All on a Winter's Night

by AUSTIN STRONG

I WOKE with a start to find Mr. Bolling prodding me gently with his cane. I hastily removed my feet from the iron railing which encircled the whitewashed stove and sat up straight.

“I hope I haven’t disturbed you by snoring, sir?” I asked.

“Not at all, young man, but I was fearful you might have a bad spill, tilted so far back in your chair.”

“Thank you, Mr. Bolling.” I pulled down my rumpled waistcoat and set my tie to rights, for we always tried to look our best in the presence of one whose father had been a member of the House of Lords, as the extinct shipowners’ club was called.

Tall and slender, this lone aristocrat had lived miraculously through three quarters of a century, a serene, detached observer, untroubled by a rowdy and changing world. Always faultlessly dressed in his gray cutaway and immaculate linen, he sat erect in his accustomed chair in the Captains’ Room at the foot of the cobbled Main Street of the Town of Nantucket, in the ancient and honorable Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

We were sitting up to welcome the solemn moment when the gilded poplar-wood hands on the face of the Town clock would meet to mark the split second and start the cogwheels grinding in the South Tower; then slowly the big bell would lift up its voice and proclaim to the Town and the dark horizon around us the birth of a new century.

“About thirty-five minutes to go, sir!” I said, glancing at the old banjo clock on the wall.

Mr. Bolling inclined his head politely but said nothing. Stiff as a grenadier, he sat on the edge of his chair, his long delicate hands clasped over the knob of the whalebone cane he held between his knees. On my frequent visits to the Captains’ Room I always found him in the same position, reserved, courteous; still as a crane on the edge of a marsh.

For weeks I had been trying to make him break his silence, for I wanted the truth about the almost legendary figure of his friend Clinton Alger; I knew if I found the key I could unlock Mr. Bolling’s gift of words. Finding that flattery and persuasion would not stir him, I attacked the memory of his friend.

“From all accounts, sir,” I said, “Clinton Alger must have been off his head.”

Mr. Bolling turned and smiled at me.

“I’m too old a fox to be caught that way, young man.” He chuckled and then to my astonishment changed into another person before my eyes. He set his cane against the deep-set window sill, pushed his hat from his forehead, placed his elbows on the arms of his chair, brought his finger tips together, crossed his elegantly shod feet on the iron railing; and leaning far back, he actually lolled as he began to address the large wooden whale which hung from the ceiling of the Captains’ Room. He spoke in a rich, cultivated voice: —

I have refrained from telling you the story of my old friend because you wouldn’t believe it — nobody ever does, but it is true and it happened right here on this island on another New Year’s Eve, as I can bear witness. It showed me how little I knew about human beings, how invisible we all are to each other, how seldom we ever catch a glimpse of what is really going on in the lives of even our dearest friends.

After the death of my wife I was unable to cope with living in empty rooms, so I took a year off from my investment business, left Boston, and opened my house here in this friendly town to spend the winter close to my next-door neighbor, Clinton Alger.

You will learn some day, young man, that lifelong friends are comforting as old wrappers. We neither of us were given much to talking. Just sitting together in silence was enough to bring me a measure of solace.

Clint was a dear fellow and like so many retired sea captains he was a babe-in-arms about business matters. If it hadn’t been for my managing his money affairs he’d have been on the beach long ago. Through my efforts I doubled his income; not that it made much difference to him, for I couldn’t keep him from giving it away with both hands to all who came to his door.

Clint was all goodness, clear through to the bone. Too good for his own good perhaps, but who can tell ? These things are beyond our measurement. His only fault was being a slave to his conscience. When a man allows it to plague him about things that don’t matter, it’s a bad sign. I noticed to my dismay that my friend had grown a bit eccentric since I had last seen him. The poor fellow had been living too long alone in his big house on Union Street , and that’s not good for any man. That’s why, I think, he had such sympathy for Hannah, the elderly widow of Obed Cooper, who had died some years before. Hannah also lived a hermit’s life in the upper rooms of her house on Traders Lane. Clint, because of his devotion to Obed, thought it was his bounden duty to support the widow, and his conscience kept picking on him until he came to me and tried to persuade me to turn over half his income to Hannah.

Of course I wouldn’t let him do that, and neither would Hannah. She was a comfortable, motherly soul who never treated us seriously, for to her we remained small boys to the end. When we tried to help her she laughed at us, shaking her head in her matter-of-fact Yankee way.

“I thank thee both for thy concern,” she said, with smiling Quaker dignity, “but I have enough to last me to the end of the voyage.”

Well, sir, I shall never forget the night it happened. Clint had left me earlier than usual to go home and tend his stoves, for it was bitter cold, with the thermometer down around ten. I was sitting up reading the last of the Boston papers before turning in, when I heard the click of the mahogany latch on my front door.

“Who’s there?” I called out.

“Only me, Joe,” came Clint’s cracked voice.

“Back again? Well, come in and shut that door quick!”

Clint brought in an icy draft with him and stood before me holding a lighted hurricane lantern in his gloved hand. I was surprised to find he had put on a heavy coonskin coat and a fur cap too small for him with long ear-flaps dangling on either side of his narrow face like the ears of a hound dog. He stood there in his padded arctics staring at me wistfully. I would have laughed, but I saw his whole face was knotted up with anxiety.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

Clint shook his head and examined a spot on the carpet, a sure sign his conscience was at him again.

“I just remembered what I plumb forgot. Joe, can I borrow your horse Tansy and your surrey?”

“Certainly not,” I said firmly.

“I’ve always done it afoot before, but tonight I’m in a hurry.”

“Why didn’t you ask me before it got dark?” I asked.

“I only just remembered.”

“You would ask me a thing like this when I was all snug and harbor-furled for the night!”

Clint turned to go.

“Now wait a minute, not so fast!” I got to my feet and pulled him around. I could see that he was excited, so I tried to soothe him.

“Come on now, Clint, tell me what it is you’ve just remembered.”

But I could get nothing from him; he just stood there looking at me appealingly through his big round spectacles. Queer how like a child a grown man can become.

“All right,” I said, weakening, “go ahead and harness Tansy, but you can’t have the surrey. Take the sleigh instead; it’s safer on a night like this. And holla when you’re ready, for I’m going with you.”

The old sailor didn’t budge and began to scrape the spot on the carpet with the toe of his arctic.

“Now what?” I said, losing patience.

“I figure to go alone, Joe.”

“Oh, you do, do you? Well, that’s where you figure wrong, my lad! I wouldn’t trust you with Tansy even if it was broad daylight in the middle of summer with no traffic on the roads. Now stop this foolishness and go along while I get my things on.”

Soon we two old fellows were stuffed into a tight cocoon of buffalo robes with Clint’s hurricane lantern lashed to the sleigh’s dashboard.

“Where away?” I asked, as I gathered up the stiff reins.

“Up Main Street, Joe,” he whispered.

Tansy, excited by her jingling collar of sleigh bells, began to cut up and I had my hands full holding her in check as I eased the screeching runners around the corners of the narrow lanes.

Once on Main Street the way opened up wide and handsome and I let Tansy have her head and away we flew, full and by, swooping under the snow-laden elms between the stately houses, past the three brick mansions and the small Civil War obelisk, until we came to the fork in the road.

“Bear to starboard,” said Clint, in a low voice.

We left the compact little town and flew into the open moors. I never get over the sensation of leaving Main Street by that road. It’s like stepping abruptly out of a comfortable room into kingdom come! The night was ablaze with stars, more than I’d ever seen before, and they had taken full possession of the sky. Perhaps it was this, or maybe I caught some of Clint’s excitement, or it may have been the magic light on everything, but I began to feel something very queer was afoot as we drove down that lonely road back of the Town. I was about to protest, when Clint dug me in the ribs with his elbow.

“Way ‘nough!” he murmured.

We drew up in front of the Old Cemetery where it lay with fences gone, forlorn and neglected.

“Now wait a minute—” I began, but Clint silenced me with a gloved finger to lip. We got out and hitched Tansy to the one last fence post, bare and bone-white, which marked what was once the main entrance to the graveyard. I covered the mare with her blanket and one of the buffalo robes while Clint unlashed the lantern.

“You wait here, Joe, I won’t be long,” he said.

“No, sir, I’m going with you.”

“Then you’ve got to promise me one thing, Joe.”

“What?” I asked.

“That you won’t laugh.”

I took a look at the bleak scene around me.

“I promise,” I said.

I followed the old sailor as he led the way. We tripped and floundered over fallen tombstones, while hidden brambles snatched at our feet. The snow had draped the crumbling monuments, turning them into queer spectral shapes rising like ghosts from tangles of elder and bayberry bushes. Old gravestones wearing pointed hats leaned drunkenly in all directions and I don’t mind telling you that I didn’t like it one little bit. I’m not given to fear of the unknown that lies ahead of us, but this midnight intrusion on the eternal sleep of these quiet dead made me uncomfortable — it seemed the height of bad manners. But Clint stumbled ahead, swinging his lantern in all directions, making a giant starfish of light on the frozen snow. Presently he came to a halt and I could see he was puzzled.

“I guess I’m lost, Joe,” he muttered as he hold his lantern in front of an old vault and read the inscription. “This snow has put me off my dead reckoning. We’re too far to leeward down among the Folgers when we should be up to nor’ard with the Starbucks.”

“Let’s get out of here!” I said, raising my voice.

“Pipe down, Joe, please!” gasped Clint, gripping my arm. “It isn’t respectful.”

“What’s this all about, Clint?”

Clint bowed his head, and holding the lantern with both hands he spoke with a certain dignity.

“Obed Cooper and I made a compact promising each other on the holy Bible that the one who was left behind after the other was laid to rest had to come out here every New Year’s Eve and tell the departed the news. Tonight it’s kind of different; I’ve got to tell Obed something personal and it makes it kind of embarrassing. You’re sure you won’t laugh, Joe, please?”

He held his lantern close to my face. I shook my head.

“Come on then,” he said, “I think I know the course now. We’ll go nor’east by east — that ought to fetch us.”

I struggled after him now stiff with cold, until we came to the top of a treeless slope.

“Here it is,” said Clint as he set the lighted lantern on the flat tombstone and swept away the snow dust with the back of his hand.

I stood back and watched my friend kneel reverently while he fumbled in the breast of his fur coat. He pulled out a sheet of foolscap and then tapped on the cold marble with his jackknife.

“Here I am, Obed,” he said, “on time as usual and keeping my given word. According to our compact I’ll tell you the news first as I promised — wait a second, Obed, I can’t see a thing, this cold has misted my glasses something fierce.”

Clint took his everlasting good time wiping them while I stamped and flapped my arms to keep alive. Clint then held the lantern and the paper close to his nose and read in a matter-of-fact voice.

“Now here’s the drift, Obed; a year’s gone by and no improvement. Hardly a turnover in real estate. The government dredged the channel inside the eastern jetty and they’ve repainted the Athenaeum two coats. They’ve widened Madaket Ditch and you’ll be glad to hear your party’s in power and by the look of things they’ll be in forever. We Democrats haven’t a look-in. Bluefish struck this fall, but scallops were as scarce as crime. The fishermen are all doing well and that helps the Island. They’ve reshingled the Baptist, and done some repairing on the North, but times are tighter than the bark on a tree, Obed, and no mistake. Flour’s up four cents, bread two, and coal’s fourteen dollars a ton. Prices are sky-high compared to when you were here!”

Clint then carefully folded the paper and pocketed it.

“Now comes the hard part, Obed, and I hope you’ll take it right . I don’t know how to begin exactly, but you see for the last year the tide’s been against your Hannah and though she doesn’t let on, not even by a look, she’s been awful down. You know how lonesome it is for a widow on this sand heap out here. Well, she’s got an offer to sell her house, keeping the life-right to the upper rooms, but the money she’d make wouldn’t keep her alive. The stocks you left her all went to nothing and I found out that she wasn’t getting enough to eat. What decided me to head in was what she said to me by accident yesterday. She said she’d hated to see the summer folk leave for the winter because she missed the smell of their bacon cooking in the morning.

“That was too much for me, Obed. She didn’t realize she’d given herself away. I’m going to ask her to sell her house outright and join forces with me; together I figure we’d have enough to keep us comfortable. She’s sitting up waiting for me now because I told her I had something important to tell her. Obed, I hope you don’t mind; I’m going to ask Hannah to marry me, but I thought it only right that I come up here and tell you first before I put it to her. I promise to take good care of her, Obed. Well there, I’ve told you and that’s that. I’m going down along now. Good night, Obed!”

Clint removed his fur cap, bowed his head, took off a glove and laid his right hand gently on the icy tomb. I think he would have been there yet if I hadn’t gone forward and lifted him to his feet, jammed on his fur cap, and tied the strings of his ear-flaps under his chin. I led him back to the sleigh and he followed me obediently in a kind of daze.

We drove to Hannah’s house on Traders Lane. Tansy, snorting long white clouds from her nostrils, stamped her hoofs and then shook herself violently, setting off a jubilant burst of sleigh bells.

“I’ll come back for you after I’ve put Tansy in the barn,” I said.

Hannah’s front door slowly opened, sending an orange path across the snow and there in the doorway, with a lighted lamp above her head, stood a calm, comforting figure, serene and smiling. Clint set down his lantern and went towards her.

Suddenly all the church bells in Nantucket began ringing, whistles blew, youngsters ran out into the snow blowing fish horns and banging tin pans. The new century had come out of the night and was upon us, but Mr. Bolling, locked in the past, heard nothing.

“Some time later,” he continued, “Clint came to see me all spruced up, shipshape and Bristol fashion. His eyes were at peace and I saw that his conscience would never trouble him again. He looked me straight in the eyes and laughed as he used to when I first knew him in our youth.

“‘Thank you, Joe, for all you’ve done for me, but most of all for not laughing out there that night when I know how foolish it must have looked to you.’

“‘I’m not so sure,’ I said.

“‘Well, I’m glad I did it, anyway. It sort of set things right, but sometimes it does seem kind of ridiculous, specially when I think that Obed was deaf as a post.’ ”