The Inn at the Red Oak | Page 2

its high brick chimneys rose the thick growth of Lovel's Woods,
crowning the ridge that ran between Beaver Pond and the Strathsey
river to the sea. The house faced southwards, and from the cobbled
court before it meadow and woodland sloped to the beaches and the
long line of sand dunes that straggled out and lost themselves in
Strathsey Neck. To the east lay marshes and the dunes and beyond
them the Strathsey, two miles wide where its waters met those of the
Atlantic; west lay the great curve, known as the Second Beach, the blue
surface of Deal Bay, and a line of rocky shore, three miles in length,
terminated by Rough Point, near which began the out-lying houses of

Monday Port.
The old hostelry took its name from a giant oak which grew at its
doorstep just to one side of the maple-lined driveway that led down to
the Port Road, a hundred yards or so beyond. This enormous tree
spread its branches over the entire width and half the length of the roof.
Ordinarily, of course, its foliage was as green as the leaves on the
maples of the avenue or on the neighbouring elms, and the name of the
Inn might have seemed to the summer or winter traveller an odd
misnomer; but in autumn when the frost came early and the great mass
of green flushed to a deep crimson it could not have been known more
appropriately than as the Inn at the Red Oak.
It was a solidly-built house, such as even in the early part of the
nineteenth century men were complaining they could no longer obtain;
built to weather centuries of biting southeasters, and--the legend ran--to
afford protection in its early days against Indians. At the time of the
Revolution it had been barricaded, pierced with portholes, and had
served, like innumerable other houses from Virginia to Massachusetts,
as Washington's headquarters. When Tom Pembroke knew it best, its
old age and decay had well set in.
Pembroke was the son of the neighbouring squire, whose house, known
as the Red Farm, lay In the little valley on the other side of the Woods
at the head of Beaver Pond. From the time he had been able to thread
his way across the woodland by its devious paths--Tom had been at the
Inn almost every day to play with Dan Frost, the landlord's son. They
had played in the stables, then stocked with a score of horses, where
now there were only two or three; in the great haymows of the old barn
in the clearing back of the Inn; in the ramshackle garret under that
amazing roof; or, best of all, in the abandoned bowling-alley, where
they rolled dilapidated balls at rickety ten-pins.
When Tom and Dan were eighteen--they were born within a day of
each other one bitter February--old Peter died, leaving the Inn to his
wife. Mrs. Frost pretended to carry on the business, but the actual task
of doing so soon devolved upon her son. And in this he was subjected
to little interference; for the poor lady, kindly inefficient soul that she

was, became almost helpless with rheumatism. But indeed it was rather
on the farm than to the Inn that more and more they depended for their
living. In the social hierarchy of Caesarea the Pembrokes held
themselves as vastly superior to the Frosts; but thanks to the easy-going
democratic customs of the young republic, more was made of this by
the women than the men.
The two boys loved each other devotedly, though love is doubtless the
last word they would have chosen to express their relation. Dan was tall,
dark, muscular; he had a well-shaped head on his square shoulders;
strong well-cut features; a face that the sun had deeply tanned and dark
hair that it had burnished with gold. Altogether he was a prepossessing
lad, though he looked several years older than he was, and he was
commonly treated by his neighbours with a consideration that his years
did not merit. Tom Pembroke was fairer; more attractive, perhaps, on
first acquaintance; certainly more boyish in appearance and behaviour.
He was quicker in his movements and in his mental processes; more
aristocratic in his bearing. His blue eyes were more intelligent than
Dan's, but no less frank and kindly. Young Frost admired his friend
almost as much as he cared for him; for Dan, deprived of schooling,
had a reverence for learning, of which Tom had got a smattering at Dr.
Watson's establishment for "the sons of gentlemen" on the nearby hill.
One stormy night in early January, the eve of Dan Frost's
twenty-second birthday, the two young men had their supper together
at the Inn, and afterwards sat for half-an-hour in the hot, stove-heated
parlour