Two men. A novel

Front matter

A NOVEL.

By ELIZABETH STODDARD,

AUTHOR OF “TJ

Chapter I

When Jason Auster married Sarah Parke he was twenty years old, and a house-carpenter. As he was not of age, he made some agreement' with a hard father by which liberty was gained, and a year’s wages lost. He left his native village filled with no adventurous spirit, but with a simple confidence that he should find the place where he could earn a living by his trade, and put in practice certain theories concerning the rights of men and property which had already made him a pest at home. The stage-coach which conveyed him thence, traversed a line of towns that made no impression from his point of view — the coach window ; but when it stopped to change horses at Crest, a lively maritime town, and he alighted to stretch his cramped legs, he saluted Destiny. Its aspect, that spring day, pleased him ; he heard the rain of blows from broad-axes in the ship-yards by the water’s edge, and saw new roofs and chimneys rising along the irregular streets among the rows of ancient houses, and concluded to stay. He unstrapped a small trunk from the stage-rack, carried it into the tavern entry, and looked about him for some one to address. A man who had been eying the trunk

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advanced towards him with a resolutely closed mouth, and hands concealed in his pockets.

“Do you keep this tavern?” Jason asked; “and do you want a hoarder ?”

“ Yes siree,” the man replied, in a loud cheerful voice.

“ What is hoard now ?”

“ Three dollars per week.”

“ I think I will stop here. My name is Auster.”

“ I agree ; hut mayhe you had rather go to the other tavern where they sell liquor, with flies in it. I keep a temperance house.”

“ Good,” answered Jason, pulling off his overcoat. “ I have got a temperance lecture in my trunk ; I wrote it last winter. I’ll lend it to you to read.”

“ I ain’t much of a hand at reading handwriting,” the tavern-keeper replied with a dubious look ; hut catching sight of Jason’s carpenter’s rule, his face brightened. “Guess you are a carpenter,” he exclaimed; “just the place for you. We are growing like the mischief since whale-oil is so high.”

The arrangement for board was concluded, and Jason began life in Crest with ten dollars, two suits of clothes, and a few articles, which consisted of several shirts, two hooks whose titles were “Man’s Social Destiny,” and “Humanity in Limbo,” a pin-cushion with Forget Me Not embroidered upon it, and the temperance lecture.

Before night he had taken the bearings of Crest, and was satisfied that he had made a good choice. The week following he sent to a boss-carpenter a novel design for mantle-pieces, which proved the means of an engagement to work with a gang on the inside of a Congregational church about to be built. With the whistling of

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his plane he began to air his theories of Socialism, Abolitionism, and Teetotalism, and amused his fellow-workmen, who never mistrusted that he intended to be believed, or that he was in earnest, for his manners belied his words. He appeared shy, cold, and indifferent, self-forgetful, and forgetful of others.

As the church progressed it became a place of resort, especially in the fine summer afternoons, when groups of young women perambulated the aisles, sat in the doorless pews, or hung over the unfinished gallery. One day two ladies went up the pulpit stairs, while' Jason was at work on its moulding below ; looking up to caution them against stepping on certain loose boards in the flooring, he saw that he was too late, for the lady in advance was already half in the cavity under the floor, and only kept herself up by a clutch on the desk. Jason bounded up the stairs and extricated her ; as he did this he heard a shrill laugh from her companion, which made him laugh too.

“ I wish it had been you, Sarah Parke,” she exclaimed. “ Thank you, sir,” she said stiffly to Jason, without looking at him.

“ You are welcome to my help,” he answered quietly. “ Of course, I owed it to you.” And he returned to his work.

“Who was the black-eyed girl that didn’t fall in?” he asked of one of the workmen, named John Davis.

“ Squire Parke’s grand-daughter,” he answered. “ It would be worth your while to walk into her affections ; but she don’t look at carpenters, I tell you.”

“She looked at me,” Jason said grandly.

“How could she help it?” replied John satirically; “you have got such eyes !”

“ Why shouldn’t she look at carpenters ?” Jason persisted.

“ The Parke family are next to the Lord, in this county, though it is not what it was once. One of ’em knocked off his heel-tap on Plymouth Rock the day the Pilgrims came ashore ; one of ’em was a governor ; one of ’em settled here — cheated the Indians, I guess, out of the pine woods that belong still to the old Squire, and died universally unlamented. I never heard any good of the name, nor any thing so very bad. There’s a streak in the family; one or two in every generation are all streak — which means that they go to the devil. I must say though, that most people have a good word for the old Squire; he ain’t meddlesome. I wonder what has come over this Sarah lately ? I see her about with folks, as if she was tired of being by herself.”

“ The Parkes, I take it, have not understood the correct balance between Man and Wealth.”

“ Oh yes, they have, and have got all the wealth from every man they ever had any dealings with !”

“ Such men delay the progress of social harmony.”

“ Speaking of harmony, will you go to the sing to-night, with all hands ? Miss Jane Moss, the girl you pulled up from the pulpit just now, is the head-singer in our choir. I sit behind her in the gallery, and pass cloves and cardamom seeds over to her every Sunday.”

“ What are you going to sing ?”

“We are getting ready for the Dedication.”

“ If you will come round to the tavern for me, I’ll go.”

John consented, and, at seven o’clock, made his appearance dressed in his best, and found J ason in his best also. But notwithstanding the change of clothes, thero

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li was a strong piney odor about them ; also a dryness of complexion, a roughness of hair and whiskers, and a cracked condition of the hands, which suggested beams, boards, and shavings. Jason had been nicknamed “ The Lath.” The physiognomy of “The Lath” promised to be interesting, if the soul should ever awaken ; eyes of light blue, fringed with thick black lashes, now somewhat vague and wandering, would then flash with conquering power, or diffuse, tender, appealing rays. At present, Jason was not handsome ; neither was there any fascination in his bearing, attitudes, gestures, or speech.

He did not confess on his way to the singing-meeting that he knew nothing of music, but when he arrived took a seat among the singers, and turned the leaves of his music-book at the proper instant. Opposite him, in the place of honor, sat Jane Moss and Sarah Parke; he soon discovered that Sarah was no more of a singer than himself, though her lips moved, and her eyes followed the notes. She looked at him in the middle of a prolonged “Amen,” and perceived that he understood the sham; she turned her head away to conceal a smile, turned back again, and learned, as the choir burst out again, that he was an accomplice in her fraud.

John Davis informed him, when the meeting broke up, that he had about made up his mind to ask Jane Moss if he might escort her home, though he didn’t know but that it would make her mad.

“Go in,” said Jason; “I’ll support you.”

John, with a stiff “Good-evening,” thrust his elbow out before Jane, and she condescendingly placed her hand inside it. A moment after, Jason was introduced

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to Sarah, and shook hands with her modestly, and walked beside her without attempting conversation ; he waited for her to address him. His deportment was so unexceptionable, that when he left her at her door, she expressed a hope of meeting him again.

It was known in Crest soon after that Jason had called at Squire Parke’s. Then it was rumored that he spent whole evenings there, playing backgammon with Sarah? or whist with the Squire. And finally the town was surprised to hear that Jason and Sarah were to be married. It charitably said that she must be bewitched to marry a poor carpenter, and that he knew which side his bread was buttered on, but that he might not find it so pleasant to go up in the world after all. But it was not allowed to be present at the marriage ceremony, which was performed one evening in the Squire’s west parlor. Two persons besides the minister were present ; the Squire and Elsa Bowen, the housekeeper. The. next morning Jason took his place at the breakfast-table, as an inmate of the family. The household consisted now of six persons ; the Squire, Sarah, his grand-daughter, Elsa Bowen, a middle-aged woman who had lived with the second wife of the Squire for years, as housekeeper, friend, and fourth cousin, a hired man, “ Cuth,” who had been in the Squire’s employ from a boy, a youth named Gilbert, and Jason himself.

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Chapter II

Squire Parke had had two wives and two children. They were dead. His first wife gave birth to a son in the second year of his marriage, and died shortly afterwards. In a year from the time of her death he married another wife, who bore him a daughter, and lived till three years before Jason’s arrival in Crest. The son and daughter by the different wives grew up, married, and died, each leaving a child, a boy and a girl, to the care of their grandfather, the Squire. The girl had just become Sarah Auster, and the boy, Osmond Luce, was in parts unknown. As soon as his grandmother was buried he announced his determination to leave home, and although the Squire cried and reproached him for being like his uncle, Sarah’s father, who had deserted home years ago, Osmond persisted in his resolution. He must have freedom, he said ; he had paid his respects to the family myths long enough, and he would transfer the duty to Sarah, who believed in them, and whose authority with them would more than compensate for the loss of himself.

“You think so?” queried Elsa Bowen, who was present when he opened the subject.

Osmond gave a look which silenced her, till the Squire rose, struck his cane on the floor, and with an emphatic “ Go,” left the room ; then she burst out with, “ You’d

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better try your luck with Sarah ; she won’t take it so

easy.”

“ I am glad you are on hand to do up the croaking, Elsa.”

“ Yes, you will find me here, and at it, after many a long year of your devil’s wanderings. What do you suppose became of your Uncle Osmond ?”

“ 6 His bones are whitening the caverns of the deep.’ — 'Washington Irving .”

“ Maybe.”

Osmond rumpled his long, thin curls into a light mass, and said, “ I shall present myself as the fretful porcupine who mustn’t be opposed. Where is she ?”

“ It will be more like if you go as a weasel. I shan’t tell you where she is.”

He knew better than Elsa how Sarah would take the news of his departure, but he carried them to her with a reckless audacity that would have silenced any ordinary opposition. But Sarah was not an ordinary person ; a conflict took place which left both torn, bleeding, breathless ; in one sense, however, he was the conqueror, for he went away in spite of it. The Squire sent him out in a vessel loaded with merchandise for some Southern port ; the cargo was sold, and Osmond, taking the proceeds, left the port to go further South. Nothing had been heard of him since the vessel returned. For a time the Squire spoke of him as one not far away ; then Elsa noticed that he began to relate the anecdotes she had heard him repeat in connection with his own son, Osmond Parke, confounding them with the childhood of Osmond Luce ; in her mind it was a sign that the old man had given him up, and that he was as good

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as buried. In Sarah’s mind his image was no.t confused. As a banner floats in the wind, he was ever floating before her mental vision, with his hundred flitting expressions of wrath, mirth, and recklessness; but she never spoke of him. Once Elsa went to a chest where some of his clothes were packed, to see if they were damp ; dampness, according to a superstition in Crest, being the proof of a seafaring man’s. death by drowning. When she told Sarah they were as dry as a bone, she looked agitated, and begged her never to speak of them again.

After Sarah’s child was born she spoke of Osmond for the first time to Jason, as a half-cousin, who bore no resemblance in character or looks to herself. He was the only one, she said, who had any claim on her grandfather’s property, that might ever trouble them. She doubted whether he would ever come back, for the Parkes who had deserted Crest never returned. There was a hectic flush on her high cheek-bones after this conversation, but Jason did not observe it.

She named her boy “ Parke.” He was a Parke, every inch of him, she remarked to Jason, and asked him to notice how much his hands were shaped like her grandfather’s. She might have added that they were like Osmond’s, too. Jason looked at his own hands instead, and' shrugged his shoulders.

“ Do you consider yourself a Parke ?” he asked.

“I am like my mother,” she answered sharply.

Jason examined her face as if he intended to make a study of race, and then looked at the baby experimentally.

“ What does the Squire think of him ?” he asked.

“ What you do, I suppose.”

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The thump of a cane was heard, and Sarah said, “ Here he comes, you can ask him.”

But he only smiled when the Squire entered and stood by the cradle, and before he spoke Jason was gone.

If Sarah had been imaginative she might have mused on the picture before her — baby Parke, aged three weeks, and the Squire, eighty-four years. As she was not, she inquired which bin in the cellar Cuth had put the potatoes in.

“Yah, yah, Sally; whatever bin Cuth has put the potatoes in is the right one.”

“ Grandpa, Cuth does what he likes with you.”

“ So, give me a coal, Sally.”

She held one in the tongs for him to light his pipe, and then moved her chair near him. His face was never so pleasant as when he was smoking, and she loved to look at it. He scattered ashes over his double-breasted waistcoat, and sparks dropped on his pantaloons, but she did not venture to brush them off, because it would have annoyed him. The serenity of his mien, the result of a wonderful selfishness, was always her envy and admiration. She thought him one of the best men in the world, because he generally allowed people their own way, — provided their way did not cross his. He was an amiable host to all the virtues, but he never sought their society.

“ When are you going to comb my hair again ?” he asked.

“ Why, Grandpa, hasn’t Elsa combed it ?”

“ Elsa has been like a gale of wind in the house since you have been shut up.”

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“ Why didn’t you check her ?”

“ I should, if I had been too much in the draft.”

She combed his long silvery locks till she was ready to faint with fatigue, and till Parke woke up with a cry. When he was hushed the old man fell asleep in his chair, and his slumber was quiet, dreamless, and deep as the child’s beside him.

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Chapter III

When Jason saw Sarah’s executive ability as the mistress and manager of her grandfather’s establishment, in doors and out, and comprehended the absolute position of the Squire, he felt the impotence of his crude ideas, and his individual isolation. Nothing practical could be done in the way of equal rights with the Squire’s garden, orchard, woodland, mills, houses, and ships, presided over and governed by the arbitrary wills of such a man and such a woman. The prestige of possession dazzled his view of the tenth point of the law, and he fell down among the “nine-holes” of the game, which is an inscrutable one to those who do not hold a hand in it. He did therefore what most men do, when suddenly ushered from one sphere to another, — ruled his actions according to the circumstances he was placed in. Now and then he made use of the phrases which belonged to his smouldered theories. When Sarah requested him to give up his trade, he replied that it was better to be a carpenter than to live by the extortions of commerce, or an undue proportion of land ; whereat she laughed so loud he discovered that some of her teeth were as sharp-pointed as needles, and that they gave her a tigerish look. His connection simply w;th the Squire permitted him to make up his own hand in the game he thought he despised. Contracts were obtained on the

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strength of it which brought him money, and at the end of three years he was the owner of several stores and houses, planned by himself, which paid a better rent than any of the Squire’s buildings. In the beginning of his enterprises he seemed the same to his acquaintances. They joked with him, and laughed at him; but the jokes grew few, and the laughs faint. Finally no one ventured to be familiar with him, except John Davis, who was now married to Jane Moss.

From the day that Jason entered the family he suffered from an intangible something in the Squire’s bearing which deprived him of his natural demeanor, and made him feel, by contrast, unfinished, awkward, incapable. Whatever the influence was, he succumbed to it, and its effect lasted long ; in fact, the Squire was the first potter that kneaded Jason’s clay.

The fourth year of his marriage came, and the Squire still lived; he went his daily rounds over his possessions in his chaise, accompanied by Cuth, smoked, dozed, played with little Parke, and listened affably to all Sarah had to say. It was the calmest, most satisfying period of her life; Jason was no trouble to her, no inconvenience to the Squire, and not an object of interest to his boy, beyond the knowledge that he was to be called “ father.”

The thread of the Squire’s life, strong as it seemed, snapped suddenly at last. In the early morning of an autumn day, Sarah, always up betimes, heard a strange babbling noise as she passed his door. She opened it, and went to his bedside, and saw that the “ Shadow feared of man” had come.

“ Grandpa,” she whispered, terror-struck.

He knew her, and with one trembling hand, — the other was paralyzed, — drew her face against his, and vainly tried to speak. His tongue was paralyzed also ; tears burst from his dim eyes, — the only speech that was left him, — and they wrung her to the soul. She released herself and ran to the kitchen — Elsa was not yet down stairs — then to the barnyard for Cuth.

“My soul,” said Cuth, rising from his milking-pail, when he saw her flying towards him, “ what is it ?”

“ He is going, Cuth ; run for the doctor.”

“ Mr. Auster ? ” stammered Cuth.

“ Grandpa,” she shrieked.

“ It can’t be ; I’ve known him forty year. But I’ll go. What do you think it is ?”

“ It is death.”

Cuth shook his head, as he started on a swinging trot, and said to himself, “ Numb palsy — I give him up.” He stopped every person he met, without stopping himself, to say that the Squire had had a shock, and before J ason heard of it, it was spread through the town.

When Sarah went back, Elsa was busy making a fire.

“ What upon earth ails you, Sarah Auster ?” she exclaimed.

Sarah took her by the hand, and led her into the Squire’s bedroom, and Elsa understood all.

“ He’ll last over to-day,” she said presently ; “ see how well he breathes.”

Sarah dropped on the floor beside him, and buried her face in the bedclothes. He began to babble again. Elsa slipped out and went up to Jason’s room.

“Mr. Auster,” she said, putting her head in at the door, “ the Squire is struck with death.”

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“ Death,” he muttered, starting from a sound sleep.

“Easy though, almost as easy as your nap. The neighbors will be flocking in now. Can you dress Parke? I’ve got to go right down again, and Sarah won’t think of any thing, except her grandfather.”

“ What are the neighbors coming in for ?”

“ Don’t be droll,” she said, closing the door.

Jason dressed, and sat down by Parke’s crib. He softly touched his beautiful hair, and put his finger inside his little hand, which closed upon it with a clinging grasp. He counted the network of delicate veins in his fair temples, and watched the tranquil motion of his white bosom. Then carefully covering himjjpb went down to the kitchen. The outside doors were already open, and people were lingering about and talking 4o each other in subdued voices.

“ The doctor has come,” said Elsa, motioning him toward the bedroom.

“Gilbert,” said Jason, giving his first order, “go up stairs and watch Parke.”

“Nothing can be done,” he heard the doctor say as he entered the bedroom. Sarah’s eyes were fixed on the Squir^ face, and she made no reply to him.

“ Why^Mrs. Auster,” he continued, testily, “ would you never be willing to part with him ?”

“Sarah,” said Jason, in a firm voice, that compelled her attention, “ your grandfather is leaving life without suffering.”

“He is going out like a candle,” added the doctor, pinching his fingers together as if they were snuffers.

“No link now,” she muttered; “and where is the other end of the chain, grandpa ?”

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The doctor rasped his chin, and looked at Jason, who wore a stolid expression.

“ Come, Sarah,” called Elsa, “ come to breakfast, do. There’s no use in putting off meals; they will come round, and they must be eaten. Come, now ; the neighbors are here, longing to do something for you.”

“ Come,” said Jason, raising her from her knees.

As she turned he met her eyes ; there was a wild look in them, which stirred his pity. He made a motion as if to put his arm round her, but she glided by him, and went over to the table alone. When she returned, Jason went up stairs to release Gilbert. Parke was awake, in high glee.

“ Go away, father Jason,” he screamed, “ and let me dffcss myself.”

“ Be good, for grandpa is sick.”

“ Then I am sick,” he replied, getting into his crib again, and shutting his eyes.

“Do you know that there are lots of people down stairs ?”

“1ST o,” Parke answered, hopping out on one foot. “ Tell me about it, and you may dress me. But you can’t wash my face ; if lots of people are h^p, I won’t stop to have my face washed.”

After he was dressed, he insisted on being taken down stairs on Jason’s shoulder, and having his breakfast handed up to him on his perch, and tried to balance his plate on Jason’s head.

“ Where’s my mother ? ” he asked ; “ there hasn’t anybody kissed me yet.”

“ Go to her,” said his father ; “ she is in the bedroom.”

Sarah heard the patter of his feet, and rose to lead him to the bed. “ Poor grandpa,” she said.

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“ He isn’t poor,” said Parke. “ Why don’t he get up ?”

The chintz bed-curtains, on which was printed a foxchase, in red and white, attracted him, as they had done a hundred times. He put his hand to his mouth, and tooted in imitation of the huntsmen, and cried “gee-up” to the galloping horses. The Squire began to babble at the sound of his voice, which made him turn away frightened, and beg his mother to let him go.

“ Will you kiss grandpa once more ?”

“No, not now, but to-morrow.” ^

She put him down outside the door, and he ran back to Jason, who amused him all day by whittling boats, animals, and uncouth toys, with which they played together. . #

“ Dear me,” said Elsa, who was by no means melancholy, “ how little that child realizes what is going on.”

Jason smiled. “ Would you have him howl ?”

“ Hadn’t he ought to have a realizing sense of death ?”

“ Never, if possible.”

At dusk the doctor pronounced the Squire’s life to be ebbing fast ; he would go before morning. Elsa immediately went all over the house and changed the order of the furniture. The chairs were placed in rows, and all small articles were moved into the closets. It was the third time, she soliloquized, that she had shoved things about for a funeral since she had been in the house ; the first happened ten years ago, and was that of Sarah’s mother, the wife of Osmond Parke, and if ever there was a creature ready to go, she was. “ I ain’t so mad,” concluded Elsa, “ as I was then. • It did me good to hustle the furniture round, and wish it was that villain Osmond Parke, who was alive somewhere, we

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thought ; though we hadn’t seen him for years.” Having finished her work, she closed the shutters on the front of the house, and opened wide all the doors. “ If his old spirit,” — she muttered, meaning the Squire’s, — “ wants to take a turn, to see if things are according to his ideas, he is welcome to do so.” She then retired in a peaceful frame of mind, after having read some passages in the Bible, which reminded her of the vanity of the world, and contained the text, “ What profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun ?”

Cuth remained in the kitchen as a watcher; Jason took care of Parke, up stairs, and Sarah stayed alone with the Squire. She was tormented by irrelevant thoughts, which Sie constantly checked by a strained attention to his breath, which grew more and more difficult.

About four o’clock, he spoke clearly, but hurriedly, and without a motion, these words :

“ It all comes to this, Sarah.”

She bent over him, and he was dead.

For an instant, while she looked upon the calm face, from which Life had fled, and Death assumed its mask, she felt as if her soul was poised on the wings of the spirit going heavenward. It was the first and the last sublime moment of her life.

Suddenly she recollected that there were no more Farkes, and she felt a pang because she waS a woman, and had been obliged to change her name.

“ It comes to this,” she repeated, “ either way.” She called softly to Cuth, and told him that it was over.

“ I know it, marm, I know it,” he answered. “ Give me your hand.” He shook it, patted her shoulder, and

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continued : “ Go to your bed, marm ; I’ve known him forty year, and I’ve a right to get him ready, and stay by him; and I am a-going to.”

She yielded the wish.

The funeral took place in three days, in the forenoon. People came from far and near to see the burial of the last of his name. Cuth took a solemn pleasure in the occasion; he crammed the horses that brought the funeral guests with oats, and cursed Gilbert’s mischief in exceeding the order he gave him to mark the carriages and harness, with their owners’ names upon them in chalk. The spectators of the long funeral procession had the gratification of knowing that “ Capt. Smith, A 1,” rode in one of the carriages, and “Mr. Brown, B 2,” in another, and so on through the line. Elsa in a lustrous black silk and blonde cap poured numberless cups of tea and coffee that day, and cut many slices of ham and loaf-cake. It was late in the afternoon before * the house was emptied of visitors, and then a dreadful blank was felt which neither Jason nor Sarah could endure. She wrapped Parke in a shawl, and took him into the garden. Behind it, and beyond the orchard, a hill rose, whose side towards the town was shaded by a few tawny crooked cedars, and whose top was covered by a small grove of oaks and a brushy heap of rocks. Parke begged to go up there, and she carried him in her arms.