And all the while Mr. Raycie continued to hold forth.
“A young man, in my opinion, before setting up for himself, must see the world; form his taste; fortify his judgment. He must study the most famous monuments, examine the organization of foreign societies, and the habits and customs of those older civilizations whose yoke it has been our glory to cast off. Though he may see in them much to deplore and to reprove—” (“Some of the gals, though,” Commodore Ledgely was heard to interject)—“much that will make him give thanks for the privilege of having been born and brought up under our own Free Institutions, yet I believe he will also”—Mr. Raycie conceded it with magnanimity—“be able to learn much.”
“The Sundays, though,” Mr. Kent hazarded warningly; and Mrs. Raycie breathed across to her son: “Ah, that’s what I say!”
Mr. Raycie did not like interruption; and he met it by growing visibly larger. His huge bulk hung a moment, like an avalanche, above the silence which followed Mr. Kent’s interjection and Mrs. Raycie’s murmur; then he crashed down on both.
“The Sundays—the Sundays? Well, what of the Sundays? What is there to frighten a good Episcopalian in what we call the Continental Sunday? I presume that we’re all Churchmen here, eh? No puling Methodists or atheistical Unitarians at my table tonight, that I’m aware of? Nor will I offend the ladies of my household by assuming that they have secretly lent an ear to the Baptist ranter in the chapel at the foot of our lane. No? I thought not! Well, then, I say, what’s all this flutter about the Papists? Far be it from me to approve of their heathenish doctrines—but, damn it, they go to church, don’t they? And they have a real service, as we do, don’t they? And real clergy, and not a lot of nondescripts dressed like laymen, and damned badly at that, who chat familiarly with the Almighty in their own vulgar lingo? No, sir”—he swung about on the shrinking Mr. Kent—“it’s not the Church I’m afraid of in foreign countries, it’s the sewers, sir!”
Mrs. Raycie had grown very pale: Lewis knew that she too was deeply perturbed about the sewers. “And the night-air,” she scarce-audibly sighed.
But Mr. Raycie had taken up his main theme again. “In my opinion, if a young man travels at all, he must travel as extensively as his—er—means permit; must see as much of the world as he can. Those are my son’s sailing orders, Commodore; and here’s to his carrying them out to the best of his powers!”
Black Dinah, removing the Virginia ham, or rather such of its bony structure as alone remained on the dish, had managed to make room for a bowl of punch from which Mr. Raycie poured deep ladlefuls of perfumed fire into the glasses ranged before him on a silver tray. The gentlemen rose, the ladies smiled and wept, and Lewis’s health and the success of the Grand Tour were toasted with an eloquence which caused Mr. Raycie, with a hasty nod to her daughters, and a covering rustle of starched flounces, to shepherd them softly from the room.
“After all,” Lewis heard her murmur to them on the threshold, “your father’s using such language shows that he’s in the best of humour with dear Lewis.”
2.
IN spite of his enforced potations, Lewis Raycie was up the next morning before sunrise.
Unlatching his shutters without noise, he looked forth over the wet lawn merged in a blur of shrubberies, and the waters of the Sound dimly seen beneath a sky full of stars. His head ached but his heart glowed; what was before him was thrilling enough to clear a heavier brain than his.
He dressed quickly and completely (save for his shoes), and then, stripping the flowered quilt from his high mahogany bed, rolled it in a tight bundle under his arm. Thus enigmatically equipped he was feeling his way, shoes in hand, through the darkness of the upper story to the slippery oak stairs, when he was startled by a candle-gleam in the pitch-blackness of the hall below. He held his breath, and leaning over the stair-rail saw with amazement his sister Mary Adeline come forth, cloaked and bonneted, but also in stocking-feet, from the passage leading to the pantry. She too carried a double burden: her shoes and the candle in one hand, in the other a large covered basket that weighed down her bare arm.
Brother and sister stopped and stared at each other in the blue dusk: the upward slant of the candle-light distorted Mary Adeline’s mild features, twisting them into a frightened grin as Lewis stole down to join her.
“Oh—” she whispered. “What in the world are you doing here? I was just getting together a few things for that poor young Mrs. Poe down the lane, who’s so ill—before mother goes to the store-room. You won’t tell, will you?”
Lewis signalled his complicity, and cautiously slid open the bolt of the front door. They durst not say more till they were out of ear-shot. On the doorstep they sat down to put on their shoes; then they hastened on without a word through the ghostly shrubberies till they reached the gate into the lane.
“But you, Lewis?” the sister suddenly questioned, with an astonished stare at the rolled-up quilt under her brother’s arm.
“Oh, I— Look here Addy—” he broke off and began to grope in his pocket—“I haven’t much about me… the old gentleman keeps me as close as ever… but here’s a dollar, if you think that poor Mrs. Poe could use it… I’d be too happy… consider it a privilege…”
“Oh, Lewis, Lewis, how noble, how generous of you! Of course I can buy a few extra things with it… they never see meat unless I can bring them a bit, you know… and I fear she’s dying of a decline… and she and her mother are so fiery-proud…” She wept with gratitude, and Lewis drew a breath of relief. He had diverted her attention from the bed-quilt.
“Ah, there’s the breeze,” he murmured, sniffing the suddenly chilled air.
“Yes; I must be off; I must be back before the sun is up,” said Mary
Adeline anxiously, “and it would never do if mother knew—”
“She doesn’t know of your visits to Mrs. Poe?”
A look of childish guile sharpened Mary Adeline’s undeveloped face. “She DOES, of course; but yet she doesn’t… we’ve arranged it so. You see, Mr. Poe’s an Atheist; and so father—”
“I see,” Lewis nodded. “Well, we part here; I’m off for a swim,” he said glibly. But abruptly he turned back and caught his sister’s arm. “Sister, tell Mrs. Poe, please, that I heard her husband give a reading from his poems in New York two nights ago—”
(“Oh, Lewis—YOU? But father says he’s a blasphemer!”)
“—And that he’s a great poet—a Great Poet. Tell her that from me, will you, please, Mary Adeline?”
“Oh, brother, I couldn’t… we never speak of him,” the startled girl faltered, hurrying away.
In the cove where the Commodore’s sloop had ridden a few hours earlier a biggish rowing-boat took the waking ripples. Young Raycie paddled out to her, fastened his skiff to the moorings, and hastily clambered into the boat.
From various recesses in his pockets he produced rope, string, a carpet-layer’s needle, and other unexpected and incongruous tackle; then lashing one of the oars across the top of the other, and jamming the latter upright between the forward thwart and the bow, he rigged the flowered bed-quilt on this mast, knotted a rope to the free end of the quilt, and sat down in the stern, one hand on the rudder, the other on his improvised sheet.
Venus, brooding silverly above a line of pale green sky, made a pool of glory in the sea as the dawn-breeze plumped the lover’s sail…
On the shelving pebbles of another cove, two or three miles down the Sound, Lewis Raycie lowered his queer sail and beached his boat. A clump of willows on the shingle-edge mysteriously stirred and parted, and Treeshy Kent was in his arms.