Silent Struggles Part 6

CHAPTER VI.

A GUIDE TO THE FARM-HOUSE.

The next day after her spectral shrouds were first seen in the harbor, the good ship came up to her wharf. Among the first pa.s.sengers that landed was a dark, foreign-looking man, apparently somewhat under thirty years of age. He stood upon the wharf with a small leathern bag in his hand, as if uncertain where to go; but his eyes, black as midnight and splendid as diamonds, turned excitedly from object to object, as if he took a vivid interest in every thing that surrounded him. At last they fell on one of the sailors who had helped Barbara Stafford down the side of the ship that stormy afternoon. With an eager step he approached the man.

"Have you heard? did the boatmen bring her safe through the storm?" he questioned. "The lady--the lady I am speaking of. Did she suffer?--is she safe and well?"

The man laughed. "She is safe enough in Goody Brown's farm-house," he said, "and well, too, if the souse she got in the water didn't give her a cold. But it was an awful tough piece of work, I tell you. If it hadn't been for that old man, who didn't seem to have so much in him, for he was thin as a shad, they would all have gone to Davie's locker, sure as a gun. You never in your born days saw such a tussel as they had with the breakers the boatmen say."

"Then she is safe and well; for that G.o.d be thanked," said the stranger, turning away. "What more have I to ask or do?"

He spoke sadly, and his fine eyes filled with mist. Then he turned, and giving the man a piece of money, asked him to show the way to Goody Brown's farm-house.

After dropping the crown piece into his pocket, the man turned up the wharf, and walked on side by side with the stranger.

"Seems to me you're a stranger in these parts; never was to Boston afore, I reckon?" he said, dropping into an old habit of asking questions with unconscious impertinence.

"You are mistaken. I have been here before," answered the stranger, and a wild fire lighted up his face. "Years ago I left that wharf a--a--but I have come back. The world shall know that I have come back."

The sailor looked at him with open astonishment.

"Why what on earth are you so mad about I should like to know?" he said.

"I hain't done nothing to set you off in a tantrum, have I now?"

The stranger smiled.

"You have done nothing," he said, in a voice so gentle that the man stared again, bewildered by the sudden change. "I was talking to myself rather than you."

"That's a queer idea, but I've hearn people do sich things afore; it was in foreign parts, though. We talk like folks in Boston now I tell you, straight out and up to the mark. But forriners will be forriners, there's no helping it. Now what is it you want up to Goody Brown's, if I may be so bold? Is the lady up there any relation of yourn?"

Again the stranger smiled.

"My friend, you are rather bold."

"Ain't I," answered the man with great self-complacency. "That's the way we Bosting folks come to know more than other people. Ain't afeared to ask questions. Every man comes right up to his duty on that pint without flinching. But you hain't told me yet if the lady is a relation or not?"

"No, she is not related to me."

"Only come over in the same ship? I reckoned so, seeing as she was a cabin pa.s.senger and you al'es kept so snug in the steerage. Never saw you on deck in my life till long after dark. Don't think she ever sot eyes on you the hull vi'age?"

"No, she never did."

"Now that's something like; can answer a fair question when you want to, can't you? But what do you go and see her now for? Couldn't you a got acquainted on ship board if you had wanted ter?"

"Who told you that I did wish to see her?" answered the stranger, a little impatiently. "Not I, that is certain."

"Then it ain't her you're going to see?" answered the man, in an injured tone, as if his time had been cruelly trifled with. "Well, maybe it's Goody Brown you're related to, arter all. Don't look like it, though, but stranger things than that has happened. She has a sight of cousins in the old country."

The stranger grew impatient. He turned upon the man almost fiercely, his eyes flashing fire, his teeth gleaming through the lips lifted from them in a haughty curve.

"Be quiet, man, you offend me."

"Wheu!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the sailor, picking up a bit of shingle from the ground, and searching for a jackknife which jingled against the silver crown in his pocket, "getting riley, now, ain't you?"

The fellow's imperturbability was so comical that no resentment could withstand it. The stranger's face cleared up, and he watched his companion with disdainful curiosity, who began whittling his shingle as he walked along.

"Goody Brown isn't your nigh relation, then," he persisted, whittling on with infinite composure; "cousin to your par or mar, mebby?"

"Goody Brown is nothing to me, understand that!" cried the stranger, at last harra.s.sed into submission; "but I am weary of salt food, and want a draught of fresh milk. This is the nearest farm-house, you tell me; so I ask you to lead me there."

"And you don't want to see the lady?"

"No!"

"And she ain't nothing particular to you?"

"Nothing in any way."

"Well, now, I never did! Why couldn't you say so, to once?" cried the man, in a tone of plaintive reproach. "What is the use of taking so many bites of a cherry I want ter know?"

"Is that the farm-house?" inquired the stranger, pointing to the low stone dwelling sheltered in n.o.ble trees that overlooked the harbor.

"Yes, that's Goody Brown's, I reckon."

The stranger stopped short.

"You may return now. I can make my way alone."

The sailor seemed a little disappointed, but he kept on whittling, and only answered:

"Wal, jest as you're a mind ter; but I kinder reckon you'll miss it in the long run."

"Miss it, how?"

"Oh, I don't mean nothing particular, only the streets of Boston are rather sarpentine for strangers, and I kinder feel as if I hadn't more 'en half arned my money yet."

The stranger fell into thought a moment and then answered cheerfully:

"You are right, my good fellow, I shall want a guide. Stay here and take charge of my bag till I come back; then we will return to the town together."

The sailor sat down on a rock, and placing the leathern bag at his feet kept on whittling with an energy that would have seemed spiteful but for his unmoved features. The traveller left him and walked forward toward the farm-house. Goody Brown was in her hand-loom weaving a piece of linen from the yarn she had spun a year before. Her rather trim feet, cased in calf-skin shoes and yarn stockings, even as her daily toil could make them, were rising and falling on the treadles with monotonous jerks. She leaned over from her seat in front of the huge loom, throwing her shuttle through the web with such earnest industry that every ten minutes the sharp click of the turning cloth-beam proclaimed her progress. Directly the headles--or harness, as she called it--would groan and struggle from the renewed tread of her feet, while the flight of the shuttle, the bang of the laith, and the thud of the treadles made such household music as the women of New England gloried in. She was busy fitting a quill into her shuttle when a strange form darkened the open door. But her heart was in her work, and she drew the thread through the eye of her shuttle with a quick breath and a motion of the tongue before she looked directly that way. Then she saw a remarkably handsome young man standing upon the threshold, holding his cap in one hand as if she had been an empress on her throne.

"Madam."

"Did you mean me?" said Dame Brown, laying down her shuttles, and tightening the strings of her linsey-woolsey ap.r.o.n. "Did you mean me, sir?"