Cursed

CHAPTER XXIX

THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE

Sadly returning home, Laura stopped for a moment at her garden gate to make quite sure her father was not in the side yard. With all her girlish dreams broken and draggled, the heartbroken girl stood looking at the flowers that only an hour before had seemed so wondrous gay. And all at once she heard the sound of wheels upon the road. Turning, she saw old Captain Briggs and Dr. Filhiol slowly driving toward Snug Haven.

Half-minded to retreat inside the garden, still she stood there, for already Captain Briggs had raised a hand in greeting. Every feature of the old captain’s face was limned with grief. His shoulders seemed to sag, bowed down with heavier weight than his almost eighty years could pile upon them.

So the girl remained at the gate, greatly sorrowing; and peered after the two old men. Though she could not guess the captain’s trouble, her woman’s instinct told her this trouble bore on Hal. And over her own grief settled still another cloud that darkened it still more.

Puzzled, disillusioned, she swung the gate and entered the prim paths bordered with low box-hedges. No one saw her. Quietly she entered the house and crept up-stairs to her own room. There, in that virginal place, she dropped down on her old-fashioned, four-posted bed of black walnut, and buried her face in the same pillows to which, girl-like, she had often confided so many innocent and tender dreams.

As the girl lay there, crying for the broken bauble, love, crushed in the brutal hand of Hal, old Captain Briggs and Dr. Filhiol – once more back on the quarterdeck of Snug Haven – settled themselves for dejected consultation.

“I never did expect ’twould be as much as that,” the captain said, mechanically stuffing his pipe. “I reckoned maybe fifty dollars would pay demurrage and repairs on Mac. McLaughlin isn’t worth more, rig and all. But, Judas priest, two hundred and a half! That’s running into money. Money I can ill afford to pay, sir!”

“I know,” the doctor answered. “It’s cruel extortion. But what can you do, captain? McLaughlin holds the tiller now. He can steer any course he chooses. The fact that he started at five hundred, plus the apology that he demands from Hal on the deck of the Sylvia in front of the whole crew, and that we’ve pared him down to two hundred and fifty, plus the apology – that’s a very great gain. It’s bad, I know, but not so bad as having had the boy locked up, charged with felonious assault. It’s not so bad as that, sir!”

“No, no, of course not,” Briggs agreed. “I suppose I’ve got to pay, though Lord knows, sir, the money’s needed terribly for other things, now that the college bill has got to be settled all over again!”

“I know it’s hard,” sympathized the doctor, “but there’s no help for it. Wipe the slate clean, and give Hal another start. That’s all you can do.”

The old captain remained smoking and brooding a while, with sunshine on his head. At last his eyes sought the far, deep line of blue that stretched against the horizon – the sea-line, lacking which the old man always sensed a vacancy, a loss.

“Close on to six bells,” judged he, “by the way the sun’s shining on the water. Wonder where the boy can be? I’ve got to have a proper gam with him.”

“Why? Where ought he to be?” the doctor asked.

“He must have put back into port, after his little cruise with Laura, this morning. We sighted her, moored at her front gate, you remember?”

“H-m! You don’t suppose there’s trouble brewing there too, do you? I thought the girl looked upset, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t notice anything. What seemed to be the matter?”

“I thought she’d been crying a bit.”

The captain clenched his fist.

“By the Judas priest!” he exclaimed fervently. “If I thought Hal had been abusing that girl, I’d make it hot for him! That’s one thing I won’t stand!” He peered down the road with narrowing eyes, then got up and went to the front door. “Hal, oh, Hal!” he cried.

No answer. The captain’s voice echoed emptily in the old-fashioned hallway.

“Not here, anyhow,” said he, returning to his rocker. “Well, we won’t accuse him of anything else till we know. I only hope he hasn’t written any more black pages on the log by mishandling Laura.”

Wearily his eyes sought Croft Hill. Of a sudden unbidden tears blurred his sight.

“There’s a peaceful harbor for old, battered craft, anyhow,” he murmured, pointing. “I sometimes envy all the tired folk that’s found sleep and rest up there in their snug berths, while we still stand watch in all weathers. If, after all I’ve worked and hoped for, there’s nothing ahead but breakers, I’ll envy them more than ever.”

“Come now, captain!” Filhiol tried to cheer him. “Maybe it was only a little lovers’ quarrel that sent Laura home. There’s never all smooth sailing, with maid and man for a crew. Let’s wait a while and see.”

“Yes, wait and think it over,” said the captain. “There’s only one place for me, doctor, when things look squally, and that’s with my folks on the hill. Guess I’ll take a walk up there now and talk it over with them. Come with me, will you?”

Filhiol shook his head.

“Too much for me, that hill is,” he answered. “If you don’t mind, I’ll sit right here and watch the sea.”

“Suit yourself, doctor.” And Captain Briggs arose. “When Ezra comes down the lane tell him not to bother with dinner. A little snack will do. Let’s each of us think this thing out, and maybe we can chart the proper course between us.”

He stood a moment in the sunshine, then, bare-headed, went down the steps and turned into the path that would lead him up Croft Hill. He stopped, gathering a handful of bright flowers – zinnias, hollyhocks, sweet peas – for his ever-remembered dead. Then he went on again.

“Poor old chap!” said Dr. Filhiol. “The curse is biting pretty deep. That’s all poppycock, that Malay cursing; but the curses of heredity are stern reality. There’s a specific for every poison in the world. Even the dread curaré has one. But for the poison of heredity, what remedy is there? Poor old captain!”

Alpheus Briggs, with bowed head, climbed up the winding way among the blackberry bushes, the sumacs and wild roses dainty-sweet; and so at last came to the wall pierced with the whitewashed gate that he himself kept always in repair.

Into the cemetery, his Garden of Gethsemane, he penetrated, by paths flanked with simple and pious stones, many of hard slate carved with death’s-heads, urns, cherubs and weeping-willows, according to the custom of the ancient, godly days. Thus to his family burial lot he came, and there laid his offering upon the graves he loved; and then sat down upon the bench there, for meditation in this hour of sorrow and perplexity.

And as sun and sky and sea, fresh breeze and drifting cloud, and the mild influences of his lifelong friend, tobacco, all worked their soothings on him, he presently plucked up a little heart once more. The nearness of his dead bade him have hope and courage. He felt, in that quiet and solemn place, the tightening of his family bonds; he felt that duty called him to lift even these new and heavy burdens, to bear them valiantly and like a man.

With the graves about him and the sea before, and over all the heavens, calm returned. And sorrow – which, like anger, cannot long be keen – faded into another thought: the thought of how he should make of Hal the man that he would have him be.

How restful was this sunlit hilltop, where he knew that soon he, too, must sleep! The faint, far cries of gulls drifted in to him with the bell-buoy’s slow tolling; and up from the village rose the music of the smitten anvil. That music minded him of a Hindustani poem Hal once had read to him – a poem about the blacksmith, Destiny, beating out showers of sparks upon the cosmic anvil in the night of eternity, each spark a human soul; and each, swiftly extinguished, worth just as much to Destiny as earthly anvil sparks are to the human toiler at the forge – as much and no more.

The poem had thus ended:

“All is Maya, all is illusion! Why struggle, then?
To walk is better than to run; to stand is better than to walk.
To sit is better than to stand; to lie is better than to sit.
To sleep is better than to wake; to dream is better than to live.
Better still is a sleep that is dreamless,
And death is best of all!”

“I wonder if that’s true?” the captain mused. “I wonder if life is all illusion and death alone is real?”

Thus meditating, he felt very near the wife and son who lay there beneath the flowers he had just laid on the close-cut sod. The cloud-shadows, drifting over the hilltop, seemed symbols of the transitory passage of man’s life, unstable, ever drifting on, and leaving on the universe no greater imprint than shadows on the grass. He yearned toward those who had gone to rest before him; and though not a praying man, a supplication voiced itself in him:

“Oh, God, let me finish out my work, and let me rest! Let me put the boy on the right course through life, and let me know he’ll follow it – then, let me steer for the calm harbor where Thou, my Pilot, wilt give me quiet from the storm!”

Thus the old captain sat there for a long time, pondering many and sad things; and all at once he saw the figure of a man in white coming along the road. The captain knew him afar.

“There’s Hal now,” said he. “I wonder where he’s been and what this all means?”

A new anxiety trembled through his wounded heart, that longed for nothing now but love and trust. Up rose the old captain, and with slow steps walked to the eastern wall of the cemetery. There he waited patiently.

Presently Hal came into sight, round the shoulder of Croft Hill.

“Ahoy, there! Hal! Come here – I want to see you!”

The old man’s cry dropped with disagreeable surprise into Hal’s sinister reflections. Hal looked up, and swore to himself. He sensed the meaning of that summons.

“There’s another damned scene coming,” thought Hal. “Why the hell can’t he let me alone now? Why can’t everybody let me alone?”