The Stillwater Tragedy
Page 6
VI
After a lapse of four years, during which he had as completelyvanished out of the memory of Stillwater as if he had been lying allthe while in the crowded family tomb behind the South Church, RichardShackford reappeared one summer morning at the door of his cousin'shouse in Welch's Court. Mr. Shackford was absent at the moment, andMrs. Morganson, an elderly deaf woman, who came in for a few hoursevery day to do the house-work, was busy in the extension. Withoutannouncing himself, Richard stalked up-stairs to the chamber in thegable, and went directly to a little shelf in one corner, upon whichlay the dog's-eared copy of Robinson Crusoe just as he had left it,save the four years' accumulation of dust. Richard took the bookfiercely in both hands, and with a single mighty tug tore it from topto bottom, and threw the fragments into the fire-place.
A moment later, on the way down-stairs, he encountered his kinsmanascending.
"Ah, you have come back!" was Mr. Shackford's grim greeting aftera moment's hesitation.
"Yes," said Richard, with embarrassment, though he had made up hismind not to be embarrassed by his cousin.
"I can't say I was looking for you. You might have dropped me aline; you were politer when you left. Why do you come back, and whydid you go away?" demanded the old man, with abrupt fierceness. Thelast four years had bleached him and bent him and made him look veryold.
"I didn't like the idea of Blandmann & Sharpe, for one thing,"said Richard, "and I thought I liked the sea."
"And did you?"
"No, sir! I enjoyed seeing foreign parts, and all that."
"Quite the young gentleman on his travels. But the sea didn'tagree with you, and now you like the idea of Blandmann & Sharpe?"
"Not the least in the world, I assure you!" cried Richard. "I taketo it as little as ever I did."
"Perhaps that is fortunate. But it's going to be rather difficultto suit your tastes. What _do_ you like?"
"I like you, cousin Lemuel; you have always been kind to me--inyour way," said poor Richard, yearning for a glimmer of human warmthand sympathy, and forgetting all the dreariness of his uncared-forchildhood. He had been out in the world, and had found it evenharder-hearted than his own home, which now he idealized in the firstflush of returning to it. Again he saw himself, a blond-headed littlefellow with stocking down at heel, climbing the steep staircase, ordigging in the clay at the front gate with the air full of the breathof lilacs. That same penetrating perfume, blown through the openhall-door as he spoke, nearly brought the tears to his eyes. He hadlooked forward for years to this coming back to Stillwater. Many atime, as he wandered along the streets of some foreign sea-port, therich architecture and the bright costumes had faded out before him,and given place to the fat gray belfry and slim red chimneys of thehumble New England village where he was born. He had learned to loveit after losing it; and now he had struggled back through countlesstrials and disasters to find no welcome.
"Cousin Lemuel," said Richard gently, "only just us two are left,and we ought to be good friends, at least."
"We are good enough friends," mumbled Mr. Shackford, who could notevade taking the hand which Richard had forlornly reached out to him,"but that needn't prevent us understanding each other like rationalcreatures. I don't care for a great deal of fine sentiment in peoplewho run away without so much as thank you."
"I was all wrong!"
"That's what folks always say, with the delusion that it makeseverything all right."
"Surely it help,--to admit it."
"That depends; it generally doesn't. What do you propose to do?"
"I hardly know at the moment; my plans are quite in the air."
"In the air!" repeated Mr. Shackford. "I fancy that describesthem. Your father's plans were always in the air, too, and he nevergot any of them down."
"I intend to get mine down."
"Have you saved by anything?"
"Not a cent."
"I thought as much."
"I had a couple of hundred dollars in my sea-chest; but I wasshipwrecked, and lost it. I barely saved myself. When RobinsonCrusoe"--
"Damn Robinson Crusoe!" snapped Mr. Shackford.
"That's what I say," returned Richard gravely. "When RobinsonCrusoe was cast on an uninhabited island, shrimps and soft-shellcrabs and all sorts of delicious mollusks--readily boiled, I've nodoubt--crawled up on the beach, and begged him to eat them; but_I_ nearly starved to death."
"Of course. You will always be shipwrecked, and always be starvedto death; you are one of that kind. I don't believe you are aShackford at all. When they were not anything else they were goodsailors. If you only had a drop of _his_ blood in your veins!"and Mr. Shackford waved his head towards a faded portrait of ayoungish, florid gentleman with banged hair and high coat-collar,which hung against the wall half-way up the stair-case. This was thecounterfeit presentment of Lemuel Shackford's father seated with hisback at an open window, through which was seen a ship under fullcanvas with the union-jack standing out straight in the wrongdirection. "But what are you going to do for yourself? You can'tstart a subscription paper, and play with shipwrecked mariner, youknow."
"No, I hardly care to do that," said Richard, with a good-naturedlaugh, "though no poor devil ever had a better outfit for thecharacter."
"What _are_ you calculated for?"
Richard was painfully conscious of his unfitness for many things;but he felt there was nothing in life to which he was so ill adaptedas his present position. Yet, until he could look about him, he mustneeds eat his kinsman's reluctant bread, or starve. The world wasyounger and more unsophisticated when manna dropped from the clouds.
Mr. Shackford stood with his neck craned over the frayed edge ofhis satin stock and one hand resting indecisively on the banister,and Richard on the step above, leaning his back against the blightedflowers of the wall-paper. From an oval window at the head of thestairs the summer sunshine streamed upon them, and illuminated thehigh-shouldered clock which, ensconced in an alcove, seemed top belistening to the conversation.
"There's no chance for you in the law," said Mr. Shackford, aftera long pause. "Sharpe's nephew has the berth. A while ago I mighthave got you into the Miantowona Iron Works; but the rascallydirectors are trying to ruin me now. There's the Union Store, if theyhappen to want a clerk. I suppose you would be about as handy behinda counter as a hippopotamus. I have no business of my own to trainyou to. You are not good for the sea, and the sea has probablyspoiled you for anything else. A drop of salt water just poisons alandsman. I am sure I don't know what to do with you."
"Don't bother yourself about it at all," said Richard, cheerfully."You are going back on the whole family, ancestors and posterity, bysuggesting that I can't make my own living. I only want a little timeto take breath, don't you see, and a crust and a bed for a few days,such as you might give any wayfarer. Meanwhile, I will look afterthings around the place. I fancy I was never an idler here since theday I learnt to split kindling."
"There's your old bed in the north chamber," said Mr. Shackford,wrinkling his forehead helplessly. "According to my notion, it is notso good as a bunk, or a hammock slung in a tidy forecastle, but it'sat your service, and Mrs. Morganson, I dare say, can lay an extraplate at table."
With which gracious acceptance of Richard's proposition, Mr.Shackford resumed his way upstairs, and the young man thoughtfullydescended to the hall-door and thence into the street, to take ageneral survey of the commercial capabilities of Stillwater.
The outlook was not inspiring. A machinist, or a mechanic, or aday laborer might have found a foot-hold. A man without handicraftwas not in request in Stillwater. "What is your trade?" was thestaggering question that met Richard at the threshold. He went fromworkshop to workshop, confidently and cheerfully at first, whistlingsoftly between whiles; but at every turn the question confronted him.In some places, where he was recognized with thinly veiled surpriseas that boy of Shackford's, he was kindly put off; in others hereceived only a stare or a brutal No.
By noon he had exh
austed the leading shops and offices in thevillage, and was so disheartened that he began to dread the thoughtof returning home to dinner. Clearly, he was a superfluous person inStillwater. A mortar-splashed hod-carrier, who had seated himself ona pile of brick and was eating his noonday rations from a tin canjust brought to him by a slatternly girl, gave Richard a spasm of envy.Here was a man who had found his place, and was establishing--whatRichard did not seem able to establish in his own case--a right toexist.
At supper Mr. Shackford refrained from examining Richard on hisday's employment, for which reserve, or indifference, the boy wasgrateful. When the silent meal was over the old man went to hispapers, and Richard withdrew to his room in the gable. He hadneglected to provide himself with a candle. However, there wasnothing to read, for in destroying Robinson Crusoe he had destroyedhis entire library; so he sat and brooded in the moonlight, casting alook of disgust now and then at the mutilated volume on the hearth.That lying romance! It had been, indirectly, the cause of all hiswoe, filling his boyish brain with visions of picturesque adventure,and sending him off to sea, where he had lost four precious years ofhis life.
"If I had stuck to my studies," reflected Richard whileundressing, "I might have made something of myself. He's a greatfriend, Robinson Crusoe."
Richard fell asleep with as much bitterness in his bosom againstDeFoe's ingenious hero as if Robinson had been a living personinstead of a living fiction, and out of this animosity grew a dreamso fantastic and comical that Richard awoke himself with a bewilderedlaugh just as the sunrise reddened the panes of the chamber window.In this dream somebody came to Richard and asked him if he had heardof that dreadful thing about young Crusoe.
"No, confound him!" said Richard, "what is it?"
"It has been ascertained," said somebody, who seemed to Richard atonce an intimate friend and an utter stranger,--"it has beenascertained beyond a doubt that the man Friday was not a man Fridayat all, but a light-minded young princess from one of the neighboringislands who had fallen in love with Robinson. Her real name wasSaturday."
"Why, that's scandalous!" cried Richard with heat. "Think of theadmiration and sympathy the world has been lavishing on this preciouspair; Robinson Crusoe and his girl Saturday! That puts a differentface on it."
"Another great moral character exploded," murmured the shadowyshape, mixing itself up with the motes of a sunbeam and drifting outthrough the window. Then Richard fell to laughing in his sleep, andso awoke. He was still confused with the dream as he sat on the edgeof his bed, pulling himself together in the broad daylight.
"Well," he muttered at length, "I shouldn't wonder! There'snothing too bad to be believed of that man."