Twice-told tales
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.
Nevertheless Mr. Brown contrived to burrow a passage through the
snow-drift, and with his bare head bent against the storm floundered
onward to Peter’s door. There was such a creaking and groaning and
rattling, and such an ominous shaking, throughout the crazy edifice
that the loudest rap would have been inaudible to those within. He
therefore entered without ceremony, and groped his way to the kitchen.
His intrusion even there was unnoticed. Peter and Tabitha stood with
their backs to the door, stooping over a large chest which apparently
they had just dragged from a cavity or concealed closet on the left
side of the chimney. By the lamp in the old woman’s hand Mr. Brown saw
that the chest was barred and clamped with iron, strengthened with iron
plates and studded with iron nails, so as to be a fit receptacle in
which the wealth of one century might be hoarded up for the wants of
another.
Peter Goldthwaite was inserting a key into the lock.
“Oh, Tabitha,” cried he, with tremulous rapture, “how shall I endure
the effulgence? The gold!—the bright, bright gold! Methinks I can
remember my last glance at it just as the iron-plated lid fell down.
And ever since, being seventy years, it has been blazing in secret and
gathering its splendor against this glorious moment. It will flash upon
us like the noonday sun.”
“Then shade your eyes, Mr. Peter!” said Tabitha, with somewhat less
patience than usual. “But, for mercy’s sake, do turn the key!”
And with a strong effort of both hands Peter did force the rusty key
through the intricacies of the rusty lock. Mr. Brown, in the mean time,
had drawn near and thrust his eager visage between those of the other
two at the instant that Peter threw up the lid. No sudden blaze
illuminated the kitchen.
“What’s here?” exclaimed Tabitha, adjusting her spectacles and holding
the lamp over the open chest. “Old Peter Goldthwaite’s hoard of old
rags!”
“Pretty much so, Tabby,” said Mr. Brown, lifting a handful of the
treasure.
Oh what a ghost of dead and buried wealth had Peter Goldthwaite raised
to scare himself out of his scanty wits withal! Here was the semblance
of an incalculable sum, enough to purchase the whole town and build
every street anew, but which, vast as it was, no sane man would have
given a solid sixpence for. What, then, in sober earnest, were the
delusive treasures of the chest? Why, here were old provincial bills of
credit and treasury notes and bills of land-banks, and all other
bubbles of the sort, from the first issue—above a century and a half
ago—down nearly to the Revolution. Bills of a thousand pounds were
intermixed with parchment pennies, and worth no more than they.
“And this, then, is old Peter Goldthwaite’s treasure!” said John Brown.
“Your namesake, Peter, was something like yourself; and when the
provincial currency had depreciated fifty or seventy-five per cent, he
bought it up in expectation of a rise. I have heard my grandfather say
that old Peter gave his father a mortgage of this very house and land
to raise cash for his silly project. But the currency kept sinking till
nobody would take it as a gift, and there was old Peter Goldthwaite,
like Peter the second, with thousands in his strong-box and hardly a
coat to his back. He went mad upon the strength of it. But never mind,
Peter; it is just the sort of capital for building castles in the air.”
“The house will be down about our ears,” cried Tabitha as the wind
shook it with increasing violence.
“Let it fall,” said Peter, folding his arms, as he seated himself upon
the chest.
“No, no, my old friend Peter!” said John Brown. “I have house-room for
you and Tabby, and a safe vault for the chest of treasure. To-morrow we
will try to come to an agreement about the sale of this old house; real
estate is well up, and I could afford you a pretty handsome price.”
“And I,” observed Peter Goldthwaite, with reviving spirits, “have a
plan for laying out the cash to great advantage.”
“Why, as to that,” muttered John Brown to himself, “we must apply to
the next court for a guardian to take care of the solid cash; and if
Peter insists upon speculating, he may do it to his heart’s content
with old Peter Goldthwaite’s treasure.”
CHIPPINGS WITH A CHISEL
Passing a summer several years since at Edgartown, on the island of
Martha’s Vineyard, I became acquainted with a certain carver of
tombstones who had travelled and voyaged thither from the interior of
Massachusetts in search of professional employment. The speculation had
turned out so successful that my friend expected to transmute slate and
marble into silver and gold to the amount of at least a thousand
dollars during the few months of his sojourn at Nantucket and the
Vineyard. The secluded life and the simple and primitive spirit which
still characterizes the inhabitants of those islands, especially of
Martha’s Vineyard, insure their dead friends a longer and dearer