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MR. WADDY'S RETURN

A REMARKABLE EPISODE, HITHERTO UNRECORDED, IN THE VOYAGE OF THE "MAYFLOWER"

Why, then, was Ira Waddy, with whom this tale is to concern itself, other than his race? Why had he revolutionised the family history? Why was he a captor, not a captive of Fate? Why was the Waddy name no longer hid from the world in the unfragrant imprisonment and musty gloom of a blind court in Boston, but known and seen and heard of all men, wherever tea-chests and clipper-ships are found, or fire-crackers do pop? Why was Ira Waddy, in all senses, the wholesale man, while every other Waddy had been retail? Brief questions--to be answered not so briefly in this history of his Return.

Yes, the Waddy fortunes had altered. To the small shop, the only patrimony of the Waddy family, went little vulgar boys in days of Salem witchcraft, in days of Dorchester sieges, and after when the Fourth of July began to noise itself abroad as a festival of the largest liberty: on all great festal days when parents and uncles rattled with candy money, and coppers were certain, and on all individual festal days when the unlooked-for copper came, then went brats, Whig and Tory, Federal and Democrat, to the Waddys' shop and bullied largely there. Not only the representative Mr. Waddy did they bully and bargain into pecuniary bewilderment and total loss of profit, but also the representative Mrs. Waddy, a feeble, scrawny dame, whose courage died when she put the fateful question to the representative Mr. Waddy, otherwise never her spouse.

But there was no more bullying about the little shop. In fact, the shop had grown giantly with the fortunes of the name. A row of stately warehouses covered its site, and many other sites where neighbour pride had once looked down upon it. The row was built of granite, without ornament or gaud, enduring as the eternal hills. On its front, cut in solid letters on a gigantic block, were the words

Ginger was sold there in dust-heaps like a Vesuvius, not gingerbread in the amorphous penny idol; aromatic cinnamon by the ceroons of a plundered forest, not by the chewing-stick for dull Sabbath afternoons; tea by the barricade of chests, product of a province, not by the tin shoeful, as the old-time Waddys had sold it for a century before the Tea Party. And Ira Waddy owned these buildings, which he had never seen.

It is not necessary that I should speculate to discover where the traits that distinguished Ira Waddy from his ancestors had their origin. Of this I have accurate information. My wonder is at the delay in a development of character certain to arrive. But late springs bring scorching summers. Fires battened long below hatches gather strength for one swift leap to the main-truck.

"Milksop! Thou hast the pepper forgot. I will teach thy caitiff life a lesson. Ho, trencherman! Bring pepper!"

It was brought. He poured it all into the porridge, and, standing by, compelled Waddy to swallow spoonful after spoonful. At the screams of the victim, the Pilgrim Grandfathers, Governor Carver, Father Winslow, and Elder Brewster, rushed from on deck into the cabin and besought the infuriated hero to desist as he valued the life of Mrs. Susanna White, who was soon to add a little Pilgrim to their colony.

"Enough!" said Standish. "The pepper hath entered into his soul."

Pepper, thus implanted in the Waddy nature, seemed to have no effect for generations. It was, however, slowly leavening their lumpishness. It was impelling them to momentary tricks of a strange vivacity. At last, the permeating was accomplished, and our hero, Ira, the first really alive Waddy, was born. I have said the first, but there was another Ira Waddy who, at one period in his brief career, showed a momentary sparkle of the smouldered flame. Of him a word anon, as his fate had to do with the fates of others, strangely interwoven with the fate of his great-nephew and namesake.

THE WADDYS OF DULLISH COURT, FROM WHITEGIFT TO OUR HERO

While Governor Winthrop was planning the future city of Boston, he went, one rainy day, to the heights of those hills that give the spot the name of Trimountain. A violent June storm had channelled the hillsides, and strong water-courses filled the valleys. No phenomenon is idle to the observing mind.

"These channels," said the prudent governor, "shall be the streets of our future city."

He then pursued his way downward, slipping along the oozy trails, until he paused at a small pool where several little, muddy rivulets united to form a stagnancy. Here, he contemplated for a while his grave but genial visage, and smiled as his reflected face broadened or lengthened grotesquely and his pointed beard wagged in the waves of the water.

"This," said he at last, "shall be a place for pauses in city life. Here shall be a no-thoroughfare court, a lurking-place for shy respectability, for proud poverty; not quite for neediness, but for those who want and would, but will not."

Boston was laid out; the streets named themselves. This court chanced to be called Dulwich Court, which soon degraded itself to Dullish, and so it remained in nature and in name.

Whitegift Waddy, and Mehitabel, his wife, floating purposeless waifs through the new settlements, drifted into Dullish Court to live dull lives and then to meekly die. There was always one son in each generation of their family, an unwholesome lad, fed on remainder biscuits and stale mince pies. Still, it gradually became aristocratic to have come in with the Pilgrims. A certain consideration began to attach itself to the family, and the current Waddy, if such phrase may be used of so very stagnant a person, was always espoused by someone of a better class than his social condition could warrant. It was generally some pale schoolmistress, or invalided housekeeper of a great mansion, who became the better half of each gentle shopkeeper of Dullish Court.

By-and-by it chanced that, quite contrary to rule, there were three sons in one generation playing in the puddles of Dullish Court and slyly filching dry gingerbread from the showcases of the old shop. It was a time when there was a flame in the land, and the elder twin of the three young Waddys, Whitegift by name, who had been early taken with tin soldiers and penny trumpets, awoke one morning after booziness to find himself, to his total surprise, with a red coat on his back and a king's shilling in his pocket. There was so little real martial ardour in his soul that he at once withered away, and being sent to the garrison of New York as a recruit of doubtful loyalty, he was there soon invalided. He finally dropped into the family trade and became a sutler. The Boston Waddys, saddened by his desertion of a cause they had vigour enough to support, soon forgot his existence--which does not at all imply that such existence terminated.

The other twin was apparently of the usual Waddy type; but when the great flame blazed forth at last unquenchable, he also took fire. He was a volunteer at Lexington and did active service, dropping several invaders in their bloody tracks. He was at once made sergeant in Captain Janeway's company, and gained the respect of his officers by his quick, ready energy. Ira was his name--Ira Waddy, the First.

Two months later, when the British were trying that uphill work at Bunker Hill for the third time, Captain Jane way and Sergeant Waddy waited rather too long. Three or four of the British rushed at Janeway with eyes staring for plunder. One of them stared at what he got and lay there staring, with his head down-hill. To bore this fellow had occupied Janeway's sword, and though Sergeant Waddy's clubbed musket could brain another assailant, it could not parry two bayonet thrusts. His breast could and did; so that Janeway felt nothing more than a scratch, when, with a murderous stamp of the left foot, another soldier ran the sergeant through. Just then a rush of flying Yankees came by and cleared the spot of foes. The captain had a moment to kneel by his preserver and hear him gasp some broken words:

"Mother! Take care of them, captain. Oh, Mary, Mary!"

When, after the surrender of Boston, Captain, now Colonel, Janeway called on that Mary with the news of her lover's death and his last words, she knew her life was widowed. There was nothing in the power of a man of wealth and growing distinction that the colonel did not offer her. She rejected all with a New England woman's quiet independence and mild self-reliance. To become a schoolmistress, as she did, was only to return to her original destiny.

Janeway remained her friend. He alone knew her secret. She was one of those strangely spiritual beings who interfere like dreamy visions in the inventive, busy business of Yankee life. She had a great, ennobling sorrow. Her lover had been a martyr of two religions. He had died for his country and for his friend. It may be said he died instinctively; but Mary knew that only the noble and the brave have noble and brave instincts.

To most people, Mary was only a pale schoolmistress. One person, however, met her on terms of devoted respect. Governor Janeway, the pre-eminently practical and successful man, found in her society what he found not with his gorgeous wife. She became the Cassandra of young Janeway--who went to the bad, it is true, but long after her death--and the kindly guide of his infant child.

Late in life she married Benajah Waddy, the youngest brother of the three. Janeway had made him bookkeeper, secretary, agent, but he had finally, after his mother's death, dwindled into the old shop. Mary, considering herself his brother's widow, came to a Hebraical, religious conclusion as to her duty. With entire simplicity of heart, she told Benajah that they ought to be married. As a matter of course, they were. The usual wife found, also, in process of time, their only son, Benajah, and married him. These both died, leaving their only son, Ira Waddy, to the charge of his aged and widowed grandmother, Mary, widow in heart of Ira the First.

Her grandson was named Ira after his great-uncle, the soldier. By-and-by it was discovered that a wide river in India bore the same name, and young Waddy was attracted toward his namesake. The old influence which, now reviving, made his blood hot as flame, urged him to know the land not merely of the citron and myrtle, but of spice and pungent condiments. His grandmother lavished upon him all the beautiful tenderness of her long-suppressed and desolated love, and then she died.

Ira Waddy's hot ardency of nature could not bear coolly any wrong. Wrong came to him. It would have extinguished an ancestor of the Whitegift class. Him it only kindled to counter-fire. He had his great quarrel with life, as many men have; he, in his young life. The Janeways had always been kind to him; so had their neighbours, the Beldens. In childish sports and youthful intercourse with the children of both families, he had often talked with enthusiasm of tropic splendours and India, his destined abode. When the world of his early associations became too narrow for him--too narrow because there his wrong would meet and hurtle him daily--then he thought again of India, and tropic indolence, and thoughtless people. Being an orphan and without kin, he could go where he chose. He chose India.

There, as the years passed, he became rich and powerful, a nabob, a merchant prince; but with all that this tale has no concern--it is written merely to chronicle the facts of his Return.

IN WHICH MR. WADDY REACHES HALIFAX AND MEETS WITH A MISADVENTURE

They all looked fresh and well-dressed in shore toggery. The Budlongs, particularly, were in full bloom. They were always now in full bloom, and meant the world should fully know they were returning from Europe with fashion and the fashions, with a gallery of pictures and a Parisian pronunciation. Old Budlong had once been a brisk young clerk, lively and lucky. He was called Flirney then. He had traded in most things and all had yielded him pelf. He was now a capitalist, fat and uneasy, with a natural jollity which he thought unbecoming his position and endeavoured to suppress. Budlong in full bloom was as formal as a ball bouquet.

Halifax is dull and provincial, but any land ho! is charming after a voyage. Old Budlong knew all about Mr. Waddy's wealth and position. He had lavished much of his style of civility, with much sincere good will, upon him on board ship and now was urgent that he should join the ladies and himself in their promenade ashore.

"Thank you," said Waddy, "but I have promised to take a tramp with your boy and these gentlemen," and he indicated Dunstan and Paulding.

So De Ch?teaun?ant carried the day. Old Budlong walked in advance, inquiring the way, while his wife and daughter followed, making a cheerful glare of ankles through the muddy streets.

"Isn't it delightful to be ashore?" remarked Miss Arabella to Auguste Henri.

"Yese, mees. I am mose pleese to be out of ze ice-bugs. Ah, mademoiselle,"--as Arabella made a lofty lift over a puddle,--"vous avez le pied d'une sylphide."

Mr. Waddy and his companions soon exhausted the town. They lunched substantially on land fare, and having still time, went to drive, Dunstan and Paulding in one drag, Mr. Waddy and Tim in another. The first signal-gun recalled them. The two friends, whose steed was a comparative Bucephalus to the others' Rosinante, drew rapidly out of sight. The rear coachman was flogging his beast into a clumsy canter, when just as they passed a little jetty near some fishing-huts, they saw a child fall from the end into deep water.

"We can't let the child drown," said Mr. Waddy, stopping the coachman.

"He's none of ours. We must catch the ship. Perhaps he can swim," rejoined Timothy.

But it was evident he couldn't; there was no other help in sight. In an instant, Mr. Waddy was on the jetty, coat, waistcoat, and hat off; in another, he was fighting the tide for the drowning life.

Tim was no more selfish a fellow than is the rule with the sons of such merchants, and especially such step-mothers. He would, perhaps, have stayed by Mr. Waddy had that gentleman been in positive danger, but seeing that he was not only not drowning, but had the child safe by the hair, Tim whipped up and got on board just in time.

Cunarders do not wait for passengers who choose to go a-ducking after top-heavy children. Tim told his story. Mrs. Budlong and most of the commercial gentry rather laughed at Mr. Waddy. Dunstan and Paulding said nothing to them. They, however, seemed to have an opinion on the subject which prevented them from any further interchange of cigars with Master Timothy. Dunstan looked up Chin Chin, Mr. Waddy's Chinese servant, and by dint of pulling his ears and cue and saying Hi yah! a great many times, made him understand that his master was left, and he, Chin Chin, must pack up the traps, and for the present obey the cue-puller.

It was a very tender and beautiful thing to see how Mr. Waddy raised the insensible boy up from the boat below to the jetty. He wrapped the dripping object without scruple in his own very neat and knowing travelling jacket and carried him toward the mother, who had seen the accident from a distance and was running wildly toward them. She clasped the child to her breast, and, at the beating of her heart, life seemed suddenly to thrill through the saved one. He opened his eyes and smiled through his gasping agony.

Then the mother turned, seized Mr. Waddy in an all-round embrace, and gave him a stout fisherwoman's smack. It was a first-class salute for the returning hero.

Mr. Waddy stopped swearing as suddenly as he had begun and burst into a roar of laughter; then he looked ruefully at his shirt.

The fisherwoman was occupied in punching the child's ribs and standing it on its head. It was spouting water like the fountain of Trevi, and gurgling out lusty screams that proved the efficacy of the treatment.

"Why, so you are," said the lady, "wet as a swab. Sammy, you jest git up an' go in the shop, an' don't you be fallin' overboard ag'in an' botherin' the gentleman."

She accompanied this advice with a box on the ear of the sobbing Sammy, which started Trevi again.

Without much ceremony or disappearance into a tiring-room, Mr. Waddy doffed his wet clothes and donned the toggery of the widow's eldest son. His cigar-case, well filled with cheroots, had fortunately escaped with his coat. He lighted his first, and sat waiting patiently while Mrs. Hawkins displayed his wet raiment before her cooking stove and turned the articles judiciously to toast on either side. Let us observe him as he sits.

He is rather young for a nabob. Many of the nabobs are lymphatic and wheezy, as well as old, and that without reference to the place of their nabobery, whether Canton, Threadneedle, or Wall Street. Mr. Waddy was none of these--he was alert, athletic, and thirty-seven. It is a grand thing to have had one's full experience and having chased all flying destinies through the bush, to have caught one and hold it safely in the hand, while the catcher is still young and strong enough to handle and tame the captive. Mr. Waddy looked strong and active enough to catch and tame anything. But some things are tamed only with delicacy and tenderness. Was he destitute of these? At this moment, there was no exhibition of any trait beyond nonchalant patience, such as men who have had to deal with Asiatics or Spanish Americans, necessarily acquire. As the last film of his smoke-puff exhales from his lips, they close under the yellow-brown moustache into an expression of firmness, and perhaps of pride. It was easy to see that firm might become stern, and pride might harshen bitterly, if treachery should betray generosity and repel candour.

"Brown man, what makes you look so ugly and black?" says Sammy, loquitur. "Ma, I know he wants to kill me for wettin' his clothes," and Sammy wept boo! hoo!

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