DEFICIENT SAINTS

DEFICIENT SAINTS.

CHAPTER I.

THE ELECT LADY AND HER DEATH-BOOK.

In the dining-room of the old stone Mercer mansion in the town of Rossignol, Me., Mrs. Hippolyta Prymmer, sanctified vessel and uncommon saint, charter member of the church of the United Brethren, chief leader in religious work, and waggishly nicknamed by the ungodly about her "the elect lady," sat looking earnestly at her death-book.

This death-book was her never-failing source of interest and chastened entertainment. In it she had enrolled the names of the various friends of whom she had been deprived by death, and for its enlargement and adornment she collected photographs, cuttings from newspapers, and items of information, with an assiduity superior to that of some of her acquaintances, who prepared scrap-books merely for purposes of diversion and amusement.

 

The covers of the book were ornamented with two silver plates engraved with the names and ages of her two deceased husbands,—Sylvester Mercer and Zebedee Prymmer. These plates had been taken from the coffins of the two worthy men before they had been lowered to their graves. Wedged under each plate were locks of hair shorn from the heads of the dead men. Sylvester, according to his coffin plate, had been a man in the prime of life. His lock of hair was soft and brown, while that of Zebedee Prymmer, whose age was given as sixty-five, was stiff and grizzled.

Mrs. Prymmer did not quail as her eye ran over these somewhat ghastly souvenirs. She even sighed gently, and with eyes partly closed,—for she nearly knew the contents of the book by heart,—repeated softly some lines addressed to herself, written by Zebedee Prymmer before death, but worded as if they had been penned after his flight to regions above.

"Mourn not, oh loved, oh cherished dear,

I have no longer foes to fear,

From here above, far in the sky,

I see the pit wherein they'll lie."

"They digged around me in the dust,

But Providence sustained the Just,

Come soon and join the dear upright,

And triumph over sons of spite."

 

Mrs. Prymmer, musing enjoyably over these lines, had her attention distracted by her cat, who was mewing around her feet, turning his sleek face up to her sleek face, and pretending that he thought it was breakfast-time instead of bedtime.

"I sha'n't give you any milk," she said, severely, "you had enough for your supper; go to bed."

The cat fled down-stairs, and Mrs. Prymmer gazed across the room at the clock. The sight of her round gray eyes was undimmed. All her bodily faculties were in a good state of preservation, and undeterred by the mournful fact that she had laid two husbands in the grave, she was, perhaps, by no means averse to taking a third one. In the course of time she would probably have another offer, for Rossignol was a marrying-place, and she was somewhat of a belle among elderly widowers, being still good-looking in spite of the artificial and unpleasing compression of her lips, and the two lines up and down the corners of her mouth.

She began to wonder just how her son would take the news of another marriage on her part. She was a little afraid of this son, although she loved him better than any one else in the world. He was the only living person admitted into her death-book, and drawing his photograph from between the leaves, she looked at it half lovingly, half apprehensively. It was a not unstriking face that confronted her. He was a curious combination, this boy of hers,—half Englishman, half Yankee. His tall, firmly built figure, his reserve, and his pale face were a legacy from his father, who was of direct English ancestry; his business ability and calculating ways, and his granite-coloured eyes, that so swiftly and unerringly measured his fellow men with respect to their usefulness or uselessness to him, were direct gifts to him through his mother from a generation or two of New England traders.

She wondered once more just how he would look and what he would say if some one were to observe suddenly to him, "So I hear your mother is going to be married again."

Her plump shoulders quivered nervously, and she looked deeper into his fathomless eyes. Probably he would be annoyed at first, but in time he would calm down, and would go on living with her and a third husband just as he had lived with her and a second one.

"He never liked Zebedee," she reflected, comfortably, "yet he was always respectful to him. He's a pretty good boy is Justin," and she passed one hand caressingly over the pale, composed face, and wished earnestly that he would come home from the long and mysterious journey that he had undertaken some weeks ago.

The house was very quiet now that he was away. A cousin who boarded with her was also absent, and her solitary maid servant, who should have been in bed, was roaming the streets with a sailor lover.

"Half-past ten," said Mrs. Prymmer, in a voice that boded no good to the loitering maid, "and her hour is ten sharp. There she is,—the witch," as a ring at the bell resounded through the silent house.

She got up and went quickly through the hall. "Mary!" she said as she opened the door. "Mary!"

There was something so aggravating in her tone that it checked the apology on the lips of the belated girl, and made her toss her head angrily.

"Mary," repeated her mistress, warningly, "if this happens again I shall consider it my duty to dismiss you without a character."

The maid hurried up-stairs, her back respectful, her face working vigorously as she made mouths at an imaginary mistress in front of her.

Mrs. Prymmer was about to follow her when her attention was caught by a sound of sleigh-bells coming from the snowy street. The old stone house, in common with most of its neighbours, was perched on a bank some distance from the street, and was approached by several flights of steps cut into the terraces before it.

A sleigh was drawn up to the pavement below, and slowly descending from it was her son, whom she had supposed to be in California. She held her breath with pleasure. She had got him back again, her one and only child, her son by her first marriage,—young Justin Mercer, junior deacon in the church of the United Brethren, the hope of the older members of the flock and the model of the rising generation. In unbounded pride she noted his firm step, his unruffled appearance, the uprightness of his figure, and the cool flash of the eye behind the glasses that he always wore.

Instead of looking like one arriving home from a journey, he had rather the appearance of one just about to leave home, and as calmly as if he had seen her a few hours before he bent his tall figure to bestow a filial embrace upon her.

In a sudden upsurging of maternal affection she responded warmly and involuntarily, until the remembrance of his abrupt departure made her draw back and survey him silently.

"Are you not glad to have me back?" he asked, with a slight smile.

"Yes, though your going away was none of the pleasantest," she said, in an injured voice, while with the tips of her fingers she arranged on her temples the thick crimped hair slightly disturbed by his caress.

"I am sorry for it, mother," he said, with the same curious smile, "and I regret to state that, unpleasant as it was, you may find it was not equal to my return."

"What do you mean?" she said, peevishly, "and why doesn't that man fetch in your things?"

"I told him to hold his horses until I came back. I have a present for you," and he turned and went down the steps while his mother returned to the shelter of the porch.

Suddenly she became as rigid as the door-post behind her. The present was taking on the shape of all things in the world most hateful to her. A young girl of medium height was coming up the steps, and bending over her in a protecting attitude was her son Justin.

They paused for an instant before her. Mrs. Prymmer had a brief confused vision of a big, beautiful wax doll whose limpid eyes shone out of a mist of light hair, then her son flashed her a swift glance, and seeing that he could hope for no response, laid a hand on the shoulder of the vision and withdrew it.

Mrs. Prymmer, brushing by the cabman who was staggering in under the weight of a trunk, marched solemnly into the hall, opened the door of the parlour, and, lighting the gas, sat down in an armchair of imposing proportions and awaited an explanation.

Her son had conducted his companion to the dining-room. She heard a few low-spoken words, then his heavy step came through the hall, and, entering the room, he sat before her.

"I don't know what some women would call this," she said, compressing her lips till there was nothing but a thin streak of red between them, "but I call it an insult."

"It is not intended as an insult," he said. "Perhaps if you will wait till I explain—"

"You can't explain away the fact that that is a woman," replied Mrs. Prymmer, pointing an accusing finger toward the next room.

No, he could not. With all the words that he could utter, with all the stock of logic at his command, Justin Mercer could not disprove the fact that in the room beyond them was a young and uncommonly beautiful woman.

"What do you mean by saying that she is a present for me?" asked his discomfited mother. "I have one girl now. I suppose this is some creature you have picked up on your travels."

Justin Mercer was not a man given to unseemly mirth, yet at this disdainful remark he made a sound in his throat closely approaching a laugh. "Did you look at her, mother?"

Mrs. Prymmer for a few instants forgot her vengeance in her curiosity. It was no servant, but a lady that had passed her in the doorway. The delicate face, with its clear-cut features and limpid eyes, was a refined and not a vulgar one.

"Who is she?" she asked, peremptorily.

"She is my wife," he said, quietly.

"Your wife," gasped Mrs. Prymmer, and she half rose from her chair, then staggered into it again, and laid her hand against the high back for support, while all the furniture in the room, presided over by her son's sober face, whirled slowly by her in a distracted procession.

"Shall I get you a glass of water?" he asked, sympathetically.

She made a prohibitory gesture. This was only the reflex action of the blow struck when first she had seen the young girl accompanying him up the steps. She knew then that he had brought home a wife. Moistening her dry lips with her tongue so that she might compass the words, she articulated, "This is the fruit of disobedience."

Her son did not reply to her, but there was no sign of regret on his face, no word of apology on his tongue. He had found the fruit sweet, and not bitter,—he had plucked it in defiance of her well-known wishes. She had lost the little boy that she had led by the hand for years,—the young man that had lingered by her side, apparently indifferent to all feminine society but her own. She had lost him for ever, and, making a motion of her plump hands as if she were washing him and his affairs from them, she got up and moved toward the door.

"Don't you want to hear about my journey?" he asked, kindly.

She did indeed want to hear. She was suffering from a burning inquisitiveness, yet she affected indifference, and said, coldly, "I do, if you will tell me the truth."

"Did I ever tell you a lie?"

"No, but I daresay you will begin now,—'by their fruits ye shall know them.' I thought you were never going to get married."

"I never said so."

"You acted it."

"You had better sit down, and I will tell you how it happened," he said, soothingly.

Mrs. Prymmer hesitated, then, dominated by his slightly imperious manner and her own ungovernable curiosity, she took on the air of a suffering martyr, and reseated herself.

There was a large mirror over the mantelpiece, and the young man, catching in it a glimpse of the contrast between his own pale face and the ruddy one of his mother, murmured, "You are very fresh-looking for fifty-five years."

It was not like Justin Mercer to make a remark about the personal appearance of man, woman, or child. His mother glanced at him in surprise, then for a brief space of time was mollified by his approval of her comfortable appearance, although she murmured a stern reference to gray hairs that are brought down by sorrow to the grave.

"Your face is full," he went on, in his composed voice, "and your hair is thick and glossy like a girl's, and your eyes are bright,—as bright as Derrice's there—"

The mention of his wife's name was inopportune. "Is that what you call her?" asked his mother, with a scornful compression of the lips.

"Yes, Derrice Lancaster."

Mrs. Prymmer's countenance grew purple. "She is not a daughter of that man?"

"She is."

"Help, Lord, for the godly man ceaseth," murmured the lady, upon whom these repeated blows were beginning to have the effect of inducing irrelevancy of Scripture quotations.

"If you like, I will tell you from the first," said her son.

"Do you want her to hear?" asked Mrs. Prymmer, with a glance toward the sliding doors that divided the two rooms.

The young man's face changed quickly, and muttering, "It would be just like her to listen,—the little witch," he got up and approached the doors.

"Hello," said a mischievous voice, and he caught a gleam of bright eyes and a smiling face at the gaping crack. Hastily opening the doors, he passed through, and, firmly closing them behind him, stood over the beautiful but slightly unformed and undeveloped figure sitting on the sofa, that was drawn close up to the doors.

"Derrice," he said, reprovingly.

"What a trying time you are having with your mamma," she said, saucily. "I was just about to interrupt. I want to go to bed."

"Very well," he said, submissively, and, preceding her into the hall, he picked up a small leather bag.

Mrs. Prymmer, peering out of the front room, saw them go by,—her son with the girl's cloak thrown over his shoulder, his head inclined toward her, as he talked in a low voice.

"Bewitched!" she exclaimed, furiously, and, creeping to the door-sill, she listened to their further movements.

Ever since his childhood her son had occupied a large room at the back of the house overlooking the garden. Mrs. Prymmer heard him open the door of this room and ask his wife to stand still while he found a match. Then there was a silence, and she pictured the girl's critical glance running over the muffled furniture, the covered bed, and the drawn blinds.

Presently there was the sound of the strange voice in the hall, "I cannot sleep in that room. It is damp, and the sheets are clammy."

"But, Derrice," said her son's clear tones in remonstrance.

"I am not mistaken," repeated the girl, "where are your other sleeping-rooms?"

"If Micah is at home we haven't any," he said, decidedly. "Most of our bedrooms are shut up."

"Then I shall have to sit up all night or go to a hotel," said the girl, with equal decision.

Mrs. Prymmer felt herself called upon to save the family reputation. She stepped into the hall, and in a voice choking with wrath called up the staircase, "Micah isn't home,—put her in his room."

The girl looked over the railing at her. It seemed to Mrs. Prymmer that her eyes were rolling mischievously. "Thank you," she said, sweetly, then she retired, and her disconcerted mother-in-law went back to the parlour.

 

 

CHAPTER II.

AN UNEXPECTED DAUGHTER-IN-LAW.

When Justin returned to the parlour there was a slight flush on his face, and, taking off his spectacles, he wiped them with a somewhat weary air.

"I guess you've got a handful in your new wife," said his mother, with resentful relish.

He gave her an unexpected smile. "She hasn't been brought up as we have—" Then he paused and fell into a reverie out of which his mother inexorably roused him. "I wish you would get on with your story. I don't want to stay here all night."

Justin put on his glasses, brushed back the thick hair from his forehead, and, leaning forward in his chair, said, firmly, "It is just five weeks to-day since I came home with a telegram from Mr. Lancaster asking me to go to see him on urgent business."

"Yes, and I advised you not to go," said Mrs. Prymmer, squeezing her lips together. "'The way of transgressors is hard.'"

"You advised me not to go because you knew nothing of the circumstances. You know that I cannot give you the details of my business transactions. Can't you trust me to do what is right in such cases?"

"Put not your trust in princes," she said, stubbornly. "A man should have no secrets from his mother."

"You forget that I am not a boy," he said, calmly. Then he went on, "I hurried to California and found Mr. Lancaster in a seaside place sitting in the sun parlour of a hotel. He was pleased that I had come so quickly, and talked over his affairs with me—"

"It's a very odd thing," interrupted Mrs. Prymmer, "that a man who has travelled as much as this Mr. Lancaster of yours should do all his business in a little place like this. Why doesn't he go to banks in New York or Boston?"

"He probably knows his own mind," said Justin, with an unmoved face. "That day I did some writing for him, then he looked out the window. There was a long beach where a small number of young people were bathing in the surf. Mr. Lancaster said, 'You have never met my daughter,—come out, and I will introduce you. The bathing season has not begun, but she often gets up a party in the spirit of adventure.' We went outside, and when he called, 'Derrice,' one of the bathers came toward us. I saw that she was a pretty girl—"

"Well—" said Mrs. Prymmer, in an icy voice.

 

Her son had paused; it was intensely distasteful to him to give her this account of his journey, and he was only urged to it by a strict sense of duty. But not for worlds would he describe to her or to any one living his sensations on first meeting the girl who had become his wife. Through half-shut eyes he gazed at his mother, his memory busy recalling the scene on the California beach,—the dripping, glistening sea-nymph dancing over the sands in her short frock and black stockings, her face radiant, her teeth shining, her slender feet spurning the ground, her whole being so instinct with life and happiness that she seemed to be an incarnation of perpetual grace and motion.

She danced to meet him and he—stiff, awkward—had stood motionless, struck with admiration, his whole soul for the first time prostrate before feminine graces and perfection.

But he must continue his recital, and, rousing himself with an effort, he went on. "Her father said, 'Derrice, this is Mr. Mercer,' and she shook hands with me. Then he asked her to go out and let me see how well she could swim. She rushed into the breakers— They are very high out there and come in in three rows howling and plunging like dogs, and throwing up spray half as high as this house. She dived through one line and another and another, then we saw her head rising beyond them. After a time I wondered why she didn't come in, but no one else seemed uneasy. The other young people had sat down on the hot sand, and her father was taken up with pride in her strength, when some one waved a marine glass from the hotel veranda and cried, 'The tide has turned,—Miss Derrice can't get in, she has been floating for some time.'"

Justin stopped again, and once more lived over his brief experience on the shores of the Pacific,—the quick agony of the father who turned and measured the strength of the young men before him, their responsive looks as they ran like deer down the beach to launch a boat, the cries of consternation of the girls as they hurried into the sea and stretched out helpless hands, and the furious beating and protesting of his own heart at the sudden snatching of his newly found treasure from him by the cruel sea. He would recover her alone and unaided, or he would die with her, and, tearing off his boots and coat, he had plunged through the rows of indignant breakers that slapped and buffeted him until he reached a region of calm where warm waves lapped his throat and playfully tried to blind his eyes with spray. In deliberate haste, for he was strong and broad of limb, he had hurried to the spot where she lay rising and falling on the water, her face like a lily-bud, her limbs stretched out like folded leaves. The glare of the sun, the brass of the sky, his steady, cool head, his beating heart, the look the girl gave him when she raised her head from the waves as from a pillow,—to his dying day he would never forget it all, and he grew pale at the remembrance.

His musings were interrupted by his mother's harsh voice, "Why couldn't she get in?"

"When the tide turns the undertow is frightful. Several drowning accidents had occurred there, it being a hard place to launch a boat, and as the bathing season had not begun, the life-saving appliances were not in readiness."

Mrs. Prymmer asked no question for a time, but encouraged by a gleam of sympathy on her face, Justin observed, dryly, "She was afraid we could not get out to her, and she was repeating poetry to keep herself from losing her presence of mind."

"I guess she wasn't much frightened," observed Mrs. Prymmer, hardening her heart again.

"She has a good deal of nerve," said Justin, quietly. "She doesn't look it, but she has."

"Well, they must have got her in," said his mother, impatiently, "as she is here; how did they do it?"

"I swam out and stayed by her," he said, laconically, "till the boat came. It kept upsetting in the breakers."

"Why didn't her father go out? It was a queer thing to let you risk your life."

"He could not swim, and he was paralysed with fright." Justin lowered his eyes, for there was a mist on his glasses. Ah, that meeting between father and daughter when the boat came in! He had turned aside quickly from it, but not quickly enough to escape the expression in the eyes of the half-fainting man as he held out his arms to his recovered daughter.

"Did you make up your mind then to marry her?" pursued his mother, in a voice so harsh that it was almost a croak.

"No; I had already done so."

"You were pretty quick about it."

"I am not always slow."

"And she jumped at the chance."

"Not exactly," and, throwing back his head, he stared at her through his glasses. "If you will recall some of your own experiences when in love, you may remember some of the ways of your sex."

The obstinate face opposite him did not relax. No; although she had twice been wooed and successfully won, his mother had never felt in the slightest degree the influence of the gentle passion. She had not the remotest conception of the strength of a loving attachment except as she had felt it to a limited extent in the guise of maternal affection. However, she was not going to tell her son this, so she said, commandingly, "Go on with your story."

 

"There isn't much more to tell. The experience in the sea had given her a shock, and she was pale and quiet for a day or two, then she was all right and was about with her father all the time, and I—of course I was there."

He stopped in a somewhat lame fashion, and Mrs. Prymmer said, scornfully, "I guess her father made the match."

Justin maintained a discreet silence. It would be sacrilege to relate to this unsympathetic listener the history of the steady, sharp oversight that the father had taken in all matters pertaining to his daughter. Justin would not tell her that Mr. Lancaster had spoken first,—that one day he had turned to him with an abrupt, "You love my daughter, don't you?"

Mrs. Prymmer would only sneer if she should be told that her son's voice had trembled as he had answered, "Yes," and that his cheek had burned under the glance of Mr. Lancaster's keen eyes. Nor would he favour her with an account of his love-making to the spoiled and wayward Derrice. It would not inspire his mother with the same intensity of interest with which it had inspired her son. Therefore he remained thoughtful until she broke the silence by an accusation that goaded him into a response. "You promised your father when he died that you would take care of me."

 

"I know I did. I have married the only woman I have ever seen who would not be jealous of a mother's appropriation of a son."

Mrs. Prymmer thought over this sentence and decided that it contained an innuendo. "You must choose between us," she said, angrily, "a man must leave father and mother, and cleave to his wife."

"I know it. I should be the last one to gainsay instructions from the Bible."

"My house is not large enough for both," she continued, "I never wanted a daughter-in-law. You have forced one on me."

"You are considerably upset to-night, mother," he said, gently. "I ought to have warned you of my marriage by telegram, but I thought I had rather break it to you myself; you had better think over the matter of our leaving your house."

Her house, yes, it certainly was hers; for she had taken good care that her first husband should leave her in possession of all his worldly goods, and that their son should be dependent on her. However, she was not devoid of feeling, and she knew Justin was not thinking of losing the shelter of her roof, but rather of the sundering of the close ties between them, and, as this thought presented itself, her shrewd and calculating mind recalled the handsome gown of her daughter-in-law, and the costly fur cloak slipping from her shoulders.

 

"Is that Mr. Lancaster as rich as folks say?" she asked, with a softening of her tone.

"No," he replied, briefly.

"I suppose if anything happened to her you would get his money."

Justin surveyed her in such austere disapprobation that she was daunted, and stammered, "You are so queer about money,—your business is to handle it, yet you haven't any respect for it, not a mite. You fling good money after bad."

Justin understood her reference, and knew that it afforded him just grounds for a retort, yet he contented himself with a silent stare at her until she went on, meekly, "You needn't take your wife away for a day or two. I will make it a subject of prayer and if the Lord directs, of course you will have to stay."

"Of course."

Her resentment did not return to her, although his tone was ironical. He had offended her terribly, this inflexible young son of hers, and even though the new member of their family was ushered in with the glamour of wealth about her, this was but a salve, a flattering ointment for a grievous wound. But after all, he was her son, her only son, and her mother's heart was touched as she got up to leave him.

"Justin," she said, and though she was not moved enough for tears, a little—a very little—whimper came at her bidding, "you have broken my heart, but I forgive you."

"No, mother, not broken," he said, also rising and laying a hand on her shoulder.

"Yes, broken," she persisted; "but you are my boy. Don't—don't let her take you away from me."

"Mother, am I likely to forget the long years that we have spent here together; the sicknesses you have nursed me through?"

"No, no, I can trust you," and she deposited her thick head of hair on his breast; "but what made you marry that chit of a thing? She looks as if she hadn't done growing. Now if it had been a woman—"

"She is older than she looks," he said, with a smile, "and she will be more tractable than a woman, and it was either 'take her or lose her.' Her father is a man of decision."

"And you—you like her?" said Mrs. Prymmer, raising her head.

He gently put her aside, and his face grew crimson. "I love her," he said, shortly.

Mrs. Prymmer went slowly from the room. She was confused in her mind, and falling on her knees by her bedside she wrestled in agitated prayer for a blessing on her son, a judgment on her daughter-in-law, and miraculous strength for herself, to bear this new and heavy cross that had been laid upon her.

 

 

CHAPTER III.

TO HIM THE WORLD WAS GAY.

Captain White was just getting home. For twenty years he had boarded with his cousin, Mrs. Hippolyta Prymmer, and now neither the near prospect of seeing her again after an absence of some months, nor any dislike for a smart rain that had begun to fall, made him quicken his footsteps as he sauntered deliberately along the concrete sidewalks of the little town.

He was a short, dark man, with a slender body, a pair of waggish, twinkling, black eyes, a sleek, dark head, and an ever present smell of fish about his garments. By fish he breathed and moved and had his being, and from the instant that the profitable herring was drawn from its native element, Captain White hung over it, superintending every detail of its curing, preparation, and shipping, for home and foreign markets.

Being a retired sea-captain and present fish merchant, his duties were supposed to end with the placing of a cargo of fish on board a vessel, but at times his affection for his old employment would break forth so strongly that, without a word of warning to Mrs. Prymmer, he would precipitate himself upon a departing schooner, and the town of Rossignol would know him not for a month or two.

It was after one of these hasty departures that he was now returning. He strolled along the lower streets of the town, his fun-loving eyes rolling inquiringly at every one he met, his hands in the pockets of his short nautical jacket, his elbows swaying gently like two pectoral fins propelling him through the air, until he arrived below the old stone mansion, when he drew his hands from his pockets, ran briskly up the three short flights of steps, and rang the bell.

"How de do, Mary," he said, briefly, to the maid when she opened the door.

Upon ordinary occasions he never spoke to her. This greeting was reserved for the important event of his return from a voyage.

Mary smiled, and, not daring to return his salutation lest she should incur a reprimand from the highest authority in the house for undue familiarity with the masculine part of it, made haste to disappear down a back stairway.

Captain White shook himself, thereby scattering a shower of wet on the oil-cloth of the floor, hung up his cap, and walked down the hall to the dining-room.

 

"I'll find them just the same as usual, I suppose," he muttered, giving a slap to his sleek head that always looked as if he had just dipped it in water, "same old table, same old chairs around it, same old fire, same old girl with same old stocking or same old death-book."

He opened the door. Yes, there she sat, her thick hair parted decently in the middle, her black gown decently disposed about her portly figure, her lips decently compressed, her fingers clicking the needles of the knitting with which she invariably disciplined or amused herself during the successive evenings of her life, her eyes fixed on her son, who sat in a loose coat and carpet slippers, diligently reading the evening paper as Captain White had seen him read it a thousand times before.

The very fire was crackling as it had crackled ever since he had had acquaintance with this hearthstone. He could even tell the hour of the evening by it, for Mrs. Prymmer from motives of economy always started it with wood but continued it with coal. It was now just eight o'clock, for the wood was nearly gone. A match had been touched to it at seven precisely, and at a quarter to eight a shovelful of coal had been lifted on it by the careful hand of his cousin.

"Well, Micah," she said, deliberately, "you have got back."

 

Captain White did not answer her. It did not seem worth while to confirm a statement that bore truth on the face of it, and moreover he, though a man possessing a fair amount of composure, was completely dumbfounded by his discovery of a curious addition to this hitherto contracted family circle.

The big family lounge, commonly pushed away in a corner, was drawn up near the fire, and on it, comfortably surrounded by cushions, reclined a girl who was not a Rossignol girl, nor anything approaching to a Rossignol girl, as far as Captain White could make out. She had been reading and had fallen asleep over her book, and she lay like a beautiful statue while Justin and his mother were apparently paying no more attention to her than if she really were something without life.

Captain White rubbed his hand across his eyes and looked again. The girl was still there, and, with a puzzled expression of face equivalent to a spoken "I give it up," he sat down beside the door, one of his peculiarities being a reluctance to approach a fire.

"How are you, Micah?" said Justin, laconically.

"First-rate," responded Captain White, "and how's yourself?"

"All right."

"You don't look it."

 

"I've been away. I guess a long journey doesn't agree with me."

"Where have you been?"

"To California."

"To California!" exclaimed Captain White, in a surprise that was ludicrous, and his gaze again went to the girl as if seeking from her a reason for this extraordinary departure on the part of his hitherto home-loving cousin.

Justin's eyes went with him, then, to the further mystification of Captain White, the young man's face took on an expression more soft, more tender, than any that he had ever seen there before, while he murmured some unintelligible remark below his breath.

There was a change, too, in Mrs. Prymmer. She had laid down her knitting, and her mouth was slowly opening and shutting as it had a habit of doing when she was surprised or deeply moved, and before it settled down to the firm compression of displeasure.

Captain White's glance wandered to the third member of this eccentric family circle. There was a change in her, too. The Sleeping Beauty was waking up. With a yawn and a little stretch of her rounded limbs, she had lifted the heavy lids of her light blue eyes, and was staring at him with a curious intentness of gaze that reminded him, in a casual way, of the expression he had seen on the faces of children who were grappling with and about to seize upon some problem hitherto beyond their solution.

"Derrice," said Justin, quietly, "this is Cousin Micah."

She was smiling at him now, gently and wistfully, and, like a baby learning to walk, was slowly putting her small feet to the floor, trying them, as if doubtful whether she could stand on them.

A flood of benevolence came over Captain White. "Give her a hand," he said to Justin. "Steady her off that lounge."

The young man drew back. "Go yourself, Micah. You have aroused her."

Justin's tone was distinctly mischievous, and Captain White's surprised eyes forgot to twinkle and went in a maze of bewilderment toward Mrs. Prymmer, whose countenance was slowly taking on a frozen aspect.

Who was this girl, who was alternately stopping and advancing in a peculiar kind of a walk that he had never seen before off the stage? Perhaps she was some actress who, for reasons best known to herself, had descended upon his puritanical cousins. Well, he had never yet run from a woman, and he didn't propose to do so now, and, drawing a long breath, he stood up and manfully awaited her approach.

 

Now she was sentimental. There was a tear in her eye, and her lip was trembling, as she stretched out her hand to him. "Captain White, I am glad to see you. It was stupid in me to fall asleep over my book. I would have kept awake if I had known you were coming."

"Say something sympathetic, can't you?" said Justin, stepping forward, and whispering in his ear.

"Bless my heart and soul, how can I?" ejaculated Captain White. "Now, if I had her alone—" and confusedly folding his arms, he retired to his seat.

To Justin's irrepressible delight, his young wife, in a state of utter fascination, drew nearer to the rough-coated stranger. "You go away from home a good deal, don't you?" she said, wistfully. "I hope that you will be able to stay with us now."

"Now, for the love of mercy," said the sea-faring man, turning in quiet desperation to Justin, and speaking under his breath, "tell me who this is?"

"She is my wife," said the young man.

Captain White fell into a state of speechless unbelief until he found confirmation of the announcement in the expression of Mrs. Prymmer's face. Justin must indeed be married to this lovely creature. Where had he got her? He rubbed both hands over his smooth head and was about to subside into stupid perplexity, when he discovered that the girl's face was quivering in a pitiful manner that threatened a feminine outbreak of some sort. Her face did not belie its promise. In one minute she had burst into violent weeping, and Justin, springing forward, was leading her from the room.

Captain White fixed his attention on the only member of the family left to him. "Hippolyta, can you let a little light in on these queer proceedings? What, you are not cracked, too,—you, best hope of the elect in Rossignol?"

His cousin was, indeed, in a state of collapse. She had just seen tumbling to the ground a fragile house of cards that she had been erecting, or, rather, a castle in Spain,—for she would be shocked at the mention of anything so worldly and pernicious as bits of painted cardboard in connection with her name. All day long she had contemplated with the utmost satisfaction the prostration of her daughter-in-law after her long journey. Derrice had lain in bed till the evening; she had been on the sofa until Captain White's arrival. She seemed utterly overcome. Perhaps it was the will of the Lord that, in a short time, this flaxen-haired doll should be laid in the grave, and she would then again have her son to herself. Now, in some unaccountable way, the girl had been roused to unusual animation by the appearance of Captain White. Her cheeks had flushed, she had seemed interested and pleased. This fit of tears was but a manifestation of temper,—"girls' tricks," she muttered, angrily. The will of the Lord was not to have her sicken and die,—it was clashing with her will, with hers, acknowledged saint, the most devout woman in the town of Rossignol. There was something radically wrong with the order of things, and she felt stunned, and in no condition to talk.

One or two ineffectual attempts she made to answer her cousin's inquiries, then, with a ponderous and unsteady step, she rushed from the room.

Captain White stretched his lean neck around the door-post. "She's off on a gale with passion for her sail. Never saw such queer doings in this house before. That lass has doddered them,—guess I'll get something to eat. In every sudden squall of life, fortify yourself by a visit to the pantry. It's wonderful how the stomach backs up your staying powers," and, wandering out into the hall, he sauntered down a staircase to the lower part of the house.

His brief warning ejaculations of "Hey! Hist! Hello!" at the kitchen door not being answered, he pushed it open and walked in, saying, "Just as I thought. She's off. Never saw such a house; whenever they've nothing to do they sneak off to bed."

Adjoining the kitchen was a small pantry where Captain White was soon standing beside sparsely laden shelves. There was nothing on the lower ones worthy of his famished condition but a beef bone destined for the soup pot on the morrow. This he seized, and while gnawing the meat from it with his strong sailor's teeth that had been sharpened during the early part of his life by attacks on salt junk and hard tack, his scintillating eyes flashed longingly up to the top shelf where stood an inviting procession of newly baked mince pies.

"Most women wouldn't make soup of that bone," he said, as he rapped a tune on the shelf with the denuded bone, "but it's a chance if Hippolyta doesn't wash and dress it and put it in a pot and make a liquor that we'll drink and all go staggering about with weakness from it. Clever woman that. Most women would have wasted a supper on me to-night, but she never thought of it. However, I'm not one to sing sour grapes. Here goes," and being too short to reach the pies he drew up his legs, sprang in the air like a jack-in-the-box and seized one of them.

"It's a good big pie, but I can manage a quarter," he said, and drawing a clasp-knife from his vest he cut out a wedge-shaped piece that he transferred by slow degrees to his mouth. "That's a superfine pie," he said, presently, "but flat,—on account of me, poor miserable sinner," and rolling his glance upward, he drew a flask from the breast of his coat and sprinkled a part of its contents over the pie.

 

In a few minutes the entire pie was disposed of, and he was deep in another. "Guess I'd better stop," he said, presently, "or a herring with a mouth as big as a church will swallow me to-night. Is there any further iniquity I can commit? Cousin Hippolyta can't be any madder than she will be when she sees those empty plates—Oh, here's the cream for breakfast. I'll drink that," and he seized a flat-bottomed dish and carried it to his mouth.

"Now seeing I've been as bad as I can be," he said, after he had chased a remaining skin of cream around the dish until he had caught it with his little finger, "I'll go above. I wish I could put this thing on Mary," and he set one plate inside another, "but even if this crockery was found in her pocket, they'd get after me. Mary is a church-member, and I'm a reprobate," and wiping his creamy lips and gaily humming, "We were three jolly sailors," he went up-stairs.

He found the parlour deserted. The fire that he had left burning cheerily was now sulking under a heap of ashes, and the lights were turned out,—sure proofs that his Cousin Hippolyta, supposing him to be in bed, had descended and made preparations for the night.

"Just nine o'clock," he said, leaning over the grate to examine his battered silver watch by a persevering gleam of firelight. "I wonder what Justin is doing. I'll take an observation," and he went up-stairs on tiptoe.

The door of a small dressing-room adjoining Justin's bedroom stood open, and Captain White, who possessed an uncommon sharpness of hearing, thought that he detected a faint noise as he peered in.

"Hello, Justin, are you there?" he whispered.

"Yes," said the young man, leaving the dark window where he was standing and coming out into the dimly lighted hall.

"Won't she let you in?"

"She isn't here, Micah."

"Where do you keep her?"

"On the flat above you."

"Up with Mary—in the attic. What's that for?"

"Well—you might be able to guess if you tried," said the young man, and he glanced toward the closed door of his mother's room.

"H'm—doesn't want to be too near her mother-in-law," reflected Captain White. Then he seized Justin by the arm as if he were a prisoner. "Come up to my den."

Marching him up another flight of stairs, he conducted him to a front room. "There, now," he said, "sit down. I know that Morris chair is in the exact place I left it, in this well-rigged house. I can give you a push that will land you in it, though I can't see a thing with those confounded curtains down. You'd better keep on your feet, though, till I strike a light. Your mother'd get after me if I broke one of your legs. Jemima Jane, here we are as snug as possible," and he turned up two gas-jets to the extent of their lighting ability, and then, dropping into a chair, reached out his hand to a drawer and took from it a pipe.

Justin, who did not smoke, took off his glasses and indulged in his frequent occupation of polishing them with his handkerchief, blinking his eyes meanwhile in the strong light.

"How old are you?" asked Captain White, as he stuffed his pipe full of tobacco.

"Thirty."

"Lack-a-daisy, it seems only the other day you were born."

Justin did not reply to him. He was not much of a talker at any time, and at present he was in a reflective condition of mind in which he did not care to discuss any subject, not even the circumstances connected with his own birth.

"You have known me for a long time," said Captain White, brusquely, "do you happen to put any kind of trust in me?"

Justin struggled out of his reverie. "Yes, Micah, you know I do."

 

"Then for goodness' sake tell me what has brought this change in you, for, hang me, if you didn't look like all the minor prophets rolled in one when I went away. My namesake, and Habakkuk and Malachi and all the rest, would have appeared like grinning idiots alongside of you, and now I have actually seen your teeth six times since I entered this blessed door."

Justin not only favoured him with another sight of his big white teeth, that were set slab-like in his square jaw, but he burst into a low, hearty laugh.

"I guess it must be dolly, Micah."

"That's your wife."

"Yes, she's my wife fast enough."

"Did you marry her in California?"

"Yes."

"When did you get back?"

"Yesterday."

"What sent you there?"

"Mr. Lancaster was there; he telegraphed for me; she is his daughter."

Captain White took his pipe from his mouth, uttered a low, significant whistle, and measured Justin with a penetrating glance, but he asked no more questions, not being one to pry into another man's secrets.

"Your mother seems a trifle put out," he observed, after a time.

 

"Naturally she would be," replied Justin, significantly.

Captain White in his turn began to laugh, at first silently and noiselessly, then with such a hearty and irrepressible explosion that Justin gazed at him in some astonishment.

"Excuse me," said the elder man, waving his pipe, apologetically, "but it makes me curl up inside to think of you as a married man, you, a brat of a boy. I don't think I'm old enough yet to launch myself in the narrow matrimonial boat, and I've seen craft of all kinds sail in and out of this Bay for over fifty years."

"I'm not young,—I'm old," muttered the young man, suddenly getting up and stretching out his arms, "and I'm tired from that pull across the continent. I guess I'll go to bed."

"Wait a bit—what made your dolly cry to-night? I didn't frighten her, did I?"

"No; you reminded her of her father. She's been grieving all day for him."

"Her father—do I look like him?"

"I never thought so till you came in this evening. When she saw the resemblance I caught it. You are like him, only his hair isn't quite as smooth as yours, and he is taller, but he wears dark clothes like yours, and he is lean and swarthy-complexioned, and he has small eyes—"

 

"Small eyes—" repeated Captain White.

His companion did not hear him. He had sprung up with the utmost celerity, and had hurried to the hall and up the next staircase to the floor above, from whence there had been a sound of something falling.

"It's against orders to leave that door open when I smoke," said Captain White, following him; "however, the family is a trifle upset to-night, and I might as well be hanged for a sailor as a cabin-boy," and he continued to embrace affectionately with his lips the stem of his well-worn pipe, while he paced defiantly up and down the hall.

"What was the trouble?" he asked, when Justin came presently down the steps.

"She upset a table with a jug of water on it and wet her feet."

"You get a girl in the house and you'll have to dance attendance on her, young man. Has she got comfortable quarters up there?"

"Yes; we moved some furniture into those two empty front rooms, and I'm going to get her some more things."

"Why didn't you marry a Rossignol girl? Judging from the eye-snap I had at this one, she's about as much out of your line of life as the admiral of a fleet is out of mine."

"I guess all girls have spoiled ways, Micah."

 

"Oh, hooks and ninepins—what a baby you are, Justin," and Captain White wagged his head and burst into an uneasy chuckling laugh. "You don't know any more about women than a moon-calf, but she'll teach you, lad, she'll teach you."