Five Hundred Dollars Part 2

"You will find they are a success, to surprise yourself," he called out: "her most bosom friends will writhe and scream with envy."

The winding line of the long New England coast faces the sea, in its sweeping curves, in every direction. From the Callender place, the ocean lay to the south. Though elsewhere east winds might be blowing harsh upon the coast, here, almost every day, and all day long, in summer, the southwest wind came pouring in from the expanse of waters, fresh and cool, boisterous often, but never chill; and even winds from the east lost edge in crossing miles of pitch-pine woods, of planted fields, of sandy ponds, of pastures, and came in softened down and friendly.

A gentle breeze was drifting in from sea. All day long it had been blowing, salt and strong and riotous, tossing the pine-tops, bending the corn, swaying the trees in the orchards, but now it was preparing to die away, as was its wont, at sundown, to give to the woods, the cornfields and the orchards a little s.p.a.ce of rest and peace before it should rise again in the early evening to toss them all night long. The blue of the sky was blue in the water. Every object stood out sharp and clear. Down the low, curving sh.o.r.e-line, curls of smoke rose from distant roofs, and on the headland, up the coast, the fairy forest in the air was outlined with precision. Distant s.h.i.+ps were moving, like still pictures, on the horizon, as if that spell were laid on them which hushed the enchanted palace. There was just sea enough to roll the bell-buoy gently, and now and then was rung an idle note of warning. Three fis.h.i.+ng-boats lay anch.o.r.ed off the Spindle, rising and falling, and every now and then a sea broke on the rock. On the white sand beach, waves were rolling in, dying softly away along the sh.o.r.e, or heavily breaking, with a long, flying line of foam.

The sun was fast descending. Delia Prince went out to the corner of the house and shaded her eyes to look at the sunset. The white clouds turned to a flaming red, and the reflection dyed to crimson the surface of the creeks; the sun descended toward the wooded bluff that flanked the bay, sent a thousand shattered, dazzling rays through the trees, and disappeared.

The red of the clouds and the red of the water gave place to gray. The wind died down. The silence was intense,--all the more marked because of the few sharp sounds that broke it now and then. Across the bay, near sh.o.r.e, a man was raking oysters; he stood in the stern of his skiff, and the bow was up in the air. Near by a girl was driving sluggish cows along the beach, and her shrill cries came over the water; by a cottage on the bank a boy was chopping brush upon a block, and Delia watched the silent blows, and heard the sound come after. He smiled as she looked; for every night she saw the boy's mother stand at the door to call him, and saw him come reluctant to his task.

There was a sense of friendly companions.h.i.+p in all these homely sights and sounds. It was different from the old house, shut in close by a second growth of birch and oak.

The table was standing ready for a late supper. The children had gone for berries to the Island, and they would soon come home, and David was due, too, with his money.

She smiled as he appeared. The ascent to the brow of the hill was so sharp that first you saw a hat in movement, then a head, then shoulders, body, legs, and feet. She ran quickly down the road to meet him, and took his arm.

"You couldn't catch the noon train?" she said. "Captain Wells stopped at the door a little while ago to see what time we should be down to get the deed, and luckily I told him that we might not be down until into the evening. He said he 'd stay at home and wait till we came."

"Delia," said David, when he had seated himself in the house, "I 've got bad news to tell you, and I may as well out with it first as last."

"You have n't s.h.i.+pped for another whaling voyage?"

"No; that would be nothing," he said.

Delia stood and looked at him.

"Well," she said, "didn't you get as much as you counted on?"

"Yes,--twenty more."

"It isn't anything about the children? I expect them home every minute."

"No."

"Delia," he said, "you was a great fool ever to have me. You ought to have taken advice."

"What is the matter?" she said. "Why don't you tell me?"

"I 've lost the money," he said. "The Captain warned me how apt a seafaring man is to lose money; but I did n't take any heed, and I went off with Calvin Green--"

"With Calvin Green! What did I tell you!" she said.

"Wait a minute--and I stopped into a jewelry store and bought you a pair of ear-rings, and I came off and left my wallet on the counter, the way that fool Joe Ba.s.sett did, to Gloucester. When I went back, the rascal claimed he never saw me before--said he didn't know me from the Prophet Samuel, as if I was born that minute. And now they'll all say--and it's true--that I'm a chip of the old block, and that I 'm bound to come out at the little end. There!" he said, as he opened a little parcel and took out the earrings. "There 's what 's left of five hundred and twenty dollars, and you must make the most of 'em. Hold 'em up to the light and see how handsome they are. I don't know, after all, but they are worth while for a man to pitch overboard off Cape Horn and harpoon whales two years for. All is, just tell folks they cost five hundred dollars, and they 'll be just as good as hen's-egg diamonds.

"In fact, I don't know but I sort o' like the situation," he went on, in a moment. "It seems sort of natural and home-like. I should have felt homesick if I 'd really succeeded in getting this place paid for.

'T would have seemed like getting proud, and going back on my own relations. And then it 'll please everybody to say, 'I told you so.'

There 'll be high sport round town, when it gets out, and we back water down to the old place.

"Come, say something, Delia!" he said, in a moment. "Why don't you say something about it? Don't you care that the money's lost, that you stand there and don't say a word, and look at nothing?"

"I don't want to say anything now," she said, "I want to think."

"Well!" said Captain Bennett, the next day, to his wife, "Delia 's got more s.p.u.n.k! I should have felt like laying right down in the shafts, in her place; but instead of that, to actually go and talk them into letting her keep the Cal-lender place and pay for it so much a month!

And David's signed a paper to do it."

"I guess if the truth was known," said Mrs. Bennett, knitting on, "that, come to think it over, she was more scared of David's settling back than she was for losing the money."

"She 's got a pull on him now," said the Captain, "anyway, for if he once agrees to a thing he always does it."

III.

No one fully knows the New England autumn who has not seen its colors on the extreme Old Colony sea-board. There are no mountain ranges, opening out far reaches of burning maples; but there are miles of salt-marsh, spreading as far as the eye can reach, cut by countless creeks, displaying a vast expanse of soft, rich shades of brown; there are cranberry-meadows of twenty, thirty, or fifty level acres, covered with matted vines and crimson with berries; there are deserted pastures, bright with golden-rod and asters. And everywhere along the sh.o.r.es, against the dark pine woods, are the varied reds of oaks, of blackberry vines, of woodbine, and of sumach.

It was a bright fall afternoon; most of the boats were in, and lay near, sh.o.r.e before the sail-loft door; the sails were up to dry,--for it had been wet outside,--looking doubly white against the colors of the sh.o.r.e.

In the sail-loft they were telling stories.

"No, I don't think myself," said Deacon Luce, from the rocking-chair, "that ministers always show what we call horse sense. They used to tell a story of Parson Allen, that preached in the Old Town, in my father's time, that pleased me. One spring the parson took a notion to raise a pig. So he went down to Jim Barrows, that lived there handy by, and says he, 'Mr. Barrows, I hear you have a litter of young pigs, and I should like to have one to raise.' So Jim he got his stilyards and weighed him out one, and the minister paid him, and Jim he sent it up. Well, the minister kep' it some three months, and he used to go out every day and put on his spectacles and take his scythe down from the apple-tree and mow pig-weed for him, and he bought corn-meal to feed him up with, and one way and another he laid out a good deal on him. The pig fattened well, but the whole incessant time he was either rooting out and gitting into the garden, or he'd ketch his foot in behind the trough and squeal like mad, or something else, so that the minister had to keep leaving his sermon-writing to straighten him out, and the minister's wife complained of the squealing when she had company. And so the parson decided to heave the enterprise up, and Jim sent up and took the pig back. Come to settle, 'How do we stand?' says the minister. 'Oh, just as you say,' says Jim, 'I'll leave it to you.' 'Well,' says the minister, 'on the one hand you've got back a pig that you've been paid for; but, on the other hand, I 've had the use of him for some three months,--and so I guess we 're square.'" "Talking of preachers," said Caleb Parker, "reminds me of a story they tell of Uncle Cephas Bascom, of Northhaven.

Uncle Cephas was a shoemaker, and he never went to sea much, only to anchor his skift in the Narrows abreast of his house, and catch a mess of scup, or to pole a load of salt-hay from San-quitt Island. But he used to visit his married daughter, in Vermont, and up there they knew he come from the sea-board, and they used to call him 'Captain Bascom.'

So, one time when he was there, they had a Sabbath-school concert, and nothing would do but 'Captain Bascom' must talk to the boys, and tell a sea-yarn, and draw a moral, the way the Deacon, here, does." The Deacon gravely smiled, and stroked his beard. "Well, Uncle Cephas was ruther pleased with his name of 'Captain Bascom,' and he did n't like to go back on it, and so he flaxed round to git up something. It seems he had heard a summer boarder talk in Sabbath-school, at Northhaven; he told how a poor boy minded his mother, and then got to tend store, and then kep' store himself, and then he jumped it on them. 'That poor boy,' says he, 'now stands before you.' So Uncle Cephas thought him up a similar yarn. Well, he had never spoke in meeting before, and he hemmed and hawed some, but he got on quite well while he was telling about a certain poor boy, and all that, and how the boy when he grew up was out at sea, in an open boat, and saw a great sword-fish making for the boat Hail Columbia, and bound to stave right through her and sink her,--and how this man he took an oar, and give it a swing, and broke the critter's sword square off; and then Uncle Cephas--he 'd begun to git a little fl.u.s.tered--he stops short, and waves his arms, and says he, 'Boys, what do you think! That sword-fish now stands before you!' I cal'late that brought the house down." Captain Philo, who had laid down his three-cornered sail-needle, to listen to this exciting story, readjusted the leather thimble that covered his palm, and began to sew again. Uncle Silas, sitting near the water door, in his brown overalls made with a breast-ap.r.o.n and suspender-straps, looked out at the boats.

A silence fell on the company.

It was broken by Calvin Green.

"A man was telling me rather a curious story, the other night," he said.

"I was just explaining to him exactly how 't was that David Prince lost his money, and so he told this:--

"There was a boy that was clerk in a store, and one day they sent him over to the bank to git some money. It was before the war, and the bank gave him twenty ten-dollar gold pieces. But when he got back to the store there was one short. The boy hadn't nothin' to say. He admitted he had n't dropped none, because he 'd put 'em in a leather bag where he could n't lose one without he lost all, and the cas.h.i.+er knew _he_ had n't made any mistake. The storekeeper he heard the story, and then he put his hand on the boy's shoulder, and says he, 'I don't know what to make o' this; but I believe this boy,' says he, 'and we 'll just drop it, and say no more about it.' So it run along, and the next day that it rained, one of the clerks in the store took down an old umberella, and, come to unfurl it, out falls a ten-dollar gold piece. Seems that the boy had that umberella that day, and hooked it on to the counter in the bank, by the handle, and one of the coins must have slid off into it when he was countin' 'em, and then he probably did n't spread the umberella coming back. And, as this man said that was telling me, it don't do to bet too much on suspicion. Now, only for that Jew's being such a hard character, according to the newspapers, I should be loath to charge him with taking David's money; I should say David might have lost it somewhere else."

n.o.body spoke. Captain Bennett whistled softly.

"I never felt so bad in my life," continued Green, "as I did when he missed his money. When we come up into the depot he was telling me a kind of a comical story about old Jim Torrey, how he wanted to find out if all his hens was laying, or if any of 'em was disposed to s.h.i.+rk, and he got him a pa.s.s-book ruled in columns, and opened a ledger account with every hen, by a name he give her; and we got up to the ticket-window, and he put his hand into his breast-pocket for his wallet--by George! I 've seen him chaff and joke, sort of quiet, when we was going to ride under every minute; but he turned as white then as that new mainsail, and off he went, like a shot But 't was no use. Of course, the jewelry feller would n't disgorge on David's say-so, without no proof."

"It was like this," he went on; "the counter was here,--and David stood here,--and I was here,--and we both come off together. But I tell you,--the way David looked when he put in his hand for his wallet! He stopped laughing, as if he see a ghost; I can't get it out of my head.

And how the man that stole the money can stand it I can't figure out."

"Perhaps he 's calloused," said the Deacon, "by what the paper said the other night about his buying a parcel of clothes hooked out of some man's entry. We concluded 'twas the same man--by the name."

"Can't believe all that's in the paper," said Perez Todd; "you know the paper had me to be married, once; the boys put it in for fun; they made up the name for the female, I guess, for I 've been kind of shyin' round for her this ten year, and have n't seen no such woman."

"Yes, sir, he's a hard ticket," said Green; "that's so, every time.

Well, I must be going; I agreed to go and help Elbridge over at half flood."