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Chanticleer: A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family, a fiction by Cornelius Mathews |
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CHAPTER 9. THE NEW-COMERS |
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_ CHAPTER 9. THE NEW-COMERS It was old Sylvester himself who opened the door and admitted the strangers; one of them, the younger, wore a slouched hat which did not allow his features to be distinctly observed, further than that his eyes were bright with a strange lustre, and that his face was deadly pale. He was partly supported by the elder man, whose person was clad in a long coat, reaching nearly to the ground. They were invited to the table, but refusing, asked permission to sit at the fire, which being granted, they took their station on either side of the hearth; the younger staggered feebly to his seat, and kept his gaze closely fixed on the other. "He had better take something," said old Sylvester, looking toward the young man and addressing the other. "Is your young friend ill?" "With an ailment food cannot relieve, I fear," the elder man answered. "Will you not remove your hats?" old Sylvester asked again. Turning slowly at this question, the young man answered, "We may not prove fit company for such as you, and if so the event shall prove, we will pass on and trouble you no further. If every thread were dry as summer flax," he added, in a tone of deep feeling, "I for one, am not fit to sit among honest people." "You should not say so, my son," said old Sylvester; "let us hope that all men may on a day like this sit together; that, remembering God's many mercies to us all, in the preservation of our lives, in his blessed change of seasons, in hours of holy meditation allowed to us, every man in very gratitude to the Giver of all Good, for this one day in the year at least, may suspend all evil thoughts and be at peace with all his fellow-creatures." The young man turned toward the company at the table, but not so far that his whole face could be seen. "Have all who sit about you at that table," he asked, glancing slowly around, "performed the duty to which you refer, and purged their bosoms of unkindness toward their fellow-men? Is there none who grasps the widow's substance? who cherishes scorn and hatred of kindred? Who judges harshly of the absent?" There was a movement in different members of the company, but old Sylvester hushed them with a look, and took upon himself the business of reply. "It may be," said old Sylvester, "that some of us are disquieted, for be it known to you that one of the children of this household is absent from among us for causes which may well disturb our thoughts." "I have heard the story," the young man continued, "and if I know it aright, these are the truths of that history: There were two men, friends, once in this neighborhood, Mr. Barbary the preacher, and your grandson Elbridge Peabody. Something like a year ago the preacher suddenly disappeared from this region, and the report arose and constantly spread that he had fallen by the hand of his friend, that grandchild of yours. It began in a cloudy whisper, afar off, but swelled from day to day, from hour to hour, till it overshadowed this whole region, and not the least of the darkness it caused was on this spot, where this ancient homestead stands, and where the young man had grown and lived from the hour of his birth. He saw coldness and avoidance on the highway; he was shrunk from on sabbath-mornings, and by children; but this was little and could be borne--the world was against him: but when he saw an aged face averted," he looked at old Sylvester steadily, "and a mother's countenance sad and hostile--" "Sad--but not hostile," the widow murmured. "Sorrowful and troubled, at least," the young man rejoined, "his life, for all of happiness, was at an end. He must cease to live or he must restore the ancient sunshine which had lighted the windows of the home of his boyhood. He knew that his friend had _not_ fallen by his hand; that he still lived, but in a far distant place which none but a long and weary journey could reach." "He should have declared as much," interposed the old patriarch. "No, sir; his word would have been but as the frail leaf blown idly from the autumn-bough; nothing but the living presence of his friend could silence the voice of the accuser. He rose up and departed, without counsel of any, trusting only in God and his own strength; he bore with him neither bag nor baggage, scrip nor scrippage--not even a change of raiment; but with a handful of fruit and the humble provision which his good mother had furnished for the harvest-field, he set forth; day and night he journeyed on the truck he knew his friend had taken to that far country, toiling in the fields to secure food and lodging for the night, and some scant aids to carry him from place to place. Pushing on fast and far through the western country, in hunger and distress, passing by the very door of prosperous kinsfolk, but not tarrying a moment to seek relief." At this point Mrs. Jane Peabody glanced at her husband. "And so by one stage and another, hastening on, he reached that great city in the south, the metropolis of New Orleans; often, as he hoped, on the very steps of his friend, but never overtaking him, with fortune at so low an ebb that there he was well-nigh wasted in strength, hunger-stricken, and tattered in dress; driven to live in hovels till some chance restored him the little means to advance; so mean of person that his dearest friend, his nearest kinsman, even his old playfellow there," pointing to Mr. Tiffany Carrack, "who had wrestled with him in the hayfield, who had sat with him in childish talk often and many a time by summer stream-sides, would have passed him by as one unknown." The glance which, in speaking this, he directed at Mr. Carrack, kindled on that young gentleman's countenance a ruby glow, so intense and fiery that it would seem as if it must have burned up the tawny tufts before their very eyes, like so much dry stubble. There was a glow of another kind in the Captain's broad face, which shone like another sun as he contemplated the two young men, glancing from one to the other. "The young man, bent on that one purpose as on life itself," he continued, silencing his companion, who seemed eager to speak, with a motion of his finger, "through towns, over waters, upon deserts, still pursued his way; and, to be brief in a weary history, there, in the very heart of that great region of gold, among diggers and searchers, and men distracted in a thousand ways in that perilous hunt, to find his simple-hearted friend, the preacher, in an out-of-the-way wilderness among the mountains, exhorting the living, comforting the sick, consoling the dying--and then, for the first time he learned, what his friend had carefully concealed before, the motive of his self-banishment to this distant country." His companion would have spoken, but the young man hurrying on, allowed him not a word. "You who know his history," he continued, addressing the company at the table--"know what calamity had once come upon the household of Mr. Barbary, by the unlawful thirst for gold; that he held its love as the curse of curses; he thought if he could but once throw himself in its midst, where that passion raged the most, he would be doing his Master's service most faithfully, more than in this quiet country-place of peaceful households, but when he learned the peril and the sore distress of his young friend, he tarried not a moment. 'To restore peace to one injured mind,' he said; 'to bring back harmony to one household is a clear and certain duty which will outweigh the vague chances of the good I may do here.' The young man cherished but one wish; through storm and trial and distress of every name and hue, if he could but reach home on the day of Thanksgiving, and stand up there before his assembled kindred a vindicated man, he would be requited fully for all his toil. He took ship; in tempest, and with many risks of perishing far away unvindicated, in the middle of the wild sea--" The widowed mother could restrain herself no longer, but rushing forward, she removed the young man's hat from his brow, parted his locks, and casting herself upon his neck, gave utterance to her feelings in the affecting language of Scripture, which she had listened to in the morning: "My son was dead and is alive again--he was lost and is found!" Miriam timidly grasped his offered hand and was silent. The company had risen from the table and gathered around. "Now," said William Peabody, "I could believe,--be glad to believe all this, if he had but brought Mr. Barbary with him." The elder stranger cast back his coat, removed his hat, and standing forth, said, "I am here, and testify to the truth, in every word, of all my young friend has declared to you." On this declaration the Peabodys, without an exception, hastened to welcome and address the returned Elbridge, and closed upon him in a solid group of affectionate acknowledgment. Old Sylvester stood looking loftily down over all from the outer edge of the circle, and while they were busiest in congratulations and well-wishes, he went forward. "Stand back!" cried the old man, waving the company aside with outspread arms, and advancing with extended hand toward his grandson. "I have an atonement to render here, which I call you all to witness." "I take your hand, grandfather," Elbridge interposed, "but not in acknowledgment of any wrong on your part. You have lived an hundred blameless years, and I am not the one this day to breathe a reproach for the first time on your spotless age." Tears filled the old patriarch's eyes, and with a gentle hand he led his grandson silently to the table, to which the whole company returned, there being room for Mr. Barbary as well. At this crisis of triumphant explanation, Mopsey, who had under one pretext and another, evaded the bringing in of the pie to the last moment, appeared at the kitchen-door bearing before her, with that air of extraordinary importance peculiar to the negro countenance on eventful occasions, a huge brown dish with which she advanced to the head of the table, and with an emphatic bump, answering to the pithy speeches of warriors and statesmen at critical moments, deposited the great Thanksgiving pumpkin pie. Looking proudly around, she simply said, "Dere!" It was the blossom and crown of Mopsey's life, the setting down and full delivery to the family of that, the greatest pumpkin-pie ever baked in that house from the greatest pumpkin ever reared among the Peabodys in all her long backward recollection of past Thanksgivings, and her manner of setting it down, was, in its most defiant form, a clincher and a challenge to all makers and bakers of pumpkin-pies, to all cutters and carvers, to all diners and eaters, to all friends and enemies of pumpkin-pie, in the thirty or forty United States. The Brundages too, might come and look at it if they had a mind to! The Peabody family, familiar with the pie from earliest infancy, were struck dumb, and sat silent for the space of a minute, contemplating its vastness and beauty. Old Sylvester even, with his hundred years of pumpkin-pie experience, was staggered, and little Sam jumped up and clapped his hands in his old grandfather's arms, and struggled to stretch himself across as if he would appropriate it, by actual possession, to himself. The joy of the Peabodys was complete, for the lost grandson had returned, and the Thanksgiving-pie was a glorious one, and if it was the largest share that was allotted to the returned Elbridge, will any one complain? And yet at times a cloud came upon the young man's brow,--when dinner was passed with pleasant family talk, questionings and experiences, as they sat about the old homestead hearth,--which even the playful gambols of the children who sported about him like so many friendly spirits, could not drive away. The heart of cousin Elbridge was not in their childish freaks and fancies as it had been in other days. The shining solitude looking in at the windows seemed to call him without. As though it had caught something of the genial spirit that glowed within the house, the wind was laid without, and the night softened with the beauty of the rising moon. With a sadness on his brow which neither the old homestead nor the pure heavens cast there, Elbridge went forth into the calm night, and sitting for a while by the road beneath an ancient locust-tree, where he had often read his book in the summer-times of boyhood, he communed with himself. He was happy--what mortal man could be happier?--in all his wishes come to pass; his very dreams had taken life and proved to be realities and friends, and yet a sadness he could not drive away followed his steps. Why was this? That moment, if his voice or any honorable and sinless motion of his hand could have ordained it, he would have dismissed himself from life and ceased to be a living partaker in the scenes about him. Even then--for happy as he was, he dreaded in prophetic fear, the chances which beset our mortal path. The weight of mortality was heavy upon the young man's spirit. Thinking over all the way he had passed, oh, who could answer that he, with the thronging company of busy passions and desires, could ever hope to reach an old age and never go astray? Oh, blessed is he (he thought) who can lie down in death, can close his account with this world, having safely escaped the temptations, the crimes, the trials, which make of good men even, in moments of weakness and misjudgment, the false speaker, the evil-doer, the slanderer, the coward, the hasty assailant, and, (oh, dreadful perchance,) the seeming-guilty-murderer himself. Strange thoughts for a prosperous lover's night, but earth is not heaven. With the sweat of anguish on his brow he bowed his head as one whose trouble is heavy to be borne. Yet even then the thought of the sweet heaven over him, with all its glorious promises, came upon him, and as he lifted up his eyes from the earth, the moon sailing forth from the clouds, and flooding the region with silver light, disclosed a figure so gentle and delicate, and in its features so pure of all our common passions, it seemed as if his troubled thoughts had summoned a spirit before him from the better world. As he stood regarding it in melancholy calmness, it extended towards him a hand. "No, no," he said, declining the gentle salutation and retiring a pace, "touch me not, Miriam, I am not worthy of your pure companionship. If you knew what passed and is passing in my breast, you would loathe me as a leper." She was silent and dropped her eyes before him. "Think not, my gentle mistress," he added presently, "my heart is changed towards you. The glow is only too bright and warm." "If you love me not, Elbridge," she interposed quickly, "fear not to say so, even now. I will bear the pang as best I can." "You have suffered too much already," he rejoined, touched to the heart. "My long silence must have been as death to one so kind and gentle." "I have suffered," was all she said. "One word from you in your long absence would have made me happy." "It would, I know it would, and yet I could not speak it," Elbridge replied. "When, with a blight upon my name I left those halls," pointing to the old homestead standing in shadow of the autumn trees, "I vowed to know them no more, that my step should never cross their threshold, that my voice should never be heard again in those ancient chambers, that no being of all that household should have a word from these lips or hands till I could come back a vindicated man; that I would perish in distant lands, find a silent grave among strangers, far from mother and her I loved, or that I would come back with my lost friend, in his living form, to avouch and testify my truth and innocence." "And had you no thought of me in that cruel absence, dear Elbridge?" asked Miriam. "Of you!" he echoed, now taking her hand, "of you! When in all these my wanderings, in weary nights, in lonely days, on seas and deserts far away, sore of foot and sick at heart, making my couch beneath the stars, in the tents of savage men, in the shadow of steeples that know not our holy faith, was it not my religion and my only solace, that one like you thought of me as I of her, and though all the world abandoned and distrusted the wanderer, there was one star in the distant horizon which yet shone true, and trembled with a hopeful light upon my path." "Are we not each other's now?" she whispered softly as she lay her gentle head upon his bosom; "and if we have erred, and repent but truly, will not He forgive us?" As she lifted up her innocent face to heaven, did not those gentle tears which fell unheard by mortal ear, from those fair eyes, drop in hearing of Him who hears and acknowledges the faintest sound of true affection, through all the boundless universe, musically as the chime of holy Sabbath-bells? "You are my dear wife," he answered, folding her close to his heart, "and if you forgive and still cherish me, happiness may still be ours; and although no formal voice has yet called us one, by all that's sacred in the stillness of the night, and by every honest beating of this heart, dear Miriam, you are mine, to watch, to tend, to love, to reverence, in sickness, in sorrow, in care, in joy; by all that belongs of gaiety to youth, in manhood and in age, we will have one home, one couch, one fireside, one grave, one God, and one hereafter." An old familiar instrument, swept as he well knew by his mother's fingers, sounded at that moment from the homestead, and hand in hand, blending their steps, they returned to the Thanksgiving household within. _ |
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