Tales of the Chesapeake Part 4

"The old sea-captain, who made five voyages a year to the nearer Indies, and sent ash.o.r.e to Port Penn as he pa.s.sed, returning, the best of rum and the freshest of tropical fruits, looked with a jealous eye upon any possible suitor to his daughter, and had, perhaps, embarra.s.sed her prospects for a younger protector, if such she had ever wished. But he loved to see the clock-maker come to the cottage, who had never shown partiality for any woman, while popular with all.

"'Minuit,' he used to say, 'the best man on watch by land or sea, thou North Star; look to my girl as to my chronometer, and I'll pay thee twice the cost of thy time!'

"It was the captain's delight, while ash.o.r.e, to have every timepiece, stationary or portable, taken apart in the presence of his daughter and himself, while he told his sailor yarns, and Lois stood ready to serve his punch, or pa.s.s to the fat, smooth-faced, cheerful Minuit the pieces of mechanism: bra.s.s gimbals, chronometer-boxes, wheels and springs, s.h.i.+p-gla.s.ses, compa.s.ses, the manifold parts of little things by which men grope their way out of sight of land, hung between a human watch and the crystal sh.e.l.l of the embossed heaven. Chronometers were with Minuit attractive and yet awe-giving subjects. The legend of his childhood, well forgotten by all else, said that he had swallowed a chronometer, so small that a sea-captain could swim with it in his mouth. And now the sailors of all the navies cruised by the aid of clumsy watches, big as house-clocks, which to look at made Minuit smile with pity.

"'Captain Lum,' he said aloud, on the eve of a voyage in the winter season, 'I have often yearned to go to sea. The sight of it makes me a little wild. I think I could guess my way over it and about it, by inherent reckoning.'

"He saw the pair of white hands holding something before him tremble a little, and he looked up. The spiritual face of Lois was looking at his with wistful apprehension and interest. If ever his pulse beat out of time it was now--for in that exchange of glances he felt what she did not understand--that he was beloved.

"Pain and joy, not swiftly, but softly, filled Minuit--pain, because he had loved this girl and wished never to have her know it, but would keep it an unbreathed, a holy mystery; and joy, like any lover's recognizing himself in the dear heart he had never importuned.

"Next day the good s.h.i.+p Chirpland came off Port Penn. The jolly captain saying adieu to Minuit, clasped his hand.

"'I saw thy look and my daughter's yesterday,' he said. 'It is weak of me to deny her a man like thee, thou sailor's friend. My s.h.i.+p is old.

These coasts are dangerous. Nights and days come when we get no sight of lights ash.o.r.e or in heaven. If thy chronometer fail, fail not thou, but be to her repairer and possessor!'

"The discovery and the trust embarra.s.sed Minuit, but he had never denied the request of any man. His time, as his sign affirmed, was everybody's. Yet a thrill, a tw.a.n.g, a twinge of delicious fear pa.s.sed through him now. He loved this girl dearly, but he feared to love at all. He had now both the parental and the womanly recognition, and his days were lonely even with his garrulous timepieces, but he felt a lonelier sense of the possibility of turning her affection to awe.

Those queer legends of his birth, his affinity for fixed luminaries and motions, and his conscious knowledge that he stood in some way related to spheres and orbits, and the laws of revolution and period, had never disturbed his mind in its calculations. But if he did stand exceptional in these respects to his fellow-men, might another and a beloved one comprehend what he himself did not? Yet the kindly regard of his neighbors, the composure of a conscience well consulted, and the hope that he was worthy of human love, made him resolve to keep the captain's admonition, though he hoped the occasion to obey it might never arrive.

"In the absence of the good s.h.i.+p, however, love could not be deceived.

It spoke in waitings and longings, and in tender glances and considerateness. She knew the rattle of his carriage-wheels, and he could feel her in the air like the breath of a beautiful day soon to appear in distance. Time, toward which he stood in such natural harmony, was dearer that it contained this pa.s.sion and life more exquisite, and himself more questionable for it all.

"It was a stormy winter. s.h.i.+ps strewed the coast between Hatteras and Navesink, and the capes of the Delaware received many a tattered barque. The ice poured down and wedged itself between Reedy Island and the sh.o.r.es, and crushed to pieces many that had escaped the ocean gales. One night in a raging storm the door of Captain Lum's cabin was thrown open, and a sailor appeared fresh from the water. He bore in his hand a chronometer, which Minuit recognized in a moment, and he drew his arm for the first time around the maiden's form.

"'The Chirpland went down on Five Fathom Shoal, and the captain stood by her. He bade us return his chronometer, and say that he perished in the a.s.surance that his daughter was left to the guidance of another fully as sure.'

"'My child,' said Minuit, 'I accept thee wholly, sharing thy griefs!

Weep, but on the breast of one who loves thee!'

"The village of Christina rejoiced when its broad-faced, dimpled friend came home with a bride so fair and well-descended. They dressed the sign before his door with flowers. Only the groom wore an anxious face as he led her into his tidy home, now for the first time blessed with a mistress.

"The night of the nuptials came softly down, as nowhere else except upon the skies of the Delaware and Chesapeake, and Minuit was happy.

The thrumming clocks in the shop below mingled their tones and tickings in one consonant chorus, scarcely heard above the long drone and low monotonies of the insects in the creeks and woods, which a.s.sisted silence. The husband slept, how well beloved he could not know.

"In the dreams of the night he was awakened. In the pale moons.h.i.+ne he saw his wife, clad in her garments of whiteness, standing by his bed all trembling.

"'Tell me,' she said, 'what it is that I hear? I have listened till I am afraid. As I lay in this room perfectly silent, with my head, my husband, nearest your heart, I felt the ticking of a watch. At first it was only curious and strange. Now it haunts me and terrifies me. I am a simple girl, new and nervous to this wedded life. Is this noise natural? What is it?'

"Minuit trembled also.

"'Lois, my bride, my heaven!' he said. 'Oh! pity me, who have tried to pity all and make all happy, if I cannot myself explain away the cause of your alarm. I have kept myself lonely these many years, aware that I was not like other men, but that my heart--no evil monitor to me--gave a different sound. There is nothing in its beat, my wife, to make you fear it. Return and lay your head upon it, and you will hear it say this only, if you listen with faith: _love_!'

"Thus the watch-maker turned superst.i.tion to a.s.surance, and the admonition of his heart was a source of joy instead of fear to the listener at its side. It ticked a few bright years with constancy, and was the last benediction of the world to her ere she was ushered into that peace which pa.s.seth understanding.

"At the death of his wife Minuit felt a deeper sense of his responsibility to time, and the finite uses of it expanded to a cheerful conception of the infinite. The country round was generally settled by a religious people, and the many meeting-houses of different sects had his equal confidence and sympathy. Pursuing his craft with unwearied diligence, and delighting the homestead with his violin as of old, a more pensive and wistful expression replaced his smile, and love withdrawn beckoned him toward it beyond the boundaries of period. Hard populations, which would not listen to preachers, heard with delight the amiable warnings of this friendly man, and as his own generation grew older, a new race dawned to whom he appeared in the light of a pure-spirited evangelist. 'Improve the time! watch it! enn.o.ble it! It is a part of the beautiful and perpetual circle of everlasting duty. It is to the great future only the little disk of a second-hand, traversed as swiftly, while the great rim of heaven accepts it as a part of the eternal round!' Such was the burden of his sermon.

"He could ride all along the roads, and hear his missionaries preaching for him wherever a clock struck, or a dial on the gable of a great stone barn propelled its shadows. His tracts were in every farmer's vest pocket. Whatever he made he consecrated with a paragraph of counsel.

"The old sign faded out. The clock-maker's sight grew dim, but his apprehensions of the everlasting love and occupation were clearer and more confident to the end.

"One day they found him in the graveyard of the London Tract, by the side of the spot where his wife was interred, worn and asleep at the ripe age of three-score.

"The mill teams and the farm wagons stopped in the road, and the country folks gathered round in silence.

"'Run down at last,' said one. 'If there are heavenly harps and bells, he hears them now!'"

And there they hear the ticking, the preaching of this faithful life, under the old stone, sending up its pleasant message yet. The stone is peris.h.i.+ng like a broken crystal, but the memory of the diligent and useful man beneath it rings amongst the holy harmonies of the country.

Though dead, he yet speaketh!

THE IMP IN NANJEMOY.

Dull in the night, when the camps were still, Thumped two nags over Good Hope Hill; The white deserter, the pa.s.sing spy, Took to the brush as the pair went by; The army mule gave over the chase; The Catholic negro, hearing the pace, Said, as they splashed through Oxon Run: "Dey ride like de soldiers who speared G.o.d's Son!"

But when Good Friday's bells behind Died in the capital on the wind, He who rode foremost paused to say: "Herold, spur up to my side, scared boy!

A word has rung in my ears all day-- Merely a jingle, 'Nanjemoy.'"

"Ha!" said Herold, "John, why that's A little old creek on the river. Surratt's Lies just before us. You halt on the green While I slip in the tavern and get your carbine!"

The outlaw drank of the whiskey deep, Which the tipsy landlord, half asleep, Brought to his side, and his broken foot He raised from the stirrup and slashed the boot.

"Lloyd," he cried, "if some news you invite-- Old Seward was stabbed in his bed to-night.

Lincoln _I_ shot--that long-lived fox-- As he looked at the play from the theatre box; And it seemed to me that the sound I heard, As the audience fluttered, like ducks round decoy, Was only the buzz of a musical word That I cannot get rid of--'Nanjemoy.'"

"Twenty miles we must ride before day, Cross Mattawoman, Piscataway, If in the morn we would take to the woods In the swamp of Zekiah, at Doctor Mudd's!"

"Quaint are the names," thought the outlaw then, "Though much I have mingled with Maryland men!

I have fever, I think, or my mind's o'erthrown.

Though sc.r.a.ped is the flesh by this broken bone, Every jog that I take on this road so lonely, With thoughts, aye b.l.o.o.d.y, my mind to employ, I can but say, over and over, this only-- The drowsy, melodious 'Nanjemoy.'"

Silent they galloped by broken gates, By slashes of pines around old estates; By planters' graves afield under clumps Of blackjack oaks and tobacco stumps; The empty quarters of negroes grin From clearings of cedar and chinquopin; From fodder stacks the wild swine flew, The shy young wheat the frost peeped through, And the swamp owl hooted as if she knew Of the crime, as she hailed: "Ahoy! Ahoy!"

And the chiming hoofs of the horses drew The pitiless rhythm of "Nanjemoy."

So in the dawn as perturbed and gray They hid in the farm-house off the way, And the worn a.s.sa.s.sin dozed in his chair, A voice in his dreams or afloat in the air, Like a spirit born in the Indian corn-- Immemorial, vague, forlorn, And disembodied--murmured forever The name of the old creek up the river.

"G.o.d of blood!" he said unto Herold, As they groped in the dusk, lost and imperilled, In the oozy, entangled mora.s.s and mesh Of hanging vines over Allen's Fresh: "The chirp of birds and the drone of frogs, The lizards and crickets from trees and bogs Follow me yet, pursue and ferret My soul with a word which I used to enjoy, As if it had turned on me like a spirit And stabbed my ear with its 'Nanjemoy.'"

Ay! Great Nature fury or preacher Makes, as she wists, of the tiniest creature-- Arming a word, as it floats on the mind, With the dagger of wrath and the wing of the wind.

What, though weighted to take them down, Their swimming steeds in the river they drown, And paddle the farther sh.o.r.e to gain, Chased by gunboats or lost in rain?

Many a night they try the ferry And the days in haggard sleep employ, But every raft, or float, or wherry, Drifts up the tide to Nanjemoy.

"Ho! John, we shall have no more annoy, We've crossed the river from Nanjemoy.

The bluffs of Virginny their shadows reach To hide our landing upon the beach!"

Repelled from the manse to hide in the barn, The sick wretch hears, like a far-away horn, As he lies on the straw by the snoring boy, The winding echo of "N-a-n-j-e-m-o-y."

All day it follows, all night it whines, From the suck of waters, the moan of pines, And the tread of cavalry following after, The flash of flames on beam and rafter, The shot, the strangle, the crash, the swoon, Scarce break his trance or disturb the croon Of the meaningless notes on his lips which fasten, And the soldier hears, as he seeks to convoy The dying words of the dark a.s.sa.s.sin, A wandering murmur, like "Nanjemoy."

THE FALL OF UTIE.