Читать книгу Tobias o' the Light - James A. Cooper - Страница 13

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Miss Heppy took pride in her front yard. The immediate vicinity of a lighthouse is not often a beauty-spot, and that of the Twin Rocks Light was for the most part bleached sand. Nevertheless the lightkeeper's sister never failed to make her garden in early May.

The soil in which she coaxed to cheerful bloom old maid's pinks, bachelor buttons, ladies' slippers, marigolds and a dozen other old-fashioned flowers, was brought from a distance. The boisterous autumn winds always drifted over the beds with sand; yet each spring Miss Heppy, like nature herself, made all things new again.

"I vum!" said her brother in his good-natured, if critical way, "I don't see why you do it. All you have to begin on every year is the conch-shells and white pebbles for borders. Sea sand mixed with its loam in such quantity would ha' sp'iled the Garden of Eden for any agricultooral purposes."

"This ain't no Garden of Eden, I do allow," his sister said. "Wherever them scientific fellers undertake to locate what was mankind's first home, they never say 'twas here on the Cape."

"Oh, sugar!" chuckled Tobias. "It took them frozen-faced Puritan ancestors of our'n to choose the Cape to locate on an' set the Provincetown folks and the Plymouth folks a-fightin' over which town should be celebrated in song an' story as the real landin' place of the Pilgrim Fathers."

"Humph!" sniffed Hephzibah, "we hear enough about the Pilgrim Fathers. I cal'late if it hadn't been for the Pilgrim Mothers there wouldn't have been any settlement here a-tall."

"Ye-as," agreed Tobias, pursing his lips. "But the women didn't have the vote then, so they didn't get advertised none to speak of. Of course, there was Priscilla Alden—she that was a Mullens. Longfeller advertised her a good bit. She's the only woman among the Pilgrims that we hear much about. I cal'late 'twas because she was one that knowed her own mind."

"No," said his sister, whose habit of looking at the darker side of life could not be denied. "No. The first woman the history of them times tells about was drowned off the Mayflower as she lay in Provincetown Harbor."

"Oh, sugar! That's so," chuckled Tobias. "She was crowded overboard by the deckload of furniture the packet carried. I never did understand how such a small craft could have brought across all that household stuff folks claim was in her cargo."

But Miss Heppy's reflections were not to be turned by frivolity.

"She," the spinster said, with a sigh, "was the first of us Cape Cod women to suffer from the savage sea."

"Oh, sugar, Heppy!" ejaculated Tobias. "You're the beatin'est for seining up trouble and seeing the blackest side of things. Enough to give a man the fantods, you are! Hello! Here's the mail packet heaving into sight."

A bony horse with a head so long that he might easily eat his oats out of a flour barrel, appeared from around the turn in the Lower Trillion road. He drew behind him a buckboard which sagged under the weight of Amos Pickering, the rural mail carrier.

"Maybe he's got a letter for us," suggested Miss Heppy with some eagerness. "You go see, Tobias."

The lightkeeper dropped his spade and made a speaking trumpet of his hands. "Ahoy! Ahoy, Amos! What's the good word?"

The mail carrier waved an answering hand before diving into the sack at his feet and bringing to light, as Tobias strode down to the roadside, a letter and a paper.

"Wal, now," said the lightkeeper, "that's what ye might call a heavy haul for us. I cal'late, Amos, if all your customers got as few parcels o' mail as what me and Heppy does, you'd purt' near go out o' business."

"It's got a black border onto it, Tobias," said the mail carrier, voicing the curiosity that ate like acid on his mind. "And it's postmarked at Batten. Ain't that where your Uncle Jethro lives?"

"Sure enough!" agreed the lightkeeper. "But 'tain't his hand o' write—nossir!"

"Be you sure?"

"Surest thing you know, Amos. 'Cause why? Cap'n Jethro Potts never learned to more than make his mark—if that much."

"I cal'late he's dead, Tobias."

"Then it's sartain he didn't send this letter with the black border."

"Well, it must be something about him, don't you think?" suggested the mail carrier leaning forward, his eager eyes twinkling.

"Why, we ain't in correspondence with nobody down there to Batten," said Tobias slowly, and holding the letter far off as though he feared it might explode.

Miss Heppy had got to her feet now and came forward.

"What's the matter with you, Tobias?" she cried. "Why don't you open it? Amos won't get home to-night if you don't."

Her gentle sarcasm was quite lost on the two men. Her brother shook his head.

"Can't open it," he said.

"Why not, for love's sake?" demanded the exasperated Heppy.

"'Cause it's for you," chuckled Tobias, thrusting the letter into her hand.

"For love's sake!" repeated Miss Heppy much flustered. "I can't read it, Tobias. I ain't got my specs here."

"No more have I," her brother rejoined. "But I cal'late I can read it for you if 'tain't writ in Choctaw."

The others, Amos no less than Heppy, remained eagerly expectant while Tobias worked his stubbed finger under the gummed flap of the envelope and tore it open. The folded sheet of paper he drew forth was likewise bordered with black. He held it off, for he was far-sighted, and read aloud slowly:

"'Batten, Mass.

"'Miss Hephzibah Bassett,

"'Twin Rocks Light.

"'Dear Miss Heppy:—

"'Your uncle, Captain Jethro Potts, of this town, passed into rest this day at noon. The funeral is set for Thursday at ten in the morning, that being high tide. You and your family is hereby notified and are requested to be present at the unsealing of Captain Potts' will in Judge Waddams' office which will follow the ceremony at the grave.

"'Your relation by marriage,

"'ICIVILLA POTTS.'"

Then followed the date. The reading of the letter for the moment left the trio—even the mail carrier—stunned. The latter finally said:

"Well! Well! That's sad news—'tis, for a fact. I expect he left a tidy bit of money?"

"Poor Uncle Jethro!" murmured Miss Heppy.

"I don't know how much money Uncle Jethro had to leave," said Tobias slowly. "But however much or little 'twas, he left it all. That's sure."

Amos gathered up the reins.

"Course you'll both go down to the funeral?"

"'Tain't likely," Tobias said. "Somebody's got to stay and nuss this light, and I cal'late 'twill be me."

But Miss Heppy would not hear to that. She declared it to be her brother's duty to go and represent their branch of the family. To tell the truth, Miss Heppy had never in her life been farther from Clinkerport than to the East Harwich Fair, while Tobias was, of course, like all deep-bottom sailors, "a traveled man."

Came Thursday, and Zeke Bassett arrived with his motor car to take Tobias to the train. It was rather an early hour for a man to climb into his Sunday suit, and the lightkeeper hated formal dress.

He should have been well used to the black suit by this time. It had served him for state occasions for full twenty years. When it was bought Tobias had not been so full-bodied as he was now. He was a sturdy man, built brickwise, with more corners than curves, and the black short-tailed coat strained at each and every seam to keep him within its bounds.

To have buttoned it across his chest would have rent button from fabric. It was so tight at the armholes that his elbows were held from his sides and his shoulders squared in a most military fashion. Tight as the coat was at these points, there were three sets of wrinkles plainly evident at the back—two perpendicular and one set horizontal. Altogether this ensemble of dress gave one the impression of a rather bulgy man being slowly choked to death by his own habit.

"I don't mind wearin' 'em on the Sabbath," confessed Tobias. "To keep in a proper frame of mind to enjoy one of Elder Hardraven's sermons, who's as melancholy as a widder woman with six small children, a feller needs to have something wearing on his mind b'sides his hair. It makes me right religious feeling to put on Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes."

"For love's sake!" his sister said tartly, "you're going to a funeral. I should think you would expect to feel religious."

"If I do," rejoined Tobias grimly, "me and the minister will be 'bout the only ones there that feel that way. This here is going to be a gathering of the vultures, Heppy."

"Why, Tobias, how you do talk!"

"Yep. The Pottses and their rel'tives are going to gather from far and near to hear the reading of Uncle Jethro's will. Icivilly Potts would never have writ us if Judge Waddams hadn't told her to. The Pottses of Batten would like to make the fun'ral and reading of the will a close-corporation affair, I cal'late. But 'tis evident Uncle Jethro must have mentioned others in his last will and testament."

"Oh, Tobias!" gasped his sister, clasping her hands.

"Yep," he rejoined. "If the old captain left us something, you'll be getting your wish, won't you?"

"Oh, don't Tobias!" she cried. "That sounds awful!"

"Oh, sugar!" drawled the practical lightkeeper, "we might's well own to it. We never bothered Uncle Jethro none endurin' his life. He was here and took pot-luck with us many's the time. He did seem to like your fishballs an' biscuit, Heppy. If he hadn't had prop'ty to watch down there at Batten, I cal'late he might nigh have lived here all the time. So why shouldn't we have expectations?"

"Oh, Tobias!" she murmured.

"I am frank to say," the lightkeeper declared, "that I'm going down there to Batten with expectations. Uncle Jethro is dead, and I cal'late to show respect to his memory. If the sermon is long I'll likely go to sleep during it. But I don't cal'late to sleep none in Judge Waddams' office when the will is being read."

His perfectly frank acknowledgment shocked Miss Heppy. But that was Tobias Bassett's way. He gave no hostage to Mrs. Grundy in any particular. No odor of hypocrisy clung to anything he did or said. If he had ever occasion to be untruthful he lied "straight from the shoulder"—without any circumlocution.

In his Sunday clothes, however, Tobias o' Twin Rocks Light was not likely to go to sleep under the dreariest funeral sermon that was ever preached on the Cape. The embrace of the Iron Virgin of the Inquisition could have been little more uncomfortable than that of his Sunday suit.

The Mariners' Chapel at Batten was set upon one of the loneliest sites to be found along the entire length of the Cape's ocean shore. Weather-bleached dunes and flats on which sparse herbage grew surrounded the chapel. But the building was centrally located and tapped a good-sized community. The gulls clamored about its squat bell-tower and the marching sands drifted against its foundation. The northeasterly windows which overlooked the sea were ground by the flying sand to a pebbly roughness. The high roof beams were hand-hewn, for the chapel had weathered at least four-score years. The pews were high-backed pens with doors. The old-time worshipper in the Puritan House of God preferred to be shut in from his neighbors, and he likewise kept his religion a matter of close communion. The uncushioned seats were the most uncomfortable that the ingenuity of man could devise.

There had been no service at the house. Such a thing as a private funeral was not known in this community. A funeral is one of the most important incidents in the existence of Cape Cod folks, and at Batten (which was a clam-digging village) was held at high sea. It was expected of the minister that he should preach a full and complete sermon over the remains.

The bustling old undertaker, in shabby black broadcloth and with his iron-grey hair brushed forward over his ears, giving him the look of a super-serious monkey, marshaled the audience after the sermon to march down one aisle past the coffin and out the other aisle.

The grim, mahogany-hued face of Captain Jethro Potts, the lines of which even the touch of death could not soften, confronted his neighbors from the coffin. His countenance was not composed as the dead usually are; but looked as though he lay there in ambush, ready to jump out at one. There was even the glitter of a beady eyeball behind the thin lashes drawn down over his eye.

"He looks mighty like he was a-watchin' of ye," observed the undertaker to Tobias. "I never see a corp' more nateral."

"You said it. 'Nateral' is right," agreed the lightkeeper. "I cal'late Uncle Jethro has got something to spring on his rel'tives. He's watchin' of 'em yet."

Whether the other members of the family had the same feeling about the dead man's alertness or not, they saw the lid of the coffin screwed down with complacency. Tobias was one of those who bore the coffin out to the churchyard and lowered it into the newly opened grave, the sides of which had to be bulkheaded to keep the sand from caving in.

Following the prayer there was a little lingering in the graveyard. Judge Waddams had announced that he would read the dead man's will in his office an hour later. Those interested began drifting back to the village along the white shell road.