STORM-STAYED.

Files of newspapers, already yellowed, can give the reader, who cares for details of such events, long accounts of the famous gale that suddenly lashed the western Atlantic to a fury of destruction in the autumn of 188–. It swept the rocky coasts of New England with a power that recent tempests have seldom equaled. Fishing-smacks, merchant craft of stalwart build, and yachts, belated in their return home, were dashed by dozens on the reefs of the Middle and Eastern States, swallowed up by the terrific sea that ran at its highest for days together, or, like empty soap-boxes in surf, were driven to shore. The death-list of seamen and others, unfortunate enough to be at the gale’s mercy or mercilessness ran well up into the hundreds. Nor was that all. For scores of miles inland travel was interrupted by wash-outs and cavings-in, on highways and railroads. The telegraph and mail-service[219] were suspended in a dozen directions. Bridges were flooded or swept away as if by spring freshets. In the harbors and straits such tides swelled as made the oldest inhabitants of the villages along them shake in their shoes to hear measured and compared. For four days sheets of rain descended about Chantico with only brief pauses, and when the down-pouring from overhead lightened and at last ceased the wind and ocean were things to send dread into the spirits of even cool-headed skippers and spectators.

With every thing in the way of communicating with their friends brought to a stand-still, paralyzed, Philip and Gerald waited on Chantico Island, in company with the Probascos, and watched the whirling and seething clouds and sea. Obed, however, was not able to be with them very often after the second morning. His rheumatism awoke when he did, and it kept the poor man much in his bed and in pain enough to put other dilemmas out of his sympathy. Mrs. Probasco nursed him; “ran” the house; sat for half hours with Touchtone and Gerald, chatting cheerfully and telling long stories of her and Obed’s[220] younger days, when they had lived on their parents’ farms, some miles back of Chantico. She kept a watchful eye on Gerald’s convalescence, and generally was like C?sar in having “to do all things at one time,” and, like the mighty Julius, she did not complain of the situation.

The resources of the farm-house, except for Mrs. Obed’s lively talk, were modest in such an emergency. One could not put his head out of the door except the wind nearly blew it off. But any thing must needs have been of a wonderfully distracting sort to beguile, for Philip Touchtone, at least, hours that he knew must be costing their friends great suspense or deep grief. There was a backgammon-board, with the legend “History of England” on the back, deceiving nobody. Gerald found amusement in another quite astonishing pastime, entitled, as to its large and gaudy label, “The Chequered Game of Life: A Moral and Instructive Amusement for Youth of Both Sexes. By a Friend to Them.”

“I wonder if it is meant for us?” Gerald asked when he unearthed this ancient treasure. “I never heard of ‘youth of both sexes’[221] before. I thought people had to be either boys or girls.”

Philip partly spent one morning in teaching the solemn cat sundry tricks (much against patient pussy’s will), which afternoon showed she had not given herself the slightest trouble to remember. With Gerald at his elbow, to add accuracy to his notes, he “wrote up” his diary, which had been abiding safely in his traveling-satchel. The partial changes of linen and the convenient odds and ends that their satchels contained were of truly unexpected value now that their trunk was in the bottom of the sea, with the rest of the Old Province’s baggage. Mrs. Probasco took the opportunity to put their limited clothing into thorough order.

“Next time I come away on a short voyage I think I’ll pack all the things in my closet into a hand-bag!” Gerald exclaimed, ruefully, taking stock of their resources.

“Or send the trunk by land?” laughed Touchtone, grimly. “I’m glad, though, that there was nothing of downright value in the trunk that we couldn’t replace. When we get to Knoxport we can get a wardrobe together directly there, or wherever Mr. Marcy and[222] your father advise. How lucky you didn’t put that daguerreotype of your mother in!—the one that is to be copied.”

“Yes,” answered the boy, seriously; “it was lucky. Papa would have felt as badly as I if that had been lost. It’s the only one we like.”

Touchtone could see that this prolonged separation of the boy from his father, in more than one sense, would bring them nearer to each other than they ever had been before. “And a precious good thing,” he soliloquized. “The best way to keep some fellows chums seems to have somebody give them both a sound shaking now and then. Perhaps this sort of thing for Gerald and Mr. Saxton amounts to that.” In spite of the resolute silence of Gerald, for the sake of his friend, on the great topic of his father’s or Mr. Marcy’s whereabouts and conclusions, Philip (who certainly did not try to introduce it) knew that most of the time Mr. Saxton was in Gerald’s mind.

“Do you know what I think?” he said abruptly, once, looking up from the backgammon-board, after having thrown his dice and placed his men abstractedly during several turns. “I don’t believe that I’ve appreciated papa very[223] much, nor that he has appreciated me very much—till now.”

Obed Probasco’s hobbling entrance for supper and a new study of the weather saved Touchtone’s answer to a statement that it struck him came peculiarly near to the truth, and to a very common state of matters between near relatives.

They rambled over the old farm-house, the wind roaring and the rain dashing about the eaves and windows. Philip possesses to-day a substantial reminder of this exploring, in the shape of a bright copper warming-pan, one of two that had belonged to “Grandmother Probasco,” which now hangs in restored glory in a place far from that dusky nook it occupied for so many years. The discovery of a rat in the wainscot of the kitchen, within convenient range of the dresser where Mrs. Probasco was accustomed to stand her hot bread and pies, gave occupation to all the household, including Towzer (“You will call that dog Towzer when you know his real name’s Jock,” frequently remonstrated Mrs. Probasco) for a while the second afternoon. In the evening Obed took to telling tales of a certain uncle of his who had[224] been “a seafaring man of oncommon eddication,” and that chronicle whiled away the hours till bed-time, and sent them to bed sleepy into the bargain; the history recounted being of a mild and long-winded sort, and chiefly connected with the efforts of the nautical ancestor to induce “a widow that lived on Cape Ann” to exchange a little piece of ground she owned for a big fishing-smack that she didn’t want, a wedding being part of the proposed transaction. They became, by hearsay, quite familiar with the quaint Chantico people and their characters and ways. For, although Mr. and Mrs. Probasco were so aloof from the little port, several of their kith and kin lived thereabouts, and household supplies and queer chapters of gossip came thence to the island. Philip remembers in these after years, as one sometimes does things heard in a dream, the anecdotes and homely annals that he listened to (or rather half-listened to) during those days. Sometimes a curious name that happens to be read or mentioned will bring back the scenes of that week, and even the wearisome, hoarse noise of sea and storm from hour to hour.

By mutual consent, all questions of how far[225] their detention from Chantico might affect their plans were pushed aside, unless Gerald was out of ear-shot. And, in any case, what could they determine?

But it does not seldom occur in this conversational world that when every subject seems exhausted people hit upon one that is to turn out the most important. This experience of “talking against time,” as it might be called, with the friendly Probascos gave Touchtone an instance of the fact which he has always thought satisfactory enough. It was Gerald Saxton who, in the evening of the last day of the gale, unintentionally set the ball in motion by a careless remark.

Obed happened to be out of the room for the sake of his efficacious bottle of “lineament.” They had been speaking of the island-farm—how fertile it was, how easily cultivated by Obed and by the extra help he employed at certain times of the year; of the commodious old dwelling that the couple had so long occupied that it was only at the days of rent-paying that they realized themselves still tenants and not owners.

“You see,” said Mrs. Obed, holding up her[226] darning-needle to re-thread it (making a very wry face in the process), “we’d ’a’ bought the island long ago, Obed and me—though there’s a pretty steep price for it, disadvantages considered—but there’s incumbrances as to the title; an’, besides, when Gran’f’ther Probasco dies (that’s my gran’f’ther over to Peanut Point)—he’s feeble, very feeble—Obed an’ me’ll have to take his farm and live there. It’s a real sightly place, an’ the land’s splendid. But it’ll be a hard pull for us to leave the island after spendin’ so much of our lives here.”

“I should think so,” assented Gerald. “I don’t see why that Mr. Jennison you speak of—the one who partly owns the old place still—don’t come over to take a look at it now and then, in the summers. I should think he would like to.”

The face of the farmer’s wife changed.

“Mr. Jennison isn’t the sort of man to care about that,” she replied. “He does come—sometimes. As it happens, husband kind o’ expected him this very month, on some errand he wrote about last July. There’s a hull roomful of his things up-stairs.”

[227]

“A roomful of his things!” ejaculated Philip, remembering the locked door.

“Yes; when he was a young man an’ used to visit oftener, we got in the way of keepin’ a chamber up-stairs that wasn’t no use to the family of us, as a kind o’ store-room for him. There’s quite a good many old articles o’ furniture an’ trunks and papers. He says they aint o’ any use, though they belonged in the family. He asked us to let ’em stay till he settled somewhere. He aint settled yet.”

“Doesn’t he live anywhere?”

Mrs. Probasco gave a cough. “I guess you might best say he lives every-where. He’s a roving gentleman, by his own account.”

“Then, I suppose, he’s generally in New York, and makes that his head-quarters,” suggested Gerald. “My father says people who live out of New York most of the time always say that. Is he a broker?”

“I don’t know just what his business is,” returned Mrs. Probasco. Philip surmised that interesting facts as to Mr. Jennison lurked about. He decided not to interrupt Gerald’s thoughtless catechism. “Sometimes his[228] business seems to be one thing, and sometimes another,” the farmer’s wife concluded.

“I’d like to see him.”

“I don’t think you’d be specially taken with him,” dryly returned Mrs. Obed. “But he might happen here before you get off. He goes all over the country in long journeys. Sometimes Mr. Clagg—that’s the lawyer over to Chantico—don’t know his address for weeks.”

“And he’s really the last of the Jennisons, you say? What a pity he don’t live in this old place himself, and keep it up, for the sake of the family.”

Mrs. Probasco examined a stocking carefully.

“Yes, it’s a pity. But I don’t much think he could. Mr. Jennison isn’t married, an’ he isn’t rich, you see, nor—”

Just then Obed’s strong voice came from the door-way where he had been pausing. “Look here, Loreta,” he exclaimed, banteringly, “I should think you’d feel ashamed of yourself to sit there an’ try to pull the wool over their eyes! Where’s the use? I know you’ve a considerable loyal feelin’ to the Jennisons,[229] but you needn’t carry it so far. The fact is, boys,” he continued, sitting down in his arm-chair with some difficulty—“the fact is Loreta an’ I have come to the conclusion that our Mr. Winthrop Jennison’s grown to be a pretty shady and suspicious sort of character. His life an’ his business seem to be matters that honest folks needn’t inquire into too closely. There, Loreta!”

“Now, Obed!” retorted Mrs. Probasco, in great annoyance, “you oughtn’t to say that! You don’t know, for certain, any more than I do.”

“May be I don’t know so much. May be I know more—more even than I’ve let on, my dear! For one thing, I haven’t ever yet given you the particulars of what Clagg told me that last afternoon I went over to pay the rent an’ learn if Mr. Jennison’d come from Boston.”

“Mr. Clagg? What did Mr. Clagg say, Obed?” asked the wife, her work and the boys forgotten in her sudden anxiety. Evidently the mysterious Mr. Jennison was a standing topic of debate between the pair. “How could you keep so still about it?”

“Well, I’ll let you hear now,” Obed replied,[230] good-naturedly, with a wink at Philip, and in some enjoyment of the situation; “but wait. Before I do I’m going to tell the boys here what you know already. Then they’ll understand the rest of my story better. You see, Mr. Touchtone,” he began, “Mr. Winthrop Jennison grew up without father or mother, an’ he was first sent to one boarding-school, then to another, by his uncle, for whom he was named—who owned this place till he died. Mr. Winthrop was a wild kind of a boy, from the first. I guess he wasn’t so downright bad, but he was wild, an’ easy led into bad scrapes. There was two or three we heard of, before his eddication an’ his law studies was done. Then his uncle, that was his guardian, died; an’ Mr. Winthrop was sent to Europe. He’d used to come here quite often in the summers before that. Wife an’ I thought a good deal o’ him, an’ wanted to keep up his interest in the place. But in France and Germany he altered a good deal, an’ spent most of his money, an’ when he got back to New York he hadn’t much. He couldn’t well sell this place, or he wouldn’t, so he always said. At any rate, that wouldn’t have been o’ much use. At last,[231] Mr. Clagg found out he gambled bad, an’ that he’d got into a set of men in the city that was shady enough to turn him into a real blackguard if he didn’t look out! Mr. Clagg talked a lot to him an’ straightened out his money-matters for him, and then he come away from New York and started into practicin’ law in Boston.”

Touchtone listened with interest quite as much as Gerald, to whom this was an exciting sketch from real life, which, as later he would find, alas! has so many like it. But the next paragraph of Mr. Winthrop Jennison’s discreditable history made Philip’s attention suddenly sharp, and a flush of color came into his face.

“We heard these things an’ lots more about him, better or worse, mostly worse. Wife and I wondered at ’em and was sorry. But whenever he come over here, no matter what he might be further inside, Mr. Winthrop was always a perfect gentleman, not a bit dissipated-lookin’, exceptin’ his bein’ generally very pale; and we rather liked his visits. He seemed pretty well tired out when he was here. He’d shut himself up in his room, or take a boat an’ go fishin’. Wife an’ I think he’s[232] stuck so to the place as a kind of a refuge an’ restin’-place for him when things don’t suit him. He’s a nice-lookin’, pleasant-spoken man, of, I dare say, forty, only he don’t look his age. Well, after he’d been ............