IX
JAMES was called home to Oldbury by the news that his father was ill. The fickle New England spring had succeeded the rigorous winter, and the Captain had been wooed out of doors without his great-coat on a fine May morning. A sudden change of the wind to the eastward had chilled him through before he could get back to his house. As a result of this exposure, he was taken down with a severe attack of congestion of the lungs, and Miss Woodbury, being much alarmed at his condition, sent at once for his son. It was a journey of fear and sickening anticipation for the poor lad, but before he reached Oldbury his father’s condition had changed for the better, and when James came to the old man’s bedside the disease was spent. The boy was allowed to see his father for a moment, and then hurried from the room by the doctor. He was not to see that kind old face for many a day.
Aunt Elizabeth accepted her brother’s illness as a special mark of Divine displeasure at the manifold shortcomings of the family, the State, and the Nation, but she bore up wonderfully under the affliction. Now that the danger was over, she was secretly delighted in the chance given her to wear herself out in nursing and watching.
Our New England women are always at their best when Fate has pulled the man of the house down by the heels and he lies propped up in bed, a meek receptacle for gruels and doses.
“Your father was very ill indeed, James,” she said to her nephew when he came out of the sick-room; “I thought that he was going off in the same way his great-uncle Abraham did. He was very feverish, and he complained of a weight upon his chest. Before the doctor came I gave him some whiskey and water and put him to bed. I saved his life, I think.”
“I’ve no doubt you did, Aunt Elizabeth. You are a wonderful nurse!”
“The nurses save more lives than the doctors destroy, James,” rejoined his aunt, in a triumphant tone. “Now come to tea; I have some Sally Lund cake. But now that you are a man at college I suppose that you despise such things.”
James’ anxiety about his father had driven from his mind the promise which he had made to his uncle to restore the buried silver; but now that he was relieved from the weight of apprehension, the responsibility of his foolish promise began to weigh upon him.
All through tea he was laying out his plan of campaign. Under cover of the night he could dig up the silver, and then take it to his room and polish it up. The next night he could return it to the Deacon’s sideboard.
After the evening meal was over he went into the sitting-room which commanded a view of the Deacon’s lilac-bush and dining-room window. He took out the dirty plan which his uncle had given him and looked up on it the probable burial-place of the silver.
There was a dash of romance in the adventure which stirred his blood mightily. The digging up of buried treasure suggested tales of Captain Kidd and Blackbeard, and a dirty map, indicating the burial-place, was always bequeathed by dying pirates to their favorites.
It was not at all unlikely that his uncle had seen as stirring things as had ever Captain Kidd. Was he not a licensed corsair? At that moment he might be capturing some rich argosy on the high seas.
But after the treasure was dug up, the romance seemed to evaporate from the prospective adventure.
It was no easy matter to restore the tankards and spoons to their old places on the sideboard—and they must be cleaned too.
After sixteen years’ burial, much elbow-grease and white powder would be needed.
Oldbury people went to bed early—modern life has taken all the witchery out of midnight, and the ghosts of to-day have no unmolested hours for exercise; but our grandfathers believed in Poor Richard’s maxims, and were all snugly in bed by nine o’clock.
James, at that hour, was stealing from the woodshed back of his house, with a pickaxe and spade. There was no light in the Deacon’s house, and the night was dark enough for any evil deed.
He began digging at a short distance from the lilac-bush, keeping a shrewd watch all the time. The soft loam yielded readily to the spade, and it soon struck against a hard substance. It proved to be a solid tankard encrusted with soil. He dug rapidly, unearthing at nearly every spadeful some piece of the stolen plate, until he had completed his uncle’s list given him with the map. And sorry enough looking was the treasure after its long hiding.
The boy whipped off his coat and tied the silver up in it. Then he shovelled back the dirt, placing the turf over the gash in the lawn.
His uncle’s secret had descended to him, and he had the weight of this old sin upon him.
He sped over to the woodshed with it, put away his tools, then up to his room with the silver. He threw this bundle upon the bed and lit his candle. It was quick work to scrape the dirt from the silver and wash it. The tankards were heavy and fine, one with a cipher and the other with some coat-of-arms, and the silver service and spoons bore the crest of the same heraldic device. The silver was tarnished, of course, but the white powder, abstracted from his aunt’s pantry, soon made it look respectable enough. Then he wrapped each article up in a piece of paper and stored the whole away in a carpet-bag, which he put upon a shelf in his closet.
“The old family skeleton is in its right place,” he thought, as he locked the door. Then he went to his chamber window and looked out into the night. All was still save for the wind sighing through the pine-trees back of the house. He must enter the Deacon’s home on the next night and restore the skeleton. How was it to be done?
The door into the Deacon’s back kitchen was fastened with a bolt. Hannah, the maid of all work, went to prayer-meeting in the afternoon and the kitchen was easy of access. Could he not in her absence unscrew the washer and file off the screws, so that it would be easy to open the door by lifting the latch and shoving hard?
In a few minutes he could creep into the dining-room, place the silver upon the buffet, and retire, as innocent a house-breaker as ever lived. It was an adventure not without risk, but it was a duty he owed his family, he thought, to make this restitution, and then too, he had promised his uncle that he would do it.
Now that he had the silver actually in hand, the risk seemed to him to be great. How could he account for having possession of it should it be found upon him? And, oh, awful thought! what if he should be caught with it after he had broken into the house!
He undressed slowly as he pondered this problem, and he went to bed to dream that the tankards were upon his heart, slowly growing in weight until they bade fair to crush out his life. He awoke with a start from this nightmare to greet a new dawn of a day which he wished would be forty-eight hours long. How quickly the sun seemed to him to speed over the heavens, to bring all too soon the darkness under which he and other thieves must work!
In the afternoon he saw Hannah Lang, the maid of all work, leave the Deacon’s kitchen, decorously attired for the Thursday prayer-meeting. She would be absent an hour. As she passed from his vision, he took out a file and screw-driver from his pocket. The kitchen door was shut, but not locked, and the coast was clear. It did not take long to remove the screws, take out their fangs, if I may be allowed the expression, and replace them, so that the washer hung by a thread or two.
A breach was ready in the enemy’s wall when he chose to enter by it. There was nothing for him to do, except to wait until dark. So far, all had gone well, and well begun was half done. His reflections were interrupted by his aunt’s voice.
“Your father is sleeping,” she said in the whisper adopted by women in houses where some one is ill. “Sleeping like a child. Dear me! what an anxious time I have had. Poor John, he never could take any care of himself. At his age too,—why he is ten years older than my father was when he died and every one called him ‘Old Squire Woodbury.’ Perhaps they call me an old woman too.”
“I never heard any one say anything so impolite,” said James.
“I am old, my dear boy, and that is a fault that time does not cure. Life slips away. Yes, I am an old woman, James. You know that I was in Boston making a visit, a young girl of seventeen, when the city was seized by General Washington’s army. I was staying with old Aunt Barrett. She went with the other Tories to Halifax when the British evacuated the town. I was caught by the siege and stayed with her till she went on board the king’s ship, and then Brother John, who was in one of the regiments outside, took care of me when the Americans took the town.”
“Then you remember the battle of Bunker Hill, Aunt Elizabeth?”
“Remember it, James; it is a day I never shall forget in this world.”
The days of the siege in Boston had been the happiest of her life. A patriot maid she was, in the midst of the enemies of her country, but love laughs at political opinions as well as at locksmiths. In the merry-makings and theatricals with which the British garrison whiled away the long winter, Aunt Elizabeth’s love-story began, and it ended on the 17th of June. Lieutenant Pennington was leading his men up Breed’s Hill as carelessly as if he were walking down Bond Street, twirling the tassel of his sword as he marched. The raw American Militia were despised by the trained soldiers. He fell at the first volley, and love was done for Elizabeth Woodbury. The poor old maid’s withered face lighted up at the memory of those halcyon days. The tragic ending made the romance the dearer and more sacred to her. She quietly left the room; and if her secret were told, who knows but that the miniature was taken from its resting-place, amid the faded finery of her girlhood?