Chanticleer Part 9

"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 G.o.d 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. Pus.h.i.+ng on fast and far through the western country, in hunger and distress, pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sion 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 a.s.sembled kindred a vindicated man, he would be requited fully for all his toil. He took s.h.i.+p; in tempest, and with many risks of peris.h.i.+ng far away unvindicated, in the middle of the wild sea--"

The widowed mother could restrain herself no longer, but rus.h.i.+ng 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 b.u.mp, 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 s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.sed 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 pa.s.s; 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 pa.s.sed, oh, who could answer that he, with the thronging company of busy pa.s.sions 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 a.s.sailant, 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 pa.s.sions, 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 companions.h.i.+p. If you knew what pa.s.sed and is pa.s.sing 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 G.o.d, 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.

CHAPTER TENTH.

THE CONCLUSION.

When Elbridge and Miriam re-entered the homestead they found the best parlor, which they had left in humble dependence on the light of a single home-made wick, now in full glow, and wide awake in every corner, with a perfect illumination of lamps and candles; and every thing in the room had waked up with them. The old bra.s.s andirons stood s.h.i.+ning like a couple of bald-headed little grandfathers by the hearth; the letters in the sampler over the mantel, narrating the ages of the family, had renewed their color; the tall old clock, allowed to speak again, stood like an overgrown schoolboy with his face newly washed, stretching himself up in a corner; the painted robins and partridges on the wall, now in full feather, strutting and flying about in all the glory of an unfading plumage; and at the rear of all the huge back-log on the hearth glowed and rolled in his place as happy as an alderman at a city feast.

The Peabodys too, partook of the new illumination, and were there in their best looks, scattered about the room in cheerful groups, while in the midst of all the widow Margaret, her face lighted with a smile which came there from far-off years, holding in her hand as we see an angel in the sunny clouds in old pictures, the ancient harpsichord, which till now had been laid away and out of use for many a long day of sadness.

While Elbridge and Miriam stood still in wonder at the sudden change of this living pageant, old Sylvester, his white head carried proudly aloft, appeared from the sitting-room with Mr. Barbary, a quaint figure, freed now of his long coat, and bearing no trace of travel on his neat apparel and face of cheerful gravity. Leaving the preacher in the centre of the apartment, the patriarch advanced quietly toward the young couple, and, addressing himself to Elbridge, said, "My children, I have a favor to ask of you."

"Anything, grandfather!" Elbridge answered promptly.

"You are sure?" Old Sylvester's eyes twinkled as he spoke.

"It would be the pleasure and glory of my young days," Elbridge answered again, "to crown your n.o.ble old age, grandfather, with any worthy wreath these hands could fas.h.i.+on, and not call it a favor either."

Old Sylvester, smiling from one to the other, said, "You are to be married immediately."

The young couple fell back and dropped each the other's hand, which they had been holding. Miriam trembled and shrunk the farthest away.

"You will not deny me?" the grandfather said again. "You are the youngest and the last whom I can hope to see joined in that bond which is to continue our name and race; it is my last request on earth."

At these simple words, turning, and with a fond regard which spoke all their thoughts, Miriam and Elbridge took again each the other's hand, and drew close side to side. The company rose, and Mr. Barbary was on the point of speaking when there emerged upon the family scene, from an inner chamber, as though he had been a foreigner entering a fas.h.i.+onable drawing-room, Mr. Tiffany Carrack, in the very blossom of full dress; his hair in glossy curl, with white neckcloth and waistcoat of the latest cut and tie, coat and pants of the purest model, pumps and silk stockings; bearing in his hand a gossamer pocket-handkerchief, which he shook daintily as he advanced, and filled the room with a strange fragrance. With mincing step, just dotting the ground, his whole body shaking like a delicate structure in danger every moment of tumbling to the ground, he advanced to where Miriam and Elbridge stood before Mr.

Barbary.

"Why really, 'pon my life and honor, Miriam, you are looking quite charming this evening!"