 CHAPTER 1 OF D. PAVAN D. PAVAN by Sarah Oren Jewett. This book is not wholly new, several of the chapters having already been published in the Atlantic monthly. It has so often been asked, if D. Pavan may not be found on the map of New England under another name, that to prevent any misunderstanding, I wish to say, while there is a likeness to be traced, few of the sketches are drawn from that town itself, and the characters will in almost every case be looked for there in vain. I dedicate this story of out-of-door life and country people first to my father and mother, my two best friends, and also to all my other friends whose names I say to myself lovingly, though I do not write them here. S. O. J. CHAPTER 1 CATE LANDCASTER'S PLAN I had been spending the winter in Boston, and Kate Lancaster and I had been together a great deal, for we are the best of friends. It happened that the morning when this story begins, I had waked up feeling sorry, and as if something dreadful were going to happen. There did not seem to be any good reason for it, so I undertook to discourage myself more by thinking that it would soon be time to leave town, and how much I should miss being with Kate and my other friends. My mind was still disquieted when I went down to breakfast, but beside my plate I found, with a hoped-for letter from my father, a note from Kate. To this day I have never known any explanation of this depression of my spirits, and I hope that the good luck which followed will help some reader to lose fear and to smile at such shadows if any chance to come. Kate had evidently written to me in an excited state of mind, for her note was not so trig-looking as usual, but this is what she said. Dear Helen, I have a plan. I think it is a most delightful plan, in which you and I are chief characters. Promise that you will say yes. If you do not, you will have to remember all your life that you broke a girl's heart. Come round early, and lunch with me, and dine with me. I'm to be all alone, and it's a long story and will need a great deal of talking over. Kate. I showed this note to my aunt, and soon went round. Very much interested. My latch-key opened the Lancaster's door, and I hurried to the parlor, where I heard my friend practicing with great diligence. I went up to her, and she turned her head and kissed me solemnly. You need not to smile. We are not sentimental girls, and are both much averse to indiscriminate kissing, though I have not the adroit habit of shying in which Kate is proficient. It would sometimes be impolite in anyone else, but she shies so affectionately. Won't you sit down, dear? She said, with great ceremony, and went on with her playing, which was abominable that morning. Her fingers stepped on each other, and whatever the tune might have been in reality, it certainly had a most remarkable incoherence as I heard it then. I took up the new little, and made believe read it, and finally threw it at Kate. You would have thought we were two children. Have you heard that my grand-aunt, Miss Catherine Brandon, of Deep Haven is dead? I knew that she had died in November at least six months before. Don't be nonsensical, Kate, said I. What is it you are going to tell me? My grand-aunt died very old, and was the last of her generation. She had a sister and three brothers, one of whom had the honor of being my grandfather. Mama is sole heir to the family estates in Deep Haven, wharf property and all, and it is a great inconvenience to her. The house is a charming old house, and some of my ancestors who followed the sea brought home the greater part of its furnishings. Miss Catherine was a person who ignored all frivolities, and her house was as sedate as herself. I have been there but little, for when I was a child my aunt found no pleasure in the society of noisy children who upset her treasures, and when I was older she did not care to see strangers, and after I left school she grew more and more feeble. I had not been there for two years when she died. Mama went down very often. The town is a quaint old place, which has seen better days. There are high rocks at the shore, and there is a beach, and there are woods inland, and hills, and there is the sea. It might be dull in Deep Haven for two young ladies who were fond of gay society and dependent upon excitement, I suppose, but for two little girls who were fond of each other and could play in the boats and dig and build houses in the sea-sand, and gather shells and carry their dolls wherever they went. What could be pleasanter? Nothing, said I promptly. Kate had told this a little at a time, with a few appropriate bars of music between, which suddenly reminded me of the story of a Chinese procession which I had read in one of Marriott's novels when I was a child, a thousand white elephants richly comparisonned, teetum tilillili, and so on for a page or two. She seemed to have finished her story for that time, and while it was dawning upon me what she meant, she sang a bit from one of Jean Engelot's verses. Will you step aboard, my dearest, for the high seas lie before us? And then came over to sit beside me and tell the whole story in a more sensible fashion. You know that my father has been meaning to go to England in the autumn. Yesterday he told us that he is to leave in a month and will be away all summer, and Mama is going with him. Jack and Willie are to join a party of their classmates who are to spend nearly the whole of the long vacation at Lake Superior. I don't care to go abroad again now, and I did not like any plan that was proposed to me. Aunt Anna was here all the afternoon, and she is going to take the house at Newport, which is very pleasant and unexpected, for she hates housekeeping. Mama thought, of course, that I would go with her, but I did not wish to do that, and it would only result in my keeping-house for her visitors, whom I know very little, and she will be much more free and independent by herself. Beside, she can have my room if I am not there. I have promised to make her a long visit in Baltimore next winter instead. I told Mama that I should like to stay here and go away when I choose. There are ever so many visits which I have promised. I could stay with you and your Aunt Mary at Lenox if she goes there for a while, and I have always wished to spend a summer in town, but Mama did not encourage that at all. In the evening Papa gave her a letter which had come from Mr. Dockham, the man who takes care of Aunt Catherine's place, and the most charming idea came into my head, and I said I meant to spend my summer in Deep Haven. At first they laughed at me, and then they said I might go if I chose, and at last they thought nothing could be pleasanter, and Mama wishes she were going herself. I asked if she did not think you would be the best person to keep me company, and she does, and Papa announced that he was just going to suggest my asking you. I am to take Anne and Maggie, who will be overjoyed, for they came from that part of the country, and the other servants are to go with Aunt Anna, and Old Nora will come to take care of this house as she always does. Perhaps you and I will come up to town once in a while for a few days. We shall have such jolly housekeeping. Mama and I sat up very late last night, and everything is planned. Mr. Dockham's house is very near Aunt Catherine's, so we shall not be lonely. Though I know you're no more afraid of that than I. Oh, Helen, won't you go? Do you think it took me long to decide? Mr. and Mrs. Lancaster sailed the tenth of June, and my Aunt Mary went to spend her summer among the Berkshire Hills, so I was at the Lancaster's ready to welcome Kate when she came home, after having said good-bye to her mother and father. We meant to go to Deep Haven in a week, but were obliged to stay in town longer. Boston was nearly deserted of our friends at the last, and we used to take quiet walks in the cool of the evening after dinner, up and down the street, or sit on the front steps in company with the servants left in charge of the other houses, who also sometimes walked up and down and looked at us wonderingly. We had much shopping to do in the daytime, for there was a probability of our spending many days indoors, and as we were not to be near any large town, and did not mean to come to Boston for weeks at least, there was a great deal to be remembered and arranged. We enjoyed making our plans and deciding what we should want, and going to the shops together. I think we felt most important the day we conferred with Anne, and made out a list of the provisions which must be ordered. This was being housekeepers in earnest. Mr. Dockham happened to come to town, and we sent Anne and Maggie, with most of our boxes, to Deep Haven in his company a day or two before we were ready to go ourselves, and when we reached there the house was opened and in order for us. On our journey to Deep Haven we left the railway twelve miles from that place, and took passage in a stagecoach. There was only one passenger beside ourselves. She was a very large, thin, weather-beaten woman, and looked so tired and lonesome and good-natured that I could not help saying it was very dusty, and she was apparently delighted to answer that she should think everybody was sweeping, and she always felt, after being in the cars awhile, as if she had been taken all to pieces and left in the different places, and this was the beginning of our friendship with Mrs. Q. After this conversation we looked industriously out of the window into the pastures and pine-woods. I had given up my seat to her, for I do not mind riding backward in the least, and you would have thought I had done her the greatest favour of her life. I think she was the most grateful of women, and I was often reminded of a remark one of my friends once made about someone. If you give Bessie a half sheet of letter-paper, she behaves to you as if it were the most exquisite of presents. Kate and I had some fruit left in our lunch-basket and divided it with Mrs. Q, but after the first mouthful we looked at each other in dismay. Lemons with oranges clothes on, aren't they? said she, as Kate threw hers out of the window, and mine went after it for company, and after this we began to be very friendly indeed. We both liked the odd woman. There was something so straightforward and kindly about her. Are you going to deep-haven, dear? she asked me, and then I wonder if you are going to stay long all summer? Well, that's clever. I do hope you will come out to the light to see me. Young folks most always like my place. Most likely your friends will fetch you. Do you know the brand-in-house? asked Kate. Well, as I do the meeting-house. There! I wonder I didn't know from the beginning, but I have been a-trying all the way to settle it who you could be. I've been up-country some weeks, stopping with my mother, and she seemed so set to have me stay till strawberry-time, and would hardly let me come now. You see, she's getting to be old. Why, every time I've come away for fifteen years, she said it was the last time I'd ever see her, but she's a dreadful smart woman of her age. He wrote to me some old Mrs. Lancaster's folks were going to take the brand-in-house this summer, and so you are the ones. It's a sightly old place. I used to go and see Miss Catherine. She must have left a power of Chinaware. She set a great deal by the house, and she kept everything just as it used to be in her mother's day. Then you live in Deep Haven, too, asked Kate. I've been here the better part of my life. I was raised up among the hills in Vermont, and I'll always be a real up-country woman if I live here a hundred years. The sea doesn't come natural to me. It kind of worries me, though you won't find a happier woman than I be longshore. When I was first married, he had a schooner and went to the banks, and once he was off on a whaling voyage, and I hope I may never come to so long a three years as those were again, though I was up to mothers. Before I was married, he had been most everywhere. When he came home that time from whaling, he found I'd taken it so to heart that he said he'd never go off again. And then he got the chance to keep Deep Haven light, and we've lived there seventeen years come January. There isn't great pay, but then nobody tries to get it away from us, and we've got so's to be contented if it is lonesome in winter. Do you really live in the lighthouse? I remember how I used to bed to be taken out there when I was a child, and how I used to watch for the light at night, said Kate enthusiastically. So began a friendship which we both still treasure, for knowing Mrs. Q was one of the pleasantest things which happened to us in that delightful summer, and she used to do so much for our pleasure and was so good to us. When we went out to the lighthouse for the last time to say goodbye, we were very sorry girls indeed. We had no idea until then how much she cared for us, and her affection touched us very much. She told us that she loved us as if we belonged to her, and begged us not to forget her as if we ever could, and to remember that there was always a home and a warm heart for us if she were alive. Kate and I have often agreed that few of our acquaintances are half so entertaining. Her comparisons were most striking and amusing, and her comments upon the books she read, for she was a great reader, were very shrewd and clever and always to the point. She was never out of temper, even when the barrels of oil were being rolled across her kitchen floor, and she was such a wise woman. This stage ride, which we expected to find tiresome, we enjoyed very much, and we were glad to think when the coach stopped and he came to meet her with great satisfaction that we had one friend in deep haven at all events. I liked the house from my very first sight of it. It stood behind a row of poplars which were as green and flourishing as the poplars which stand in stately procession in the fields around Quebec. It was an imposing great white house, and the lilacs were tall, and there were crowds of rosebushes not yet out of bloom, and there were box-borders, and there were great elms at the side of the house and down the road. The hall door stood wide open and my hostess turned to me as we went in with one of her sweet, sudden smiles. "'Won't we have a good time, Nellie?' said she, and I thought we should.' So our summer's housekeeping began in most pleasant fashion. It was just at sunset, and Anne's and Maggie's presence made the house seem familiar at once. Maggie had been unpacking for us, and there was a delicious supper ready for the hungry girls. Later in the evening we went down to the shore, which was not very far away. The fresh sea-air was welcome after the dusty day, and it seemed so quiet and pleasant in Deep Haven. End of chapter 1 Chapter 2 of Deep Haven This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Read by Betsy Bush in Marquette, Michigan, December 2007. Deep Haven by Sarah Oren Jewett Chapter 2 The Brandon House and the Lighthouse I do not know that the Brandon House is anything very remarkable, but I never have been in one that interests me in the same way. Kate used to recount to select audiences at school some of her experiences with her Aunt Catherine, and it was popularly believed that she once carried down some indestructible picture books when they were first in fashion, and the old lady basted them for her to hem round the edges at the rate of two a day. It may have been fabulous. It was impossible to imagine any children in the old place. Everything was for grown people. Even the stair railing was too high to slide down on. The chairs looked as if they had been put at the furnishing of the house in their places, and there they meant to remain. The carpets were particularly interesting, and I remember Kate's pointing out to me one day a great square figure in one and telling me she used to keep house there with her dolls for lack of a better playhouse, and if one of them chance to fall outside the boundary stripe, it was immediately put to bed with a cold. It is a house with great possibilities. It might easily be made charming. There are four very large rooms on the lower floor and six above, a wide hall in each story, and a fascinating garret over the whole, where were many mysterious old chests and boxes, in one of which we found Kate's grandmother's love letters. And you may be sure the vista of rummages which Mr. Lancaster had laughed about was explored to its very end. The rooms all have elaborate cornices, and the lower hall is very fine, with an archway dividing it, and panelings of all sorts, and a great door at each end, through which the lilacs in front and the old pensioner plum trees in the garden are seen exchanging vows and gestures. Coming from the Lancaster's high city-house, it did not seem as if we had to go upstairs at all there, for every step of the stairway is so broad and low, and you come halfway to a square landing with an old straight-backed chair in each farther corner, and between them a large round-topped window with a cushioned seat, looking out on the garden and the village, the hills far inland and the sunset beyond all. Then you turn and go up a few more steps to the upper hall, where we used to stay a great deal. There were more old chairs and a pair of remarkable sofas on which we used to deposit the treasures collected in our wanderings. The wide window, which looks out on the lilacs, and the sea was a favourite seat of ours. Facing each other on the either side of it are two old secretaries, and one of them we ascertained to be the hiding-place of drawers, in which may be found valuable records deposited by ourselves one rainy day when we first explored it. We wrote, between us, a tragic journal on some yellow old letter paper we found in the desk. We put it in the most hidden drawer by itself and flatter ourselves that it will be regarded with great interest some time or other. Of one of the front rooms, the best chamber, we stood rather in dread. It is very remarkable that there seem to be no ghost stories connected with any part of the house, particularly this. We are neither of us nervous, but there is certainly something dismal about the room. The huge, curtained bed and immense easy-chairs, windows, and everything were draped in some old-fashioned kind of white cloth, which always seemed to be waving and moving about of itself. The carpet was most singularly coloured with dark reds and indescribable greys and browns, and the pattern, after a whole summer study, could never be followed with one's eye. The paper was captured in a French prize somewhere, sometime in the last century, and part of the figure was shaggy, and therein little spiders found habitation and went visiting their acquaintances across the shiny places. The colour was an unearthly pink and a forbidding maroon, with dim white spots, which gave it the appearance of having moulded. It made you low-spirited to look long in the mirror, and the great lounge one could not have cheerful associations with after hearing that Miss Brandon herself did not like it, having seen so many of her relatives lie there dead. There were fantastic china ornaments from Bible subjects on the mantle, and the only picture was one of the Maid of Orleans, tied with an unusually strong rope to a very stout stake. The best parlor we also rarely used, because all the portraits which hung there had, for some unaccountable reason, taken a violent dislike to us, and followed us suspiciously with their eyes. The furniture was stately and very uncomfortable, and there was something about the room which suggested an invisible funeral. There is not very much to say about the dining room. It was not specially interesting, though the sea was in sight from one of the windows. There were some old Dutch pictures on the wall, so dark that one could scarcely make out what they were meant to represent, and one or two engravings. There was a huge sideboard for which Kate had brought down from Boston Miss Brandon's own silver, which had stood there for so many years, and looked so much more at home and in place than any other possibly could have looked. And Kate also found in the closet the three great decanters with silver labels chained round their necks, which had always been the companions of the tea service in her aunt's lifetime. From the little closets in the sideboard there came a most significant odor of cake and wine whenever one opened the doors. We used Miss Brandon's beautiful old blue India china, which she had given to Kate, and which had been carefully packed all winter. Kate sat at the head and eye at the foot of the round table, and I must confess that we were apt to have either a feast or a famine. For at first we often forgot to provide our dinners. If this were the case, Maggie was sure to serve us with most derisive elegance and made us wait for as much ceremony as she thought necessary for one of Mrs. Lancaster's dinner parties. The West Parlor was our favorite room downstairs. It had a great fireplace framed in blue and white dutch tiles, which ingenuously and instructively represented the careers of the good and the bad man, the starting place of each being a very singular cradle in the center at the top. The last two of the series are very high art. A great coffin stands in the foreground of each, and the virtuous man is being led off by two disagreeable-looking angels, while the wicked one is hastening from an indescribable but unpleasant assemblage of claws and horns and eyes which is rapidly advancing from the distance, open-mouthed and bringing a chain with it. There was a large cabinet holding all the small curiosities and knick-knacks there seemed to be no other place for. Odd china figures and cups and vases, unaccountable Chinese carvings and exquisite corals and seashells, minerals and Swiss woodwork, and articles of virtue from the South Seas. Underneath were stored boxes of letters and old magazines, for this was one of the houses where nothing seems to have been thrown away. In one parting we found a parcel of old manuscript sermons, the existence of which was a mystery, until Kate remembered there had been a gifted son of the house who entered the ministry and soon died. The windows had each a pane of stained glass, and on the wide sills we used to put our immense bouquets of field-flowers. There was one place which I liked and sat in more than any other. The chimney filled nearly the whole side of the room, all but this little corner where there was just room for a very comfortable high-backed cushioned chair and a narrow window where I always had a bunch of fresh green ferns in a tall champagne glass. I used to write there often and always sat there when Kate sang and played. She sent for a tuner and used to successfully coax the long imprisoned music from the antique piano and sing for her visitors by the hour. She almost always sang her oldest songs, for they seemed most in keeping with everything about us. I used to fancy that the portraits liked our being there. There was one young girl who seemed solitary and forlorn among the rest in the room, who were all middle-aged. For their part they looked amiable, but rather unhappy, as if she had come in and interrupted their conversation. We both grew very fond of her, and it seemed, when we went in the last morning on purpose to take leave of her, as if she looked at us imploringly. She was soon afterward boxed up, and now enjoys society after her own heart in Kate's room in Boston. There was the largest sofa I ever saw opposite the fireplace. It must have been brought in in pieces and built in the room. It was broad enough for Kate and me to lie on together, and very high and square. But there was a pile of soft cushions at one end. We used to enjoy it greatly in September, when the evenings were long and cool and we had many candles and a fire and crickets, too, on the hearth, and the deer-dog lying on the rug. I remember one rainy night, just before Miss Tennant and Kitty Bruce went away, we had a real driftwood fire and blew out the lights and told stories. Miss Margaret knows so many and tells them so well. Kate and I were unusually entertaining, for we became familiar with the family record of the town and could recount marvelous adventures by land and sea and ghost stories by the dozen. We had never, either of us, been in a society consisting of so many traveled people. Hardly a man, but had been the most of his life at sea. Speaking of ghost stories, I must tell you that once in the summer two Cambridge girls who were spending a week with us unwisely enticed us into giving some thrilling recitals, which nearly frightened them out of their wits. And Kate and I were finally in terror ourselves. We had all been on the sofa in the dark singing and talking and were waiting in great suspense after I had finished one of such particular horror that I declared it should be the last, when we heard footsteps on the hall stairs. There were lights in the dining-room, which shone faintly through the half-closed door, and we saw something white and shapeless come slowly down and clutched each other's gowns in agony. It was only Kate's dog who came in and laid his head on her lap and slept peacefully. We thought we could not sleep a wink after this and I bravely went alone out to the light to see my watch. In finding it was past twelve we concluded to sit up all night and to go down to the shore at sunrise. It would be so much easier than getting up early some morning. We had been out rowing and had taken a long walk the day before and were obliged to dance and make other slight exertions to keep ourselves awake at one time. We launched at two and I never shall forget the sunrise that morning, but we were singularly quiet and abstracted that day and indeed for several days after deep haven was a land in which it seemed always afternoon we breakfasted so late. As Mrs. Q. had said there was a power of China, Kate and I were convinced that the lives of her grandmothers must have been spent in giving tea-parties. We counted ten sets of cups beside quantities of stray ones and some member of the family had evidently devoted her time to making a collection of pictures. There was an escortoir in Miss Brandon's own room which we looked over one day. There was a little package of letters, ship letters mostly, tied with a very pale, and tired-looking blue ribbon. There was even a drawer with a locket holding a faded miniature on ivory and a lock of brown hair and there were also some dry twigs and bits of leaf which had long ago been dried wild roses such as still bloom among the deep haven rocks. Kate said that she had often heard her mother wonder why her aunt never had cared to marry for she had chances enough, doubtless, and had been rich and handsome and finally educated. So there was a sailor lover after all and perhaps he had been lost at sea and she faithfully kept the secret never mourning outwardly. And I always thought her the most matter-of-fact old lady, said Kate, yet here's her romance after all. We put the letters outside on a chair to read but afterwards carefully replaced them without untieing them. I'm glad we did. There were other letters which we did read and which interested us very much. Letters from her girlfriends written in the boarding-school vacations and just after she finished to school. Those in one of the similar packages were charming. It must have been such a bright nice girl who wrote them. They were very few and were tied with black ribbon and marked on the outside in girlish writing. My dearest friend Dolly McAllister died September 3, 1809, aged 18. The ribbon had evidently been untied and the letters read many times. One began, My dear delightful kitten, I am quite overjoyed to find my father has business which will force him to go to deep-haven next week and he kindly says if there be no more rain I may ride with him to see you. I will surely come, for if there is danger of spattering my gown and he bids me stay at home I shall go galloping after him and overtake him when it is too late to send me back I have so much to tell you. I wish I knew more about the visit. Poor Miss Catherine. It made us sad to look over these treasures of her girlhood. There were her compositions and exercise books. Some samplers and queer little keepsakes with their flowers and some pebbles and other things of like value with which there was probably some pleasant association. Only think of her keeping them all her days, that I do Kate. I am continually throwing some relic of the kind away because I forget why I have it. There was a box in the lower part which Kate was glad to find for she had heard her mother wonder if some such things were not in existence. It held a crucifix and a mass book and some rosaries and Kate told me Miss Catherine's youngest and favorite brother had become a Roman Catholic while studying in Europe. It was a dreadful blow to the family for in those days there could have been few deeper disgraces to the Brandon family than to have one of its sons go over to Potpourri. Only Miss Catherine treated him with kindness and after a time he disappeared without telling even her where he was going and was only heard from indirectly once or twice afterward. It was a great grief to her. And Mama knows, said Kate, that she always had a lingering hope of his return for one of the last times she saw Aunt Catherine before she was ill. She spoke of soon going to be with all the rest and said, though your Uncle Henry dear and stopped and smiled sadly, you'll think me a very foolish old woman but I never quite gave up thinking he might come home. Mrs. Cue did the honors of the lighthouse thoroughly on our first visit but I think we rarely went to see her that we did not make some entertaining discovery. Mr. Cue's nephew, a guileless youth of forty, lived with them and the two men were of a mechanical turn and had invented numerous aids to housekeeping, appendages to the stove and fixtures on the walls for everything that could be hung up, catches in the floor to hold the doors open and ingenious apparatus to close them, but above all a system of barring and bolting for the wide four-door which would have disconcerted an energetic battering ram. After all this work being expended, Mrs. Cue informed us that it was usually wide open all night in summer weather. On the back of this door I discovered one day a row of marks and asked their significance. It seemed that Mrs. Cue had attempted one summer to keep count of the number of people who inquired about the depredations of the neighbor's chickens. Mrs. Cue's bedroom was partly devoted to the fine arts. There was a large collection of likenesses of her relatives and friends on the wall which was interesting in the extreme. Mrs. Cue was always much pleased to tell their names and her remarks about any feature not exactly perfect were very searching and critical. That's my oldest brother's wife, Clarenthe Adams, that was. She's well-featured, if it were not for that nose, and that looks as if it had been thrown at her and she wasn't particular about having it on firm in hopes of getting a better one. She sets by her looks, though. There were often sailing parties that came there from up and down the coast. One day Kate and I were spending the afternoon at the light. We had been fishing and were sitting in the doorway listening to a reminiscence of the winter Mrs. Cue kept school at the Four Corners, saw a boat full coming, and all lost our tempers. Mrs. Cue had a lame ankle and Kate offered to go up with the visitors. There were some girls and young men who stood on the rocks awhile and then asked us with much better manners than the people who usually came if they could see the lighthouse, and Kate led the way. She was dressed that day in a costume we both frequently wore of gray skirts and blue sailor jacket and her boots were much the worse for wear. The celebrated Lancaster complexion was rather darkened by the sun. Mrs. Cue expressed a wish to know what questions they would ask her and I followed after a few minutes. They seemed to have finished asking about the lantern and to have become a personal. Don't you get tired staying here? No indeed, said Kate. Is that your sister downstairs? No, I have no sister. I should think you would wish she was, aren't you ever lonesome? Everybody is sometimes, said Kate. But it's such a lonesome place, said one of the girls. I should think you would get work away. I live in Boston. Why, it's so awful, quiet, nothing but the water and the wind when it blows. And I think either of them is worse than nothing and only this little bit of a rocky place. I should want to go for a walk. I heard Kate pleasantly refuse the offer of pay for her services and then they began to come down the steep stairs laughing and chattering with each other. Kate stayed behind to close the doors and leave everything all right and the girl who had talked the most waited too. And when they were on the stairs just above me and the others out of hearing, she said, You're real good to show us the things. I guess you'll think I'm silly, but I do like you ever so much. I wish you would come to Boston. I'm in a real nice store, H's, on Winter Street. And they will want new saleswomen in October. Perhaps you could be at my counter. I'd teach you and you could board with me. I've got a real comfortable room and I suppose I might have more things for I get good pay. But I like to send money home to mother. I'm at my aunt's now, but I am going back next Monday and if you will tell me what your name is, I'll find out for certain about the place and write you. My name's Mary Wendell. I knew by Kate's voice that she had touched her. You are very kind, thank you heartily, said she, but I cannot go and work with you. I should like to know more about you. I live in Boston too. My friend and I are staying over in Deep Haven for the summer only. And she held out her hand to the girl whose face had changed from its first expression of earnest good humour to a very startled one. And when she noticed Kate's hand and a ring of hers which had been turned round she looked really frightened. Oh, will you please excuse me, said she, blushing. I ought to have known better, but you showed us round so willing and I never thought of you're not living here. I didn't mean to be rude. Of course you did not and you were not. I'm very glad you said it and glad you like me, said Kate. And just then the party called the girl and she hurried away and I joined Kate. Then you heard it all. That was worth having, said she. She was such an honest little soul and I mean to look for her when I get home. Sometimes we used to go out to the light early in the morning with the fishermen who went that way to the fishing grounds, but we usually made the voyage early in the afternoon if it were not too hot. And we went fishing off the rocks and we sat in the house with Mrs. Q, who often related some of her Vermont experiences, or Mr. Q would tell us surprising sea stories and ghost stories like a storybook sailor. Then we would have an unreasonably good supper and afterward climb the ladder to the lantern to see the lamps lighted and sit there for a while, watching the ships and the sunset. Almost all the coasters came in sight of Deep Haven and the sea outside the light was their grand highway. Twice from the lighthouse we saw a yacht squadron like a flock of great white birds. As for the sunsets, it used to seem often as if we were near the part of them for the sea all around us caught the color of the clouds and though the glory was wonderful I remember best one still evening when there was a bank of heavy grey clouds in the west shutting down like a curtain and the sea was silver colored. You could look under and beyond the curtain of clouds the palest, clearest yellow sky. There was a little black boat in the distance drifting slowly climbing one white wave after another as if it were bound out into that other world beyond. But presently the sun came from behind the clouds and the dazzling golden light changed the look of everything and it was the time then to say one thought at a beautiful sunset while before one could only keep very still and watch the boat and wonder if heaven would not be somehow like that far faint color which was neither sea nor sky. When we came down from the lighthouse and it grew late we would beg for an hour or two longer on the water and row away in the twilight far out from land where with our faces turned from the light it seemed as if we were alone and the sea shoreless and as the darkness closed round us softly we watched the stars come out and were always glad to see Kate's star and my star which we had chosen when we were children. I used long ago to be sure of one thing that however far away heaven might be it could not be out of sight of the stars. Sometimes in the evening we waited out at sea for the moonrise and then we would take the oars again and go slowly in once in a while singing or talking but oftenest silent. End of Chapter 2 Chapter 3 of Deep Haven This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Read by Betsy Bush in Marquette, Michigan, June 2008 Deep Haven by Sarah Oren Jewett Chapter 3 My Lady Brandon and the Widow Jim When it was known that we had arrived in Deep Haven the people who had known Miss Brandon so well and Mrs. Lancaster also seemed to consider themselves Kate's friends by inheritance and were exceedingly polite to us in either calling upon us or sending pleasant messages Before the first week had ended we had no lack of society They were not strangers to Kate to begin with and as for me, I think it is easy for me to be contented and to feel at home anywhere I have the good fortune and the misfortune to belong to the Navy, that is, my father does and my life has been consequently an unsettled one except during the years of my school life when my friendship with Kate began I think I should be happy in any town if I were living there with Kate Lancaster I will not praise my friend as I can praise her or say half the things I might say honestly She is so fresh and good and true and enjoys life so heartily She is so childlike without being childish and I do not tell her that she is faultless but when she makes mistakes she is sorryer and more ready to hopefully try again than any girl I know Perhaps you would like to know something about us but I am not writing Kate's biography in my own only telling you of one summer which we spent together Sometimes in deep haven we were between 6 and 7 years old but at other times we have felt irreparably grown up and as if we carried a crushing weight of care and duty In reality we are both 24 and it is a pleasant age though I think next year is sure to be pleasanter for we do not mind growing older since we have lost nothing that we mourn about and our gaining so much I should be glad if you learn to know Kate a little in my stories it is not that I am fond of her and endow her with imagined virtues and graces no one can fail to see how unaffected she is or not notice her thoughtfulness and generosity and her delightful fun which never has a trace of coarseness or silliness It was very pleasant having her for one's companion for she has an unusual power of winning people's confidence and of knowing with surest instinct how to meet them on their own ground It is the girls being so genuinely sympathetic and interested which makes everyone ready to talk to her and to be friends with her just as the sunshine makes it easy for flowers to grow which the chilly winds hinder She is not polite for the sake of seeming polite but polite for the sake of being kind and there is not a particle of what Hugh Miller justly calls the prevalence of condensation about her She is not brilliantly talented yet she does everything in a charming fashion of her own She is not profoundly learned yet she knows much of which many wise people are ignorant and while she is a patient scholar in both little things and great she is no less a teacher to all her friends Dear Kate Lancaster We knew that we were considered Miss Brandon's representatives in Deep Haven Society and this was no slight responsibility as she had received much honor and respect We heard again and again what a loss she had been to the town and we tried that summer to do nothing to lessen the family reputation and to give pleasure as well as take it though we were singularly persistent in our pursuit of good time I grew much interested in what I heard of Miss Brandon and it seems to me that it is a great privilege to have an elderly person in one's neighborhood in town or country who is proud and conservative and who lives in stately fashion who is intolerant of sham and of useless novelties and clings to the old ways of living and behaving as if it were part of her religion There is something immensely respectable about the gentle women of the old school They ignore all bustle and flashiness and the conceit of the younger people who act as if at last it had been time for them to appear and manage this world as it ought to have been managed before Their position in modern society is much like that of the King's Chapel in its busy street in Boston It perhaps might not have been easy to approach Miss Brandon but I am sure that if I had visited in Deep Haven during her lifetime I should have been very proud if I had been asked to take tea at her house and should have liked to speak afterward of my acquaintance with her It would have been impossible not to pay her great deference It is a pleasure to think that she must have found this world a most polite world and have had the highest opinion of its good manners No bless oblige, that is true in more ways than one I cannot help wondering if those of us who will be left by and by to represent our own generation will seem to have such superior elegance of behavior If we shall receive so much respect and be so much valued it is hard to imagine it We know that the world gains new refinements and a better culture but to us there never will be such imposing ladies and gentlemen as those who belong to the old school The morning after we reached Deep Haven we were busy upstairs and there was a determined blow at the knocker of the front door I went down to see who was there and had the pleasure of receiving our first caller She was a prim little old woman who looked pleased and expectant who wore a neat cap and front and whose eyes were as bright as black beads She wore nob on it and had thrown a little three-cornered shawl with palm leaf figures over her shoulders and it was evident that she was a near neighbor She was very short and straight and thin and so quick that she darted like a pickerel when she moved about It occurred to me at once that she was a very capable person and had faculty and dear me how fast she talked She hesitated a moment when she saw me and dropped a fragment of a courtesy Miss Lancaster? said she doubtfully No, said I I'm Miss Dennis Miss Lancaster is at home, though Come in, won't you? Oh, Mrs. Patton! said Kate who came down just then How very kind of you to come over so soon I should have gone to see you today I was asking Mrs. Q last night if you were here Land-o-compassion! said Mrs. Patton as she shook Kate's hand delightedly Where'd you suppose I'd be, dear? I ain't like to move away from Deep Haven now after I've held by the place so long I've got as many roots as the Deep Ellum Well, I should know you were a Brandon no matter where I see you You've got a real Brandon look Tall and straight, ain't you? It's four or five years since I saw you except once at church and once you went by down to the shore, I suppose It was a windy day in the spring of the year I remember it very well, said Kate Those were both visits of only a day or two and I was here at Aunt Catherine's funeral and went away that same evening Do you remember once I was here in the summer for a longer visit, five or six years ago and I helped you pick currents in the garden You had a very old mug Now whoever would have thought Oh, you're recollected that said Mrs. Patton Yes, I had that mug because it was handy to carry about among the bushes and then I'd empty it into the basket as fast as I got it full Your Aunt always told me to pick all I wanted She couldn't use them but they used to make sites a current wine in old times I suppose that mug would be considerable of a curiosity to anybody that wasn't used to seeing it round A grandfather Joseph Togerson my mother was a Togerson picked it up on the long sands in a wad of seaweed Strange it wasn't broke, but it's tough I've dropped it on the floor many as the time and it ain't even chipped There's some Dutch reading on it and it's marked 1732 Now I shan't have thought you'd remembered that old mug I declare Your mother, she had a monstrous sight of Chinese She's told me where most all that come from but I expect I forgot My memory fails me a good deal by spells If you hadn't come down I suppose your mother would have had the Chinese packed up this spring what she didn't take with her after your aunt died Suppose she hasn't made up her mind what to do with the house No, said Kate She wishes she could It is a great puzzle to us I hope you will find it in middling order said Mrs. Patton humbly Me and Mrs. Dockham had done the best we knew Opened the windows and let in the air and tried to keep it from getting damp I fixed all the woolens with fresh camphor and tobacco the last of the winter You have to be dreadful careful in one of these old houses lest everything gets creaking with moths in no time Miss Catherine how she did hate the sight of a moth miller There's something I'll speak about before I forget it The mice have eaten the backs of a pile of old books that's stored away in the West Chamber Closet next to Miss Catherine's room and I set a trap there but it was older in the ten commandments that trap was and the springs rusty I guess you'd better get some new ones and set around in different places lest the mice will pass through you There ain't been no chance for them to get much of a live-in lawn through the winter but they'll be sure to come back quick as they find there's likely to be good bored I see your aunt's cat setting out on the front steps She never was no great of a mouser but it went to my heart to see how pleased she looks Come right back, didn't she? How they do hold to their old haunts Was that Miss Brandon's cat? I asked with great interest She has been upstairs with us but I suppose she belonged to some neighbor and had strayed in She behaved as if she felt at home, poor old pussy We must keep her here, said Kate Miss Dockham took her after your mother went off and Miss Catherine's maids, said Miss Patton but she told me that it was a long spell before she seemed to feel contented She used to sit on the steps and cry by the hour together and try to get in first one door and then another I used to think how bad Miss Catherine would feel She set a great deal by a cat and she took notice of this as long as she did of anything Her mind failed her, you know Great loss to deep haven she was Proud woman and some folks were scared of her but I always got along with her and I wouldn't ask for no kind of friend nor neighbor I've had my troubles and I've seen the day I was suffering poor and I couldn't have brought myself to Ask Town Help Know How but I wish she had heard her scold me when she found it out and she'd come marching into my kitchen one morning like a grenadier and says she Why didn't you send and tell me how sick and poor you are? says she and she said she'd have been so glad to help me all along but she thought I had means, everybody did and I see the tears in her eyes but she was scolding me and speaking as if she was dreadful mad She made me comfortable and she sent over one of her maids to see to me and got the doctor and a load of stuff come up from the store so I didn't have to buy anything for a good many weeks I got better and sows to work but she never let me say nothing about it I had a good deal of trouble and I thought I'd lost my health but I hadn't and that was thirty or forty years ago there never was nothing going on at the great house that she didn't have me over so when her cleaning her company and I got so that I knew how she liked to have things done I felt as if it was my own sister though I'd never had one when I was going over to help lay her out she used to talk as free to me as she would to Miss Loramere or Miss Carew I suppose she ain't seen nothing of them yet she was a good Christian woman, Miss Catherine was the memory of the just is blessed that's what Mr. Loramere said in his sermon the Sunday after she died and there wasn't a blood relation there to hear it I declare it looked pitiful to see that pew empty that ought to have been the mourner's pew your mother, Miss Lancaster, had to go home Saturday your father was going away he went to Washington, I've understood and she'd come back again the first of the week there, it didn't make no sort of difference perhaps nobody thought of it by me there hadn't been anybody in the pew more than a couple of times since she used to sit there herself regular as Sunday come and Mrs. Patton looked for a minute as if she were going to cry but she changed her mind upon second thought your mother gave me most of Miss Catherine's clothes this cap belonged to her that I've got on now it's most wore out but it does for mornings oh said Kate I have two new ones for you in one of my trunks Mama meant to choose them herself but she had not time and so she told me and I think I found the kind she thought you would like now I'm sure said Mrs. Patton if that ain't kind you don't tell me that Miss Lancaster thought of me just as she was going off I shall set everything by them caps and I'm much obliged to you Miss Kate I was just going to speak of that time you were here and saw the mug you trimmed a cap for Miss Catherine to give me real Boston style I guess that box of cap fixings is up on the top shelf of Miss Catherine's closet now to the left hand said Mrs. Patton with wistful certainty she used to make her everyday caps herself and she had some beautiful materials laid away that she never used some folks has laughed at me for being so particular about wearing caps except for best but I don't know it's presuming beyond my station and somehow I feel more respect for myself when I have a good cap on I can't get over your mother's recollectin' about me and she sent me a handsome present of money this spring for looking after the house I never should have asked for a cent it's a pleasure to me to keep an eye on it out of respect to your aunt I was so pleased when I heard you were coming long oh your friend I like to see the old place open it was about as bad as having no meeting I miss seeing the lights and your aunt was a great hand for lightin' up bright the big hall lantern was lit every night and she put it out when she went upstairs she liked to go round same as if it was day you see I forget all the time she was sick and go back to the days when she was well and about the house when her mind was failing her when she was upstairs in her room her eyesight seemed to be lost part of the time and sometimes she'd tell us to get the lamp and a couple of candles in the middle of the day and then she'd be as satisfied but she used to take a notion to set in the dark some nights and think I suppose I should have forty fits if I undertook it that was a good while ago and do you recollect how she used to play the piano she used to be a great hand to play when she was young indeed I remember it said Kate who told me afterward how her aunt used to sit at the piano in the twilight and play to herself she was formally a skilled musician said my friend though one would not have imagined she cared for music when I was a child she used to play in company of an evening and once when I was here one of her friends asked for a tune and she laughingly said that her day was over and her fingers were stiff though I believe she might have played as well as ever then if she had cared to try but once in a while when she had been quiet all day and rather sad I am ashamed that I used to think she was cross she would open the piano and sit there until late while I used to be enchanted by her memories of dancing tunes and old psalms and marches and songs there was one tune which I am sure had a history there was a sweet wild cadence in it and she would come back to it again and again always going through with it in the same measured way I have remembered so many things about my aunt since I have been here said Kate which I hardly noticed and did not understand when they happened I was afraid of her when I was a little girl but I think if I had grown up sooner I would have enjoyed her heartily it never used to occur to me that she had a spark of tenderness or of sentiment until just before she was ill but I have been growing more fond of her ever since I might have given her a great deal more pleasure it was not long after I was through school that she became so feeble and of course she liked best having mama come to see her one of us had to be at home I have thought lately how careful one ought to be to be kind and thoughtful to one's old friends it is so soon too late to be good to them and then one is always so sorry I must tell you more of Mrs. Patton of course it was not long before we returned her call and we were much entertained we always liked to see our friends in their own houses her house was a little way down the road unpainted and gambrel-ruffed but so low that the old lilac bushes which clustered round it were as tall as the eaves the widow-jim as nearly everyone called her in distinction to the widow-jack Patton who was a tailoress and lived at the other end of the town was a very useful person I suppose there must be her counterpart in all old New England villages she sewed and she made elaborate rugs and she had a decided talent for making carpets if there were one to be made which must have happened seldom but there were a great many to be turned and made over in deep haven and she went to the carouss and loramers at house-cleaning time or in seasons of great festivity she had no equal in sickness and knew how to brew every old-fashioned dose and to make every variety of herb tea and when her nursing was put to an end by her patient's death she was commander-in-chief at the funeral and stood near the doorway to direct the morning friends to their seats and I have no reason to doubt that she sometimes even had the immense responsibility of making out the order of the procession since she had all genealogy and relationship at her tongue's end awful thing in deep haven we found if the precedence was wrongly assigned and once we chanced to hear some bitter remarks because the cousins of the departed wife had been placed after the husband's relatives the blood relations riding behind them that was only kin by marriage I don't wonder they felt hurt said the person who spoke a most unselfish and unassuming soul ordinarily Mrs. Patton knew everybody's secrets but she told them judiciously if at all she chattered all day to you as sparrow twitters and you did not tire of her and Kate and I were never more agreeably entertained than when she told us of old times and of Kate's ancestors and their contemporaries for her memory was wonderful and she had either seen everything that had happened in deep haven for a long time or had received the particulars from reliable witnesses she had known much trouble her husband had been but small satisfaction to her and it was not to be wondered at if she looked upon all proposed marriages with compassion she was always early at church and she wore the same bonnet that she had when Kate was a child it was such a well preserved, proper black straw bonnet with discreet bows of ribbons and a useful lace veil to protect it from the weather she showed us into the best room the first time we went to see her it was the plainest little room in very dull and there was an exact sufficiency about its furnishings if there was a certain dignity about it it was unmistakably a best room and not a place where one might make a litter or carry one's everyday work you felt at once that somebody valued the prim old fashioned chairs and the two half moon tables and the thin carpet which must have needed anxious stretching every spring to make it come to the edge of the floor there were some morning pieces by way of decoration inscribed with the names of Mrs. Patton's departed friends two worked in cruel to the memory of her father and mother and two paper memorials with the women weeping under the willow at the side of a monument they were all brown with age and there was a sampler beside worked by Judith Beckett aged ten and all five were framed in slender black frames and hung very high on the walls there was a rocking chair as if it felt too grand for use and considered itself imposing it tilted far back on its rockers and was bent forward at the top to make one's head uncomfortable it need not have troubled itself nobody would ever wish to sit there it was such a big rocking chair and Mrs. Patton was proud of it always generously urging her guests to enjoy its comfort which was imaginary with her as she was so short that she could hardly have climbed into it without assistance Mrs. Patton was a little ceremonious at first but soon recovered herself and told us a great deal which we were glad to hear I asked her once if she had not always lived in Deep Haven here and beyond East Parish said she Mr. Patton, that was my husband he owned a good farm there when I married him but I come back here again after he died place was all mortgaged I never got a cent and I was poorer than when I started I worked harder than I did before or since to keep things together but it wasn't any kind of use your mother knows all about it Miss Kate as if we might not be willing to believe it on her authority I come back here a widow and a destitute I tell you the world looked fair to me when I left this house first to go over there don't you run no risks you're better off as you be, dears but land sakes alive he didn't mean no hurt and he said everything by me when he was himself I don't make no scruples of speaking about it everybody knows how it was but I did go through with everything I never knew what the day would bring forth said the widow as if this were the first time she had had a chance to tell her sorrows to a sympathizing audience she did not seem to mind talking about the troubles of her married life any more than a soldier minds telling the story of his campaigns and dwells with pride on the worst battle of all her favorite subject always was Miss Brandon and after a pause she said that she hoped we were finding everything right in the house she had meant to take up the carpet in the best spare room but it didn't seem to need it it was taken up the year before and the room had not been used since there was not a might of dust under it last time and Kate assured her with an appearance of great wisdom that she did not think it could be necessary at all I come home and had a good cry yesterday after I was over seeing you said Mrs. Patton and I could not help wondering if she really could cry for she looked so perfectly dried up so dry that she might rustle in the wind your aunt had been failing so long that just after she died it was a relief but I've got so's to forget all about that and I miss her as she used to be it seemed as if you had stepped into her place and you look some as she used to when she was young you must miss her, said Kate and I know how much she used to depend on you you were very kind to her I sat up with her the night she died said the widow with mournful satisfaction I have lived at neighbor to her all my life except the thirteen years I was married and there wasn't a week I wasn't over to the great house except I was off to a distance taking care of the sick when she got to be feeble she always wanted me to tend to the cleaning and to see to putting the canopies and curtains on the bedsteads and she wouldn't trust nobody but me to handle some of the best China I used to say, Miss Catherine why don't you have some young folks come and stop with you there's Miss Lancaster's daughter growing up but she didn't seem to care for anybody but your mother you wouldn't believe what a hand she used to be for company in her younger days surprising how folks alters when I first recollect her much she was as straight as an arrow and she used to go to Boston visiting and come home with the top of the fashion she always did dress elegant it used to be gay here and she was always going down to the Loramures or the Carous to tea and they coming here her sister was married she was a good deal older but some of her brothers were at home there was her grandfather and Mr. Henry I don't think she ever got over it is disappearing so there were lots of folks then that's dead and gone and they used to have their card parties and old Captain Manning, he's dead and gone used to have them all to play wist every fortnight sometimes three or four tables and they always had cake and wine handed round or the Captain'd make some punch like's not with oranges in it and lemons he knew how he was a bachelor to the end of his days the old Captain was but he used to entertain real handsome I recollect one night they was a plane after the wine was brought in and he upset his glass all over Miss Martha Loramures invisible green watered silk and spoiled the better part of two breaths she sent right over for me early the next morning to see if I knew of anything to take out the spots but I didn't though I can take grease out of most any material we tried clear alcohol and salaradus water and hearts horn and pouring water through and heating off it and when we got through it was worse than when we started she felt dreadful bad about it and at last she says Judith we won't work over it any more but if you'll give me a day some time or another we'll rip it up and make a quilt of it I see that quilt last time I was in Miss Rebecca's north chamber Miss Martha was her aunt you never saw her she was dead and gone before your day it was a silk old Captain Peter Loramures her brother who left him his money brought home from sea and she had worn it for best and second best 11 years it looked as good as new and she never would have ripped it up if she could have matched it I said it seemed to be a shame but it was a curious figure Captain Manning fetched her one to pay for the next time he went to Boston she didn't want to take it but he wouldn't take no for an answer he was free-handed the Captain was I helped him make it long of Miss Mary Ann Sims the dressmaker was dead and gone too the time it was made it was brown and a beautiful looking piece but it wore shiny and she made a double gown of it before she died Mrs. Patton brought Kate and me some delicious old fashioned cake with much spice in it and told us it was made by old Mrs. Chantry Brandon's recipe which she got in England that it would keep a year and she always kept a loaf by her now that she could afford it she supposed we knew Miss Catherine had named her in her will long before she was sick it has put me beyond fear of want said Mrs. Patton I won't deny that I used to think it would go hard with me when I got so old I couldn't earn my living you see I never laid up but a little and it's hard for a woman who comes of respectable folks to be a pauper in her last days but your aunt Miss Kate she thought of it too and I'm sure I'm thankful to be so comfortable and to stay in my house which I couldn't have done likes not Miss Rebecca Loramere said to me after I got news of the will why Miss Patton you don't suppose your friends would ever have let you want and I says my friends are kind the Lord bless them but I feel better to be able to do for myself than to be beholden after this long call we went down to the post office and coming home stopped for a while in the old burying ground which we had noticed the day before and we sat for the first time on the great stone in the wall in the shade of a maple tree where we so often waited afterward for the stage to come with a male while rested on our way home from a walk it was a comfortable perch we used to read our letters there I remember I must tell you a little about the deep haven burying ground for its interest was inexhaustible and I do not know how much time we may have spent in reading the long epitaphs on the grave stones and trying to puzzle out the inscriptions which were often so old and worn that we could only trace a letter here and there it was a neglected corner of the world and there were straggling sumacs and acacias scattered about the enclosure while a row of fine old elms marked the boundary of two sides the grass was long entangled and most of the stones leaned one way or the other and some had fallen flat there were a few handsome old family monuments clustered in one corner among which the one that marked Miss Brandon's grave looked so new and fresh that it seemed inappropriate it should have been dingy to begin with like the rest, said Kate one day but I think it will make itself look like its neighbors as soon as possible there were many stones which were sacred to the memory of men who had been lost at sea almost always giving the name of the departed ship which was so kept in remembrance and one felt as much interest in the ship Starlight supposed to have foundered off the Cape of Good Hope as in the poor fellow who had the ill luck to be one of her crew there were dozens of such inscriptions and there were other stones perpetuating the fame of honourable gentlemen who had been members of Her Majesty's Council or surveyors of His Majesty's Woods or King's officers of customs for the town of Deephaven some of the epitaphs were beautiful showing that tenderness for the friends who had died that longing to do them justice to fully acknowledge their virtues and dearness which is so touching and so unmistakable even under the stiff, quaint expressions and formal words which were thought suitable to be chiseled on the stones so soon to be looked at carelessly by the tearless eyes of strangers we often used to notice names and learn their history from the old people whom we knew and in this way we heard many stories which we never shall forget it is wonderful the romance and tragedy and adventure which one may find in a quiet old-fashioned country town though to heartily enjoy the everyday life one must care to study life and character and must find pleasure in thought and observation of simple things and have an instinctive, delicious interest in what to others is unflavored dullness to go back to Mrs. Patton on our way home after our first call upon her we stopped to speak to Mrs. Dockham who mentioned that she had seen us going into the widow gyms Will and woman, said Mrs. Dockham always been respected and had an uncommon faculty of speech I never saw such a hand to talk but then she had something to say which ain't the case with everybody good neighbor does according to her means always dreadful tough time of it with her husband shiftless and drunk all his time noticed that dent in the side of her forehead, I suppose that's where he liked to have killed her slung a stone bottle at her what? said Caint and I very much shocked she don't like to have it inquired about but she and I were sitting up with man to dame her one night and she gave me the particulars I knew he did it for she was a fit of sickness afterward had sliced cucumbers for breakfast that morning he was very partial to them and he wanted some vinegar happened to be two bottles in the cellar way were just alike and one of them was vinegar and the other had spirit in it at hang time he takes up the wrong one and pours on quick and out come the hay seed and flies and he give the bottle a sling and it hit her there where you see the scar might put the end of your finger into the dent she said he meant to break the bottle again the door but it went slant wise sort of I don't know I'm sure meditatively she said he was good natured it was early in the morning he hadn't had time to get upset but he had high temper naturally and so much drink hadn't made it much better she had good prospects when she married him six foot two and red cheeks and straight as a Norway pine had a good property from his father and his mother come of a good family but he died in debt drank like a fish yes it was a shame nice woman good consistent church member always been respected useful among the sick end of chapter three chapter four of Deep Haven this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org read by Betsy Bush in Marquette, Michigan July 2008 Deep Haven by Sarah Orrin Jewett chapter four Deep Haven Society it was curious to notice in this quaint little fishing village by the sea how clearly the gradations of society were defined the place prided itself most upon having been long ago the residence of one Governor Chantry who was a rich ship owner an East India merchant his fame and magnificence were almost fabulous it was a never ceasing regret that the house should have burned down after he died and there is no doubt that if it were still standing it would rival any ruin of the old world the elderly people though laying claim to no slight degree of present consequence modestly ignored it and spoke with pride of the grand way in which life was carried on by their ancestors the Deep Haven families of old times I think Kate and I were assured at least a hundred times that Governor Chantry kept a valet and his wife Lady Chantry kept a maid and that the Governor had an uncle in England who was a baronet and I believe this must have been why our friends felt so deep in interest in the affairs of the English nobility they no doubt felt themselves entitled to seats near the throne itself there were formally five families who kept their coaches in Deep Haven there were balls at the Governors and regal entertainments at other of the grand mansions there is not a really distinguished person in the country who will not prove to have been directly or indirectly connected with Deep Haven we were shown the cellar of the Chantry House and the terraces and a few clumps of lilacs and the grand rows of elms there are still two of the Governor's warehouses left but his ruined wharves are fast disappearing and are almost deserted except by small barefooted boys who sit on the edges to fish for sea perch when the tide comes in there is an imposing monument in the burying ground to the great man and his amiable consort I am sure that if there were any surviving relatives of the Governor they would receive in Deep Haven far more deference than is consistent with the principles of a Republican government but the family became extinct long since and I have heard though it is not a subject that one may speak of lightly that the sons were unworthy their noble descent and came to inglorious ends there were still remaining a few representatives of the old families who were treated with much reverence by the rest of the town's people although they were like the conies of Scripture a feeble folk Deep Haven is utterly out of fashion it never recovered from the effects of the embargo of 1807 and a sandbar has been steadily filling in the mouth of the harbor though the fishing gives what occupation there is for the inhabitants of the place it is by no means sufficient to draw recruits from abroad but nobody in Deep Haven cares for excitement and if someone once in a while has the low taste to prefer a more active life he is obliged to go elsewhere in search of it and is spoken of afterward with kind pity I well remember the widow Moses said to me in speaking of a certain misguided nephew of hers I never could see what could have sought him out to leave so many privileges and go way off to Lynn with all them children too why they lived here no more than a cable length from the meeting house there were two schooners owned in town and Bajaw Mali and Joe Sands owned a troll there were some schooners in a small brig slowly going to pieces by the wharves and indeed all Deep Haven looked more or less out of repair all along shore one might see dories and wearies and whale boats which had been left to die a lingering death there is something piteous to me in the sight of an old boat if one I had used much and cared for were passed as usefulness I should say goodbye to it and have it towed out to sea and sunk it never should be left to fall to pieces above high watermark even the commonest fishermen felt a satisfaction and seemed to realize their privilege in being residents of Deep Haven but among the nobility and gentry there lingered a fierce pride in their family and town records a hardly concealed contempt and pity for people who were obliged to live in other parts of the world there were acknowledged to be a few disadvantages such as living nearly a dozen miles from the railway but as Miss Annara Karoo said the tone of Deep Haven society has always been very high and it was very nice that there had never been any manufacturing element introduced she could not feel too grateful herself that there was no disagreeable foreign population but said Kate one day wouldn't you like to have some pleasant new people brought into town certainly my dear said Miss Annara rather doubtfully I have always been public spirited but then we always have guests in summer and I'm growing old I should not care to enlarge my acquaintance to any great extent Miss Annara and Mrs. Dent had lived gay lives in their younger days and were interested and connected with the outside world more than any of our Deep Haven friends but they were quite contented to stay in their own house with their books and letters and knitting and they carefully read little and the new magazine as they called it the Atlantic the Karoo's were very intimate with the minister and his sister and there were one or two others who belong to this set there was Mr. Joshua Dorsey who wore his hair in a queue was very deaf and carried a ponderous cane which had belonged to his venerated father a much taller man than he he was polite to Kate and me but we never knew him much he went to play wist with the Karoo's every Monday evening and commonly went out fishing once a week he had begun the practice of law but he had lost his hearing and at the same time his lady love had inconsiderately fallen in love with somebody else after which he retired from active business life he had a fine library which he invited us to examine he had many new books but they looked shockingly overdressed in their fresher bindings beside the old brown volumes of essays and sermons and lighter works in many volume editions a prominent link in society was Widow Tully who had been the much respected housekeeper of old Captain Manning for forty years when he died he left her the use of his house and family pew besides an annuity the existence of Mr. Tully seemed to be a myth during the first of his widow's residence in town she had been much affected when obliged to speak of him and always represented herself as having seen better days and as being highly connected but she was apt to be ungrammatical when excited and there was a whispered tradition that she used to keep a toll bridge in a town in Connecticut though the mystery of her previous state of existence will probably never be solved she wore mourning for the captain which would have befitted his widow and patronized the townspeople conspicuously while she herself was treated with much condescension by the Carous and Loramures she occupied on the whole much the same position that Mrs. Betty Barker did in Cranford and indeed Kate and I were often reminded of that estimable town we heard that Kate's aunt, Miss Brandon had never been appreciative of Mrs. Tully's merits and that since her death the others had received Mrs. Tully into their society rather more it seemed as if all the clocks in Deep Haven and all the people with them had stopped years ago and the people had been doing over and over what they had been busy about during the last week of their unambitious progress their clothes had lasted wonderfully well and they had no need to earn money when there was so little chance to spend it indeed there were several families who seemed to have no more visible means of support than a balloon there were no young people whom we knew though a number used to come to church on Sunday from the inland farms or the country as we learn to say there were children among the fishermen's families at the shore but a few years we'll see Deep Haven possessed by two classes instead of the time-honored three as for our first Sunday at church it must be in vain to ask you to imagine our delight when we heard the tuning of a base veal in the gallery just before service we pressed each other's hands most tenderly looked up at the singer's seats and then trusted ourselves to look at each other it was more than we had hoped for there were also a violin and sometimes a flute and a choir of men and women singers though the congregation were expected to join in the psalm singing the first hymn was the Lord our God is full of might the winds obey his will to the tune of St. Anne's it was all so delightfully old-fashioned our pew was a square pew and was by an open window looking seaward we also had a view of the entire congregation and as we were somewhat early we watched the people come in with great interest the Deep Haven aristocracy came with stately step up the aisle this was all the chance there was for displaying their unquestioned dignity in public many of the people drove to church in wagons that were low and old and creaky with worn buffalo robes over the seat and some hay tucked underneath for the sleepy undecided old horse some of the younger farmers and their wives had high shiny wagons with tall horse whips which they sometimes brought into church and they drove up to the steps with a consciousness of being conspicuous and enviable they had a bashful look when they came in and for a few minutes after they took their seats they evidently felt that all eyes were fixed upon them but after a little while they were quite at their ease and looked critically at the new arrivals the old folks interested us most do you notice how many more old women there are than old men? whispered Kate to me and we wondered if the husbands and brothers had been drowned and if it must not be sad to look at the blue sun-shiny sea beyond the marshes if the far away white sails reminded them of some ships that had never sailed home into Deep Haven harbor or of fishing boats that had never come back to land the girls and young men adorned themselves in what they believed to be the latest fashion but the elderly women were usually relics of old times in manner and dress they wore to church thin soft silk gowns that must have been brought over from the seas years upon years before the wide collars fastened with morning pins holding a lock of hair they had big black bonnets some of them with stiff capes such as Kate and I had not seen before since our childhood they treasured large rusty lace veils of scraggly pattern and wore sometimes unpleasant sundaes white china crepe shawls with attenuated fringes and there were two or three of these shawls in the congregation which had been dyed black and gave an aspect of meekness and general unworthiness to the aged wearer they clung and drooped about the figure in such a hopeless way we used to notice often the most interesting scarves without which no deep-haven woman considered herself in full dress sometimes there were red India scarves in spite of its being hot weather but our favorite ones were long stripes of silk embroidered along the edges and at the ends with dismal colored floss in old patterns I think there must have been a fashion once in deep-haven of working these scarves and I should not be surprised to find it was many years before the fashion of working samplers came about our friends always wore black mitts on warm sundaes and many of them carried neat little bags of various designs on their arms containing a precisely folded pocket handkerchief and a frugal lunch of caraway seeds or red and white peppermints I should like you to see with your own eyes widow wearer and miss experience hall two old sisters whose personal appearance we delighted in and whom we saw feebly approaching down the street this first Sunday morning under the shadow of the two last members of an otherwise extinct race of parasols there were two or three old men who sat near us they were sailors there was something unmistakable about a sailor and they had a curiously ancient uncanny look as if they might have belonged to the crew of the Mayflower or even have cruised about with the Northmen in the times of Harold Harfiger and his comrades they had been blown about by so many winter winds so browned by summer suns and wet by salt spray that their hands and faces looked like leather with a few deep folds instead of wrinkles they had pale blue eyes very keen and quick their hair looked like the fine seaweed which clings to the kelp roots and muscle shells and little locks these friends of ours sat solemnly at the heads of their pews and looked unflinchingly at the minister when they were not dozing and they sang with voices like the howl of the wind with an occasional deep note or two have you never seen faces that seemed old fashioned? many of the people in Deep Haven Church looked as if they must be if not supernaturally old exact copies of their remote ancestors I wonder if it is not possible that the features and expressions may be almost perfectly reproduced these faces were not modern American faces but belonged rather to the days of the early settlement of the country the old colonial times we often heard quaint words and expressions which we never had known anywhere else but in old books there was a great deal of sealing go in use indeed we learned a great deal ourselves unconsciously and used it afterward to the great amusement of our friends but there were also many peculiar provincialisms and among the people who lived on the lonely farms inland we often noticed words we had seen in Chaucer and studied out at school in our English literature class everything in Deep Haven was more or less influenced by the sea the minister spoke oftenest of Peter and his fisherman companions and prayed most earnestly every Sunday morning for those who go down to the sea in ships he made frequent illusions and drew numberless illustrations of a similar kind for his sermons and indeed I am in doubt whether if the Bible had been written wholly in inland countries it would have been much valued in Deep Haven the singing was very droll for there was a majority of old voices which had seen their best days long before and the bass viol was excessively noticeable and apt to be a little ahead of the time the singers kept while the violin lingered after somewhere on the other side of the church we heard an acute voice which rose high above all the rest of the congregation sharp as a needle and slightly cracked with a limitless supply of breath it rose and fell gallantly and clung long to the high notes of Dundee it was like the whale of the Banshee which sounds clear to the fated hearer above all other noises we afterward became acquainted with the owner of this voice and were surprised to find her amic widow who was like a thin black beetle in her pathetic cypress veil and big black bonnet she looked as if she had forgotten who she was and spoke with an apologetic whine but we heard she had a temper as high as her voice and as much to be dreaded as the equinoctical gale near the church was the parsonage where Mr. Lorimer lived and the old Lorimer house not far behind was occupied by Miss Rebecca Lorimer some stranger might ask the question why the minister and his sister did not live together but you would have understood it at once after you had lived for a little while in town they were very fond of each other and the minister dined with Miss Rebecca on Sundays and she passed the day with him on Wednesdays and they ruled their separate household with decision and dignity I think Mr. Lorimer's house showed no signs of being without a mistress any more than his sisters betrayed the want of a master's care and authority the crews were very kind friends of ours and had been Miss Brandon's best friends we heard that there had always been a coolness between Miss Brandon and Miss Lorimer and that though they exchanged visits and were always polite there was a chill in the politeness and one would never have suspected them of admiring each other at all we had the whole history of the trouble which dated back scores of years from Miss Unera Karoo but we always took pains to appear ignorant of the feud and I think Miss Lorimer was satisfied that it was best not to refer to it and to let bygones be bygones it would not have been true deep haven courtesy to prejudice Kate against her grand aunt and Miss Rebecca cherished her dislike in silence which gave us a most grand respect for her since we knew she thought herself in the right though I think it never had come to an open quarrel between these majestic aristocrats Miss Unera Karoo and Mr. Dick and their elder sister Mrs. Dent had a charmingly sedate and quiet home in the old Karoo house Mrs. Dent was ill a great deal while we were there but she must have been a very brilliant woman and was not at all dull when we knew her she had outlived her husband and her children and she had several years before our summer there she had come up her own home which was in the city and had come back to Deep Haven Miss Unera, dear Miss Unera had been one of the brightest, happiest girls and had lost none of her brightness and happiness by growing old she had lost none of her fondness for society though she was so contented and quiet to Deep Haven and I think she enjoyed Kate's and my stories of our pleasures as much as we did hers of old times we used to go to see her almost every day Mr. Dick as they called their brother had once been a merchant in the East Indies and there were quantities of curiosities in most beautiful China which he had brought and sent home which gave the house a character of its own he had been very rich and had lost some of his money and then he came home and was still considered to possess princely wealth by his neighbors he had a great fondness for reading and study which had not been lost sight of during his business life and he spent most of his time in his library he and Mr. Loramir had their differences of opinion about certain points of theology and this made them much fonder of each other's society and gave them a great deal of pleasure for after every series of arguments each was sure that he had vanquished the other or there were alternate victories and defeats which made life vastly interesting and important Miss Caru and Mrs. Dent had a great treasury of old brocades and laces and ornaments which they showed us one day and told us stories of the wearers or if they were their own there were always some reminiscences which they liked to talk over with each other and with us I never shall forget the first evening we took tea with them it impressed us very much and yet nothing wonderful happened tea was handed round by an old-fashioned maid and afterward we sat talking in the twilight looking out at the garden it was such a delight to have tea served in this way I wonder that the fashion has been almost forgotten Kate and I took much pleasure in choosing our teapoys hers had a mandarin parading on the top and mine a flight of birds in a pagoda and we often used them afterward for Miss Onera asked us to come to tea whenever we liked a stupid common country town someone dared to call Deep Haven in a letter once and how bitterly we resented it that was a house where we might find the best society and the most charming manners and good breeding and if I were asked to tell you what I mean by the word lady I should ask you to go if it were possible to call upon Miss Onera Karoo after a while the elder sister said my dears we always have prayers at nine for I have to go upstairs early nowadays and then the servants came in and we read solemnly the King of Glory Psalm which I have always liked best and then Mr. Dick read the church prayers the form of prayer to be used in families we stayed later to talk with Miss Onera after we had said good night to Mrs. Dent and we told each other as we went home in the moonlight down the quiet street how much we had enjoyed the evening for somehow the house and the people had nothing to do with the present or the hurry of modern life I have never heard that Psalm since without its bringing back that summer night in Deep Haven the beautiful quaint old room and Kate and I feeling so young and worldly by contrast the flickering shaded light of the candles the old book and the voices that said amen there were several other fine old houses in Deep Haven beside this and the Brandon House though that was rather the most imposing there were two or three which had not been kept in repair and were deserted and of course they were said to be haunted and we were told of their ghosts and why they walked and win from some of the local superstitions Kate and I have vainly endeavored ever since to shake ourselves free there was a most heathenish fear of doing certain things on Friday and there were countless signs in which we still have confidence when the moon is very bright and other people grow sentimental we only remember that it is a fine night to catch hake End of Chapter 4 Chapter 5 of Deep Haven This is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Read by Betsy Bush in Marquette, MI July 2008 Deep Haven by Sarah Oren Jewett Chapter 5 The Captains I should consider my account of Deep Haven society incomplete if I did not tell you something of the ancient mariners who may be found every pleasant morning signing themselves like turtles on one of the wharves sometimes there was a considerable group of them but the less constant members of the club were older than the rest and the epidemics of rheumatism in town were sadly frequent we found that it was etiquette to call them each captain but I think some of the Deep Haven men took the title by breath upon arriving at a proper age they sat close together because so many of them were deaf and when we were lucky enough to overhear the conversation it seemed to concern their adventures at sea or the freight carried out by the sea dock the ocean rover or some other Deep Haven ship the particulars of the voyage and its disasters and successes were familiar as the wanderings of the children of Israel to an old person there were sometimes violent altercations when the captains differed as to the tonnage of some craft that had been a prey to the winds and waves dryrod or barnacles fifty years ago the old fellows puffed away at little black pipes with short stems and otherwise consumed tobacco in fabulous quantities it is needless to say that they gave an immense deal of attention to the weather we used to wish we could join this agreeable company but we found that the appearance of an outsider caused a disapproving silence and that the meeting was evidently not to be interfered with once we were impertinent enough to hide ourselves for a while just round the corner of the warehouse but we were afraid or ashamed to try it again though the conversation was inconceivably edifying Captain Isaac Horn, the eldest and wisest of all was discoursing upon some cloth he had purchased once in Bristol which the shopkeeper delayed sending until just as they were ready to weigh anchor I happened to take a look at that cloth said the captain in a loud droning voice and as quick as I got sight of it I spoke unpleasant of that swindling English fellow in the crew they stood back I was dreadful high-tempered in them days, mind ye and I had the gig manned we was out in the stream just ready to sail it was no use waiting any longer for the wind to change and we was going north about I went ashore and when I walked into his shop you never see a creature so wilted you see the miserable sculp and thought I'd never stopped to open the goods and it was a chance I did, mind ye Lorr says he, grinning and turning the color of a mild lobster I suppose ye were a standing out to see by this time No, says I and I've got my men out here on the quay a landing that cloth a-yorn and if you don't send just what I bought and paid for down there to go back in the gig within fifteen minutes I'll take ye by the collar and drop ye into the dock I was twice the size of him, mind ye, and master strong Don't ye like it? says he, edging round I'll change it for ye then Terrible polite he was Like it, says I it looks as if it were built of dog's hair in Divell's wool kicked together by spiders and its coarser than Irish freeze Three threads to an armful, says I This was evidently one of the captain's favorite stories for we heard an approving grumble from the audience In the course of a walk inland we made a new acquaintance Captain Lant whom we had noticed at church and who sometimes joined the company on the wharf We had been walking through the woods and coming out to his fields we went on to the house for some water There was no one at home but the captain who told us cheerfully that he should be pleased to serve us though his women folks had gone off to a funeral the other side of the point He brought out a pitcher full of milk and after we had drunk some we all sat down together in the shade The captain brought an old flag-bottomed chair from the woodhouse and sat down facing Kate and me with an air of certainty that he was going to hear something new and make some desirable new acquaintances and also that he could tell something it would be worth our while to hear He looked more and more like a well-to-do old English sparrow and chippered faster and faster Queer ye should know I'm a sailor so quick Why, I've been a farm in it this twenty years I'd have to go down to the shore and take a day's fishing every hands turn though to keep the old hulk clear of barnacles There, I do wish I lived near the shore where I could see the folks I know and talk about what's been going on You don't know anything about it, you don't but it's trying to a man to be called Old Cap and Lant and so to speak be forgot when there's anything stirring and be called Granther by clumsy creatures going on fifty and sixty who can't do no more work today than I can and then the women folks keep telling me to be cheerful and not fall and it's how I'm too old to go out fishing and when they want to be soft-spoken they say it's how they don't see as I fail and how wonderful I keep my hearing I never did want to farm it but she always took it to heart when I was off on the voyage and this farm in some considerable means beside came to her from her brother and they all sought to and gave me no peace of mind till I sold out my share of the Analyza and come ashore for good I did keep an eighth of the Pactolus and I was ship's husband for a long spell but she never was heard from on her last voyage to Singapore I was the lonesomest man when I first come ashore that ever you see Well, you are master hands to walk if you come way up from the Brandon House I wish the women was at home No, Miss Brandon, why yes and I remember all her brothers and sisters father and mother I can see them now coming into Meaton proud as Lucifer and straight as a mast every one of them Miss Catherine, she always had her butter from this very farm some of the folks used to go down every Saturday and my wife, she's been in the house a hundred times I suppose So you're half away Brandon's granddaughter to Kate why he and I have been out fishing together many's the time he and Chantry, his next younger brother Henry, he was a disappointment he went to fur and parts and turned out a Catholic priest I suppose you've heard I never was so set again Mr. Henry as some folks was he was the pleasantest spoken of the whole in them you do look like the Brandon's you really favor him considerable well I'm pleased to see you I'm sure we asked him many questions about the old people and found he knew all the family histories and told them with great satisfaction we found he had his pet stories and it must have been gratifying to have an entirely new and fresh audience he was adroit in leading the conversation around to a point where the stories would come inappropriately and we helped him as much as possible in a small neighborhood all the people knew each other's stories and experiences by heart and I have no doubt the old captain had been snubbed many times on beginning a favorite anecdote there was a story which he told us that first day which he assured us was strictly true and it is certainly a remarkable instance of the influence of one mind upon another at a distance it seems to me worth preserving at any rate and as we heard it from the old man with a solemn voice and serious expression and quaint gestures it was singularly impressive when I was a youngster said Captain Lant I was an orphan and I was bound out to old Mr. Pallita Dawes folks over on the ridge road it was in the time of the last war and he had a nephew, Ben Dytton a dreadful high strung wild fellow who had gone off on a privateer the old man he said everything by Ben he would disablige his own boys any day to please him this was in his latter days and he used to have spells of wandering and being out of his head and he used to cull for Ben and talk sort of foolish about him Ben never did a stroke of work for him either but he was a handsome fellow and had a way with him when he was good-natured one night old Pellita had been very bad all day and was getting quieted down and it was after supper we sat round in the kitchen and he lay in the bedroom opening out there were some pitch-knots blazing and the light shone in on the bed and all of a sudden something made me look up and look in and there was the old man setting up straight with his eyes shining at me like a cat stop them he says stop them and his two sons run in then to catch hold of him for they thought he was beginning with one of his wild spells but he fell back on the bed and began to cry like a baby oh dear me says he they've hung him hung him right up to the yard arm oh they oughtn't have done it cut him down quick he didn't think he means well Ben does hasty oh my god I can't bear to see him swing round by the neck it's poor Ben hung up to the yard arm let me alone I say Andrew and Moses they were holding him with all their might and they were both hearty men but he most got away from them once or twice and he screeched and howled like a mad creature and then he would cry again like a child he was worn out after a while and lay back quiet and said over and over Ben and hung at the yard arm and he told the neighbors next day but nobody noticed him much and he seemed to forget it as his mind came back all that summer he was miserable and towards cold weather he failed right along though he had been a master strong man in his day and his timbers held together well along late in the fall he had taken to his bed and one day there came to the house a fellow named Sim Decker a reckless fellow he was too who had gone out in the same ship with Ben he pulled a long face when he came in and said he had brought bad news they had been taken prisoner and carried into port and put in jail and Ben Diden had got a fever there and died you lie says the old man from the bedroom speaking as loud and fierce as ever you heard they hung him to the yard arm don't mind him says Andrew he's wandering like and he had a bad dream back in the spring I suppose he'd forgotten it but the Decker fellow he turned pale and kept talking crooked while he listened to old Pilata scolding to him he answered the questions the women folk asked him they took on a good deal but pretty soon he got up and winked to me and Andrew and we went out in the yard he began to swear and then says he when did that old man have his dream Andrew couldn't remember but I knew it was the night before he sold the gray cult and that was the 24th of April well says Sim Decker on the 23rd day of April Ben Diden was hung to the yard arm and I see him do it Lord help him I didn't mean to tell the women I suppose you'd never know for I'm all the one of the ship's company you're ever likely to see he were taken prisoner and Ben was mad as fire and they were scared of him and chained him to the deck and while he was sulking there a little parrot of a midshipman came up and grinned at him and snapped his fingers in his face and Ben lifted his hands with a heavy iron and sprung at him like a tiger and the boy dropped dead as a stone and they put a bit of a rope round Ben's neck and slung him right up to the yard arm and there he swung back and forth until as soon as we dared one of us climbed up and cut the rope and let him go over the ship's side and they put us in irons for that cursem how did that old man in there know and he bedridden here nigh upon 3,000 miles off says he but I guess there wasn't any of us could tell him said Captain Lant in conclusion it's something I never could account for but it's true as truth I've known more such cases some folks laugh at me for believing them the captain's yarns they call them but if you'll notice everybody's got some yarn of that kind they do believe if they won't believe yours and there's a good deal happens in the world that's mysterious now there was Witter Oliver Pinkham over to the point told me with her own lips that she but just here we saw the captain's expression alter suddenly and looked round to see a wagon coming up the lane we immediately said we must go home for it was growing late but asked permission to come again and hear the Witter Oliver Pinkham story we stopped however to see the women folks and afterward became so intimate with them that we were invited to spend the afternoon and take tea which invitation we accepted with great pride we went on fishing also with the captain and Danny of whom I will tell you presently I often think of Captain Lant in the winter for he told Kate once that he felt master old in winter to what he did in summer he likes reading fortunately and we had a letter from him not long ago acknowledging the receipt of some books of travel by land and water which we had luckily thought to send him with the latitude and longitude of deep haven at the beginning of his letter and signed himself respectfully yours with esteem Jacob Lant condemned as unseaworthy End of Chapter 5