Two men :: :: University of Virginia Library

Squire Parke had had two wives and two children.
They were dead. His first wife gave birth to a son in
the second year of his marriage, and died shortly afterwards.
In a year from the time of her death he married
another wife, who bore him a daughter, and lived till
three years before Jason's arrival in Crest. The son
and daughter by the different wives grew up, married,
and died, each leaving a child, a boy and a girl, to the
care of their grandfather, the Squire. The girl had just
become Sarah Auster, and the boy, Osmond Luce, was in
parts unknown. As soon as his grandmother was buried
he announced his determination to leave home, and although
the Squire cried and reproached him for being
like his uncle, Sarah's father, who had deserted home
years ago, Osmond persisted in his resolution. He must
have freedom, he said; he had paid his respects to the
family myths long enough, and he would transfer the
duty to Sarah, who believed in them, and whose authority
with them would more than compensate for the loss
of himself.

“You think so?” queried Elsa Bowen, who was present
when he opened the subject.

Osmond gave a look which silenced her, till the Squire
rose, struck his came on the floor, and with an emphatic
“Go,” left the room; then she burst out with, “You'd

better try your luck with Sarah; she won't take it so
easy.”

“I am glad you are on hand to do up the croaking,
Elsa.”

“Yes, you will find me here, and at it, after many a
long year of your devil's wanderings. What do you
suppose became of your Uncle Osmond?”

“`His bones are whitening the caverns of the deep.'—
Washington Irving.”

“Maybe.”

Osmond rumpled his long, thin curls into a light
mass, and said, “I shall present myself as the fretful
porcupine who mustn't be opposed. Where is she?”

“It will be more like if you go as a weasel. I shan't
tell you where she is.”

He knew better than Elsa how Sarah would take the
news of his departure, but he carried them to her with
a reckless audacity that would have silenced any ordinary
opposition. But Sarah was not an ordinary person;
a conflict took place which left both torn, bleeding,
breathless; in one sense, however, he was the conqueror,
for he went away in spite of it. The Squire sent him
out in a vessel loaded with merchandise for some Southern
port; the cargo was sold, and Osmond, taking the
proceeds, left the port to go further South. Nothing
had been heard of him since the vessel returned. For a
time the Squire spoke of him as one not far away; then
Elsa noticed that he began to relate the anecdotes she
had heard him repeat in connection with his own son,
Osmond Parke, confounding them with the childhood
of Osmond Luce; in her mind it was a sign that the
old man had given him up, and that he was as good

as buried. In Sarah's mind his image was not confused.
As a banner floats in the wind, he was ever floating before
her mental vision, with his hundred flitting expressions
of wrath, mirth, and recklessness; but she never
spoke of him. Once Elsa went to a chest where some
of his clothes were packed, to see if they were damp;
dampness, according to a superstition in Crest, being the
proof of a seafaring man's death by drowning. When
she told Sarah they were as dry as a bone, she looked
agitated, and begged her never to speak of them again.

After Sarah's child was born she spoke of Osmond for
the first time to Jason, as a half-cousin, who bore no resemblance
in character or looks to herself. He was the
only one, she said, who had any claim on her grandfather's
property, that might ever trouble them. She
doubted whether he would ever come back, for the
Parkes who had deserted Crest never returned. There
was a hectic flush on her high cheek-bones after this
conversation, but Jason did not observe it.

She named her boy “Parke.” He was a Parke, every
inch of him, she remarked to Jason, and asked him to
notice how much his hands were shaped like her grandfather's.
She might have added that they were like
Osmond's, too. Jason looked at his own hands instead,
and shrugged his shoulders.

“Do you consider yourself a Parke?” he asked.

“I am like my mother,” she answered sharply.

Jason examined her face as if he intended to make a
study of race, and then looked at the baby experimentally.

“What does the Squire think of him?” he asked.

“What you do, I suppose.”

The thump of a cane was heard, and Sarah said,
“Here he comes, you can ask him.”

But he only smiled when the Squire entered and
stood by the cradle, and before he spoke Jason was
gone.

If Sarah had been imaginative she might have mused
on the picture before her—baby Parke, aged three
weeks, and the Squire, eighty-four years. As she was
not, she inquired which bin in the cellar Cuth had put
the potatoes in.

“Yah, yah, Sally; whatever bin Cuth has put the
potatoes in is the right one.”

“Grandpa, Cuth does what he likes with you.”

“So, give me a coal, Sally.”

She held one in the tongs for him to light his pipe,
and then moved her chair near him. His face was never
so pleasant as when he was smoking, and she loved to
look at it. He scattered ashes over his double-breasted
waistcoat, and sparks dropped on his pantaloons, but
she did not venture to brush them off, because it would
have annoyed him. The serenity of his mien, the result
of a wonderful selfishness, was always her envy and admiration.
She thought him one of the best men in the
world, because he generally allowed people their own
way,—provided their way did not cross his. He was
an amiable host to all the virtues, but he never sought
their society.

“When are you going to comb my hair again?” he
asked.

“Why, Grandpa, hasn't Elsa combed it?”

“Elsa has been like a gale of wind in the house since
you have been shut up.”

“Why didn't you check her?”

“I should, if I had been too much in the draft.”

She combed his long silvery locks till she was ready
to faint with fatigue, and till Parke woke up with a cry.
When he was hushed the old man fell asleep in his chair,
and his slumber was quiet, dreamless, and deep as the
child's beside him.