Caleb sat on the deck of the Screamer on her homeward run, his face turned toward Keyport Light, beyond which his little cabin lay. His eyes glistened, and there came a choking in his throat as he thought of meeting Betty. He could even feel her hand slipped into his, and could hear the very tones of her cheery welcome, when she met him at the gate and they walked together up the garden path to the porch.
Most of the men who had stood to the watch-tackles in the rolling surf sat beside him on the sloop. Those who were still wet, including Sanford, had gone below into the cabin, out of the cutting wind. Those who, like Caleb, had changed their clothes, sat on the after deck. Captain Joe, against Sanford’s earnest protest, had remained on the Ledge for the night. He wanted, he said, to see how the derricks would stand the coming storm.
It had been a busy month for the diver. Since the explosion he had been almost constantly in his rubber dress, working not only his regular four hours under water,—all that an ordinary man could stand,—but taking another’s place for an hour or two when some piece of submarine work at the Ledge required his more skillful eye and hand. He had set some fifty or more of the big enrockment blocks in thirty feet of water, each block being lowered into position by the Screamer’s boom, and he had prepared the anchor sockets in which to step the four great derricks. Twice he had been swept from his hold by the racing current, and once his helmet had struck a projecting rock with such force that he was deaf for days. His hands, too, had begun to blister from the salt water and hot sun. Betty, on his last Sunday at home, had split up one of her own little gloves for plasters, and tried to heal his blisters with some salve. But it had not done his bruises much good, he thought, as he probed with his stub of a thumb the deeper cracks in his tough, leathery palms.
Now that the men were convalescent he gloried more and more in his wife’s energy and capacity. To relieve a wounded man, serve him night and day, and by skill, tenderness, and self-sacrifice get him once more well and sound and on his legs, able to do a day’s work and earn a day’s pay,—this, to Caleb, was something to be proud of and to glory in. But for her nursing, he would often say, poor Billy would now be among the tombstones on the hill back of Keyport Light.
Caleb’s estimate of Betty’s efforts was not exaggerated. Her patient had been the most severely injured, and her task had therefore been longer and more severe. The cut on Lacey’s cheek and frontal bone, dividing his eyebrow like a sabre slash, had been deep and ugly and slow to heal; and the bruise on his back had developed into a wound that in its progress had sapped his youthful strength. He had been her patient from the first, and she had never neglected him an hour since the fatal night when she helped the doctor wind his bandages. When on the third day fever set in, she had taken her seat by his bedside until the delirium had passed. Mrs. Bell and Miss Peebles, the schoolmistress, had relieved each other in the care of the other wounded men,—all of them, strange to say, were single men, and all of them away from home.
Betty would go to her own cabin for an hour each day, but as soon as her work was done she would pull down the shades, lock the house door, and, with a sunbonnet on her head and some little delicacy in her hand, hurry down the shore road again to the warehouse hospital. This had been the first real responsibility of her life, the first time in which anything had been expected of her apart from the endless cooking of three meals a day, and the washing up and sweeping out that followed.
There were no more lonely hours for her now. A new tenderness, too, had been aroused in her nature because of the helplessness of the boy whose feeble, hot fingers clutched her own. The love which this curly-headed young rigger had once avowed for her when there were strength and ruggedness in every sinew of his body, when his red lips were parted over the white teeth and his eyes shone with pride, had been quite forgotten as she watched by his bed. It was this helplessness of his which was ever present in her mind, his suffering. She realized that the prostrate young fellow before her was dependent on her for his very life and sustenance, as a child might have been. It was for her he waited in the morning, refusing to touch his breakfast until she gave it to him,—unable at first, reluctant afterward. It was for her last touch on his pillow that he waited at night before he went to sleep. It was she alone who brought the smiles to his face, or inspired him with a courage he had almost lost when the pain racked him and he thought he might never be able to do a day’s work again.
The long confinement had left its mark on Lacey. He was a mere outline of himself the first day he was able to sit in the sunshine at the warehouse door. His hands were white, and his face was bleached. When he gained a little strength, Captain Joe gave him light duties about the wharf, the doctor refusing to let him go to the Ledge. But even after he was walking about, Betty felt him still under her care, and prepared dainty dishes for him. When she took them to him, she saw, with a strange sinking of her heart, that he gained but slowly, and was still weak and ill enough to need a woman’s care.
The story of her nursing and of the doctor’s constant tribute to her skill was well known, and Caleb, usually so reticent, would talk of it again and again. Most of the men liked to humor his pride in her, for Betty’s blithesome, cheery nature made her a favorite wherever she was known.
“I kind’er wish Cap’n Joe had come ashore to-night,” Caleb said, turning to Captain Brandt, who stood beside him, his hand on the tiller. “He’s been soakin’ wet all day, an’ he won’t put nothin’ dry on ef I ain’t with him. ’T warn’t for Betty I’d ’a’ stayed, but the little gal’s so lonesome ’t ain’t right to leave her. I don’ know what Lacey ’d done but for Betty. Did ye see ’er, Lonny, when she come in that night?” All the little by-paths of Caleb’s talk led to Betty.
It was the same old question, but Lonny, seated on the other side of the deck, fell in willingly with Caleb’s mood.
“See ’er? Wall, I guess! I thought she’d keel over when the doctor washed Billy’s face. He did look ragged, an’ no mistake, Caleb; but she held on an’ never give in a mite.”
Carleton sat close enough to overhear the remark.
“Why shouldn’t she?” he sneered, behind his hand, to the man next him. “Lacey’s a blamed sight better looking fellow than what she’s got. The girl knows a good thing when she sees it. If it was me, I’d”—
He never finished the sentence. Caleb overheard the remark, and rose from his seat, with an expression in his eyes that could not be misunderstood. Sanford, watching the group through the cabin window, and not knowing the cause of Caleb’s sudden anger, said afterwards that the diver looked like an old gray wolf gathering himself for a spring, as he stood over Carleton with hands tightly clinched.
The superintendent made some sort of half apology to Caleb, and the diver took his seat again, but did not forgive him; neither did the older men, who had seen Betty grow up, and who always spoke of her somehow as if she belonged to them.
“T’ain’t decent,” said Lonny Bowles to Sanford when he had joined him later in the cabin of the Screamer and had repeated Carleton’s remark, “for a man to speak agin a woman; such fellers ain’t no better ’n rattlesnakes an’ ought’er be trompled on, if they is in guv’ment pay.”
When the sloop reached Keyport harbor, the men were landed as near as possible to their several homes. Caleb, in his kindly voice, bade good-night to Sanford, to Captain Brandt, to the crew, and to the working gang. To Carleton he said nothing. He would have overlooked and forgotten an affront put upon himself, but never one upon Betty.
“She ain’t got nobody but an ol’ feller like me,” he often said to Captain Joe,—“no chillen nor nothin’, poor little gal. I got to make it up to her some way.”
As he walked up the path he was so engrossed with Carleton’s flippant remark, conning it over in his mind to tell Betty,—he knew she did not like him,—that he forgot for the moment that she was not at the garden gate.
He looked up at the house and noticed that the shades were pulled down on the garden side of the house.
“She ain’t sick, is she?” he said to himself. “I guess nussin’ Lacey’s been too much for her. I ought’er knowed she’d break down. ’Pears to me she did look peaked when I bid her good-by las’ Monday.”
“Ye ain’t sick, little woman, be ye?” he called out as he opened the door.
There was no response. He walked quickly through the kitchen, passed into the small hall, calling her as he went, mounted the narrow stairs, and opened the bedroom door softly, thinking she might be asleep. The shutters were closed, the room was in perfect order. The bed was empty. The sheet and covering were turned neatly on his side, and the bedding was clean and had not been slept in. At its foot, within reach of his hand, lay his big carpet slippers that she had made for him. He stooped mechanically, gazing at the untouched pillow, still wondering why she had turned the sheet, his mind relieved now that she was not ill.
Then he remembered that it was not yet dark, and that, on account of the coming storm, he was an hour earlier than usual in getting home. His face lightened. He saw it all now: Betty had not expected him so soon, and would be home in a little while.
When he entered the kitchen again he saw the table. There was but one plate laid, with the knife and fork beside it. This was covered by a big china bowl. Under it was some cold meat with the bread and butter. Near the table, by the stove, a freshly ironed shirt hung over a chair.
He understood it all now. She had put his supper and his shirt where he would find them, and was not coming home till late. He would “clean up” right away, so as to be ready for her.
When he had washed, dressed himself in his house clothes, and combed his big beard, he dragged a chair out on the front porch, to watch for her up and down the road.
The men going home, carrying their dinner-pails, nodded to him as they passed, and one stopped and leaned over the gate long enough to wonder whether the big August storm would break that night, adding, “We generally has a blow ’bout this time.”
While he sat waiting the butcher stopped to leave the weekly piece of meat for Sunday,—the itinerant country butcher, with his shop in one of the neighboring villages, and his customers up and down all the roads that led out of it; supplies for every household in his wagon, and the gossip of every family on his lips.
His wagon had sides of canvas painted white, with “Fish, Meat and Poultry” in a half-moon of black letters arching over the owner’s name, and was drawn by a horse that halted and moved on, not by the touch of the lines,—they were always caught to a hook in the roof of the wagon,—but by a word from the butcher, who stood at the tail-board, where the scales dangled, sorting fish, hacking off pieces of red meat, or weighing scraggly chickens proportionate to the wants and means of his various customers. He was busying himself at this tail-board, the dripping of the ice pock-marking the dusty road below, when he caught sight of Caleb.
“Wall, I kind’er hoped somebody’d be hum,” he said to himself, wrapping the six-pound roast in a piece of yellow paper. With a tuck to his blue over-sleeves, he swung open the gate. “So ye didn’t go ’long, Caleb, with Mis’ West? I see it begin to blow heavy, and was wond’rin’ whether you’d get in—best cut, you see,” opening the paper for Caleb’s inspection, “and I broke them ribs jes’ ’s Mis’ West allers wants ’em. Then I wondered agin how ye could leave the Ledge at all to-day. Mis’ Bell tol’ me yesterday the cap’n was goin’ to set them derricks. I see ’em a-layin’ on the dock ’fore that Cape Ann sloop loaded ’em, an’ they was monstrous, an’ no mistake. Have some butter? She didn’t order none this mornin’, but I got some come in this forenoon, sweet’s a nut,—four pounds for a dollar, an’”—
Caleb looked at him curiously. “Where did the wife say she was a-goin’?” he interrupted.
“Wall, she didn’t say, ’cause I didn’t ketch up to her. I was comin’ down Nollins Hill over to Noank, when I see her ahead, walkin’ down all in her Sunday rig, carryin’ a little bag like. I tho’t maybe she was over to see the Nollins folks, till I left seven pounds fresh mackerel nex’ door to Stubbins’s, an’ some Delaware eggs. Then I see my stock of ice was nigh gone, so I druv down to the steamboat dock, an’ there I catched sight of ’er agin jes’ goin’ aboard. I knowed then, of course, she was off for Greenport an’ New York, an’ was jes’ sayin’ to myself, Wall, I’ll stop an’ see if anybody’s ter hum, an’ if they’re all gone I won’t leave the meat, but”—
“Put the meat in the kitchen,” said Caleb, without rising from his chair.
When the butcher drove off, the diver had not moved. His gaze was fixed on the turn of the road. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. A faint sickness unnerved him. Had he been cross or impatient with her the last time he was at home, that she should serve him so? Then a surge of anxiety swept over him, as he thought of Betty going without letting him know. Why should she walk all the way to Noank and take the boat across the Sound, twenty miles away, if she wanted to go to New York? The railroad station was nearer and the fare through was cheaper. He would have taken her himself, if he had only known she wanted to go. He could have asked Captain Joe to give him a couple of days off, and would have gone with her. If she had only left some message, or sent some word by the men to the Ledge! Then, as his thoughts traveled in a circle, catching at straws, his brain whirling, his eye fell upon the clump of trees shading Captain Joe’s cottage. Aunty Bell would know, of course; why had he not thought of that before? Betty told Aunty Bell everything.
The busy little woman sat on the porch shelling peas, the pods popping about her bright tin pan, as Caleb came up the board walk.
“Why, ye needn’t hev give yerself the trouble, Caleb, to come all the way down!” she called out as he came within hearing. “Lonny Bowles’s jest been here and told me cap’n ain’t comin’ home till Monday. I’m ’mazin’ glad them derricks is up. He ain’t done nothin’ but worrit about ’em since spring opened, ’fraid somebody’d get hurted when he set ’em. Took a lantern, here, night ’fore last, jest as we was goin’ to bed, after he’d been loadin’ ’em aboard the Screamer all day, an’ went down to the dock to see if Bill Lacey’d shrunk them collars on tight enough. Guess Betty’s glad yer home. I ain’t see her to-day, but I don’t lay it up agin her. I knowed she was busy cleanin’ up ’gin ye come.”
Caleb’s heart leaped into his throat. If Betty had not told Aunty Bell, there was no one else who would know her movements. It was on his lips to tell her what the butcher had seen, when something in his heart choked his utterance. If Betty had not wanted any one to know, there was no use of his talking about it.
A man of different temperament, a nervous or easily alarmed or suspicious man, would have caught at every clue and followed it to the end. Caleb waited and kept still. She would telegraph or write him and explain it all, he said to himself, or send some one to see him before bedtime. So he merely answered he was glad Aunty Bell knew about Captain Joe, nodded good-night, and passed slowly down the board walk and up the road, his head on his chest, his big beard blowing about his neck in the rising wind. He kept saying to himself that Betty would telegraph or write and explain it all, or send some one to see him before bedtime.
It was dark when he reached home. He lit the kerosene lamp and pulled down the shades. He did not want passers-by to know he was alone. For an hour or more he strode up and down the kitchen, his thumbs in his suspenders, his supper untouched. Now and then he would stop as if listening for a footfall, or fix his eye minutes at a time on some crack in the floor or other object, gazing abstractedly at it, his thoughts far away. Once he drew the lamp close and picked up the evening paper, adjusting his big glasses; reading the same lines over and over, until the paper fell of itself from his hands. Soon, worn out with the hard fight of the day, he fell asleep in his chair, awaking some hours after, his mind torn with anxiety. Then he took off his shoes and crept upstairs in his stocking feet, holding to the balustrade as a tired man will do, entered his bedroom, and dropped into a chair.
All through the night he slept fitfully; waking with sudden starts, roused by the feeling that some horrible shadow had settled upon him, that something he could not name to himself was standing behind him—always there, making him afraid to turn and look. When he was quite awake, and saw the dim outlines of the untouched bed with its smooth white pillows, the undefinable fear would slowly take shape, and he would start up in his chair, and as if to convince himself he would take a long look at the bed, with the relief of one able at last to explain a horror the vagueness of which had tortured him. “Yes, I know, Betty’s gone.” Then, overcome with fatigue, he would doze again.
With the breaking of the day he sprang from his chair, half dazed, threw up the narrow sash to feel the touch of the cool, real world, and peered between the slats of the shutters, listening to the wind outside, now blowing a gale and dashing against the blinds.
None of the other houses were open yet. He was glad of that, glad of their bare, cold, indifferent exteriors, blind to the outside world. It was as though he felt his secret still safe from prying eyes, and he meant to guard it always from them; to let none of them know what his night had been, or that Betty had been away for so long without telling him. When she came home again she would help, he knew, to smooth away the marks of it all, the record of his pain. Her bright face would look up into his, her little hands pat his cheeks, and he would then know all about it, why she went and where, and he would take the little girl wife in his arms, and comfort her in the suffering that would surely come to her when she discovered that her thoughtlessness had caused him any misery.
No! He would tell no one. He would simply wait, all day if necessary, all day and another night. He could trust her. It was all right, he knew. He did not even mind the waiting.
Then while he was still thinking, still determining to keep silent, still satisfying himself that all was well, he turned rapidly and tiptoed downstairs.
With nervous, trembling fingers he took a suit of tarpaulins and a sou’wester from a hook behind the porch door, and walked down to the dock. Some early lobstermen, bailing a skiff, saw him stand for a moment, look about him, and spring aboard a flat-bottomed sharpie, the only boat near by,—a good harbor boat, but dangerous in rough weather. To their astonishment, he raised the three-cornered sail and headed for the open sea.
“Guess Caleb must be crazy,” said one man, resting his scoop for a moment, as he watched the boat dip almost bow under. “Thet sharpie ain’t no more fittin’ for thet slop sea ’n ever was. What do ye s’pose ails him, anyhow? Gosh A’mighty! see her take them rollers. If it was anybody else but him he wouldn’t git to the P’int. Don’t make no difference, tho’, to him. He kin git along under water jes’ ’s well’s on top.”
As the boat flew past Keyport Light and Caleb laid his course to the Ledge, the keeper, now that the dawn had come, was in the lantern putting out his light and drawing down his shades. Seeing Caleb’s boat tossing below him, he took down his glass.
“What blamed fool is that tryin’ to get himself measured for a coffin?” he said.
The men were still asleep when Caleb reached the Ledge and threw open the door of the shanty,—all but Nickles, who was preparing breakfast. He looked at Caleb as if he had been an apparition, and followed him to the door of Captain Joe’s cabin, a little room by itself. He wanted to hear the dreadful news he brought. Unless some one was dead or dying no man would risk such a sea alone,—not even an old sailor like the diver.
Caleb opened the door of the captain’s little room and closed it tight behind him, without a word to the cook. The captain lay asleep in his bunk, one big arm under his head, his short curly hair matted close.
“Cap’n Joe,” said Caleb, laying his hand on the sleeping man’s shoulder and shaking him gently,—“Cap’n Joe, it’s me,—Caleb.”
The captain raised his head and stared at him. Then he sat upright, trying to collect his thoughts.
“Cap’n, I had to come for ye,—I want ye.”
“It ain’t Aunty Bell, is it?” said Captain Joe, springing to the floor. The early hour, the sough of the wind and beating of the rain on the roof of the shanty, Caleb dripping wet, with white drawn face, standing over him, told him in a flash the gravity of the visit.
“No, it’s my Betty. She’s gone,—gone without a word.”
“No, it’s my Betty”
“No, it’s my Betty”
“No, it’s my Betty”
“Gone! Who with?”
Caleb sunk on Captain Joe’s sea-chest, and buried his face in his blistered hands. For a moment he dared not trust himself to answer.
“I don’t know—I don’t know”—The broken words came between his rough fingers. Big tears rolled down his beard.
“Who says so? How do you know she’s gone?”
“The butcher seen ’er goin’ ’board the boat at Noank yesterday mornin’. She fixed everythin’ at home ’fore she went. I ain’t been to bed all night. I don’t know what ye kin do, but I had to come. I thought maybe you’d go home with me.”
The captain did not answer. Little scraps of gossip that he had heard now and then among the men floated through his memory. He had never paid any attention to them, except once when he had rebuked Nickles for repeating some slurring remark that Carleton had made one night at table. But even as he thought of them Betty’s face rose before him,—her sweet, girlish face with its dimples.
“It’s a dirty lie, Caleb, whoever said it. I wouldn’t believe it if I see it myself. Ain’t no better gal ’n Betty ever breathed. Go with you! Course I will’s soon’s I get my clo’es on.” He dressed hurriedly, caught up his oilskins, flung wide the shanty door, and made his way over the platforms towards the wharf.
When they reached the little cove in the rocks below, where the smaller boats were always sheltered, and he saw the sharpie, he stopped short.
“You ain’t come out here in that, Caleb?”
“It was all I could get; there warn’t nothin’ else handy, Cap’n Joe.”
The captain looked the frail sharpie over from stem to stern, and then called to Nickles: “Bring down one ’er them empty ker’sene five-gallon cans; we got some bailin’ to do, I tell ye, ’fore we make Keyport Light. No, there ain’t nothin’ up,” noticing Nickles’s anxious face. “Caleb wants me to Keyport,—that’s all. Get breakfast, and tell the men, when they turn out, that I’ll be back to-morrow in the Screamer, if it smooths down.”
Caleb took his seat on the windward side of the tossing boat, holding the sheet. The captain sat in the stern, one hand on the tiller. The kerosene-can lay at their feet. The knees of the two men touched.
No better sailors ever guided a boat, and none ever realized more clearly the dangers of their position.
The captain settled himself in his seat in silence, his eyes watching every wave that raced by, and laid his course towards the white tower five miles away, blurred gray in the driving rain. Caleb held the sheet, his eyes facing the long, low line of hills where his cabin lay. As he hauled the sheet closer a heavy sigh broke from him. It was the first time since he had known Betty that he had set his face homeward without a thrill of delight filling his heart. Captain Joe heard the smothered sigh, and, without turning his head, laid his great hand with its stiff thole-pin fingers tenderly on Caleb’s wrist. These two men knew each other.
“I wouldn’t worry, Caleb,” he said, after a little. “That butcher sees too much, an’ sometimes he don’t know nothin’. He’s allers got some cock-an’-bull story ’bout somebody ’r other. Only las’ week he come inter Gardiner’s drug store with a yarn ’bout the old man bein’ pisened, when it warn’t nothin’ but cramps. Ease a little, Caleb—s-o. Seems to me it’s blowin’ harder.”
As he spoke, a quick slash of the cruel wind cut the top from a pursuing wave and flung it straight in Caleb’s face. The diver, with his stiffened fingers, combed the dripping spray from his beard, and without a word drew his tarpaulins closer. Captain Joe continued:—
“Wust 'r them huckster fellers is they ain’t got no better sense 'an to peddle everythin’ they know 'long with their stuff. Take in—take in, Caleb! Thatwasa soaker.” The big wave that had broken within a foot of the rail had drenched them from head to foot. “Butcher didn’t say nobody was with Betty, did he?” he asked, with a cant of his sou’wester to free it from sea-water.
Caleb shook his head.
“No, and there warn’t nobody. I tell ye this thing’ll straighten itself out. Ye can’t tell what comes inter women’s heads sometimes. She might’er gone over to Greenport to git some fixin’s for Sunday, an’ would’er come back in the afternoon boat, but it blowed so. Does she know anybody over there?”
Caleb did not answer. Somehow since he had seen Captain Joe hope had gone out of his heart. He had understood but too clearly the doubting question that had escaped the captain’s lips, as he sprang from the bed and looked into his eyes. He was not a coward; he had faced without a quiver many dangers in his time; more than once he had cut his air-hose, the last desperate chance of a diver when his lines are fouled. But his legs had shaken as he listened to Captain Joe. There was something in the tone of his voice that had unmanned him.
For a mile or more the two men did not speak again. Wave after wave pursued them, and tossed its angry spray after them. Captain Joe now managed the sail with one hand, and steered with the other. Caleb bailed incessantly.
When they ran under the lee of the lighthouse the keeper hailed them. He had recognized Captain Joe. Indeed, he had followed the sharpie with his glass until it reached the Ledge, and had watched its return “with two fools instead of one,” he said.
“Anybody sick?” he shouted.
Captain Joe shook his head, and the sharpie plunged on and rounded the point into the perfect calm of the protecting shore.
Caleb made fast the boat when land was reached, while the captain sprang out. Then they both hurried up Caleb’s garden walk to the cabin door.
There was no change in the house. The white china bowl still lay over the supper, the newspaper on the floor; no one had entered since Caleb had left.
The captain began a close search through the rooms: inside the clock, all over the mantelpiece, and on the sitting-room table. No scrap of writing could he find that shed a ray of light on Betty’s movements. Then he walked upstairs, Caleb following him, and opened the bedroom closet door. Her dresses hung in their usual places,—all but the one she wore and her cloak, Caleb said.
“She ain’t gone for long,” said the captain thoughtfully, looking into the closet. “You wait here, Caleb, and git yerself some breakfast. I may be gone two hours, I may be gone all day. When I find out for sure I’ll come back. I’m goin’ to Noank fust, to see them hands aboard the boat. It’s Sunday, an’ she ain’t a-runnin’.”
Caleb waited by the fireless stove. Hour after hour went by. Now and then he would open the front door and peer down the road, trying to make out the captain’s burly, hurrying form. When it grew dark he put a light in the window, and raised one shade on the kitchen side of the house, that the captain might know he was still at home and waiting.
About nine o’clock Caleb heard the whistle of a tug and a voice calling for some one to catch a line. He opened the kitchen door and looked out on the wet gloom, that was broken here and there by the masthead lights rocking in the wind. Then he recognized one of the big Medford tugs lying off the dock below his garden; the hands were making fast to a dock spile. Captain Joe sprang ashore, and the tug steamed off.
The captain walked slowly towards the porch, entered the kitchen without a word, and sank heavily into a chair. Caleb made no sound; he stood beside him, waiting, one hand grasping the table.
“She’s gone, ain’t she?”
The captain nodded his head.
“Gone! Who with?” asked Caleb, unconsciously repeating the words that had rung all day in his ears.
“Bill Lacey,” said the captain, with choking voice.
Mrs. Leroy was one of the few women in town who realized what Sanford and his friends had long ago discovered,—the possibilities of New York in summer. To her it had now become its most delightful season, a season of long days and short nights—days and nights of utter idleness, great content, and blessed peace of mind; a season when one could dine where one chose without a waiting cab and a hurried departure at the bidding of somebody else; when the eleven o’clock lecturer is silent, the afternoon tea a memory, and the epidemic of the ten-course dinner a forgotten plague.
She had grown to believe with Sanford that if one could impress the possibility of these truths upon the friends one loved, so that they, and only they, could tiptoe back into their houses, keep their blinds closed and their servants hidden, and so delude the balance of the world—those they did not love, the uncongenial, the tiresome, the bumptious, and the aggressive—into believing that they had fled; if this little trick could be played on the world every June, and for three long happy months only congenial spirits could spread themselves over space and eat their lotus in peace (and with their fingers, if they so pleased), then would each one discover that New York in summer could indeed be made the Eldorado of one’s dreams.
Her own front door on Gramercy Park was never barricaded, nor was her house dismantled. She changed its dress in May and put it into charming summer attire of matting and chintz, making it a rare and refreshing retreat; and more than half her time she spent within its walls, running down to Medford whenever the cares of that establishment required attention, or a change of mood made a change of scene desirable.
Since the visit when Captain Joe had dismissed her with his thanks from the warehouse hospital at Keyport she had gone to Medford but once.
The major had been a constant visitor, and Jack Hardy and his fiancée, Helen Shirley, had on more than one occasion hidden themselves, on moonlight nights, in the shadows of the big palms fringing her balcony overlooking the Park. Sanford had not seen her as often as he wished. Work on the Ledge had kept him at Keyport, and allowed him but little time in town.
With the setting of the derricks, however, he felt himself at liberty for a holiday, and he had looked forward with a feeling of almost boyish enthusiasm—which he never quite outgrew—to a few days’ leisure in town, and a morning or two with Mrs. Leroy.
When the maid brought up his card, Mrs. Leroy was at her desk in the little boudoir, with its heaps of silk cushions, its disorder of books, and bloom of mignonette and red geraniums filling the windows that looked straight into the trees of the Park. Here the sun shone in winter, and here the moonlight traced the outlines of bare branches upon her window-shades, and here in summer the coolest of cool shadows fell from tree and awning.
“Why, I expected you yesterday, Henry,” she said, holding out her hand, seating Sanford upon the divan, and drawing up a chair beside him. “What happened?”
“Nothing more serious than an elopement.”
“Not Jack and Helen Shirley?” she said, laughing.
“No; I wish it were; they would go on loving each other. This affair brings misery. It’s Caleb West’s wife. Captain Joe is half crazy about it, and poor Caleb is heartbroken. She has gone off with that young fellow she was nursing the day you came up with the major.”
“Eloped! Pretty doings, I must say. Yes, I remember her,—a trim, rather pretty little woman with short curly hair. I caught a glimpse of Caleb, too, you know, as he came in from the Ledge. He seemed years older than she. What had he done to her?”
“Nothing, so far as I know, except love her and take care of her. Poor Caleb!”
“What did he let her go for, then? I’m sorry for the old diver, but it was his fault, somewhere. The girl had as good a face as I ever looked into. She never left her husband without some cause, poor child. What else has happened at Keyport?”
“Kate, don’t talk so. She’s treated him shamefully. They have only been married two years.”
Mrs. Leroy bent her head and looked out under the awnings for a moment in a thoughtful way. “Only two years?” she said, with some bitterness. “The poor child was impatient. When she had tried it for fifteen she would have become accustomed to it. It is the same old story, I suppose. We hear it every day. He ugly and old and selfish, never thinking of what she would like and what she longed for, keeping her shut up to sing for him when she wanted now and then to sing for herself; and then she found the door of the cage open, and out she flew. Poor little soul! I pity her. She had better have borne it; it is a poor place outside for a tired foot; and she’s nothing but a child.” Then musing, patting her slipper impatiently, “What sort of a man has she gone with? I couldn’t see him that morning, she hung over him so close, and his head was so bandaged.”
“I don’t know much about him. I haven’t known him long,” Sanford answered carelessly.
“Good-looking, isn’t he, and alive, and with something human and manlike about him?” she asked, leaning forward eagerly, her hands in her lap.
“Yes, I suppose so. He could climb like a cat, anyway,” said Sanford.
“Yes, I know, Henry. I see it all. I knew it was the same old story. She wanted something fresh and young,—some one just to play with, child as she is, some one nearer her own age to love. She was lonely. Nothing for her to do but sit down and wait for him to come home. Poor child,” with a sigh, “her misery only begins now. What else have you to tell me?”
“Nothing, except that all of the derricks tumbled. I wired you about it. They are all up now, thank goodness.” He knew her interest was only perfunctory. Her mind, evidently, was still on Betty, but he went on with his story: “Everybody got soaking wet. Captain Joe was in the water for hours. But we stuck to it. Narrowest escape the men have had this summer, Kate, since the Screamer’s. It’s a great mercy nobody was hurt. I expected every minute some one would get crushed. No one but Captain Joe could have got them up that afternoon. It blew a gale for three days. When did you get here? I thought you had gone back to Medford until Sam brought me your note.”
“No, I am still here, and shall be here for a week. Now, don’t tell me you’re going back to-night?”
“No, I’m not, but I can’t say how soon; not before the masonry begins, anyhow. Jack Hardy is coming to-morrow night to my rooms. I have asked a few fellows to meet him,—Smearly and Curran, and old Bock with his 'cello, and some others. Since Jack’s engagement he’s the happiest fellow alive.”
“They all are at first, Henry,” said Mrs. Leroy, laughing, her head thrown back. The memory of Jack and Helen was still so fresh and happy a one that it instantly changed her mood.
Betty and Caleb for the moment were forgotten, while they talked of Helen’s future, of the change in Jack’s life, of his new housekeeping, and of the thousand and one things that interested them both,—the kind of talk that two such friends indulge in who have been parted for a week or more, and who, in the first ten minutes, run lightly over their individual experiences, so that both may start fresh again with nothing hidden in either life. When he rose to go, she kept him standing while she pinned in his buttonhole a sprig of mignonette picked from her window-box, and said, with the deepest interest, “I can’t get that poor child out of my mind. Don’t be too hard on her, Henry; she’s the one who will suffer most.”
When Sanford reached his rooms again he sank into a chair which Sam had drawn close to the window, and sighed with content. “Oh, these days off!” he exclaimed.
The appointments of his own apartments seemed never so satisfying and so welcome as when he had spent a week with his men, taking his share of the exposure with all the discomforts that it brought. His early life had fitted him for these changes, and a certain cosmopolitan spirit in the man, a sort of underlying stratum of Bohemianism, had made it easy for him to adapt himself to his surroundings, whatever they might be. Not that his restless spirit could long have endured any life, either rough or luxurious, that repeated itself day after day. He could idle with the idlest, but he must also work when the necessity came, and that with all his might.
Sam always made some special preparation for his home-coming. To-day the awnings were hung over window and balcony, and the most delightful of luncheons had been arranged,—cucumbers smothered in ice, soft-shell crabs, and a roll of cream cheese with a dash of Kirsch and sugar. “I know he don’t git nuffin fit for a dog to eat when he’s away. 'Fo’ God I don’t know how he stands it,” Sam was accustomed to observe to those of his friends who sometimes watched his preparations.
“Major’s done been hyar 'mos’ ebery day you been gone, sah,” he said, drawing out Sanford’s chair, when luncheon was served. “How is it, sah,—am I to mix a cocktaileberytime he comes? An’ dat box ob yo’ big cigars am putty nigh gone; ain’t no more ’n fo’r 'r five of ’em lef.” The major, Sam forgot to mention, was only partly to blame for these two shrinkages in Sanford’s stores.
“What does he come so often for, Sam?” asked Sanford, laughing.
“Dat’s mor’ 'an I know, sah, ’cept he so anxious to git you back, he says. He come twice a day to see if you’re yere. Co’se dere ain’t nuffin cooked, an’ so he don’t git nuffin to eat, but golly! he’s powerful on jewlips. I done tole him yesterday you wouldn’t be back till to-morrow night. Dat whiskey’s all gin out; he saw der empty bottle hisse’f; he ain’t been yere agin to-day,” with a chuckle.
“Always give the major whatever he wants,” said Sanford. “And Sam,” he called as that darky was disappearing in the pantry, “a few gentlemen will be here to supper to-morrow night. Remind me to make a list in the morning of what you will want.”
The list was made out, and a very toothsome and cooling list it was,—a frozen melon tapped and filled with a pint of Pommery sec, by way of beginning. All the trays and small tables with their pipes and smokables were brought out, a music-stand was opened and set up near a convenient shaded candle, and the lid of the piano was lifted and propped up rabbit-trap fashion.
Just as the moon was rising, silvering the tops of the trees in the square below, Smearly in white flannels and flaming tie arrived fresh from his studio, where he had been at work on a ceiling for some millionaire’s salon. Jack followed in correct evening dress, and Curran from his office, in a business suit. The major was arrayed in a nondescript combination of yellow nankeen and black bombazine, that would have made him an admirable model for a poster in two tints. He was still full of his experiences at the warehouse hospital after the accident to the Screamer. His little trip to Keyport as acting escort to Mrs. Leroy had not only opened his eyes to a class of workingmen of whose existence he had never dreamed, but it had also furnished him with a new and inexhaustible topic of conversation. Every visitor at his downtown office had listened to his recital by the hour. To-night, however, the major had a new audience, and a new audience always added fuel to the fire of his eloquence.
When the subject of the work at the Ledge came up, and the sympathy of everybody was expressed to Sanford over the calamity to the Screamer,—they had not seen him since the explosion,—the major broke out:—
“You ought to have gone with us, my dear Smearly.” (To have been the only eye-witness at the front, except Sanford himself, gave the major great scope.) “Giants, suh,—every man of ’em; a race, suh, that would do credit to the Vikings; bifurcated walruses, suh; amphibious titans, that can work as well in water as out of it. No wonder our dear Henry” (this term of affection was not unusual with the major) “accomplishes such wonders. I can readily understand why you never see such fellows anywhere else; they dive under water when the season closes,” he continued, laughing, and, leaning over Curran’s shoulder, helped himself to one of the cigars Sam was just bringing in.
“And the major outdid himself, that day, in nursing them,” interrupted Sanford. “You would have been surprised, Jack, to see him take hold. When I turned in for the night on a cot, he was giving one of the derrickmen a sponge bath.”
“Learned it in the army,” said Curran, with a sly look at Smearly. Both of them knew the origin of the major’s military title.
The major’s chin was upturned in the air; his head was wreathed in smoke, the match, still aflame, held aloft with outstretched hand. He always lighted his cigars in this lordly way.
“Many years ago, gentlemen,” the major replied, distending his chest, throwing away the match, and accepting the compliment in perfect good faith; “but these are things one never forgets.” The major had never seen the inside of a camp hospital in his life.
The guests now distributed themselves, each after the manner of his likes: Curran full length on a divan, the afternoon paper in his hand; Jack on the floor, his back to the wall, a cushion behind his head; Smearly in an armchair; and the major bolt upright on a camp-stool near a table which held a select collection of drinkables, presided over by a bottle of seltzer in a silver holder. Sam moved about like a restless shadow, obedient to the slightest lifting of Sanford’s eyebrow, when a glass needed filling or a pipe replenishing.
At ten o’clock, lugging in his great 'cello, Bock came,—short, round, and oily, with a red face that beamed with good humor, and fat puffy hands that wrinkled in pleats when he held his bow. Across a perpetually moist forehead was pasted a lock of black hair. He wore a threadbare coat spattered with spots, baggy black trousers, and a four-button brown holland waistcoat, never clean,—sometimes connected with a collar so much ashamed of the condition of its companion shirt-front that it barely showed its face over a black stock that was held together by a spring. A man who was kindly and loyal; who loved all his kind, spoke six languages, wrote for the Encyclopædia, and made a 'cello sing like an angel.
Despite his frouziness, everybody who knew Bock liked him; those who heard him play loved him. There was a pathos, a tender, sympathetic quality in his touch, that one never forgot: it always seemed as if, somehow, ready tears lingered under his bow. “With a tone like Bock’s” was the highest compliment one could pay a musician. To Sanford this man’s heart was dearer than his genius.
“Why, Bock, old man,” he called, “we didn’t expect you till eleven.”
“Yes, I know, Henri, but ze first wiolin, he take my place. Zey will not know ze difference.” One fat hand was held up deprecatingly, the fingers outspread. “Everybody fan and drink ze beer. Ah, Meester Hardy, I have hear ze news; so you will leave ze brotherhood. And I hear,” lowering his voice and laying his other fat hand affectionately on Jack’s, “zat she ees most lofely. Ah, it ees ze best zing,” his voice rising again. “When ve get old and ugly like old Bock, and so heels over head wiz all sorts of big zings to build like Mr. Sanford, or like poor Smearly paint, paint, all ze time paint, it ees too late to zink of ze settle down. Ees it not so, you man Curran over zere, wiz your newspaper over your head?” This time his voice was flung straight at the recumbent editor as a climax to his breezy salutation.
“Yes, you’re right, Bock; you’re ugly enough to crowd a dime museum, but I’ll forgive you everything if you’ll put some life into your strings. I heard your orchestra the other night, and the first and second violins ruined the overture. What the devil do you keep a lot of”—
“What ees ze matter wiz ze overture, Meester Ole Bull?” said Bock, pitching his voice in a high key, squeezing down on the divan and pinching Curran’s arm with his fat fingers.
“Everything was the matter. The brass drowned the strings, and Reynier might have had hair-oil on his bow for all the sound you heard. Then the tempo was a beat too slow.”
“Henri Sanford, do you hear zis crazy man zat does not know one zing, and lie flat on his back and talk such nonsense? Ze wiolin, Meester Musical Editor Curran, must be pianissimo,—only ze leetle, ze ve’y leetle, you hear. Ze aria is carried by ze reeds.”
“Carried by your grandmother!” said Curran, springing from the divan. “Here, Sam, put a light on the piano. Now listen, you pagan. Beethoven would get out of his grave if he could hear you murder his music. The three bars are so,”—touching the keys, “not so!” And thus the argument went on.
Out on the balcony, Smearly and Quigley, the marine painter, who had just come in, were talking about the row at the Academy over the rejection of Morley’s picture, while the major was in full swing with Hardy, Sanford, and some of the later arrivals, including old Professor Max Shutters, the biologist, who had been so impressively introduced by Curran to the distinguished Pocomokian that the professor had at once mistaken the major for a brother scientist.
“And you say, Professor Slocomb,” said the savant, his hand forming a sounding-board behind his ear, “that the terrapin, now practically extinct, was really plentiful in your day?”
“My learned suh, I have gone down to the edge of my lawn, overlooking the salt-marsh, and seen ’em crawling around like potato bugs. The niggahs couldn’t walk the shore at night without trampling on ’em. This craze of yo’r millionaire epicures for one of the commonest shell-fish we have is”—
“Amphibia,” suggested the professor, as if he had recognized a mere slip of the tongue. “I presume you are referring to theMalaclemmys palustris,—the diamond-back species.”
“You are right, suh,” said the major. “I had forgotten the classification for the moment,” with an air of being perfectly at home on the subject. “The craze for the palustris, my dear suh, is one of the unaccountable signs of the times; it is the beginning of the fall of our institutions, suh. We cannot forget the dishes of peacock tongues in the old Roman days,—a thousand peacocks at a cou’se, suh.”
The major would have continued down through Gibbon and Macaulay if Curran had not shouted out, “Keep still, every soul of you! Bock is going to give us the Serenade.”
The men crowded about the piano. Smearly stood ready to turn the leaves of the music for Curran, and Jack drew a chair closer to the 'cellist.
Bock uncovered the 'cello and held it between his knees, his fat hand resting lightly on the strings. As Curran, with his foot on the pedal of the piano, passed his hand rapidly over the keys, Bock’s head sank to the level of his shoulders, his straggling hair fell over his coat collar, his raised fingers balanced for a moment the short bow, and then Schubert’s masterpiece poured out the very fullness of its heart.
A profound hush, broken only by the music, fell on the room. The old professor leaned forward, both hands cupped behind his ears. Sanford and Jack smoked on, their eyes half closed, and even the major withheld his hand from the well-appointed tray and looked into his empty glass.
At a time when the spell was deepest and the listeners held their breath, the perfect harmony was broken by a discordant ring at the outer door. Curran turned his head angrily, and Sanford looked at Sam, who glided to the door with a catlike tread, opening it without a sound, and closing it gently behind him. The symphony continued, the music rising in interest, and the listeners forgot the threatened interruption.
Then the door opened again, and Sam, making a wide détour, bent over Sanford and whispered in his ear. A woman wanted to see him in the hall. Sanford started, as if annoyed, arose from his seat, and again the knob was noiselessly turned and the door as noiselessly closed, shutting Sanford into the corridor.
“Do you wish to see me, madam?” he asked, crossing to a chair in which the woman sat wrapped in a long cloak, her face buried in her hands.
The woman turned her head towards him without raising her eyelids.
“And you don’t know me any more, Mr. Sanford?”
“Betty! You here!” said Sanford, looking in astonishment at the crouching figure before him.
“I had to come, sir. The druggist at the corner showed me the house. I was a-waitin’ outside in the street below, hopin’ to see you come in. Then I heard the music and knew you were home.” The voice shook with every word. The young dimpled face was drawn and pale, the pretty curly hair in disorder about her forehead. She had the air of one who had been hunted and had just found shelter.
“Does Lacey know you are here?” asked Sanford, a dim suspicion rising in his mind.
Betty shivered slightly, as if the name had hurt her. “No, sir. I left him two nights ago. I got away while he was asleep. All I want now is a place for to-night, and then perhaps to-morrow I can get work.”
“And you have no money?” asked Sanford.
Betty shook her head. “I had a little of my own, but it’s all gone, and I’m so tired, and—the city frightens me so—when the night comes.” The head dropped lower, the sobs choking her. After a little she went on, drying her eyes with her handkerchief, rolled tight in one hand; and resting her cheek on the bent fingers, “I didn’t know nobody but you, Mr. Sanford. I can pay it back.” The voice was scarcely audible.
Sanford stood looking down upon her bowed head. The tired eyelids were half closed, the tears glistening in the light of the overhanging lamp, the shadows of her black curls flecking her face. The cloak hung loosely about her, the curve of her pretty shoulders outlined in its folds. Then she lifted her head, and, looking Sanford in the eyes for the first time, said in a broken, halting voice, “Did you—did you—see—Caleb—Mr. Sanford?”
Sanford nodded slowly in answer. He was trying to make up his mind what he should do with a woman who had broken the heart of a man like Caleb. Through the closed door he heard the strains of Bock’s 'cello, the notes vibrating plaintively. They belonged to some other world.
“Betty,” he said, leaning over her, “how could you do it?”
The girl covered her face with her hands and shrank within her cloak. Sanford went on, his sense of Caleb’s wrongs overpowering him: “What could Lacey do for you? If you could once see Caleb’s face you would never forgive yourself. No woman has a right to leave a man who was as good to her as your husband was to you. And now what has it all come to? You’ve ruined yourself, and broken his heart.”
The girl trembled and bent her head, cowering under the pitiless words; then, in a half-dazed way, she rose from her seat, and, without looking at Sanford, said in a tired, hopeless voice, as if every word brought a pain, “I think I’ll go, Mr. Sanford.”
Sanford watched her silently as she drew her cloak about her and turned to the door. The pathos of the shrinking girlish figure overcame him. He began to wonder if there were something under it all that even Captain Joe did not know of. Then he remembered the tones of compassion in Mrs. Leroy’s voice when her heart had gone out to this girl the morning before, as she said, “Poor child, her misery only begins now; it is a poor place for a tired foot.”
For an instant he stood irresolute. “Wait,” he said. “Wait a moment.”
Betty stood still, without raising her head.
Sanford paused in deep thought, with averted eyes.
“Betty,” he murmured at last in a softened voice, “you can’t go out like this alone. I’ll take you, child, where you will be safe for the night.”
The morning after Betty’s visit to Sanford’s apartments, Captain Joe was seen hurrying up the shore road at Keyport toward his cottage. His eyes shone with excitement, and his breath came in short, quick puffs. He wore his rough working-clothes, and held a yellow envelope in his hand. When he reached the garden gate he swung it open with so mighty a jerk that the sound of the dangling ball and chain thumping against the palings brought Aunty Bell running to the porch.
“Sakes alive, Cap’n Joe!” she exclaimed, following him into the kitchen, “whatever’s the matter? Ain’t nobody hurted, is there?”
“There will be ef I don’t git to New York purty quick. Mr. Sanford’s got Betty, an’ them Leroy folks is a-keepin’ on her till I git there.”
Aunty Bell sank into a chair, her hands twisted in her apron, the tears starting in her eyes.
“Who says so?”
“Telegram—come in the night,” he answered, almost breathless, throwing the yellow envelope into her lap. “Git me a clean shirt quick as God’ll let ye. I ain’t got but ten minutes to catch that eight-ten train.”
“But ye ain’t a-goin’ till ye see Caleb, be ye? He won’t like it, maybe, if”—
“Don’t ye stop there talkin’, Aunty Bell. Do as I tell ye,” he said, stripping off his suspenders and tugging at his blue flannel shirt. “I ain’t a-goin’ to stop for nobody nor nothin’. That little gal’s fetched up hard jes’ where I knowed she would, an’ I won’t have a minute’s peace till I git my hands onto her. I ain’t slep’ a night since she left, an’ you know it.”
“How do ye know she’ll come with ye?” asked Aunty Bell, as she gave him his shirt. Her hands were trembling.
“I ain’t a-worritin’,” he answered, thrusting his head and big chest into the stiff garment; fumbling, as he spoke, with his brown hands, for the buttons. “Gimme that collar.”
“Well, I’m kind’er wonderin’ if ye hadn’t better let Caleb know. I don’t know what Caleb’ll say”—
“I ain’t a-carin’ what Caleb says. I’ll stop that leak when I git to 't.” He held his breath for a moment and clutched the porcelain button with his big fingers, trying to screw it into his collar, as if it had been a nut on a bolt. “Here, catch hold o’ this button; it’s so plaguy tight. No,—I don’t want no toothbrush, nor nothin’. I wouldn’t ’er come home at all, but I was so gormed up, an’ she’s along with them Leroy folks Mr. Sanford knows. My—my”—he continued, forcing his great arms through the tight sleeves of his Sunday coat with a humping motion of his back, and starting toward the door. “Jes’ to think o’ Betty wanderin’ ’bout them streets at night!”
“Why, ye ain’t got no cravat on, Cap’n Joe!” called Aunty Bell, running after him, tie in hand, to the porch.
“Here, give it to me!” he cried, snatching it and cramming it into his pocket. “I’ll fix it on the train.” In another moment he was halfway down the plank walk, waving his hand, shouting back over his shoulder, “Send word to Cap’n Bob to load them other big stone an’ git ’em to the Ledge to-day; the wind’s goin’ to haul to the south’ard. I’ll be back ’bout eight o’clock to-night.”
Aunty Bell looked after his hurrying figure until the trees shut it from view; then, gasping with excitement, angry with herself for having asked so little, she reëntered the kitchen and again dropped into a chair.
Betty’s flight had been a sore blow to the bustling little wife. She had been the last to believe that Betty had really deserted Caleb for Lacey, even after Captain Joe had told her how the mate of the Greenport boat had seen them board the New York train together.
As for the captain, he had gone about his work with his mind filled with varying emotions: sympathy for Caleb, sorrow and mortification over Betty’s fall, and bitter, intense, dangerous hatred of Lacey. These were each in turn, as they assailed her, consumed by a never ending hunger to get the child home again, that she might begin the undoing of her fatal step. To him she was still the little girl he used to meet on the road, with her hair in a tangle about her head, her books under her arm. As he had never fully realized, even when she married Caleb, that anything had increased her responsibilities, or that she could be anything but the child she looked,—so he could not now escape the conviction that somehow or other “she’d been hoodooed,” as he expressed it, and that when she came to herself her very soul would cry out in bitter agony.
Every day since her flight he had been early and late at the telegraph office, and had directed Bert Simmons, the letter-carrier on the shore road, to hunt him up wherever he might be,—on the dock or aboard his boat,—should a letter come bearing his name. The telegram, therefore, was not a surprise. That Sanford should have found her was what he could not understand.
Aunty Bell, with the big secret weighing at her heart, busied herself about the house, so as to make the hours pass quickly. She was more conservative and less impulsive in many things than the captain; that is, she was apt to consider the opinions of her neighbors, and shape her course accordingly, unless stopped by one of her husband’s outbursts and won over to his way of thinking. The captain knew no law but his own emotions, and his innate sense of right and wrong sustained by his indomitable will and courage. If the other folks didn’t like it, the other folks had to get out of the way; he went straight on.
“Ain’t nobody goin’ to have nothin’ to do with Betty, if she does git tired of Lacey an’ wants to come home, poor child,” Aunty Bell had said to Captain Joe only the night before, as they sat together at supper. “Them Nevins gals was sayin’ yesterday they’d pass her on the road and wouldn’t speak to her, not if they see her starvin’, and was a-goin’ on awful about it; and Mis’ Taft said”—
The captain raised his head quickly. “Jane Bell,”—when the captain called Aunty Bell “Jane” the situation was serious,—“I ain’t got nothin’ to do with them Nevins gals, nor Mis’ Taft, nor nobody else, and you ain’t got nothin’, neither. Ain’t we hed this child runnin’ in an’ out here jes’ like a kitten ever since we been here? Don’t you know clean down in yer heart that there ain’t no better gal ever lived 'n Betty? Ain’t we all liable to go ’stray, and ain’t we all of us so dirt mean that if we had our hatches off there ain’t nobody who see our cargo would speak to us? Now don’t let me hear no more about folks passin’ her by. I ain’t a-goin’ to pass her by, and you ain’t, neither, if them Nevins gals and old Mother Taft and the whole kit and caboodle of ’em walks on t’other side.”
She remembered the very sound of these words, as she rested for a moment, rocking to and fro, in the kitchen, after the captain had gone, her fat little feet swinging clear of the floor. She could even hear the tone of his voice, and could see the flashing of his eye. The remembrance gave her courage. She wanted some one to come in, that she might put on the captain’s armor and fight for the child herself.
She had not long to wait. Mrs. Taft was already coming up the walk,—for dinner, perhaps. Carleton was walking beside her. They had met at the gate.
“I heard the captain had to go to New York, Aunty Bell, and so I thought maybe you’d be alone,” said Mrs. Taft, taking off her bonnet. “No news from the runaway, I suppose? Ain’t it dreadful? She’s the last girl in the world I would ’a’ thought of doing a thing like that.”
“We ain’t none of us perfect, Mis’ Taft. Take a chair, Mr. Carleton. If we was, we could most of us stay here; there wouldn’t be no use o’ heaven.”
“But, Aunty Bell!” exclaimed the visitor, “you surely don’t think—Why, it’s awful for Betty to go and do what she did”—
“I ain’t judgin’ nobody, Mis’ Taft. I ain’t a-blamin’ Betty, an’ I ain’t a-blamin’ Caleb. I’m only thinkin’ of all the sufferin’ that poor child’s got to go through now, an’ what a mean world this is for her to have to live in.”
“Serves the old man right for marrying a girl young enough to be his daughter,” said Carleton, with a laugh, tilting back his chair,—his favorite attitude. “I made up my mind the first day I saw her that she was a little larky. She’s been fooling West all summer,—anybody could see that.” He had not forgiven the look in Caleb’s eye that afternoon aboard the Screamer. “When ’s the captain coming home?”
Aunty Bell looked at the superintendent, her lips curling, as the hard, dry laugh rang in her ears. She had never fancied him, and she liked him less now than ever. Her first impulse was to give him a piece of her mind,—an indigestible morsel when served hot. Then she remembered that her husband was having some difficulty with him about the acceptance of the concrete disk, and so her temper, chilled by this more politic second thought, cooled down and stiffened into a frigid determination not to invite him to dinner if she ate nothing herself all day.
“Cap’n 'll be here in the mornin’,” she answered curtly. “Got any message for him?”
“Yes. Tell him I was out to the Ledge yesterday with my transit, and the concrete is too low by six inches near the southeast derrick. It’s got to come up to grade before I can certify. I thought I’d come in and tell him,—he wanted to know.”
The door opened, and the tall form of Captain Bob Brandt, the Screamer’s skipper, entered.
“Excuse me, Mis’ Bell,” he said, removing his hat and bowing good-humoredly to everybody. “I saw ye pass, Mr. Carleton, an’ I wanted to tell ye that we’re ready now to h’ist sail fur the Ledge. We got 'leven stone on. Caleb ain’t workin’ this week, an’ one o’ the other divers’s a-goin’ to set ’em. Guess it’s all right; the worst is all done. Will you go out with us, or trust me to git ’em right?”
“Well, where are you going to put ’em?” asked Carleton in his voice of authority.
“Las’ time Caleb was down, sir, he said he wanted four more stone near the boat-landin’, in about twelve foot o’ water, to finish that row; then we kin begin another layer nex’ to ’em, if ye say so. S’pose you know Cap’n Joe ain’t here?—gone to New York. Will you go with us?”
“No; you set ’em. I’ll come out in the tug in the morning and drop a rod on ’em, and if they’re not right you’ll have to take 'em up again. That concrete’s out of level, you know.”
“What concrete?”
“Why, the big circular disk,” snapped Carleton.
This was only another excuse of Carleton’s for refusing to sign the certificate. The engineer had postponed his visit, and so this fresh obstruction was necessary to maintain his policy of delay.
“Not when I see it, sir, three days ago,” said Captain Brandt in surprise. “It was dead low water, an’ the tide jest touched the edges of the outer band all round even.”
“Well, I guess I know,” retorted the superintendent, flaring up. “I was out there yesterday with a level, an’ walked all over it.”
“Must’er got yer feet wet, then, sir,” said the skipper, with a laugh, as he turned toward the door. “The tide’s been from eight inches to a foot higher ’n usual for three days past; it’s full-moon tides.”
During the talk Aunty Bell and Mrs. Taft had slipped into the sitting-room, and the superintendent, finding himself alone, called to the skipper, and joined him on the garden walk.
As the afternoon hours wore on, and no other callers came in,—Mrs. Taft having gone,—Aunty Bell brought a big basket, filled with an assortment of yarn stockings of varied stains and repairs, out to a chair on the porch, and made believe to herself that she was putting them in order for the captain when he should need a dry pair. Now and then she would stop, her hand in the rough stocking, her needle poised, her mind going back to the days when she first moved to Keyport, and this curly-haired girl from the fishing-village a mile or more away had won her heart. Since the death of that baby girl of long ago, Betty, somehow, had filled day by day all the deep corners of the sore heart, still aching from this earlier sorrow. When the girl’s mother died, a few months after Betty’s marriage, Aunty Bell had thrown a shawl over her head, and, going to Caleb’s cabin, had mounted the stairs to Betty’s little room and shut the door. With infinite tenderness she had drawn the girl’s head down on her own bosom, and had poured out to her all the mother’s love she had in her own heart, and had told her of that daughter of her dreams. Betty had not forgotten it, and among all those she knew on the shore road she loved Aunty Bell the best. There were few days in the week—particularly in the summer, when Caleb was away—that she was not doing something for Aunty Bell, her bright face and merry, ringing laugh filling the house and the little woman’s life,—an infectious, bubbling, girlish laugh that made it a delight to be with her.
But a fresh thought, like a draft from an open door, rushed into Aunty Bell’s mind with a force that sent a shiver through her tender heart, and chilled every kind impulse. Suppose Caleb should turn his back on this girl wife of his. What then? Ought she to take her to her heart and brave it out with the neighbors? What sort of an example was it to other young women along the shore, Aunty Bell’s world? Could they, too, run off with any young fellows they met, and then come home and be forgiven? It was all very well for the captain,—he never stopped to think about these things,—that was his way; but what washerduty in the matter? Would it not be better in the end for Betty if she were made to realize her wrong-doing, and to suffer for it?
These alternating memories and perplexities absorbed her as she sat on the porch, the stockings in her lap, her mind first on one course of action and then on another, until some tone of Betty’s voice, or the movement of her hand, or the toss of her head came back, and with it the one intense, overwhelming desire to help and comfort the child she loved.
When it began to grow dark she lighted the lamp in the front room, and made herself a cup of tea in the kitchen. Every few minutes she glanced at the clock, her ears alert for the whistle of the incoming train. Losing confidence even in the clock, she again took her seat on the porch, her arms on the rail, her plump chin resting on her hands, straining her eyes to see far down the road.
When the signaling whistle of the train was heard, the long-drawn sound reverberating over the hills, she ran to the gate, and stood there, her apron thrown over her head. Soon a carriage passed, filled with summer visitors, their trunks piled in front, and drove on up the road. Then a man carrying a bag hurried by with two women, their arms full of bundles. After that the road was deserted. These appeared to be all the passengers coming her way. As the minutes dragged, and no sound of footsteps reached her ear, and no big burly figure with a slender girl beside it loomed against the dim light of the fading sky, her courage failed and her eyes began to grow moist. She saw it all now: Betty dared not come home and face Caleb and the others!
Suddenly she heard her name called from inside the house, and again from the kitchen door.
“Aunty Bell! Aunty Bell! where be ye?”
It was the captain’s voice: he must have left the train at the drawbridge and crossed lots, coming in at the rear gate.
She hurried up the plank walk, and met him at the kitchen door. He was leaning against the jamb. It was too dark to see his face. A dreadful sense of some impending calamity overcame her.
“Where’s Betty?” she faltered, scarcely able to speak.
The captain pointed inside.
The little woman pushed past him into the darkening room. For a moment she stood still, her eyes fixed on Betty’s slender, drooping figure and bowed head, outlined against the panes of the low window.
“Betty!” she cried, running forward with outstretched arms.
The girl did not move.
“Betty—my child!” Aunty Bell cried again, taking the weeping woman in her arms.
Then, with smothered kisses and halting, broken speech, these two—the forgiving and the forgiven—sank to the floor.
Outside, on a bench by the door, sat the captain, rocking himself, bringing his hands down on his knees, and with every seesaw repeating in a low tone to himself, “She’s home. She’s home.”