CHAPTER XIV
A VISITOR FROM THE LONG AGO
As the captain sat there expectantly on the piazza, telescope across his knees, dog by his side, a step sounded in the hallway of Snug Haven, and out issued Ezra, blinking in the sunshine, screwing up his leathery, shrewd, humorous face, and from under a thin palm squinting across the harbor.
“Ain’t sighted him yit, cap’n?” demanded he, in a cracked voice. “It’s past six bells o’ the aft’noon watch. You’d oughta be sightin’ him pretty soon, now, seems like.”
“I think so, too,” the captain answered. “He wrote they’d leave Boston this morning early. Seems as if they should have made Endicutt Harbor by now.”
“Right, cap’n. But don’t you worry none. They can’t of fell foul o’ nothin’. Master Hall, he’s an A1 man. He’ll make port afore night, cap’n, never you fear. He’s
gotta
! Ain’t I got a leg o’ lamb on to roast, an’ ain’t I made his favorite plum-cake with butter-an’-sugar sauce? Aye, he’ll tie up at Snug Haven afore sundown, never you fear!”
The captain only grunted; and old Trefethen, after careful but fruitless examination of the harbor, went back into the house again, very much like those figures on toy barometers that come out in good weather and retire in bad.
Left alone once more, the captain drew deeply at his pipe and glanced with satisfaction at his cozy domain. A pleasant place it was, indeed, and trimly eloquent of the hand of an old seafaring man. The precision wherewith the hedge was cut, the whitewashed spotlessness of the front gate – a gate on the “port” post of which was fastened a red ship’s-lantern, with a green one on the “starboard” – and even the sanded walks, edged with conch-shells, all spelled “shipshape.”
Trailing woodbine covered the fences to right and left, and along these fences grew thrifty berry bushes. Apple-trees, whereon green buttons of fruit had already set, shaded the lawn, interspersed with flower-beds edged with whitewashed rocks – flower-beds bright with hollyhocks, peonies and poppies.
Back of the house a vegetable-garden gave promise of great increase; and in the hen-yard White Leghorns and Buff Orpingtons pursued the vocations of all well-disposed poultry. A Holstein cow, knee-deep in daisies on the gentle hill-slope behind Snug Haven, formed part of the household; and last of all came the bees, denizens of six hives not far from the elm-shaded well.
But the captain’s special pride centered in the gleaming white flagpole, planted midway of the front lawn – a pole from which flew the Stars and Stripes, together with a big blue house-flag bearing a huge “B” of spotless white. This flag and a little cannon of gleaming brass, from which on every holiday the captain fired a salute, formed his chief treasures; by which token you shall read the heart of the old man, and see that, for all his faring up and down the world, a certain curious simplicity had at the end developed itself in him.
Thus that June afternoon, sitting in state amid his possessions, the captain waited. Waited, dressed in his very best, for the homecoming of the boy on whom was concentrated all the affection of a nature now powerful to love, as in the old and evil days it had been violent to hate. His face, as he sat there, was virile, patriarchal, dignified with that calm nobility of days when old age is “frosty but kindly.” With placid interest he watched a robin on the lawn, and listened to the chickadees’ piping monotone in the huge maple by the gate. Those notes seemed to blend with the metallic music of hammer and anvil somewhere down the village street.
Tunk-tunk! Clink-clank-clink!
sang the hammer from the shop of Peter Trumett, as Peter forged new links for the anchor-chain of the
Lucy Bell
, now in port for repairs. Then a voice, greeting the captain from the rock-nubbled roadway, drew the old man’s gaze.
“How do, cap’n?” called a man from the top of a slow-moving load of kelp. “I’m goin’ up-along. Anythin’ I kin do fer you?”
“Nothing, Jacob,” answered Briggs. “Thank you, just the same. Oh, Jacob! Wait a minute!”
“Hoa,
s-h-h-h-h
!” commanded the kelp-gatherer. “What is it, cap’n?”
The old man arose, placed his telescope carefully in the rocking-chair, and slowly walked down toward the gate. The Airedale followed close. The dog’s rusty-brown muzzle touched the captain’s hand. Briggs fondled the animal and smiling said:
“I’m not going to leave you, Ruddy. None of us can go anywhere to-day. Hal’s coming home. Know that? We mustn’t be away when he comes!” The captain advanced once more. Half-way down the walk he paused, picked up a snail that had crawled out upon the distressful sand. He dropped the snail into the sheltering grass and went forward again. At the gate he stopped, leaned his crossed arms on the clean top-board, and for a moment peered at Jacob perched on the load of kelp that overflowed the time-worn, two-wheeled cart.
“What is it, cap’n?” Jacob queried. “Somethin’ I kin do fer you?”
“No, nothing you can do for me, but something you can do for Uncle Everett and for yourself, if you will.”
At sound of that name the kelp-gatherer stiffened with sudden resentment.
“Nothin’ fer him, cap’n!” he ejaculated. “He’s been accommodatin’ as a hog on ice to me, an’ the case is goin’ through. Nothin’ at all fer that damned – ”
“Wait! Hold on, Jacob!” the old man pleaded, raising his hand. “You can’t gain anything by violence and hate. I know you think he’s injured you grievously. He thinks the same of you. In his heart I know he’s sorry. You and he were friends for thirty years till this petty little quarrel came up. Jacob, is the whole boat worth cutting the cables of good understanding and letting yourselves drift on the reefs of hate? Is it, now?”
“You been talkin’ with him ’bout me?” demanded Jacob irefully.
“Well, maybe I have said a few words to Uncle Everett,” admitted the captain. “Uncle’s willing to go half-way to meet you.”
“He’ll meet me nowheres ’cept in the court-room down to ’Sconset!” retorted Jacob with heat. “He done me a smart trick that time. I’ll rimrack
him
!”
“We’ve all done smart tricks one time or another,” soothed the old captain. The sun through the arching elms flecked his white hair with moving bits of light; it narrowed the keen, earnest eyes of blue. “That’s human. It’s better than human to be sorry and to make peace with your neighbor. Uncle Everett’s not a bad man at heart, any more than you are. Half a dozen words from you would caulk up the leaking hull of your friendship. You’re not going to go on hating uncle, are you, when you
could
shake hands with him and be friends?”
“Oh, ain’t I, huh?” demanded Jacob. “Why ain’t I?”
“Because you’re a man and can think!” the captain smiled. “Harkness and Bill Dodge were bitter as gall six months ago, and Giles was ready to cut Burnett’s heart out, but I found they were human, after all.”
“Yes, but they ain’t
me
!”
“Are you less a man than they were?”
“H-m! H-m!” grunted Jacob, floored. “I – I reckon not. Why?”
“I’ve got nothing more to say for now,” the captain answered. “Good-by, Jacob!”
The kelp-gatherer pushed back his straw hat, scratched his head, spat, and then broke out:
“Mebbe it’d be cheaper, after all, to settle out o’ court rather ’n’ to law uncle. But shakin’ hands, an’ bein’ neighbors with that – that – ”
“Good day, Jacob!” the captain repeated. “One thing at a time. And if you come up-along to-morrow, lay alongside, and have another gam with me, will you?”
To this Jacob made no answer, but slapped his reins on the lean withers of his horse. Creakingly the load of seaweed moved away, with Jacob atop, rather dazed. The captain remained there at the gate, peering after him with a smile, kindly yet shrewd.
“Just like the others,” he murmured. “Can’t make port all on one tack. Got to watch the wind, and wear about and make it when you can. But if I know human nature, a month from to-day Jacob Plummer will be smoking his pipe down at Uncle Everett’s sail-loft.”
The sound of piping voices, beyond the blacksmith-shop, drew the old captain’s attention thither. He assumed a certain expectancy. Into the pocket of his square-cut blue jacket he slid a hand. Along the street he peered – the narrow, rambling street sheltered by great elms through which, here and there, a glint of sunlit harbor shimmered blue.
He had not long to wait. Round the bend by the smithy two or three children appeared; and after these came others, with a bright-haired girl of twenty or thereabout. The children had school-bags or bundles of books tightly strapped. Keeping pace with the teacher a little girl on either side held her hands. You could not fail to see the teacher’s smile, as wholesome, fresh and winning as that June day itself.
At sight of the captain the boys in the group set up a joyful shout and some broke into a run.
“Hey, lookit! There’s cap’n!” rose exultant cries. “There’s Cap’n Briggs!”
Then the little girls came running, too; and all the children captured him by storm. Excited, the Airedale set up a clamorous barking.
The riot ended only when the captain had been despoiled of the peppermints he had provided for such contingencies. Meanwhile the teacher, as trimly pretty a figure as you could meet in many a day’s journeying, was standing by the gate, and with a little heightened flush of color was casting a look or two, as of expectancy, up at Snug Haven.
The old captain, smiling, shook his head.
“Not yet, Laura,” he whispered. “He’ll be here before night, though. You’re going to let me keep him a few minutes, aren’t you, before taking him away from me?”
She found no answer. Something about the captain’s smile seemed to disconcert her. A warm flush crept from her throat to her thickly coiled, lustrous hair. Then she passed on, down the shaded street; and as the captain peered after her, still surrounded by the children, a little moisture blurred his eyes.
“God has been very good to me in spite of all!” he murmured. “Very, very good, and ‘the best is yet to be’!”
He turned and was about to start back toward the house when the
cloppa-cloppa-clop
of hoofs along the street arrested his attention. Coming into view, past Laura and her group of scholars, an old-fashioned buggy, drawn by a horse of ripe years, was bearing down toward Snug Haven.
In the buggy sat an old, old man, wizen and bent. With an effort he reined in the aged horse. The captain heard his cracked tones on the still afternoon air:
“Pardon me, but can you tell me where Captain Briggs lives – Captain Alpheus Briggs?”
A babel of childish voices and the pointing of numerous fingers obliterated any information Laura tried to give. The old man, with thanks, clucked to his horse, and so the buggy came along once more to the front gate of Snug Haven. There it stopped.
Out of it bent a feeble, shrunken figure, with flaccid skin on deep-lined face, with blinking eyes behind big spectacles.
“Is that you, captain?” asked a shaking voice that pierced to the captain’s heart with a stab of poignant recollection. “Oh, Captain – Captain Briggs – is that you?”
The captain, turning pale, steadied himself by gripping at the whitewashed gate. For a moment his staring eyes met the eyes of the old, withered man in the buggy. Then, in strange, husky tones he cried:
“God above! It – it can’t be you, doctor? It can’t be – Dr. Filhiol?”
CHAPTER XV
TWO OLD MEN
“Yes, yes, it’s Dr. Filhiol!” the little old man made answer. “I’m Filhiol. And you – Yes, I’d know you anywhere. Captain Alpheus Briggs, so help me!”
He took up a heavy walking-stick, and started to clamber down out of the buggy. Captain Briggs, flinging open the gate, reached him just in time to keep him from collapsing in the road, for the doctor’s feeble strength was all exhausted with the long journey he had made to South Endicutt, with the drive from the station five miles away, and with the nervous shock of once more seeing a man on whom, in fifty years, his eyes had never rested.
“Steady, doctor, steady!” the captain admonished with a stout arm about him. “There, there now, steady does it!”
“You – you’ll have to excuse me, captain, for seeming so unmanly weak,” the doctor proffered shakily. “But I’ve come a long way to see you, and it’s such a hot day – and all. My legs are cramped, too. I’m not what I used to be, captain. None of us are, you know, when we pass the eightieth milestone!”
“None of us are what we used to be; right for you, doctor,” the captain answered with deeper meaning than on the surface of his words appeared. “You needn’t apologize for being a bit racked in the hull. Every craft’s seams open up a bit at times. I understand.”
He tightened his arm about the shrunken body, and with compassion looked upon the man who once had trod his deck so strongly and so well. “Come along o’ me, now. Up to Snug Haven, doctor. There’s good rocking-chairs on the piazza and a good little drop of something to take the kinks out. The best of timber needs a little caulking now and then. Good Lord above! Dr. Filhiol again – after fifty years!”
“Yes, that’s correct – after fifty years,” the doctor answered. “Here, let me look at you a moment!” He peered at Briggs through his heavy-lensed spectacles. “It’s you all right, captain. You’ve changed, of course. You were a bull of a man in those days, and your hair was black as black; – but still you’re the same. I – well, I wish I could say that about myself!”
“Nonsense!” the captain boomed, drawing him toward the gate. “Wait till you’ve got a little tonic under your hatches, ’midships. Wait till you’ve spliced the main brace a couple of times!”
“The horse!” exclaimed Filhiol, bracing himself with his stout cane. He peered anxiously at the animal. “I hired him at the station, and if he should run away and break anything – ”
“I’ll have Ezra go aboard that craft and pilot it into port,” the captain reassured him. “We won’t let it go on the rocks. Ezra, he’s my chief cook and bottle-washer. He can handle that cruiser of yours O. K.” The captain’s eyes twinkled as he looked at the dejected animal. “Come along o’ me, doctor. Up to the quarterdeck with you, now!”
Half-supported by the captain, old Dr. Filhiol limped up the white-sanded path. As he went, as if in a kind of daze he kept murmuring:
“Captain Briggs again! Who’d have thought I could really find him? Half a century – a lifetime – Captain Alpheus Briggs!”
“Ezra! Oh, Ezra!” the captain hailed. Carefully he helped the aged doctor up the steps. Very feebly the doctor crept up; his cane clumped hollowly on the boards. Ezra appeared.
“Aye, aye, sir?” he queried, a look of wonder on his long, thin face. “What’s orders, sir?”
“An old-time friend of mine has come to visit me, Ezra. It’s Dr. Filhiol, that used to sail with me, way back in the ’60’s. I’ve got some of his fancy-work stitches in my leg this minute. A great man he was with the cutting and stitching; none better. I want you men to shake hands.”
Ezra advanced, admiration shining from his honest features. Any man who had been a friend of his captain, especially a man who had embroidered his captain’s leg, was already taken to the bosom of his affections.
“Doctor,” said the captain, “this is Ezra Trefethen. When you get some of the grub from his galley aboard you, you’ll be ready to ship again for Timbuctoo.”
“I’m very glad to know you, Ezra,” the doctor said, putting out his left hand – the right, gnarled and veinous, still gripped his cane. “Yes, yes, we were old-time shipmates, Captain Briggs and I.” His voice broke pipingly, “turning again toward childish treble,” so that pity and sorrow pierced the heart of Alpheus Briggs. “It’s been a sad, long time since we’ve met. And now, can I get you to look out for my horse? If he should run away and hurt anybody, I’m sure that would be very bad.”
“Righto!” Ezra answered, his face assuming an air of high seriousness as he observed the aged animal half asleep by the gate, head hanging, spavined knees bent. “I’ll steer him to safe moorin’s fer you, sir. We got jest the handiest dock in the world fer him, up the back lane. He won’t git away from
me
, sir, never you fear.”
“Thank you, Ezra,” the doctor answered, much relieved. The captain eased him into a rocker, by the table. “There, that’s better. You see, captain, I’m a bit done up. It always tires me to ride on a train; and then, too, the drive from the station was exhausting. I’m not used to driving, you know, and – ”
“I know, I know,” Briggs interrupted. “Just sit you there, doctor, and keep right still. I’ll be back in half a twinkling.”
And, satisfied that the doctor was all safe and sound, he stumped into the house; while Ezra whistled to the dog and strode away to go aboard the buggy as navigating officer of that sorry equipage.
Even before Ezra had safely berthed the horse in the stable up the lane, bordered with sweetbrier and sumacs, Captain Briggs returned with a tray, whereon was a bottle of his very best Jamaica, now kept exclusively for sickness or a cold, or, it might be, for some rare and special guest. The Jamaica was flanked with a little jug of water, with glasses, lemons, sugar. At sight of it the doctor left off brushing his coat, all powdered with the gray rock-dust of the Massachusetts north shore, and smiled with sunken lips.
“I couldn’t have prescribed better, myself,” said he.
“Correct, sir,” agreed the captain. He set the tray on the piazza table. “I don’t hardly ever touch grog any more. But it’s got its uses, now and then. You need a stiff drink, doctor, and I’m going to join you, for old times’ sake. Surely there’s no sin in that, after half a century that we haven’t laid eyes on one another!”
Speaking, he was at work on the manufacture of a brace of drinks.
“It’s my rule not to touch it,” he added. “But I’ve got to make an exception to-day. Sugar, sir? Lemon? All O. K., then. Well, doctor, here goes. Here’s to – to – ”
“To fifty years of life!” the doctor exclaimed. He stood up, raising the glass that Briggs had given him. His eye cleared; for a moment his aged hand held firm.
“To fifty years!” the captain echoed. And so the glasses clinked, and so they drank that toast, bottoms-up, those two old men so different in the long ago, so very different now.
When Filhiol had resumed his seat, the captain drew a chair up close to him, both facing the sea. Through the doctor’s spent tissues a little warmth began to diffuse itself. But still he found nothing to say; nor, for a minute or two, did the captain. A little silence, strangely awkward, drew itself between them, now that the first stimulus of the meeting had spent itself. Where, indeed, should they begin to knit up so vast a chasm?
Each man gazed on the other, trying to find some word that might be fitting, but each muted by the dead weight of half a century. Filhiol, the more resourceful of wit, was first to speak.
“Yes, captain, we’ve both changed, though you’ve held your own better than I have. I’ve had a great deal of sickness. And I’m an older man than you, besides. I’ll be eighty-four, sir, if I live till the 16th of next October. A man’s done for at that age. And you’ve had every advantage over me in strength and constitution. I was only an average man, at best. You were a Hercules, and even to-day you look as if you might be a pretty formidable antagonist. In a way, I’ve done better than most, captain. Yes, I’ve done well in my way,” he repeated. “Still, I’m not the man you are to-day. That’s plain to be seen.”
“We aren’t going to talk about that, doctor,” the captain interposed, his voice soothing, as he laid a strong hand on the withered one of Filhiol, holding the arm of the rocker. “Let all that pass. I’m laying at anchor in a sheltered harbor here. What breeze bore you news of me? Tell me that, and tell me what you’ve been doing all this time. What kind of a voyage have you made of life? And where are you berthed, and what cargo of this world’s goods have you got in your lockers?”
“Tell me about yourself, first, captain. You have a jewel of a place here. What else? Wife, family, all that?”
“I’ll tell you, after you’ve answered my questions,” the captain insisted. “You’re aboard my craft, here, sitting on my decks, and so you’ve got to talk first. Come, come, doctor – let’s have your log!”
Thus urged, Filhiol began to speak. With some digressions, yet in the main clearly enough and even at times with a certain dry humor that distantly recalled his mental acuity of the long ago, he outlined his life-story.
Briefly he told of his retirement from the sea, following a wreck off the coast of Chile, in 1876 – a wreck in which he had taken damage from which he had never fully recovered – and narrated his establishing himself in practice in New York. Later he had had to give up the struggle there, and had gone up into a New Hampshire village, where life, though poor, had been comparatively easy.
Five years ago he had retired, with a few hundred dollars of pitiful savings, and had bought his way into the Physicians’ and Surgeons’ Home, at Salem, Massachusetts. He had never married; had never known the love of a wife, nor the kiss of children. His whole life, the captain could see, had been given unhesitatingly to the service of his fellow-men. And now mankind, when old age had paralyzed his skill, was passing him by, as if he had been no more than a broken-up wreck on the shores of the sea of human existence.
Briggs watched the old man with pity that this once trim and active man should have faded to so bloodless a shadow of his former self. Close-shaven the doctor still was, and not without a certain neatness in his dress, despite its poverty; but his bent shoulders, his baggy skin, the blinking of his eyes all told the tragedy of life that fades.
With a pathetic moistening of the eyes, the doctor spoke of this inevitable decay; and with a heartfelt wish that death might have laid its summons on him while still in active service, turned to a few words of explanation as to how he had come to have news again of Captain Briggs.
Chance had brought him word of the captain. A new attendant at the home had mentioned the name Briggs; and memories had stirred, and questions had very soon brought out the fact that it was really Captain Alpheus Briggs, who now was living at South Endicutt. The attendant had told him something more – and here the doctor hesitated, feeling for words.
“Yes, yes, I understand,” said Briggs. “You needn’t be afraid to speak it right out. It’s true, doctor. I
have
changed. G