There was nothing more to be got out of him. His recent conversation with Bob's spirit had muddled him for the day, and he mixed up Caroline with her mother or grandmother. He relapsed into silence, and sat with his long pipe unfilled in his hand, looking into the fireplace; gone back in imagination to the past. As the old man made no sign of conversation, but rather of a disposition to "drop off" for a few minutes, Harry began to look about the room. On the table lay a bundle of old letters. It was as if the living and the dead had been reading them together.
Harry took them up and turned them over, wondering what secrets of long ago were contained in those yellow papers, with their faded ink. The old man's eyes were closed—he took no heed of his visitor; and Harry standing at the table began shamelessly to read the letters. They were mostly the letters of a young sailor addressed to one apparently a good deal older than himself—for they abounded in such appellations as "my ancient," "venerable," "old salt," and so forth. But the young man did not regard his correspondent with the awe which age should inspire, but rather as a gay and rollicking spirit who would sympathize with the high-jinks of younger men, even if he no longer shared in them, and who was an old and still delighted treader of those flowery paths which are said by moralists to be planted with the frequent pitfall and the crafty trap. "The old man," thought Harry, "must have been an admirable guide to youth, and the disciple was apt to learn."
Sometimes the letters were signed "Bob," sometimes "R. Coppin," sometimes "R. C." Harry, therefore, surmised that the writer was no other than his own uncle Bob, whose ghost he had just missed.
Bob was an officer on board of an East Indiaman, but he spoke not of such commonplace matters as the face of the ocean or the voice of the tempest. He only wrote from port, and told what things he had seen and done, what he had consumed in ardent drink. The letters were brief, which seemed as well, because if literary skill had been present to dress up effectively the subjects treated, a literary monument might have been erected, the like of which the world has never seen.
It is, indeed, a most curious and remarkable circumstance that even in realistic France the true course of the prodigal has never been faithfully described. Now the great advantage formerly possessed by the sailor—an advantage cruelly curtailed by the establishment of "homes," and the introduction of temperance—was, that he could be and was a prodigal at the end of every cruise; while the voyage itself was an agreeable interval provided for recovery, recollection, and anticipation.
"Bob, Uncle Bob, was a flyer," said Harry. "One should be proud of such an uncle. With Bob and Bunker and the bankrupt builder, I am indeed provided."
There seemed nothing in the letters which bore upon the question of his mother's property, and he was going to put them down again, when he lighted upon a torn fragment on which he saw in Bob's big handwriting the name of his cousin Josephus.
"Josephus, my cousin, that he will ... (here a break in the continuity) ... 'nd the safe the bundle ... (another break) ... for a lark. Josephus is a square-toes. I hate a man who wont' drink. He will ... (another break) if he looks there. Your health and song, shipmate.—R. C."
He read this fragment two or three times over. What did it mean? Clearly nothing to himself.