Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker Part 9

"Then by-by! Come, Hugh!"

VI

There must have been in this troubled country many such sad scenes as I have tried to recall. Father and son were to part with hot words, brother to take sides against brother. My unpleasant half-hour was but prophetic of that which was to come in worse shape, and to last for years.

My Aunt Gainor said, "Do not tell your mother," and I a.s.suredly did not.

"He will tell her. He tells her everything, soon or late. I must see her at once. Your father is becoming, as the French say, impossible.

The times, and these wrangling Friends, with their stupid testimonies, irritate him daily until he is like a great, strong bull, such as the Spaniards tease to madness with little darts and fireworks. You see, Hugh, events are p.r.i.c.kly things. They play the deuce with obstinate people. Your father will be better away from home. He has never been in England, and he will see how many, like Mr. Pitt and Colonel Barre, are with us. As for myself, I have been a bit of a fool about you, and your father is more or less right. We must abjure sack and take physic."

"What?" said I.

"To be plain, we must--that is, you must--play less and drink less, and in your father's absence look sharply, with my help, to his business."

I was to need other doctors before I mended my ways. I said my aunt was right, and I made certain good resolutions, which were but short-lived and never reached adult maturity of usefulness.

My aunt walked with me north between the warehouses, taverns, and ship-chandlers on the riverfront, and so across the bridge over Dock Creek, and up to Third street. She said I must not talk to her. She had thinking to do, and for this cause, I suppose, turning, took me down to Pine street. At St. Peter's Church she stopped, and bade me wait without, adding, "If I take you in I shall hear of it; wait."

There was a midday service at this time, it being Lent. I waited idly, thinking of my father, and, as I before said, vexed and sorry and ashamed by turns. Often now I pause before I enter this sacred edifice, and think of that hour of tribulation. I could hear the fine, full voice of the Rev. Dr. d.u.c.h.e as he intoned the Litany. He lies now where I stood, and under the arms on his tomb is no record of the political foolishness and instability of a life otherwise free from blame. As I stood, Mrs. Ferguson came out, she who in days to come helped to get the unlucky parson into trouble. With her came my aunt.

"I said a prayer for thee, Hugh," she whispered. "No; no cards in Lent, my dear Bess. Fie! for shame! This way, Hugh;" and we went east, through Pine street, and so to the back of our garden, where we found a way in, and, walking under the peach-trees, came to where my mother sat beneath a plum-tree, sh.e.l.ling peas, her great Manx cat by her side.

She wore a thin cap on top of the curly head, which was now wind-blown out of all order. "Come, Gainor," she cried, seeing us; "help me to sh.e.l.l my peas. Thou shalt have some. They are come in a ship from the Bermudas. What a pretty pale green the pods are! I should like an ap.r.o.n of that colour."

"I have the very thing, dear. Shall it be the minuet pattern, or plain?"

"Oh, plain. Am I not a Friend? _Une Amie? Ciel!_ but it is droll in French. Sarah Logan is twice as gay as I, but John does not love such vanities. _Quant a moi, je les adore_. It seems odd to have a colour to a religion. I wonder if drab goodness be better than red goodness. But what is wrong, Gainor? Yes, there is something. Hugh, thy collar is torn; how careless of me not to have mended it!"

Then my Aunt Gainor, saying nothing of my especial difficulty, and leaving out, too, her London news, related with remarkable clearness the reasons why my father should go overseas in the early fall and be gone for a year. The mother went on quietly sh.e.l.ling the peas, and losing no word. When Gainor had done, the bowl of peas was set aside, and my mother put back her curls, fixed her blue eyes on her sister-in-law, and was silent for a moment longer. At last she said, "It were best, for many reasons best. I see it," and she nodded her head affirmatively.

"But my son? my Hugh?"

"You will have him with you at home. Everything will go on as usual, except that John will be amusing himself in London."

At this the little lady leaped up, all ablaze, so to speak. Never had I seen her so moved. "What manner of woman am I, Gainer Wynne, that I should let my husband go alone on the seas, and here and there, without me? I will not have it. My boy is my boy; G.o.d knows I love him; but my husband comes first now and always, and thou art cruel to wish to part us."

"But I never wished to part you. Go with him, Marie. G.o.d bless your sweet heart! Leave me your boy; he cannot go. As G.o.d lives, I will take care of him!"

Upon this the two women fell to weeping in each other's arms, a thing most uncommon for my Aunt Gainor. Then they talked it all over, as if John Wynne were not; when it would be, and what room I was to have, and my clothes, and the business, and so on--all the endless details wherewith the cunning affection of good women knows to provide comfort for us, who are so apt to be unthankful.

It amazed me to see how quickly it was settled, and still more to learn that my father did not oppose, but fell in with all their plans.

Now back of all my weaknesses and folly I had, as I have said, some of the sense of honour and proud rect.i.tude of my father, who strictly abided by his creed and his conscience. I returned no more that day to the counting-house, but, saying to my mother I had business, I went off, with a hunk of bread, to my boat, and down the creek to the Delaware. I pulled out, past our old playground on the island, and far away toward the Jersey sh.o.r.e, and then, as the sun fell, drifted with the tide, noting the ruddy lines of the brick houses far away, and began to think.

The scene I had gone through had made a deep impression. It has been ever so with me. Drinking, gaming, betting, and worse, never awakened my conscience or set me reflecting, until some sudden, unlooked-for thing took place, in which sentiment or affection was concerned. Then I would set to work to balance my books and determine my course. At such times it was the dear mother who spoke in me, and the father who resolutely carried out my decision.

The boat drifted slowly with the flood-tide, and I, lying on the bottom, fell to thought of what the day had brought me. The setting sun touched the single spire of Christ Church, and lit up yellow squares of light in the westward-looking windows of the rare farm-houses on the Jersey sh.o.r.e. Presently I was aground on the south end of Petty's Island, where in after-years lay rotting the "Alliance," the remnant ship of the greatest sea-fight that ever was since Grenville lay in the "Revenge,"

with the Spanish fleet about him. I came to ground amid the reeds and spatter-docks, where the water-lilies were just in bud. A noisy orchestra of frogs, with, as Jack said, fiddles and ba.s.soons in their throats, ceased as I came, and pitched headlong off the broad green floats. Only one old fellow, with a great ba.s.s voice, and secure on the bank, protested loudly at intervals, like the owl in Mr. Gray's n.o.ble poem, which my Jack loved to repeat.

At last he--I mean my frog--whose monastery I had disturbed, so vexed me, who wanted stillness, that I smacked the water with the flat of an oar, which he took to be a hint, and ceased to lament my intrusion.

I was now well on to twenty, and old enough to begin at times to deal thoughtfully with events. A young fellow's feelings are apt to be extreme, and even despotic, so that they rule the hour with such strength of sway as may be out of proportion to the cause. I might have seen that I had no just cause to blame myself, but that did not help me. The mood of distressful self-accusation was on me. I had no repeated impulse to smile at what, in my father's conduct, had appeared to me a little while ago odd, and even amusing. I could never please him. I had grinned as I always did when risks were upon me. He never understood me, and I was tired of trying. What use was it to try? I had one of those minutes of wishing to die, which come even to the wholesome young. I was well aware that of late I had not, on the whole, satisfied my conscience; I knew this quite too well; and now, as I lay in the boat discontented, I felt, as the youthful do sometimes feel, as if I were old, and the ending of things were near. It was but a mood, but it led up to serious thought. There are surely hours in youth when we are older than our years, and times in age when we are again young. Sometimes I wonder whether Jack was right, who used to say it may be we are never young or old, but merely seem to be so. This is the queer kind of reflection which I find now and then in Jack's diary, or with which he used to puzzle me and please James Wilson. Of course a man is young or is old, and there's an end on 't, as a greater man has said. But Jack has imagination, and I have none.

I asked myself if I had done wrong in what I had said. I could not see that I had. With all my lifelong fear of my father, I greatly honoured and respected him, finding in myself something akin to the unyielding firmness with which he stood fast when he had made up his mind.

That this proud and steadfast man, so looked up to by every one, no matter what might be their convictions religious or political, should have been humiliated by a woman, seemed to me intolerable; this was the chief outcome of my reflections. It is true I considered, but I fear lightly, my own misdoings. I made up my mind to do better, and then again the image of my father in his wrath and his shame came back anew.

I turned the boat, and pulled steadily across the river to our landing.

My father was in the counting-house in his own room, alone, although it was full late. "Well?" he said, spinning round on his high stool. "What is it? Thou hast been absent, and no leave asked."

"Father," I said, "if I was wrong this morning I wish to ask thy pardon."

"Well, it is full time."

"And I am come to say that I will take the punishment here and now. I did not run away from that."

"Very good," he replied, rising. "Take off thy fine coat."

I wished he had not said this of my coat. I was in a heroic temper, and the sarcasm bit cruelly, but I did as I was bid. He went to the corner, and picked up a rattan cane. To whip fellows of nineteen or twenty was not then by any means unusual. What would have happened I know not, nor ever shall. He said, "There, I hear thy mother's voice. Put on thy coat." I hastened to obey him.

The dear lady came in with eyes full of tears, "What is this, John, I hear? I have seen Gainor. I could not wait. I shall go with thee."

"No," he said; "that is not to be." But she fell on his neck, and pleaded, and I, for my part, went away, not sorry for the interruption.

As usual she had her way.

I remember well this spring of '73. It was early by some weeks, and everything was green and blossoming in April. My father and mother were not to sail until the autumn, but already he was arranging for the voyage, and she as busily preparing or thinking over what was needed.

When next I saw my Aunt Gainor, she cried out, "Sit down there, bad boy, and take care of my mandarin. He and my great bronze Buddha are my only counsellors. If I want to do a thing I ask Mr. Mandarin--he can only nod yes; and if I want not to do a thing I ask Buddha, and as he can neither say no nor yes, I do as I please. What a wretch you are!"

I said I could not see it; and then I put my head in her lap, as I sat on the stool, and told her of my last interview with my father, and how for two days he had hardly so much as bade me good-night.

"It is his way, Hugh," said my aunt. "I am sorry; but neither love nor time will mend him. He is what his nature and the hard ways of Friends have made him."

I said that this was not all, nor the worst, and went on to tell her my latest grievance. Our family worship at home was, as usual with Friends in those days, conducted at times in total silence, and was spoken of by Friends as "religious retirement." At other times, indeed commonly, a chapter of the Bible was read aloud, and after that my father would sometimes pray openly. On this last occasion he took advantage of the opportunity to dilate on my sins, and before our servants to ask of Heaven that I be brought to a due sense of my iniquities. It troubled my mother, who arose from her knees in tears, and went out of the room, whilst I, overcome with anger, stood looking out of the window. My father spoke to her as she opened the door, but she made no answer, nor even so much as turned her head. It brought to my memory a day of my childhood, when my father was vexed because she taught me to say the Lord's Prayer. He did not approve, and would have no set form of words taught me. My mother was angry too, and I remember my own amazement that any one should resist my father.

When I had told my aunt of the indignity put upon me, and of the fading remembrance thus recalled, she said, "John Wynne has not changed, nor will he ever." She declared that, after all, it was her fault--to have treated me as if I were a man, and to have given me too much money. I shook my head, but she would have it she was to blame, and then said of a sudden, "Are you in debt, you scamp? Did John pray for me!" I replied that I owed no one a penny, and that she had not been remembered. She was glad I was not in debt, and added, "Never play unless you have the means to pay. I have been very foolish. That uneasy woman, Bessy Ferguson, must needs tell me so. I could have slapped her. They will have thy sad case up in Meeting, I can tell thee."

"But what have I done!" I knew well enough.

"Tut! you must not talk that way to me; but it is my fault. Oh, the time I have had with your mother! I am not fit, it seems, to be left to take care of you. They talk of leaving you with Abijah Hapworthy--sour old dog! I wish you joy of him!"

"Good heavens!" I exclaimed; for among my aunt's gay friends I had picked up such exclamatory phrases as, used at home, would have astonished my father.

"Rest easy," said Mistress Wynne; "it is not to be. I have fought your battle, and won it. But I have had to make such promises to your father, and--woe is me!--to your mother, as will d.a.m.n me forever if you do not help me to keep them. I can fib to your father and not care a snap, but lie to those blue eyes I cannot."