278CHAPTER XXIXA FATAL LETTER
For the last of many days the light-housekeeper had watched from his aerie for the coming of the fleet––and had not been disappointed.
His horse and buggy stood by the tower doorstep, and into it he leaped, whipping up the horse with the same motion. Then down the road he had flown like Paul Revere rousing the villagers, and followed by an excited, half-hysterical procession of women and children.
So thick had been the murk and scud that he had only caught sight of the approaching leader while she was a bare two miles off the point, and even when Nat had landed the crowd was momentarily being augmented from all the houses along the King’s Road and as far south as Castalia.
When the officer of the law laid his hand on Code’s arm and spoke the words that meant imprisonment and disgrace in the very heart of the village festival, a groan went up that caused the officer to look sharply about him.
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Despite the work Nat had done on his brief stop at the Head, Code was the hero of the day, for he had come in with the first cargo of fish and had won the distinction of being the first to effect the salvation of the island.
“Oh, let him go!” said a voice. “He ain’t goin’ to run away!” Nat, standing behind his captive, turned sharply upon the offender.
“No, you bet he ain’t!” he snapped. “He’s been doin’ that too long already. He’s got somethin’ to answer for this time.”
Into the harbor at that moment swept the Tanners’Rosan, and abreast of her the steamer from St. John’s. Five minutes behind came Jed Martin’sHerring Bone, and the first of the fleet was safely in.
As the discontented and muttering mob followed Code toward the little jail back of the Odd Fellows’ Hall, none noticed that the lovely schooner that had led the procession in was stealing quietly out again into the thick of the gale.
And those who did notice it thought nothing of it in the excitement of the moment, probably judging her to be some coaster who had run in to look for a leak. She had been tied up just ten minutes at the Mallaby wharf.
As the sorry procession passed the Schofield cottage, Code’s mother ran out sobbing and threw herself upon him. She had not seen her son before280(although orphan Josie had told her theLasswas in), for Code had been closeted with Boughton, and now her first glimpse of him was as an accused criminal.
But, regardless of watching eyes and public opinion, she walked all the way to the jail with him and went inside; and the two were absolutely oblivious to their surroundings, so overjoyed were they to see each other and so intimate was their companionship.
Along the edge of the crowd great Pete Ellinwood slouched, looking with dimmed eyes at mother and son.
“Ain’t she the mother, though?” he said to himself. “Just like a girl she is––not a day past thirty by her looks!”
The jailer, who was regularly employed as janitor of the Free Baptist Church, opened the little house for his unexpected guest. It consisted of a room, fitted for sleeping, and a cell. These were not connected, but were side by side, facing the passage that ran through from front to back of the building.
Code was taken to the cell, and only his mother and Pete stayed with him to talk over the situation. It was determined to have Squire Hardy come over in the evening (it was now five o’clock) and give his opinion on the legal situation.
Ma Schofield went home and prepared her boy’s281supper herself, and brought it with her own hands for him to eat. Code was in the best of spirits at his success of the afternoon, and had no fear whatever as to the outcome of his present situation.
Pete had gone away for an hour, and Ma Schofield had taken the dishes back home, when the detective came in, saying that a little girl who called herself Josie had come with a message.
Code asked to see her, and the great-eyed, dark little thing wept bitterly over him, for to her fourteen years he represented all the heroes of romance. Even as she passed him the message she knew that she could never love again and that she would shortly die of a broken heart.
Code kissed her, promptly forgot her presence, and opened the note.
It was from Elsa.
“Will be down to see you to-night at eight. Have sent a note to Nat in your name, telling him to be there, too. I think we have him on the hip, so be sure and have the squire and the officer present.”
Code wondered vaguely how they had Nat on the hip, as he had been unable to find a single iota of proof to push home the case he and Elsa had built up against him.
The note brought him stark awake and eager for the conference. He had begun to drowse after a282good home dinner and sixty hours without sleep, but this acted like an electric shock. He was keen and alert, for he knew that this was the night of his destiny. Either he should triumph as he had in the grueling race, or he should have to face the ignominy of transfer and legal proceedings at St. Andrew’s.
At half-past seven Squire Hardy, his round, red face fringed by snowy whiskers, came in. He dragged a chair into the passageway in front of the bar and was beginning a long and laborious law opinion when the detective, who had been to Mis’ Shannon’s boarding-house for dinner, returned.
The two began to fight the matter out between them when, at a quarter to eight, Nat came in, dressed in his best clothes and smoking a land cigar.
“Well, what do you want of me, Schofield?” he asked. “You sent for me, but you needn’t try to beg off. I won’t listen to it. Now, go ahead.”
On the instant a feminine voice was heard outside, and a moment later Elsa Mallaby stepped into the little four-foot passage.
“Oh, how many there are here!” she said in a surprised voice. “Perhaps, Code, I had better wait until later.”
“Hey, Roscoe!” sung out Code, hardly able to control his desire to grin. “Bring Mrs. Mallaby a chair.” Roscoe obeyed and added two more, so283that all were placed within a small compass just outside Code’s cell.
From Elsa Mallaby’s first entrance Nat had observed her with a certain flicker of fear and hatred in his eyes. She, on the other hand, greeted him with the same formal cordiality she had used toward the others. Though utterly incongruous in such surroundings, she seemed absolutely at her ease and instantly assumed command of the situation.
“Excuse me,” said Nat, who had not sat down and shifted from one foot to the other, “but Schofield sent for me, an’ I would like to find out what he wants. I’ve got to go along.”
“Schofield didn’t send for you––I sent for you. There are several things about this imprisonment of Code that don’t look right to me, and we may as well settle the whole business once and for all while we are here together. Now, Mr. Durkee,” she said, turning to the detective, “would you mind telling me what the charge is against Captain Schofield?”
“To tell you the truth, ma’am,” said he respectfully, “there are two charges out against him. One, by the insurance company, sues for recovery of money paid on the schoonerMay Schofield, and charges that the said schooner was sunk intentionally, first because Schofield wanted a newer boat, and second because the policy of theMaywas to expire284in a few days and could not have been renewed except at a much advanced rate.”
“And the other charge?”
“Is for murder in the first degree, growing out of the intentional sinking of the schooner. Captain Burns is the complainant.”
“Thank you.” She flashed one of her radiant smiles at him and made him a friend for life.
“That was a great race to-day,” she remarked irrelevantly, but with enthusiasm. “How much did you beat theNettie B., Code?”
“A half an hour,” he replied, mystified at the turn of the conversation.
“Well, thatisa coincidence.” She looked from one to the other. “It’s exactly the same amount of time he beat you seven months ago when he raced the oldMayagainst theM. C. Burns, isn’t it?” Her glance shot to Nat.
“Why, I believe it is, Mrs. Mallaby,” he stammered. The quick transition to that painful and dangerous period had caught him off his guard.
“That was a great race, too,” she said cheerfully, “and it’s too bad you never sailed the second one. Especially after you wanted to bet so much. You thought you would win the second race, didn’t you, Nat?” She was sweetness itself.
“Why, yes, I thought so,” he admitted guardedly. “But I don’t see what all this has got to do––”
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“Well, it hasn’t very much,” she said deprecatingly, “but I was just interested. What made you so sure you would win that second race that you tried to bet?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he answered easily. “I just had confidence––”
“In what, Nat Burns? Your schooner had easily been beaten the first time and she was notoriously slower than theMay. Every one in the island knows that you can’t sail a vessel like Code Schofield can, and that you are afraid to carry sail. To-day proved it. Anybody with half an eye could see that that stays’l was cut with a knife and didn’t blow off. All these things being so, what made you so sure that you would win that second race seven months ago?”
Nat looked at her steadily. His nervousness had gone, apparently, and he was his old crafty self once more.
“That is none of your business, Mrs. Mallaby,” he said insolently. “And now if you’ll let me pass I’ll keep an engagement.”
“Mr. Durkee,” she said, “please keep Mr. Burns here until we have entirely finished.”
“Yes, ma’am, I will,” said the hypnotized man, and Nat, after a glare around upon the unsympathetic audience slumped down into a chair and smoked sullenly.
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“Steady as she goes my friend,” broke in Squire Hardy, looking at Nat. “Answer the lady’s question. What made you think you would win?”
“I refuse to answer.”
“He really doesn’t need to answer,” said Elsa. “I will answer for him. Code kindly let me have the log of theM. C. Burns.”
Schofield drew the old book from his pocket and handed it through the bars. Then Elsa, opening it to the last pages, read aloud the few entries that Code had discovered that day when he was a prisoner aboard theNettie B.As she read the silence was intense, but all eyes were upon Nat, who, startled at the sudden appearance of this document he had so long forgotten, chewed savagely upon his dead cigar. His face had grown pale and his rough hands were clasped tightly together.
“You see,” said Elsa, when she had finished, “that Burns had determined upon the winning of his next race. It is perfectly clear, is it not?”
The breathless circle nodded.
It was a strange setting for the working out of the drama. Overhead a suspended oil-lamp flamed and smelled. Outside the crash of surf against the rocks came to them, and the wind whistled about the eaves of the little stone building.
“Now the mirror,” she said to Code, and, still wondering, he handed the trinket to her. “Tell287about this,” she directed him with a smile and a long look from her deep dark eyes.
And Code told them. He told of the time his father first gave it to him, of his experiments in astronomy, and of Nat’s coveting the mirror. He told of that night after the first race when he had looked for the log-book of theMayand had seen the mirror in its drawer. He told of its final discovery in the secret box of the storeroom on theNettie.
As he talked the memory of the wrongs against him flamed in his breast, and he directed his story at Nat, who sat silent and immovable in the corner.
“If I found this aboard theNettieit proves that he must have come and got it!” he cried. “He boarded the oldMay, but it was not for this that he came!”
“What, then?” asked Hardy.
“To damage the schooner so that she would break down under the strain of the next race,” flared Code, facing Nat dramatically. Burns only clenched his jaws tighter on his cigar.
“You don’t believe this, perhaps, squire, but listen and I’ll tell you how the oldMaysank.” And once again he described the crashing calamity aboard the overloaded boat as she struggled home to Freekirk Head with the last of her strength.
“You, squire, you’ve sailed your boats in your288time! You know that never could have happened even to the oldMayunless something had been done. And somethingwasdone! Burns had weakened the topm’st and the mainstay!”
All eyes were fixed on Nat, but he did not move. He was very pale now, but apparently self-possessed. Suddenly, with a hand that appeared firm, he removed the cigar from his mouth and cast it on the floor.
“That,” he said with deadly coolness, “is a blasted fine plot that you have all worked out together. But every word of it is a lie, for the whole thing is without a single foundation in fact. Prove it!”
“I’ll give you a last chance, Burns,” said Elsa in a level voice that contained all the concentrated hatred that Code had detected in her before. “Dismiss these charges against Code.”
“Never!” The word was catapulted from him as though by a muscular convulsion. “He murdered my father, and he shall pay for it!”
Without a word Elsa rose from her chair and walked back into the adjoining room. A moment later she reappeared, leading a beautiful girl who was perhaps twenty years old.
The effect was electric. The people in the little group seemed frozen into the attitudes they had last assumed.
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Only in Nat Burns was there a change.
He seemed to have shrunk back into his clothes until he was but a little, wizened man. His face was ghastly and clammy perspiration glittered on his forehead in the lamplight.
“Caroline!” he cried in a hoarse voice that did not rise above a whisper.
“Yes, Caroline,” said Elsa, her black eyes flashing fire. “You had forgotten her, hadn’t you? You had forgotten the girl who loved you, that you drove away from the island! You had forgotten the girl that gave you everything and got nothing! But that has come back upon you now, and these people are here to see it. Even your father, in his log-book, mentioned when my sister left Grande Mignon, apparently to work in the factory at Lubec. As though my sister should ever work in a factory!”
“So this explains why she went that time,” said Squire Hardy gently. “We all wondered at it, Elsa––we all wondered at it.”
“And well you might. But he is the cause! And he wouldn’t marry her! I have waited for this chance of revenge, and now he shall pay.”
Caroline Fuller, who was even more beautiful than her sister, looked at Nat in a kind of daze. Suddenly there was a spasmodic working of her features.
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“Oh, that I could ever have loved him!” she said in a faint voice. “Here, Elsa, read it to them all!”
From under her cloak she drew a crumpled envelope which she passed to her sister.
With a snarl like that of a wild animal Nat leaped from his chair toward the girl, but Durkee struck him violently and he reeled back into it.
“You swore you burned them all!” muttered Nat. “You swore it! You swore it!”
“Yes, and she did, the innocent child––all but this one that she had mislaid in a book you once sent her,” cried Elsa. “But I found it, Burns. Where do you think I’ve been all this while? At St. John’s, where she lives with my aunt. And do you think there was no reason for that letter being saved? God takes care of things like this, and now you’ve got to pay, Nat Burns! I knew there would come a time. I knew there would!”
She was still standing, and she drew the letter out of the envelope.
“Look, squire, Code, any of you who know. Is this Nat’s writing?”
“Yes,” they all declared as the letter passed from hand to hand.
“Read it,” said the squire, forcing Caroline Fuller to sit down in his chair.
“I’ll spare him hearing the first of it,” said Elsa.291“It is what men write to women they love or feign to love, and it belongs to my sister. But here”––she turned the first sheet inside out––“listen to this.”
Involuntarily they all leaned forward, all except Durkee, who went over and stood beside Nat. The latter gave no sign except a dry rattling sound in his throat as he swallowed involuntarily.
“I’ve got him, Caroline––I’ve got him!” she read. “He’ll beat me again, will he? Well, not if I know it! Everybody in the Head seems tickled to death that he won, but you know how little that means to me. It is simply another reason why I should beat him the next time.
“Dearest little girl, it’s the easiest thing in the world. I’ve just come back from going over theMay(it’s midnight), and the thing looks good. You know Schofield is a great hand to carry sail. Well, when you hear about the race, maybe you’ll hear that his foretopmast came down in a squall. If you don’t, I’ll be much surprised, for I’ve attended to it myself, and I don’t think it will take much of a squall.
“Maybe you’ll hear, too, that his mainstay snapped and his sticks went into the water all because he carried too much sail. I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ve attended to that, too. So I guess with his foretopmast cracked off and his mainstay snapped292the oldM. C.ought to romp home an easy victor, if she is an old ice-wagon. I tried to get Schofield to bet, but he’s so tight with his cash he wouldn’t shake down a five-cent piece. Good thing for him, though, he doesn’t know it. Nothing would do me more good than to get his roll, the virtuous old deacon!”
She stopped reading as a rumble of mirth went round the circle. Code in the rôle of a virtuous deacon was a novelty. Even the hard lines of Elsa’s face relaxed and she smiled, albeit a trifle grimly.
“That’s all,” she said, folding up the letter and putting it back into the envelope. “The rest is personal and not ours. Now, Mr. Durkee, if you still care to consider Captain Schofield as the defendant in those two suits I want your arguments.”
“I don’t, Mrs. Mallaby,” said the detective, and called the Freekirk Head jailer. “But I know who is going to take Schofield’s place.”
He glared at Nat Burns, who cowered silent and miserable in his corner. Despite his sailing as Nat’s guest he had never brought himself to like the man, and now he was glad to be well rid of him.
Code stepped out a free man, and his first action was to take both of Elsa’s hands and try to thank her. Her eyes dropped and she blushed. When he had stammered through his speech he turned to293Caroline Fuller and repeated it, but the sad smile she gave him tore at his heart.
“I came because Elsa asked me to save a friend,” she said, “not because I wished to revenge myself on Nat. I am glad it was you, for I would do anything on earth for Elsa.”
Code turned mystified eyes upon Mrs. Mallaby.
“I thought you did this to revenge yourself on Nat,” he half whispered.
“I did, partly,” she replied. She lifted her eyes to his and he saw something in them that startled him––something that, in all his association with her, he had never seen before. He stood silent, amazed, overwhelmed while she turned her face away.
294CHAPTER XXXELSA’S TRIUMPH
Code Schofield’s appearance at his schooner the next morning to help the crew unload was the signal for a veritable native-son demonstration. Not only had the story of Code’s sudden liberation and Nat’s as sudden imprisonment spread like wild-fire clear to Southern Head Light, twenty miles away, but the tale was hailed with joy.
For Nat had come into his own in the hatred of his townsfolk. Among the fleet he was heartily unpopular because he had not fished all season and then had tried to catch the first market with a purchased cargo, merely to revenge himself on Code and the Tanners. Throughout his conduct had been utterly selfish, whereas others had worked for the island and for its salvation.
With the landing of the two schooners from the fleet the women-folk were soon apprised of Nat’s action, and, had it not been for Elsa’s sensational disclosures in the little jail that made him the sudden occupant of a cell, there is no question but what295the women of Marblehead would have been equaled by the women of Freekirk Head; and Skipper Ireson would not have ridden down history alone in tarry glory.
But now, since Code was free, the whole town exulted, and there was a steady procession to the jail to look in upon the first real criminal the village had mustered in years.
Code, after checking the scale-tally all morning as his stalwart men swung the baskets of salted fish out of the hold, went along the road to Squire Hardy’s house after dinner and interviewed that worthy man.
“You’ve got him where you want him,” said the squire, “but you can’t get much except damages.”
“I don’t want even damages,” said Code. “I want him to take all his things and go away from here and never come back. Since he didn’t do anyrealdamage to anybody I don’t care what becomes of him so long as he leaves here.”
“Well, all you must do is to withdraw your charges against him––they were put in your name so that Mrs. Mallaby’s would not have to appear.”
“But even if I do, won’t the State take it up. You know a murder case––”
“Yes, my boy, but this is no murder case now. On the face of it Nat did not set out to murder his father; he did not set out really tosinkyour296schooner––merely to disable it; the proof is indisputable and self-evident by his own confession and letter.
“Well, now, in a private racing agreement between gentlemen, if both vessels are registered and rated seaworthy, nothing that happens to one can be laid to the other unless, as in the present case, one deliberately damages the other. The principal punishment is a moral one administered by the former friends of the dishonest man, but the victim can collect money damages. Naturally the insurance company will change its charge so as to accuse Nat instead of you.
“They have a proven case against him already, and he will have to pay them nearly all they gave you––so that, in the end, he really pays you for the damage he did that day. Then, I understand, he is going to pay an amount to the family of each man who lost his life in theMay, on condition that they will never sue him.”
“Whee-ew!” whistled Code. “When he gets through he won’t have much money left, I guess.”
“No, I guess he won’t,” agreed the judge, “and it serves him right. He’ll probably have to sell his schooner and start life over again somewhere else. I hope he starts honestly this time. Then you won’t take any action against him, Code?”
“Me? Oh, no!” said Schofield. “I’ve nothing297against him now. Let him go. But I’ll tell you one thing, squire––he had better be smuggled away to-night quietly, because, if the crowd gets hold of him, it might not be good for his health.”
The squire agreed and Code went back to his work. Late that afternoon Pete Ellinwood swung the last basket of the catch to the scales and Code completed his tally.
“Sixteen hundred and seventy quintal,” he announced, “and forty-three pounds. At a hundred pounds a quintal that makes 167,078 pounds, and at three cents a pound totals to $5,012.34. Not bad for a two months’ cruise, but my soul and body, Bill Boughton, how the fish did run!”
“It’s a good catch, Code, and fine fish,” answered Boughton, who had been writing. “How will you have the money––in a lump or individual checks?”
“Separate checks.” Boughton went back to his glass-surrounded desk to write them.
Code, being the sole owner of theCharming Lass, took two thousand dollars as his share, and the rest was divided almost equally among the other nine men, a trifle extra going to Pete Ellinwood for his services as mate.
“It was a toppin’ haul,” declared Pete jovially, slapping his well-filled pocket after a visit to the bank, “an’ the rest of them poor devils won’t get over two and a half a pound––some of ’em only298two, when there’s lots of fish. Half a cent a pound is a pretty good bonus!”
Code had dinner with his mother that night, and appeared for it carefully dressed. What was his surprise to see his mother in her one silk dress.
“I’m going up to Mallaby House,” he said in answer to her inquiring look. “But you! What’s all this gaiety, mother?”
“I am going to hear an account of how you behaved yourself on the voyage, Code,” she said, attempting severity.
“By an eye-witness?” Visions of Ellinwood, painfully arrayed, danced in his head.
“Yes.”
“Um-m. Well, I won’t be home until late, then, because it’s a long story.”
“You rascal!” said his mother, and kissed him.
On the way to Mallaby House (it was up the old familiar path that he had raced down so recklessly the night of the great fire), he thought over the thing that his eyes had seen for an instant the night before in the jail.
Elsa loved him, he knew now, and she had always loved him. He cursed himself for a stupid fool in that it had taken him so long to find out, but he was relieved to know at last upon what footing to meet her. She was no longer a baffling and alluring299creature of a hundred chameleon moods; she was a lonely girl.
Martin, who had been his body-servant while aboard the mystery schooner, opened the door, and bowed with decided pleasure at seeing his temporary master. He ventured congratulations that Schofield was free of the law’s shadow.
“Mrs. Mallaby is up-stairs, sir,” he said, taking Code’s hat. “Just step into the drawing-room, sir, and I’ll call her.”
It was a sample of Elsa’s taste that she illuminated all her rooms with the soft flame of candles or the mellow light of lamps. The mahogany furniture, much of it very old and historic among the island families, gleamed in the warm lights. There were built-in shelves of books against one wall, splendid engravings, etchings, and a few colored prints of the daughters of Louis XV.
Presently Elsa came down the broad staircase. Her hair was parted simply in the middle and done into two wheels, one over each pink ear. Her dress was a plain one of China silk with a square Dutch neck. It fitted her splendid figure beautifully.
Never had she appeared to Code so fresh and simple. The great lady was gone, the keen advocate had disappeared, the austere arbiter of Freekirk Head’s destinies was no more. She seemed a girl. He arose and took her hand awkwardly.
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“I am glad you came so soon,” she said; “but aren’t you neglecting other people? I’m sure there must be friends who would like to see you.”
“Perhaps so, but this time they must wait until I have paid my respects to you. As far as actions go, you are the only friend I have.”
“You are getting quite adept at turning a phrase,” she said, smiling.
“Not as adept as you in turning heaven and earth to liberate an innocent man.”
“I have no answer to that,” she replied. “But seriously, Code, I hope you didn’t come up to thank me again to-night. Please don’t. It embarrasses me. We know each other well enough, I think, to do little things without the endless social prating that should accompany them.”
“You’ve been a dear!” he cried, and took one of her hands in his. She did not move. “Elsa, I want you for my wife!”
“What can I say?” she began in a low voice. “You are noble and good, Code, and I know what has actuated you to say this to me. Some women would be resentful at your offer, but I am not. A week ago, even yesterday, I should have accepted it gladly and humbly, but to-day––no.
“Since last night I have thought, and somehow things have come clearer to me. I have tried to do too much. I have always loved you, Code, but301I can see now that you were not meant for me. I tried to win you because of that love, not considering you or others––only myself. And I defeated my own end. I overshot the mark.”
“I don’t understand,” said Code.
“Perhaps not, but I will tell you. In the first place, I deliberately managed so that Nat Burns and Nellie could never be married. I know now that they have separated for good. I hated Burns for his part in my sister’s life, and I resolved to wreck his happiness if his engagement to Nellie was happiness. So now she is free and you can have her, I think, for the asking.”
“But,” cried Schofield in protest, “I have never said––”
“You did not need to say that you loved some one,” she told him, with a faint smile. “That night at dinner on the schooner with me proved it. I have talked to your mother since I came home, and she told me what Nat’s engagement meant to you, so that I know Nellie is the girl you have always loved. Isn’t it so?”
“Yes,” he replied gently.
“Now is it plain to you how I have undone my own plans? Two things I desired more than anything else on earth, you, and Burns’s ruin. I ruined Burns and paved the way for the loss of you, for, unscrupulous as I am in some things, I could never302marry you when Nellie was free and you loved her. I have wanted happiness so hard, Code, that when I see others who have it within their grasp, I cannot stand in their way.
“But I don’t mind now––I really don’t. That was all in the past, and it’s over now. If you want to make me happy, be happy yourself. I see there are forces that guide our lives that must have their will whatever our own private plans may be, and, having learned that lesson, I feel that perhaps now I shall be happier, somehow, than I ever would have been if my own selfishness had triumphed.”
Code lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it.
“What a splendid woman you are! I know that happiness and joy will come to you. One who has done what you have done cannot fail to realize it. This hour will always be a very sweet one in my memory, and I shall never forget it.”
“Nor I,” she said softly, “for, through you, I have begun to find myself.”
303CHAPTER XXXIPEACE AND PROSPERITY
The village of Freekirk Head prospered once Code Schofield, Bijonah Tanner, and Jed Martin had started the ball rolling. Inside a week another large consignment of fish arrived. Boughton was ready for it, and for all that could come, he said, in the next two months.
This was music to the ears of Code Schofield and the crack crew of theCharming Lass, and nine days after they had picked up their mooring in the little crescent harbor they were off again, salt and bait-laden, for the Banks, expecting to do a little haddocking if they failed to load down with cod before they disappeared in October.
Seven schooners sailed with him that day, and, at the end of nine weeks, theLassweighed anchor and charged home with the first halibut that had come into Freekirk Head in years. On this trip, when he was left in peace, Code displayed all the remarkable “nose” for fish that his father had had before him.
And when he had weighed out the last of his halibut Bill Boughton led him into the little office of304the fishstand and offered him a quarter interest in the business.
Thereafter Code was to make only such trips as he could spare time for, and Pete was to have charge of theLasson other occasions.
He had proved himself worth his salt in the eyes of the whole village, and Boughton needed some one to do the heavy work, while he collected most of the profits. This business future, and three thousand dollars in the bank, led Code one day to send to St. John’s for an architect, and to haggle with Al Green concerning the cost of a piece of land overlooking the blue bay.
The very night that Code and Elsa had their last talk Nat Burns was smuggled aboard a motor sloop lying in Whale Cove and taken over to Eastport, where he was turned loose in the United States.
Half of the value of theNettiewas eaten up by his debts and damage settlements, and so, the better to clear the whole matter up, he sold her at auction inside a week and departed with the remnants of his cash to parts unknown.
Since that time not a word or trace of him had been heard in Freekirk Head except once. That was when the St. John’s paper printed a photograph of an automobile that made a trip across the Hudson Bay country.
Beside the machine stood a man in furs who was305claimed by all who saw the picture to be Nat Burns. Was he running a trap line in the wilds with the Indians, or was he a passenger in the car under an assumed name?
Elsa Mallaby did not even wait for the departure of theCharming Lasson her second voyage before she acted on a determination that had come to her. She shut up Mallaby House entirely, and, with Caroline as her companion, started on a trip around the world, promising to be back in three years.
But she did not go on the mystery schooner, nor did anybody ever see or hear of it again.
It soon developed that the government officials were hard after the boat that had impersonated a gunboat, and would make it very hot both for owners and crew. Elsa knew this the day she made her final triumphant dash into Freekirk Head, and that was the reason that the ship only stayed ten minutes.
So quietly and skilfully was the whole thing managed that, in the excitement of Code’s arrest, every one thought Elsa and her sister had come on the evening boat from St. John’s.
Not three men in the island would have connected her with this strange craft, and two of those weren’t sure enough of anything to speak above a whisper. The third was Code Schofield.
Captain Foraker took the mystery schooner outside306the harbor, pointed her nose straight south by the compass, and held her there for a matter of ten days. At the end of that time he was in danger of pushing Haiti off the map, so he went to Port-au-Prince and sold the schooner at a bargain to the government, which, at that time, happened to need a first-class battle-ship. Then Captain Foraker and the crew divided the money (by Elsa’s orders), and returned to the States.
It was only after the return from his second cruise that Code paid attention to Nellie Tanner. Something in him that respected her trouble and Elsa’s confession at the same time had kept his lips sealed during that short stay at home. But one Sunday after the second trip they climbed to the crest of the mountain back of the closed Mallaby House, and Code told her what had been in his heart all these years.
For a while she said nothing. The sun was setting over the distant Maine coast and the clouds all round the horizon were wonderful masses of short-lived rainbow texture. The sea was the pink and greenish blue of floating oil.
“You get me a trifle shop-worn,” she said at last, laughing uncertainly.
“Then I get you?” He had turned toward her with a flash of boyish eagerness. One look at her radiant face and shining eyes found the answer.
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“Shop-worn?” he said after a while. “Well, so am I, a trifle, but not in the way you mean. If having the down knocked off one and seeing things truer and better for it is being shop-worn, then thank God for the wearing.
“It has been a roundabout way for us, little girl, but at last our paths have met, and from now on, God willing, they shall go together. Come, I want to show you something.”
They walked through the woods until they found the place where the surveyors had laid out the foundation plan for the little house. There they found an interested couple gravely discussing a near-by excavation with the aid of a blue-print.
Presently the couple turned around, and the lovers clutched each other in amazement.
“Bless me,” gasped Code, “if it isn’t ma and Pete Ellinwood!”
THE END
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