Part 1

A Bad Penny

[Illustration: “‘IS THIS YOUR BOY?’” _See page 16_]

A BAD PENNY

BY JOHN T. WHEELWRIGHT

AUTHOR OF “A CHILD OF THE CENTURY,” “ROLLO’S JOURNEY TO CAMBRIDGE,” ETC.

Illustrated by F. G. ATTWOOD

[Illustration]

BOSTON L. C. PAGE & COMPANY 1901

Copyright, 1896, By Lamson, Wolffe, and Company.

_All rights reserved_

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE

“‘IS THIS YOUR BOY?’” _Frontispiece_

“MISS ELIZABETH SAT IN HIGH STATE AT HER TEA-TABLE” 12

“A PUFFY AND CONSEQUENTIAL-LOOKING MAN WAS DEACON FAIRBANKS” 46

ALICE 56

“THE BOAT WAS FLYING DOWN THE HARBOR” 64

“CHEEVER LOOKED THE MAN STRAIGHT IN THE EYE” 82

“SOME BOYS WHO NEVER WERE BOYS” 102

“JAMES TURNED AS HE HEARD THE NOISE” 119

“‘WE CANNOT BE TOO CAREFUL AT OUR AGE, MISS WOODBURY’” 137

“ANOTHER CUTLASS PIERCED THE AMERICAN’S BREAST” 154

A Bad Penny

I

With our modern habit of huddling together in cities, fair urban gardens, together with many other pleasant things of an age which loved elbow room, are now rare: yet in some of our New England seaboard towns, which commerce has deserted and the hands of modern improvers left unmarred, such gardens still exist, to rest the spirits of men, tired of living at lightning express rate.

In one of these unprosperous Massachusetts towns, Oldbury, on the broad High Street, there stands a great square brick house, with a broad comfortable lawn stretching down to a high fence. A pathway leads from the street, between two rows of giant elm-trees, to the front door of the house; an entrance dignified by a portico of wooden Corinthian columns painted white. The house itself is severely simple, as befits a mansion, built by a Yankee ship-owner, but there is about it a comfortable air of solidity, which makes it more attractive than the gimcrack villas, which our successful men build nowadays. It was evidently built to last, and to be lived in by the builder and the children who should come after him.

On a day in June, more than eighty years ago, this house was new, and its owner, Captain John Woodbury, was standing, his hand on the shoulder of his son, in the garden at the back surveying with pride his mansion. He was a short, square-built man, his legs were encased in knee-breeches and stockings, although long trousers had already begun to shroud the symmetry or cover the defects of most male legs. But the Captain’s legs were stout and well developed, and were stretched apart, as their owner stood gazing at his new house, as if he had been used to standing on the quarter-deck and to giving orders to his crew. His red, weather-beaten face, with its strong aquiline nose, firm mouth, and keen black eyes, indicated that he was a seafaring man; though his service in the land forces of the Provincial Congress in the war against the British entitled him to the title of Captain, as well as did his command of a ship.

There was no rollicking air of the sea-dog about the Captain; life had been a serious business to him, although he had been used to value it little in times of danger. New England, at the first part of this century, was a peculiar community; the old Puritan stock, unmixed with foreign blood, yet strengthened by founding a nation, was beginning to break through its narrow shell, but the old faith was strong in the land. The Captain, as he stood on his demesne, believed that he owned it deep down to an actual Hell where the wicked and unbelieving were in eternal torture, and that he read his title clear to his estate far up to Heaven, where a talent for leading hymns could not be hidden during the eternity of paradise.

A shrewd and skilful trader, as well as a navigator, was the Captain, and during the great wars with which Napoleon fretted the world, he had seized the opportunities offered to Americans to make money in the carrying trade, and the new house, at which he was gazing with pride, was the monument of his success in life; a success which had come too late to be shared in by his wife, who had died some dozen years before.

The light-hearted boy standing by his side did not notice the tears which filled his father’s eyes at the thought of the dear face whose image time had not dimmed in the sturdy Captain’s remembrance. Indeed, the boy’s laughing blue eyes, joyful mouth, and fair curly hair recalled the mother to the old man; and the love which he bore him was made the deeper and tenderer by the resemblance.

It had been her darling wish that her son should be educated for the ministry; for her father had been a distinguished divine in the last century. His name was handed down to posterity in a volume of sermons wherein unbaptized infants and unpredestined fared but badly. Young James had been intended from infancy for the church, by his father, and since his mother’s death the boy had been left by the Captain, during his voyages, in the charge of his unmarried sister, Elizabeth, who lived in a small house on a street in Oldbury leading from the aristocratic High Street.

The life of Aunt Elizabeth had not been made happy by her charge, nor had he been happy with her. The good lady was an uncompromising Puritan, rigid in bearing and severe in visage, whose life was spent in a constant struggle with the powers of dirt and ungodliness. She was such a noteworthy housewife that it was a saying in Oldbury that the ministers whom she entertained at tea might have eaten off the dining-room floor as well as off her polished mahogany. Of course James’ muddy boots sadly disturbed his aunt’s peace of mind. Indeed, the boy, after that brief period of infancy when he was declared by his female relatives to look like an angel from heaven, had little excepting his good looks to recommend him to his aunt. He did not, like a good boy, love his books, and he was continually in mischief, so that he gained with surprising facility the distinction of being the bad boy of the neighborhood. The ill-natured remarks which reached Miss Woodbury’s ears as to “old-maid’s children” made the affliction hard for the old lady to bear. The boy was continually wandering off to the wharves, where the ships were laying, so that he might chat with the old salts over the wonders of the world. There he climbed up the shrouds of the vessels and skylarked over the decks and into the holds, returning home late to tea, covered with an unpleasant mixture of tar and molasses, which never could be removed from his clothes, and which would only wear off from his hands by slow attrition. Or, he would be missing till late at night, and return declaring that his boat had run aground on some one of the shifting sandbars of the harbor and that he had been compelled to wait for the tide to float it off; but I doubt whether he was really the unskilful navigator that he claimed to be. The mantle of the Rev. James Cheever did not seem to have fallen upon his grandson. The world seemed to the boy to be a beautiful place, full of color and adventure, as indeed it was, at the time when the great Napoleon was pulling down the old kings and setting up his unroyal brothers upon ancient pedestals.

At church, the boy used to sit through the long dreary sermons, wriggling in his seat, greatly to the annoyance of his aunt, and a quiet smile would play over his mouth as he thought that he was destined by his family to occupy such a pulpit and to be as dreary and as long-winded as good old Dr. Canterbury. His mind was always full of schemes to avoid this painful predestined fate; of plans for stowing his little body away in the hold of a ship, to appear upon deck in a few days after the vessel had left port and take up the important duties of a cabin-boy. In that happy estate of life, there would be no more Latin lessons for him, and, best of all, no Aunt Elizabeth to scour his face, and no long sermons on the Sabbath, to say nothing of the escape from the lesser evils of prayer-meetings and Sabbath-school catechism.

More than once he had stolen towards the wharves with a bag of biscuits and a brown jug of water to sustain life while a stowaway, only to go back home when he remembered what his father’s sorrow would be upon returning from a long voyage to find his son gone. His father’s short stays at home in the intervals of his voyages were the pleasantest days of the boy’s life, for there were friendly though somewhat formal relations between the two Woodburys; and now the old gentleman had retired from seafaring and for the last year had been rearing the fine mansion at which he was gazing with such sorrowful pride. His son had been growing during this last year almost as rapidly as the new house, and now at fifteen was as tall and as good-looking a youngster as Oldbury could boast.

He stood by his father’s side that morning, a little ill at ease. He was nearly ready for college and would be sent up to Cambridge for examination in a few weeks, unless he could obtain his father’s consent that he should go to sea. All day long he had had the words upon his tongue’s end, which should frame the arguments by which his father would be persuaded to relieve him from the dreadful life of a scholar and let him take to his natural element,--the water.

But as he looked at the Captain’s stern face, it became every moment more difficult to broach the subject, and his arguments became more and more unconvincing to himself. Finally he mustered up courage to speak:

“Father,” he said in a faltering voice, “I wish to have a talk with you. You know that I am almost prepared for college?”

“Mr. Dillaway tells me that he _hopes_ you can pass your examinations, but that you have been very idle. It was not by idleness and skylarking that your good grandfather became such an ornament to his profession, James,” said his father, patting the boy’s shoulder as he reproved him, to show him that the words were meant in kindness.

“I know that, sir,” said James; “I am anything but a good scholar, and indeed, sir, I do not think that it is worth while for you to waste so much money upon my education.”

The Captain looked for a moment into his son’s face, and then said with a gesture of command: “Come into my room, my son, we must talk this matter over.”

The interior of the house was like that of other good houses of the period; a long broad hall stretched through it from the front door to the back; from this hall rose a staircase with carved and twisted balustrade; on either side of this hall were two large square rooms, the two sunny back rooms being for a dining-room and living room, while the two front parlors were kept sacred to dark respectability, samplers and furniture covered with hair-cloth, and were rarely used except for weddings, funerals, or other entertainments. They went through the back door into the sitting-room, in the corner of the house overlooking the garden. Over the high, white mantelpiece hung the picture of the Captain’s last ship, the _Arethusa_, a gem of nautical art, depicting the staunch craft, ploughing her way under full sail, through waves of gray-green paint as regular as the teeth of a saw. The carved teak-wood furniture gave the room a romantic charm, and the great lips of two blue china vases told to the receptive ears of the boy, sweet tales of the remote earth, just as the large pink shells sang of the Spanish Main. In a sandal-wood chest in one corner were rich stuffs and laces which the Captain had brought with him from the voyage to France for the wife whom he found dead on his return. The boy’s wife should wear them some day, the good old man thought as he packed them away. They were too sacred for any one else, though Aunt Elizabeth knew of their existence and coveted them; for even a Yankee old maid is a daughter of Eve.

In another corner of the room was a great iron box studded with heavy nails and fastened by a padlock, in which the Captain kept his valuables. James always looked at this with awe. He supposed it to be full of gold and silver and precious stones, and that his father was rich beyond the dreams of avarice. I could not in many pages describe all the contents of this wonderful room; it would be as hard as to enumerate the contents of a boy’s pocket; but I must not pass by the musket which the Captain carried through the war of the Revolution, nor the cutlasses which were in a rack in the corner, with the pistols and a great brass blunderbuss used for repelling pirates from the _Arethusa_, nor the curious old decanters filled with New England rum or port wine, which were in a little locker in a corner of the room.

On stormy nights, James, as he sat with his father in this room poring over his Latin grammar, would fancy that they were sailing through the Caribbean Sea, and that a pirate would soon heave in sight and a desperate conflict ensue. Pretty thoughts these, for a budding parson; and dreadful to relate, the boy quite as often dreamed that they were pirates under the “Jolly Roger,” and he would look earnestly at his father’s wrinkled, stern face and close-shut mouth, and wonder how he had acquired the gold supposed to be in the strong box. It would be but a passing thought, however, of which he was ashamed the next minute as he saw his father turning over the leaves of the little Bible which he knew to have been his mother’s.

“The truth is, father, I do not want to go to college, I want to go to sea; I am not fit to be a minister, and oh,--I cannot be one,” blurted out James as soon as they were seated in the Captain’s room.

There was silence for a moment, then the Captain, clearing his throat and wiping his gold-bowed spectacles with a great red bandana handkerchief, spoke: “James, you know my wishes and those of your dear mother, whom you do not remember.”

Here the old man removed his spectacles and rubbed them again quite violently with the bandana, while James considerately turned his face away that he might not observe the emotion which he had learned to expect whenever his father mentioned his mother’s name. “She dedicated you, James, as an infant to the service of the Lord, and it is with this end in view that I have had you educated. And now, just as I am on the point of sending you to the college at Cambridge, you tell me that you wish to go to sea.”

The boy looked down at the ground under his father’s stern, sad gaze and tried to speak. “I do not believe that I can ever stand up in a pulpit and preach long sermons, and I am very sure that I should not enjoy it,” he finally stammered.

“Enjoy it!” interrupted his father, sternly. “Do you think that you were put into this world for the purpose of enjoying yourself? To think of your speaking of a holy calling as if it were a game with the devil’s books. Why, boy,” he continued, “I have labored all these years that you might have a higher place in the world than mine has been. I had no advantages of education, my parents were poor and could not give them to me, I have led a hard rough life from boyhood up, and have lived often with wicked men. I might have been wicked myself had it not been for your mother, who led me to the faith and for her unseen presence which has blessed me since her death. Through my long voyages in the solitude in which a master of a vessel lives, I have always thought that I would save you from the wretchedness of a sailor’s life. It is a dog’s life, lad.”

“Sailors are not hypocrites,” said the boy, petulantly. “They like their work better than they would any other, and they do it well because they like it. If I am made a minister, I shall be a hypocrite.”

“My son,” interrupted the Captain, bringing his hand down sharply upon the table, “you are talking very foolishly and wrongly. In a few weeks, your teacher informs me, you will be ready for college, and so far I may compel you to go in the career I have marked out for you. I do not choose that you shall go before the mast. Of course, it is in your power to disregard my opinion and disobey me. I trust, however, that your love for me and for the memory of your mother will prevent your taking a wilful course. I wish that I knew enough to help you in your work, my boy.”

“You don’t know how stupid the Latin grammar is, father. I believe that I can learn a great deal more by seeing the world than by committing such stuff as this to memory.” As he spoke, James opened his dog’s-eared Latin grammar which lay upon the table and showed his father a formidable table of irregular verbs. The Captain started to put on his spectacles to look at the book, but stopping as if an idea occurred to him, he laid them upon the table. He saw that he was being craftily led from the region of the known to the unknown. As an honest, truth-telling man, he would have had to confess that the process of acquiring a knowledge of the Latin tongue did not seem to him an inspiring pursuit.

“James,” he said, after shutting the Latin grammar, “I shall not discuss with you about the details of a matter of which I know nothing. The education which produced your good grandfather, James Cheever, after whom you were named, is not to be criticised by an ignorant old sea-captain like me.”

“What is one man’s meat, is another man’s poison, father,” replied the boy, whose delicate features took something of the old man’s severe expression, as the two contended in argument. “I’m afraid that I have only my grandfather’s name, not his disposition. It makes me sick to stay in doors moping over books: I take no pleasure in them. I do not think that I could skate very well if every motion I took was disagreeable to me. Now, Tom Gaston, who went to Cambridge last year, is a good boy and loves his books, but he always ties granny knots when he reefs a sail; and his chest is as flat as a flounder’s. He would make a good parson. Do you wish me to try to be like him?”

“Go to your room, James,” interrupted his father, sternly; for Tom Gaston was his pet abomination and his parental authority had been too long questioned. “You have had my decision, and I will have no more talk about it.”

James bowed respectfully to his father (if he had been born sixty years later, I fear that he would have slammed the door), and went slowly to his room.

The June day had lost its beauty for him. What was the loveliness of nature to a poor chap whose future life must be passed in libraries, at the odious task of writing sermons in sixteen parts, or, worst of all, in delivering these sermons after he had written them, to a nodding congregation twice a Sunday for fifty-two weeks every year, to say nothing of the Friday prayer-meetings? Could a man, who in spirit was navigating the Spanish Main, in the body discourse for an hour upon a Scriptural text? He had gone into the conflict with his father with little hope and much fear. He had long pondered over what he should say to him and rehearsed the arguments to be used on that momentous occasion; but when he came to face the dreaded authority, the arguments disintegrated, and he felt that his father had got the better of him. Even the irregular verbs had failed--well, to college he must go--worse luck!

II

That evening, Miss Elizabeth sat in high state at her tea-table, behind the silver service, which was at once her pride and her greatest responsibility. The possession of a silver service was, of course, a badge of the greatest respectability, and Miss Elizabeth did not allow one jot of the dignity consequent thereon to be abated. She was a likeness of her brother done in vinegar. She had his bright eyes, prominent nose, and firmly closed mouth, but her skin was very white and fair. Her hair, on her depressed, blue-veined temples, was done into rigid curls, as formalized as the waves on an English lawyer’s wig. What a wonderful crystallization a formal curl is! Compare the Sun-god’s careless, waving locks with Aunt Elizabeth’s gray corkscrew curls! Her figure was very slight, and her dress gray and formal. She was exquisitely neat in appearance, and her hands and feet were small and pretty, and she was very proud of them. Poor Aunt Elizabeth! She was proud of many things, but there had been little joy in her solitary life.

The elderly ladies in Oldbury declared that Elizabeth Woodbury had never had a love affair, but how did they know the secrets of the withered virgin’s heart? Among certain kindly women, there is a saying prevalent that every woman of thirty, be she fair or ill-favored, has received at least one offer of marriage. Let us hope that this may be so, however improbable it seems to those who dwell in our Eastern States, where the fair sex so greatly preponderates; for it is pleasant to think that every heart has been at least once warmed by the sunshine of love.

[Illustration: “MISS ELIZABETH SAT IN HIGH STATE AT HER TEA-TABLE.”]

For aught any one knew, Aunt Elizabeth may have been ill-treated by a faithless lover, or she may have requested any number of disconsolate suitors to endeavor to forget her. Certainly there was in her chaste apartment, in an upper bureau drawer, carefully covered with an Indian silk handkerchief, a miniature of a young man in a British uniform: James had found this one day, when rummaging the drawers for pennies. On discovering her nephew at this outrageous piece of intrusion, Aunt Elizabeth had boxed his ears soundly, and her eyes were red when next he saw her.

But as she sat at the supper-table this evening over her shining silver service, she seemed far removed from the darts of Cupid.

The table was spread with a good New England supper; an excellent informal meal, too seldom enjoyed in these days of late dinners and borrowed English manners. Against the rich gloss of the Spanish mahogany table, the silver gleamed, as no silver service can shine unless rubbed by the hands of a gentlewoman.