"Flint, you are a misanthrope! You have searched out this G.o.d-forsaken stretch of sand just for the purpose of getting away from your kind.
Now I have hunted you to your lair, and I propose to stay with you for a fortnight; but I am not to be dragooned into saying that I think your resort is a scene of beauty, for I don"t; but that is a jolly, old, gray, tumbled-down building over there--a barn, I suppose."
"No, sir; that is the Nepaug Inn. As it has neither porters, waiters, nor electric bells, you are expected to shoulder your own luggage and march upstairs--second room to the right. Whoa, there!" he called out to the old horse a full minute after the animal had come to a dead halt in front of the inn door. The noise, however, served its purpose in bringing Marsden to the door, and loading the old inn-keeper with imprecations for their unlucky experience with the mola.s.ses, Flint left him to struggle with the contents of the wagon, while he himself escorted Brady up the narrow, sagging stairs, and ensconced him in a room next his own,--a room whose windows looked out like his over the purple stretch of ocean, now opalescent with reflection of the clouds.
"Where do you take your bath?" Brady asked, looking round somewhat helplessly.
"In there, you land-lubber!" answered Flint, pointing out to sea; "isn"t the tub big enough?"
Brady laughed, a hearty, boyish, infectious laugh. "All right," he said, "only it seems rather odd to come East for pioneering. Did you know, by the way, that I am to be in New York this winter?"
"No!"
"Yes. Our house is just establishing a branch office there, and I am to be at the head of it."
Flint chuckled.
"Bison establishing a branch office in New York! The humor of the thing delights me."
"I don"t see anything so very funny about it," answered Brady, rather testily; "but I have no stomach for a quarrel till I have had some supper--unless you sup _out there_," he added with a lordly wave of his hand towards the ocean in imitation of Flint"s gesture. "I hope, at any rate, our evening meal is not to be of farina. The a.s.sociations might be a little too strong even for my appet.i.te."
CHAPTER IV
THE DAVITTS
"The short and simple annals of the poor."
After taking leave of Flint and his companion in misfortune, Winifred quickened her pace. The lengthening shadows warned her that if she intended to return to the White House before supper was over, she had no time to lose.
"Come, Paddy!" she said, laying her hand with a light, caressing gesture on the s.h.a.ggy red-brown head of the Irish setter, which had kept closer guard than ever since the meeting with the strangers in the road,--"come, Paddy! we must make a sprint for it."
The dog, glad enough to be allowed the luxury of a gallop, set off pell-mell, and Winifred followed at a gait which soon brought her, flushed and out of breath, before the unpainted house where the Davitt family made their abode. It was not characterized by great order or tidiness. Clothes-lines, hung with underwear of various shapes and sizes, decorated the side-yard, and proclaimed Mrs. Davitt"s calling.
A whole section of the front fence had taken itself off. The gate swung aimlessly on one rusty hinge, and a brood of chickens wandered at will over the unmown gra.s.s before the house: yet the place was not wholly unattractive, for it bore evidences of human love and happiness; and, after all, these are the objects for which the most orderly and elegant mansions exist, if indeed they are so fortunate as to attain them. These are the essence of a home.
An old dory filled with geranium and nasturtium brightened the centre of the yard. Beneath the wide spreading maples, which lent their unbought adornment to the shabby old house, hung a child"s swing, and near by stood a rickety express-cart, to which an unlucky goat was tethered by a multi-colored harness made of rope, tape, and bits of calico. The driver of this equipage, a tow-headed lad of some five years old, stood with his thumb in his mouth, gazing with open-eyed amazement at the young lady who thought it worth while to walk so fast.
"Good afternoon, John!" said Winifred, when she had regained her breath. "Is your mother at home?"
The practice of answering questions is an acquired habit, and comes only after long acquaintance with society. Children left in a state of nature rarely think it necessary or even safe to commit themselves so far. John Davitt only pulled his thumb out of his mouth, poked his pink toes deeper into the gra.s.s, and gave a hitch at the single suspender supporting the ragged knickerbockers which formed two-thirds of his costume.
"Oh!" continued the visitor, not in the least disconcerted by the lack of response to her advances, "you don"t want to leave your goat long enough to go and ask about your mother, do you? Well, I should not like to be asked to leave my colt if I were driving. People should do their own errands, I think, and not be bothering other folks with their business. You will not be afraid of my dog if I leave him here while I go into the house, will you?"
"Whath hith name?" asked John, discovering for the first time that he had a tongue and knew its use.
"Paddy," answered the visitor.
"I uthed to have a brother Paddy. He died."
"Then you must make friends with the dog for his sake. Would you like to see how my Paddy can chase a stone?" With this Winifred picked up a large pebble, and threw it far down the road. Paddy, with a bark of animated enjoyment, made after it, with wagging tail and ears laid back against his head. John laughed loud, wrinkled up his little pug nose and showed his white teeth.
"Now when he brings it back, you throw it again, and I will go in and try to find your mother; I think I see her now," she added, as she turned the angle of the house and caught a glimpse of Mrs. Davitt, seated in the wooden rocking-chair beside the kitchen-table, paring potatoes.
To the casual glance she was only a homely old Irish woman who might have been the original of "The shape which shape had none." The only semblance of waist was the line drawn by her gingham ap.r.o.n-string. Her form bulged where it should have been straight, and was straight where it should have curved. Her face, however, had a gentle motherliness, and still bore traces of the comeliness which had marked it a quarter of a century earlier, when, as Bridget O"Hara, she had set sail from "the owld counthry" to try her fortune in the new.
After a few months" experience of city life over here, she had drifted to South East, where she found employment in a thread factory which stood on the bank of the tiniest stream that ever, outside of England, called itself a river. Its current ran swiftly, however; its mimic falls were forced into the service of trade; and the wheels of the thread factory whirred busily, except when bad times brought wheels and bobbins to a standstill.
For three years after her arrival in South East, Bridget O"Hara stood beside her wheel, and fed her bobbin faithfully. Her blue Irish eyes were bright in those days, and her cheeks red as the roses of County Meath, where the thatched homestead of the O"Haras lifted its humble head. More than one of the men working in the factory took notice of the blue eyes and the red cheeks, and would have been glad to secure their owner for a wife; but she was not for any of them. Before she had been in the village six months, she had given her faithful heart to Michael Davitt, the young New England fisherman whose boat lay below the bridge which she crossed every morning on her way to her work in the factory. Many a time on bright spring mornings she loitered on the bridge, leaning over its wooden railing to watch Michael as he washed out his boat, and made ready for the day"s sail.
Sometimes the talk grew so absorbing that the factory bell sounded out its last warning call before Bridget could tear herself away, and afterward, through the long day, shut up among the whirring wheels, in the dust and heat of the big dreary room, she kept the vision of the white flapping sail, and of Michael Davitt standing by the tiller of the boat under the bridge.
At last the fisherman asked her to marry him, and she accepted him joyously, undismayed by the diminutive proportions of their united incomes.
"Sure, Mike dear," Bridget had declared cheerfully, "what"s enough for wan will be enough for two, and you"ll never feel the bit I"ll be afther atin"."
This specious theory of political economy has beguiled into matrimony many a young couple who fail to take account of the important difference that what is enough for two may not be enough for three, and still less for three times three. So it fell out with the Davitts.
For the first year of their married life, Bridget went on working in the factory, and kept her tiny tenement tidy, and Michael mended nets on the doorstep, and sold fish in summer, and loafed in the winter in contented a.s.surance that life would continue to treat him well. But the next year opened less prosperously. Bridget was compelled to give up her work in the factory, and when, in the middle of a particularly rigorous winter, a baby was born to the house of Davitt, the outlook would have appeared discouraging to any one less optimistic than Bridget. But she found much cause for satisfaction in the thought that the baby had come at this particular time, when Michael could be at home to help take care of the house; and above all in the reflection that the baby was a boy, "who"d not be thrubblin" any wan long, for before we know it, Mike, me jewel, he"ll be lookin" afther you and me."
Part of her self-congratulation had justified itself, for the baby Leonard had grown up into one of those helpful, "handy" lads who sometimes are sent to be the salvation of impecunious households. At an incredibly early age, he began to feel the responsibilities of the family on his manly little shoulders, and as the procession of small Davitts entered the world, he took each one under his protecting care.
Dennis, Ellen, Maggie, Tommy, Katie, and John had found their way into the family circle, and no one hinted that there was not place and porridge for the last as well as the first.
As the years went on, Michael Davitt lost whatever alertness of temperament he might once have possessed. New England seems to endow some of her children with such a surplus of energy, that she is compelled to subtract a corresponding amount from the share of others.
Michael Davitt was one of the others. His experiences as a fisherman had persuaded him that it was useless to put forth effort, unless he had wind and tide in his favor. Consequently, his life was spent in waiting for encouragement from the forces of nature,--encouragement which never came; so that at last he gave up the struggle, and sat by the chimney-corner all winter, as contentedly as he sat on the stern of his boat all summer, ready to move if circ.u.mstances favored, but serene under all conditions. His silence was as marked as his serenity. On occasions, he could be moved to smiles, but seldom to speech. He sat quiet and unmoved amid the family hubbub, his long limbs twisted together, his arms folded above his somewhat hollow chest, and his protruding tusks of teeth firmly fastened over his nether lip, as if constraining it to silence.
Tommy might lift off the cover of the beehive, and rush into the house shrieking with wrath and terror over the result; Maggie might upset the milk, and John drag the kitten about the room by its tail,--no matter! the father of the family continued to sit unmoved as Brahma.
But when Leonard entered the door, some appearance of life began to show itself in Michael. He untwisted his legs, moved a little to make room on the settle, and even went so far as to make an entering wedge of conversation with a "Well, Leon!"
Leonard Davitt was a boy to warm any father"s heart,--stout and strong, hearty and frank, cheerful as the day was long, with the smile and jest of his race ready for any chance comer. This light-heartedness had made him a favorite not only in his own family, but among all the youth and maidens who dwelt in the outlying farmhouses around South East; but of late an unaccountable change had come over the lad. This merry, careless happiness had deserted him. He had taken to going about with hair unbrushed, and a "dejected "havior of his visage."
The noisy mirth of his little brothers and sisters irritated him, and their noisier quarrels exasperated him. He kept away from them as much as he could, and when he was not off in his boat, he sat on the fence under the maples as taciturn as Michael himself. The children wondered at him, and gradually began to draw away at his approach, instead of rushing toward him as of old. Maggie, who was fifteen now, and worked in the factory, suspected the cause of his trouble, and once ventured to rally him on "the girl that was so cool she"d give a man the mitten in summer;" but her pleasantry was ill-received. Leonard scowled at her, and stalked away muttering to himself.
His mother saw him from her window, and she too knew what was the trouble with her boy; but she only dropped a few tears among the potato-parings, and resolved to make griddle-cakes for supper,--as though Leonard were still a child whose heart could be cheered through his stomach. As Mrs. Davitt laid down her knife to wipe her eyes, she heard the barking of a dog, and then a rapid double knock on the half-open kitchen-door.
"Come in, Miss," she said, rising and wiping her hands on her gingham ap.r.o.n. "Come in and take the rocker. Don"t be standin" when sittin"
down is chape enough, even for the poor. It"s yourself hezn"t forgot me, nor me bit o" farina."
"No, indeed, Mrs. Davitt, I did not forget you: but you won"t get your farina after all; for I met some poor men in distress, and I handed over all the sea-moss to them."
"Poor craytyurs! Wuz they that hungry they could ate it raw?"
"Hardly," answered Winifred, smiling at her remembrance of the peculiarly well-fed looking recipients of her bounty, "they were not hungry at all; but they had come to grief with a mola.s.ses jug. The carriage and everything in it was sticky, and I don"t know what they would have done to get it clean without your moss; but you shall surely have some more to-morrow, and now tell me how you are feeling."
"Is it meself? Thank ye kindly, me dear. I"m jest accordin" to the common, save where I"m worse; me legs ache me nights, and I fale the washin" in me back some days; but if me moind wuz right, it"s little I"d moind the thrubble in me bones."
"Why, what is wrong, Mrs. Davitt?" Winifred asked with sympathy in her voice. "The children all look well. John"s cheeks are red as apples, and Katie is as round as a b.u.t.ter-ball."
"Oh, the childers is all right," answered Mrs. Davitt, with an air of mystery, but evidently not unwilling to be pressed further as to the source of her trouble.