The fact had another aspect as well,--it robbed foreign travel of one of its charms. If one could wander so far and still be pursued by enervating domestic customs, one might as well stay at home. Why subject yourself to the dangers of the deep if liberty fled always before your coming?
One room in the Captain's house gave me a fright. It was a small, dark apartment, a closet for size. In it the owner had chosen to place four or five lay figures in old-fashioned garments. They had dried pumpkins for heads and they sat in ghostly silence amid the gloom. There was a man with a pipe in his mouth sitting in front of an empty fireplace, an old woman, and two or three children. There was even a baby in a cradle,--its yellow, pumpkin face looking out from a ruffled cap.
Ever since that visit the silent family had haunted my dreams, and I more than half suspected that Captain Bannister would like to lock me up in the room with them. I did not know what advantage he would get by such an action, but its possibility seemed very near.
Even on the bright morning that Ed Mason and I, walking through West Injy Lane engaged in a discussion about the old tree--even then, to me the Captain's house was an eerie place.
There was no reason--aside from the pumpkin family--why it should be so. It glistened with all its usual brightness, and there was the owner himself puttering about in the little garden. Ed Mason walked up to the picket fence, bold as a lion, and addressed the captain in an easy, conversational tone.
"Hullo, boys! Won't yer come in?... Yer needn't be afraid, I won't hurt yer."
This last was for my benefit; I had not shown as much readiness to enter the gate as had my companion.
So I went in. The next remark of the old man did much to put everything on an agreeable footing.
"Well, just wait till I pull up two or three of these plantains, an' we'll go round to the side of the house an' see if there's any on the tree.... There ... now come on."
We followed him around the corner of the house. A black cat with a white breast came running to meet his master.
"Hullo, here's Nickerdemus; I told him to watch the peaches. Did yer keep the bees away, Nickerdemus?"
Nicodemus yawned and gave every sign of having been asleep, after the manner of his kind when there is no personal advantage in keeping awake.