The visitor had not waited, but came pushing in behind him.
“We do not need to stand on ceremony,” he said, “when It is all in the same family. These are your two guests, eh? You need not introduce them, we have met before. I saw the boy very recently, in fact; he seems to be an enterprising fellow and was conducting some investigations of his own. Well, well, we won’t talk of it now.”
Oliver writhed inwardly under his sharp glance, but could muster no appropriate reply. He was thinking again that Anthony Crawford might have been handsome except for those restless gray eyes that were set too near together. Although his host was obviously anxious to lead him away to the study, the visitor planted himself in the middle of the library floor and stood his ground firmly.
“Have you thought over my offer, Jasper?” he said. “Are you ready to give me my share, or shall I take all?”
“I have given up what seemed your share,” Jasper Peyton returned steadily, “and rather than quarrel with you further I would gladly give you all. But I believe to shut one’s eyes to justice is wrong, even in such a matter as this.”
The other’s calm broke suddenly under the force of ungovernable anger.
“You will be sorry,” he cried. “You will lose more than those fat acres by the river and this fine house where you hoped to live so happily—until I came. You won’t give in, will you? Your high principles—or your stubbornness—will still hold you back from giving me what is mine? Then I can tell you that I will drag your good name down where my own stands, I will publish that disgrace of mine that you hushed up to save the family pride. You will have people looking into your own past; they will be saying, ‘If one of the family was crooked, why not another?’ There is always a pack of gossips and scandalmongers who are only too glad to snap at the heels of any prominent man. I will loose them all upon you, Jasper Peyton, every one.”
He stopped, perhaps to draw breath, while Cousin Jasper stood before him, very silent and very white. The man’s narrow eyes turned first to Oliver who was bursting with unexpressed rage and then to Janet who was regarding him with astonished and horrified disapproval.
“You do not like my way of talking?” he said to her. “I assure you that all I have said is the truth.”
“Then I should not think,” she replied bluntly, “that you would have many friends if you often tell them the truth in just that way.”
“I have no friends,” he declared. “Friends exist only to hurt you; it is my belief that men prosper better alone. Have no illusions, trust nobody, feel that every man’s hand is against you, and then you will know where you stand. That is my policy. Your soft-hearted cousin, here—his one mistake is that he trusts every one, he likes everybody. He even trusts me a little, on very small evidence, I can assure you. He would hate me if he could, but, because we are of the same blood, he cannot even bring himself to do that. Eh, Jasper, am I not right?”
“If you think you have said enough to these children,” said Cousin Jasper, wincing, but still quiet, “perhaps we had better discuss this business further in some other room.”
“Very well,” returned the other, quite good-tempered again. “I should be glad enough to have them hear the whole. But of course if there are some things that you do not wish known—”
He walked away toward the study, quite at his ease, humming a tune and casting sharp, appraising glances about him as though the thought of ownership were already in his mind. The door beyond the hall closed behind them.
“What a hateful man!” cried Janet, almost in tears. “Poor Cousin Jasper! And we can’t do anything to help him.”
Oliver, equally miserable, stood at the window. The moon was coming up behind the trees, a great red moon just past the full, misshapen and lopsided, that seemed to be laughing at them. He stamped his foot in angry impotence.
“And he doesn’t seem to me even to believe in himself; it is as though he were playing a part, just showing off.” He pointed through the window at the disgraceful cart and dejected old horse standing before the wide white steps.
“I don’t think he has to drive that wretched wagon at all. He just does it to make Cousin Jasper ridiculous.”
The session in the study was prolonged so late that in the end Janet and Oliver abandoned their sleepy effort to wait until Anthony Crawford should depart, and went dispiritedly upstairs to bed.
“I have made up my mind to one thing,” said Oliver firmly, as they reached the top of the stairs, “I am going to ask the Beeman what we ought to do. I feel as though I had known him always and I am sure he can help us.”
“But ought we to tell him Cousin Jasper’s secrets?” objected Janet doubtfully, “and, by the way, what is his name? You never told me.”
“Why—I don’t know it,” exclaimed Oliver in a tone of complete astonishment. “I never even noticed that I didn’t. It doesn’t matter, I will ask him tomorrow. And you understand, from the first minute he speaks, that you can trust the Beeman.”
He went away to his room where, so it seemed to him, he had been asleep a long time before the rattle of wheels aroused him. He peered drowsily through the window and saw the old white horse with its lean, erect driver move slowly down toward the gate, long-shadowed and unreal in the moonlight, fantastic omens of some unknown mischief that was brewing.
Next morning, as he and Janet left the car beside the orchard wall and climbed the grassy slope of the hill, Oliver’s one misgiving was lest the Beeman should not be there. But yes, as they came up the steep path they heard voices and smelled the sharp, pleasant odor of wood smoke drifting down toward them. The wind was high today, singing and swooping about the hilltop, slamming the swinging door of the house, and scattering in all directions such bold bees as had ventured out to ride down the boisterous breeze to the honey-filled meadows below.
Janet was as warmly welcomed as Oliver, and they were both bidden to come in and sit down beside the table where Polly was sorting the little wooden boxes in which the bees build the honeycomb.
“We were just going to begin a story,” said the Beeman, “Polly as been clamoring for it for half an hour.”
“But I wanted to ask you something,” broke in Oliver, too excited for good manners. “Couldn’t you wait?”
“I believe,” said the Beeman slowly, giving him an odd glance that seemed to carry a message of complete understanding, “I believe that sometimes it is better, when you are troubled about something, to cool off and settle down, and come at an affair slowly. And I think this is one of the times.”
Oliver nodded. He felt quite sure that the Beeman was right.
CHAPTER V
THE GHOST SHIP
Cicely Hallowell sighed deeply as she pushed away the heap of papers before her and brushed back the hair from her aching forehead. She was weary of her task and the room was growing dark and cold. She was beginning, moreover, to be uneasily conscious that the two men at the far end of the long table had forgotten her presence behind the pile of great ledgers and were talking of things that she was not meant to hear.
Half an hour earlier her brother Alan had rushcd in to see whether she were not ready for their afternoon ride and had been disappointedly impatient when she shook her head.
“It is a glorious day, so cold and the roads so deep in snow. The horses are like wild things, and will give us a famous gallop up the valley. Oh, do come, Cicely.”
But no, she must stay in the big gloomy countinghouse, to finish the letters that she had promised to copy for her father, while Alan had flung off, saying over his shoulder, as he departed to take his ride alone:
“It is very wrong to miss fun and adventure by toiling and moiling here. Think how the sea will look and how the blasts will be blowing over our Windy Hill!”
The place seemed very cheerless and empty after he had gone. The long windows gave little light on that gray winter afternoon, and the big fireplace with its glowing logs was at the far end of the room. There were shadows already on the shelv
es of heavy ledgers lining the walls, and on the rows of ship’s models all up and down the sides of the big countingroom. Those lines of dusty volumes held records that Alan was forever reading, tales of wonderful voyages, of spices and gold dust and jewels brought home from the Orient, of famines in far lands broken by the coming of American grain ships, of profits reckoned in ducats and doubloons and Spanish pieces of eight. Cicely was fond of drawing and loved, far more than copying dull letters, to make sketches of those miniature vessels in the glass cases that stood for the Hallowell ships that had scoured the oceans of the world. They had been wrecked on coral reefs in hot, distant seas, they had lain becalmed with priceless cargoes in pirate-infested waters, their crews were as skillful with the long guns as they were at handling the sails, their captains were as at home in Shanghai or Calcutta as they were in the streets of the little seaport town where they had been born. Cicely could remember when the big countingroom had been crowded with clerks and had hummed like a beehive with the myriad activities of the Hallowell trade. It was a dull and empty place now, and the fleet of Hallowell ships was scattered, some lying at anchor, some dismantled and sold, some fallen into the hands of the enemy. For this was the third year of that struggle with England that the histories were to call the War of 1812.
Cicely, for all her thirteen years, looked very small, sitting there at the end of the long table, in her “sprigged” high-waisted gown, her feet in their strapped slippers perched on the rung of the high office stool. She had just taken up her pen to begin writing again when the voices of the two men by the fire rose so suddenly that she dropped it, startled. Her father’s tone fell almost immediately to strained quiet, but Martin Hallowell, his partner, went on with angry insistence. She knew him to be hotheaded and impetuous, but she had never heard such words from him before.
With a quick, eager motion that was the embodiment of impatient greed, Martin was running his finger down the columns of the ledger before him.
“There is no ship like a privateer, and no privateer like the Huntress,” he was saying. “Send her on one more voyage and we shall be rich men.”
There was an ugly tremor in his voice, that quavered and broke in spite of his attempts to keep it calm.
“I do not care to be one of those who gathers riches from a war,” returned Reuben Hallowell, Cicely’s father. There was something in the dry calm of his answer that seemed to stir Martin to uncontrollable anger.
“It is like you, Reuben Hallowell,” he said, “to be willing to ruin my plans by your foolish scruples just when a real prize is within reach. But I vow you shall not do it. You shall be a wealthy man in spite of yourself, and let me remind you that, two years ago, before we built the Huntress, you were a precious poor one.”
The Hallowell partners were not brothers, but cousins, with Cicely’s father much the older of the two. They had inherited the business from their fathers, for such an ill-assorted pair would never have been joined together from choice. Many of their discussions ended in stormy words, but never before had Martin’s dark face showed such white-hot, quivering rage as when he arose now, gathered up his papers, and went away to his own room, closing the door smartly behind him. Cicely got up also and went down the long countingroom to where her father sat by the fire.
“I heard what you and Cousin Martin were saying,” she told him hesitatingly, “I am afraid you did not remember that I was there. But it does not matter, for I did not understand what Cousin Martin was so angry about.”
“There is no reason why you should not understand,” her father replied, rather slowly and wearily, she thought, “although sometimes I am not certain that I understand these troubled times myself. Across the seas the Emperor Napoleon, a long-nosed, short-bodied man of infinite genius for setting the world by the ears, has been warring with England for the last ten years and more. He and the British, with their blockades and embargoes and Orders in Council have long been striving to ruin each other, yet have achieved their greatest success in ruining a peaceable old gentleman in America who relies on his ships to bring him a livelihood. To oppress neutral shipping leads in the end to war, although I vow that often Congress must have felt that it should toss up a penny to determine whether the declaration should be against France or England. Some stubborn British minister, however, decided to countenance the stealing of sailors from our ships to fill up the scanty crews of their own navy, and a stubborn British nation felt that it must back him, so in the end the war was with England.”
“And have we not won many glorious victories?” asked Cicely.
“Ay, there have been victories; out of her fleet of seven hundred and thirty sail, England has lost a handful to us and we have shown how small our navy is and how great is its spirit. There have been passages of arms on land, also, of which we do not love to talk. And we have sent out our privateer vessels, armed ships that prey upon England’s commerce, yet do not belong to our navy. They have done great things, have cut deep into England’s overseas trade, and have brought home many a valuable prize to fill the pockets of their owners. Such a vessel is our Huntress, built at your Cousin Martin’s instigation and launched at the moment when our fortunes were at their lowest ebb. Since we had not sufficient funds to equip her, nearly every one in this town put money into her, from John Harwood the minister down to Jack Marvin who digs our garden. It was a patriotic venture and a risky one, but she has brought home great profits in prize money and our own share has reëstablished the firm of Hallowell. Your Cousin Martin says that one more voyage will bring us not only profit, but real wealth. But I say,” he struck his hand suddenly upon the table, “I say that there shall not be another.”
“Why?” The question was startled from Cicely by his sudden vehemence, yet it was not from him that she was to receive the answer. The door opened to admit Martin Hallowell, who had come back, apparently, for a last word.
“You say,” he began at once, “that the Huntress needs refitting and cannot be made seaworthy in less than a month?”
His partner nodded.
“I say that she shall sail in a week,” declared Martin.
“And I say no,” cried Reuben Hallowell.
“You say, too, that the war is nearly over, that the Peace Commission is sitting at Ghent, and that rumors are coming home that they are near to an agreement. That is your excuse for wishing to keep our privateers at home. You are a foolish and an overscrupulous man, Reuben Hallowell, for I say that such a reason makes all the more haste for her to be gone. We should reap what profit we can while there is yet time.” He leaned forward, his dark, eager face close to theirs, all caution forgotten in the intensity of his purpose. “Once at sea the Huntress is beyond reach of tidings or orders. If she should take her last and richest prizes a little after peace has been declared, who will ever know it?”
He was silent and stood staring at them with unwavering, defiant eyes. Cicely could hear her sharply drawn breath as she waited for her father to answer.
“We are partners no longer, Martin Hallowell,” he said. “We were not born to work together and it is clear that we have come to the parting of the ways. Tomorrow we will make division of our holdings, for I tell you plainly that I will have no more to do with you and your dishonest schemes.”
“It shall be as you say,” Martin agreed, quick to press home an advantage. “And since it was I who urged the building and launching of the Huntress, it is only proper that she should fall to my share. She shall sail this day week, as I have told you. And you, my dear cousin, for your effort to stop her, shall soon be a most regretful man.”
He went out, this time closing the door very gently behind him. The echoes of his vague threat seemed to hang in the great room long after he was gone.
“What—what can he do?” questioned Cicely.
Her father, with a visible effort, answered cheerfully, “An angry man loves to threaten, but we have naught to fear from him. And now,” he gathered the big ledger under his arm, “I must work fo
r a little in the countingroom and then we will go home.”
Cicely, left alone, went back to fetch her letters and stopped for a moment at one of the long windows to look down upon the harbor where the Huntress dipped and swayed at anchor, a stately, beautiful thing that seemed to quiver with life as she rocked in the choppy seas, her shimmering reflection, beginning to be colored by the sunset, rocking and dancing with her.
“Oh, I must draw it,” cried Cicely, catching up a sheet of fresh paper. “If only the light holds and the ship does not swing round with the tide!”
The minutes passed while she worked eagerly, but finally was forced to lay down her pencil, unable to see more in the dusk. The door flew open and some one came in with the impulsive rush that belonged only to her brother Alan.
“What, Cicely, still here and trying to draw in the dark? Let me see what you have done,” he exclaimed. He lit a candle and examined the paper. “I vow, that is good. Oh, Cicely, that Huntress is a wonderful ship!”
For some reason there was a cold clutch at Cicely’s heart.
“Yes?” she answered faintly.
“I have just had such a talk with Cousin Martin,” the boy went on excitedly. “I did not quite understand the way of it, but he said that he and my father were to divide, and that the Huntress was to be his own, entire. He wants me to go with her on her next voyage. He says the war is not nearly done and that there will be many months of fighting and prize-taking still. He thinks a great fellow of sixteen like me should have been a ship’s officer long ago, and I think so, too. What a good fellow Cousin Martin is!”
Alan admired his elder cousin greatly, Cicely well knew, and he had, indeed, a touch of the same excitable, headstrong nature. She could well understand how Martin Hallowell had dazzled the boy with tales of what he would see and do. Had there been such a plan in her cousin’s mind when he first uttered his threat against her father? Or had it only flashed upon him as he met Alan running up the stairs, eager, vigorous, and ready for any adventure?
“It is all arranged,” declared Alan, “except just to tell my father.”
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