“Harkness,” said the Captain, turning his fat head half round toward his friend, who sat a little back of him, and breaking off his cigar-ash into the bronze plate at his elbow, “do you know that your remaining in the trade after all the rest of us have gone out of it is something quite monumental?” Captain Butler had a tender and almost reverential love for Joshua Harkness, but he could not help using a little patronage toward him, since his health had grown delicate, and his fortunes had not distinctly prospered.
“I am glad you like it, Jack,” said Harkness quietly.
“The Captain is a mass of compliments to-night,” remarked Helen.
The Captain grinned his consciousness. “You are a minx,” he said admiringly to Helen. Then he threw back his head and pulled at his cigar, uttering between puffs, “No, but I mean it, Harkness. There’s something uncommonly fine about it. A man gets to be noblesse by sticking to any old order of things. It makes one think of the ancien régime somehow to look at you. Why, you ‘re still of the oldest tradition of commerce, the stately and gorgeous traffic of the orient j you ‘re what Samarcand, and Venice, and Genoa, and Lisbon, and London, and Salem have come to.”
“They’ve come to very little in the end then,” said Harkness as before.
“Oh, I don’t know about that the Captain took the end of his cigar out and lit a fresh one from it before he laid it down upon the ash-holder; “I don’t know about that. We don’t consider material things merely. There has always been something romantic, something heroic about the old trade. To be sure, now that it’s got down to telegraphing, it’s only fit for New-Yorkers. They ‘re quite welcome to it.” This was not very logical taken as a whole, but we cannot always be talking reason. At the words romantic and heroic Helen had pricked her ears, if that phrase may be used concerning ears of such loveliness as hers, and she paused from her millinery. “Ah ha, young lady!” cried the Captain; “you’re listening, are you? You didn’t know there was any romance or heroism in business, did you?”
“What business?” asked Helen.
“Your father’s business, young woman; my old business, the India trade.”
“The India trade? Why, were you ever in the India trade, Captain Butler?”
“Was I ever in the India trade?” demanded the Captain, taking his cigar out of his mouth in order to frown with more effect upon Helen. “Well, upon my word! Where did you think I got my title? I’m too old to have been in the war.”
“I didn’t know,” said Helen.
“I got it in the India trade. I was captain and supercargo many an eleven months’ voyage, just as your father was.”
Helen was vastly amused at this. “Why, papa! were you ever captain of a ship !”
“For a time,” said Mr. Harkness, smiling at the absurdity.
“Of course he was!” shouted the Captain.
“Then why isn’t he captain, now?”
“Because there’s a sort of captain that loses his handle When he comes ashore, and there’s a sort that keeps it. I’m one sort and your father’s the other. It’s natural to call a person of my model and complexion by some kind of title, and it isn’t natural to call such a man as your father so. Besides, I was captain longer than he was. I was in the India trade, young lady, and out of it before you were born.”
“I was born a great while ago,” observed Helen, warningly.
“I daresay you think so,” said the Captain. “I thought I was, at your age. But you’ll find, as you grow older, that you weren’t born such a very great while ago after all. The time shortens up. Isn’t that so, Harkness?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Harkness. “Everything happened day before yesterday.”
“Exactly,” said the Captain. Helen thought how young she must be to have already got that letter of Robert’s so many centuries ago. “Yes,” the Captain pursued. “I had been in the India trade twenty-five years when I went out of it in 1857 — or it went out of me.” He nodded his great, close-clipped head in answer to her asking glance. “It went out of a good many people at that time. We had a grand smash. We had overdone it. We had warnings enough, but we couldn’t realise that our world was coming to an end. It hadn’t got so low as telegraphing, yet; but it was mere shop then even, compared with the picturesque traffic of our young days. Eh, Harkness?”
“Yes, it had lost nil attraction but profit.”
“Were you ever down at India Wharf, Helen?” demanded the Captain. “I don’t blame you; neither were my girls. But were you?”
“Of course,” said Helen, scorning to lift her eyes from her work. “The Nahant boat starts from it.”
“The Nahant boat!”. repented the Captain in a great rage. “In my day there was no Nahant boat about India Wharf, I can tell you, nor any other steamboat; nor any dirty shanties ashore. The place was sacred to the shipping of the grandest commerce in the world. There they lay, those beautiful ships, clean as silver, every one of them, and manned by honest Yankee crews.” The Captain got upon his feet for the greater convenience of his eloquence. “Not by ruffians from every quarter of the globe. There were gentlemen’s sons before the mast, with their share in the venture, going out for the excitement of the thing; boys from Harvard, fellows of education and spirit; and the forecastle was filled with good Toms and Jims and Joes from the Cape; chaps whose aunts you knew; good stock through and through, sound to the core. The supercargo was often his own captain, and he was often a Harvard man — you know what they are!”
“Nicest fellows in the world,” consented Helen.
The Captain blew a shaft of white smoke into the air, and then cut it through with a stroke of his cigar. “We had on a mixed cargo, and we might be going to trade at eastern ports on the way out. Nobody knew what market we should find in Calcutta. It was pure adventure, and a calculation of chances, and it was a great school of character. It was a trade that made men as well as fortunes; it took thought and forethought. The owners planned their ventures like generals planning a campaign. They were not going to see us again for a year; they were not going to hear of us till we were signalled outside on our return. When we sailed it was an event, a ceremony, a solemnity; and we celebrated it with song from all the tarry throats on board. Yes, the men used to sing as we dropped down the bay.”
“Oh, Captain Butler, it was fine!” cried Helen, dropping her hands on her work, and looking up at the Captain in his smoke-cloud, with rapture. “Papa, why didn’t you ever let me come down to see your ships sail?”
“It was all changed before you were born, Helen,” began her father.
“O yes, all changed,” cried the Captain, taking the word away from him. “The ships had begun, long before that, to stop at East Boston, and we sold their cargoes by sample, instead of handling them in our warehouses, and getting to feel some sort of human interest in them. When it came to that, a mere shopman’s speculation, I didn’t much care for the New-Yorkers getting it.” The Captain sat down and smoked in silence.
“How did the New-Yorkers get it?” asked Helen, with some indignant stir in her local pride.
“In the natural course of things,” said her father. “Just as we got it from Salem. By being bigger and richer.”
“Oh, it was all changed anyway,” broke in the Captain. “We used to import nearly all the cotton goods used in this country, — fabrics that the natives wove on their little looms at home, and that had the sentiment you girls pretend to find in hand-made things, — but before we stopped we got to sending our own cottons to India. And then came the telegraph, and put the finishing-stroke to romance in the trade. Your father loads now according to the latest despatches from Calcutta. He knows just what his cargo will be worth when it gets there, and he telegraphs his people what to send back.” The Captain ended in a very minor key: “I’m glad I went out of it when I did. You’d have done well to go out too, Harkness.”
“I don’t know, Jack. I had nothing else in view. You know I had become involved before the crash came; and I couldn’t
get out.”
“I think you could,” returned the Captain stubbornly, and he went on to show his old friend how; and the talk wandered back to the great days of the old trade, and to the merchants, the supercargoes, the captains, the mates of their youth. They talked of the historic names before their date, of Cleaveland and his voyages, of Handasy de Perkins, of Bromfield, of the great chiefs of a commerce which founded the city’s prosperity, and which embraced all climes and regions. The Dutch colonies and coffee, the China trade and tea, the North-west coast and furs; the Cape, and its wines and oil; the pirates that used to harass the early adventurers; famous shipwrecks; great gains and magnificent losses; the splendour of the English nabobs and American residents at Calcutta; mutinies aboardship; the idiosyncrasies of certain sailors; the professional merits of certain black cooks: these varied topics and interests conspired to lend a glamour to the India trade as it had been, that at last moved Captain Butler to argument in proof of the feasibility of its revival. It was the explanation of this scheme that wearied Helen. At the same time she saw that Captain Butler did not mean to go very soon, for he had already sunk the old comrade in the theorist so far as to be saying, “Well, sir,” and “Why, sir,” and “I tell you, sir.” She got up — not without dropping her scissors from her lap, as is the custom of her sex — and gave him her hand, which he took in his left, without rising.
“Going to bed? That’s right. I shall stay a bit, yet. I want to talk with your father.”
“Talk him into taking a little rest,” said Helen, looking at the Captain as she bent over her father to kiss him good-night.
“I shall give him all sorts of good advice,” returned the Captain cheerily.
Her father held her hand fondly till she drew an arm’s-length away, and then relinquished it with a very tender “Good-night, my dear.”
Helen did not mean to go to bed, and when she reached her own room, she sat a long time there, working at Margaret’s bonnet, and overhearing now and then some such words of the Captain’s as “dyes,” “muslins,” “ice,” “teak,” “gunny-bags,” “shellac,” “Company’s choppers,” — a name of fearful note descriptive of a kind of Calcutta handkerchief once much imported. She imagined that the Captain was still talking of the India trade. Her father spoke so low that she could not make out any words of his; the sound of’ his voice somehow deeply touched her, his affection appealed to hers in that unintelligible murmur, as the disembodied religion of a far-heard hymn appeals to the solemnity of the listener’s soul. She began to make a fantastic comparison of the qualities of her father’s voice and the Captain’s, to the disadvantage of the Captain’s other qualities; she found that her father was of finer spirit and of gentler nature, and by a natural transition she perceived that it was a grander thing to be sitting alone in one’s room with one’s heart-ache than to be perhaps foolishly walking the piazza with one’s accepted commonplace destiny as Marian Butler was at that moment. At this point she laughed at herself, said “Poor Marian” aloud, and recognised that her vagaries were making Captain Butler an ill return for his kindness in dropping in to chat with her father; she hoped he would not chat too long, and tire him out; and so her thoughts ran upon Robert again, and she heard no more of the talk below, till after what seemed to her, starting from it, a prolonged reverie. Then she was aware of Captain Butler’s boots chirping out of the library into the hall, toward the door, with several pauses, and she caught fragments of talk again: “I had no idea it was as bad as that, Harkness — bad business, must see what can be done, weather it a few weeks longer — confoundedly straitened myself — pull you through,” and faintly,”
“Well, good-night, Joshua; I’ll see you in the morning.” There was another pause, in which she fancied Captain Butler lighting his cigar at the chimney of the study-lamp with which her father would be following him to the door; the door closed and her father went slowly back to the library, where she felt rather than heard him walking up and down. She wanted to go to him, but she would not; she wanted to call to him, but she remained silent; when at last she heard his step upon the stairs, heavily ascending, and saw the play of his lamp-light on the walls without, she stealthily turned down the gas that he might not think her awake. Half an hour later, she crept to his door, which stood a little ajar, and whispered, “Papa!”
“What is it, Helen?” He was in bed, but his voice sounded very wakeful. “What is it, my dear!”
“Oh, I don’t know!” — she flung herself on her knees beside his bed in the dark, and put her arms about his neck—” but I feel so unhappy!”
“About—” began her father, but she quickly interrupted.
“No, no! About you, papa! You seem so sad and careworn, and I’m nothing but a burden and a trouble to you.”
“You are nothing but a comfort and a help to me. Poor child! You mustn’t be worried by my looks. I shall be all right in the morning. Come, come!”
“But weren’t you perplexed somehow about business? Weren’t you thinking about those accounts?”
“No, my dear.”
“What were you thinking of?”
“Well, Helen, I was thinking of your mother and your little brothers.”
“Oh!” said Helen, with the kind of recoil which the young must feel even from the dearest dead. “Do you often think of them?”
“No, I believe, not often. Never so much as tonight, since I first lost them; the house seemed full of them then. I suppose these impressions must recur.”
“Oh, doesn’t it make you feel strange?” asked Helen, cowering a little closer to him.
“Why should it? It doesn’t make me feel strange to have your face against mine.”
“No, but — O don’t, don’t talk of such things, or I can’t endure it! Papa, papa! I love you so, it breaks my heart to have you talk in that way. How wicked I must be not to like you to think of them! But don’t, to-night! I want you to think of me, and what we are going to do together, and about all our plans for next winter, and for that new house, and everything. Will you? Promise!” Her father pressed her cheek closer against his, and she felt the fond smile which she could not see in the dark. He gave her his promise, and then began to talk about her going down to the Butlers’, which it seemed the Captain had urged further after she had bidden him good-night. The Captain was going to stay in Boston a day or two, and Mr. Harkness thought he might run down with him at the end of the week. Helen did not care to go, but with this in view she did not care to say so. She let her father comfort her with caressing words and touches, as when she was a child, and she frankly stayed her weak-heartedness upon his love. She was ashamed, but she could not help it, nor wish to help it. As she rested her head upon his pillow she heard his watch ticking under it; in this sound all the years since she was a little girl were lost Then his voice began to sink drowsily, as it used to do in remote times, when she had wearied him out with her troubles. He answered at random, and his talk wandered so that it made her laugh. That roused him to full consciousness of her parting kiss. “Goodnight,” he said, and held her hand, and drew her down by it again, and kissed her once more.
III.
HELEN woke the next morning with the overnight ache still at her heart: she wondered that she could have thought of leaving her father; but when she opened her shutters and let in the light, she was aware of a change that she could not help sharing. It was the wind that had changed, and was now east; the air was fresh and sparkling; the homicidal sunshine of the day before lay in the streets and on the house fronts as harmless as painted sunshine in a picture. Another day might transform all again; the tidal wave of life that the sea had sent from its deep cisterns out over the land might ebb as quickly, and the world find itself old and haggard, and suffering once more; but while it lasted, this respite was a rapture.
Helen came down with something of it in her face, the natural unreasoned and unreasoning hopefulness of young nerves rejoicing in the weather’s mood; but she began at breakfast by asking h
er father if he did not think it was rather crazy for her to be starting off for Beverley the very day after she had got home for good, and had just unpacked everything. She said she would go only on three conditions: — first, that he felt perfectly well; second, that he would be sure to come down on Saturday; and third, that he would be sure to bring her back with him on Monday.
“I don’t think I could stand Marian Butler in her present semi-fluid state more than three days; and I wouldn’t consent to leave you, papa, except that while you ‘re worrying over business you’d really rather not have me about. Would you?”
Her father said he always liked to have her about.
“O yes; of course,” said Helen. “But don’t you see, I’m trying to make it a virtue to go, and I can’t go unless I do?”
He laughed with her at her hypocrisy. They agreed that this was Thursday the 15th, and that he should come down on Saturday the 17th, and that he would let nothing detain him, and that he would come in time for dinner, and not put it off, as he would be sure to do, till the last train. Helen gave him a number of charges as to his health, and his hours of work, and bade him, if he did not feel perfectly well, to telegraph her instantly. When he started down town she made him promise to drive home. After the door closed upon him, she wondered that she had ever allowed herself to think of leaving him, and indignantly dismissed the idea of going to Beverley; but she went on and packed her trunk so as to have it ready when the express-man came for it. She could easily send him away, and besides, if she did not go now, there was no hope of getting her father off for a holiday and a little change of scene. She quitted the house in time to catch the noon train, and rode drearily down to Beverley, but not without the comfort of feeling herself the victim of an inexorable destiny. All the way down she was in impulse rushing back to Boston, and astonishing Margaret by her return, and telling her father that she found she could not go, and being fondly laughed at by him. She was almost in tears when the brakeman shouted out the name of the station, and if Marian Butler had not been there with her phaeton, in obedience to the Captain’s telegram announcing Helen’s arrival, she would have hidden herself somewhere, and taken the next train back to town. As it was, she descended into the embrace of her friend, who was so glad to see her that she tried to drive through the train, just beginning to move off, on the track that crossed their road, and had to be stopped by the baggage-master, who held the pony’s nose till the train was well on its way to Portland. At the door of the cottage, when the pony had drawn up the phaeton there, with a well-affected air of being driven up, Mrs. Butler met Helen with tender and approving welcome, and said that they could never have hoped to get her father to come unless she had come first. “This change in the weather will be everything for him, and you mustn’t worry about him,” she said, laying a soothing touch upon Helen’s lingering anxieties. “If he has any business perplexities, you may be sure he’d rather have you out of the way. I have seen something of business perplexities in my time, my dear, and I know what they are. I shall telegraph to Mr. Butler to bring your father in the same train with him, and not give him any chance of slipping through his fingers.”
Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells Page 190