Left to Themselves/Chapter 14
CHAPTER XIV.
ALLIES.
THE question concluding the preceding chapter of this history took more than a moment or so to answer, as the reader may suppose. Open-mouthed, as well as open-eared, with their packages, one by one, dropped heedlessly in the grassy path that led up from the little dock, "Obed Probasco and Loreta his wife" halted before Philip, still ejaculating, questioning, and with their astonishment of one kind giving place to that of another as Philip proceeded with his story. He leaned against the fence and, talking now with one, now the other, related his strange experience. The amazed New England couple turned and looked into each other's eyes at every few sentences, with many a "My gracious me!" "Did ever any body hear the like?" "You don't mean that you"—did so and so; and by Obed's frequent "Well, this beats all creation, fur as I know it!" Even Touchtone's anxiety and their curiosity as to Gerald could not retard their eagerness to learn all the facts.
The couple bore every appearance of homely thrift and simplicity of character; of being, in short, precisely the kind of people Touchtone had hoped. It is, perhaps, needless to say that Philip's narrative was only of the circumstances since the hour of departure from the Old Province. Mr. Belmont and his persecution he left till a more convenient season.
"An' you mean to tell me that that poor boy an' you have been shut up here two days? No other soul about the place? An' he sick on your hands half the time?" gasped the distressed Mrs. Obed.
"That's just what I mean," replied Touchtone.
"Never heard such an astonishin' story in my life," repeated Probasco. "What would you 'a' done, though, if you hadn't brought up here? Well, it stumps me; that's all."
"The hand of the Lord's in it, no mistake!" declared Mrs. Obed. "I can't say how welcome you've been to any thing an' to every thing of ours that the old house there's got inside it. You couldn't 'a' better pleased me an' my husband here, Mr. Tombstone—I mean Mr. Touchtone—I b'lieve you said that was your name, didn't you?—than by just makin' free of every blessed corner of it. But dear, dear! If I'd only been to home."
"Yes, it's queer luck! Wife an' I've both been over on shore. We had to go across to Chantico to the funeral of a nephew of ours, that died very sudden. We stuck fast there by my bein' sick. The very time that such a thing as this came straight up to our doors!"
"Queer luck?" repeated the farmer's wife. "You'd better just say queer Providence, Obed! It's been awful unhandy for you, Mr. Touchtone—made things so much harder for you an' the little boy. But I guess if Providence could save you both bein' dashed overboard with those poor souls in that boat, he could help you to get along with a lot o' my stale stuff to eat, an' not a hand to help you to any thing better. Our house wide open, was it? Well, I don't know where you'd 'a' got in if't been us left it last! But," she continued, turning in sudden vexation to her husband, "that's the very identical good-bye time old Murtagh 'll play us such a trick! After all his straight up an' down promises that he'd never leave the place one minute! An' the cow, too!"
"Yes, I've had enough of Murtagh," assented the farmer, sharply, "an' I guess we'll find the obligations on our side, sir. Murtagh's a man we've had on the place to help us, an' he don't appear to have no more responsibleness than a grasshopper, let alone his drinking. Wife an' I've been in a worry the hull time we was obliged to stay across the strait. But we didn't look for his acting this way."
It appeared that the derelict Murtagh had indeed been left in charge by his master; and that that neglectful hireling of the household must have scarcely waited for his employers' backs to be turned than he had betaken himself to his own little skiff and gone off shoreward, too. "Most likely, on one of his regular high old sprees!" surmised the exasperated farmer. "This is the end of Pat Murtagh's working for me!"
"Well, come, come, don't let's stand another minute here," said Mrs. Probasco, realizing that the necessary explanations on both sides were finished; "that boy you've got with you mustn't be left alone. Perhaps he's not so sick as you think. I hope he's been asleep while we've been puttin' you through such a long catechism. Let's all hurry, to make up for it. Obed, don't you rattle that gate; an' do you take off your boots before you get to the kitchen door. Thanky, Mr. Touchtone, let them things lay just where they be; there's nobody to steal 'em, you know. Come along, quick, both of you."
Leaving Obed to deprive his feet of their squeaky new coverings, Philip and Mrs. Probasco stepped lightly toward the kitchen and on tiptoe drew near the bedroom door.
Sure enough, Gerald's slumber was profound. The kind-hearted woman followed Touchtone to the bedside in curiosity and pity. She beheld the face of this other of her two uninvited guests with a great stir in her motherly heart and a quick admiration of Gerald's strange and just now singularly pathetic beauty. With a woman's soft fingers she ventured to touch his skin, and with intent ear she listened to the sleeper's breathing.
"He's better than he was, I guess," she said in a hushed voice to Philip. "His skin's damp, an' he breathes in a good deal healthier way than I expected. Fever's gone down as soon as it came up, I dare say. How han'some he is!—a reg'lar picture. From New York, did you say?"
Obed looked in at the door in anxious interest. "You stay here with him while I fly around and get things sort o' settled and more ready for whatever's best for us to do." She glided out, closing the door after her. Smothered sounds, that now and then came from behind it, hinted to Philip as he sat that the flying around had begun to some purpose.
Excellent Mrs. Probasco! Whatever may have been the sentiments of your housekeeper's heart at such a delayed home-coming and such a finding of your entire domestic establishment taken possession of by boys, and not only an asylum, but a hospital, all at once on your hands—whatever the amusement or vexation at the general upsetting of order on each side, you kept it all to yourself! She darted softly about. "Time enough for talk, by and by," she said, sharply, to Obed, who was accustomed to act pretty much as she commanded. "Then we'll talk. We know plenty to start right at. We must just take care of these boys as well as we can, till they're ready to leave us an' go ahead on their journey. An', by the way, Mr. Touchtone says they'd ought to get some sort of word to their friends right away, just as soon as we see how that boy is when he wakes. Of course they'd ought! So I advise you, after you been over the place, an' done up all those chores old Murtagh's kindly left for you, to get the boat ready for early to-morrow morning, when you can hurry over to Chantico."
Obed hastened off, his Sunday go-to-meeting clothes exchanged for his every-day array, and disappeared down the garden with the chickens trooping after him in joyful expectancy; Mrs. Probasco kept at work, now and then slipping in to consult Touchtone or calling him to her.
Daylight began to wane. Gerald slept on, occasionally appearing to be just on the point of awakening, but always drifting back into sounder sleep again. Numerous, and with many hurried and whispered paragraphs of further explanation and questions and answers, were the interviews between Philip and his bustling hostess during the remnant of time before candle-light. With its windows and doors wide open, and the smell of supper coming appetizingly from the kitchen, and with a general sense of human occupation about it, the old dwelling was already like a different place from its former mysterious self. The dog ("You will call him Towzer, but his real name's Jock," Mrs. Probasco protested) trotted about. Upper rooms were unsealed, and Touchtone stared about them, meeting nothing to excite his curiosity except one or two quaint and battered pieces of furniture that seemed in keeping with the old house rather than with any modern inmates.
And before long came history, bit by bit, from Mrs. Probasco or Obed. As Philip had expected, the farm and premises on Chantico Island were not owned, but rented, by them—had been so for many years, through an agent.
The dignified, isolated old dwelling, half farmhouse, half mansion, still belonged in a family line once distinguished in the county for wealth and social position—the Jennisons. Other people might live in it, but it was always haunted by the atmosphere of stately earlier days and aristocratic occupants.
Who were, or had been, the Jennisons? Great had they been once, in that part of the State. Early Jennisons had bought the island and named it "Jennison's Island," in Revolutionary days. One famous grandfather had built the mansion and fitted it with fine old-fashioned furnishings, and loved it, and lived and died in it. In his day this ancient roof had sheltered many a guest of famous name. Under it gay levees had come off, and sumptuous dinners and country merry-makings, and lively weddings and solemn funerals. Two of the belles in the family line had been the very "Mary Abigail" and "Sarah Amanda" who had stitched those yellowed samplers on the wall. They had died, grandmothers both, long ago. And of all the Jennison estate was left to-day only this single lonely corner of it, the island, its very name changed on the government maps by some State maneuver. Furthermore, to bear the family name and own the scattered remnants of this world's goods left to its credit, there was now only a single representative, one Wentworth Jennison, according to Mrs. Probasco's reserved account, an erratic and wandering man, who seldom set his foot near the home of his ancestors—once or twice a year, perhaps; then not again for another two or three seasons. He allowed an old lawyer at Chantico to lease island, farm, and house to the Probascos. They paid their modest rent and kept the mansion from destruction. They had long been its tenants.
Of course, the connection between these details became clearer in his later talks with the good farmer's wife; but Philip gathered enough in her scraps of explanation that afternoon and evening to interest his boyish love of romance and novelty and to fill his heart with gratitude for this hospitable situation.
Just before supper-time Gerald awoke.
"Philip," he called, "Philip! where have you gone?"
Touchtone hastened in from the kitchen. A few sentences with the sick boy gave him a delightful sense of relief. It was quite confirmed during the next half hour. Gerald's fever had almost departed. He was told the good news of the Probascos' return. On the first sight of his sympathetic hostess he "took to her" (so she expressed it}, "as if we'd never done nothing but spend our hull lives in this same old house." Obed was permitted by his vigilant spouse to come in and hold the boy's slender hand in his for a few moments and speak his few kindly words of welcome and help. The invalid's appetite that had developed was rewarded with a dainty supper, and he was made comfortable in fresh sheets. "O, I guess he's all right, an' doing splendidly, Mr. Touchtone," Mrs. Probasco declared. "We wont give him a chance to get real sick, between us."
"What kind people they are!" Gerald said, softly, to Touchtone, just as he was dropping off into a fresh doze, with the clink of Mrs. Probasco's dishes and the murmur of her conference with Obed making a homely lullaby from the adjoining room.
"Yes, the kindest sort," assented Touchtone. "Go to sleep, old man, and dream about them and every thing else that is pleasant. I'll add a postscript to these letters, to bring them down to the latest minute."
"O, yes, now you can. Did you write papa?"
"I have written papa and every body. Mr. Probasco is going to get up early to-morrow morning, and either take me over with these to Chantico or else carry them alone. So, you see, we are fairly started toward getting back to civilization and our friends again. The suspense all around will soon be over."
"We've been through a good deal together, haven't we? And in such a little while."
"We certainly have," said Touchtone, half seriously, half smiling.
Gerald slept. Philip added a few lines to his letters, and, now that their situation was so happily determined, his anxiety for their being dispatched came upon him with double force. Not an hour longer must needlessly intervene.
It was impossible for him to guess what conclusion Mr. Marcy and Gerald's father could have or could not have arrived at by this. According to Probasco's account there had been plenty in all the newspapers about the steamer—"Folks had done nothing else but read an' talk about it"—although Obed's "plaguey turn o' the wust sort o' rheumatism" had kept himself, his wife, and their Chantico relatives in too much excitement for reading news, to say nothing of the funeral at the house. In his last writing Philip told Mr. Marcy and Mr. Saxton that within as few hours as possible for Gerald and himself to leave the Probascos they would go to Chantico, and thence down to Knoxport. There they would wait for instructions from one or the other gentleman. In view of the absolute ignorance of affairs it seemed to Philip unwise to hurry straight back to New York by railroad, and much less advisable to think of continuing their Halifax journey, of course. There was a chance, too, that at this very minute Mr. Saxton, Mr. Marcy, or both, were lingering in Knoxport, hoping for news from some quarter, unwilling to quit the point nearest to the late accident.
Fortunately, he did not know that a body declared to be his own, drowned and disfigured, had been duly "identified" days before by a coroner's jury, and that the fate of the boat had been decided by every opinion brought to bear on it, and that, while he sat there writing, Mr. Marcy, with as heavy a heart as a man can ever bear in his breast, was packing his own and Mr. Saxton's valises and preparing to fairly drag away the distracted father from the Knoxport House on the journey that he hoped might quiet his friend's nerves, and for which Marcy had generously suspended all his own affairs.
The letters sealed, Philip felt more at rest. As the evening wore on, more excited than tired, he and Mrs. Probasco and Obed sat within ear-shot of the sick-room. In low voices they went into new particulars on both sides, discussed his plans for himself and Gerald together, and weighed this and that. Hospitable, shrewd, warm-hearted folk! Could you and your charge, Philip, have fallen into more tender or more willing hands? How interested they became in the life at the Ossokosee that had made this friendship begin, and in the thousand little or greater incidents which had perfected it and so suddenly laid such responsibilities on Touchtone's shoulders! How carefully both, the man by silence, the good woman by tactful turns of the conversation, avoided intruding on matters that they surely would have relished understanding better, but into which they would not pry!
It seemed beautiful to Mrs. Probasco's inmost heart, which one already will have divined was nothing like as unromantic as her features, this friendship between these two lads, this devotion of the elder lad to the younger.
"There never was any thing prettier than the way you an' him have been keeping together," she ventured once to remark, ungrammatically but earnestly. "It's like a book."
"But there never was any body else like Gerald—in or out of a book," Touchtone answered, simply, blushing. For if facts were on his lips his inner sentiments, as a general thing, were not.
"Well, I only hope that you'll have a long life together without no kind of quarrels between you, nor troubles after these, my lad," said Obed, stroking the dog's head as Towzer lay beside his chair. "You've begun to make friendship the way it 'd ought to be made, an' as it's grown older it 'd ought to be of a kind that aint common in this part o' the world, so far as I've had opportunity to jedge."
"I hope so, too," responded Touchtone, soberly. Yes, and he believed it. His "old head on young shoulders" for one moment pictured in flashing succession years to come at Gerald's side, himself his best friend ever, to companion and care for him. Or, would the future bring differences, quarrels, a breaking apart for them, and only thorns from this now newly planted vineyard, as happened to so many other pairs of friends in this strange world? Only fate knew, and only time could decide.
Bed-hour came. Philip proposed to hold to his lounge; so it was more comfortably made up for rest, under Mrs. Probasco's care, than before. Obed was to start for Chantico after the early breakfast. At first Philip decided that it was best he should go with him; but he concluded to curb his impatience and not be absent all day from Gerald. The letters and telegrams lay ready to be forwarded; Obed understood precisely what he was to do.
They said good-night. Philip lay awake a half hour or so. He was restless. Uncertainty after uncertainty and step by step of the unsolved equation of Gerald's and his situation filled his brain. He thought and planned, and heard the wind that had all at once risen blow furiously about the house. His final thought was that it had begun to rain pretty hard.
But his dismay and that of the Probascos when they met the next morning cannot briefly be described. A great gale was raging. The sea was a wild, mad, terrible creature, heaving itself in black tumult in the drenching and cold storm. The channel between the island and vanished coast was a raging body of water that no ordinary boat could safely hope to traverse. It was not a storm, but an equinoctial tempest.
Obed, with as much regret as honesty, declared he could not think of attempting a passage to Chantico. Letters, telegrams, every sort of communication, must wait until the elements were lulled.
"Another day lost!" cried Philip to himself, impatiently. He walked up and down Gerald's room in chafing, impotent anxiety. Gerald was so much better that Mrs. Probasco declared danger of further illness ended. He roved languidly about the house with the farmer's wife, in more contentment than Philip had hoped the boy could be kept in. But it made his own concern come home to him heavily. Obed and he counseled and watched the sea and storm. There was nothing else to do. The gale's fury increased in the afternoon, and, worse still, the coming of the early and deep darkness of the evening found it undiminished in violence.