CHAPTER.—I.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XX, Issue 1415, 24 December 1887, Page 4 (Supplement)

CHAPTER.— I.

Somewhere in Maine there is a seaport town, touched by the sea and guarded by high blue hills always shrouded in a kind of mist, the breath of the great tide that sobs and beats against the cold, rocky shore. Such an old town this is, fair Athens by the Sea. Years and years ago, fine old sea captains lived here and built stately homes. They named the town Athens — it was originally called some musical Indian word, poetic in its mean-ing—-and they built their houses after their half-forgotten remembrances of castles and noble mansions across the sea. These old captains were wealthy and proud, arrogant perhaps ; but a sea captain is always lord of all he surveys on blue water, and it was not strange that the air and old habit of command remained with him when he cast anchor in a home harbor until his voyage of life ended.

Thirty years ago, in Athens, old Captain Perry was the chief man of the village ; now the red glow of the sun tints hig pallid marble monument with a rosy light", the monument on which is carved a wonderful little ship that generations of young Athenians will marvel at and remember. A man that svas once so much is pitiful small in an earthly mound, and vet this is to come to both captains and -ailors. Old Captain Perry lived in a grand mansion, the best in the village. Threestoried, white, and soft-green blinds-, and a high-pillared portico that made it look like a church. The Gaptain's grounds were artistically laid out ; gleaming under the noble elms thai shaded the lawn were beautiful statues brought from Europe ; near the house a big bronze fountain tossed sparkling diamonds of water all the quiefc Summer days.

When the captain left the- sea, fifty years before, he was fifty years old and " rich as Crocus," ths villagers said, with a poetic remembrance of a simple flower, and yet an erroneous idea of the meaning and use of a word. He had a ward, the handsome daughter of a brother captain. Finding the villagers began to talk about the girl of twenty living under his roof, he promptly and rather masterfully urged his suit to her, and she married him. She was a faithful, obedient wife, quiet and passive, yet lie oiten heard her sob and mean in her sleep. She died giving birth to a child a year after her marriage. She said no word of regret, nor kissed the girl baby they laid beside her, but only turned her face to the wall and lay there till the end. After her death the captain found a tear-staiued packet of letters, a portrait of a handsome sailor, that was all ; but it made the captain bitter and distrustful of men and women, so he brought his motherless daughter up like some captive princess. She should have no past that he could not tell the " Young Prince" who would claim her some day. The captain meant her to marry, but the man he intended for her husband was quite too exalted a personage in character and rank ever to come to Athens in the flesh.

The captain used to talk of his daughter's future to John Greenleaf, better known as "Cap'en John." When fie little Desdemona, the captain's daughter, was born, John Greenleaf was a cabin-boy in one of the captain's ships. Greenleaf senior had been a sailor in the captaiu's employ, but having no ambition, wȣ never promoted, his ability never ris ; ng beyoi.d the carrying out of a superior's orders ; not so with John, and the captain pu.3h.ed the boy ahead. He saw there was metal in him ; he liked John's great dark eyes, his rare bright smile, his intelligent face, and activity ; so when Desdemona was a maiden of seventeem, John, thirty-two, quiet and grave, almost stern in manner, was captain of the Othello, one of the captain's best ships. Captain Perry was at that time one of the largest ship-owner's in the State of Maine. All this was thirty years ago, and ships were monarchs of jhe sea then.

Captain Perry balked of his future son-iu-law to Captain John, and the latter listened with sad interest lifting his quiet eyes, that, like deep black pools in the forest, might reveal so much when stirred, and glancing at the dainty giii out by the bronze fountain — a golden-haired, blueeyed maiden, feeding the rotons that flocked about her. Somehow in the storms ntspa, the long, lazy days and calms in tropical climes, she came up before him — the blue of her dress like the blue of her oyes, the glint of her yellow hair, the swift withdrawal of her sweat glance when her eye 3 met his and she dropped the curtain of her long dark lashes. John never saw a seashell but he thought #f the transparent pink of her cheek. He thought, while the captain talked amiably about the expected Prince, of his poor home, a mile from . town at the foot of the blue h>lls. He saw tho rickety old farmhouse, the barren fields, the lean cattle. He remembered his crippled father, his aged mother ; he saw little Sammy playing by the gate— little white-headed, freckled Sammy, the orphan child of his wild, dissipated brothe* whose debts ha was paying — the debts that were still so heavy and that he could lower so slowly.

Captain Perry prattled on, for he regarded John as a sort of slave— the child of one of his ignorant sailors — a man he had made. " But, great guns, a smart man, and one that knows his place. Why, I've had him in my house like— like a (the captain paused)— a nephew for yeara. Look at my daughter, indeed !" (Some one had insinuated such a thing might occur). "Old John, quiet, staid John Greenleaf! why, I'd as soon think of Peter Jones, my old cook that went to sea wifeh me thirty year ago, looking at Desmondy."

In the year 1850; when Sammy was seven and hig grandfather somewhere about eighty, the Othello was in New York, and Captain John came home to Athens to spend Christmas. The old folks, he saw, were very feeble, the home poorer than ever, and the doctor's bill for his lather's sickness staggered him. It was a dreary Christmas ; life had always been dreary to him, poor- John ; but he was so patient, so cheerful always, that no one suspected his sad heart and terrible loneliness. He met the captain — such a whitebearded old giant of seventy — and the captain, bubbling over with joy, informed 1 'm the Prince had arrived.

" Met him last Summer just after you went away, John. Desmondy was .ailing a little— l took her to New York. He was there— son of an old friend — a retired ship commissioner — only twenty-two — handsome young fellow — rich, too — worship* Mona. He's here now— told him 'bout you — what a smart cap'en you were — no cabin- window promotion either, but worked your way up. He'd like to •eejou,"

" No," he said ; ''let me look at you for a moment in the firelight and try to realize that you are the little child 1 used to pet, the child that was never absent from my thoughts in all my lonely, lonely hours. How I used to plan things for her, and try to remember all her little wants ! Her happy face, when I filled her apron and her dimpled arms with quaint foreign toys, ivas the sweetest recollection of my life." He spoke half to himself.

" You brought me nothing this time, John," she sai-1, half laughing, but there was a tearful shadow in her eyes.

"I dared not incrude my gifts on the young lady," stammered the captain, awkwardly. "Your father wrote me the Prince had come at last— the young lover he used to talk to me about — the rich, handsome lover. 1 did not know but that you were already married. How long, may I ask now , before the blue- eyed child is tobelos for ever, and the Princess, leaving her enchanted home, will go out into the great world with the Prince, leaving us woeful and sad as the faded flowers ?" "Ah, me," sighed the Princess, "I am very, very unhappy, John." She leaned her cheek on her hand and looked up into his face. She noticed his firm lips tremble under his dark moustache ; she noted he passed his hand over his eyes as if they were moiat.

"Thank you," said Captain John, huskily: "he's kind, but I'm so busyso much to see to — time's so short."

" But Mona wants you," said the captain, not noticing in hi's cheer the chill, gray look on John's face. " She's liked ye from a child— used to sit on your knee — keeps all the gimcracks you brought her. I tell her— ha, ha— they will be good for her youngsters to play with when she is Mrs. May. Tom May's his name." At first Captain John determined not to go to that white house hidden amongst the pines and firs, wearing their bright-green dress in the w,intry blast, when all the other trees, the queenly elms and stalwart oaks, were wrapped in winding-sheets of snow ; yet insensibly his steps turned thither, and a servant showed him into a cozy parlor, her own little room, where everything was dainty blue save a big, crackling wood fire. It was a late afternoon when he went, aud twilight was dropping down from the mountains to meet the thick gray fog from the sea. The parlor was lighted only by the bright fire, but he saw her against the background of the twilight shadows, sitting near the hearth. She raised her head from the big volume on her knee when she heard his step, and lifted her beautiful face, now radiant from the yellow light of the blazing pine that threw fantastic lights on her golden hair and her white gown with its soft, feathery fur. He gazed at her in a sort of trance — the only woman he knew besides his wrinkled mother. He had lived a lonely life at Bea, and the creatures he had known in his younger days were not of the same race as this fair, s»veebgirl. " Don't you know me, John ? " she said, going up to him and laying her little white hand in his bronzed big one, never to him so big and rough before. He stammered, and pressed the small hand tremblingly. "Shall I ring for lights ? " she said, drawing him a chair by the fire and resuming her position with the book on her knee.

' ' Unhappy Mon a? You — now .' " he said, incredulously, leaning nearer to her. "Why," he cried, brokenly, " how pale you are, how sad ! and your void.*— its old happy riag is gone. Is it .this cursed climate of cold and mist ?— must you, tho loveliest of them all, go like the rest, the sweet-faced girls I have seen grow to young womanhood ? Ah, God ! Mona, to think of you in the graveyard, you" young life at an end ! "

He rose quickly, and walked to the window and looked out across the harbor, where the light of the lighthouse at the entrance sent a long, yellow stream out on the dark waves.

" I am well," said Mona, impatiently. "It's not consumption, it's — it's (with a little sob) — *' it's heartbreak, John." He came back to her then. "Mona," he said, tremblingly, "you used to tell old John all the little troubles of your childhood, and we would .plan a way out of them. Can I not help you now ?"

He drew his chair , closer to her, and took the frail hand lying on the book in both of his hands. She longed bo lay her cheek close to his and sob out her grief as she did when a little .child.

"I do not love the Prince," she gasped. " Father says I must many him, and I shall die."

"Not love him!" repeated John. "He young, rich, haudsome — all your father desires, and knowing no one else. I don't understand it, Mona."

She looked at /him wistfully, then quickly drew her hand away. "Do you know; why I was named Desdemona?" shejsaid, shortly. " Because," said! bewildered John, • it was the only play of Shakespeare's your father ever read ; -the same reason I be; lieve he named my ship the Othello."

" He named me for Desdemona because he folfc my mother deceived him," said Mona, steadily, "Yqu see my mother

loved a dead sailor, and married father with only a broken heart and blighted life in return for his great love and kindness. Father read how Othello thought he had been deceived, but grew to love Desdemona because she was true after all, and he wanted me to be what she was. I think he pities Othello, because he might have suffered like Othello did if mother had lived."

" I see 1" said the captain, still bewildered.

" Imagine now," said Mona, quickly, a pink glow on brow and cheek, " if Desdemona had to marry one of the nobles, whom her father liked, and all the time she loved Othello with her whole heart."

" And yet he did not try to win her ; he was too humble, hoo unworthy, he thought, for such a fair, sweet lady," said the captain. " But he told her stories of his travels."' cried Mona, fixing her glowing eyes on the captain's face, "and she knew by them of his bravery, his nobility. She knew she could adore and worship him, he was so strong in heart, so daring, with the courage of a lion. A woman "shut in from the world finds her heroes in books — in book-people — and when she sees a man like the ideal she has read about her heart goes out to him whether she will or not."

The captain looked into the fire ; his face, half hidden by his hand, was curiously calm, and like marble in its pallor. Still that wistful glance in her blue eyes. He felt conscious of a sweet perfume, a delicious dreamy feeling of happiness ; yet crushed his heart as he from a lifetime of repression knew how to do. " You used to tell me stories, John," said a tender, broken voice, so close to him that he feltr the warmth of her breath on his hand. He started up and went once again to the window-. Still darkness

outside, a faint svy^estion of snow on the fields, a wide expanse of gloomy black water rolling under the faint, tiny stars, and away across the harbor the gleaming light. How quiet it was ! Only the snap and crackle of the fire dying down to deep red coals.

He heard her soft step ; he was mad for a moment. Wild, fevered blood poured into his brain ; his heart seemed as if ifc would choke him. He clinched hia hands. She came close to him and rested her cheek on his arm.

"You are angry. I have been unmaidenly, dear John,' 1 she said, piteously ; " but it was so soon — the wedding — and yon — you would be gone. " " God have mercy on me !" he cried hoarsely. '• My heart is breaking !" He flung past' her and out of the house. She turned, tremblingly, for she heard a well-known step. Her father was close beside her.

" I heard it all ! "he hissed, his voice strangled with passion. "He came here like a serpent — he stole your love — he, the son of an ignorant sailor — a pauper ! He'll go back to his poverty, and you — you shall marry May to-morrow. He shall never know this. I was deceived, so shall he be. All women arc traitors — are liars at heart. Bring lights' I" he thundered to the scared maid at the door ; and when the candles were brought he flung open the big volume. "See! see! I named you aright ! "he shouted — " Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see, She has deceived her father, and may thee. "