Clearing Weather

Weather

CHAPTER I

HOAR FROST

The bent plum trees set in the square of rough grass behind the Blackbird Inn, were as white on this mild February morning as though it were May. Ordinarily their branches were as black with age as they were twisted by sea winds; for beyond the hawthorne hedge was the marsh, across which gales from the north and east could sweep unhindered; and beyond the marsh was the sea. It was neither blossom nor snow which covered the wide-reaching boughs in that hazy sunshine, but a gossamer-light veil of frost which lay upon every branch and twig, and penciled each with a delicate tracery of white. Nicholas Drury opening the door which gave upon the garden, could see that the rime-covered boughs were not stirred by any breath of wind and that even the brown expanse of the marsh lay unrippled by any breeze in the stillness of the winter dawn. Across the tops of the dun and yellow, frost-tipped grasses, he could see the slate-gray water with white riffles where the slow swells curved and broke about Pelman Island and along the rocky reach of Branscomb Head. The horizon was faintly blurred, as though the mist which had lain over the garden all night and had gathered in airy lines of white upon the trees and grass, was now returning whence it had come.

He stood upon the doorstone, a tall boy of nineteen, well knit, with brown hair which, at the back of his head, never lay quite smooth. He was looking across the garden with a glance vague, at first, then growing intent with surprise and curiosity. Finally he passed his hand across his eyes as though to rub away the obscuring weariness of the night just past, and looked again.

He saw that the grass below the plum trees was covered with frost also, each yellow blade beaded with the same perishable whiteness which a touch would destroy. A touch had indeed dislodged it at regular intervals; for all across the lawn leading up from the direction of the marsh was a line of striding footsteps. So faintly were they printed upon that shining surface that at one moment the boy was quite sure he could make out each separate footfall reaching from the far corner of the hedge to the little bow window of the room out of which he had come; yet at the next instant it seemed as though the marks were only the shadows of tree and hedge, or merely a deceiving trick of the sparkling rime. He could only stare and wonder and think, first that he saw them and then that he did not.

Behind him the house was slowly awaking from the troubled slumber of night to the work of the day. Footsteps and voices were going up and down in the passage, and in the stone-flagged kitchen where a lattice window was thrown open. But the voices, for the most part, spoke in whispers, and the footsteps either hesitated or hurried. Once there was the sharp clatter of a plate dropped upon a stone floor, and a man’s startled exclamation cut short in the middle as though in recollection of the great need for quiet. Certainly the sounds had little to do with the bustling arrival of travelers. There was nothing of the laughter, the hum of voices, the orders called and the hastening feet which belonged to the ordinary humming activity of a busy inn.

Although it was well situated with its front door upon the very edge of the post road leading north from Branscomb, and its back garden looking upon a broad blue reach of sea, custom was no longer very great at the Blackbird Inn. Travelers indeed were very few anywhere during these difficult times in the years just following the war of the Revolution. Once the highway leading north from Boston had been busy with mail riders and coaches, with packhorses and creaking carts, for Branscomb was no inconsiderable port and had been known for its harbor and its ship building throughout the colony of Massachusetts. Yet to-day there was nothing of this, only the stirring of uneasy feet and a sense of danger and disquiet in every sound drifting out from door or window.

Suddenly a man spoke in the passage. His voice was deep, with, under its low tone, a wavering edge of desperate anxiety.

He has passed safely through the night, but what is the day to bring?

The more softly spoken words of a woman followed:

Ah, what can save us now?

Nicholas, hearing them so close to the door called, though almost below his breath.

Phoebe, Caleb, see what is here.

They came out together upon the step, Caleb Harmon, a broad-shouldered man with a gray head, but with the ruddy open face of undiminished health and strength. Phoebe, with her smooth hair, placid, gray eyes, and gentle expression was an odd contrast to his breezy vigor.

There is a storm brewing, she said as she stepped outside.

She was shading her eyes with her hand to look across the garden, for the sun, just then, was bright behind the haze. Then both were intently silent for a moment, for it was plain that they also were staring at the footprints in the white frost.

As I live, Nicholas heard Phoebe say to herself in a wondering whisper, here is good fortune come to this house at last. I always knew that it must return out of the sea, whither it was carried away.

Good fortune? repeated Caleb. You are over-hopeful, Phoebe, to read any sign thus. It is high time that some better chance should come our way; but it is my belief that all good luck has fled from this household forever.

Nicholas looked down at his shabby breeches, then glanced up quickly at the window of the room just overhead before he voiced his agreement with Caleb.

It is true that we have need of good fortune, he said, but how can it come out of the marsh where no man dwells and from the sea where no ship lies? It is more than likely that these are the footsteps of a thief who stole up to look in at the window and went trudging away again when he saw how little there was within.

If it was some one peering in, said Caleb, his anxious tone lightening a little, I believe that I can tell just what it was that he saw. If he came toward morning, as the sharpness of these footmarks would seem to show, if he stood close to the window—and look, he must have done so for there are the two prints of boot soles in the soft earth of Phoebe’s tulip bed—if he pressed his face against the glass, I think he observed a young gentleman with rumpled hair, sitting beside a table all set about with ledgers, accounts and legal documents. And he saw that the same gentleman had grown so weary of adding and subtracting figures which all told the same sorry tale, that he had laid before him a fair sheet of paper and, with dawn coming in at the window and with the candle flame burning colorless in the daylight, he was drawing the picture of a ship.

Did—did you see? stammered Nicholas, and then chuckled in spite of himself, in unison with Caleb’s deep rumble of laughter.

I would require small wit to see from your hollow eyes that you had not slept, and I would need even less to guess whither your thoughts would stray before the night was over.

Nicholas colored with the quick flush of one whose feelings are apt to be cherished secrets and who is startled no matter how close a friend it is who guesses them. To cover the confusion which his words had produced Caleb Harmon added easily:

And it seems that this chance of good fortune which Phoebe has foreseen for all of us, is about to take its flight.

The sun had come out for a brief moment through the haze, and under its warmth the delicate, short-lived hoar frost was already disappearing. Only beneath the plum trees and in the shadow of the hedge were the footprints still visible. The three stood watching as these also slowly grew indistinct and vanished. Even after Caleb and Phoebe had gone inside the house, Nicholas still stood staring at the place where the marks had been, as though he would conjure them back again.

The other two had been summoned by a rapping at the main door of the inn which opened so close to the highroad that the swaying, four-horsed post chaises would sometimes draw up with such a flourish that the leaders’ prancing hoofs would be almost upon the doorstep. But since there had been no rumbling of wheels this was perhaps only a sailor come, even this early, up from the wharves where ships lay idle in these unprosperous times and through the town, where men without employment walked the streets. He would be jingling two or three sixpences and copper pennies in his pocket and would come to spend what little he had upon Phoebe Harmon’s far-famed cookery and her home-brewed ale. But no, it was not even so humble a customer as this, for Nicholas could hear Phoebe say to her husband :

Make haste to open the door. It is John Ewing from the shipyards and he will wake the master with his knocking.

The grinding bolt was pushed back and the door was swung open, with John Ewing’s quavering voice sounding at almost the same instant.

I came to ask for news, Caleb, of good Mr. Thomas Drury. What is there to tell of him to-day?

Nothing but what you heard yesterday, Caleb Harmon could be heard answering. The doctor was here at sunset and said that he was faring better than for a few days past. He says that there is now but little danger that our dear Master Thomas Drury should—go away from us.

No, no, I do not mean that, John Ewing’s voice was growing higher with anxiety, yet he was evidently trying to subdue it to a tone more proper for that house of sickness. We heard that in the village yesterday,—that Mr. Drury would recover. Abner Hoxie, the town crier, was calling it in the market place just before the curfew. I came now to ask of Mr. Drury’s affairs, of work in the shipyards, of all those things which concern us and our welfare. What tidings are there of them?

I can tell you nothing, Caleb answered briefly. And do you think it is quite fitting that you should come to this place from which the shadow of death has only just passed, that you should be hastening hither so soon to be prating of money and the building of ships, and of all your own small hopes and fears?

It—it was not I alone, it was all of them, back yonder in the town, who bade me come, stammered John Ewing. It is rumored that the work in the shipyards is to come to an end, and if it is truly so, then half of Branscomb must starve. These are desperate times, Caleb Harmon. If Master Thomas Drury fails us, whither can we turn? What can save us now?

The man’s trembling voice, rising high in terror, had uttered the same words which Phoebe Harmon had spoken fearfully in the passage not half an hour before. It was a direful question which found its echo also in Nicholas Drury’s heart, as he walked in from the garden to that small room just inside, where, as Caleb Harmon had guessed, he had spent the whole night poring over accounts and ledgers, all of whose balances added up to one result—ruin. The cool freshness from the marsh and the sea streamed in past him through the open door; but could neither blow away the whole of the close heaviness of the air within, nor dispel the cloud of doubt and danger which seemed to hang everywhere.

The boy’s uncle, Mr. Thomas Drury, had lain for some weeks, ill to the point of death, in the little bedchamber just above, under the eaves. He had been lodged there, rather than in the best room at the front of the inn, for here the sound of the sea could come in through the window. Drifting up through the town, there came also the pleasant noise of busy hammers from the shipyards of which Thomas Drury was the well-loved master.

He had lain in a stupor for the most part of the time, only occasionally opening his eyes, and saying to Dolly Drury, the younger sister of Nicholas, his deft and devoted nurse, That sound must not come to an end. Nothing matters if only that may go on. Tell Nicholas. Have you surely told Nicholas?

He had spent his whole strength and had come near to giving his life also, that the work in those shipyards might continue. He was the great person of the town, since nearly all of the men worked in his boat yards, or made sails and ropes to rig the vessels which he built and which were famous all up and down New England. Such ships as he sent to sea on his own ventures were manned, also, by those seafaring men of Branscomb who could not stop ashore. Although he was the owner of houses and lands besides his shipyards, he had not gathered a great surplus of money wealth. He was content to be master of a thriving industry, to be loved by all of those whom he employed and to be looked upon, at the time the war of the Revolution began, as the firm upholder of the prosperity of that whole community.

It had been at the very outbreak of hostilities that the heaviest blow fell, as though with direct aim, upon his fortunes and upon the shipyards of Branscomb. Although Nicholas was then many years younger, he was never to forget that night of wild uproar when a force of British ships had dropped anchor in the harbor and, having picked up a fisherman in his small boat, had sent by him the command, Let all the dwellers in this town leave it within the hour, for it is to be destroyed by cannon fire. In those days the conventions of war demanded such a warning before bombardment could begin.

The stout-hearted Branscomb folk had refused to flee, even though the force of Minute Men belonging to that region had, by chance, been drawn away to a muster at the north end of the county, leaving the town almost unprotected. The shipwrights who remained had snatched up weapons of every sort and had offered obstinate battle. Nicholas, only eight years old then, had stood at the window of an upper room in that big house beyond the town where he and his sister dwelt with his uncle, and had watched the red flare of burning boats along the waterside and had listened to the steady boom—boom—boom which meant destruction at every thundering report.

At last, quite unnoticed in the general confusion, he had slipped out of the house and had taken his way along the road to the village, hurrying ever faster and faster, with the light of the fires growing brighter and the noise of the fighting louder as he came near. He had found his way through empty streets, to the rocky open ridge which looked down upon the shipyards.

The fire from the British vessels seemed to be aimed at that special space of ground just below him, where cannon shots were destroying derricks and hoists and were dropping amongst the piles of lumber with one splintering crash after another. On account of the choppy sea in the harbor, however, much of the marksmanship went wide, and struck harmlessly along the rocky shore of Branscomb Head. Nicholas saw more than one big, round iron ball go skipping and bounding past him, as he crouched below a great sheltering boulder and saw a band of sailors, who had landed from the ships, come pouring over the wharves. But there were men with rifles posted in the shelter of boats and scaffolding, who met the invaders with such a volley of well-directed bullets that they faltered and stood wavering. The broad-shouldered, burly officer at their head roared to them to Come on, there is but a handful to withstand you.

Of a sudden, not a rifle ball but a stout oak billet thrown by who knew what hand, came hurtling through the fire-lit space and dropped him like a stunned bullock. His men, without their leader, broke and ran in every direction, two of them even scrambling up the ridge and stumbling past close to Nicholas in the dark.

Too much like Lexington, the boy heard one mutter to the other, as he stopped for a moment to look back at the smoke and lights and the seething turmoil below.

Thomas Drury, steady and unruffled, had gathered his men, and had succeeded in mounting and loading four of the serpentine cannon which had been brought the day before to arm the vessel then building. With these he now opened fire, hastening the retreat of the landing party to a wild rout and finally, by well-aimed shots, even forcing the retirement of the war vessels lying in the harbor. Yet before their departure, the British had managed to cut loose the vessels at the Drury wharf, five of them, goodly ships and new built, almost ready to take the sea as privateers. The enemy towed them out to sea and scuttled them, and then made sail for Boston, leaving the Branscomb shipyards full of splintered wreckage and with the vessel on the ways pierced by three great holes through her deck and hull.

Not until the last sailor had taken refuge upon his ship, not until the blazing fires had begun to die down, did Nicholas have knowledge of anything save the surging tumult below. Then he became suddenly aware that he was not alone in his lookout upon that rock-strewn ridge. Only a few yards away, almost in the shelter of the same boulder, a very tall man was standing, so intent upon watching what was going forward that he was as unconscious of Nicholas as the boy had been of him. An instant’s upflaring of one of the fires had lit his face for a moment, a darkly handsome face with high color, great slanting eyebrows, and with, just now, an expression of fierce and exulting triumph. To see him standing so close, to know that he was one whom his uncle had called a friend, Darius Corland, the man second in importance to Thomas Drury himself in that neighborhood of town and farming country—it was this which frightened the peering boy far more than the thudding impact of cannon balls. He crept noiselessly away and for a long time kept the secret of that sudden vision untold to any one. It had passed so quickly, had so resembled a bad dream and was so little to be explained, that he could make nothing of it.

The brief and sudden raid had resulted in no very great loss of life, and the next morning every man able to lift a hammer was at work again. Thomas Drury was directing as calmly as though the brush with the British had scarcely broken his night’s sleep. The vessel on the stocks was ready for sea hardly a week beyond the appointed time and went forth duly to fight for her country.

She sank her good share of King George’s shipping, Caleb Harmon loved to tell Nicholas. She had accounted for a round dozen before she went down off the Bahamas, three months before Yorktown.

Such destruction, however, as that single night’s work of the British ships had accomplished, was a very great loss to fall upon a single owner. We have declared war, we must endure its fortunes, Thomas Drury said and went forward with his building. With half his best men under arms, with his gathered wealth growing less and less, he still managed to send ships to sea through the whole of the Revolution. It was not so much the hazards and destruction of warfare which had wrecked his prosperity, it was the disastrous period which came afterwards. In the efforts of a war-torn country to establish government on the basis of that new freedom which no man was used to and which many loudly doubted, the first results were confusion, disharmony and dire poverty for a great mass of the people in the new United States.

Valiant Thomas Drury, looking daily more worn and pale, kept a brave face and labored early and late in his countinghouse down beside the wharves, striving to keep disaster at bay, and to provide work for those men who, in those difficult times, felt that their only support was in him.

Nicholas, now almost nineteen, labored as best he could to help his uncle; but in those intricate matters of dwindling money, of debts and mortgages and bills of exchange he had, as he knew himself, only the smallest of understanding.

He observed anxiously that Mr. Thomas Drury held long councils with a certain man of law, Joseph Ryall, and with his one-time friend, Darius Corland. Once the boy had tried to tell his uncle of seeing that same Mr. Corland watching the fight from the hill, but Thomas Drury had made light of such a tale.

You must have been mistaken, he insisted. Darius Corland tells me that he was away in Salem that night and arrived home too late to be of assistance to us.

Whatever were the results of those conferences, Thomas Drury wore always the same look of steady courage, had always the same words of hope and determination to the very end.

That end came upon a stormy evening when he tarried so late in the countinghouse that Nicholas went to seek what delayed his home-coming. He found him all alone in the great empty room, the candles burning low upon the table full of papers, sunk down in his big chair with his head upon his breast. His eyes were closed, his cheeks were flaming with fever and he was muttering to himself. Even the broken and confused words of delirium bore the same burden. We must go on.

Some passing infection had taken fierce hold upon his worn frame and was wreaking its unchecked havoc.

With the help of Caleb Harmon, the foreman of yards, Nicholas carried his uncle out of the dark, chilly countingroom. The big house beyond the town was out of reach on that night of wind and rain, so Thomas Drury was conveyed to the Blackbird Inn, there to be nursed through long, dangerous weeks by the devoted care of Phoebe Harmon and of Dolly Drury. The fever waxed and waned, relenting a little, then falling upon him with redoubled fury, seeming bound to destroy him in spite of all that could be done by those who so greatly loved him.

Meanwhile, that ruin which he had so courageously kept at a distance was now marching forward in terrible array. It was left for Nicholas to deal as best he could with the debts and contracts, with all the disheartening reckoning of that long struggle against too heavy odds. Former friends had all fallen away; there was no one to whom the boy could turn for honest counsel. Little Mr. Hugh Hollister, his uncle’s usual legal adviser, was only agonized and despairing when Nicholas appealed to him.

Who ever could have thought that Thomas Drury would come to this, he would exclaim, fairly wringing his hands, and could offer no comfort or suggestion of what should be done.

Yet the more Nicholas toiled over the accounts and records of that last desperate year, the more he understood how gallant a fight had been waged by Thomas Drury; and the more heart-breaking it seemed that such a battle must end in disastrous defeat.

It was over the ledgers, letters, notes and agreements that he had been working for the whole of that night, since now a decision must at last be made. His long adding and dividing, ciphering and hoping had brought evidence of only one obvious thing to be done, to declare the business bankrupt and the work of the shipyards ended. That it would mean tragedy and want to half the town he was very well aware. Yet there seemed no other course. In the gray, cold hour when heavy night is turning to dull morning, he had laid a sheet of paper before him and had begun to write out a notice to be posted upon the gate to the yards and the docks, for information of the men who had toiled in faithful loyalty, ten, twenty and thirty years for first one Thomas Drury and then another.

Let it be known that the work heretofore carried on in these shipyards, on the docks, wharves, vessels and on all property belonging to the estate of Thomas Drury is now finally declared closed and finished—

Here he had been unable to go on, to write the last words and to sign his name. Instead, he sat long in deep and bitter thought, and at last, in very weariness of effort, he fell to dreaming of happier things, took up another sheet of paper, and, as was his habit when his wits were drifting anywhere they would, he began to draw the picture of a ship.

Had he, perhaps, as he sat there absorbed in thought, heard a faint fumbling at the window, as though a hand had felt of the fastenings, to push it open, and then had drawn back?

As Nicholas stood outside in the morning sunshine, looking at the last fading traces of the footsteps in the grass, it seemed to him that he did have a vague memory of some such sound. But there was no use in thinking of it now; whoever it could have been had come and gone, and even the last fading traces of his footsteps had quite vanished.

It was high morning now, but with the sunshine disappearing, hidden in the thickening haze. John Ewing had trudged away, to take back to the waiting village what little news he had gathered. Nicholas heard him go, walked across to the table and sat down once more to his task. Here was that unfinished document to which he must once more set his reluctant hand. —now declared closed and finished. He must write the last words and sign his name.

He could see, with such cruel clearness within his mind just how the notice, posted upon the gate, would be read by the first comer; how he would run back to tell the rest ; how they would all come crowding about to peer and wonder and to repeat that desperate cry. Ah, what can save us now?

Some one, looking over the shoulder of another would say, That is the writing of young Master Nicholas. We had hoped that the lad might help us!

How could he, at nineteen, do what his uncle had not been able to accomplish? No, there was no blame to rest heavily upon his shoulders, only grief and regret which seemed heavier still. His racing thoughts had no mercy, for they fell to picturing for him, also, the proclamation of the town crier whose duty it would be to announce abroad so important and disastrous an event as the closing of the shipyards. He could see old Abner Hoxie come striding down the street, his bell clanging, the flapping tails of his shabby, homespun coat blowing about his long, thin legs. He could imagine him stopping in the middle of the market square, where all the townspeople would come flocking about him to hear the slow jangling of his bell and to hearken to what he was to say.

Nicholas had watched Abner Hoxie going up and down in that same attire, ever since he himself had been a little boy. He had heard that enormous voice over and over, and had always been reminded, when he listened, of the deep croaking of the biggest frog in Red Pond. What would it be to hear that great voice now crying out the desperate secret which, so far, was hidden amongst the papers on the table and in the heart of that sufferer upstairs.

Oyez, oyez, oyez. It is to-day made public that Thomas Drury, Esquire, of this town—

Once more he could not go on. At least, he could take up that drawing to which he had let his mind wander the night before, could crumple it fiercely and carry it to the fire to drop it upon the flame. He must make no more such pictures; for now he could never again hope to be a builder of ships. Yet the paper was still in his hand, when he paused suddenly, his head lifted to listen, his attention caught by a rising tumult of noises outside.

There was a rumble of wheels coming from the direction of the center of the town, and with it the