University of Virginia Library

11. CHAPTER XI.

The little boy who had been added to the family of
Zephaniah Pennel and his wife soon became a source of
grave solicitude to that mild and long-suffering woman.
For, as the reader may have seen, he was a resolute, self-willed
little elf, and whatever his former life may have been,
it was quite evident that these traits had been developed
without any restraint.

Mrs. Pennel, whose whole domestic experience had consisted
in rearing one very sensitive and timid daughter, who
needed for her development only an extreme of tenderness,
and whose conscientiousness was a law unto herself, stood
utterly confounded before the turbulent little spirit to which
her loving-kindness had opened so ready an asylum, and she
soon discovered that it is one thing to take a human being to
bring up, and another to know what to do with it after it is
taken.

The child had the instinctive awe of Zephaniah which his
manly nature and habits of command were fitted to inspire,
so that morning and evening, when he was at home, he was
demure enough; but while the good man was away all day,
and sometimes on fishing excursions which often lasted a
week, there was a chronic state of domestic warfare — a
succession of skirmishes, pitched battles, long treaties, with
divers articles of capitulation, ending, as treaties are apt to
do, in open rupture on the first convenient opportunity.

Mrs. Pennel sometimes reflected with herself mournfully,
and with many self-disparaging sighs, what was the reason
that young master somehow contrived to keep her far more
in awe of him than he was of her. Was she not evidently,
as yet at least, bigger and stronger than he, able to hold his
rebellious little hands, to lift and carry him, and to shut him
up, if so she willed, in a dark closet, and even to administer
to him that discipline of the birch which Mrs. Kittridge
often and forcibly recommended as the great secret of her
family prosperity? Was it not her duty, as everybody told
her, to break his will while he was young? — a duty which
hung like a millstone round the peaceable creature's neck,
and weighed her down with a distressing sense of responsibility.

Now, Mrs. Pennel was one of the people to whom self-sacrifice
is constitutionally so much a nature, that self-denial
for her must have consisted in standing up for her own
rights, or having her own way when it crossed the will
and pleasure of any one around her. All she wanted of
a child, or in fact of any human creature, was something to
love and serve. We leave it entirely to theologians to reconcile
such facts with the theory of total depravity; but it
is a fact that there are a considerable number of women of
this class. Their life would flow on very naturally if it
might consist only in giving, never in withholding — only in
praise, never in blame — only in acquiescence, never in conflict
— and the chief comfort of such women in religion is
that it gives them at last an object for love without criticism,
and for whom the utmost degree of self-abandonment is not
idolatry but worship.

Mrs. Pennel would gladly have placed herself and all she
possessed at the disposition of the children; they might have

broken her china, dug in the garden with her silver spoons,
made turf alleys in her best room, drummed on her mahogany
tea-table, filled her muslin drawer with their choicest
shells and sea-weed; only Mrs. Pennel knew that such kindness
was no kindness, and that in the dreadful word responsibility,
familiar to every New England mother's ear, there
lay an awful summons to deny and to conflict where she
could so much easier have conceded.

She saw that the tyrant little will would reign without
mercy, if it reigned at all, and ever present with her was the
uneasy sense that it was her duty to bring this erratic little
comet within the laws of a well-ordered solar system, — a
task to which she felt about as competent as to make a new
ring for Saturn. Then, too, there was a secret feeling, if
the truth must be told, of what Mrs. Kittridge would think
about it; for duty is never more formidable than when she
gets on the cap and gown of a neighbor; and Mrs. Kittridge,
with her resolute voice and declamatory family government,
had always been a secret source of uneasiness to
poor Mrs. Pennel, who was one of those sensitive souls who
can feel for a mile or more the sphere of a stronger neighbor.
During all the years that they had lived side by side,
there had been this shadowy, unconfessed feeling on the part
of poor Mrs. Pennel, that Mrs. Kittridge thought her deficient
in her favorite virtue of “resolution,” as, in fact, in
her inmost soul she knew she was; — but who wants to have
one's weak places looked into by the sharp eyes of a neighbor
who is strong precisely where we are weak? The
trouble that one neighbor may give to another, simply by
living within a mile of one, is incredible; but until this new
accession to her family, Mrs. Pennel had always been able
to comfort herself with the idea that the child under her

particular training was as well-behaved as any of those of
her more demonstrative friend. But now, all this consolation
had been put to flight; she could not meet Mrs. Kittridge
without most humiliating recollections.

On Sundays, when those sharp black eyes gleamed upon
her through the rails of the neighboring pew, her very soul
shrank within her, as she recollected all the compromises
and defeats of the week before. It seemed to her that Mrs.
Kittridge saw it all, — how she had ingloriously bought
peace with gingerbread, instead of maintaining it by rightful
authority, — how young master had sat up till nine
o'clock on divers occasions, and even kept little Mara up
for his lordly pleasure.

How she trembled at every movement of the child in the
pew, dreading some patent and open impropriety which
should bring scandal on her government! This was the
more to be feared, as the first effort to initiate the youthful
neophyte in the decorums of the sanctuary had proved anything
but a success, — insomuch that Zephaniah Pennel had
been obliged to carry him out from the church; therefore,
poor Mrs. Pennel was thankful every Sunday when she
got her little charge home without any distinct scandal and
breach of the peace.

But, after all, he was such a handsome and engaging little
wretch, attracting all eyes wherever he went, and so full of
saucy drolleries, that it seemed to Mrs. Pennel that everything
and everybody conspired to help her spoil him.

There are two classes of human beings in this world: one
class seem made to give love, and the other to take it. Now
Mrs. Pennel and Mara belonged to the first class, and little
Master Moses to the latter.

It was, perhaps, of service to the little girl to give to her

delicate, shrinking, highly nervous organization the constant
support of a companion so courageous, so richly blooded,
and highly vitalized as the boy seemed to be. There was a
fervid, tropical richness in his air that gave one a sense of
warmth in looking at him, and made his Oriental name
seem in good-keeping. He seemed an exotic that might
have waked up under fervid Egyptian suns, and been found
cradled among the lotus blossoms of old Nile, and the fair
golden-haired girl seemed to be gladdened by his companionship,
as if he supplied an element of vital warmth to her
being. She seemed to incline toward him as naturally as a
needle to a magnet.

The child's quickness of ear and the facility with which he
picked up English were marvellous to observe. Evidently,
he had been somewhat accustomed to the sound of it before,
for there dropped out of his vocabulary, after he began to
speak, phrases which would seem to betoken a longer
familiarity with its idioms than could be equally accounted
for by his present experience. Though the English evidently
was not his native language, there had yet apparently
been some effort to teach it to him — although the
terror and confusion of the shipwreck seemed at first to
have washed every former impression from his mind.

But whenever any attempt was made to draw him to
speak of the past, of his mother, or of where he came from,
his brow lowered gloomily, and he assumed that kind of
moody, impenetrable gravity, which children at times will
so strangely put on, and which baffle all attempts to look
within them. Zephaniah Pennel used to call it putting up
his dead-lights.

Perhaps it was the dreadful association of agony and terror
connected with the shipwreck, that thus confused and

darkened the mirror of his mind the moment it was turned
backward; but it was thought wisest by his new friends to
avoid that class of subjects altogether — indeed, it was their
wish that he might forget the past entirely, and remember
them as his only parents.

Miss Roxy and Miss Ruey came duly as appointed to initiate
the young pilgrim into the habiliments of a Yankee
boy, endeavoring, at the same time, to drop into his mind
such seeds of moral wisdom as might make the internal
economy in time correspond to the exterior.

But Miss Roxy declared that “of all the children that
ever she see, he beat all for finding out new mischief, — the
moment you 'd make him understand he must n't do one
thing, he was right at another.”

One of his exploits, however, had very nearly been the
means of cutting short the materials of our story in the
outset.

It was a warm, sunny afternoon, and the three women,
being busy together with their stitching, had tied a sun-bonnet
on little Mara, and turned the two loose upon the
beach to pick up shells.

All was serene, and quiet, and retired, and no possible
danger could be apprehended. So up and down they
trotted, till the spirit of adventure which ever burned in
the breast of little Moses caught sight of a small canoe
which had been moored just under the shadow of a cedar-covered
rock.

Forthwith he persuaded his little neighbor to go into it,
and for a while they made themselves very gay, rocking it
from side to side.

The tide was going out, and each retreating wave washed
the boat up and down, till it came into the boy's curly head

how beautiful it would be to sail out as he had seen men do,
— and so, with much puffing and earnest tugging of his little
brown hands, the boat at last was loosed from her moorings
and pushed out on the tide, when both children laughed
gayly to find themselves swinging and balancing on the
amber surface, and watching the rings and sparkles of sunshine
and the white pebbles below. Little Moses was
glorious, — his adventures had begun, — and with a fairy-princess
in his boat, he was going to stretch away to some
of the islands of dream-land. He persuaded Mara to give
him her pink sun-bonnet, which he placed for a pennon on a
stick at the end of the boat, while he made a vehement
dashing with another, first on one side of the boat and then
on the other, — spattering the water in diamond showers, to
the infinite amusement of the little maiden.

Meanwhile the tide waves danced them out and still outward,
and as they went farther and farther from shore, the
more glorious felt the boy. He had got Mara all to himself,
and was going away with her from all grown people, who
would n't let children do as they pleased, — who made them
sit still in prayer-time, and took them to meeting, and kept
so many things which they must not touch, or open, or play
with. Two white sea-gulls came flying toward the children,
and they stretched their little arms in welcome, nothing
doubting but these fair creatures were coming at once to
take passage with them for fairy-land. But the birds only
dived and shifted and veered, turning their silvery sides
toward the sun, and careering in circles round the children.
A brisk little breeze, that came hurrying down from the
land, seemed disposed to favor their unsubstantial enterprise,
— for your winds, being a fanciful, uncertain tribe of people,
are always for falling in with anything that is contrary to

common sense. So the wind trolled them merrily along,
nothing doubting that there might be time, if they hurried,
to land their boat on the shore of some of the low-banked
red clouds that lay in the sunset, where they could pick up
shells, — blue and pink and purple, — enough to make
them rich for life. The children were all excitement at the
rapidity with which their little bark danced and rocked, as
it floated outward to the broad, open ocean, — at the blue,
freshening waves, at the silver-glancing gulls, at the floating,
white-winged ships, and at vague expectations of going
rapidly somewhere, to something more beautiful still. And
what is the happiness of the brightest hours of grown people
more than this?

“Roxy,” said Aunt Ruey innocently, “seems to me I
have n't heard nothin' o' them children lately. They 're so
still, I 'm 'fraid there 's some mischief.”

“Well, Ruey, you jist go and give a look at 'em,” said
Miss Roxy. “I declare, that boy! I never know what he
will do next; but there did n't seem to be nothin' to get into
out there but the sea, and the beach is so shelving, a body
can't well fall into that.”

Alas! good Miss Roxy, the children are at this moment
tilting up and down on the waves, half a mile out to sea, as
airily happy as the sea-gulls; and little Moses now thinks,
with glorious scorn, of you and your press-board, as of grim
shadows of restraint and bondage that shall never darken
his free life more.

Both Miss Roxy and Mrs. Pennel were, however, startled
into a paroxysm of alarm when poor Miss Ruey came
screaming, as she entered the door, —

“As sure as you 'r' alive, them chil'en are off in the boat,
— they 'r' out to sea, sure as I 'm alive! What shall we
do? The boat 'll upset, and the sharks 'll get 'em.”

Miss Roxy ran to the window, and saw dancing and
courtesying on the blue waves the little pinnace, with its
fanciful pink pennon fluttered gayly by the indiscreet and
flattering wind.

Poor Mrs. Pennel ran to the shore, and stretched her
arms wildly, as if she would have followed them across the
treacherous blue floor that heaved and sparkled between
them.

“Oh, Mara, Mara! oh, my poor little girl! oh, poor
children!”

“Well, if ever I see such a young un as that,” soliloquized
Miss Roxy from the chamber-window; “there they be,
dancin' and giggitin' about; — they 'll have the boat upset
in a minit, and the sharks are waitin' for 'em, no doubt. I
b'lieve that ar young un 's helped by the Evil One, — not a
boat round, else I 'd push off after 'em. Well, I don't see
but we must trust in the Lord, — there don't seem to be
much else to trust to,” said the spinster, as she drew her
head in grimly.

To say the truth, there was some reason for the terror of
these most fearful suggestions; for not far from the place
where the children embarked was Zephaniah's fish-drying
ground, and multitudes of sharks came up with every rising
tide, allured by the offal that was here constantly thrown
into the sea. Two of these prowlers, outward-bound from
their quest, were even now assiduously attending the little
boat, and the children derived no small amusement from
watching their motions in the pellucid water, — the boy occasionally
almost upsetting the boat by valorous plunges at
them with his stick. It was the most exhilarating and
piquant entertainment he had found for many a day; and
little Mara laughed in chorus at every lunge that he made.

What would have been the end of it all it is difficult to
say, had not some mortal power interfered before they had
sailed finally away into the sunset.

But it so happened on this very afternoon, Rev. Mr.
Sewell was out in a boat, busy in the very apostolic employment
of catching fish, and looking up from one of the
contemplative pauses which his occupation induced, he
rnbbed his eyes at the apparition which presented itself.

A tiny little shell of a boat came drifting toward him, in
which was a black-eyed boy, with cheeks like a pomegranate,
and lustrous tendrils of silky dark hair, and a little
golden-haired girl, white as a water-lily, and looking ethereal
enough to have risen out of the sea-foam. Both were in the
very sparkle and effervescence of that fanciful glee which
bubbles up from the golden, untried fountains of early childhood.

Mr. Sewell, at a glance, comprehended the whole, and at
once overhauling the tiny craft, he broke the spell of fairy-land,
and constrained the little people to return to the confines,
dull and dreary, of real and actual life.

Neither of them had known a doubt or a fear in that joyous
trance of forbidden pleasure, which shadowed with so
many fears the wiser and more far-seeing heads and hearts
of the grown people; nor was there enough language yet in
common between the two classes to make the little ones
comprehend the risk they had run.

Perhaps so do our elder brothers, in our Father's house,
look anxiously out when we are sailing gayly over life's sea,
— over unknown depths, — amid threatening monsters, —
but want words to tell us why what seems so bright is so
dangerous.

Duty herself could not have worn a more rigid aspect

than Miss Roxy, as she stood on the beach, press-board in
hand; for she had forgotten to lay it down in the eagerness
of her anxiety. She essayed to lay hold of the little hand
of Moses to pull him from the boat, but he drew back, and,
looking at her with a world of defiance in his great eyes,
jumped magnanimously upon the beach.

The spirit of Sir Francis Drake and of Christopher Columbus
was swelling in his little body, and was he to be brought
under by a dry-visaged woman with a press-board?

In fact, nothing is more ludicrous about the escapades of
children than the utter insensibility they feel to the dangers
they have run, and the light esteem in which they hold the
deep tragedy they create.

That night, when Zephaniah, in his evening exercise,
poured forth most fervent thanksgivings for the deliverance,
while Mrs. Pennel was sobbing in her handkerchief,
Miss Roxy was much scandalized by seeing the young cause
of all the disturbance sitting upon his heels, regarding the
emotion of the kneeling party with his wide bright eyes,
without a wink of compunction.

“Well, for her part,” she said, “she hoped Cap'n Pennel
would be blessed in takin' that ar boy; but she was sure she
did n't see much that looked like it now.”

The Rev. Mr. Sewell fished no more that day, for the
draught from fairy-land with which he had filled his boat
brought up many thoughts into his mind, which he pondered
anxiously.

“Strange ways of God,” he thought, “that should send to
my door this child, and should wash upon the beach the only
sign by which he could be identified. To what end or purpose?
Hath the Lord a will in this matter, and what is it?”

So he thought as he slowly rowed homeward, and so did
his thoughts work upon him that half way across the bay to
Harpswell he slackened his oar without knowing it, and the
boat lay drifting on the purple and gold tinted mirror, like a
speck between two eternities. Under such circumstances,
even heads that have worn the clerical wig for years at
times get a little dizzy and dreamy. Perhaps it was because
of the impression made upon him by the sudden apparition
of those great dark eyes and sable curls, that he now thought
of the boy that he had found floating that afternoon, looking
as if some tropical flower had been washed landward by a
monsoon; and as the boat rocked and tilted, and the minister
gazed dreamily downward into the wavering rings of purple,
orange, and gold which spread out and out from it, gradually
it seemed to him that a face much like the child's formed
itself in the waters; but it was the face of a girl, young
and radiantly beautiful, yet with those same eyes and curls,
— he saw her distinctly, with her thousand rings of silky
hair, bound with strings of pearls and clasped with strange
gems, and she raised one arm imploringly to him, and on the
wrist he saw the bracelet embroidered with seed pearls, and
the letters D. M. “Ah, Dolores,” he said, “well wert thou
called so. Poor Dolores! I cannot help thee.”

“What am I dreaming of?” said the Rev. Mr. Sewell.
“It is my Thursday evening lecture on Justification, and
Emily has got tea ready, and here I am catching cold out on
the bay.”