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Chanticleer: A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family, a fiction by Cornelius Mathews |
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CHAPTER 4. THE FORTUNES OF THE FAMILY CONSIDERED |
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_ CHAPTER 4. THE FORTUNES OF THE FAMILY CONSIDERED When Oliver and old Sylvester entered the house they found all of the family gathered within, save the children, who loitered about the doors and windows, looking in, anxious-eyed, on the preparations for tea going forward under the direction of the widow Margaret, and Mopsey. The other women of the household were busy with a discussion of the merits of Mrs. Carrack, of Boston, the fashionable lady of the family. "I should like to see Mrs. Carrack above all things," said the Captain's pretty little wife, "she must be a fine woman from all I have heard of her." "Thee will have small chance, I fear, child," said Mrs. Jane Peabody, sitting buxomly in an easy arm chair, which she had quietly assumed, "she is too fine for the company of us plain folks in every point of view." "It's five years since she was here," the widow suggested as she adjusted the chairs around the table, "she said she never would come inside the house again, because the best bed-chamber was not given to her--I am sorry to say it." "She's a heathen and wicked woman," Mopsey said, shuffling at the door, and turning back on her way to the kitchen--"your poor boy was lying low of a fever and how could _she_ expect it." "In one point of view she may come; her husband was living then," continued Mrs. Jane Peabody, "she has become a rich woman since, and may honor us with a visit--to show us how great a person she has got to be--let her come--it need'nt trouble thee, nor me, I'm sure." Mrs. Jane Peabody smoothed her Quaker vandyke, and sat stiffly in her easy chair. Old Sylvester entering at that moment, laid aside his staff and broad-brimmed hat, which little Sam Peabody ran in to take charge of, and took his seat at the head of the table; the Captain, who was busy at the back-door scouring an old rusty fowling-piece for some enterprise he had in view in the morning, was called in by his little wife; the others were seated in their places about the board. "Where's William?" old Sylvester asked. He was at a window in the front room, where he had sat for several hours, with spectacles on his brow, poring over an old faded parchment deed, which related to some neighboring land he thought belonged to the Peabodys, (although in possession of others,) and which he had always made a close study of on his visits to the homestead. There was a dark passage, under which he made their title, which had been submitted to various men learned in the law; it was too dark and doubtful, in their opinion, to build a contest on, and yet William Peabody gave it every year a new examination, with the hope, perhaps, that the wisdom of advancing age might enable him to fathom and expound it, although it had been drawn up by the greatest lawyer of his day in all that country. His wife Hannah, grieving in spirit that her husband should be toiling forever in the quest of gain, sat near him, pale, calm and disheartened, but speaking not a word. He could not look at her with that fearful green shade on her face, but kept his eyes always fixed on the old parchment. When his aged father had taken his seat, and began his thanks to God for the bounties before them, as though the old Patriarch had brought a better spirit from the calm day without, he thrust the paper into his bosom and glided to his place at the table. It would have done you good to hear that old man's prayer. He neither solicited forgiveness for his enemies nor favors for his friends; for schools, churches, presidents or governments; neither for health, wealth, worldly welfare, nor for any single other thing; all he said, bowing his white old head, was this: "May we all be Christian people the day we die--God bless us." That was all; and his kinsfolk lost no appetite in listening to it--for it was no sooner uttered than they all fell to--and not a word more was spoken for five minutes at least, nor then perhaps, had not little Sam Peabody cried out, with breathless animation, and delight of feature, "The pigeons, grandfather!" at the same time pointing from the door to the evening sky, along which they were winging their calm and silent flight in a countless train--streaming on westward as though there was no end to them; which put old Sylvester upon recalling the cheerful sports of his younger days. "I have taken a couple of hundred in a net on the Hill before breakfast, many a time," he said. "You used to help me, William." "Yes, I and old Ethan Barbary," said the merchant, "used to spring the net; you gave the word." "Old Ethan has been dead many a day. Ethan," continued old Sylvester, in explanation, "was the father of our Mr. Barbary. He was a preacher too, and carried a gun in the revolution. I remember he was accounted a peculiar man. I never knew why. To be sure he used to spend the time he did not employ in prayers, preaching and tending the sick, in working on the farms about, for he had no wages for preaching. When there was none of that to be had, he took his basket, and sallying through the fields, gathered berries, which he bestowed on the needy families of the neighborhood. In winter he collected branches in the woods about, as fire-wood for the poor." "That was a capital idea," said Oliver the politician. "It must have made him very popular." "Wasn't he always thought to be a little out of his head?" asked the merchant. "He might have sold the wood for a good price in the severe winters." "I remember as if it were yesterday," old Sylvester went on in his own way, not heeding in the slightest the suggestions of his sons, "he and black Burling, who is buried in the woods by the Great Walnut tree, near the pond, both fought in the American ranks, and had but one gun between them, which they used turn about." "You saw rough times in those days, grandfather," said the Captain. "I did, Charley," old Sylvester answered, looking kindly on the Captain, who had always been something of a favorite of his from the day he had married into the family; "and there are but few left to talk with me of them now. I am one of the living survivors of an almost extinguished race. The grave will soon be our only habitation. I am one of the few stalks that still remain in the field where the tempest passed. I have fought against the foreign foe for your sake; they have disappeared from the land, and you are free; the strength of my arm delays, and my feet fail me in the way; the hand which fought for your liberties is now open to bless you. In my youth I bled in battle that you might be independent--let not my heart, in my old age, bleed because you abandon the path I would have you follow." The old patriarch leaned his head upon his hand, and the company was silent as though they had listened to a voice from the grave. He presently looked up and smiled--"Old Ethan, I call to mind now," he renewed, "had a quality which our poor Barbary inherited, and for which," he added, looking toward his son William, "and for which I greatly honor his memory. He counted the money of this world but as dross. From his manhood to the very moment of his entering on the ministry, he never would touch silver nor gold, partly, I think, because it was the true Scripture course, and partly because a dreadful murder had once happened in the Barbary family, growing out of a quarrel for the possession of a paltry sum of money." The bread she was raising to her lips fell from the widow's hand, for she could not help but think of the history of her absent son; and the voice of Miriam, who did not present herself at the table, was heard from a distant chamber, not distinctly, but in that tone of chanting lament which had become habitual to her whether in house, garden, or field. It was an inexpressibly mournful cadence, and for the time stilled all other sounds. They were only drawn away from it by descrying Mopsey, the black servant, at a turn of the road, hurrying with great animation towards the homestead, but with a singularity in her progress which could not fail to be observed. She rushed along at great speed, for several paces, and suddenly came to a halt, during which her head disappeared, and then renewed her pace, repeating the peculiar manoeuvre once at least in every ten yards. In a word, she was shuffling on in her loose shoes, (which were on or off, one or the other of them every other minute,) at as rapid a rate as that peculiar species of locomotion allowed. Bursting with impatience and the importance of her communication, her cap flaunting from her head, she stood in the doorway and announced, "We've beat Brundage--we've beat Brundage!" "What's this, Mopsey?" old Sylvester inquired. "I've tried it and I've spanned it. I can't span ours!" On further questioning it appeared that Mopsey had been on a pilgrimage to the next neighbor's, the Brundages, to inspect their thanksgiving pumpkin, and institute a comparison with the Peabody growth of that kind, with a highly satisfactory and complacent result as regarded the home production. Nobody was otherwise than pleased at Mopsey's innocent rejoicing, and when she had been duly complimented on her success, she went away with a broad black guffaw to set a trap in the garden for the brown mouse, the sole surviving enemy of the great Peabody thanksgiving pumpkin which must be plucked next day for use. With the dispatch of the evening meal, old Sylvester withdrew to the other room, with a little hand lamp, to read a chapter by himself. The others remaining seated about the apartment; the Captain and Oliver presently fell into a violent discussion on the true sources of national wealth, the Captain giving it as his opinion that it solely depended on having a great number of ships at sea, as carriers between different countries. Oliver was equally clear and resolute that the real wealth of a nation lay in its wheat crops. When wheat was at ten shillings the bushel, all went well; let it fall a quarter, and you had general bankruptcy staring you in the face. Mr. William Peabody was'nt at the pains to deliver his opinion, but he was satisfied, in his secret soul, that it lay in the increase of new houses, or the proper supply of calicoes--he had'nt made up his mind which. Presently Oliver was troubled again in reference to the supply of gold in the world--whether there was enough to do business with; he also had some things to say (which he had out of a great speech in Congress) about bullion and rates of exchange, but nobody understood him. "By the way," he added, "Mrs. Carrack's son Tiffany is gone to the Gold Region. From what he writes to me I think he'll cut a very great figure in that country." "An exceedingly fine, talented young man," said the merchant, who had, then, sundry sums on loan from his mother. "In any point of view, in which you regard it," continued Oliver, "the gold country is an important acquisition." "You hav'nt the letter Tiffany wrote, with you?" interrupted the Captain. "I think I have," was the answer. "I brought it, supposing you might like to look at it. Shall I read it?" There was no objection--the letter was read--in which Mr. Tiffany Carrack professed his weariness of civilized life--spoke keenly of misspent hours--a determination to rally and do something important, intimating that that was a great country for enterprising young men, and, in a familiar phrase, closed with a settled resolution to do or die. "I have a letter to the same effect," said the Captain. "And so have I," said William Peabody, "word for word." "He means to do something very grand," said the Captain. Something very grand--the women all agreed--for Mr. Tiffany Carrack was a nice young man, and had a prospect of inheriting a hundred thousand dollars, to say nothing of the large sums he was to bring from the Gold Regions. It was evident to all that he was going into the business with a rush. They, of course, would'nt see Mr. Tiffany Carrack at this Thanksgiving gathering--he had better business on hand--Mr. Tiffany Carrack was clearly the promising young man of the family, and was carrying the fortunes of the Peabodys into the remotest quarters of the land. "In a word," said Mr. Oliver Peabody, developing the Declaration of Independence on his pocket-handkerchief. "He is going to do wonders in every point of view. He'll carry the principles of Free Government everywhere!" The consideration of the extraordinary talents and enterprise of the son imparted a new interest to the question of the coming of Mrs. Carrack; which was rediscussed in all its bearings; and it was almost unanimously concluded--that, one day now only intervening to Thanksgiving--it was too late to look for her. There had been a general disposition, secretly opposed only by Mrs. Jane Peabody, to yield to that fashionable person the best bed-chamber, which was always accounted a great prize and distinguished honor among the family. But now there was scarcely any need of reserving it longer--and who was to have it? Alas! that is a question often raised in rural households, often shakes them to the very base, and spreads through whole families a bitterness and strength and length of strife, which frequently ends only with life itself. To bring the matter to an issue, various whispered conversations were held in the small room, lying next to the sitting-room, at first between Mrs. Margaret Peabody and Mopsey, to which one by one were summoned, Mrs. Jane Peabody, the Captain's wife, and Mrs. Hannah Peabody. The more it was discussed the farther off seemed any reasonable conclusion. When one arrangement was proposed, various faces of the group grew dark and sour; when another, other faces blackened and elongated; tongues, too, wagged faster every minute, and at length grew to such a hubbub as to call old Sylvester away from his Bible and bring him to the door to learn what turmoil it was that at this quiet hour disturbed the peace of the Peabodys. He was not long in discovering the ground of battle, and even as in old pictures Adam is shown walking calmly in Eden among the raging beasts of all degrees and kinds, the old patriarch came forward among the women of the Peabody family--"My children," he said, "should dwell in peace for the short stay allotted them on earth. Why make a difference about so small a matter as a lodging-place--they are all good and healthful rooms. I have seen the day when camping on the wet grounds and morasses I would have held any one of them to be a palace-chamber. The back chamber, my child," he continued, addressing the Captain's wife, "looks out on the orchard, where you always love to walk; the white room, Hannah, towards your father's house; and Jane, you cannot object to the front chamber which is large, well-furnished, and has the best of the sunrise. The Son of Man, my children, had not where to lay his head, and shall we who are but snails and worms, compared with his glory and goodness, presume to exalt ourselves, where he was abased." The old patriarch wished them a good night, and with the departure of his white locks gleaming as he walked away, as though it had been the gentle radiance of the moon stilling the tumult of the waters, they each quietly retired, and without a further murmur, to the chambers assigned them. _ |
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