It was a gloomy-looking house even in midsummer, standing like a
grim figure menaced by the tortured limbs of the trees surrounding
it, stark and alone. No other human habitation was in view from its
site. The Latham who had built the twelve-room house had built on
hope. He desired and expected to fill the great house with a breed
of Lathams that would do honor to the Cape on sea and on land. But
his young wife had died the next year, after giving birth to her
second child.
Tunis Latham's father, Randall Latham, had been the elder Latham's
sole hope of perpetuating the family name and filling the big, ugly
brown house behind Wreckers' Head with tow-headed little Lathams,
for the other child was a girl.
It was said that Medford Latham had seldom spoken to or of his
daughter, Lucretia. She must have led a very lonely and repressed
life while she was a little girl. Medford Latham did not go to sea,
for he had business that kept him on shore.
Medford Latham lived long enough to see Randall grow up, walk his
own quarter-deck, and marry a maiden from the port who promised to
be able to fulfill his hopes of a flourishing houseful of children.
She bore Tunis while young Captain Randall Latham was away, and he
came back in time to christen the boy with the name of the most
colorful city he had touched on the trip, not an uncommon practice
of seagoing fathers on the Cape.
Pages:
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49