Part 8

His name was Launcelot Gobbo; he was born, or rather hatched, on a Narragansett farm. He was the joint property of Bill and Ralph Prime, two farmer’s sons, fourteen and fifteen years of age, who, according to the good old fashion in the Prime family, were given each year some portion of the farm stock--a cosset lamb, a brood of chickens, a pig, a cote of pigeons--to rear and sell, or keep as their very own. This year their share of the farm-products was Launcelot Gobbo and his mate. His name was given him by the village school-teacher, a young college student who chanced to come frequently to call on the boy’s sister, Mary Prime. Gobbo was chosen as their handsel because he was such a mammoth turkey-chick, a nine-days’-old wonder; and by tender cherishing he had fulfilled the great promise of his youth.

This great size had been aided by careful feeding, on a composite diet, of Narragansett fashion, extended by Oriental suggestion. His first food was such as all well-reared Narragansett turkeys have, milk curdled with rennet, by which the gasps and stomach-ache so fatal to turkey infancy were avoided. Then came the natural food-supply of grasshoppers and Rhode Island whole corn. The Prime boys had few books to read; among them were several dry and colorless memoirs of sainted missionaries to the East. There was one nutritious kernel, however, in one of these rustling husks of books; it was an account of the preparation of locusts as food, the roasting, frying, and drying them for grinding them into meal. Bill Prime was an inventive genius, a true Yankee, ever ready to take a hint; moreover, he was animated by sincere affection for his pet, and pride in his size; and as he read the meagre missionary accounts he conceived the notion of supplying Gobbo with his dearly loved grasshoppers after autumnal winds had chilled and cleared the fields of vegetable and insect life.

It was not as easy a task to catch and dry these American grasshoppers as Oriental locusts, but love laughs at limitations; just as Gobbo laughed when his daily dole of grasshoppers was dealt out to him on chill October and November mornings, with the Tallman sweetings that formed his dessert. “Laugh and grow fat” is the old saying; and as Gobbo laughed he also grew fat, and he waxed taller and taller. Ralph thought Gobbo weighed thirty pounds; Bill set the weight at least five pounds higher. As the turkey was full and rich of feather he looked to me twice as large as any other I had ever seen; really big enough to reach the seventeenth-century standard of “three score pound in weight.”

But Gobbo had other claims to consideration besides his size or his distinguished name; he was an accomplished turkey--a trick-performer. Like Shakespeare’s famous Gobbo for whom he was named, he “used his heels at his master’s commands.” When Bill struck the ground near him with a stick and called out “Dance, Gobbo, dance for the ladies,” and set up a shrill fife-like whistle, Gobbo spread his great fan-like tail, and nodded and bowed his head, and circled and hopped around in exact time with the rapping of the stick, in the most pompous, ridiculous, mirth-provoking caricature of a dance that ever was footed or clawed. He posed before the whole town as a show-bird. Stolid Narragansett farmers and fishermen for miles around came to see him, and roared aloud at his dancing, which he had to exhibit every day in the week. Even on Sunday, at the nooning, Bill proudly but secretly led the neighbors’ boys home to the farm and behind the barn; though the deacon sternly frowned on a Sunday dance, even by a turkey who had no soul to be saved.

It was the second week of November; Gobbo was still growing and still dancing, when one day a gayly painted vehicle with a smart horse came dashing into town. The wagon had an enclosed box behind the chaise front. It might be taken for a peddler’s cart or a patent-medicine coach, but it was neither; it was the collecting-van of a Boston “antique-man.” Persuasive, smiling, flattering, peering into every kitchen, cupboard, and dresser, in every parlor closet, in every bedroom and gabled attic, he gathered in his lucrative autumnal harvest of brass andirons and candlesticks, of old blue dishes and copper lustre pitchers, of harp-back chairs and spinning-wheels. He débonnairly purchased two pewter porringers, a sampler, and an old mirror of Mrs. Prime, while he effusively praised the farm and the cattle. And as he partook of the apples and cider generously set before him, he shouted with laughter at Gobbo, who proudly danced for him again and again. As the early twilight began to lower, the “antique-man” called out a cheerful good-night and drove away. Gobbo also stalked off--and forever--from the Prime door-yard, for in the morning he had vanished from the farm as completely as if he had evaporated.

How the boys stormed and mourned! how fiercely they descended on the “colored” Johnsons, more than suspected in the past of chicken-stealing! how they hunted the woods and meadows! how they fretted and fumed!--but to no avail. To check their worry and anger, their mother sent them off to Boston to spend Thanksgiving week with their married sister.

With the sea-loving curiosity of all boys, they haunted the wharves and lower portions of the city, and on the day before Thanksgiving, as they wandered up from the docks through a crowded and noisy street, they joined a little group gathered around the show-window of a “dime musee,” for in the window stood as a lure, a promise of treasures and wonders within, an enormous turkey, penned in a wire coop, drooping of feather, and listlessly feeding.

“He isn’t nearly as big as Gobbo,” said Bill, contemptuously. “Not much,” answered Ralph; but even as they spoke there gathered in their questioning brains, in their eager eyes, a conviction which burst forth from their lips: “It is Gobbo!”

Now they were Yankee boys, slow but shrewd, and they knew every feather of the wings, every fold of the comb and wattle of their pet; but each paid his dime and entered the museum to be sure. Past the voluble showman, the wax figures, the stuffed animals, they silently strolled to the window. No one else stood near within doors. “Dance, Gobbo, dance for the ladies!” cried Bill, excitedly, striking the floor with his cane, and his heart beat high. Oh! how the crowd outside on the street laughed as Gobbo spread his tail and danced “most high and disposedly,” as the French ambassador said of Queen Elizabeth in the gavotte.

A great printed card hung over Gobbo’s pen; he was to be raffled that very night. Made suspicious by fraud, the boys scarcely dared leave the hall even for food, but with the instinctive good sense of many of country birth, Bill interviewed a friendly policeman on the beat, and another policeman appeared at the raffling at eight o’clock and sat near the Prime boys on the front row of seats in the hall.

At the appointed hour a noisy but not disorderly crowd had gathered. The master of ceremonies removed the wire netting from around Gobbo, who was still feeding and still fattening. The showman entreated silence, and in a reasonable stillness began: “Gentlemen, this magnificent turkey, the biggest ever known in the civilized world, the feathered monarch of the ornithological world, will--” when a shrill whistle pierced the air, and “Dance, Gobbo, dance for the ladies!” was roared out. The turkey reared his long neck and head like a snake, and with a piercing gobble literally flew from the platform to his friend Bill, with a force that almost stunned the boy. The showman advanced: “What does this mean?” he shouted. “Don’t you touch him,” screamed Bill, and “Don’t you touch him,” confirmed with emphasis the policeman, while Ralph explained to the inquisitive and sympathizing ’longshoremen and sailors who crowded around him, how the turkey had been lost and found; not without some bitter aspersions on the character of the antique-man.

An adjourned meeting was held at the police-station the following morning, when the Prime boys testified and Gobbo danced, and a gay session it was in those dingy rooms; and the showman with a sham good-humor resigned his claims to what had proved to him a very lucrative drawing-card.

There ought to be a romantic ending to this tale of a lost love; but every turkey has his day, and this was Gobbo’s. He was too big to keep in a city yard, and too big to take home in the cars; thus did his greatness, as did Cardinal Wolsey’s, prove his destruction. Even his accomplishments were a snare; for when it was known he could dance, his talent could not be hidden under a bushel in obscure country-life. He had ever been destined for a city market, and soon again he graced a window, this time of a great city poulterer; and on the eve of Thanksgiving he was again raffled--the second time, alas! with hanging wings, and plucked sides, and drooping head.

CUDDYMONK’S GHOST

Black Cuddymonk and his wife Rosann were holding an animated discussion as they sat before the fire in their cheerful kitchen in old Narragansett. That is, Cuddymonk was talking loudly and effusively, while Rosann said little, but said it firmly; and in the end succeeded in having her own way, as such stubborn, talk-less persons usually do, whether they be black or white. Cuddy had had an offer of employment for a month, and he was unwilling to accept the position and do the work; but Rosann calmly overruled him and he had to yield. It was not that the work was hard, or that the pay was poor, but simply that Cuddy was afraid, he was too superstitious to dare to face the terrors that the performance of his duties might bring forth. And yet it seemed simple enough! Old Dr. Greene had the rheumatism and could not hold the reins to drive, and he wanted to hire Cuddy to drive in his chaise with him when he went on his daily round of visits, and to care for the horse when he returned home. Cuddy would have loved to feed and rub down the horse, and drive through the sunny lanes and green woods, and sit in the sun while the Doctor visited and dosed and bled within doors. It would be like making a round of visits himself, for he was then “Black Gov’nor,” and at every house in village or on farm he would find some friend or constituent to chat and gossip with. But alas! all the Doctor’s visits were not made in the daytime, and Cuddy shrank from the thought of driving all over Narragansett in the night. He thus complained to Rosann: “I wouldn’t care if it warn’t for dem darminted graveyards. Dere’s a graveyard on ebery farm all ober dis country. I nebber see sech fools es folks is in Narragansett. Dey warnts ter hab ghosts ebberywhere. Why don’t dey keep ’em all in de ole church-yard ober ter Fender Zeke’s corner, den yer can go de road dat leads round de udder way, an’ not meet ’em. Down Boston way dey buries folks in church-yards an’ keeps der ghosts where dey belongs.”

Cuddymonk had travelled, and knew how things should be; he had ridden to Boston thirty years previously with Judge Potter; and the strange sights he had seen, and the new ways he had learned at that metropolis, had been his chief stock-in-trade ever since, and, indeed, had formed one of his great qualifications for election as Black Governor.

Rosann answered him calmly and coldly: “I’s sick er ghosts, Cuddymonk. I’se been mar’d forty year, and you’s a-talkin’ about ghosts all de whole during time an’ a-speerin’ for ghosts all dem years, an’ yer ain’t nebber seed one yit. You’s jess got ter go ter de Doctor’s termorrer an’ dribe for him.”

“Rosann, when yer sees me brung home a ragin’ luniac wid misery ob de head, yer’ll wish yer hadn’ drove yer ole man erway from yer bed ’n’ b’ord ter go foolin’ all ober de country in de night-time, seein’ ghosts and sperits an’ witches. P’raps I sha’n’t nebber come home alibe, anyway.”

“You’s got ter go, Cuddy, an’ dar ain’t no use er talkin’ ’bout it. I guess de ole Doctor kin charm off any ghost you’ll eber see. ’Sides, he won’t be out much nights when he got de rheumatiz ser bad. ’Tain’t ebry day yer kin git yer keep an’ ten dollars a month, an’ yer ought ter dribe fer him anyway, ter ’comerdate him, when he sabed yer troo de bronchiters.”

So Cuddy went to the Doctor, and for a week all was well with him. He drove to all points from Wickford to Biscuit Town, and received such greeting and honor from all of his race as was due a governor. But an end came to all this content, for late on a misty, miserable September afternoon young Joe Champlin came riding up to the doctor’s door in great speed, and in a few moments the Doctor shouted out to Cuddy to harness up Peggy. Cuddy was wretched. He knew well where the Champlin farm lay--far up on Boston Neck--and he thought with keen terror of the lonely road, of the many little enclosed graveyards that lay between him and the Champlin homestead. Fear made him bold, and he managed to stammer out to the Doctor the request that he would have Joe Champlin hitch his saddle-horse behind the chaise and drive the Doctor to the farm, where horse and chaise and doctor could remain all night; then he (Cuddy) would walk up early in the morning to drive back. The Doctor scoffed at the ridiculous proposition, and barely gave Cuddy time ere they started to put on his coat and waistcoat wrong side out--a sure safeguard against ghosts. As they drove up Boston Neck in the misty twilight Cuddy suffered keen thrills of terror whenever he got down from the chaise to let down bars or open gates; for the only roads at that time in that region of Narragansett were drift-ways through the fields--well-travelled, to be sure--but still kept closed by gates. Cuddy clambered in and out of the chaise, and opened and closed the gates with an agility that amazed the Doctor, who had previously had frequent occasions in the daytime to revile him for his laziness in like duties. He also glanced with apprehension and dread at the family burying-grounds they passed, counting to himself the whole dreary number that would have to be repassed on the way home.

These sad little resting-places are dotted all over Narragansett. In olden times each family was buried in some corner on the family-farm. Sometimes the burying-place was enclosed in a high stone wall; often they were overgrown with great pine or hemlock trees, or half-shaded with airy locust-trees. Ugly little gravestones were clustered in these family resting-places--slate head-stones carved with winged cherub heads and quaint old names, and lists of the virtues of the lost ones; and all the simple but tender stone-script of the country stone-cutter’s lore--hackneyed but loving verses--repeated on stone after stone. Beautifully ideal is the thought and reality of these old Narragansett planters and their wives and children resting in the ground they loved so dearly, and so faithfully worked for. But there was nothing beautiful in the thought to Cuddy; he groaned as he passed them, and thought of his midnight return; and he tried to learn from the Doctor how long he would probably be detained at the Champlin farm. But Dr. Greene, accustomed to ride alone for hours through the country, was taciturn and gruff, and kept Cuddy in ignorance of both the name and ailment of the patient.

When they reached the Champlin farm Cuddy ventured to say, with a cheerful assumption of interest: “’S’pose you’ll stay here all night, Doctor, it’s so cole an’ damp an’ so bad fer yer rheumatiz. I’ll sleep in de hay in de barn an’ won’t bodder nobody.”

“No, indeed,” answered the Doctor, sharply, “we’ll start back in half an hour.” Cuddymonk gloomily hitched and blanketed the horse, and walked into the great kitchen, where, nodding and dozing, sat old Ruth Champlin, the negro cook. When Ruth saw his reversed clothing, she did not dream of smiling at his absurd appearance, but at once sympathized with him in his gloomy forebodings; and while she filled him with metheglin--a fermented mead made of water, honey, and locust-beans--she also filled him with fresh stories of witches and ghosts until the time came to start on the homeward drive, when the poor “Black Gov’nor’s” nerves were completely unstrung.

I will not give a list of the terrors that assailed Cuddy from the first moment of his ride home. A rustling leaf, a cracking branch, a sighing wind, were magnified into groans and wails. Every stone, every bush, seemed an uncanny form; every cluster of blackberry bushes, every hay-rick, a looming monster. And when Dr. Greene decided to return by Pender Zeke’s corner, and thus pass the old church foundation of the Narragansett Church and its cluster of deserted gravestones, Cuddy’s terror found words.

“Don’ do it, Doctor; don’ go by dat darminted ole church foundashum. It’s a dreffle lonely road, an’ ebberybody knows dere’s ghosts in dat ole church-yard ebbery night. Ole Mum Amey seed one a-dancin’ on ole Brenton’s table-stone. Fer de lub ob praise, Doctor, don’ less go dere to-night. Ole Tuggie Bannocks an’ all dem dashted ole witches gadders in de ole noon-house dat stan’s in de church-yard an’ brews dere witch-broth; an’ ef anyone sees ’em a-brewin’ dey can nebber eat nothin’ else, an’ pines away wid misery ob de stummick an’ dies.”

The Doctor only answered, gruffly, “Go by the corners, Cuddy; I’ll drive off the ghost.”

As they approached the haunted church-yard Cuddy was fairly speechless with apprehension. His teeth chattered, and he held the whip in one trembling hand to ward off any ghostly or witchly attack. Words would fail in attempting to express the horror, the agony, which seized him, which overwhelmed him when he saw as he passed the old noon-house an unearthly, an appalling, object, which he could not bear to look at, nor could he force his staring eyes to look away from. The Doctor saw it, too--a tall slender column, about seven feet in height, of faintly shimmering light vaguely outlining a robed figure, not of a human being, but plainly of a ghost. It appeared to be about a hundred feet from the road, though it could be clearly seen through the mist, and it seemed palpitating with a faint, uncanny radiance. “Stop, Cuddy,” eagerly roared the Doctor, “I want to see what that is!” And as Cuddy showed no sign of stopping the horse’s progress, he seized the reins from the negro’s shaking hands. Cuddy, frightened out of all sense of respect or deference, shouted out, “G’lang, git up,” and attempted to whip the steed.

“Cuddy, you black imp! if you dare to do that again, I’ll whip you within an inch of your life. I’m going to get out and see what that is. It is a very interesting physical phenomenon.”

“Oh, Doctor dear, you’s bewitched a’ready. Dere ain’t no physic about dat, it’s a moonack. Fer de lub of God, don’t go near it--you’ll nebber walk out alibe”--and with that the unhappy black man fairly burst into tears and threw his restraining arms around the Doctor’s neck.

The unheeding Doctor jumped from the side of the chaise with a force that nearly dragged Cuddymonk with him. The weeping negro’s affection and interest would carry him no farther, and as the Doctor walked sturdily across the church-green, Cuddy, moaning and groaning in despair, gathered up the reins, ready, at any motion or sound of the ghost, to start the horse down the road and wholly desert the Doctor.

The brave ghost-investigator walked up the four narrow stone steps that once led to the church door--but now, alas! lead sadly nowhere--then turned into the graveyard. As he stumbled eagerly along through the high grass and tangled blackberry-bushes, and as he passed under the shading branches of a wild-cherry tree, a most terrifying catastrophe took place--he plunged and slid into an open grave containing about a foot of water. Cuddy heard the splash, and it indicated to him the Doctor’s utter annihilation. He gathered the reins up with a groan of despair and prepared to drive off with speed, lest the moonack chase and overwhelm him also, when he heard the Doctor’s voice. The instinct of obedience was strong in him--for he had been born a slave--and he delayed a moment to listen. “Come here, Cuddy,” shouted the Doctor, “I’ve fallen into the grave they’ve dug for old Tom Hazard.” Cuddy groaned, but did not move, either to drive, or to fly to the Doctor’s rescue. “Come here, I say, and help me out; I shall die of the rheumatism if I stay here.” Another groan, but still no motion to render assistance. “Cuddy, if you don’t come, I’ll conjure you with that big skeleton in my closet.” Still no answer, and at last, the Doctor, by dint of struggling and breaking away the earth, managed to drag himself out of the shallow grave. Undaunted by a mishap that would have both mentally unnerved and physically exhausted anyone but a country doctor, unchilled in spirit though shivering in body, the determined investigator walked up to the ghost.

He took one glance and at once turned, and, avoiding the open grave, ran down the steps and across the green. “Come here, Cuddy; if I die of rheumatism I’ll take you up and show you that ghost. I’ll conjure you with every charm in the witch-book if you don’t come.” Cuddy was weak with terror, and the Doctor seized him by the collar, pulled him out of the chaise and up the steps. With chattering teeth and closed eyes he stumbled along by the Doctor’s side, clutching his leader’s arm and muttering words of Voodoo charms. When they reached the faintly shining ghost, the Doctor shouted, “Open your eyes, Cuddy,” and his power fairly forced Cuddy to comply. The Doctor raised his whip and brought it down on the shining ghost; a great swarm of fire-flies rose in the air, leaving disclosed a juniper-tree, which had chanced to grow somewhat in the form of a human figure. This strange phenomenon I cannot explain, but it is not the only time that a juniper-tree on a misty night in fall has attracted a swarm of fire-flies to light upon it.

Cuddy nearly fainted in revulsion of feeling. Both returned to the road and clambered into the chaise. The Doctor was now thoroughly chilled. He took from the medicine-chest that he always carried (“the Doctor’s bag o’ tools,” Cuddy called it) a flask that may have contained medicine, but which smelled more like “kill-devil,” and bade Cuddy drive with speed to Zeke Gardiner’s; for when the heat of the chase was over, the valiant old Doctor began to feel the twinges of an enemy that he dreaded more than any ghost--his rheumatism--and he dare not ride home dripping with icy grave-water, even if he were full of Jamaica rum.

No lights were seen at Zeke’s, but a vigorous knocking at the door roused the entire amazed and sympathetic family; and while one blew up a roaring fire in the chimney, another heated a warming-pan, another took off the Doctor’s muddy clothes, and Mistress Gardiner concocted a terrible mixture--a compound tea of boneset, snakeroot, and chamomile, which, in spite of the Doctor’s fierce remonstrances and entreaties for a mug of flip instead, she poured down his throat, thus cancelling in one fell dose many a debt of nauseous bolus, pill, or draught that she owed to him.

The perspiring Doctor, as he was being smothered in the great feather-bed, and singed with the warming-pan, and filled to the teeth with scalding herb-tea, gave his parting order to Cuddy--to drive home and tell Mrs. Greene that he had been detained at the Gardiners’ all night “on account of an overdose of spirits,” and then to come for him in the morning. Cuddy listened respectfully and answered obediently, went quietly around behind the Gardiners’ house, calmly placed the horse in the Gardiners’ stable and the chaise in the Gardiners’ barn, slept the sleep of the brave, the obedient, the unhaunted, in the hay in the upper hay-mow, and appeared, as ordered, with horse and chaise at the front door the following morning.

Books by Alice Morse Earle

In Old Narragansett (_Ivory Series_)