Twice-Told Tales (48 page)

"Avaunt, Satan!" cried Peter. "The man shall have his gold." Uplifting
his axe, he hit the horned gentleman such a blow on the head as not
only demolished him, but the treasure-seeker also, and caused the
whole scene to vanish like magic. Moreover, his axe broke quite
through the plaster and laths and discovered a cavity.

"Mercy on us, Mr. Peter! Are you quarrelling with the Old Scratch?"
said Tabitha, who was seeking some fuel to put under the dinner-pot.

Without answering the old woman, Peter broke down a further space of
the wall, and laid open a small closet or cupboard on one side of the
fireplace, about breast-high from the ground. It contained nothing but
a brass lamp covered with verdigris, and a dusty piece of parchment.
While Peter inspected the latter, Tabitha seized the lamp and began to
rub it with her apron.

"There is no use in rubbing it, Tabitha," said Peter. "It is not
Aladdin's lamp, though I take it to be a token of as much luck. Look
here, Tabby!"

Tabitha took the parchment and held it close to her nose, which was
saddled with a pair of iron-bound spectacles. But no sooner had she
begun to puzzle over it than she burst into a chuckling laugh, holding
both her hands against her sides.

"You can't make a fool of the old woman," cried she. "This is your own
handwriting, Mr. Peter, the same as in the letter you sent me from
Mexico."

"There is certainly a considerable resemblance," said Peter, again
examining the parchment. "But you know yourself, Tabby, that this
closet must have been plastered up before you came to the house or I
came into the world. No; this is old Peter Goldthwaite's writing.
These columns of pounds, shillings and pence are his figures, denoting
the amount of the treasure, and this, at the bottom, is doubtless a
reference to the place of concealment. But the ink has either faded or
peeled off, so that it is absolutely illegible. What a pity!"

"Well, this lamp is as good as new. That's some comfort," said
Tabitha.

"A lamp!" thought Peter. "That indicates light on my researches."

For the present Peter felt more inclined to ponder on this discovery
than to resume his labors. After Tabitha had gone down stairs he stood
poring over the parchment at one of the front windows, which was so
obscured with dust that the sun could barely throw an uncertain shadow
of the casement across the floor. Peter forced it open and looked out
upon the great street of the town, while the sun looked in at his old
house. The air, though mild, and even warm, thrilled Peter as with a
dash of water.

It was the first day of the January thaw. The snow lay deep upon the
housetops, but was rapidly dissolving into millions of water-drops,
which sparkled downward through the sunshine with the noise of a
summer shower beneath the eaves. Along the street the trodden snow was
as hard and solid as a pavement of white marble, and had not yet grown
moist in the spring-like temperature. But when Peter thrust forth his
head, he saw that the inhabitants, if not the town, were already
thawed out by this warm day, after two or three weeks of winter
weather. It gladdened him—a gladness with a sigh breathing through
it—to see the stream of ladies gliding along the slippery sidewalks
with their red cheeks set off by quilted hoods, boas and sable capes
like roses amidst a new kind of foliage. The sleigh bells jingled to
and fro continually, sometimes announcing the arrival of a sleigh from
Vermont laden with the frozen bodies of porkers or sheep, and perhaps
a deer or two; sometimes, of a regular marketman with chickens, geese
and turkeys, comprising the whole colony of a barn-yard; and
sometimes, of a farmer and his dame who had come to town partly for
the ride, partly to go a-shopping and partly for the sale of some eggs
and butter. This couple rode in an old-fashioned square sleigh which
had served them twenty winters and stood twenty summers in the sun
beside their door. Now a gentleman and lady skimmed the snow in an
elegant car shaped somewhat like a cockle-shell; now a stage-sleigh
with its cloth curtains thrust aside to admit the sun dashed rapidly
down the street, whirling in and out among the vehicles that
obstructed its passage; now came round a corner the similitude of
Noah's ark on runners, being an immense open sleigh with seats for
fifty people and drawn by a dozen horses. This spacious receptacle was
populous with merry maids and merry bachelors, merry girls and boys
and merry old folks, all alive with fun and grinning to the full width
of their mouths. They kept up a buzz of babbling voices and low
laughter, and sometimes burst into a deep, joyous shout which the
spectators answered with three cheers, while a gang of roguish boys
let drive their snow-balls right among the pleasure-party. The sleigh
passed on, and when concealed by a bend of the street was still
audible by a distant cry of merriment.

Never had Peter beheld a livelier scene than was constituted by all
these accessories—the bright sun, the flashing water-drops, the
gleaming snow, the cheerful multitude, the variety of rapid vehicles
and the jingle-jangle of merry bells which made the heart dance to
their music. Nothing dismal was to be seen except that peaked piece of
antiquity Peter Goldthwaite's house, which might well look sad
externally, since such a terrible consumption was preying on its
insides. And Peter's gaunt figure, half visible in the projecting
second story, was worthy of his house.

"Peter! How goes it, friend Peter?" cried a voice across the street as
Peter was drawing in his head. "Look out here, Peter!"

Peter looked, and saw his old partner, Mr. John Brown, on the opposite
sidewalk, portly and comfortable, with his furred cloak thrown open,
disclosing a handsome surtout beneath. His voice had directed the
attention of the whole town to Peter Goldthwaite's window, and to the
dusty scarecrow which appeared at it.

"I say, Peter!" cried Mr. Brown, again; "what the devil are you about
there, that I hear such a racket whenever I pass by? You are repairing
the old house, I suppose, making a new one of it? Eh?"

"Too late for that, I am afraid, Mr. Brown," replied Peter. "If I make
it new, it will be new inside and out, from the cellar upward."

"Had not you better let me take the job?" said Mr. Brown,
significantly.

"Not yet," answered Peter, hastily shutting the window; for ever since
he had been in search of the treasure he hated to have people stare at
him.

As he drew back, ashamed of his outward poverty, yet proud of the
secret wealth within his grasp, a haughty smile shone out on Peter's
visage with precisely the effect of the dim sunbeams in the squalid
chamber. He endeavored to assume such a mien as his ancestor had
probably worn when he gloried in the building of a strong house for a
home to many generations of his posterity. But the chamber was very
dark to his snow-dazzled eyes, and very dismal, too, in contrast with
the living scene that he had just looked upon. His brief glimpse into
the street had given him a forcible impression of the manner in which
the world kept itself cheerful and prosperous by social pleasures and
an intercourse of business, while he in seclusion was pursuing an
object that might possibly be a phantasm by a method which most people
would call madness. It is one great advantage of a gregarious mode of
life that each person rectifies his mind by other minds and squares
his conduct to that of his neighbors, so as seldom to be lost in
eccentricity. Peter Goldthwaite had exposed himself to this influence
by merely looking out of the window. For a while he doubted whether
there were any hidden chest of gold, and in that case whether it was
so exceedingly wise to tear the house down only to be convinced of its
non-existence.

But this was momentary. Peter the Destroyer resumed the task which
Fate had assigned him, nor faltered again till it was accomplished. In
the course of his search he met with many things that are usually
found in the ruins of an old house, and also with some that are not.
What seemed most to the purpose was a rusty key which had been thrust
into a chink of the wall, with a wooden label appended to the handle,
bearing the initials "P.G." Another singular discovery was that of a
bottle of wine walled up in an old oven. A tradition ran in the family
that Peter's grandfather, a jovial officer in the old French war, had
set aside many dozens of the precious liquor for the benefit of topers
then unborn. Peter needed no cordial to sustain his hopes, and
therefore kept the wine to gladden his success. Many half-pence did he
pick up that had been lost through the cracks of the floor, and some
few Spanish coins, and the half of a broken sixpence which had
doubtless been a love-token. There was likewise a silver coronation
medal of George III. But old Peter Goldthwaite's strong-box fled from
one dark corner to another, or otherwise eluded the second Peter's
clutches till, should he seek much farther, he must burrow into the
earth.

We will not follow him in his triumphant progress step by step.
Suffice it that Peter worked like a steam-engine and finished in that
one winter the job which all the former inhabitants of the house, with
time and the elements to aid them, had only half done in a century.
Except the kitchen, every room and chamber was now gutted. The house
was nothing but a shell, the apparition of a house, as unreal as the
painted edifices of a theatre. It was like the perfect rind of a great
cheese in which a mouse had dwelt and nibbled till it was a cheese no
more. And Peter was the mouse.

What Peter had torn down, Tabitha had burnt up, for she wisely
considered that without a house they should need no wood to warm it,
and therefore economy was nonsense. Thus the whole house might be said
to have dissolved in smoke and flown up among the clouds through the
great black flue of the kitchen chimney. It was an admirable parallel
to the feat of the man who jumped down his own throat.

On the night between the last day of winter and the first of spring
every chink and cranny had been ransacked except within the precincts
of the kitchen. This fated evening was an ugly one. A snow-storm had
set in some hours before, and was still driven and tossed about the
atmosphere by a real hurricane which fought against the house as if
the prince of the air in person were putting the final stroke to
Peter's labors. The framework being so much weakened and the inward
props removed, it would have been no marvel if in some stronger
wrestle of the blast the rotten walls of the edifice and all the
peaked roofs had come crashing down upon the owner's head. He,
however, was careless of the peril, but as wild and restless as the
night itself, or as the flame that quivered up the chimney at each
roar of the tempestuous wind.

"The wine, Tabitha," he cried—"my grandfather's rich old wine! We
will drink it now."

Tabitha arose from her smoke-blackened bench in the chimney-corner and
placed the bottle before Peter, close beside the old brass lamp which
had likewise been the prize of his researches. Peter held it before
his eyes, and, looking through the liquid medium, beheld the kitchen
illuminated with a golden glory which also enveloped Tabitha and
gilded her silver hair and converted her mean garments into robes of
queenly splendor. It reminded him of his golden dream.

"Mr. Peter," remarked Tabitha, "must the wine be drunk before the
money is found?"

"The money
is
found!" exclaimed Peter, with a sort of fierceness.
"The chest is within my reach; I will not sleep till I have turned
this key in the rusty lock. But first of all let us drink."

There being no corkscrew in the house, he smote the neck of the bottle
with old Peter Goldthwaite's rusty key, and decapitated the sealed
cork at a single blow. He then filled two little china teacups which
Tabitha had brought from the cupboard. So clear and brilliant was this
aged wine that it shone within the cups and rendered the sprig of
scarlet flowers at the bottom of each more distinctly visible than
when there had been no wine there. Its rich and delicate perfume
wasted itself round the kitchen.

"Drink, Tabitha!" cried Peter. "Blessings on the honest old fellow who
set aside this good liquor for you and me! And here's to Peter
Goldthwaite's memory!"

"And good cause have we to remember him," quoth Tabitha as she drank.

How many years, and through what changes of fortune and various
calamity, had that bottle hoarded up its effervescent joy, to be
quaffed at last by two such boon-companions! A portion of the
happiness of a former age had been kept for them, and was now set free
in a crowd of rejoicing visions to sport amid the storm and desolation
of the present time. Until they have finished the bottle we must turn
our eyes elsewhere.

It so chanced that on this stormy night Mr. John Brown found himself
ill at ease in his wire-cushioned arm-chair by the glowing grate of
anthracite which heated his handsome parlor. He was naturally a good
sort of a man, and kind and pitiful whenever the misfortunes of others
happened to reach his heart through the padded vest of his own
prosperity. This evening he had thought much about his old partner,
Peter Goldthwaite, his strange vagaries and continual ill-luck, the
poverty of his dwelling at Mr. Brown's last visit, and Peter's crazed
and haggard aspect when he had talked with him at the window.

"Poor fellow!" thought Mr. John Brown. "Poor crack-brained Peter
Goldthwaite! For old acquaintance' sake I ought to have taken care
that he was comfortable this rough winter." These feelings grew so
powerful that, in spite of the inclement weather, he resolved to visit
Peter Goldthwaite immediately.

The strength of the impulse was really singular. Every shriek of the
blast seemed a summons, or would have seemed so had Mr. Brown been
accustomed to hear the echoes of his own fancy in the wind. Much
amazed at such active benevolence, he huddled himself in his cloak,
muffled his throat and ears in comforters and handkerchiefs, and, thus
fortified, bade defiance to the tempest. But the powers of the air had
rather the best of the battle. Mr. Brown was just weathering the
corner by Peter Goldthwaite's house when the hurricane caught him off
his feet, tossed him face downward into a snow-bank and proceeded to
bury his protuberant part beneath fresh drifts. There seemed little
hope of his reappearance earlier than the next thaw. At the same
moment his hat was snatched away and whirled aloft into some
far-distant region whence no tidings have as yet returned.