University of Virginia Library

9. CHAPTER NINTH.
THE NEW-COMERS.

It was old Sylvester himself who opened the door
and admitted the strangers; one of them, the younger,
wore a slouched hat which did not allow his features
to be distinctly observed, further than that his
eyes were bright with a strange lustre, and that his
face was deadly pale. He was partly supported by
the elder man, whose person was clad in a long coat,
reaching nearly to the ground. They were invited
to the table, but refusing, asked permission to sit at
the fire, which being granted, they took their station
on either side of the hearth; the younger staggered
feebly to his seat, and kept his gaze closely fixed on
the other.

“He had better take something,” said old Sylvester,
looking toward the young man and addressing
the other. “Is your young friend ill?”

“With an ailment food cannot relieve, I fear,” the
elder man answered.

“Will you not remove your hats?” old Sylvester
asked again.

Turning slowly at this question, the young man
answered, “We may not prove fit company for such
as you, and if so the event shall prove, we will pass
on and trouble you no further. If every thread were
dry as summer flax,” he added, in a tone of deep feeling,
“I for one, am not fit to sit among honest people.”

“You should not say so, my son,” said old Sylvester;
“let us hope that all men may on a day like
this sit together; that, remembering God's many mercies
to us all, in the preservation of our lives, in his
blessed change of seasons, in hours of holy meditation
allowed to us, every man in very gratitude to
the Giver of all Good, for this one day in the year at
least, may suspend all evil thoughts and be at peace
with all his fellow-creatures.”

The young man turned toward the company at the
table, but not so far that his whole face could be
seen.

“Have all who sit about you at that table,” he
asked, glancing slowly around, “performed the duty
to which you refer, and purged their bosoms of unkindness

toward their fellow-men? Is there none
who grasps the widow's substance? who cherishes
scorn and hatred of kindred? Who judges harshly
of the absent?”

There was a movement in different members of the
company, but old Sylvester hushed them with a look,
and took upon himself the business of reply.

“It may be,” said old Sylvester, “that some of us
are disquieted, for be it known to you that one of the
children of this household is absent from among us
for causes which may well disturb our thoughts.”

“I have heard the story,” the young man continued,
“and if I know it aright, these are the truths
of that history: There were two men, friends, once in
this neighborhood, Mr. Barbary the preacher, and
your grandson Elbridge Peabody. Something like a
year ago the preacher suddenly disappeared from this
region, and the report arose and constantly spread
that he had fallen by the hand of his friend, that
grandchild of yours. It began in a cloudy whisper,
afar off, but swelled from day to day, from hour to
hour, till it overshadowed this whole region, and not
the least of the darkness it caused was on this spot,
where this ancient homestead stands, and where

the young man had grown and lived from the hour
of his birth. He saw coldness and avoidance on the
highway; he was shrunk from on sabbath-mornings,
and by children; but this was little and could be
borne—the world was against him: but when he
saw an aged face averted,” he looked at old Sylvester
steadily, “and a mother's countenance sad and hostile—”

“Sad—but not hostile,” the widow murmured.

“Sorrowful and troubled, at least,” the young man
rejoined, “his life, for all of happiness, was at an
end. He must cease to live or he must restore the
ancient sunshine which had lighted the windows of
the home of his boyhood. He knew that his friend
had not fallen by his hand; that he still lived, but in
a far distant place which none but a long and weary
journey could reach.”

“He should have declared as much,” interposed
the old patriarch.

“No, sir; his word would have been but as the
frail leaf blown idly from the autumn-bough; nothing
but the living presence of his friend could silence the
voice of the accuser. He rose up and departed, without
counsel of any, trusting only in God and his own

strength; he bore with him neither bag nor baggage,
scrip nor scrippage—not even a change of raiment;
but with a handful of fruit and the humble provision
which his good mother had furnished for the harvest-field,
he set forth; day and night he journeyed on
the track he knew his friend had taken to that far
country, toiling in the fields to secure food and lodging
for the night, and some scant aids to carry him
from place to place. Pushing on fast and far through
the western country, in hunger and distress, passing
by the very door of prosperous kinsfolk, but not tarrying
a moment to seek relief.”

At this point Mrs. Jane Peabody glanced at her
husband.

“And so by one stage and another, hastening on,
he reached that great city in the south, the metropolis
of New Orleans; often, as he hoped, on the very
steps of his friend, but never overtaking him, with
fortune at so low an ebb that there he was well-nigh
wasted in strength, hunger-stricken, and tattered in
dress; driven to live in hovels till some chance restored
him the little means to advance; so mean of
person that his dearest friend, his nearest kinsman,
even his old playfellow there,” pointing to Mr. Tiffany

Carrack, “who had wrestled with him in the
hayfield, who had sat with him in childish talk often
and many a time by summer stream-sides, would have
passed him by as one unknown.”

The glance which, in speaking this, he directed at
Mr. Carrack, kindled on that young gentleman's countenance
a ruby glow, so intense and fiery that it
would seem as if it must have burned up the tawny
tufts before their very eyes, like so much dry stubble.
There was a glow of another kind in the Captain's
broad face, which shone like another sun as
he contemplated the two young men, glancing from
one to the other.

“The young man, bent on that one purpose as on
life itself,” he continued, silencing his companion,
who seemed eager to speak, with a motion of his finger,
“through towns, over waters, upon deserts, still
pursued his way; and, to be brief in a weary history,
there, in the very heart of that great region of gold,
among diggers and searchers, and men distracted in
a thousand ways in that perilous hunt, to find his simple-hearted
friend, the preacher, in an out-of-the-way
wilderness among the mountains, exhorting the living,
comforting the sick, consoling the dying—and

then, for the first time he learned, what his friend
had carefully concealed before, the motive of his self-banishment
to this distant country.”

His companion would have spoken, but the young
man hurrying on, allowed him not a word.

“You who know his history,” he continued, addressing
the company at the table—“know what calamity
had once come upon the household of Mr. Barbary, by
the unlawful thirst for gold; that he held its love as
the curse of curses; he thought if he could but once
throw himself in its midst, where that passion raged
the most, he would be doing his Master's service most
faithfully, more than in this quiet country-place of
peaceful households, but when he learned the peril
and the sore distress of his young friend, he tarried
not a moment. `To restore peace to one injured
mind,' he said; `to bring back harmony to one
household is a clear and certain duty which will out-weigh
the vague chances of the good I may do here.'
The young man cherished but one wish; through
storm and trial and distress of every name and hue,
if he could but reach home on the day of Thanksgiving,
and stand up there before his assembled kindred
a vindicated man, he would be requited fully

for all his toil. He took ship; in tempest, and with
many risks of perishing far away unvindicated, in the
middle of the wild sea—”

The widowed mother could restrain herself no
longer, but rushing forward, she removed the young
man's hat from his brow, parted his locks, and casting
herself upon his neck, gave utterance to her feelings
in the affecting language of Scripture, which she
had listened to in the morning: “My son was dead
and is alive again—he was lost and is found!”

Miriam timidly grasped his offered hand and was
silent. The company had risen from the table and
gathered around.

“Now,” said William Peabody, “I could believe,
—be glad to believe all this, if he had but brought
Mr. Barbary with him.”

The elder stranger cast back his coat, removed his
hat, and standing forth, said, “I am here, and testify
to the truth, in every word, of all my young friend
has declared to you.”

On this declaration the Peabodys, without an exception,
hastened to welcome and address the returned
Elbridge, and closed upon him in a solid group
of affectionate acknowledgment. Old Sylvester stood

looking loftily down over all from the outer edge of
the circle, and while they were busiest in congratulations
and well-wishes, he went forward.

“Stand back!” cried the old man, waving the company
aside with outspread arms, and advancing with
extended hand toward his grandson. “I have an
atonement to render here, which I call you all to
witness.”

“I take your hand, grandfather,” Elbridge interposed,
“but not in acknowledgment of any wrong on
your part. You have lived an hundred blameless
years, and I am not the one this day to breathe a reproach
for the first time on your spotless age.”

Tears filled the old patriarch's eyes, and with a
gentle hand he led his grandson silently to the table,
to which the whole company returned, there being
room for Mr. Barbary as well.

At this crisis of triumphant explanation, Mopsey,
who had under one pretext and another, evaded the
bringing in of the pie to the last moment, appeared
at the kitchen-door bearing before her, with that air
of extraordinary importance peculiar to the negro
countenance on eventful occasions, a huge brown dish
with which she advanced to the head of the table,

and with an emphatic bump, answering to the pithy
speeches of warriors and statesmen at critical moments,
deposited the great Thanksgiving pumpkin pie. Looking
proudly around, she simply said, “Dere!”

It was the blossom and crown of Mopsey's life,
the setting down and full delivery to the family of
that, the greatest pumpkin-pie ever baked in that
house from the greatest pumpkin ever reared among
the Peabodys in all her long backward recollection
of past Thanksgivings, and her manner of setting it
down, was, in its most defiant form, a clincher and a
challenge to all makers and bakers of pumpkin-pies,
to all cutters and carvers, to all diners and eaters,
to all friends and enemies of pumpkin-pie, in the
thirty or forty United States. The Brundages too,
might come and look at it if they had a mind to!

The Peabody family, familiar with the pie from
earliest infancy, were struck dumb, and sat silent for
the space of a minute, contemplating its vastness and
beauty. Old Sylvester even, with his hundred years
of pumpkin-pie experience, was staggered, and little
Sam jumped up and clapped his hands in his old
grandfather's arms, and struggled to stretch himself
across as if he would appropriate it, by actual possession,

to himself. The joy of the Peabodys was complete,
for the lost grandson had returned, and the
Thanksgiving-pie was a glorious one, and if it was
the largest share that was allotted to the returned
Elbridge, will any one complain? And yet at times
a cloud came upon the young man's brow,—when
dinner was passed with pleasant family talk, questionings
and experiences, as they sat about the old homestead
hearth,—which even the playful gambols of the
children who sported about him like so many friendly
spirits, could not drive away. The heart of cousin
Elbridge was not in their childish freaks and fancies
as it had been in other days. The shining solitude
looking in at the windows seemed to call him without.

As though it had caught something of the genial
spirit that glowed within the house, the wind was
laid without, and the night softened with the beauty
of the rising moon. With a sadness on his brow
which neither the old homestead nor the pure heavens
cast there, Elbridge went forth into the calm
night, and sitting for a while by the road beneath an
ancient locust-tree, where he had often read his book
in the summer-times of boyhood, he communed with

himself. He was happy—what mortal man could be
happier?—in all his wishes come to pass; his very
dreams had taken life and proved to be realities and
friends, and yet a sadness he could not drive away
followed his steps. Why was this? That moment,
if his voice or any honorable and sinless motion of his
hand could have ordained it, he would have dismissed
himself from life and ceased to be a living partaker
in the scenes about him. Even then—for happy
as he was, he dreaded in prophetic fear, the chances
which beset our mortal path. The weight of mortality
was heavy upon the young man's spirit.

Thinking over all the way he had passed, oh, who
could answer that he, with the thronging company
of busy passions and desires, could ever hope to
reach an old age and never go astray? Oh, blessed
is he (he thought) who can lie down in death, can
close his account with this world, having safely
escaped the temptations, the crimes, the trials, which
make of good men even, in moments of weakness and
misjudgment, the false speaker, the evil-doer, the
slanderer, the coward, the hasty assailant, and, (oh,
dreadful perchance,) the seeming-guilty-murderer
himself. Strange thoughts for a prosperous lover's

night, but earth is not heaven. With the sweat of
anguish on his brow he bowed his head as one whose
trouble is heavy to be borne. Yet even then the
thought of the sweet heaven over him, with all its
glorious promises, came upon him, and as he lifted up
his eyes from the earth, the moon sailing forth from
the clouds, and flooding the region with silver light,
disclosed a figure so gentle and delicate, and in its
features so pure of all our common passions, it seemed
as if his troubled thoughts had summoned a spirit before
him from the better world. As he stood regarding
it in melancholy calmness, it extended towards
him a hand.

“No, no,” he said, declining the gentle salutation
and retiring a pace, “touch me not, Miriam, I am not
worthy of your pure companionship. If you knew
what passed and is passing in my breast, you would
loathe me as a leper.”

She was silent and dropped her eyes before him.

“Think not, my gentle mistress,” he added presently,
“my heart is changed towards you. The
glow is only too bright and warm.”

“If you love me not, Elbridge,” she interposed

quickly, “fear not to say so, even now. I will bear
the pang as best I can.”

“You have suffered too much already,” he rejoined,
touched to the heart. “My long silence must
have been as death to one so kind and gentle.”

“I have suffered,” was all she said. “One word
from you in your long absence would have made me
happy.”

“It would, I know it would, and yet I could not
speak it,” Elbridge replied. “When, with a blight
upon my name I left those halls,” pointing to the old
homestead standing in shadow of the autumn trees,
“I vowed to know them no more, that my step
should never cross their threshold, that my voice
should never be heard again in those ancient chambers,
that no being of all that household should have
a word from these lips or hands till I could come
back a vindicated man; that I would perish in distant
lands, find a silent grave among strangers, far from
mother and her I loved, or that I would come back
with my lost friend, in his living form, to avouch and
testify my truth and innocence.”

“And had you no thought of me in that cruel absence,
dear Elbridge?” asked Miriam.

“Of you!” he echoed, now taking her hand, “of
you! When in all these my wanderings, in weary
nights, in lonely days, on seas and deserts far away,
sore of foot and sick at heart, making my couch beneath
the stars, in the tents of savage men, in the
shadow of steeples that know not our holy faith, was
it not my religion and my only solace, that one like
you thought of me as I of her, and though all the
world abandoned and distrusted the wanderer, there
was one star in the distant horizon which yet shone
true, and trembled with a hopeful light upon my
path.”

“Are we not each other's now?” she whispered
softly as she lay her gentle head upon his bosom;
“and if we have erred, and repent but truly, will not
He forgive us?”

As she lifted up her innocent face to heaven, did
not those gentle tears which fell unheard by mortal
ear, from those fair eyes, drop in hearing of Him who
hears and acknowledges the faintest sound of true
affection, through all the boundless universe, musically
as the chime of holy Sabbath-bells?

“You are my dear wife,” he answered, folding her
close to his heart, “and if you forgive and still cherish

me, happiness may still be ours; and although
no formal voice has yet called us one, by all that's
sacred in the stillness of the night, and by every
honest beating of this heart, dear Miriam, you are
mine, to watch, to tend, to love, to reverence, in sickness,
in sorrow, in care, in joy; by all that belongs of
gaiety to youth, in manhood and in age, we will have
one home, one couch, one fireside, one grave, one God,
and one hereafter.”

An old familiar instrument, swept as he well knew
by his mother's fingers, sounded at that moment from
the homestead, and hand in hand, blending their
steps, they returned to the Thanksgiving household
within.