Chapter XI (2)

Peter swung his great arms again round and round like a wheel. Aunt
Prudence’s sense of security became very firm.

“That will do, Peter. If you should ever see a ghost, you call me;
and if I should ever see a man, I will call you.”

“Heaven forbid that I should ever see a ghost!” said Peter; “it would
just kill me dead, true as preachin’.”

The summer passed; the apples reddened in the shadowy orchards, and
the frosts dropped the walnuts on the light beds of crimson leaves.
The orioles went, and the ospreys. The beautiful Indian summer came
and burned and faded. November, the month of shadows, came, and a
coolness fell from the steel sky over the bay, and soon the light
snow-crystals began to fall. No ghosts were seen in or about the old
house; no robbers. Peter lost his fears, and Aunt Prudence became
full of confidence, and the two were as happy as such a solitary life
could make them. Aunt Prudence, at least, seemed perfectly happy and
contented.

There was in the great chimney an odd receptacle, once common to such
chimneys, but now almost forgotten even in England, known as the
smoke chimney. The door to it, which was iron, opened in this old
house into one of the upper rooms. The chamber consisted of iron bars
on which fresh hams were stored in the fall, and through which the
smoke passed from one of the lower fireplaces. It was in reality a
smoke-house in the chimney; a place to smoke meats, in the days when
such smoked meats were regarded as a greater luxury than now. Peter
Fayerweather had not been slow to discover this fortress-like smoke
chamber. Peter was not what would be called bright, but a bright idea
illumined his dull face when he first opened the iron door.

“Ghosts? Ghosts?” he said to himself. “If I ever should—I know what I
would do if I ever should—Nothing could ever get through that iron
door, true as preachin’. If I ever should—”

A part of the predicate to Peter’s subjunctive sentence was wanting,
but that a very helpful idea had come to him was evident from his
luminous face. He had formed a very definite plan of security “if he
ever should—”

Aunt Prudence too, in a careful survey of the premises, had been
struck with the appearance of security and seclusion of the old smoke
chamber. She too had examined it alone; and as sympathetic minds by a
kind of telegraphy express themselves in like phrases, she also said:—

“If I ever should—No robber would think of such a place as that,
anyhow. I will hang up a quilt over the iron door, and if I ever
should—If I ever should—eh, well, if I ever should—I will.”

She too turned away from the dungeon-like place with a face full of
animation and confidence. Certainly if Peter “ever should,” or if
Aunt Prudence “ever should,” the old smoke chamber would be a very
desirable and convenient seclusion. Now, Peter thought of seclusion
only in the case of a ghost, and Aunt Prudence only in case that
an unknown man of very selfish propensities should “break into the
house;” and each evidently had received a sense of security on
a careful inspection of the old smoke chamber. But neither made
a confidant of what the other would do under certain alarming
circumstances.

Peter, like most cowardly people who recover a sense of security,
became suddenly very bold. He used to visit Bristol evenings, and
return late, greatly to Aunt Prudence’s anxiety. It was the time of
the once famous Episcopal and Methodist Episcopal revivals, and Peter
claimed that he went to attend the meetings, which were the exciting
topics of the old port and of the State. Aunt Prudence, who was a
strict Calvinist, was not deeply in sympathy with these phenomenal
meetings, which were called the “New Light Stir.” She advised Peter
to “read his Bible at home.” But he still felt the necessity of going
elsewhere for the interpretation of that good book, and so, to use
his own expression, he continued to “follow up” the meetings.

Aunt Prudence’s patience at thus being left alone during the long
winter evenings at last came to an end.

“Peter,” she said, one morning after Peter had attended a meeting
that had held very late, “are you never afraid of meeting apparitions
on your way home nights? Suppose you should—what would you do?”

Peter thought of the old smoke chamber, but that would not serve
him in such a case. He knew Aunt Prudence’s purpose in making these
appalling suggestions. He was not a very politic boy, but he was
quite equal to the situation on this particular occasion.

“I would call for _you_, Aunt. You say that you are not afraid of
’em.”

Aunt Prudence felt flattered, but she still recalled amid her feeling
of satisfaction that she must not be left alone.

“But, Peter, I would hate to see the ghost of Captain Kidd, or to
see any of the old Indian apparitions. Don’t you know, Peter, that
Mount Hope is a great Indian graveyard? I would not like to meet old
Penelope Royall all in white going about in the wind; would you,
Peter? It would be awful; now wouldn’t it, Peter?”

Peter’s great eyes and ears began to grow. His old nervous fears were
coming back again, but he still coveted the freedom of his evenings.

“Aunt,” he said at last, very thoughtfully, “where do you suppose old
Penelope Royall went when she died?”

“To heaven, I hope, Peter, even if she was a royalist.”

“Then why don’t she stay there? What would she want to be wanderin’
about in the wind in cold nights for?”

“For vengeance,” said Aunt, in an annoyed tone.

“For vengeance?” said Peter. “I shouldn’t think a woman after she had
gone to heaven would have any more wicked feelings like that. I don’t
believe she wanders about in the wind with thin clothes on anyway.
Now say, do you, Aunt? Do you really think so? They dress comfortable
_up there_. It don’t stand to reason, true as preachin’; now does it?”

Aunt felt the force of Peter’s argument. In fact, Peter was
expressing her own firm convictions about such matters.

“But Captain Kidd, Peter, he was a dreadful man; I don’t think he has
gone to heaven.”

“Where did he go, Aunt?”

Aunt Prudence replied with spirit and emphasis,—

“He went, Peter, where all wicked people go,—to the kingdom of
darkness, where he is shut up for ever and ever. There now!”

Aunt Prudence was “clearing away the table,” as she called her
morning work, when she uttered these startling and decisive words.
She looked steadily at Peter, and felt that she had answered him and
silenced him. She felt a kind of triumph in the pause that followed,
and lifted her spectacles as though to say, “What do you think of
that?”

“But, Aunt Prudence—”

“But what, Peter? This is a very alarming subject.”

“But _who let him out_?”

“Oh, Peter, Peter! You are becoming an awful boy. I always knew
that those Methodist free salvation meetings would do you no good.
You go right out to the wood-pile, and bring me in an armful of wood.
You have no sense of theology, anyway. You are a poor daft fellow.
‘Who let him out?’ Did I ever!”

Peter went out, muttering that he didn’t “see how people can be shut
up forever in another world, and be wandering about this world at the
same time. It don’t stand to reason, nohow, true as preachin’.”

But although Peter’s reasoning seemed convincing, it did not quiet
his superstitious fears. Whenever his conscience became a little
disturbed, the picture of tall Penelope Royall wandering about in
the wind “all in white” was before him. Even grim old Captain Kidd
was not such an alarming object to his fancy as that. Captain Kidd
was a man, and he felt sure that he would let him alone, if he did
not trouble the buried treasure, but old Penelope Royall—_she_ was a
woman.

* * * * *

The Mount Hope lands were full of Indian stories, which were founded
on tricks, and even worse stories of those whose wits cheated the
devil out of his dues, when their grasping souls had bargained
with the latter. Peter thought of these. There was one story that
suggested to him that wit is equal to most conditions of life. It was
a red settle story, but became a poem:—

“Among Rhode Island’s early sons
Was one whose orchards fair
By plenteous and well-flavored fruit,
Rewarded all his care.

“For household use they stored the best,
And all the rest, conveyed
To neighboring mill, were ground and pressed
And into cider made.

“The wandering Indian oft partook
The generous farmer’s cheer;
He liked his food, but better still
His cider fine and clear.

“And as he quaffed the pleasant draught
The kitchen fire before,
He longed for some to carry home,
And asked for more and more.

“The farmer saw a basket new,
Beside the Indian bold,
And smiling said, ‘I’ll give to you
As much as that will hold.’

“Both laughed, for how could liquid thing
Within a basket stay?
But yet, the jest unanswering,
The Indian went his way.

“When next from rest the farmers sprung
So very cold the morn,
The icicles like diamonds hung
On every eping and thorn.

“The brook that babbled by his door
Was deep, and clear, and strong,
And yet unfettered by the frost,
Leaped merrily along.

“The self-same Indian by this brook
The astonished farmer sees;
He laid his basket in the stream,
Then hung it up to freeze.

“And by this process oft renewed,
The basket soon became
A well-glazed vessel, tight and good,
Of most capacious frame.

“The door he entered speedily,
And claimed the promised boon;
The farmer laughed heartily,
Fulfilled his promise soon.

“Up to the basket’s brim he saw
The sparkling cider rise,
And to rejoice his absent squaw,
He bore away the prize.

“Long lived the good man at the farm,
The house is standing still,
And still leaps merrily along
The much diminished rill.

“And his descendants still remain,
And tell to those who ask it,
The story they have often heard
About the Indian’s basket.”

A wonderful reformation seemed to come over Peter. He began to
stay at home, and go to bed very early, often as early as seven
o’clock,—or at least he seemed to do these sober things. Aunt
Prudence had gone to the door of his room once or twice after his
early retiring, but had found it locked, and she had been unable to
awake him, he “slept so sound.” “Boys do,” she said.

“Peter,” she said one morning, “tell me the truth, now; didn’t you
hear me when I pounded and pounded on the door last night?”

“No, Aunt Prudence, true as preachin’ I did not.” And he did not.

The truth was that poor Peter had fallen from his integrity, even in
these times of the great revivals. He had discovered that the great
hall window was as handy as a door, and that he had only to leave it
unfastened to return to the house at any time of the night without
disturbing the sound slumbers of good Aunt Prudence. He was careful
in taking this liberty to first lock his own room. These were wicked
ways, it is true, and very bold ones for a quiet youth, and quite
inconsistent with meeting-going habits. But the meetings at this
period were wonderfully dramatic; everybody talked about them, and
Peter’s curiosity quite overcame his moral sense.

The holidays were at hand. Thanksgiving was Aunt Prudence’s great
annual festival, her Feast of Tabernacles; she made little account
of Christmas, which, she told Peter, was a mere “relic of the Pope
and the Dragon,” and which he associated with an old picture in the
“Pilgrim’s Progress.”

Watch Night was the great annual occasion of the old Bristol
Methodists. It took place on New Year’s Eve, when a great assembly
used to meet to sing the old Wesleyan Watch Night hymns, written by
Wesley for the Old London Foundry, and to watch “the old year out and
the new year in.” The services of the Presiding Elder were sometimes
secured for this memorable night, and if so, a “Love Feast” was held,
and a multitude told their experiences, amid triumphant responses,
ecstatic refrains, and sometimes strange exhibitions of trance, or of
“losing one’s strength,” as the old phenomena were called.

Christmas was the Episcopal festival, and the Episcopal Church in
Bristol was unlike any other at that time. It followed the revival
methods of Whitefield and Lady Huntingdon. Christmas Eve was an
occasion of universal charity. The poor were the guests of the
church, and were entertained like princes. Peter well understood all
these festivals, and he resolved to attend them all,—the old Orthodox
church’s Thanksgiving, the Episcopal festival, and the Methodists’
solemn jubilee on New Year’s Eve. There was nothing sectarian about
him. It was also his intention not to disturb the mind of Aunt
Prudence about these matters,—the easy hall window would make it
unnecessary.

Thanksgiving passed—it fell late this year; December came in mildly,
as though the bright days were loath to go. The stillness before the
winter storms filled the air. The withered grasses were silent now,
without the voice of insect or bird. A white gull sometimes cleaved
the still gray air, and the wild cry of the shore birds was sometimes
heard. The nights were silvery and cold. The Mount Hope Bay and the
Pocassett Hills in the frosty moonlight recalled the silence and
melancholy fate of that ancient race which slumbered in the browned
fields, Pometacom’s cliff and spring. The night air seemed peopled
with shadows of painted chiefs and spectral armies forever gone. The
river weeds were dead, and encased in a thin sheet of ice in the
early mornings. Brown leaves still hung on the oaks, and red leaves
of ivy on the long walls. Husking was over, and the yellow cones of
the stalks of corn fodder glimmered on every farm. The fishing-boats
were hauled upon the shore; everything—the sky, the blue bay, the
fields, the working-men—seemed waiting for the coming of winter. The
mild days grew shorter and shorter; the tall candles burned lower and
lower each evening; the nights were glorious, and Christmas Eve came,
rung in by the resonant bell of good St. Michael’s.

Aunt Prudence had resolved to depart from the Orthodox customs on
this special year, and to make Peter a Christmas present. “He has
become such a good boy of late,” she reasoned, “and so steady. Every
one else is giving presents, and he ought to be rewarded.” She
planned to fill a bag with good things for him, after the manner of
the bountiful bag, and to hang it on his bedroom door on Christmas
Eve. He would, as she thought, find it in the morning, and it would
be a great surprise to him. It certainly would. She made the bag,
purchased some sweetmeats for it, and began to fill it with useful
articles. She knit for it a “comforter,” as a neck-scarf was called,
several pairs of stockings, some “galluses,” and secured for it
various other useful things, among them “Hervey’s Meditations,”
“Young’s Night Thoughts,” and “The Fool of Quality,” all famous books
in those sober days, and “good readin’.”

When the bag was nearly full it occurred to her that she ought to
knit for it a pair of mittens. This happy thought, however, did not
occur to her until the day before Christmas. Aunt Prudence was a
rapid knitter. The needles flew under her skilled fingers so swiftly
as to look like mere glimmers. “I can finish the mittens before
eleven o’clock to-night,” she said to herself, “and then the bag
will be all complete. I had as lief sit up late to-night as not, the
nights are so long now.”

Peter retired early that evening.

“Going?” said Aunt Prudence as he left the room with his candle. “You
seem dreadful sleepy of late. Well, that’s all right, I suppose. Boys
_do_ when they’re growing. Don’t forget to say your prayers, Peter.
You’ve a great deal to be thankful for. Good-night, Peter. The Lord
bless ye!”

Peter closed the door on receiving this serene benediction.

“He’s such a steady boy!” said the good woman, as she resumed her
knitting. “He sha’n’t lose anything by it, either. Any boy will be
steady if he is brought up right. There’s the trouble, people do not
bring their children up right.” Her needles flew. It was inspiring to
recall her great success in training Peter.

It was a still night. There was a faint moon, and the stars glimmered
thick in the cloudless sky. Aunt Prudence looked out of the window
at times, saw the still fields and bare trees, and thought of
the past. The Mount seemed haunted—it always does on calm winter
nights. Not by Leif, or Kidd, or the Royalls, or by Indian fighters,
or Revolutionary heroes, or statesmen, but by that vanished and
mysterious race whose forest capital was here, and whose arrow-heads
still fill the fields and sand.

At nine the old Bristol bell rang out on the clear air.

“I shall have the work all done by ten,” said Aunt Prudence, and her
needles flew again. She was very happy. She got up and looked out of
the window for the tenth time—ghost-land.

The hands on the old English clock pointed to ten. The work was done,
and Aunt Prudence drew the top of the bag together, and pinned upon
the tape handle a sheet of paper, on which was written,

“PETER FAYERWEATHER, a Present.”

It was half-past ten before Aunt Prudence opened the door to go
with the bag bountiful to the door of Peter’s room. As she did so
she thought that she heard a noise in the hall. She stepped back
and listened with a beating heart. She surely heard the hall window
close, and a careful step in the hall. Her heart bounded, and she
gasped for breath; she had long had a presentiment of this danger.

She locked her door at once, withdrew the key, and kneeled down on
the rug and looked through the key-hole very cautiously. There was
only a faint moon and star light in the hall, but she saw the shadow
of a tall man pass, and heard a dull step move in the direction of
Peter’s room. Her house had been entered, surely; the expected event
had really come. What should she do?

She stepped into her bedroom, which opened out of her sitting-room,
where she had been knitting, and sunk down upon the white bed, and
drew the bed-curtains. She would have groaned, but she dared not.
Here she lay and trembled till the old clock struck eleven, the
strokes sounding like a warning through the hollow rooms.

She must alarm Peter. How? Suppose she were to meet the robber in
the hall? Her nervous system was so shaken that she felt that she
could not be quiet any longer. She must do something, at any event.
She arose, put aside the bed-curtains, drew from the bed the white
counterpane, put it over her head like a great shawl, wrapped it
around her, and going into the sitting-room, took the almost extinct
candle, and unlocked the door and stepped cautiously into the hall.
If ever a mortal looked like the traditional spectre, Aunt Prudence
did then.

The hall was empty; all was still. The grim old portraits were
there—like shadow people they were all.

She left the sitting-room door open, and moved silently and
cautiously along toward Peter’s room. She tried Peter’s door. A great
sense of relief came to her; it was unlocked. She opened it slowly,
but a draught blew out the light. Terrified at this, she glided
to Peter’s bed and seized the boy by the hair, gasping, “Peter,
Peter, there’s a man in the house! Get up, get up! there’s a man in
the house!” She shook him with a nervous energy, and repeated in
stage-like whispers the words. She then vanished out of the room.

Peter awoke at the first touch of the rude hand, and his heart seemed
to stop, and his blood to turn to frozen streams, as he saw an awful
white spectre standing over his bed, and felt its bony fingers in his
hair. Penelope flashed upon him. It surely was the ghost of Penelope;
she had got away from the other world this time, surely, despite his
reason and philosophy. He looked around wildly, saw the shadow of the
old ox-saddle that adorned this room as a curiosity,—and Penelope,
awful Penelope.

Penelope’s final shake of his great shoulders nearly put a period
to his unromantic history. A chill like death came over him, and he
fully believed that his last moments had come. The gasped words,
“There’s a man in the house—get up!” were something of a relief. “A
man!” If he would only appear! Then he beheld the unearthly white
figure vanish through the door. It surely was Penelope. She had gone;
and oh, if _the_ man, if any man, would come!

He lay petrified for a moment, and then thought of the old smoke
chamber. His decision was immediate. He leaped up, drew the dark
patchwork coverlid around him, and darted upstairs. Past loom,
hatchel, and spinning-wheel, he made his way to the iron door, leaped
into the smoke chamber, closed the door behind him, and sank down
in a heap, with a most decided resolution to leave the house in the
morning forever, “true as preachin’.” He drew the industrial coverlid
around him, leaving only an opening for his eyes.

Aunt Prudence went back to her room, and locked the door tremblingly,
and waited for Peter’s step. But no Peter came. Her suspense grew
unbearable again. Suddenly she too thought of the old smoke chamber,
and drawing her ghostly robe again around her, she went into the
hall, and silently and very cautiously made her dark way up the
stairs. She too, past loom, hatchel, and spinning-wheel, found her
way to the iron door, and pulling it open, prepared to enter the dark
grated chamber.

If ever a mind was supped full of horror, it was Peter’s when he
heard a noise at the iron door, and beheld the supposed ghost of
Penelope Royall, tall and avengeful, standing before him. He uttered
a pitiful shriek, slid through the iron bars, and dropped down the
chimney into the fireplace. There he recovered himself at once,
leaped up with a bound, fled from the house, and almost flew toward
the town.

But Aunt Prudence? Shocked on finding the supposed robber in the
old smoke chamber, she too fled precipitately for the outside door,
turning over the spinning-wheel in her flight. Once into the open
air, she made equal speed toward the slumbering village.

She did not see the form of Peter in advance of her; but he paused
a moment for breath, and saw the supposed form of Penelope pursuing
him, “all in white.” It stimulated his resolution to gain the town.
It was a mile or more from the Mount Hope farms to the old village,
and Peter fleeing from the ghost, and Aunt Prudence from the robber,
went over this distance in a very brief part of the midnight hour.

“The Bristol clock struck the hour of twelve. An out-of-town
Christmas Eve party were returning home at this late hour on foot,
and on the skirts of the village were surprised by Peter, wrapped in
his odd blanket. The merry-makers knew him well, laughed, and plied
him with questions.

“The ghost!” he shrieked, as soon as he could recover his voice, and
pointed to the hill. “Penelope!”

The astonished young people looked in the direction in which Peter
had pointed. There surely was a tall white form that seemed to have
wings and to come half flying toward them through the air. They
had heard of such things, but had never seen one before. Had they
numbered but two or three, they would have fled; but there were some
ten or twelve in the party, and they waited the coming of the strange
apparition.

“’Tis me she’s after—Penelope—’tis me,” screamed Peter. “The Lord
have mercy upon me! My time is come now, true as preachin’.”

The white figure was soon before them. It no sooner reached the place
than it sunk down upon the earth.

“Take me home with you; there’s a robber in the house!”

A ghost and a robber!

“It’s Aunt Prudence Wardwell,” said one of the young men, after a
pause, on hearing such a midnight tale. “Why, Aunt Prudence, what
_is_ the matter?”

“Protect me—take me home, somewhere. Oh, there’s a robber in the
house,—a robber!”

“Here’s Peter,” said the young man. “I thought he lived with you.”

“Peter?” gasped the woman all in white.

“Yes. Here, Peter, what _does_ this mean?”

“I—I—thought, oh, I thought, Aunt Prudence, that you was a ghost. I
did, true as preachin’.”

“How did you get here, Peter? Oh, there’s a robber in the house. Did
you hear me when I called you? I saw him enter by the window,—saw
him with my own eyes, Peter. He’s hid in the old smoke chamber. Oh,
Peter, where shall we go, oh! oh!”

It was all clear to Peter now, painfully clear; the cloud had lifted.

“It was _me_, Aunty.”

“What?” Aunt Prudence’s tall form rose slowly.

“It was me who got into the house by the window.”

“You?”

“Yes—I must confess—I run away and went to the town to the festival.
I did—I must confess—true as preachin’.”

“You?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, Peter, let’s go home. What two dreadful-looking objects we are!
I ain’t afraid of ghosts.”

“And I ain’t afraid of no robbers, nor no such. What a time we’ve
made of it!—and the folks will all laugh at us too. Let’s go home.
That’s the place for us, true as preachin’.”

The Robber and Ghost, two spectral figures, departed, with a great
sense of relief, but with many reserved opinions. Peter never
received the present of the bountiful bag, but neither ghosts nor
robbers were ever known to trouble the Royall house again. It became
a very quiet place, and Peter Fayerweather settled down there to his
pastoral and domestic duties, and really fulfilled Aunt Prudence’s
hopes of him, his thrifty farming doing real credit to the beautiful
and historic Mount Hope Lands.[4]

[4] Originally published in Harper’s Weekly.