Read Ebook: Mr. Waddy's Return by Winthrop Theodore Stevenson Burton Egbert Editor

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Ebook has 867 lines and 65329 words, and 18 pages

"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!

"Don't cry, my boy," said Mr. Waddy, and putting his hand into a pocket he thought his own, he drew out not the expected purse containing the presentable shilling, but a strip of pigtail tobacco. "Am I brown? I am the Ancient Mariner. I have been where the sun bakes men as brown as that loaf of gingerbread. Here are two shillings out of my vest pocket. Keep one yourself and buy that loaf from your mother with the other. My mother used to bake gingerbread and my father sold it, years ago, when I was white, not ginger-coloured."

So Ira and Sammy came to terms of peace and good will and munched together.

"I kind er guess your things is dry now, capting," said Mrs. Hawkins. "I'll jest put the flatiron to that air shirt and make it as slick as a slide. Salt water don't take sterch or them collars would stan' right up."

While Mr. Waddy was recovering his habiliments, Isaiah Hawkins, the widow's eldest son, came in. He owned a small coaster and was to sail that afternoon for Portland. He came to get his traps.

"Can you take a passenger?" inquired Mr. Waddy, after the usual preliminary greetings.

"Wal, capting," replied Hawkins, with much deliberation, "I dunno as I could, an' I dunno as I couldn't. What kind a feller is this ere passenger? Kin he eat pork an' fish?"

"I'm the man," explained Mr. Waddy. "I should think I could eat pork and fish. I've lived in Boston."

"Wal, capting, come along if yer like," said Hawkins heartily, "an' it shan't cost yer a durned cent. 'Tain't every feller I'd take, but I feel kinder 'bleeged to yer fer pickin' up Sam."

Mr. Waddy would not consent to be a dead-head, but took pay passage at once, to start at two. Meanwhile he strolled about the town, and climbing the steep glacis, admired the glorious bay and the impregnable fort. He was entering when his way was stopped by the sentinel.

"No one admitted without special order," announced that functionary.

"My old friend Mr. Waddy has special entr?e everywhere!" cried a passing officer, laying his hand on Ira's shoulder. "My dear fellow, you wouldn't let me thank you at Inkerman for dropping that Cossack. Now I intend to pepper you with gratitude."

He pulled out his cigar-case and the match-box. They each took a cigar and walked off together to Major Granby's quarters, as coolly as if the reciprocal life-saving they had recalled was an everyday business.

"How in the name of Mercury came you here?" asked the major, after they were seated.

"Ginger beer--gingerbread, beer," murmured Waddy abstractedly. "Bass' Pale Ale. Yes--ah, well!"

"What, ho! Patrick!" called the major. "Here's Mr. Waddy come back and wants his ale!"

While Patrick grinned a cheerful recognition and drew the cork, Mr. Waddy explained his position and the gingerbread allusion.

"Why not? I'll join you when you please," assented Granby instantly. "I already have a furlough. I wish I could start to-day."

"Come by the next steamer, to-day fortnight," suggested Ira, "and meet me in Boston at the Tremont House. I'm really as much a stranger as you; but they all know me. We'll see the lions together."

"You'll have to be a ladies' man, for my sake," said the major. "I've heard the American women are the loveliest of the world, and I've determined to see for myself. I thought, before I saw you, of dropping in at Newport this summer. That's the mart, I hear."

"Certainly, we'll go there and everywhere," agreed Ira. "What do you say to a partnership for matrimonial speculation? You put in good looks, good name, and glory. I contribute money--the prize, of course, to be mine."

"You say nothing about wit," the major pointed out. "Modest! As to good looks, these are perhaps degenerate days, but you'll do very well for an Antinous with whiskers, and I used constantly in Rome to be mistaken for the Apollo, in costume of the period."

"Well, Apollo, I leave you to study attitudes," said Waddy, rising. "I must be off. Good-bye! To-day three weeks."

"So long! Here, Pat! pack up a carpet-bag for Mr. Waddy and put in some of those short shirts. My six-feet-one beats you by three inches."

"Say, mister! gimme another shilling to buy gingerbread!"

We leave the reader to judge whether the prayer went unanswered.

A GENTLE LADY OF FORTUNE DECIDES TO FACE A STORM

The afternoon was hot and sulky. Still, as the party had fixed that day for leaving The Island, they would not change their plan. Old Dempster said there would certainly be "considerable of a blow."

All the party had longed for a storm; the young ladies had rhapsodised about billows and breakers and driving spray and heroic encounters with warring elements. Now that the long roll of premonitory surges was crashing in sullenly on Black Rock Head and Wrecker's Point, they seemed to shrink a little from billows unsunlit. Grandeur was too much for them. To recline on the rocks under a parasol held by a gentle cavalier, this was gay and dressy and afforded the recumbent and her attendant knight indefinite possibilities. But ladies are not lovely in submarine armour, and muslins limply collapse when salt showers come whirling in from shattered waves. The great wild terror of the certain storm made itself felt among the gay party. They were quite willing to hasten their departure and pass the night quietly at Loggerly. They would spend also a quiet next day there and take the train on the second morning for Portland and Boston.

Miss Sullivan preferred to stay for the promised entertainment. She seemed already a little excited out of her usual tranquil reserve by the thought that Nature was to act a wild drama for her benefit. Besides, apart from the storm, she was willing to pass one solitary day on the rocks and along the beach. She also longed for one last master-view from the mountain above Dempster's house. She was glad to see all these without the intrusion of gaiety. It may have been a mood; it may have been character. She would visit, for perpetual recollection, the best spots undisturbed; a storm would be clear gain. Mr. Dempster promised to drive her over to Loggerly next evening, rain or shine.

"Miss Sullivan has a strange fancy," said she, "to wander about alone in wild places. Did you notice how almost handsome she was to-day?"

"Mary Sullivan was nobly handsome once," said Mrs. Wilkes, "and will be soon again, I hope, now that she is rich and done with all family troubles."

"Is she very rich?" asked Cloanthus Fortisque, friend of Gyas. "I'm sorry I'm so much afraid of her. She may be sweet as ice-cream, but she is colder. A feller couldn't sail in with much chance."

Miss Julia pouted a little at this ingenuous remark of Fortisque and devoted herself to Gyas Cutus for the rest of the journey.

It was lonely at Dempster's when the gay party was gone. The house looked singularly small and mean. Mrs. Dempster was baking wondrous bread; bread for which all the visitors had gone away bulkier. Miss Miranda Dempster was up to her elbows in strawberries. She was a magnificent lioness of a woman, with a tawny mane of redundant locks.

The kitchen was close and the hot, heavy atmosphere affected Miss Sullivan's views as to the quality of her hostess's bread. She walked out upon the little meadow, a bit of tender culture between the forest and the rude and rocky shore. Old Dempster and Daniel, his son, were hurrying their hay into the ox-cart. The oxen seemed to stand unnecessarily knockkneed and feeble in the blasting heat. Yet the sun was obscured and there came puffs of breeze from seaward. But these were puffs explosive, sultry, volcanic, depressing.

As Miss Sullivan approached, Dempster was tossing up an enormous mass of hay to Daniel. A puff of wind caught it and one half "diffused to empty air," making air no longer empty but misty with hay-seed, and aromatic with mild fragrance. Dempster shook himself and stood leaning on his pitchfork. He was a grand old yeoman, worthy to be the father of heroes. The Island, though not a solitary one, had been to him a Juan Fernandez. He was a contriver of all contrivances, a builder of all that may be built. He farmed, he milled, he fished, he navigated in shapely vessels of his own shaping; his roof-tree was a tree of his own woods, felled and cleft by himself. He had split his own shingles as easily as other men mend a toothpick; with these he had tented his roof-tree over. Miss Sullivan and he were great friends, and now, as she drew near, he looked at her with kindly eyes.

"See, Miss Sullivan," said he, "them oxen has stopped chewin' the cud--another sure sign of a storm. The wind is sou'west. It'll be short, but hot an' heavy--a kind er horriken."

"If the storm is severe, what will all these fishing-vessels do?" she asked. "I have counted nearly a hundred this afternoon."

"Most on 'em will go birds'-nestin' 'round in the bays an' coves along shore. Some on 'em alluz gits caught, an' that's what makes me feel kind er anxious now. You see, my boy Willum has been buyin' a schooner up to New Brunswick, with a pardner of his, and he's jest as like as not to be takin' her down to Boston about now."

"I hope not!" cried Miss Sullivan, shuddering involuntarily in the hot chill of another isolated blast.

"Wal, worryin' won't mend nothin'," said the father, with stoic calmness. "Come, Dan'l, we must hurry up with this 'ere hay," and the two fell to work again; but the face of the elder man was very grave as he glanced, from time to time, at the grey sky and sullen sea.

Miss Sullivan strolled on across the meadow to Black Rock Head. There she had often sat in brilliant days and sent her looks and thoughts a-dreaming beyond the misty edge of the ocean world. To-day a strange, dismal heaviness in the air made dreams nightmares. Perpetual calm seemed destined to dwell upon the ocean, so unruffled was its surface and unsuggestive of storms to be. Looking down from the Head, Miss Sullivan would scarcely have discerned the great, slow surges, lifting and falling monotonously. They made themselves felt, however, when they met the opponent crag. A vast chasm stood open in its purple rocks, and as the lazy waves fell upon the unyielding shore, they flowed in, filling this cavernous gulf almost to the brim with foaming masses. Then, as the surge deliberately withdrew, these ambitious waters, abandoned and unsupported, plunged downward in a wild whirlpooling panic, stream overwhelming stream, all seething together furiously, hissing, roaring, thundering, until again they met the incoming breaker, and again essayed as vainly to rise above control and overcome the enduring land.

Mists, slowly uprising, had given sunset a dull reception, and the great southeastern cloud-bank was growing fast heavier and heavier. Puffs of driving fog began to hide the mountain and lower down upon the Dempster house. Darkness fell, and at last Miss Sullivan was driven in.

A WRECK AND A RESCUE

All night the storm did its tyrannous work over sea and land; all night, around old Dempster's house, it howled its direful menaces. But the house stood firm, for it had been built to withstand the shock of any storm; only shivered now and then as the gale smote it with heavier hand, then tore on its way lamenting.

More than once Miss Sullivan awoke and lay listening to the storm's wild voices--voices which recalled the past--voices whispering, pleading, sighing, moaning to be heard again and again answered. And they were answered--answered with bitter moans and tears, and at last with prayers for patience and peace, and, if need were, for pardon.

Neither Mrs. Dempster nor Miranda understood the enthusiasm of Miss Sullivan for storms and breakers. There were several things they would rather do than venture out next morning: the chief of which was to stay at home.

Old Dempster looked uneasily at the cloud-drift. The wind was as furious as ever, but the rain came only in keen showers.

"These 'ere sou'-easters," said he, "never last long at this time o' the year. It'll be clear as moonshine by long about noon. But ef you've got your mind set on goin' out, I'll rig you out so you'll be dry as a rooster. Dan'l, go down to the mill an' bring up them short overhauls."

Dan'l brought up a great coat of yellow, oiled canvas, and a tarpaulin with a flap like the tail of a Barbary sheep. Mrs. Dempster supplied a pair of Dan'l's fishing boots, outgrown by him in one bare-footed summer, but still impervious.

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