Читать книгу The Great Quest - Charles Boardman Hawes - Страница 11

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Unless you have lived in a little town where every man's business is his neighbor's, you cannot imagine the furor in the village of Topham when our fellow citizens learned that Seth Upham had actually sold his business and his house, and was to embark with Cornelius Gleazen on a voyage of speculation to the West Indies and Africa. The friction with Great Britain that had closed ports in the West Indies to American ships added zest to their surmises; and the unexpected news that that very worthy gentleman, Cornelius Gleazen, who had so recently returned to his old home, was so soon to depart again, sharpened their regrets. All were united in wishing us good fortune and a safe, speedy return; all were keenly interested in whatever hints of the true character of the voyage we let fall, which you can be sure were few and slender. It was such an extraordinary affair in the annals of the village, that the more enterprising began to prepare for a grand farewell, which should express their feelings in a suitable way and should do honor both to their respected fellow townsman, Seth Upham, and to their distinguished resident, Cornelius Gleazen.

There was to be a parade, with a band from Boston at its head, a great dinner at the town hall, to which with uncommon generosity they invited even the doubting blacksmith, and a splendid farewell ceremony, with speeches by the minister and the doctor, and with presentations to all who were to leave town. It was to mark an epoch in the history of Topham. Nothing like it had ever taken place in all the country round. And as we were to go to Boston in the near future,—the man who had bought out Uncle Seth was to take over the house and store almost at once,—they set the date for the first Saturday in September.

Because I, in a way, was to be one of the guests of the occasion, I heard little of the plans directly, for they were supposed to be secret, in order to surprise us by their splendor. But a less curious lad than I could not have helped noticing the long benches carried past the store and the platform that was building on the green.

The formal farewell, as I have said, was to take place on the first Saturday in September, and the following Wednesday we five were to leave town. But meanwhile, in order to have everything ready for our departure, and because we needed another pair of hands to help in the work during the last days at the store, I went on Friday to get Abraham Guptil to join us.

He had been so pleased at the chance to ship for a voyage, thus to recover a little of the goods and gear that misfortune had swept away from him almost to the last stick and penny, that I was more than glad I had given him the chance. Well satisfied, accordingly, with myself and the world, I turned my uncle's team toward the home of Abe's father-in-law, where Mrs. Guptil and the boy were to stay until Abe should return from the voyage; and when I passed the green, where the great platform was almost finished, I thought with pleasure of what an important part I was to play in the ceremonies next day.

It was a long ride to the home of Abraham Guptil's father-in-law, and the way led through the pines and marshes beside the sea, and up hill and down valley over a winding road inland. The goldenrod beside the stone walls along the road was a bright yellow, and the blue frost flowers were beginning to blossom. In the air, which was as clear as on a winter night, was the pleasant, almost indescribable tang of autumn, in which are blended so mysteriously the mellow odors of stubble fields and fallen leaves, and fruit that is ready for the market; it suggested bright foliage and mellow sunsets, and blue smoke curling up from chimneys, and lighted windows in the early dusk.

On the outward journey, but partly occupied by driving the well-broken team, I thought of how Neil Gleazen, before my very eyes, had at first frightened Uncle Seth, and had then cajoled him, and, finally, had completely won him over. I had never put it in so many words before, that Gleazen had got my uncle into such a state that he could do what he wished with him; but to me it was plain enough, and I suspected that Arnold Lamont saw it, too. Although I had watched Gleazen from the moment when he first began to accomplish the purpose toward which he had been plotting, I could not understand what power he held over Uncle Seth that had so changed my uncle's whole character. Then I fell to thinking of that remark, twice repeated, about robbing churches, and meditated on it while the horses quietly jogged along. Never, I thought, should the people of the town learn of my suspicions; they concerned a family matter, and I would keep them discreetly to myself.

It was touching to see Abraham Guptil bid farewell to his wife and son. Their grief was so unaffected that it almost set me sniffling, and I feared that poor Abe would make a dreary addition to our little band; but when we had got out of sight of the house, he began to pick up, and after wiping his eyes and blowing his nose, he surprised me by becoming, all things considered, quite lively.

"Now," said he, "you can tell me all about this voyage for which I've shipped. It seems queer for a man to sign the articles when he don't know where his lay is coming from, but, I declare, it was a godsend to me to have a voyage and wages in prospect, and you were a rare good friend of mine, Joe, to put my name in like you done."

It puzzled me to know just how much to tell him, but I explained as well as I could that it was a trading voyage to the West Indies and Africa, and gave him a hint that there was a secret connected with it whereby, if all went well, we were to get large profits, and let him know that he was to share a certain proportion of this extra money with Arnold, Sim, and me, in addition to the wages that we all were to draw.

It seemed to satisfy him, and after thinking it over, he said, "I've heard Seth Upham was getting all his money together for some reason or other. There must be more than enough to buy the Adventure. He's been cashing in notes and mortgages all over the county, and I'm told the bank is holding it for him in gold coin."

"In gold!" I cried.

"Gold coin," he repeated. "It's rumored round the county that Neil Gleazen's holding something over him that's frightened him into doing this and that, exactly according to order."

"Where did you hear that?" I demanded.

It was so precisely what I myself had been thinking that it seemed as if I must have talked too freely; yet I knew that I had held my tongue.

"Oh, one place and another," he replied. Then, changing the subject, he remarked, "There'll be a grand time in town to-morrow, what with speeches and all. I'd like to have brought my wife to see it, but I was afraid it would make it harder for her when I leave."

"She doesn't want you to go?"

"Oh, she's glad for me to have the chance, but she's no hand to bear up at parting."

Conversing thus, we drove on into the twilight and falling dusk, till we came so near the town that we could see ahead of us the tavern, all alight and cheerful for the evening.

"I wonder," Abe cried eagerly, "who'll be sitting by the table with a hot supper in front of him, and Nellie Nuttles to fetch and carry."

I was hungry after my day's drive and could not help sharing Abe's desire for a meal at the tavern, which was known as far as Boston and beyond for its good food; but I had no permission thus wantonly to spend Uncle Seth's money, so I snapped the whip and was glad to hear the louder rattling of wheels as the horses broke into a brisk trot, which made our own supper seem appreciably nearer.

And who, indeed, would be sitting now behind those lighted windows? Abe's question came back to me as we neared the tavern. The broad roofs seemed to suggest the very essence of hospitality, and as if to indorse their promise of good fare, a roar of laughter came out into the night.

As we passed, I looked through one of the windows that but a moment since had been rattling from the mirth within, and saw—I looked again and made sure that I was not mistaken!—saw Neil Gleazen, red-faced and wild-eyed, standing by the bar with a glass raised in his hand.

The sight surprised me, for although Gleazen, like almost everyone else in old New England, took his wine regularly, in all the months since his return he had conducted himself so soberly that there had been not the slightest suggestion that he ever got himself the worse for liquor; and even more it amazed me to see beside him one Jed Matthews who was, probably, the most unscrupulous member of the lawless crew with whom Gleazen was said to have associated much in the old days, but of whom he had seen, everyone believed, almost nothing since he had come home.

As we drove on past the blacksmith shop, I saw the smith smoking his pipe in the twilight.

"It's a fine evening," I called.

"It is," said he, coming into the road. And in a lower voice he added, "Did you see him when you passed the inn?"

"Yes," I replied, knowing well enough whom he meant.

"They've called me a fool," the smith responded, "but before this night's over we'll see who's a fool." He puffed away at his pipe and looked at me significantly. "We'll see who's a fool, I or them that has so much more money and wisdom than I."

He went back and sat down, and Abe and I drove on, puzzled and uncomfortable. The smith was vindictive. Could he, I wondered, be right?

A good supper was keeping hot for us in the brick oven, and we sat down to it with the good-will that it merited; but before we were more than half through, my uncle burst in upon us. He seemed harassed by anxiety, and went at once to the window, where he stood looking out into the darkness.

"Have you heard anything said around town?" he presently demanded, more sharply, it seemed to me, than ever.

"I've heard little since I got back," I returned. "Only the smith's ravings. He was in an ill temper as we passed. But I saw Neil Gleazen at the inn drinking with Jed Matthews."

"The ungrateful reprobate!" Uncle Seth cried with an angry gesture. "He's drawn me into this thing hand and foot—hand and foot. I'm committed. It's too late to withdraw, and he knows it. And now, now for the first time, mind you, he's starting on one of his old sprees."

"He's not a hard drinker," I said. "In all the time he's been in Topham he's not been the worse for liquor, and this evening, so far as I could see, he was just taking a glass—"

"You don't know him as he used to be," my uncle cried.

"A glass," put in Abe Guptil; "but with Jed Matthews!"

"You've hit the nail on the head," Uncle Seth burst out—"with Jed Matthews. God save we're ruined by this night's work. If he should go out to Higgleby's barn with that gang of thieves, my good name will go too. I swear I'll sell the brig."

Uncle Seth wildly paced the room and scowled until every testy wrinkle on his face was drawn into one huge knot that centred in his forehead.

The only sounds, as Abe and I sat watching him in silence, were the thumping of his feet as he walked and the hoarse whisper of his breathing. Plainly, he was keyed up to a pitch higher than ever I had seen him.

At that moment, from far beyond the village, shrilly but faintly, came a wild burst of drunken laughter. It was a single voice and one strange to me. There was something devilish in its piercing, unrestrained yell.

"Merciful heavens!" Uncle Seth cried,—actually his hand was shaking like the palsy; a note of fear in his strained voice struck to my heart like a finger of ice,—"I'd know that sound if I heard it in the shrieking of hell; and I have not heard Neil Gleazen laugh like that in thirty years. Come, boys, maybe we can stop him before it's too late."

Thrusting his fingers through his hair so that it stood out on all sides in disorder, he wildly dashed from the room.

Springing up, Abe and I followed him outdoors and down the road. We ran with a will, but old though he was, a frenzy of fear and anxiety and shame led him on at a pace we could scarcely equal. Down the long road into town we ran, all three, breathing harder and harder as we went, past the store, the parsonage, and the church, and past the smithy, where someone called to us and hurried out to stop us.

It was the smith, who loomed up big and black and ominous in the darkness.

"They've gone," he said, "they've gone to Higgleby's barn."

"Who?" my uncle demanded. "Who? Say who! For heaven's sake don't keep me here on tenterhooks!"

"Neil Gleazen," said the smith, "and Jed Matthews and all the rest. Ah, you wouldn't listen to me."

"And all the rest!" Uncle Seth echoed weakly.

For a moment he reeled as if bewildered, even dazed. Whatever it was that had come over him, it seemed to have pierced to some unsuspected weakness in the fibre of the man, some spot so terribly sensitive that he was fairly crazed by the thrust. To Abe and me, both of us shocked and appalled, he turned with the madness of despair in his eyes.

"Boys," he said hoarsely, "we've got to be ready to leave. Call Sim and Arnold! Hitch up the horses! Pack my bag and—and, Joe,"—he laid his hand on my shoulder and whispered in my ear, a mere trembling breath of a whisper,—"here's the key to the house safe. Pack all that's in it in the bed of the wagon while the others are busy elsewhere. O Joe! what a wretched man I am! Why in heaven's name could he not walk straight for just one day more?"

Why, indeed? I thought. But I remembered Higgleby's barn, and in my own heart I knew the reason. Secretly, all this time, Neil Gleazen had been hand in glove with his old disreputable cronies; now that he had got Uncle Seth so far committed to this new venture that he could not desert it, Gleazen was entirely willing to throw away his hard-won reputation for integrity, for the sake of one farewell fling with the "old guard."

"Go, lads," Uncle Seth cried; "go quickly." He rested a shaking hand on my arm as Abe turned away. "My poor, poor boy!" he murmured. "I've meant to do so well by you, Joey! Heaven keep us all!"

"But you?" I asked.

"I'm going, if I can, to bring Neil Gleazen back before it is too late," Uncle Seth replied. And with that he set off into the darkness.

As we turned back to the store to rouse up Arnold and Sim, I caught a glimpse of the stark white platform on the green, which was visible even in the darkness, and ironically I thought of the farewell ceremonies that were to take place next day.

I shall never forget how the store looked that night, as Abe and I came hurrying up to it. The shadows on the porch were as black as ink, and the shuttered windows seemed to stare like the sightless eyes of a blind man who hears a familiar voice and turns as if to see whence it comes. From the windows of the room above, which Arnold and Sim occupied, there shone a few thin shafts of light along the edges of the shades, and the window frames divided the shades themselves into small yellow squares, on which a shadow came and went as one of the men moved about the room.

In reply to our cries and knocks, Arnold raised the curtain and we saw first his head, then Sim's, black against the lighted room.

"Who is there?" he called, "and what's wanted?"

Almost before we had finished pouring out our story, Arnold was downstairs and fumbling at the bolts of the door; and as we entered the dark store, Sim, his shoes in his hand, followed him, even more than usually grotesque in the light from above.

"My friends," said Arnold, calmly, "let us now, all four, prove to ourselves and to Seth Upham, the mettle that is in us."

We lost no time in idle speculation. Dividing among us all that was to be done, we fell to with a will. Working like men possessed, we packed our own possessions and Uncle Seth's, both at the store and at the barn; and while the others were still busy in the carriage-shed, I hurried back to the house and opened the safe, and brought out bags of money and papers and heaven knows what, and as secretly as possible packed them in the bottom of the wagon. For three hours we toiled at one place and the other; then, hot, tired, excited, apprehensive of we knew not what, we rested by the wagon and waited.

"I never heard of anything so rattle-headed in all my life," Sim Muzzy cried, when he had caught his breath. "Seth Upham gets crazier every day. Here all's ready for the grand farewell to-morrow and all of us to be there, and not one of us to leave town until next week, and yet he gets us up at all hours of the night as if we was to start come sunrise. I'm not going to run away at such an hour, I can tell you. Why it may be they'll call on me to make a speech! Who knows?"

"We'll be lucky, I fear," said Arnold Lamont, "if we do not start before sunrise."

"Before sunrise! Well, I'll have you know—"

I simply could not endure Sim's interminable talk. "Watch the goods and the wagon, you three," I said. "I'm going to look for Uncle Seth and see what he wants us to do next."

Before they could object, I had left them sitting by the wagon and the harnessed horses, ready for no one knew what, and had made off into the night. Having done all that I could to carry out my uncle's orders, I had no intention of returning until I had solved the mystery of Higgleby's barn.

I hurried along and used every short cut that I knew; and though I now stumbled in the darkness, now fell headlong on the dewy grass, now barked my shins as I scrambled over a barway, I made reasonably good progress, all things considered, and came in less than half an hour to the pasture where Higgleby's lonely barn stood. The door of the barn, as I saw it from a distance, was open and made a rectangle of yellow light against the black woods beyond it. When I listened, I heard confused voices. As I was about to advance toward the barn, a certain note in the voices warned me that a quarrel was in progress. I hesitated and stopped where I was, wondering whether to go forward or not, and there I heard a strange sound and saw a strange sight.

First there came a much louder outcry than any that had gone before; then the light in the barn suddenly went out; then I heard the sound of running back and forth; then the light appeared again, but flickering and unsteady; then a single harsh yell came all the way across the dark pasture; then the light grew and grew and grew.

It threw its rays out over the pasture land and revealed men running about like ants around a newly destroyed hill. A tongue of flame crept out of one window and crawled up the side of the old building. A great wave of fire came billowing out of the door. Sparks began to fly and the roar and crackling grew louder and louder.

As I breathlessly ran toward the barn, from which now I could see little streams of fire flowing in every direction through the dry grass, I suddenly became aware that there was someone ahead of me, and by stopping short I narrowly escaped colliding with two men whom, with a sudden shock, I recognized as my uncle and Neil Gleazen.

"Uncle Seth!" I gasped out.

Nothing then, I think, could have surprised Seth Upham. There was only relief in his voice when he cried, "Quick, Joe, quick, take his other arm."

Obediently, if reluctantly, I turned my back on the conflagration behind us, and locking my right arm through Neil Gleazen's left, helped partly to drag him, partly to carry him toward the village and the tavern.

"I showed the villains!" Gleazen proclaimed thickly. "The scoundrels! The despicable curs! I showed them how a gentlemen replies to such as them. I showed them, eh, Seth?"

"Yes, yes, Neil! Hush! Be still! There are people coming. Merciful heavens! That fire will bring the whole town out upon us."

"I showed them, the villains! the scoundrels! the despicable curs! They are not used to the ways of gentlemen, eh, Seth?"

"Yes, yes, but do be still! Do, do be still!"

"I showed them how a gentleman acts—"

The man was as drunk as a lord, but in his thick ravings there was a fixed idea that sent a thrill of apprehension running through me.

"Uncle Seth," I gasped, "Uncle Seth, what has he done?"

"Quick! quick! We must hurry!"

"What has he done?"

"Come, come, Joe, never mind that now!"

For the moment I yielded, and we stumbled along, arm in arm, with Gleazen now all but a dead weight between us.

"I showed them!" he cried again. "I showed them!"

I simply could not ignore the strange muttering in his voice.

"Tell me," I cried. "Uncle Seth, tell me what he has done."

"Not yet! Not yet!"

"Tell me!"

"Not yet!"

"Or I'll not go another step!"

My uncle gasped and staggered. My importunity seemed to be one thing more than he could bear, poor man! and even in my temper, pity sobered me and cooled my anger. For a moment he touched my wrist. His hand was icy cold. But his face, when I looked at him, was set and hard, and my temper flashed anew.

"Not another step! Tell me."

Glancing apprehensively about, my uncle gasped in a hoarse undertone, "He has killed Jed Matthews."

As people were appearing now on all sides and running to fight the fire, Uncle Seth and I tried our best to lead Gleazen into a by-path and so home by a back way; but with drunken obstinacy he refused to yield an inch. "No, no," he roared, "I'm going to walk home past all the people. I'm not afraid of them. If they say aught to me, I'll show 'em."

So back we marched, supporting between us, hatless but with the diamonds still flashing on his finger and in his stock, that maudlin wretch, Cornelius Gleazen. I felt my own face redden as the curious turned to stare at us, and for Uncle Seth it was a sad and bitter experience; but we pushed on as fast as we could go, driven always by fear of what would follow when the people should learn the whole story of the brawl in the burning barn.

Back into the village we came, now loitering for a moment in the deeper shadows to avoid observation, now pushing at top speed across a lighter open space, always dragging Cornelius Gleazen between us, and so up to the open door of the tavern.

"Now," murmured Uncle Seth, "heaven send us help! Neil, Neil—Neil, I say!"

"Well?"

"We must get your chests and run. Your money, your papers—are they packed?"

"Money? What money?"

"Your fortune! You can never come back here. Sober up, Neil, sober up! You killed Jed Matthews."

"Served him right. Despicable cur, villain, scoundrel! I'll show them."

"Neil, Neil Gleazen!" cried my uncle, now all but frantic.

"Well, I hear you."

"Oh, oh, will he not listen to reason? Take his arm again, Joe."

We lifted him up the steps and led him into the inn, and there in the door of the bar-room came face to face with the landlord, who was hot with anger.

"Don't bring him in here, Mr. Upham," he cried; "I keep no house for sots and swine."

"What!" gasped my uncle, "you'll not receive him?"

"Not I!"

"But what's come over you? But you never would treat Mr. Gleazen like this!"

"But, but, but!" the landlord snarled. "This very night he threw my good claret in my own face and called it a brew for pigs. Let him seek his lodgings elsewhere."