WEST INJY LANE

Every one called it "West Injy Lane," but some of the property holders had put up a sign-post with the words, "Washington Avenue."

There was never a Washington Avenue which looked so little like one. A pleasant old road,—it had not greatly changed its appearance since the day when the man for whom it had been renamed passed by. It meandered along, innocent of sidewalks, and bordered, right and left, with grass. A pond at one end was musical all the spring and summer,—first with the high notes of the "peepers," then with the soprano trilling of toads, and finally with the gruff performances of basso-profundo bullfrogs.

Cows and sheep nibbled the grass at the sides of the road, or grazed in the meadows beyond the stone walls. There were only five or six farm-houses throughout the mile and a half of the lane, and their barns stood open all summer, while the swallows flashed in and out. Solemn files of white ducks waddled down to the pond, where they spread devastation among the minnows and polliwogs, and then waddled contentedly back again, clapping their yellow bills as if smacking their lips. Their bills and feet gleamed in the sunlight.

It does not seem that any kind of weather but bright sunshine ever prevailed in West Injy Lane. Certainly, Ed Mason and I did not see how it could be improved. At one end, near the pond, was the country grocery where you could get weighed on the scales, and buy jumbles (shaped like an elephant) at two for a cent. Near the other end was Haskell's Field,—a hallowed spot, for it always contained one or two grass-covered rings, the relics of circuses past and the promise of circuses to come.

Midway between the two, and in front of one of the houses, was a gigantic and half-ruined elm, already celebrated in legend and verse. Its romantic story never impressed us, except to make me wonder how it happened that when the young man had stuck a willow branch into the ground in front of his sweetheart's dwelling, an elm tree should have sprouted therefrom.

"'Twasn't a willow," said Ed Mason, as we walked through the lane one morning, "'twas a piece of elm."

"'Twas a willow," I retorted.

"How do you know?"

"'Cos Charley Carter told me."

"He don't know anything 'bout it."

"Yes, he does, too! Fred Noyes told him, and Peter Bailey told him, and Cap'n Bannister told him."

Ed was silent.

The name of Captain Bannister was potent. He lived in a house on this very lane,—a small, red-faced man with black hair. He had been a sailor, it was said, but he was a farmer now, so far as he had any occupation at all. He had no family and no servants, and he dwelt alone with a fluctuating number of cats.

His house was painted white,—spotless and shining. It was without blinds, and so dazzling as to make you sneeze when you looked at it. The path up to his front door was lined, not with the usual white-washed rocks, but with large white sea-shells from some foreign country. Back of these were double rows of cinnamon pinks, the Captain's joy and pride.

Once I had been taken by my elders to call on Captain Bannister. He showed us around his house,—a museum of curiosities. But of all the stuffed birds, all the spiny and prickly fishes, all the curious bits of coral and wooden ships somehow stuffed into glass bottles,—none had seemed so interesting as a small box filled with what the Captain assured me was "tooth-powder from China." That the Chinese should know and use a pink substance so much like that with which I had to struggle every morning seemed to me nothing less than marvellous.

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.

I did not linger there.

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.

"Good mornin', Cap'n Bannister!"

The sailor faced about.

"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.

"Come right in."

So I went in. The next remark of the old man did much to put everything on an agreeable footing.

"Do you boys like peaches?"

We did like peaches, and we said so.

"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.

The captain put a ladder against the tree, climbed up, and began to drop peaches to us. Until then I had a faint suspicion that he might be merely luring us on and on toward the room where sat the pumpkin family. But all such suspicions vanished now. You cannot think ill of a man who gives you peaches like those.

Ed Mason intended to find out about the old elm tree, and he broached the subject fearlessly.

"Cap'n, Sam says that you said they planted a piece of willow where the old elm came up."

"What's that? No; they didn't plant no willow, but all this about the young feller that came callin' on his girl, an' cut a stick to keep off the dogs, an' stuck the stick in the ground in front of her door, an' then went away an' forgot it, an' the tree grew outer that stick,—all that's bosh. Don't yer believe it."

We promised not to believe it. The captain came down the ladder with two more peaches, which he passed over to us. He stood, watching us eat them, and enlarged on the subject of the tree.

"I know all 'bout it, 'cos my second cousin, Silas Winkley, lived there, an' his great-gran'father planted that there tree jus' like any other tree. Silas's great-gran'father, ol' Deacon Plummer, wa'n't callin' on any girls there, 'cos he was up'ards of seventy when he planted the tree, an' had children an' gran'-children of his own. These here poems is all cat's-foot-in-yer-pocket!"

We did not know exactly what that meant, but it seemed to cast some doubt on the truth of the legend, at any rate.

"Silas Winkley," ruminated the Captain, "thought he was a sailor. He went two or three v'yges with ol' Dick Cutter an' fin'lly he got Melvin Bailey,—gran'-father of this Melvin that's alive now, to give him command of a ship. I've heard my father tell 'bout it lots of times,—he was second mate. She was the Nanny Karr,—spelt it with a K, they did then. Well, Silas took her down as fur as Nantucket all right,—hee, hee, hee!"

Here Captain Bannister paused and chuckled for a few moments.

"Yes, siree, he got her down there without no difficulties,—hee, hee, hee! an' then he run her plumb on to the south side of the island. In a dead ca'm, mind yer, an' on a night as clear as a whistle. The crew all went ashore,—they could a dropped off'n her bows on to land without wettin' their feet a'most, an' the next mornin' Silas went aboard ag'in to git his wife's knittin'-needles,—his wife was along with him."

The captain paused again to choke and wheeze.

"Well, in a day or two there come a high tide, an' they got whale-boats, an' hawsers, an' some fellers on the island, an' they got her off all right,—she wa'n't no ways hurt in the sand, an' they went on their way rej'icin',—'cept Melvin Bailey, who had had a hunderd an' forty dollars of his forked out to the fellers with the whale-boats. However, he didn't know nothin' 'bout this till months arterwards. Silas set out ag'in, he was bound for Fayal,—d'yer know where Fayal is?"

We were silent, till at last I suggested:

"It's in Spain, I mean Portugal, isn't it?"

"Now look at that! I betcher when I was your age there wa'n't any boy in this town that didn't know Fayal. It's one o' the Azores, an' some ways this side of Spain or Portugal either. Well, Silas was bound for Fayal, but he had the most terrible luck you ever see. Fust, he run into a gale and got drove way south of the Capes. When he wrote back to Melvin Bailey 'bout this gale he said that the seas run tremenjus high, an' that the ship was put into great jeopardy. Well, Melvin wa'n't what yer call a very edjicated man, an' he got down his atlas an'—hee, hee, hee! an' tried to find Great Jeopardy! Hee, hee, hee!"

I thought I was not appreciating the joke to its utmost, so I inquired politely:

"Where is Great Jeopardy, Cap'n?"

"It ain't nowhere, son. That's just the pint of the hull thing,—there ain't no such place! 'Jeopardy' means danger, an' all Silas meant was that, owin' to the gale, the ship was put into danger,—hee, hee, hee! I s'pose Melvin thought 'twas one of them islands like the Lesser Antilles, or some of them."

This time Ed Mason and I could join in Captain Bannister's mirth. The captain, still chuckling, led the way across the yard and sat down on the stone doorstep, warm in the noon sunshine. Ed and I perched on a grass banking beside him to hear the further adventures of Silas Winkley.

"Well, Silas he kep' havin' bad luck. His fust mate, Andy Spauldin', was took down sick pretty soon with yaller janders, an' that left Silas an' my father to navigate the ship. It was my father's fust v'yge as an officer, an' I guess he wa'n't no great shakes navigatin',—though he was most as good as Silas was, at that."

"In 'bout two weeks they made what Silas thought was Fayal. Silas sailed into harbor as proud as Nebberkernezzar, when one of the men come up an' says, says he, 'That ain't Fayal, Cap'n,' but Silas told him to shut his mouth, he guessed he knew where he was without no Joppa clam-digger tellin' him his business. Yer see Silas he was born over to Ipswich, an' terrible proud of it,—I dunno why. But after he'd come to anchor, an' he'd got on his shore clothes, he got into the boat an' went ashore. It didn't take him long to find out that the feller was right; it wa'n't Fayal, it wa'n't even one of the Azores, he hadn't made no east'ard at all,—hee, hee, hee! Hee, hee, hee! It was—hee, hee, hee!"

The captain's laughing was so prolonged this time, he was so doubled up with excruciating merriment as to cause us some anxiety. He coughed and strangled, and his usually red face became deep purple. Finally he managed to control himself enough to gasp faintly:—

"It was one of the West Injies! Yessir, Silas had sailed pretty nigh due south after the gale was over, an' here he was on one of the West Injy Islands. I dunno what one: my father said Silas wouldn't never tell 'em, though he reckoned it might 'a' been Cubia. Joe Noyes was in the crew, an' he said it was further to the east'ard than Cubia, but it was one of the West Injies all right. The story got out, of course, when the Nanny got back here, an,' when Silas come down to live on this lane with his mother's folks,—for Melvin Bailey didn't ask him to command no more ships,—why then they began to call this West Injy Lane. That wa'n't its name,—'twas Plummer's Lane, but folks has called it West Injy Lane ever since,—'cept these cotty-dummers that want it called Washington Avenue. Yessir, that's the way it happened."

And then the captain added, somewhat irrelevantly:—

"So yer see I know all 'bout that tree, an' yer don't want to believe any of them poets!"