Read Ebook: The New Science of Controlled Breathing Vol. 1 (of 2) The Secret of Strength Energy and Beauty—Through Breath Control by Lankow Edward

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Ebook has 258 lines and 12278 words, and 6 pages

"He will--I know he will," said little Sam Peabody, leaping down from his judgment-seat in the window. "Chanticleer knows he will, or he would not speak in that way. He hasn't crowed once before, you know, grandfather, since Elbridge went away; we'll hear from brother soon, I know we shall--I know we shall!"

The little fellow, in his glee, clapped his hands and crowed too. The grandfather, looking on his gambols, smiled, but was presently sad again.

"Would to Heaven he may," he said. "If they come who should, to-day, we may learn of him--for to-day my children should come up from all the quarters of the land where they are scattered--the East, the West, the North, the South--to join with me in the Festival of Thanksgiving which now draws near. My head is whitened with many winters, and I shall see them for the last time." Sylvester continued: "If they come--in this calm season, which, so soft and sweet, seems the gentle dawn of the coming world--we shall have, I feel, our last re-gathering on earth! But they come not; my eyes are weary with watching afar off, and I cannot yet discern that my children bear me in remembrance, in this grateful season of the year. Why do they not come?"

The aged patriarch of the family bowed his head and was silent. From the broom-corn the gentle voice stole again:

Why sings the robin in the wood? For him her music is not shed: Why blind-brook sparkle through the field? He may be dead! he may be dead!

The murmur of Miriam's musical lamenting had scarcely died away on the dreamy air, when there came hurrying forward from the garden--where she had been tending the great thanksgiving pumpkin, which was her special charge--the black servant of the household, Mopsey by name, who, with her broad-fringed cap flying all abroad, and her great eyes rolling, spoke out as she approached--

"Do hear dat, massa?"

"I hear nothing, Mopsey."

"Dere, don't you hear't now? Dey're coming!"

With faces of curiosity, and ears erect, they listened. There was a peculiar sound in the air, and on closer attention they discerned, in the stillness of the morning, the jingling traces of the stage-coach, on the cross-road, through the fields.

"They are not coming," said old Sylvester, when the sound had died away in the distance; "the stage has taken the other road."

As Mopsey spoke, two figures appeared on foot on the brow of the road, which sloped down toward the Homestead, through a feathery range of graceful locusts. They were too far off to be distinctly made out, but it was to be inferred that they were travellers from a distance, for one of them held against the light some sort of travelling bag or portmanteau; one of them was in female dress, but this was all they could as yet distinguish. Various conjectures were ventured as to their special character. They were unquestionably making for the Homestead, and it was to be reasonably supposed they were Peabodys, for strangers were rare upon that road, which was a by-way, off the main thoroughfare.

The family gathered on the extreme out-look of the balcony, and watched with eager curiosity their approach, which was slow and somewhat irregular--the man did not aid the woman in her progress, but straggled on apart, nor did he seem to address her as they came on.

ARRIVAL OF THE MERCHANT AND HIS PEOPLE.

"It is William and Hannah," said the Patriarch, towering above the household grouped about him, and gaining an advantage in observation from his commanding height, "I am glad the oldest is the first to come!"

When the two comers reached the door-yard gate the man entered in without rendering the least assistance or paying the slightest heed to his companion, who followed humbly in his track. He was some sixty years of age, large-featured and inclining to tallness; his dress was oldmanish and plain, consisting of a long-furred beaver hat, a loose made coat, and other apparel corresponding, with low cut shoes. He smiled as he came upon the balcony, greeting old Sylvester with a shake of the hand, but taking no notice whatever either of the widow, little Sam, or Mopsey. His wife, on the contrary, spoke to all, but quietly and submissively, which was in truth, her whole manner. She was spare and withered, with a pinched, colorless face, constrained in a scared and apprehensive look as though in constant dread of an impending violence or injury. Over one eye she wore a green patch, which greatly heightened the pallor and strangeness of her features.

"Where's the Captain and Henrietta?" old Sylvester asked when the greetings were over.

"They started from the city in a chay," he was answered by William Peabody, "some hours before us,--the captain,--seaman--way of driving irreg'lar. Nobody can tell what road he may have got into. Should'nt be surprised if did'nt arrive till to-morrow morning. Will always have high-actioned horse."

William Peabody had scarcely spoken when there arose in the distance down the road, a violent cloud of dust, from which there emerged a two-wheeled vehicle at a thundering pace, and which, in less than a minute's time, went whirling past the Homestead. It was supposed to contain Captain Saltonstall and wife; but what with the speed and dust, no eye could have guessed with any accuracy who or what they were. In less than a minute more it came sweeping back with the great white horse, passing the house again like an apparition, or the ghost of a horse and gig. With another sally down the road and return, with a long curve in the road before the Homestead, it at last came to at the gate, and disclosed in a high sweat and glowing all over his huge person, the jovial Captain, and at his side his pretty little cherry-faced girl of a wife, Henrietta Peabody, daughter of William Peabody, who, be it known, is old Sylvester's oldest son. There also emerged from the one-horse gig, after the captain had made ground, and jumped his little wife to the same landing in his arms, a red-faced boy, who must have been closely stowed somewhere, for he came out of the vehicle highly colored, and looking very much as if he had been sat upon for a couple of hours or more. The Captain having freed his horse from the traces, and at old Sylvester's suggestion, set him loose in the door-yard to graze at his leisure, rushed forward upon the balcony very much in the character of a good natured tornado, saluted the widow Margaret with a whirlwind kiss, threw little Sam high in the air and caught him as he came within half an inch of the ground, shook the old grandfather's readily extended hand with a sturdy grasp, and wound up, for a moment, with a great cuff on the side of the head with a roll of stuff for a new gown for Mopsey, saying as he delivered it, "Dere, what d'ye say to dat, Darkey!"

Darkey brightened into a sort of nocturnal illumination, and shuffling away, in the loose shoes, to the keeping of which on her feet the better half of the best energies of her life were directed, gave out that she must be looking after dinner.

It was but for a moment only that the Captain paused, and in less than five minutes he had said and done so many good-natured things, had shown himself so free of heart withal, and so little considerate of self or the figure he cut, that in spite of his great clumsy person, and the gash in his face, and the somewhat exorbitant character of his dress, his coat being a bob as long and straight in the line across the back, as the edge of a table, you could not help regarding him as a decidedly well made, well dressed, and quite handsome person; in fact the Captain passed with the whole family for a fine-looking man.

"Where's my little girl Miriam?" asked the jovial Captain, after a moment's rest in a seat by the side of old Sylvester. "I must see my Dolphin, or she'll think I'm growing old."

Being advised that the young lady in question was somewhere within, the Captain rushed into the house, pursued by all the family in a body, save William Peabody, who remained with old Sylvester, seated and in silence.

"How go matters in the city, William?" he said, removing his hand from his brow, where it had rested in contemplation for several minutes.

"After the old fashion, father," William Peabody answered, smiling with a fox-like glance at his father; "added three new houses to my property since last year."

"Three new houses?"

"Three, all of brick,--good streets--built in the latest style. The city grows and I grow!"

"Three new houses, and all in the latest style--and how does Margaret's little property pay?"

"Poorly, father, poorly. Elbridge made a bad choice when he bought it--greatly out of repair--rents come slowly."

"In a word, the old story, the widow gets nothing again from the city. I had hopes you would be able to bring her some returns this time, for she needs it sadly."

"I do the best I can, but money's not to be got out of stone walls."

"And you have three new houses which pay well," old Sylvester continued, turning his calm blue eye steadily upon his son.

"Capital--best in the city! Already worth twice I gave for 'em. The city grows and I grow!"

"My son, do you never think of that other house reserved for us all?"

William Peabody was about to answer, it was nonsense for a man only sixty and in sound condition of body and mind to think too much of that, when his eye, ranging across the fields, espied in shadow as it were, through the dim atmosphere, the mist clearing away a little in that direction, an old sorrel horse--a long settler with the family and well-known to all its members--staggering about feebly in a distant orchard, and in her wanderings stumbling against the trees.--"Is old Sorrel blind?" he asked, shading his own eyes from the light.

"She is, William," old Sylvester replied; "her sight went from her last New-Year's day."

"My birth-day," said the merchant, a sudden pallor coming upon his countenance.

"Yes, you and old Sorrel are birth-mates, my son."

"We are; she was foaled the day I was born," said William Peabody, and added, as to himself, musingly, "Old Sorrel is blind! So we pass--so we pass--young to-day--to-morrow old--limbs fail us--sight is gone."

They sat silently, contemplating the still morning scene before them, and meditating, each in his own particular way, on the history of the past.

To William, the merchant, it brought chiefly a recollection how in his early manhood he had set out from those quiet fields for a hard struggle with the world, with a bare dollar in his pocket, and when that was gone the whole world seemed to combine in a desperate league against him to prevent his achieving another. How at last, on the very edge of starvation and despair, he had wrung from it the means of beginning his fortunes; and how he had gone on step by step, forgetting all the pleasant ties of his youth, all recollections of nature and cheerful faces of friends and kinsfolk, adding thousand to thousand, house to house; building, unlike Jacob, a ladder, that descended to the lower world, up which all harsh and dark spirits perpetually thronged and joined to drag him down; and yet he smiled grimly at the thought of the power he possessed, and how many of his early companions trembled before him because he was grown to be a rich man.

Old Sylvester, on the other hand, in all his memory had no thought of himself. His recollection ran back to the old times when his neighbors sat down under a king's sceptre in these colonies, how that chain had been freed, the gloomy Indian had withdrawn his face from their fields, how the darkness of the woods had retired before the cheering sun of peace and plenty; and how from a little people, his dear country, for whose welfare his sword had been stained, had grown into a great nation. Scattered up and down the long line of memory were faces of friends and kindred, which had passed long ago from the earth. He called to mind many a pleasant fire-side chat; many a funeral scene, and burying in sun-light and in the cold rain; the young Elbridge too was in his thoughts last of all; could he return to them with a name untainted, the old man would cheerfully lie down in his grave and be at peace with all the world.

In the meanwhile, within the house the Captain in high favor was seated in a great cushioned arm-chair with little Sam Peabody on his knee, and the women of the house gathered about him, looking on as he narrated the courses and adventures of his last voyage. The widow listened with a sad interest. Mopsey rolled her eyes and was mirthful in the most serious and stormiest passages; while little Sam and the Captain's wife rivalled each other in regarding the Captain with innocent wonder and astonishment, as though he were the most extraordinary man that ever sailed the sea, or sat in a chair telling about it, in the whole habitable globe. Miriam Haven alone was distant from the scene, gliding to and fro past the door, busied in household duties in a neighboring apartment, and catching a word here and there as she glanced by.

It was a wonderful story, certainly, the Captain was telling, and it seemed beyond all belief that it could be true that one man could have seen the whales, the icebergs, the floating islands, the ships in the air, the sea-dogs, and grampuses, the flying-fish, the pirates, and the thousand other wonders the Captain reported to have crossed his path in a single trip across the simple Atlantic and back. He also averred to have distinctly seen the sea-serpent, and what was more, to have had a conversation with a ship in the very middle of the ocean. Was there anything wonderful in that? it occurs every day--but listen to the jovial Captain!--a ship--and he had news to tell them of one they would like to hear about. They pressed close to the Captain and listened breathlessly; Miriam Haven pausing in her task, and stopping stone-still like a statue, in the door, while her very heart stayed its beating.

Go on--Captain--go on--go on!

"Well, what do you think; we were in latitude--no matter, you don't care about that--we had just come out of a great gale, which made the sea pitch-dark about us; when the first beam of the sun opened the clouds, we found ourselves along side a ship with the old stars and stripes flying like a bird at the mast-head. There was a sight, my hearties. We hailed her, she hailed us, we threw her papers, she threw us, and we parted forever."

"Is that all?"

"Not half. One of these was a list of passengers; I run my eye up, and I run my eye down, and there, shining out like a star amongst them all, I find, whose d'ye think--Elbridge Peabody--as large as life."

Miriam Haven staggered against the door-post, the widow fell upon her knees, "Thank God, my boy is heard from."

Little Sam Peabody darted from the Captain's knee and rushed upon the balcony, crying at the top of his lungs, "Grandfather, brother Elbridge is heard from."

"I don't believe it," said William Peabody; the poor old blind sorrel had disappeared from sight into a piece of woods near the orchard, and the merchant had quite recovered his usual way of speaking. "Never will believe it. You hav'nt heard of that youngster,--never will. Always knew he would run away some day--never come back again."

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