Providence Patriot, Columbian Phenix

From the American Monthly Magazine
CAPTAIN THOMPSON.
I was unfortunate enough, one bright July morning, in my Senior year, to receive an expressive note from my Tutor, which rendered a journey of some hundred and fifty miles quite necessary. I was in the coach in less than an hour, with a travelling cap pulled over a very long face, partly to avoid recognition by my classmates as we whirled by the colleges, and partly with an indefinite feeling that a pretty woman, who sat in the corner of the coach, would observe a tear that was coquetting very capriciously with my eyelids. The rumbling of the wheels from the broad front of the East Rock, roused me from a very bitter fit of reflection, and recollecting that there were now two miles between me and certain official gentlemen, I raised my cap and took a long breath and a look out of the window. The lady on the back seat had a child on her lap. We three were the only passengers.
It is surprising how "it's all your eye" whether beautiful objects seem beautiful in this world. I do not think there is a sweeter gem of scenery in New England than the spot upon which my eye fell at that moment-the little hamlet of Whitneyville at the head of East Rock. I had rambled all over its wild neighborhood, and threaded for hundred of truant days its deep passes-I knew, and loved as a romantic colleger will love, every striking tree and sheltered moss-knoll from its base to its summit--I had stood on the romantic bridge many a moonlight hour thinking of you, dear--I (shem!) and stargazing in the black mirror of the tarn below--and now, as I hope to recalled, I thought it the most exquisitely dismal spot I ever looked upon-the trees ugly and distorted, the "fine old trap-rock" (the Professor's epithet was as good as an apotheosis to it) desolate and naked, and the pretty buildings below (the only factory that ever adorned a stream) absolutely insulting with their peaceful picturesqueness.
"What a desolate place!" said I, in a soliloquizing tone as the coach rolled out from the covered bridge (a new one, by the way, that was not half as pretty as the old one) and toiled slowly up the steep hill beyond.
"Sir!" said the lady. She did not know how a sudden start for home in the middle of the term, affects the moral sensorium. I should have called Diana a hag
"I mean, madam- I beg pardon"
and then I went into a long rhodomontade to explain away my apparent want of taste, and the lady told me her son's name was John, and that he was named after his father who was Captain Thompson of the brig Dolly, that had just arrived in Boston after a three years voyage, &c. &c. &c.-ending in a request that I would assist her with my knowledge of localities when we arrived at the end of our journey.
In ten miles, I was on very sociable terms with Mrs. Thompson. In ten more, by dint of gingerbread and good humor, Master John was persuaded into my lap, and in ten more—but travellers have a reputation for a long bow, and I shall not be believed. The day was divine, and the season was June, and if it had not been for an occasional sight of the mail-bag under my feet, which I presumed contained a simple explanation of my journey, I could have contrived to forget the imminent peril in which I stood of losing my graduate's sheepskin and my father's blessing. The coach, however, rolled on, and would have rolled on just as it did probably, if it had been ten times as miserable (I know nothing more provoking than the indifference of such vehicles to one's feelings) and by and by. what with now and then a very sweet smile from Mrs. Thompson, and a disastrous discomfiture of my sham shirt-bosom by Master John, I think I may flatter myself that I was tolerably resigned to circumstances.
Have I described Mrs. Thompson? She was not as delicate as Seadrift, nor as bluff as Moll Flanders. Her cheeks were red. and her cheeks to match, and she had "two eyes with lids to them" according to the inventory in the play--but when the lids were up the eyes were blue--(and very soft and gentle, and dangerous eyes they were)--and if it had not been for a very thin, spirited nostril, and an expression like a cocked pistol about her pretty chin, I should have thought she was made for a Niobe.
Her name was Julia (I asked her as it grew twilight, the second day) and that name always, (as L. E. L. would say, calling for her eau de Cologne) brings a gushing tear If she was not sentimental, there is no truth in symptoms. At any rate, I was tender to her upon suspicion. The chain of circumstantial evidence would have borne me out, I think.
Travelling after twilight, I have always remarked, makes one very affectionate. The forty miles between Worcester and Boston on the mail route (they used to pass it before the "reform" between sunset and midnight) should be sacred to sentiment. If there were "tongues in trees," or if the crooked fences could tell straight stories, pedestrian tour over that part of the highway would be highly interesting. I can answer for its effect upon myself and Mrs. Thompson.
We were aroused from a deep metaphysical discussion of elective sympathies, by the rattling of the wheels on the pavement : and at the same moment the city clocks struck twelve, The streets were all deserted, and the lamp-posts and watchmen performed their duties in dismal silence. Captain (so said Mrs. T.) was at the Marlborough Hotel; and singularly forgetful as his lady had seemed to be of his existence for the previous six hours, she grew very amiably anxious about him as the coach rattled on to Washington Street. A crack of the whip brought us up to the door after a turn or two, and the half-dressed bar-keeper peered out with his flaring candle, and gave us the gratuitous information that the house was full.
" Is Captain Thompson here," said my companion in an eager voice from the coach window.
The sleepy mixer of liquors wet his thumb and finger, and snuffed two huge coffins from the wick of the candle, then sheltering it with his hand, he walked towards the lady with his head protruded inquisitively, and looked at her a minute in perfect silence.
" Is Captain Thompson here?" thundered I, enforcing the question with a smart slap on the shoulder, for I thought he was not fully awake.
A lady's face, not at all disturbed either by the emphasis of my question or the pathos of Master John, who was crying lustily to the band-box, and the bag, and the two baskets, and stood beside the heap very impatient of the delay. Getting into a passion. "What the d---l do you mean?" said the bar-keeper. "Is Captain Thompson here, take your candle away from the lady's face, and go up and tell him his wife and child have arrived."

"Wife and child!" echoed the fellow, "wife and child!" And he coolly backed slowly into the house, with an incredulous grin crawling slowly over his dull face—and bolted the door. The driver looked at me, and I looked at Mrs. Thompson. "You are sure"—I saw a tear in her eye, and left the sentence unfinished. "She must be drunk," said the driver opportunely; and believing in my soul that the driver was right, I thumped away once more at the house. The master of the house answered the summons from a chamber window.

"Is Captain Thompson here?" said I.

"Yes, Sir."

"Will you be kind enough to tell him his wife and child are at the door?"

"Wife and child!" said Boniface, repeating my words very slowly; "I have always understood that Captain Thompson was a bachelor!"

Mrs. Thompson leaned back in the coach and sobbed audibly.

"It's no consequence what you have always understood, Sir—will you convey that message to Captain Thompson, or not?"

He withdrew his head, and came down presently to the door. "I have no objection to showing you Captain Thompson's room, Sir," said he, "and you may carry your own message; but I assure you he'll be very likely to pitch you over the banisters for your intelligence."

I took the candle, and mounted after him three flights of stairs. He stopped at the landing, and, pointing to a door at the extremity of the entry, renewed his caution. I proceeded, however, and rapped boldly on the panel. A gruff "Come in!" was the immediate answer; and opening the door, I walked up to the bed, and touched my hat as courteously as I knew how.

"Have I the honor of addressing Captain Thompson!"

As I asked the question, I raised the candle, and got a fair look at the premises. On a bachelor's bed, narrow and well tucked up, lay a man of the heaviest frame, whiskered to the eye; and with a fist as it lay doubled on the coverlid, like the end of the club of Hercules. A fiery lock of hair, redder than his face (I feel as I was using a hyperbole) straggled out from a black silk handkerchief twisted tightly round his head, and his nose and mouth and chin, masses of solid purple, might have been, for delicacy of outline, hewn with a broad axe from a mahogany log. He looked at me just as long as I have been writing this description before he answered my question.

"What do you want?" he bolted at last, as if the words were forced out of his mouth with a catapult.

"I am sorry to disturb you, Sir, but"—(I took a backward position as I approached the crisis of my sentence, and stood prepared to run)—"Mrs. Thompson and little John are at the door—and—and—"

A loud laugh from the landlord in the entry cut off the sequel of my explanation, and completed my dismay. I looked at the Captain's fist, and stole a glance over my shoulder to see if the door was open, and then shamed my courage back again, and recovered my first position. The thought of Mrs. Thompson in tears lowered his shaggy eyebrows till they met his whiskers, fixed his eyes upon me and raised himself slowly from his elbow, and prepared to speak. If he had levelled two pistols at me I should have been less frightened.

"I'll tell you what, Mr. Milk-and-water," said he, in a voice as deliberate and decided as the fall of a sledge hammer, (I was a slender student in those days, and paler than usual of course,) "I'll tell you what—If you are not out of this room in two minutes with your "Mrs. Thompson and little John," I'll slam you through that window—if I don't."

The threat was definite, I doubted neither his inclination nor his power to keep. My heart was grieved for Mrs. Thompson; but if I was thrown down to her from a fourth-story window, I reflected that I should probably be in no situation to express my sympathy. It was philosophy to retreat. I bade the Captain good night in my gentlest tone; and as I turned away with some alacrity, he grasped a glass of brandy and water that stood on the light-stand, and muttering "Mrs. Thompson and little John" between his teeth, drank it at a gulp. As I passed through the door the tumbler whizzed past my head like a shot, and shivered to atoms on the entry wall.

I found "Mrs. Thompson and little John" in a very moving state of unhappiness. They were decidedly on my hands—that was clear. If it had been at any other hour, I would have taken them home till the mystery could be cleared up; but to arrive from college unexpectedly at midnight with a woman and child—I thought it highly improbable that my motives would be appreciated.

"I say, Sir," said the driver, as I stood pondering the case, "hadn't you better take her to the stage-house and leave the matter till morning."

It was a sensible advice, and I got in and comforted Mrs. Thompson as we drove to Hanover Street.

The first person that appeared on the step of the tavern door was another Captain Thompson, a stout, handsome fellow, who took "Mrs. Thompson and little John" into his arms at one clasp, and kissed them—as one might be supposed to do after a three years' voyage.

I heard, in the course of a day or two, that a rough old captain at the Marlboro' rough, who had been there, off and on, for thirty years, and had always sworn himself a bachelor, had been awaked at midnight by the arrival of a wife and child whom he had left in some foreign port, and had gone