We neither of us thought that Gregory Wilkinson manifested as much enthusiasm in the matter as the circumstances of the case demanded; but then, as Susan pointed out to me, in her usual clear-headed way, it was not reasonable to expect a man with a fortune to be as eager to get one as a man without one would be.
“Very likely he’ll give us his share for finding it,” said Susan; “he don’t want it himself, and it would be dreadful to turn the heads of all those destitute red Indian children by leaving it to them.”
I should have mentioned earlier that, so far as we knew, my cousin and I were my great-great-great-uncle’s only surviving heirs. The family luck had not held out any especially strong temptations in the way of pleasant things to live for, and so the family gradually had died off. Whatever my search should bring to light, therefore, would be divided between us two.
By the time that Old Jacob got through with his boat-painting, Gregory Wilkinson had gathered a sufficient interest in our money-digging to volunteer to go along with us to the bay. We had a two-seated wagon, and I took with me several things which I thought might be useful in an expedition of this nature—two spades, a pickaxe, a crow-bar, a measuring tape that belonged to Susan, an axe, and a lantern (for, as Susan very truly said, we might have to do some of our digging after dark). I took also a pulley and a coil of rope, in case the box of treasure should prove so heavy that we could not otherwise pull it out from the hole. Old Jacob knew all about rigging tackle, and said that we could cut a pair of sheer-poles in the woods. We were very much encouraged by the confident way in which Old Jacob talked about cutting sheer-poles; it sounded wonderfully business-like. Susan, of course, was very desirous of going along, and I very much wanted to take her. But as we intended to stay all night, in case we did not find the treasure during our first day’s search, and as the only place where we could sleep was an oysterman’s shanty that Old Jacob knew about, she saw herself that it would not do. So she made the best of staying at home, in her usual cheery fashion, and promised, as we drove off, to have a famous supper ready for us the next night—when we would come home with our wagon-load of silver and gold.
It was a long, hot, dusty drive, and the mosquitoes were pretty bad as we drew near the coast. But we were cheered by the thought of the fortune that was so nearly ours, and we smoked our pipes at the mosquitoes in a way that astonished them. After we had taken out the horses and had eaten our dinner (Susan had put us up a great basket of provisions, with two of her own delicious peach pies on top) we walked down to the bay-side, with Old Jacob leading, to look for the place where the Martha Ann used to anchor. I took the tape-measure along, both because it might be useful, and because it made me think of Susan.
I was sorry to find that the clearer the lay of the land and water became, the more indistinct grew Old Jacob’s remembrance of where his father had told him that the schooner used to lie.
“It mought hev ben about here,” he said, pointing across to a little bay some way off on our left; “an’ agin it mought hev ben about thar,” with a wave of his hand towards a low point of land nearly half a mile off on our right; “an’ agin it mought hev ben sorter atwixt an’ at ween ’em. Here or hereabouts, thet’s w’at I say; here or hereabouts, sure.”
Now this was perplexing. My plan, based upon Old Jacob’s assurance that he could locate the anchorage precisely, was to hunt near the shore for likely-looking places and dig them up, one after another, until we found the treasure. But to dig up all the places where treasure might be buried along a whole mile of coast was not to be thought of. We implored Old Jacob to brush up his memory, to look attentively at the shape of the coast, and to try to fix definitely the spot off which the schooner had lain. But the more that he tried, the more confusing did his statements become. Just as he would settle positively—after much thinking and much looking at the sun and the coast line—on a particular spot, doubts would arise in his mind as to the correctness of his location; and these doubts presently would resolve themselves into the certainty that he was all wrong. Then the process of thinking and looking would begin all over again, only again to come to the same disheartening end. The short and long of the matter was that we spent all that day and a good part of the next in wandering along the bay-side in Old Jacob’s wake, while he made and unmade his locations at the rate of about three an hour. At last I looked at Gregory Wilkinson and Gregory Wilkinson looked at me, and we both nodded. Then we told Old Jacob that we guessed we’d better hitch up the horses and drive home. It made us pretty dismal, after all our hopes, to hitch up the horses and drive home that way.
My heart ached when I saw Susan leaning over the front gate watching for us as we drove up the road. The wind was setting down towards us, and I could smell the coffee that she had put on the fire to boil as soon as she caught sight of us—Susan made coffee splendidly—and I knew that she had kept her promise, and had ready the feast that was to celebrate our success; and that made it all the dismaller that we hadn’t any success to celebrate.
When I told her how badly the expedition had turned out she came very near crying; but she gave a sort of gulp, and then laughed instead, and did what she could to make things pleasant for us. We had our feast, but notwithstanding Susan’s effort to be cheerful, it was about as dreary a feast as I ever had anything to do with. We brought Old Jacob in and let him feast with us; and he, to do him justice, was not dreary at all. He seemed to enjoy it thoroughly. Indeed, the most trying part of that sorrowful supper-party was the way in which Old Jacob recovered his spirits and declared at short intervals that his memory now was all right again. He even went so far as to say that with his eyes blindfolded and in the dark he could lead us to the precise spot off which the schooner used to lie.
Susan was disposed to regard these assertions hopefully; but we, who had been fumbling about with him for two days, well understood their baselessness. It was not Old Jacob’s fault, of course, but his defective memory certainly was dreadfully provoking. Here was an enormous fortune slipping through our lingers just because this old man could not remember a little matter about where a schooner had been anchored.
After he had eaten all the supper that he could hold—which was a good deal—and had gone home, we told Susan the whole dismal story of how our expedition had proved to be a total failure. It was best, we thought, not to mince matters with her; and we stated minutely how time after time the anchorage of the schooner had been precisely located, and then in a little while had been unlocated again. She saw, as we did, that as a clew Old Jacob was not much of a success, and also that he was about the only thing in the least like a clew that we possessed. Realizing this latter fact, and knowing that his great age made his death probable at any moment, Susan strongly advised me, in her clear-sighted way, to have him photographed.
IV
Gregory Wilkinson seemed to find himself quite comfortable in our little home, and settled down there into a sort of permanency. We were glad to have him stay with us, for he was a first-rate fellow, and always good company in his pleasant, quiet way, and he told us two or three times that he was enjoying himself. He told me a great many more than two or three times that he considered Susan to be a wonderfully fine woman; indeed, he told me this at least once every day, and sometimes oftener. He was greatly struck—just as everybody is who lives for any length of time in the same house with Susan—by her capable ways, and by her unfailing equanimity and sweetness of temper. Even when the colored girl fell down the well, carrying the rope and the bucket along with her, Susan was not a bit flustered. She told me just where I would find the clothes-line and a big meat-hook; and when, with this hastily-improvised apparatus, we had fished the colored girl up and got her safely on dry land again, she knew exactly what to do to make her all right and comfortable. As Gregory Wilkinson observed to me, after it was all over, from the way that Susan behaved, any one might have thought that hooking colored girls up out of wells was her regular business.
As to making Susan angry,
that simply was impossible. When things went desperately wrong with her in any way she would just come right to me and cry a little on my shoulder. Then, when I had comforted her, she would chipper up and be all right again in no time. Gregory Wilkinson happened to come in one day while a performance of this sort was going on, and for fear that he should think it odd Susan explained to him that it was a habit of hers when things very much worried her and she felt like being ugly to people. (The trouble that day was that the colored girl, who had a wonderful faculty for stirring up tribulation, had broken an India china teacup that had belonged to Susan’s grandmother, and that Susan had thought the world of.) That evening, while we were sitting on the veranda smoking, and before Susan, who was helping clear the supper-table, had joined us, Gregory Wilkinson said to me, with oven, more emphasis than usual, that Susan was the finest woman he had ever known; and he added that he was very sorry that when he was my ago he had not met and married just such another.
He and I talked a good deal at odd times about the money that our great-great-great-uncle the pirate had buried, and that through all these years had stayed buried so persistently. He did not take much interest in the matter personally, but for my sake, and still more for Susan’s sake, he was beginning to be quite anxious that the money should be found. He even suggested that we should take Old Jacob over to the bay-side and let him try again to find the Martha Ann’s anchorage; but a little talk convinced us that this would be useless. The old man had been given every opportunity, during the two days that we had cruised about with him, to refresh his memory; and we both had been the pained witnesses of the curious psychological fact that the more he refreshed it, the more utterly unmanageable it had become. The prospect, we agreed, was a disheartening one, for it was quite evident that for our purposes Old Jacob was, as it were, but an elderly, broken reed.
About this time I noticed that Gregory Wilkinson was unusually silent, and seemed to be thinking a great deal about something. At first we were afraid that he was not quite well, and Susan offered him both her prepared mustard plasters and her headache powders. But he said that he was all right, though he was very much obliged to her. Still, he kept on thinking, and he was so silent and preoccupied that Susan and I were very uncomfortable. To have him around that way, and to be always wondering what he could possibly be thinking about, Susan said, made her feel as though she were trying to eavesdrop when nobody was talking.
One afternoon while we were sitting on the veranda—Susan and I trying to keep up some sort of a conversation, and Gregory Wilkinson thinking away as hard as ever he could think—a thin man in a buggy drove down the road and stopped at our hitch-ing-post. When he had hitched his horse he took out from the after-part of the buggy a largo tin vessel standing on light iron legs, and came up to the house with it. He made us all a sort of comprehensive bow, but stopped in front of Susan, set the tin vessel upon its legs, and said:
“Madam, you behold before you the most economical device and the greatest labor-saving invention of this extraordinarily devicious and richly inventive age. This article, madam”—and he placed his hand upon the tin vessel affectionately—”is Stowe’s patent combination interchangeable churn and wash-boiler.”
Susan did not say anything; she simply shuddered.
“As at present arranged, madam,” the man went on, “it is a churn. Standing thus upon these light yet firm legs” (the thing wobbled outrageously), “with this serviceable handle projecting from the top, and communicating with an exceptionally effective churning apparatus within, it is beyond all doubt the very best churn, as well as the cheapest, now offered on the American market. But observe, madam, that as a wash-boiler it is not less excellent. By the simple process of removing the handle, taking out the dasher, and unshipping the legs—the work, as you perceive, of but a moment—the process of transformation is complete. As to the trifling orifice that the removal of the handle leaves in the lid, it becomes, when the wash-boiler side of this Protean vessel is uppermost, a positive benefit. It is an effective safety-valve. Without it, I am not prepared to say that the boiler would not burst, scattering around it the scalded, mangled remains of your washer-woman and utterly ruining your week’s wash.
“And mark, madam, mark most of all, the economy of this invention. I need not say to you, a housekeeper of knowledge and experience, that churning-day and wash-day stand separate and distinct upon your household calendar. Under no circumstances is it conceivable that the churn and the wash-boiler shall be required for use upon the same day. Clearly the use of the one presupposes and compels the neglect of the other. Then why cumber your house with these two articles, equally large and equally unwieldly, when, by means of the beautiful invention that I have the honor of presenting to your notice, the two in one can be united, and money and house-room alike can be saved? I trust, madam, I believe, that I have said enough to convince you that my article is all that fancy can paint or bright hope inspire; that in every household made glad by its presence it will be regarded always and forever as a heaven-given boon!” Suddenly dropping his rhetorical tone and coming down to the tone of business, the man went on: “You’ll buy one, won’t you? The price—”
The change of tone seemed to arouse Susan from the spellbound condition in which she had remained during this extraordinary harangue.
“O-o-o-oh!” she said, shudderingly, “do take the horrid, horrid thing right away!” Then she fled into the house.
I was very angry at the man for disturbing Susan in this way, and I told him so pretty plainly; and I also told him to get out. At this juncture, to my astonishment, Gregory Wilkinson interposed by asking what the thing was worth; and when the man said five dollars, he said that he would buy it. The man had manifested a disposition to be ugly while I was giving him his talking to, but when he found that he had made a sale, after all, he grew civil again. As he went off he expressed the hope that the lady would be all right presently, and the conviction that she would find the combination churn and wash-boiler a household blessing that probably would add ten years to her life.
“What on earth did you buy that for?” I asked, when the man had gone.
“Oh, I don’t know. It seems to be a pretty good wash-boiler, anyway. I heard your wife say the other day that she wanted a wash-boiler. She needn’t use it as a churn if she don’t want to, you know.”
“But my wife never will tolerate that disgusting thing, with its horrid suggestiveness of worse than Irish uncleanliness, about the house,” I went on, rather hotly. “I really must beg of you to send it away.”
“All right,” he answered. “I’ll take it away. I’m going to New York tomorrow, and I’ll take it along.”
“And what ever will you do with it in New York?” I asked.
“Well, I can’t say positively yet, but I guess I’ll send it out to the asylum. They’d be glad to get it there, I don’t doubt—not as a churn, you know, but for wash-boiling.”
Then he went on to tell me that one of the things that he especially wanted done at the asylum with his legacy was the construction of a steam-laundry, with a thing in the middle that went round and round, and dried the clothes by centrifugal pressure. He explained that the asylum was only just starting as an asylum, and was provided not only with very few destitute red Indian children, but also with very few of the appliances which an institution of that sort requires, and that was the reason why he had selected it, in preference to many other very deserving charities, to leave his money to.
I must say that I was glad to hear him talking in this strain, for his sudden announcement of his intended departure for New York, just after I had spoken so warmly to him, made me fear that I had offended him. But it was clear that I hadn’t, and that his going off in this unexpected fashion did not mean anything. He always did have a fancy for doing things suddenly.
Susan was worried about it, in just the same way, when I told her; but she ended by agreeing with me that he was not in the least offended at anything. Indeed, tha
t evening we both were very much pleased to notice what good spirits he was in. His preoccupied manner was entirely gone, and, for him, he was positively lively. Evidently, whatever the thing was that he had been thinking about so hard, he had settled it in a way that satisfied him.
Just as we were going to bed he told me, in what struck me at the time as rather an odd tone, that he was under the impression that he had somewhere a chest full of old family papers, and that possibly among these papers there might be something that would tell me how to find the fortune that Susan and I certainly deserved to have. As he said this he laughed in a queer sort of way, and then he looked at Susan very affectionately, and then he took each of us by the hand.
“Oh!” said Susan, rapturously (when Susan is excited she always begins what she has to say with an “Oh!” I like it). “To think of finding a piece of old yellow parchment with a quite undecipherable cryptogram written on it in invisible ink telling us just where we ought to dig! How perfectly lovely! Why didn’t you think of it sooner?”
“Because I have been neither more nor less than a blind old fool. And—and I have to thank you, my dear,” he continued, still speaking in the queer tone, “for having effectually opened my eyes.” As he made this self-derogatory and quite incomprehensible statement he turned to Susan, kissed her in a great hurry, shook our hands warmly, said goodnight, and trotted off up-stairs to his room. His conduct was very extraordinary. But then, as I have already mentioned, Gregory Wilkinson had a way of always doing just the things which nobody expected him to do.
He had settled back into his ordinary manner by morning; at least he was not much queerer than usual, and bade us good-bye cheerily at the Lewes railway station. I had hired a light wagon and had driven him over in time for the early train, bringing Susan along, so that she might see the last of him. What with all three of us, his trunk and valise, and the churn-wash-boiler, we had a wagon-load.
The Pirate Story Megapack: 25 Classic and Modern Tales Page 119