Tom was puzzled: there was no such island in any geography that he had ever studied.
“But I don’t know where that is,” he answered.
“It is a place of which few people know,” she said. “Those that live here are Friends. They never leave the Isle, and it is seldom that any one discovers it.”
This gave Tom the clue. It was what he had been thinking of only last night: why had he not thought of it again?
“Ah!” he said, “you mean the Phantom Island.” She smiled compassionately, and waved her little hand toward the village which stretched up from the shore.
“Look!” she said. “Is anything more real?”
It was indeed a substantial looking scene. The houses, though old-fashioned and presenting innumerable gables, were well-built and beautifully neat. The gardens surrounding them bloomed with flowers, and the elms which overhung the road were thick with foliage. Tom wondered if he or the almanac were wrong.
“Will you please tell me,” he said, “if this isn’t Christmas-day?”
For a moment the maiden looked perplexed.
“Thee means the day of our Lord’s birth?” she asked at length inquiringly. “We do not observe that; but it is the twenty-fifth of December.”
“But everything is green!” Tom exclaimed. “The flowers are out. In Marblehead things are frozen up tight, and there won’t be a blossom for six months.”
“Verily!” observed the little girl. “But the Isle of Peace is washed by a warm current. It is always summer here.”
Tom drew a long breath.
“Well,” he declared, “that is a comfortable arrangement. “Have you any idea how far it is from the mainland?”
She shook her head.
“No one ever goes there,” she repeated; “thee is the first one who has been here for many, many years.”
“And don’t you ever hear about what is going on?”
She smiled gravely.
“The world goes on,” she said, “that is enough for us.”
“And you don’t get the Boston papers?”
“Papers?” interrogatively.
“Yes: the newspapers. They come out every day, you know, and have all the news of the world in them.’*
“We do not get anything,” she said; “we do not want anything; we are at peace.”
“But what country do you belong to? Aren’t you a part of the United States?”
“The United States of Holland?” she asked.
“No; we do not belong to that.”
“Why, no,” said Tom; “the United States of America of course.”
The look of perplexity deepened on the little girl’s face, and she answered as Tom himself had done about the Island, “I do not know where that is.”
Tom was stupefied. Here was a girl somewhere within a night’s sail of Boston who did not even know where the United States were.
“Well, I should remark!” he exclaimed.
“Will thee not tell me where it is?” she asked timidly.
Tom laughed.
“Why, of course I’ll tell you,” he said, “but it is so ridiculous — to think you don’t know! The United States are the old thirteen colonies with twenty-five States added and a lot of Territories beside.”
“And do they belong to England?”
“Belong to England!” Tom drew himself up as though the majesty of the American eagle was represented in his person, “I guess they don’t belong to England. We fixed that business more than a hundred years ago. Why, you’re awfully behind the age here. If you don’t know about the Revolutionary War, of course you don’t know about the Rebellion?”
She shook her head while a little blush came upon her cheeks.
* “Nor the Centennial; nor President Garfield’s death?”
“I know very little,” she murmured, apologetically; “it was more than two hundred years ago when my forefathers came here, and we have not learned anything since.”
Tom felt a pang of reproach; as though this were Eve and he were offering her the forbidden fruit.
“Ah!” he said, “you are a great deal better off. It is a great bore to have to learn all these things. I wish I didn’t. What I want to know is why I found this place when so few other people have ever seen it.”
The little girl’s eyes rested on Tom’s open, boyish face, as though she would read his nature for herself.
“Sometimes,” she said, “those find it who are at peace themselves; and sometimes those who are not at peace, but need it.”
In a moment the disturbing thoughts of last night came back to Tom’s recollection. His face flushed and his lips were pressed more closely together.
“Well,” he said, “I certainly ain’t at peace.”
A pained look came into her dark blue eyes.
“No,” she said, “I see thee is not. But thee may be,” she added.
He looked around on the tranquil scene. On one hand the sea lay quiet and glassy beneath the rays of the low lying sun: on the other the birds were singing gayly in the arching elms.
“One ought to find it here,” he said.
“Thee may find it anywhere,” she said gently.
Tom jumped on to the bow of the boat, which he had drawn up on the shore, and sat there swinging his feet.
“Well,” he said, “I’ll tell you about it. I was awfully mad when I left home last night, and I didn’t care where I went. You see I had had a row with my mother” —
Her countenance expressed the deepest distress.
“Thy mother!” she cried.
“Oh, my stepmother I” he explained, “my father’s second wife. She doesn’t like me for a cent, and I don’t like her. She told me last night she wished I’d go away and not come back again, and I told her I would — I’d never come back as long as I lived. So I took the dory and sailed away. When it came night I let the boat drift and went to sleep, and when I woke up the first thing I saw was this island” — He broke off as though a new thought had struck him. “Do you think your people would let me stay here?” he asked eagerly.
She looked at him wistfully for a moment.
“Would thee like to stay?” she asked.
“I’ve got to stay somewhere,” he said; “it might as well be here as anywhere else.”
She shook her head.
“Thee could not stay,” she said, “feeling as thee does. Only those can live here who are at peace. Thee can only get peace in one way.”
“How is that?” he asked.
“Thee must go home,” she said quietly.
Tom stared amazedly at his little monitor.
“Oh, I can’t do that!” he said. “My stepmother is glad to get rid of me.”
“Is thy father glad?” she asked. “Will he not be sorry to hear that thee is gone away?”
Tom turned his face a little aside.
“Yes,” he said after a moment, “my father will be sorry.”
“And ought thee not to go back for his sake?”
“Yes,” he said hesitatingly, “I suppose I ought; but I would rather stay here.”
The little maiden at the sound of a footstep turned around.
“See!” she cried. “Here come my father and the Elders. They have seen thy boat. Ask them if thee may stay.”
Tom looked up and saw coming down the street a party of staid, sedate-looking men, reminding him as he gazed of the pictures of William Penn in the school history. He jumped down from the boat and respectfully awaited their approach.
“Father!” the little girl called out, as the foremost man came near, “this is a lad who has been driven here in his boat by the winds, and would like to stay with us.”
The man bent on Tom a grave but not unkindly gaze.
“What is thy name?” he asked.
“Thomas Fowler, sir,” replied Tom.
“And thee wants to stay here?”
“I should like to, sir, if you will keep me.”
“What is the matter? Why is thee
not satisfied to remain at home?”
Tom briefly rehearsed his story, to which the Elders listened with evident interest.
“Thee is not of age,” the spokesman remarked when he had finished.
“I’m only fifteen, sir.”
“Then thee is entitled to thy father’s support, and he is entitled to thy service. Is it not so?”
Tom looked down on the ground.
“Yes, sir,” he said slowly, “I suppose so.”
“And if thee runs away thee robs thy father of so much help.”
“I relieve him of so much burden, too,” said Tom. The Elder’s eye rested gravely on Tom’s face.
“Does thee think it is a burden?” he asked.
Tom hesitated a moment, then he looked up and frankly met the others’ gaze.
“No, I don’t,” he said. “Father never grudged me a penny in my life. It’s shabby of me to go away and leave him.”
The Elder stepped back and spoke briefly with the others.
“Listen!” he said, turning again to Tom. “If thee wishes we will keep thee. All we ask is, that thee shall promise to remain with us until thee shall be of age. Whether it be right for thee to stay or to go back to thy father, we leave thee to decide.”
Tom drew a long breath. This was putting a heavier responsibility on him than he had sought. As he looked up the village street it seemed more beautiful than ever. How balmy the air was! how bright the flowers! how peaceful the scene! and with a sweet and trustful countenance the little Quaker maiden, standing by her father’s side, met his own glance of boyish admiration. If he remained, what a delightful life might he not lead! If he went back, it would be to the bleak winds and damp bays of Marblehead, to the sharp tongue of his stepmother, to the hard grind of his father’s farm. But could he remain at peace with himself? Would not the thought of his father come up to accuse him? Would he not feel that he had run away from his duty? Tom was fond of poetry, and a line of Tennyson’s Lotos Eaters came into his head. Would he be any better than they who sat down in tropical idleness and forgot all about their friends at home? He turned away so that he might not see the little girl’s face.
“I think I’ll go home,” he said quietly.
The Elder laid his hand on the boy’s head.
“Thee is right,” he said approvingly. “Thee could not have stayed. But before thee goes will thee not come up and look at our homes?”
Tom shook his head.
“No,” he said, “I won’t go any farther: it would only make me want to stay more. I’d better get away from here as soon as possible. You didn’t tell me your name,” he said, turning suddenly towards his first acquaintance.
Her eyes as she raised them to his were wet with tears.
“My name is Ruth Fox,” she said. “Thee will not forget us, Thomas?”
He took her little hands in his own.
“I will never forget you,” he said, “but I wish I might have stayed.”
“Ah!” she said simply, “but thee knows thee could not. Perhaps thee will find the Island again,” she added wistfully.
“Maybe some day you’ll come to the mainland,” he suggested. “Why not come, sir,” he went on, addressing the Elder; “all the old quarrels have died out, and the Friends have as many rights as anybody else.”
But the man shook his head.
“Why should we come?” he asked. “Is there anything there that we have not got here?”
“Railroads,” Tom ventured, “telegraphs, the telephone, sewing machines — oh, there are lots of things you haven’t got!”
“Would they do us any good?” the man asked quietly; “would we be any happier for them?” once in a while she caught herself listening for his footfall outside the door. But he would not come back. He had said that he would not and Tom was not a boy that changed his mind. His father had discovered that the dory was gone, so that no doubt was left as to the manner in which he had left. But had the dory weathered the wind? Or, had Tom stood the cold? Mrs. Fowler pictured to herself the boat bottom up and Tom frozen or drowned. The thought made her nervous. She felt almost as though she might be Tom’s murderer. It was Christmasday, but there was no peace in her heart nor any of the cheer which the season ought to bring. “Ah!” she cried, “if Tom would only come back!” Just then the front gate clicked as it did when any one came in. It might be Mr. Fowler or one of the neighbors, but Mrs. Fowler’s heart beat with the thought that it might possibly be Tom. She was trimming a pie at the moment, and stopped with the knife in her hand, while a footstep came up the path. She listened intently. Could it be any one else’s step than Tom’s? The door opened, and Mrs. Fowler suddenly felt the load that she had been carrying all the day, roll off forever. “O Tom!” she cried, and dropping in a chair she burst into tears.
Tom who had no idea of the state of mind through which his stepmother had gone, and who had never seen her show her emotions, or fancied indeed that she had any, was struck with surprise. “Why, mother!” he exclaimed. “What is the matter?”
It was a minute or two before she could speak.
“I’ve been so frightened,” she said brokenly, “and I’m so glad you’ve come back.”
Tom drew a breath of relief while he hung his cap on the nail. On the way home he had tried to fancy what his mother might say, but his imagination had not pictured any such reception as this. If he had had any lingering regrets that he had not staid on the Island they were all gone now.
“Well, mother,” he said, taking up the water-pail which he saw was empty and starting for the pump, “I’d an invitation to stay away, but I didn’t accept.”
“Who was it from?” she asked, displaying a new interest in Tom’s concerns.
“It was from some Quakers,” he said, as he stood in the door.
“Oh, well!” said his stepmother, “you can go and see them sometime.”
Tom smiled a little sadly as he went out.
“I’ll never see them again,” he said to himself. But all the same Tom never goes out in the dory without looking seaward for the Phantom Island; and when he visits Boston he eagerly scans the faces that pass him by, hoping that some day or other among the crowd, he may discover the face of little Ruth.
THE KINKIPAWS.
FOR two full weeks had flaming posters — at the corners of the streets, at the stores, at the post-office, at the blacksmith’s shop — in quiet little Hingford, announced a grand moonlight excursion to Old Orchard Beach on the night of the twenty-first: “Round trip by steamboat, 50 cents.” It was to be an occasion. The militia companies of half a dozen neighboring villages, having landed with admiring friends and kindred at the beach, were to engage, according to the bills —
“In the smoke and flash and rattle
Of a rousing big sham battle!”
After which they would all sit down together in the sand to a steaming hot clam-chowder at twenty-five cents a head, “Thet don’t mean twenty-five cents a plate,” explained Billy Tanker, the day after the bills were posted, to a surrounding clump of Kinkipaws, “but twenty-five cents apiece for all you c’n eat!”
Whereupon there was a great smacking of lips, and wagging of heads, and rubbing about of hands. For that very afternoon had the Kinkipaws resolved (gathering themselves together in one corner of the school-yard at recess) to go. Furthermore, they had resolved to go in costume — blankets, beads, warpaint and feathers.
“An’ le’s ev’ry chap pick up a dollar somehow,” Tim Landers had suggested. “We c’n do it; we got two weeks. Fifty cents for ticket, twenty-five cents for chowder, an’ twenty-five cents for inc’dentals — sech as peanuts, lemonade, and sech things.” A scheme which had been adopted.
“Guess they won’t make much money off’n us on chowder!” smiled Billy Huff at the close of Billy Tanker’s explanation.
“I tell ye wot!” piped up Teddy Fayles, the littlest chap in the tribe, but by no means the last to be heard from; “we c’n show ’em some war-dancin’ thet�
�ll make the’r eyes shine!”
“S’pose we’ll dance?” asked some one.
“Oh, no!” cried Teddy, “guess not! Oh, no! We’ll only jes’ have a grand war-dance round a bonfire on the beach! Hey, fellers?”
And this scheme was likewise carried.
And from that time forth had the Kinkipaws, singly or in groups, as from a pinacle of lively expectation, explored those flaming posters day by day.
But the Kinkipaws?
In the village school at Hingford were seventeen sturdy little Yankees who had been wont, on Saturday afternoons and at such other times as school-boy fortune favored, to apparel and deport themselves in humble imitation of the historic savages who once had scoured that region round about. These, my lads, were the Kinkipaws; and their chief was Billy Tanker. And never did a corresponding number of youngsters in any other New England township have jollier times than they!
Well, the eventful evening had arrived. The moon rose, round and big, from out the eastern ocean, and the Monie Musk lay at the pier. It was advertised to start at eight-o’clock. It lacked yet a quarter to eight; but a gay company with drums and fifes — the fifes piping high and drums beating — were awaiting the hour of departure.
But where was Billy Tanker? All the other Kinkipaws infull array, their faces so besmeared with India ink and scokeberry-juice that their own mothers would not have known them, were moving restlessly about in quest of him — now and then shouting his name, now and then sending in among the strains of martial music, the shrill discordant war-whoop of their tribe.
Some minutes wore by. At length, well up the road, an answering shriek was heard — faint, but sufficient.
“Thet’s him, boys!” cried Billy Huff. “He’s comin’!”
And in a moment more the tardy tattooed warrior hove in sight. In the moonlight they could see him, tomahawk in hand, tearing down toward them at a spanking pace, his red blanket flapping behind him.
There was a general rush to meet him, and a jangle in the air: “Where you been?”
“What you been waitin’ fer?”
“Why didn’t ye git here before?”
“Are we all here?” gasped the panting sachem, glancing hastily around.
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 589