Rayton: A Backwoods Mystery

by Theodore Goodridge Roberts

"It is bad enough," returned the other, "but it is not disgraceful. I must tell it to you, Davy, and then you can think over what happened to-night and work it out for yourself. It's only right that you should know all that I can tell you—and then, if you think it all foolishness, it's your own funeral."

David could not see his companion's face in the darkness, though he fairly strained his eyes to make it out. He wet his dry lips with his tongue. "I'm listening," he said, and forced an uneasy laugh.

"My mother lived in St. John with her parents, until she married, and moved over to the Miramichi," began Harley. "My father's home was in St. John, too, when he was a young fellow; but he was a sailor in those days and so spent most of his time at sea. He was a smart lad, and no mistake—mate of a foreign-goin' bark when he was nineteen and skipper when he was twenty-one. His schooling had been good, and he owned some shares in the ship, so he wasn't one of the common run of shellbacks.

"When he first met my mother he was layin' off a voyage to recover from a dose of malarial fever that had got into his blood down in Brazil. He saw her at a party of some kind; and, not being troubled with shyness, he went right after her. She was a beauty, I guess, like her mother before her—and, like her mother again, there was a whole bunch of young fellows courting her. My father, though, was a fine, upstanding lad, with good looks, fine manners, and a dashing way in everything he did. So he sailed right in; but he didn't have everything all his own way, at first.

"I've heard my mother say that, Sunday evenings, as many as six young men would call at her father's house—and she was the only girl, mind you. But they'd all pretend to be pleased to see each other, and there would be singing, and piano playing, and cake and wine—yes, and the old gent would invite one or two of them into his library to smoke his cigars, and the old lady would talk away to the rest of them about the grand times in St. John when she was young. Sometimes she'd tell about how the navy officer and the Spanish count fought about her—and, of course, she'd mention the queer marks on the card. She called it a romantic story.

"Well, it wasn't long before my father thought he had the other fellows beaten out, so he popped the question. My mother said 'Yes'—and so the old people announced the engagement. They were pretty stylish, you see. My father was all cured of his malarial fever, by this time, and ready for sea again. About a week after my mother had given him her promise, and only a few days before he expected to have his ship ready for a voyage to the West Indies, he was walking home about ten o'clock in the evening and met a bunch of his friends. They were going to have supper at a hotel and then finish the night at card playing. Well, my father was a light-hearted lad, with a pocketful of money and a taste for jolly company; so he joined the gang. The game they played was whist. Suddenly my father jumped to his feet, his face as red as fire, and tore one of the cards into little bits and flung them on the floor.

"'You may consider that a joke—whoever did it—but it's a damn poor joke!' he cried. He was a good man, but sometimes he got boiling mad. Some of the lads asked him what was the trouble, and one young fellow picked up the scraps of the torn card and found the two red crosses. 'Some one here knows what the trouble is,' yelled my father, 'and if he'll just stand up and confess to his ungentlemanly joke, I'll smack him across the face for his trouble.'

"Nobody stood up, you may bet your hat on that; but when the lad who had picked up the scraps of card began handing them around, a lot of them began to laugh and jeer, and make fun of the sailor. Most of them had heard the old lady tell about the Spanish count, you know. 'Better make your will,' said one. 'That's a dangerous family to monkey with,' said another. 'Glad I'm not in your boots.' 'It's the Spaniard's ghost.' 'Better break it off, Tom, and look 'round for a safer wife.' 'The other chap who got the red marks was a sailor, too.'

"And so they shouted things at him until he was mad enough to kill somebody. But he couldn't tackle them all. So he called them a lot of hard names. He told them that the sailors aboard his ship had a better idea of a joke and better manners than they had. They began to quiet down, then, and some of them looked mighty red in the face, for every lad there considered himself something pretty extra when it came to style and manners. My father finished by saying that the trick they had played and the things they had said to him were insults to two ladies who had never done any of them a shadow of harm. Most of them jumped up and yelled that they knew nothing about any trick, and hadn't meant to insult any one; but my father just glared and sneered at them, and left the room. He was just a skipper of a sailing ship, but he had been brought up with pretty strict notions about manners, and insults, and those kinds of things.

"He had just reached the street when one of the others—a lad called Jackson—came jumping after him and grabbed him by the back of the neck. This Jackson was as white as paper, he was that mad. 'I'll teach you your proper place, you damn fo'castle swine!' he yelled, striking my father in the face with his free hand. Well, my father jerked himself clear and give him one on the jaw that put him to sleep for an hour or two."