Chapter 11

He entered, following her as he would have followed a ghost. She moved a chair from the wall without the least noise, and he dropped upon it. As he looked at her his identity seemed slipping away--seemed to be slipping into an atmosphere connected with her and her surroundings. She brought him some water which she dipped from a pail near by, and held the cocoa-nut dipper which contained it to his lips.

"Thee has come to us from strange parts, I reckon, from thy looks."

"Yes," he answered, absently; "I needed change."

"There has been no change here since the Indians went away. If thee will look across the road thee can see the ground is strewed with the bits of shells from their feasts."

He went to the window, and again remarked to himself, "This is the place for me."

"Could you," he asked, going toward her, "let me stay with you a while?"

"Did thee come to the Marsh End station this morning?"

"Yes; my valise is there."

"Thy parents are rich?"

"I have none."

"Thee has been well cared for, though."

"I have not left home because of any--" Misfortune, he was about to say, but that did not seem to be the right word; so he tried to think of something else to say. She saw his embarrassment, and said, quickly,

"I never have harbored a stranger; but if Peter likes, he may take thee."

Osgood thanked her so pleasantly that she determined he should stay. She asked him his name, his age, his place of residence, his business, and his intentions. Except in regard to the latter, his answer proved satisfactory; and when Peter returned at noon from the distant shore with a load of sea-weed, she introduced Osgood as if he were an old acquaintance of whom Peter was in a state of lamentable ignorance. He pushed his hat on the back of his head, shook hands with Osgood, and said, "Maria, will thee give me my dinner?" taking no further notice of Osgood till she had placed it on the table. It consisted of stewed beans, boiled beef, apple-pie, and cheese. Osgood ate half a pie, and established himself in Peter's good graces.

"Thee will learn that Maria's pie-crust beats all," he said.

"Thee is ready to consent," said his wife, "to keep young Osgood a while?"

"I don't know yet," answered Peter.

But after dinner he harnessed his horse and went to the dépôt for Osgood's valise, which he carried upstairs and deposited in the spare room. He then invited Osgood to take a look at the premises. He wished to make his own investigations in regard to Osgood without Maria's intervention. They lingered by the pig-sty, and while Peter scratched the pigs with a cord-wood stick, exchanged views of men and things. Peter saw the capabilities of Osgood's character, and easily divined the manner of life he had led. He knew him to be selfish from ignorance, and because he had early formed the habits which impose self-indulgence. Something in the young man's bearing won his heart--a certain impetuous simplicity and frankness which made him long to be of service to a nature unlike his own. Osgood found Peter genial, shrewd, and sad. Such a man he had never met. It seemed to him that Peter could set him straight in his own estimation; there was no nonsense about the old man, and yet he could see deep feeling in his dark, cavernous eyes. The feeling which had oppressed him passed away, and another took its place which contained restoration, and faith in the future. He got into Peter's way by attempting to help fodder the cattle and "slick up" the barn. When the work was done, and while Peter fastened the barn-doors with an ox-bow, Osgood looked about him. It was a March afternoon; no wind blew, and no sun shone; but the gray round of the sky, which neither woods nor hills hid from his sight, rolled over him in soft commotion. The reddish, barren fields stretched in their flatness beyond his vision, and the narrow roads of yellow sand ran to nowhere. The world of God, he thought, he saw for the first time; and, away from the world of men, felt himself a _man_.

He looked so kindly upon Maria when he entered the house that she delayed the stream of the tea-kettle which she held over the teapot to admire him. The supper was the dinner--cold, with an addition of warm biscuits; and again Osgood ate himself into Peter's good graces.

The evening was passed in silence. Peter smoked, Maria mended, and Osgood reflected. A violent storm arose in the night, which lasted three days. They were improved by Maria and Peter in overhauling garden-seeds in the garret, and in setting up a leach-tub in the wood-house. Osgood assisted. When he was alone with Maria she talked to him of the boy who was lost at sea, and of the girl who died in childhood; with the hungry eyes of a bereaved mother she looked upon him, and his heart was touched with a new tenderness. When he was alone with Peter the old man sounded the depths of the young man's soul with wise, pathetic, quaint speech; he went over the ground of his own life, which had been passed on the spot where he now was, with the exception of several mackerel voyages, and one in a merchant vessel to some of the southern ports of Europe. But when together Peter and Maria never talked with Osgood on personal matters. Between them a marital silence was kept, which was more expressive than the conjugal volubility which ordinarily exists; it proved that they had passed through profounder experiences.

When the storm ceased Peter went to the station for his Boston newspaper, which he read to Maria, who took it afterward and read it over to herself. Brother Quakers, Peter's neighbors, who lived out of sight, dropped in from time to time to exchange a word with Maria, or hold talks outside with Peter, with one foot in the rut and the other on the wagon-step. The present subject of interest, Osgood discovered, was the approaching Quarterly Meeting, and the mackerel fishery. Peter asked him to accompany himself and Maria to the town where the meeting was to be. They breakfasted at sunrise, when the day arrived, in full dress--Peter in a snuff-colored suit, and Maria in a series of brown articles--dress, shawl, and bonnet. They started in good spirits in an open wagon, with an improvised seat for Peter in front. Beyond a belt of pine woods stood the meeting-house, and a mile beyond the meeting-house lay the town, before a vast bay. Osgood drove alone into the town, and spent several hours there. He visited the shops to find some trifle for Maria, and then went through the town down to the shore. How happy he grew in the pure wind and the gay morning light! The gulls rode over the foaming wave-crests and dipped into their green walls, and hawks swooped between the steadfast sky and heaving deep. The sea traveled round and round before his eyes with a mad joy, and tempted him to plunge into it. He wrote his name in the heavy sand with a broken shell, and the water filtered out the letters; then he paved it in pebbles with the word _Strength_.

Peter and Maria were waiting for him when he returned to the meeting-house with the wagon.

"Thee has been skylarking," she said.

"After something for you," he answered, putting in her hand a handsome work-basket.

"Has thee so much money that thee must waste it on me, Osgood?"

But she was pleased with the gift. They rode home amicably. Peter, as a favor, allowed Osgood to drive, while he imparted to Maria sundry bits of information gained at the meeting.

"Mackerel" went in and out at Osgood's ears without gaining his attention, till he caught at something Peter said about the _Bonita_. He listened. Three vessels were about to sail from the town on a mackerel voyage, and the _Bonita_ was one of them. He comprehended that Peter owned half the _Bonita_, and a plan struck him. He inquired into the subject, and obtained its history. That evening he proposed going on a mackerel voyage, which proposal so fired Peter that he declared he had a mind to go too; but Maria quenched his enthusiasm by going over the programme of work that must be done at home. She made no opposition to Osgood's going, but set before him in plain terms the hardships of such a voyage. He was not to be deterred, and Peter gave his consent, promising him a small share of the profits.

Osgood wrote to his Aunt Formica that night, assuring her that he already felt much better, and that he was about to enter into a new business, of which she should hear more. He also wrote Lily Tree a minute, lengthy epistle. He described his situation with Peter and Maria; told her how much board he paid--two dollars and fifty cents a week--and how well he had learned to do chores. He fed the pigs every day; he wished that she could see how well they thrived on the diet lately introduced by Peter and himself--a dry mash of boiled potatoes and meal, with an occasional horseshoe thrown in as a relish. Would she, he wondered, have enjoyed the day that he, Maria, and Peter made soft soap? He mentioned his intended voyage, and asked her if she liked sailors. Could he have the hope, he continued, of her sympathy in his future enterprises, which perhaps would differ from those she had thought of for him? He avowed a change in himself. Would it affect her?

He sealed his letters, and began pacing his little room. Writing home had brought his old life near him again; the distance it had come to reach him seemed enormous.

"It was only a few days ago," he thought, "and yet I am so different!"

He rolled up his paper window-curtain and softly raised the window. The moon made the landscape look more vast and desolate than it was in the light of day. Under the horizon it revealed a strip of sea which shone as if it were the portal of another world whose light was reflected thereon. Osgood felt that he was an imprisoned soul this side of it. The light gave him an intimation of immortality. "Where is Lily's soul?" he asked. "Has she any dream beyond the life she is in?"

When Lily received Osgood's note she was angry; so was Mrs. Formica when she received hers. An intuition that Osgood repented his rashness touched Lily's pride, and preserved her silence. When the second letter came, she thought he had the intention of experimenting with her; a test, she concluded, was unendurable, not to be submitted to. Should she test him, and proclaim the engagement she meditated? it would be a relief to do something. She could not reach him with a letter, for he had gone on a mackerel voyage beyond the limits of the post-office. She decided differently according to the light she had. Unlike Osgood, she was chained to the place she was in. She was alone, too; her mother was occupied with neuralgia, and her father was out of town half his time, on mysterious agencies which referred to canals. The newspaper reporters at Albany were well acquainted with Mr. Tree's name while they were putting into short-hand the doings of the Legislature. Mrs. Formica had no suspicion that Lily was the cause of Osgood's disappearance; she would not have regretted his absence so much on these grounds, for a match with Lily was not desirable.

Within a month Lily's engagement to Mr. Barclay Dodge was announced. He was a young man of fortune, whose father owed his rise in the world to corn starch, and who had made himself known by spending large sums of money on pictures, landscapes mostly, which had been indorsed by the public in exhibitions.

Mr. Barclay Dodge was happy; he had for more than two years followed Lily through all vicissitudes attendant upon the career of a young girl in society. From an exhilaration the pursuit had become a desperation. He had never suspected any man of being his rival, and accounted for the acquaintance between Lily and Osgood by believing that Lily was related to the Formica family. How she managed so suddenly to convince Barclay Dodge that it was safe for him to propose is a mystery which none but a disappointed, contrary woman may reveal. He had the usual penetration of his sex in regard to such mysteries; he was a man of sense and experience, but he was in love, and when a man is in love he only analyzes himself, and all that he learns is, that his love must be gratified.

In the whirl of his attentions, and the congratulations of her friends, the time passed quickly; not so quickly, however, as to avert the plan by which the Fates were to bring her to a knowledge of herself.

Barclay proposed an immediate marriage. Lily declined the proposal with so much vehemence that he dared not insist. He pulled his mustache in rage after he left her, and wondered why he did not insist. By what means, he cogitated, could he make her yield her will to his? Her resistance he set down to coyness; all women had freaks; they were alike in such matters. He divined after a while that she would let go the lasso at any moment if he proved restive; so he played the submissive to perfection. If she ever saw his eyes flame, or any gesture which contained a threat, he never knew it; but every revelation from him was a revelation to her of herself, and this was to be her education and her punishment.

"Where is your friend Osgood?" he asked once.

"He has been away a long time," she answered, looking him full in the face, but with rather a stony expression in her eyes.

"He is your relative?"

"Oh no."

"No? I thought so, always seeing you in the same places."

"Our families have been acquainted always."

"Do you think he is handsome?"

"Yes."

"He is too short" (Barclay was tall), "and his eyes have a wandering, unsettled look."

"He is following his destiny by them," she answered, bitterly. "I wish that I could follow mine as a man can."

"Do you mean that you would like to follow Osgood's eyes?"

"By no means; I must see destiny by your eyes."

The words were pleasant, but the tone was malicious. It made his heart bound as if an invisible foe had come into his atmosphere to do battle with him, and he could do nothing.

* * * * *

"'With the vapors all around, and the breakers on our lee, Not a light is in the sky, not a light is on the sea.'--

barring the lantern abaft," roared Osgood, from the deck of the schooner _Bonita_, which was tossing outside Cape Malabar.

"You may sing t'other side of your mouth afore long," bawled back the skipper. "We ain't fur from the Cormorant Rocks; the wind p'r'aps will shove us on the ledge."

"What, when we are just going home with full barrels?"

"The mackerel may be briled in Tophet for all we know."

The skipper was at the helm; Osgood and he were in the radius of a lantern which revealed their faces to each other. Outside of that was pitch darkness; the rain drove in fierce slants against them, and the wind howled all round the sea.

The skipper did not look concerned, neither did Osgood; but they were both wondering which would first break over the _Bonita_, the light of morning or the sea.

"Them boys are asleep, I s'pose, wet to the bone?" the skipper yelled.

"Yes."

"Let 'em sleep; there ain't a lanyard loose."

"What time must it be?"

"Hard onto 'leven. My old woman's turned in long afore this, _she_ has; allus goes to bed on the stroke o' nine."

"She has thought of you to-night?"

"She has give me a prayer or so; she's the strictest kind. Now I'll luff, there is a lull comin'; peskiest storms that have lulls in 'em. You don't hear a swashing to a distance now?"

"No."

"Hark!"

A sound, not of wind nor sea, approached them--a rapid, rushing, cutting sound.

"Up with the helm!" shrieked the skipper to himself. "God Almighty, she is down on us!"

Osgood leaped up. The bowsprit of a large ship was over him; he threw up his arms instinctively and caught at something; he felt his feet drawing over the skipper's head, and that he thumped it with his boots. He knew no more. The great ship crushed and plowed the _Bonita_ into the waves as easily as a plow buries in the sod the stubble of the corn-field. Nothing signaled her destruction except the exclamation of the skipper; nothing remained in the wide sea to show it. Her timbers and the sleeping crew went to the bottom together. Morning dawned on the wild scene, revealing no floating spar, no rib of boat, no stave of tub or barrel, no sailor's hat, no remnant of sail, no shred of clothing; the jaws of the sea had closed over all. The ship, a Liverpool liner, driven out of her course by the storm, cruised round the spot for a few hours, and then went on her way, taking Osgood with her. He had clung to the folds of the forward sail; and there he was found with his left wrist dislocated, his body strained and sore, and his mind wandering. He was no romantic sight with his red flannel shirt, fishy trowsers, cowhide boots, and hands pickled in brine. Still the ship's surgeon took to him, and found, when Osgood came to himself, that he had taken to a gentleman. He lent him a suit of customary black, and introduced him to his acquaintances. Osgood would have enjoyed the voyage across the Atlantic but for the horror which had fallen on his mind from the catastrophe of the _Bonita_.

"How old are you?" the surgeon asked him.

"About the first of March I was twenty-three; since then I have grown so old I have lost the reckoning."

"I'll have to give you quinine, my boy."

"Give me some of the tincture of Lethe."

"It is of no use to one to forget; don't be soft."

"Let us reason together, Sawbones."

The Doctor agreed, and Osgood began his story with, "Poor Peter," and finished it with asking, "Do you think I love her?"

"I'll bet a guinea," said the Doctor, "that she is married."

"She isn't," replied Osgood, indignantly.

"I am sure that she is engaged, as you call it, to somebody besides yourself."

"I know better."

"What do you propose doing when you get home?"

"What can I do with thirty dollars, which I left with Peter by-the-way?"

"We shall see what we shall see when we come face to face with Aunt Formica. I intend going the rounds with you in New York. I am a student."

He carried Osgood to his country-home beyond Liverpool, where they staid till the ship was ready to sail again. He amused his mother and sisters with stories of Osgood's adventures on sea and land, and represented him in the light of a "Jarley's wax-works" hero, till he was fairly cured of his melancholy.

Five months from the day on which he left New York Osgood returned, and stood on his Aunt Formica's door-steps with Dr. Black. They looked like a pair of Englishmen. Both had shiny, red noses, shiny, hard, narrow-brimmed hats, and shiny, narrow-toed boots, and the nap had brushed off their coats.

Osgood looked into the familiar area with emotion, and the Doctor looked at the windows with curiosity.

"They must be out of town," he said; "the house has been put in brown hollands."

But Osgood knew the habits of his aunt--knew that from the first of July till the first of October the house was put on an out-of-town footing; and that she skirmished between city and country, or watering-place. The bell was answered by a servant he did not know.

"I wish to see Mrs. Formica," he said, brushing past her, and entering the dark parlor. "Dr. Black and friend say."

Mrs. Formica came in a moment after with a slight air of amazement, which increased to astonishment when she saw her nephew. She gave a little yelp as he embraced her, and said, "Where _have_ you been?"

"To Cape Cod, and to Europe. I have been shipwrecked, aunt--that is, I lost my mackerel venture, and have been taken care of by my noble friend, Dr. Black."

Aunt Formica grew pale at the word "shipwrecked," and turned to Dr. Black. Something in his face made her extend her hand and give him a warm welcome.

"Black may stay here while he is in port, mayn't he? He will amuse you with yarns about me."

"Of course," she replied. "Now tell me the whole story."

Between Osgood and the Doctor it was related.

"Why did you ever go from me?" she asked, wiping away a real tear.

"I believe, aunt, I shall keep up the business of going--it suits me. I can never live through your conventional cramps."

She did not think it prudent to combat him just then; but made a mental memorandum that something must be done that would change his foolish resolution. A plan developed at dinner that evening.

"I had a note yesterday from Mrs. Senator Conch," said Mrs. Formica. "She will be in Saratoga this week, and begs me to meet her there. Formica and I have been talking it over, Osgood, and we think that it will be pleasant for Dr. Black and you to go up for a week. You will go, Doctor?"

"Thank you, Madam, provided Osgood is not averse."

"Any of our set there?" Osgood asked.

"The Trees went up last Saturday with Barclay Dodge. They are making an extensive tour this year."

"What's Barclay Dodge along for?"

"He is engaged to Lily Tree!"

"Ah!" said Osgood, looking at the Doctor, who could not help giving him a malicious grimace. "How long since? It's a capital match, ain't it?"

"The engagement must have been announced soon after you left."

This reply put Osgood in a brown study. What impulse, he mused, had prompted Lily to give herself to Barclay Dodge? Would _he_ have done so?

Dr. Black commented on Osgood's face, and considered himself in a fair way to make studies.

"As far as money goes," continued Mrs. Formica, "it may be called a good match; but certainly not as far as family goes."

"Family!" echoed Dr. Black, softly.

"His father was a tradesman," explained Mr. Formica, "while Lily can go back to her great-grandfather before trade need be mentioned."

"Old Mr. Tree's father," remarked his wife, "was a brigadier-general in the Revolution."

"He was a drover, for all that," said Osgood.

Mrs. Formica changed the theme, and talked of Saratoga.

"We'll go," Osgood said, crossly; "but I must first go to my tailor."

Mrs. Formica held a private conversation with him after dinner, gave him a check, and told him not to worry about the future: she had a plan in view.

"Plans go by contraries with me, aunt."

"You owe it to me not to be perverse."

"I can't pay any debt."

Previous to going to bed Dr. Black and Osgood smoked several cigars.

"You strike me," said the Doctor, "as growing to the dramatic just now. One event runs into another with monstrous rapidity among you Americans. How you differ from the English! How is it that you catch fortune by the hair so?"

"We are passionate and quick-witted."

"And then you repudiate with ease."

"Bah! you imitate Sydney Smith."

"I did not mean in the sense of State bonds precisely."

"I think," Osgood groaned, "that I begin to feel like a snob again. What shall I do to be saved?"

"Go on in the groove that is making for you. I'll stand by and be the chorus. When I hear thy plaints of misery I will let fall the tear; but remember that 'laws determine even the fates.'"

"Bosh!"