Left to Themselves/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII.
INVADING THE UNKNOWN.
TURNING his head back to glance at Gerald, already half hid by the bushes straggling beside the path, Philip followed the weather-worn fence on his left. The garden into which he now looked seemed to be flourishing, chiefly in the way of Indian corn and tomatoes and string-beans. As he came closer to the house, and its outward structure was clearer, he noticed that it was more dignified and solid looking than most of its sort. It might almost be termed a mansion. It was built of grayish stone and white-painted wood, the second story covered by the high-pitched roof with its at least dozen dormer-windows. Both down-stairs and up-stairs many of these windows were closed.
"Family must be small, and all busy somewhere in the back, or perhaps in the garden," Philip concluded, advancing.
A harmless snake darted across the way as he at length raised the gate-latch. He called out, "Holloa, here!" in as loud a tone as his fatigue permitted. His only answer was the dog's leaping forward through the shrubbery from a nook under one of the trees. But this canine warder proved to be all bark and no bite. At the sight of Philip unlatching the gate his objections subsided to a growl, his bound ended in a trot, and his tail suddenly began wagging eagerly.
"Good fellow!" exclaimed Philip, walking up the path and holding out his hand. "Changed your mind, have you? You don't think I look like a thief, eh? I should think I did—very much."
The dog jumped on him, whining curiously. He pursued the path toward the front porch, which was shaded with roses, carefully trained. The asters and geraniums on all sides showed recent care, and on a strip of grass near the porch lay a row of clean pans; and two white aprons lay bleaching, and several fat hens were scratching comfortably together under a lilac-bush. The front window-shutters, with the exception of the furthest one—faded gray-green affairs, all of them, with half-moons cut in their broad, wooden expanses—were shut. Touchtone rapped at the front door, letting the iron knocker do its duty smartly. No footsteps replied. The dog stared at him very intently. Impatient of delay, he hurried around the corner of the house.
A walk of cinders bordered with clam-shells and china-pinks and zinnia led him toward it, past what he presumed was the sitting-room or dining-room, and two of the windows were open. Nobody was to be seen or heard yet, outside or in. He leaned over a window and peered inside. A tall, white-covered bed, with four posts and towering pillows, and various articles of furniture that his eyes glanced at in his bold inspection, loomed out in the cool dimness.
"The spare chamber, of course," he at once concluded. "Empty—in good order for unexpected company—like Gerald and me."
He slowly passed on, turning his head to left and right. The dog preceded him, whining and making sure that Touchtone followed. A well, with its arbored trellis, was on the left. He drank and was on the point of turning back to relieve Gerald's thirst, but thought it better to go on. Upon a grass-plot more aprons and some towels were bleaching, and a row of red crocks were sunned on an unpainted bench by the back door. He reached the kitchen. It was open.
"Holloa, here!" he called again before the door, peering into the cool room then and once more turning to survey the garden-beds, in which more poultry strayed.
By this time the fatigues of the past few hours were half-forgotten in a certain new excitement.
"Well, Towzer, if your people are all away and are willing to leave their house and home open and unprotected, in this free and easy sort of fashion, pirates must be out of date with a vengeance! I don't know what strangers coming to them for charity can do except to do what Mrs. Wooden calls 'act according to their best lights'—eh?" The dog had trotted into the kitchen behind him, and now stood wagging his tail and barking a sharp note, here and there, beside an empty platter that rested on the hearth.
"Cold? Yes, and there hasn't been a fire in that stove for hours and hours," exclaimed Philip, examining; "nor have you been fed, Towzer, I begin to suspect, within the same time, have you? That's what's the matter with you. Whoever lives here has gone off on some errand or other away from the island. What sort of errand can it be that has made the family stay so much longer than they must have expected to stay?" Vague, disagreeable feelings crossed Touchtone's mind. It was strange. "I must be certain of things in the place before I go back to Gerald. What if there should have been some plague, some awful accident on the premises?"
He began to wonder, almost to dread, what might come under his eyes any minute. Suppose that this lonely house would not prove the shelter for them at all. Various reasons for the silence and desertion of the dwelling, despite all signs of recent occupancy and peaceful daily life, came thronging.
He paused a moment, leaning against a clean kitchen-table whereon were set several pieces of china ready to be laid upon the shelves around the walls—another task mysteriously post-poned. The dog he had christened Towzer now whined and fawned on him hungrily. Philip whistled loudly, once, twice, half a dozen times. Then he opened the door in front of him and proceeded deeper into the dwelling.
Its central hall was before him, lighted cheerfully by a good-sized fan-light over the front entrance. The hall was of rather uncommon width and height of ceiling, carpeted with a faded but unworn green ingrain and with several antiquated rugs. Philip looked quickly into the front chamber on his right. It was the large, well-furnished bedroom he had glanced into from the garden-walk. The bed was made. He noticed a hat-rack beside the hall entrance on which depended a huge straw hat, a woman's sun-bonnet and a straw bonnet, and two umbrellas; and a wide-open closet near by contained various water-proofs, boots and shoes, and two or three pairs of clean blue overalls. He turned the knob of the parlor door and withdrew it, murmuring,
"Locked, I declare! Regular New Englanders, whatever else they are—believe in saving the parlor for Sundays and their own funerals."
The sitting-room on the other side was full of the usual simple furnishings of such living-rooms. The pictures were old revolutionary scenes, besides President Lincoln and his family and an engrossed copy of the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments, in photograph. Up in one corner hung two highly elaborate samplers, framed in an old-fashioned, heavy style. On one of these "MARY ABIGAIL JENNISON, August, 1827," was stiffly worked under the claws of a red and yellow bird of paradise; on the other he read, "SARAH AMANDA JENNISON, August, 1827," who boasted for her finer art the alphabet and the numerals arranged in rows around a red book and a green willow-tree.
"Old, those," Philip thought. "I guess the Jennison ladies must be pretty well tired out with housekeeping if they are the heads of this establishment at present."
There were sundry photographs on the walls, that he had not time to examine closely, of elderly men and women with plain, hard-featured New England faces.
The door into the room behind the sitting-room stood open. It was quite light, each shutter turned back. This appeared considerably more of a living-room than its fellows, with a sewing-machine, a big table with stockings, hickory shirts, and coarse mending, a cracked looking-glass with a comb and brush in front of it, and a quantity of miscellaneous articles distributed about. Suddenly Philip perceived a pile of very modern-looking, paper-covered books and a heap of newspapers.
"At last!" he ejaculated. He caught up several numbers of a weekly religious magazine. On the yellow label he read, "Obed Probasco, Chantico," and the name of the State. On other copies of the Knoxport Weekly Anchor he found scrawled by the newsdealer the same name. Some new numbers of the Ladies' Own Monthly were directed, "Mrs. Obed Probasco, Chantico." The paper-covered novels, three or four agricultural hand-books, and half a dozen recipe-books were neatly marked in similar fashion.
A last assurance that these were at least the ruling spirits throughout this lonely island, whose nearest post-office on the main-land was, doubtless, the town of Chantico, lay between the covers of a family Bible. On the fly-leaf of this was written, in a faded ink, "To Obed Probasco and Loreta, his Wife—a Wedding-Gift from their affectionate pastor, William Day, May 17, 1850."
"So then our hosts—that are to be—are this Obed Probasco and Loreta, his wife," Touchtone decided. "Elderly people, of course. No children living with them, as far as I can guess. And they stay out here alone on this island, and either own it or farm it. Where on earth have they gone to just now? When did they expect to come home, pray? His knees fairly were failing under him. He saw what duty and necessity directed his doing for himself and Gerald. For some hours at least this lonely, inexplicable old house was deserted, and they must make themselves at home in it. He must get Gerald up at once and provide food and drink and quarters for the night, unpermitted and unasked.
But he would better finish his hasty survey. He looked up the staircase. There might be an invalid or helpless occupant still to be consulted before he boldly took possession of the premises in the license of Gerald's and his own plight; to use them until those absent should suddenly appear. He mounted the stairs.
"Good, large, comfortable rooms, with more old-fashioned furniture, not used very much," he soliloquized, passing from one chamber to another of the second story. Every thing was clean, cheerful, and in stiff and even polished order except Mr. and Mrs. Obed Probasco's own big room, evidently in too much use for apple-pie order to be preserved. One or two doors up-stairs were locked. It was plain that to the Probascos a house was one thing, living in it was another. A huge attic, that startled Philip by the bewildering array of odds and ends crowded in it, took up the space immediately under the roof.
He descended quickly to the lower hall again, on his way back to Gerald. His head was giddy; he began to feel a great faintness, but the main question of their finding shelter and food was settled.
"I will fetch Gerald, ransack for what eatables there must be, get him to bed, and then we'll await developments and the showing up of these Probascos—how many or what sort they be. We seem to be more than ever castaways, but castaways under such a state of things as never I have read about."
The dog, with a hunger very evident to him, tried to bar his way by leaping up on him beseechingly as he hurried into the kitchen. Ah! the first objects that might well have met his eye he had not noticed before—three loaves of tempting bread set on the high shelves, a pound-cake, and a cooked ham, partly cut. But he would not stretch his hand toward them till Gerald was in that room to eat with him. He left the house and hastened back to the gate, giving loud whistle-calls for Gerald's encouragement.
He found the boy just entering the yard, impatient, faint, and anxious.
"I was afraid something had happened," he exclaimed. "Well? Will they take us in? What kind of people are they, Philip?"
"I don't know, Gerald. The fact is, I can find plenty of house and food and beds, but not a single soul to hear us say, 'By your leave,' if we help ourselves. So I've made up my mind we must just do that—help ourselves."
"What do you mean?" asked Gerald in distressed surprise.
Touchtone made his explanation as brief and cheering as he could. And really, after all, there was small wrong in this self-succoring, without the license or help of these people so unaccountably absent, who, in all probability, were to be the kind of hosts likely to rejoice that two such unfortunates should take matters in their own hands.
"So, my dear fellow, you and I will just take possession here at once, feed ourselves and this unlucky Probasco dog, too, get rested out and put our clothes in shape as well as we can, and have every thing ready to leave the place the moment any of the Probascos turn up to help us or order us to do it."
"How do you know that's the name?" asked Gerald.
Philip, explaining his warrant, to Gerald's amusement, in spite of the lad's weariness and exhaustion, got his charge and himself safely into the kitchen. The cellar revealed pan after pan of milk and cream. They made a meal more ample than was altogether prudent after such spare commons as had been theirs at sea, but fortunately with no harm to them; nor was the famishing Towzer forgotten, nor the cat that suddenly came trotting up the walk, miauling, with tail erect. Infinitely refreshed, Philip went once more over the sober, still dwelling to satisfy the curiosity of Gerald. They made no new discoveries of importance. In course of the afternoon, after resting, they also somewhat examined the garden and sheds and stables, and lo! out in an inclosed lot the cow was patiently grazing by a spring. On seeing them she began complaining so sorely at being unmilked that Philip brought back a foaming pail to store away down-stairs.
"I should say, decidedly, that there was hardly any body but Mr. and Mrs. Probasco living here," Gerald decided, in course of the afternoon. Every thing pointed, indeed, to a solitary life led by a careful, thrifty couple in this isolated spot; childless, and just now called away from their home—probably to the mainland—by some sudden and oddly detaining necessity."
"Yes; they live here alone. They have gone away in a hurry for some special reason. It's plainly that, I think. And all you and I can do is to wait for them to come back," replied Philip.
"But don't you see how their not being here puts us back from letting papa or Mr. Marcy or any body know what has happened to us? They must all be terribly anxious."
Touchtone quite realized that important dilemma. There were, indeed, the others to think of besides themselves. He had long since remembered that their friends on shore now might easily be believing the worst about them. Other boats must have landed safely from the abandoned steamer, and the list of passengers have been carefully reckoned over. What might not the newspapers be circulating that very moment? But there was nothing to be done now. One thing at a time.
"We cannot help that, Gerald, quite yet. If they are anxious they must stay so, old fellow, till we find some way of sending word. If no boat lands here to-morrow with any of the people that belong here in it, we will mount a signal of distress, of some sort."
"But it's known that people live here! Signals wont count for much unless we can manage to hit on just the proper sort of one."
"O, come, now! We're not Robinson Crusoes, remember! Before to-morrow noon, I expect, we shall have the people who live here coming up that garden-walk and staring their eyes out at you and me, when we go down to meet them. We will not be left to ourselves long, depend on it, and in a twinkling after that we can get matters all straightened out—explainings right and left, and going on with our journey, and all."
As twilight came on they remembered again the boat, and would willingly have gone to make more secure that single link at present connecting them with the rest of the world. But they had neither light nor strength for it. The boat must fare as fate should decree.
Philip got Gerald to bed in the large chamber on the first floor. He decided to occupy a wide sofa he pushed in from an adjoining room. A closet of linen supplied sheets and a blanket. Gerald fell asleep at once. Apparently he should be none the worse for his trying adventures so far.
"I guess I am used up myself till to-morrow; that's certain," he declared.
A big eight-day clock, composedly keeping time from a sufficiently recent winding, struck nine. Outside the frogs and tree-toads about the lonely house croaked and chirped. The sound of the sea filled the night air. The stars were bright and the moon shone gloriously. Philip wondered once more if this novel situation was reality or dream. Excitement could keep him up and wakeful no longer. He did not lock either a door or window and so break what seemed the habit of the house. He partially threw off his clothes and stretched himself on his sofa to fall instantly into a deep slumber, whether the problematical Probascos should waken him out of it at midnight or any other time.