 | CHAPTER I.
“MORE THAN KIN AND LESS THAN KIND.” The shadow of Moloch mountain |  |
1. CHAPTER I.
“MORE THAN KIN AND LESS THAN KIND.”
Near the town and seaport of Milvorhaven,
stood, some years ago, an old
farm-house known as the Brewster Place.
The house itself might have been copied as
a type of rural architecture in the New-England
of fifty years ago, with its low, red walls;
its roof sweeping downward at the back until
it touched the ground; its huge chimney-stack
occupying nearly half the area of the house;
its unhewn “door-rock” and primitive elm-shaded
well; its lilac and syringa bushes, and
the fine, short turf crowding close to the low
sills. A pleasant house, although somewhat
lonely, set as it was in the midst of low sand-hills
and dwarfed pine forest, with no hint of
neighborhood in sight, unless it was to be inferred
from the narrow wheel-track winding
away from the door and losing itself in the
blue-green shadow of the wood. A pleasant
house, and a good farm, as farms went in the
township of Milvorhaven; and yet, as Peleg
Brewster, driving his span of stout grays from
the barn to the house, cast a gloomy look over
his possessions, he muttered with a bitter curse:
“I wish the devil had the farm—and me too, for
that matter.”
At the door of the farm-house stood a woman
about thirty years old, whom one might call
pretty at the first glance, qualifying the opinion
as he chose, after noting with a second look
the cunning and sensual lines about the red
mouth, the false light in the greenish-blue
eyes, the depression of the forehead, and the
firmness of the lower jaw. This woman was
Semantha Brewster, second wife of the blackbrowed
farmer who, sitting in the wagon at
the gate, sternly asked of her:
“Well, where is Ruth?”
“Getting ready, but as ugly as sin about it,”
said the woman sulkily.
“Tell her to make haste, or I'll come and
fetch her in a hurry,” ordered her husband
house.
Peleg Brewster, still sitting at the gate,
watched the door for a moment, and then suffered
his eyes to wander on, over the low,
round hills, over the dense pine wood, past
the scattered houses, set here and there upon
their lonely farms, until far on the horizon-line
he caught the glint of the sea, bright beneath
the morning sun.
It was the same view that had met his eyes
ever since he first opened them forty years before;
and yet, to-day, he looked upon it as a
stranger might, noting with curious interest
the zigzag line of the half-cleared wood, where
he had gone chestnuting so long ago that half
these trees had sprung since then, the broken
chain of hills beyond, the gap where they
parted to let Milvor Branch bring its bright
waters to the sea, and, finally, the fields and
pastures, green with aftermath, of his own
domain. Over all these swept the gloomy
gaze, softening and saddening as it went, until,
with a sudden movement, Peleg Brewster
turned and looked intently toward a rising
ground behind his house, where, within an enclosure
of evergreen-trees, lay a little burial-place
dotted with white gravestones.
“If Mary had lived!” muttered he, and leaning
an elbow upon his knee, rested his chin
in his hand, and set his haggard gaze straight
before him.
“Forty years boy and man, and now I'm
going. The same roof shan't cover us—”
The figure of a man crossing the road in
front of his horses' heads broke the line of
that set gaze, and it altered to an expression
of concentrated rage.
“Hallo, there! Joe—Joe Brewster, I say!
Come here,” called he, sitting upright, and
clenching the hand a moment before hanging
supinely from his knee.
The man thus addressed paused, hesitated a
moment, and then came slouching down the
road, until, standing near, but not within reach
of the wagon, he raised his eyes as far as the
other's breast, then dropped them again, and
asked in a low voice:
“Well, Peleg, what is it?”
Peleg Brewster did not immediately reply,
but in the look he fixed upon the other's face
burned such concentrated scorn and wrath, such
utter loathing and contempt, that the glance
could not fail but reach the consciousness of
its object with a sting words might have failed
to convey. Shifting uneasily from foot to foot,
and moistening his white lips before he spoke,
the new-comer asked again:
“Did you want to say any thing more, Peleg?
I'm just a going.”
“The same father and the same mother
owned us, and I wonder why I don't take this
gun and shoot you in your tracks,” said Peleg,
half turning toward a rifle lying behind him
in the wagon. His brother glanced apprehensively
in the same direction, but made no reply.
Peleg still regarded him in silence, and
within the house was heard the soft and silky
voice of Semantha, calling:
“Come, Ruthie, aren't you ready yet?”
The sound seemed to rouse her husband
from the gloomy reverie into which he was
falling, and he hurriedly said:
“What I have to tell you, Joe Brewster, is
this: I am going to the 'haven this morning,
and to Milvor this afternoon; and before I
come home, I'll sell this place, and every hoof
and every stick upon it, and I'll make a will
that shall put the price of my home out of
your reach, and out of hers—yes, and out of
the child's too, that you, between you, have
made near as big a devil as yourselves. And
when that's over, I'm going—no matter where.
Where I never shall see or liear of the man I
called my brother, or the woman I called my
wife, or the girl that was Mary Brewster's
daughter. Curse you, curse you all, I say,
and may—”
He shut his teeth firmly over the next
words, and though the tempest of passion
shook him like a leaf, and though his writhing
lips grew white, and his very eyes blanched
in their agony, the imprecation remained unspoken.
Oh! well for you, Peleg Brewster—well for
you before the night fell, that those words
were never said, that you fought the fight and
conquered!
Wiping the great drops from his forehead,
he said more calmly than he had yet spoken:
“Take whatever belongs to you, Joe, and
keep the farm-money which I gave you last
week, but begone from here before I come
home; mind that, or I won't answer for what
I may do. Begone from here by five o'clock
this afternoon, as you value your life. To-morrow,
I shall take Semanthy to her mother's,
and in another day I shall be gone
myself.”
He spoke the last words more to himself
eyes wandered over field and wood, and distant
ocean-view, with the strange, and gaze of
one who looks with new eyes upon the dear
spot he leaves forever.
Joe, stealing a glance upward, caught the
softened expression of his brother's face, and,
after a moment's hesitation, asked deprecatingly:
“Why can't you let me try to explain a little?”
“Explain!” interposed the other fiercely.
“Do you think I need any explanations? Do
you take me for a fool? Be off, I tell you!
Don't wait till the devil gets uppermost in
me, or—”
A savage glance filled up the sentence, and
without waiting for another, Joe Brewster
turned and made the best of his speed toward
the shelter of the grove whence he had
emerged. At the same moment, Mrs. Brewster
appeared at the door, followed by a girl
of about twelve years of age, meanly dressed,
tall and gaunt, and with her face as nearly
hidden as possible beneath a large cape-bonnet
made of striped print. Between them,
these two carried a small round trunk, covered
with horse-hair, which they placed in the
back of the wagon. The girl then came forward
to the step, but her father, without looking
round, and with a backward motion of the
hand, repulsed her, saying shortly:
“Get in behind, and sit on the trunk; I
don't want you here.”
And as Ruth silently obeyed, he continued
still, without looking round:
“Semanthy, you can put up every thing in
the house that you brought to it, and whatever
else you've any claim to; but see that you
don't touch a thing that was Mary's—mind
you that! To-morrow morning, you'll go
home to your mother; and if she wants to
know why you've come, I'll tell her.”
Still, without looking round, he gathered
up the reins and drove away—away from the
house where he had been born, where he had
lived ten happy years with the wife whose
white head-stone now looked farewell from
the far hill-side—from the home which, to his
mind, had of a sudden grown less a home
than the narrow bound beside that dead wife
where he had always thought to be laid.
Away from home, and the memories of
forty peaceful years, drove Peleg Brewster,
and the rustling shadows of the pine-wood re
ceived him and hid him, and threw themselves
an impassable, if impalpable, barrier
between him and that home forever.
| CHAPTER I.
“MORE THAN KIN AND LESS THAN KIND.” The shadow of Moloch mountain | |