 | Marjorie Daw, and other people |  |
5. MISS MEHETABEL'S SON.
1. I.
The Old Tavern at Bayley's Four-Corners.
YOU will not find Greenton, or Bayley's Four-Corners
as it is more usually designated, on
any map of New England that I know of. It is
not a town; it is not even a village; it is merely
an absurd hotel. The almost indescribable place
called Greenton is at the intersection of four
roads, in the heart of New Hampshire, twenty
miles from the nearest settlement of note, and
ten miles from any railway station. A good
location for a hotel, you will say. Precisely;
but there has always been a hotel there, and for
the last dozen years it has been pretty well patronized
— by one boarder. Not to trifle with an
intelligent public, I will state at once that, in the
early part of this century, Greenton was a point
at which the mail-coach, on the Great Northern
passengers to dine. People in the county, wishing
to take the early mail Portsmouth-ward, put
up overnight at the old tavern, famous for its
irreproachable larder and soft feather-beds. The
tavern at that time was kept by Jonathan Bayley,
who rivalled his wallet in growing corpulent,
and in due time passed away. At his death the
establishment, which included a farm, fell into
the hands of a son-in-law. Now, though Bayley
left his son-in-law a hotel, — which sounds handsome,
— he left him no guests; for at about the
period of the old man's death the old stage-coach
died also. Apoplexy carried off one, and steam
the other. Thus, by a sudden swerve in the tide
of progress, the tavern at the Corners found
itself high and dry, like a wreck on a sand-bank.
Shortly after this event, or maybe contemporaneously,
there was some attempt to build a town
at Greenton; but it apparently failed, if eleven
cellars choked up with débris and overgrown
with burdocks are any indication of failure. The
farm, however, was a good farm, as things go in
New Hampshire; and Tobias Sewell, the son-in-law,
could afford to snap his fingers at the travelling
they never did.
The hotel remains to-day pretty much the same
as when Jonathan Bayley handed in his accounts
in 1840, except that Sewell has from time to time
sold the furniture of some of the upper chambers
to bridal couples in the neighborhood. The bar
is still open, and the parlor door says Parlour
in tall black letters. Now and then a passing
drover looks in at that lonely bar-room, where a
high-shouldered bottle of Santa Cruz rum ogles
with a peculiarly knowing air a shrivelled lemon
on a shelf; now and then a farmer comes across
country to talk crops and stock and take a friendly
glass with Tobias; and now and then a circus
caravan with speckled ponies, or a menagerie with
a soggy elephant, halts under the swinging sign,
on which there is a dim mail-coach with four
phantomish horses driven by a portly gentleman
whose head has been washed off by the rain.
Other customers there are none, except that one
regular boarder whom I have mentioned.
If misery makes a man acquainted with strange
bedfellows, it is equally certain that the profession
of surveyor and civil engineer often takes one
Greenton until my duties sent me there, and kept
me there two weeks in the dreariest season of the
year. I do not think I would, of my own volition,
have selected Greenton for a fortnight's
sojourn at any time; but now the business is
over, I shall never regret the circumstances that
made me the guest of Tobias Sewell and brought
me into intimate relations with Miss Mehetabel's
Son.
It was a black October night in the year of
grace 1872, that discovered me standing in front
of the old tavern at the Corners. Though the
ten miles' ride from K——had been depressing,
especially the last five miles, on account of the
cold autumnal rain that had set in, I felt a pang
of regret on hearing the rickety open wagon turn
round in the road and roll off in the darkness.
There were no lights visible anywhere, and only
for the big, shapeless mass of something in front
of me, which the driver had said was the hotel, I
should have fancied that I had been set down by
the roadside. I was wet to the skin and in no
amiable humor; and not being able to find bell-pull
or knocker, or even a door, I belabored the side
minute or two I saw a light flickering somewhere
aloft, then I heard the sound of a window opening,
followed by an exclamation of disgust as a
blast of wind extinguished the candle which had
given me an instantaneous picture en silhouette
of a man leaning out of a casement.
“I say, what do you want, down there?” said
an unprepossessing voice.
“I want to come in, I want a supper, and a
bed, and numberless things.”
“This is n't no time of night to go rousing
honest folks out of their sleep. Who are you,
anyway?”
The question, superficially considered, was a
very simple one, and I, of all people in the world,
ought to have been able to answer it off-hand;
but it staggered me. Strangely enough, there
came drifting across my memory the lettering on
the back of a metaphysical work which I had
seen years before on a shelf in the Astor Library.
Owing to an unpremeditatedly funny collection
of title and author, the lettering read as follows:
“Who Am I? Jones.” Evidently it had puzzled
Jones to know who he was, or he would n't
lame and impotent a conclusion. It certainly
puzzled me at that instant to define my identity.
“Thirty years ago,” I reflected, “I was nothing;
fifty years hence I shall be nothing again,
humanly speaking. In the mean time, who am
I, sure enough?” It had never occurred to me
before what an indefinite article I was. I wish
it had not occurred to me then. Standing there
in the rain and darkness, I wrestled vainly with
the problem, and was constrained to fall back
upon a Yankee expedient.
“Is n't this a hotel?” I asked finally.
“Well, it is a sort of hotel,” said the voice,
doubtfully. My hesitation and prevarication had
apparently not inspired my interlocutor with confidence
in me.
“Then let me in. I have just driven over
from K—— in this infernal rain. I am wet
through and through.”
“But what do you want here, at the Corners?
What's your business? People don't come here,
least ways in the middle of the night.”
“It is n't in the middle of the night,” I returned,
incensed. “I come on business connected
the works.”
“Oh!”
“And if you don't open the door at once, I'll
raise the whole neighborhood,—and then go to
the other hotel.”
When I said that, I supposed Greenton was a
village with three or four thousand population at
least, and was wondering vaguely at the absence
of lights and other signs of human habitation.
Surely, I thought, all the people cannot be abed
and asleep at half past ten o'clock: perhaps I am
in the business section of the town, among the
shops.
“You jest wait,” said the voice above.
This request was not devoid of a certain accent
of menace, and I braced myself for a sortie
on the part of the besieged, if he had any
such hostile intent. Presently a door opened
at the very place where I least expected a door,
at the farther end of the building, in fact, and
a man in his shirt-sleeves, shielding a candle
with his left hand, appeared on the threshold.
I passed quickly into the house with Mr.
Tobias Sewell (for this was Mr. Sewell) at my
bar-room.
There were two chairs drawn up before the
hearth, on which a huge hemlock backlog was
still smouldering, and on the unpainted deal
counter contiguous stood two cloudy glasses with
bits of lemon-peel in the bottom, hinting at recent
libations. Against the discolored wall over
the bar hung a yellowed handbill, in a warped
frame, announcing that “the Next Annual N. H.
Agricultural Fair” would take place on the 10th
of September, 1841. There was no other furniture
or decoration in this dismal apartment, except
the cobwebs which festooned the ceiling,
hanging down here and there like stalactites.
Mr. Sewell set the candlestick on the mantel-shelf,
and threw some pine-knots on the fire,
which immediately broke into a blaze, and showed
him to be a lank, narrow-chested man, past sixty,
with sparse, steel-gray hair, and small, deep-set
eyes, perfectly round, like a carp's, and of no
particular color. His chief personal characteristics
seemed to be too much feet and not enough
teeth. His sharply cut, but rather simple face,
as he turned it towards me, wore a look of interrogation.
out my pocket-book and handing him my
business-card, which he held up to the candle and
perused with great deliberation.
“You're a civil engineer, are you?” he said,
displaying his gums, which gave his countenance
an expression of almost infantile innocence. He
made no further audible remark, but mumbled
between his thin lips something which an imaginative
person might have construed into, “If
you're a civil engineer, I'll be blessed if I would
n't like to see an uncivil one!”
Mr. Sewell's growl, however, was worse than
his bite, — owing to his lack of teeth probably,
— for he very good-naturedly set himself to work
preparing supper for me. After a slice of cold
ham, and a warm punch, to which my chilled
condition gave a grateful flavor, I went to bed in
a distant chamber in a most amiable mood, feeling
satisfied that Jones was a donkey to bother
himself about his identity.
When I awoke the sun was several hours high.
My bed faced a window, and by raising myself
on one elbow I could look out on what I expected
would be the main street. To my astonishment
a sterile hill and disappearing over the ridge.
In a cornfield at the right of the road was a
small private graveyard enclosed by a crumbling
stone-wall with a red gate. The only thing suggestive
of life was this little corner lot occupied
by death. I got out of bed and went to the
other window. There I had an uninterrupted
view of twelve miles of open landscape, with
Mount Agamenticus in the purple distance. Not
a house or a spire in sight. “Well,” I exclaimed,
“Greenton does n't appear to be a very closely
packed metropolis!” That rival hotel with
which I had threatened Mr. Sewell overnight was
not a deadly weapon, looking at it by daylight.
“By Jove!” I reflected, “maybe I'm in the
wrong place.” But there, tacked against a panel
of the bedroom door, was a faded time-table
dated Greenton, August 1, 1839.
I smiled all the time I was dressing, and went
smiling down stairs, where I found Mr. Sewell,
assisted by one of the fair sex in the first bloom
of her eightieth year, serving breakfast for me
on a small table — in the bar-room!
“I overslept myself this morning,” I remarked
you to some trouble. In future, if you will
have me called, I will take my meals at the usual
table-d'hôte.”
“At the what?” said Mr. Sewell.
“I mean with the other boarders.”
Mr. Sewell paused in the act of lifting a chop
from the fire, and, resting the point of his fork
against the woodwork of the mantel-piece, grinned
from ear to ear.
“Bless you! there is n't any other boarders.
There has n't been anybody put up here sence —
let me see — sence father-in-law died, and that
was in the fall of '40. To be sure, there's Silas;
he's a regular boarder; but I don't count him.”
Mr. Sewell then explained how the tavern had
lost its custom when the old stage line was
broken up by the railroad. The introduction of
steam was, in Mr. Sewell's estimation, a fatal
error. “Jest killed local business. Carried it
off I'm darned if I know where. The whole
country has been sort o' retrograding ever sence
steam was invented.”
“You spoke of having one boarder,” I said.
“Silas? Yes; he came here the summer
and he's here yet, going on thirteen year. He
could n't live any longer with the old man. Between
you and I, old Clem Jaffrey, Silas's father,
was a hard nut. Yes,” said Mr. Sewell, crooking
his elbow in inimitable pantomime, “altogether
too often. Found dead in the road hugging
a three-gallon demijohn. Habeas corpus
in the barn,” added Mr. Sewell, intending, I
presume, to intimate that a post-mortem examination
had been deemed necessary. “Silas,” he
resumed, in that respectful tone which one should
always adopt when speaking of capital, “is a
man of considerable property; lives on his interest,
and keeps a hoss and shay. He's a great
scholar, too, Silas; takes all the pe-ri-odicals and
the Police Cazette regular.”
Mr. Sewell was turning over a third chop,
when the door opened and a stoutish, middle-aged
little gentleman, clad in deep black, stepped
into the room.
“Silas Jaffrey,” said Mr. Sewell, with a comprehensive
sweep of his arm, picking up me and
the new-comer on one fork, so to speak. “Be
acquainted!”
Mr. Jaffrey advanced briskly, and gave me his
hand with unlooked-for cordiality. He was a
dapper little man, with a head as round and
nearly as bald as an orange, and not unlike an
orange in complexion, either; he had twinkling
gray eyes and a pronounced Roman nose, the
numerous freckles upon which were deepened by
his funereal dress-coat and trousers. He reminded
me of Alfred de Musset's blackbird,
which, with its yellow beak and sombre plumage,
looked like an undertaker eating an omelet.
“Silas will take care of you,” said Mr. Sewell,
taking down his hat from a peg behind the door.
“I've got the cattle to look after. Tell him, if
you want anything.”
While I ate my breakfast, Mr. Jaffrey hopped
up and down the narrow bar-room and chirped
away as blithely as a bird on a cherry-bough,
occasionally ruffling with his fingers a slight
fringe of auburn hair which stood up pertly
round his head and seemed to possess a luminous
quality of its own.
“Don't I find it a little slow up here at the
Corners? Not at all, my dear sir. I am in
the thick of life up here. So many interesting
discoveries, spirits, railroad disasters,
mysterious homicides. Poets, murderers, musicians,
statesmen, distinguished travellers, prodigies
of all kinds turning up everywhere. Very
few events or persons escape me. I take six
daily city papers, thirteen weekly journals, all
the monthly magazines, and two quarterlies. I
could not get along with less. I could n't if you
asked me. I never feel lonely. How can I,
being on intimate terms, as it were, with thousands
and thousands of people? There's that
young woman out West. What an entertaining
creature she is! — now in Missouri, now in Indiana,
and now in Minnesota, always on the go,
and all the time shedding needles from various
parts of her body as if she really enjoyed it!
Then there's that versatile patriarch who walks
hundreds of miles and saws thousands of feet of
wood, before breakfast, and shows no signs of
giving out. Then there's that remarkable, one
may say that historical colored woman who knew
Benjamin Franklin, and fought at the battle of
Bunk — no, it is the old negro man who fought
at Bunker Hill, a mere infant, of course, at that
how that venerable female slave — for-merly
an African princess — is repeatedly dying
in her hundred and eleventh year, and coming to
life again punctually every six months in the
small-type paragraphs. Are you aware, sir, that
within the last twelve years no fewer than two
hundred and eighty-seven of General Washington's
colored coachmen have died?”
For the soul of me I could n't tell whether this
quaint little gentleman was chaffing me or not.
I laid down my knife and fork, and stared at
him.
“Then there are the mathematicians!” he
cried vivaciously, without waiting for a reply.
“I take great interest in them. Hear this!”
and Mr. Jaffrey drew a newspaper from a pocket
in the tail of his coat, and read as follows: “It
has been estimated that if all the candles manufactured
by this eminent firm (Stearine & Co.)
were placed end to end, they would reach 2 and
⅞ times around the globe. Of course,” continued
Mr. Jaffrey, folding up the journal reflectively,
“abstruse calculations of this kind are not, perhaps,
of vital importance, but they indicate the
he said, halting in front of the table, “what with
books and papers and drives about the country, I
do not find the days too long, though I seldom
see any one, except when I go over to K — for
my mail. Existence may be very full to a man
who stands a little aside from the tumult and
watches it with philosophic eye. Possibly he
may see more of the battle than those who are
in the midst of the action. Once I was strug-gling
with the crowd, as eager and undaunted as
the best; perhaps I should have been struggling
still. Indeed, I know my life would have been
very different now if I had married Mehetabel, —
if I had married Mehetabel.”
His vivacity was gone, a sudden cloud had
come over his bright face, his figure seemed to
have collapsed, the light seemed to have faded
out of his hair. With a shuffling step, the very
antithesis of his brisk, elastic tread, he turned
to the door and passed into the road.
“Well,” I said to myself, “if Greenton had
forty thousand inhabitants, it could n't turn out
a more astonishing old party than that!”
2. II.
The Case of Silas Jaffrey.
A man with a passion for bric-à-brac is always
stumbling over antique bronzes, intaglios, mosaics,
and daggers of the time of Benvenuto
Cellini; the bibliophile finds creamy vellum folios
and rare Alduses and Elzevirs waiting for him at
unsuspected bookstalls; the numismatist has but
to stretch forth his palm to have priceless coins
drop into it. My own weakness is odd people,
and I am constantly encountering them. It was
plain I had unearthed a couple of very queer
specimens at Bayley's Four-Corners. I saw that
a fortnight afforded me too brief an opportunity
to develop the richness of both, and I resolved to
devote my spare time to Mr. Jaffrey alone, instinctively
recognizing in him an unfamiliar
species. My professional work in the vicinity
of Greenton left my evenings and occasionally
an afternoon unoccupied; these intervals I purposed
fellow-boarder. It was necessary, as a preliminary
step, to learn something of his previous
history, and to this end I addressed myself to
Mr. Sewell that same night.
“I do not want to seem inquisitive,” I said
to the landlord, as he was fastening up the
bar, which, by the way, was the salle à manger
and general sitting-room, — “I do not want to
seem inquisitive, but your friend Mr. Jaffrey
dropped a remark this morning at breakfast
which — which was not altogether clear to
me.”
“About Mehetable?” asked Mr. Sewell, uneasily.
“Yes.”
“Well, I wish he would n't!”
“He was friendly enough in the course of
conversation to hint to me that he had not
married the young woman, and seemed to regret
it.”
“No, he did n't marry Mehetabel.”
“May I inquire why he did n't marry Mehetabel?”
“Never asked her. Might have married the
K——. She'd have had him quick enough.
Seven years, off and on, he kept company with
Mehetabel, and then she died.”
“And he never asked her?”
“He shilly-shallied. Perhaps he didn't think
of it. When she was dead and gone, then Silas
was struck all of a heap,—and that's all about
it.”
Obviously Mr. Sewell did not intend to tell me
anything more, and obviously there was more to
tell. The topic was plainly disagreeable to him
for some reason or other, and that unknown
reason of course piqued my curiosity.
As I was absent from dinner and supper
that day, I did not meet Mr. Jaffrey again
until the following morning at breakfast. He
had recovered his bird-like manner, and was
full of a mysterious assassination that had
just taken place in New York, all the thrilling
details of which were at his fingers' ends. It
was at once comical and sad to see this harmless
old gentleman, with his naïve, benevolent
countenance, and his thin hair flaming up in
a semicircle, like the foot-lights at a theatre, revelling
deed.
“You come up to my room to-night,” he cried,
with horrid glee, “and I'll give you my theory
of the murder. i'll make it as clear as day to
you that it was the detective himself who fired
the three pistol-shots.”
It was not so much the desire to have this
point elucidated as to make a closer study of Mr.
Jaffrey that led me to accept his invitation. Mr.
Jaffrey's bedroom was in an L of the building,
and was in no way noticeable except for the
numerous files of newspapers neatly arranged
against the blank spaces of the walls, and a huge
pile of old magazines which stood in one corner,
reaching nearly up to the ceiling, and threatening
to topple over each instant, like the Leaning
Tower at Pisa. There were green paper shades
at the windows, some faded chintz valances about
the bed, and two or three easy-chairs covered
with chintz. On a black-walnut shelf between
the windows lay a choice collection of meerschaum
and brierwood pipes.
Filling one of the chocolate-colored bowls for
me and another for himself, Mr. Jaffrey began
to have flown out of his mind. In fact, I
do not remember that the topic was oven touched
upon, either then or afterwards.
“Cosey nest this,” said Mr. Jaffrey, glancing
complacently over the apartment. “What is
more cheerful, now, in the fall of the year, than
an open wood-fire? Do you hear those little
chirps and twitters coming out of that piece of
apple-wood? Those are the ghosts of the robins
and bluebirds that sang upon the bough when it
was in blossom last spring. In summer whole
flocks of them come fluttering about the fruit-trees
under the window: so I have singing birds
all the year round. I take it very easy here, I
can tell you, summer and winter. Not much
society. Tobias is not, perhaps, what one would
term a great intellectual force, but he means
well. He's a realist, — believes in coming down
to what he calls `the hard pan'; but his heart is
in the right place, and he's very kind to me.
The wisest thing I ever did in my life was to sell
out my grain business over at K——, thirteen
years ago, and settle down at the Corners. When
a man has made a competency, what does he
which destroyed any ambition I may have
had. Mehetabel died.”
“The lady you were engaged to?”
“N-o, not precisely engaged. I think it was
quite understood between us, though nothing had
been said on the subject. Typhoid,” added Mr.
Jaffrey, in a low voice.
For several minutes he smoked in silence, a
vague, troubled look playing over his countenance.
Presently this passed away, and he fixed
his gray eyes speculatively upon my face.
“If I had married Mehetabel,” said Mr. Jaffrey,
slowly, and then he hesitated. I blew a ring
of smoke into the air, and, resting my pipe on my
knee, dropped into an attitude of attention. “If
I had married Mehetabel, you know, we should
have had — ahem! — a family.”
“Very likely,” I assented, vastly amused at
this unexpected turn.
“A Boy!” exclaimed Mr. Jaffrey, explosively.
“By all means, certainly, a son.”
“Great trouble about naming the boy. Mehetabel's
family want him named Elkanah Elkins,
after her grandfather; I want him named Andrew
him Elkanah Elkins Andrew Jackson Jaffrey.
Rather a long name for such a short little fellow,”
said Mr. Jaffrey, musingly.
“Andy is n't a bad nickname,” I suggested.
“Not at all. We call him Andy, in the family.
Somewhat fractious at first, — colic and things.
I suppose it is right, or it would n't be so; but
the usefulness of measles, mumps, croup, whooping-cough,
scarlatina, and fits is not visible to
the naked eye. I wish Andy would be a model
infant, and dodge the whole lot.”
This suppositious child, born within the last
few minutes, was clearly assuming the proportions
of a reality to Mr. Jaffrey. I began to feel
a little uncomfortable. I am, as I have said, a
civil engineer, and it is not strictly in my line to
assist at the births of infants, imaginary or otherwise.
I pulled away vigorously at the pipe, and
said nothing.
“What large blue eyes he has,” resumed Mr.
Jaffrey, after a pause; “just like Hetty's; and
the fair hair, too, like hers. How oddly certain
distinctive features are handed down in families!
Sometimes a mouth, sometimes a turn of the eyebrow.
now and then derisively advised me to follow my
nose. It would be an interesting thing to do. I
should find my nose flying about the world, turning
up unexpectedly here and there, dodging this
branch of the family and reappearing in that,
now jumping over one great-grandchild to fasten
itself upon another, and never losing its individuality.
Look at Andy. There's Elkanah Elkins's
chin to the life. Andy's chin is probably
older than the Pyramids. Poor little thing,” he
cried, with sudden indescribable tenderness, “to
lose his mother so early!” And Mr. Jaffrey's
head sunk upon his breast, and his shoulders
slanted forward, as if he were actually bending
over the cradle of the child. The whole gesture
and attitude was so natural that it startled me.
The pipe slipped from my fingers and fell to the
floor.
“Hush!” whispered Mr. Jaffrey, with a
deprecating motion of his hand. “Andy 's
asleep!”
He rose softly from the chair and, walking
across the room on tiptoe, drew down the shade
at the window through which the moonlight was
remained gazing with half-closed eyes into the
dropping embers.
I refilled my pipe and smoked in profound
silence, wondering what would come next. But
nothing came next. Mr. Jaffrey had fallen into
so brown a study that, a quarter of an hour
afterwards, when I wished him good night
and withdrew, I do not think he noticed my
departure.
I am not what is called a man of imagination;
it is my habit to exclude most things not capable
of mathematical demonstration; but I am not
without a certain psychological insight, and I
think I understood Mr. Jaffrey's case. I could
easily understand how a man with an unhealthy,
sensitive nature, overwhelmed by sudden calamity,
might take refuge in some forlorn place like
this old tavern, and dream his life away. To
such a man — brooding forever on what might
have been and dwelling wholly in the realm of
his fancies — the actual world might indeed become
as a dream, and nothing seem real but his
illusions. I dare say that thirteen years of Bayley's
Four-Corners would have its effect upon
children of the Madonna, I should probably see
gnomes and kobolds, and goblins engaged in
hoisting false signals and misplacing switches for
midnight express trains.
“No doubt,” I said to myself that night, as I
lay in bed, thinking over the matter, “this once
possible but now impossible child is a great comfort
to the old gentleman, — a greater comfort,
perhaps, than a real son would be. May be
Andy will vanish with the shades and mists of
night, he's such an unsubstantial infant; but if
he does n't, and Mr. Jaffrey finds pleasure in
talking to me about his son, I shall humor the
old fellow. It would n't be a Christian act to
knock over his harmless fancy.”
I was very impatient to see if Mr. Jaffrey's
illusion would stand the test of daylight. It did.
Elkanah Elkins Andrew Jackson Jaffrey was, so
to speak, alive and kicking the next morning.
On taking his seat at the breakfast-table, Mr.
Jaffrey whispered to me that Andy had had a
comfortable night.
“Silas!” said Mr. Sewell, sharply, “what are
you whispering about?”
Mr. Sewell was in an ill-humor; perhaps he
was jealous because I had passed the evening in
Mr. Jaffrey's room; but surely Mr. Sewell could
not expect his boarders to go to bed at eight
o'clock every night, as he did. From time to
time during the meal Mr. Sewell regarded me
unkindly out of the corner of his eye, and in
helping me to the parsnips he poniarded them
with quite a suggestive air. All this, however,
did not prevent me from repairing to the door of
Mr. Jaffrey's snuggery when night came.
“Well, Mr. Jaffrey, how's Andy this evening?”
“Got a tooth!” cried Mr. Jaffrey, vivaciously.
“No!”
“Yes, he has! Just through. Gave the nurse
a silver dollar. Standing reward for first tooth.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to express surprise
that an infant a day old should cut a tooth,
when I suddenly recollected that Richard III.
was born with teeth. Feeling myself to be on
unfamiliar ground, I suppressed my criticism. It
was well I did so, for in the next breath I was
advised that half a year had elapsed since the
previous evening.
“Andy's had a hard six months of it,” said
Mr. Jaffrey, with the well-known narrative air
of fathers. “We've brought him up by hand.
His grandfather, by the way, was brought up by
the bottle” — and brought down by it, too, I
added mentally, recalling Mr. Sewell's account
of the old gentleman's tragic end.
Mr. Jaffrey then went on to give me a history
of Andy's first six months, omitting no detail
however insignificant or irrelevant. This history
I would, in turn, inflict upon the reader, if I were
only certain that he is one of those dreadful
parents who, under the ægis of friendship, bore
you at a street-corner with that remarkable thing
which Freddy said the other day, and insist on
singing to you, at an evening party, the Iliad of
Tommy's woes.
But to inflict this enfantillage upon the unmarried
reader would be an act of wanton cruelty.
So I pass over that part of Andy's biography,
and, for the same reason, make no record
of the next four or five interviews I had with
Mr. Jaffrey. It will be sufficient to state that
Andy glided from extreme infancy to early youth
with astonishing celerity, — at the rate of one
must I confess it? — before the week came to
an end, this invisible hobgoblin of a boy was
only little less of a reality to me than to Mr.
Jaffrey.
At first I had lent myself to the old dreamer's
whim with a keen perception of the humor of the
thing; but by and by I found I was talking and
thinking of Miss Mehetabel's son as though he
were a veritable personage. Mr. Jaffrey spoke
of the child with such an air of conviction! — as
if Andy were playing among his toys in the next
room, or making mud-pies down in the yard. In
these conversations, it should be observed, the
child was never supposed to be present, except
on that single occasion when Mr. Jaffrey leaned
over the cradle. After one of our séances I
would lie awake until the small hours, thinking
of the boy, and then fall asleep only to have indigestible
dreams about him. Through the day,
and sometimes in the midst of complicated calculations,
I would catch myself wondering what
Andy was up to now! There was no shaking
him off; he became an inseparable nightmare to
me; and I felt that if I remained much longer
such another bald-headed, mild-eyed visionary as
Silas Jaffrey.
Then the tavern was a grewsome old shell any
way, full of unaccountable noises after dark, —
rustlings of garments along unfrequented passages,
and stealthy footfalls in unoccupied chambers
overhead. I never knew of an old house
without these mysterious noises. Next to my
bedroom was a musty, dismantled apartment, in
one corner of which, leaning against the wainscot,
was a crippled mangle, with its iron crank
tilted in the air like the elbow of the late Mr.
Clem Jaffrey. Sometimes,
“In the dead vast and middle of the night,”
that rusty crank on the sly. This occurred
only on particularly cold nights, and I conceived
the uncomfortable idea that it was the thin family
ghosts, from the neglected graveyard in the cornfield,
keeping themselves warm by running each
other through the mangle. There was a haunted
air about the whole place that made it easy for
me to believe in the existence of a phantasm like
unearthly than Mr. Jaffrey himself, and seemed
more properly an inhabitant of this globe than
the toothless ogre who kept the inn, not to mention
the silent Witch of Endor that cooked our
meals for us over the bar-room fire.
In spite of the scowls and winks bestowed
upon me by Mr. Sewell, who let slip no opportunity
to testify his disapprobation of the intimacy,
Mr. Jaffrey and I spent all our evenings together,—those
long autumnal evenings, through
the length of which he talked about the boy, laying
out his path in life and hedging the path with
roses. He should be sent to the High School at
Portsmourth, and then to college; he should be
educated like a gentleman, Andy.
“When the old man dies,” said Mr. Jaffrey,
rubbing his hands gleefully, as if it were a great
joke, “Andy will find that the old man has left
him a pretty plum.”
“What do you think of having Andy enter
West Point, when he's old enough?” said Mr.
Jaffrey on another occasion. “He need n't necessarily
go into the army when he graduates; he
can become a civil engineer.”
This was a stroke of flattery so delicate and
indirect that I could accept it without immodesty.
There had lately sprung up on the corner of
Mr. Jaffrey's bureau a small tin house, Gothic in
architecture, and pink in color, with a slit in the
roof, and the word Bank painted on one façade.
Several times in the course of an evening Mr.
Jaffrey would rise from his chair without interrupting
the conversation, and gravely drop a
nickel into the scuttle of the bank. It was pleasant
to observe the solemnity of his countenance
as he approached the edifice, and the air of
triumph with which he resumed his seat by the
fireplace. One night I missed the tin bank. It
had disappeared, deposits and all. Evidently
there had been a defalcation on rather a large
scale. I strongly suspected that Mr. Sewell was
at the bottom of it; but my suspicion was not
shared by Mr. Jaffrey, who, remarking my glance
at the bureau, became suddenly depressed. “I'm
afraid,” he said, “that I have failed to instil into
Andrew those principles of integrity which —
which —” and the old gentleman quite broke
down.
Andy was now eight or nine years old, and for
some time past, if the truth must be told, had
given Mr. Jaffrey no inconsiderable trouble;
what with his impishness and his illnesses, the
boy led the pair of us a lively dance. I shall not
soon forget the anxiety of Mr. Jaffrey the night
Andy had the scarlet-fever,—an anxiety which
so infected me that I actually returned to the
tavern the following afternoon earlier than usual,
dreading to hear the little spectre was dead, and
greatly relieved on meeting Mr. Jaffrey at the
door-step with his face wreathed in smiles.
When I spoke to him of Andy, I was made aware
that I was inquiring into a case of scarlet-fever
that had occurred the year before!
It was at this time, towards the end of my
second week at Greenton, that I noticed what
was probably not a new trait,—Mr. Jaffrey's
curious sensitiveness to atmospherical changes.
He was as sensitive as a barometer. The
approach of a storm sent his mercury down
instantly. When the weather was fair, he was
hopeful and sunny, and Andy's prospects were
brilliant. When the weather was overcast and
threatening, he grew restless and despondent,
well.
On the Saturday previous to my departure,
which had been fixed for Monday, it rained heavily
all the afternoon, and that night Mr. Jaffrey
was in an unusually excitable and unhappy frame
of mind. His mercury was very low indeed.
“That boy is going to the dogs just as fast as
he can go,” said Mr. Jaffrey, with a woful face.
“I can't do anything with him.”
“He'll come out all right, Mr. Jaffrey. Boys
will be boys. I would not give a snap for a lad
without animal spirits.”
“But animal spirits,” said Mr. Jaffrey sententiously,
“should n't saw off the legs of the piano
in Tobias's best parlor. I don't know what Tobias
will say when he finds it out.”
“What! has Andy sawed off the legs of the old
spinet?” I returned, laughing.
“Worse than that.”
“Played upon it, then!”
“No, sir. He has lied to me!”
“I can't believe that of Andy.”
“Lied to me, sir,” repeated Mr. Jaffrey, severely.
“He pledged me his word of honor that he
climbs sends a chill down my spine. This morning,
notwithstanding his solemn promise, he
shinned up the lightning-rod attached to the
extension and sat astride the ridge-pole. I saw
him, and he denied it! When a boy you have
caressed and indulged, and lavished pocket-money
on, lies to you and will climb, then there's
nothing more to be said. He's a lost child.”
“You take too dark a view of it, Mr. Jaffrey.
Training and education are bound to tell in the
end, and he has been well brought up.”
“But I did n't bring him up on a lightning-rod,
did I? If he is ever going to know how to
behave, he ought to know now. To-morrow he
will be eleven years old.”
The reflection came to me that if Andy had
not been brought up by the rod, he had certainly
been brought up by the lightning. He was eleven
years old in two weeks!
I essayed, with that perspicacious wisdom
which seems to be the peculiar property of
bachelors and elderly maiden ladies, to tranquillize
Mr. Jaffrey's mind, and to give him
some practical hints on the management of youth.
“Spank him,” I suggested at length.
“I will!” said the old gentleman.
“And you'd better do it at once!” I added,
as it flashed upon me that in six months Andy
would be a hundred and forty-three years old!—
an age at which parental discipline would have
to be relaxed.
The next morning, Sunday, the rain came
down as if determined to drive the quicksilver
entirely out of my poor friend. Mr. Jaffrey sat
bolt upright at the breakfast-table, looking as
woe-begone as a bust of Dante, and retired to
his chamber the moment the meal was finished.
As the day advanced, the wind veered round to
the northeast, and settled itself down to work.
It was not pleasant to think, and I tried not to
think, what Mr. Jaffrey's condition would be if
the weather did not mend its manners by noon;
but so far from clearing off at noon, the storm
increased in violence, and as night set in, the
wind whistled in a spiteful falsetto key, and the
rain lashed the old tavern as if it were a balky
horse that refused to move on. The windows
rattled in the worm-eaten frames, and the doors
of remote rooms, where nobody ever went,
the tornado, sweeping down the side of Mount
Agamenticus, bowled across the open country,
and struck the ancient hostelry point-blank.
Mr. Jaffrey did not appear at supper. I knew
he was expecting me to come to his room as
usual, and I turned over in my mind a dozen
plans to evade seeing him that night. The landlord
sat at the opposite side of the chimney-place,
with his eye upon me. I fancy he was aware of
the effect of this storm on his other boarder, for
at intervals, as the wind hurled itself against the
exposed gable, threatening to burst in the windows,
Mr. Sewell tipped me an atrocious wink, and
displayed his gums in a way he had not done
since the morning after my arrival at Greenton.
I wondered if he suspected anything about Andy.
There had been odd times during the past week
when I felt convinced that the existence of Miss
Mehetabel's son was no secret to Mr. Sewell.
In deference to the gale, the landlord sat up
half an hour later than was his custom. At half-past
eight he went to bed, remarking that he
thought the old pile would stand till morning.
He had been absent only a few minutes when
beheld Mr. Jaffrey standing on the threshold,
with his dress in disorder, his scant hair flying,
and the wildest expression on his face.
“He's gone!” cried Mr. Jaffrey.
“Who? Sewell? Yes, he just went to bed.”
“No, not Tobias,—the boy!”
“What, run away?”
“No,—he is dead! He has fallen off of a
step-ladder in the red chamber and broken his
neck!”
Mr. Jaffrey threw up his hands with a gesture
of despair, and disappeared. I followed him
through the hall, saw him go into his own apartment,
and heard the bolt of the door drawn to.
Then I returned to the bar-room, and sat for an
hour or two in the ruddy glow of the fire, brooding
over the strange experience of the last fortnight.
On my way to bed I paused at Mr. Jaffrey's
door, and, in a lull of the storm, the measured
respiration within told me that the old gentleman
was sleeping peacefully.
Slumber was coy with me that night. I lay
listening to the soughing of the wind, and thinking
at first with its grotesqueness; but now the poor
little phantom was dead, I was conseious that
there had been something pathetic in it all along.
Shortly after midnight the wind sunk down, coming
and going fainter and fainter, floating around
the eaves of the tavern with a gentle, murmurous
sound, as if it were turning itself into soft wings
to bear away the spirit of a little child.
Perhaps nothing that happened during my stay
at Bayley's Four-Corners took me so completely
by surprise as Mr. Jaffrey's radiant countenance
the next morning. The morning itself was not
fresher or sunnier. His round face literally
shone with geniality and happiness. His eyes
twinkled like diamonds, and the magnetic light
of his hair was turned on full. He came into
my room while I was packing my valise. He
chirped, and prattled, and carolled, and was sorry
I was going away,—but never a word about
Andy. However, the boy had probably been dead
several years then!
The open wagon that was to carry me to the
station stood at the door; Mr. Sewell was placing
Jaffrey had gone up to his room to get me a certain
newspaper containing an account of a remarkable
shipwreck on the Auckland Islands. I
took the opportunity to thank Mr. Sewell for his
courtesies to me, and to express my regret at
leaving him and Mr. Jaffrey.
“I have become very much attached to Mr.
Jaffrey,” I said; “he is a most interesting person;
but that hypothetical boy of his, that son
of Miss Mehetabel's—”
“Yes, I know!” interrupted Mr. Sewell, testily.
“Fell off a step-ladder and broke his dratted
neck. Eleven year old, was n't he? Always
does, jest at that point. Next week Silas will
begin the whole thing over again, if he can get
anybody to listen to him.”
“I see. Our amiable friend is a little queer
on that subject.”
Mr. Sewell glanced cautiously over his shoulder,
and, tapping himself significantly on the
forehead, said in a low voice,
“Room To Let—Unfurnished!”
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