CHAPTER XII—CAPTAIN JOE’S CREED
When Captain Joe flung open Caleb’s cabin door, the same cry was on his lips: “She’s home, Caleb, she’s home! Run 'way an’ lef’ him, jes’ ’s I knowed she would, soon’s she got the spell off’n her.”
Caleb looked up over the rim of his glasses into the captain’s face. He was sitting at the table in his shirt-sleeves and rough overalls, the carpet slippers on his feet. He was eating his supper,—the supper that he had cooked himself.
“How d’ ye know?” he asked. The voice did not sound like Caleb’s; it was hoarse and weak.
“She come inter Mr. Sanford’s place night 'fore last, scared almost to death, and he tuk her to them Leroy folks; they was stavin’ good to her an’ kep’ ’er till mornin’, an’ telegraphed me. I got the eight-ten this mornin’. There warn’t no time, Caleb,”—in an apologetic tone,—“or I’d sent for ye, jes’ ’s Aunty Bell wanted me to; but I knowed ye’d understand. We jes’ got back. I’d brought ’er up, only she’s dead beat out, poor little gal.”
It was a long answer of the captain’s to so direct a question, and it was made with more or less misgiving. It was evident from his manner that he was a little nervous over the result. He did not take his eyes from the diver’s face as he fired these shots at random, wondering where and how they would strike.
“Where is she now?” inquired Caleb quietly.
“Down on my kitchen floor with her head in Aunty Bell’s lap. Git yer hat and come 'long.” The captain leaned over the table as he spoke, and rested one hand on the back of Caleb’s chair.
Caleb did not raise his eyes nor move. “I can’t do her no good no more, Cap’n Joe. It was jes’ like ye to try an’ help her. Ye’d do it for anybody that was a-sufferin’; but I don’t see my way clear. I done all I could for her 'fore she lef’ me,—leastwise I thought I had.” There was no change in the listless monotone of his voice.
“You allus done by her, Caleb.” The captain’s hand had slipped from the chair-back to Caleb’s shoulder. “I know it, and she knows it now. She ain’t ever goin’ to forgive herself for the way she’s treated ye,—tol’ me so to-day comin’ up. She’s been hoodooed, I tell ye,—that’s what’s the matter; but she’s come to now. Come along; I’ll git yer hat. She ought’er go to sleep purty soon.”
“Ye needn’t look for my hat, Cap’n Joe. I ain’t a-goin’,” said Caleb quietly, leaning back in his chair. The lamp shone full on his face and beard. Captain Joe could see the deep lines about the eyes, seaming the dry, shrunken skin. The diver had grown to be a very old man in a week.
“You say you ain’t a-goin’, Caleb?” In his heart he had not expected this.
“No, Cap’n Joe; I’m goin’ to stay here an’ git along th’ best way I kin. I ain’t blamin’ Betty. I’m blamin’ myself. I been a-thinkin’ it all over. She done ’er best to love me and do by me, but I was too old for ’er. If it hadn’t been Billy, it would’er been somebody else,—somebody younger ’n me.”
“She don’t want nobody else but you, Caleb.” The captain’s voice rose quickly. He was crossing the room for a chair as he spoke. “She told me so to-day. She purty nigh cried herself sick comin’ up. I was afeard folks would notice her.”
“She’s sorry now, cap’n, an’ wants ter come back, ’cause she’s skeered of it all, but she don’t love me no more ’n she did when she lef’ me. When Billy finds she’s gone, he’ll be arter her agin”—
“Not if I git my hands on him,” interrupted the captain angrily, dragging the chair to Caleb’s side.
“An’ when she begins to hunger for him,” continued Caleb, taking no notice of the outburst, “it’ll be all to do over agin. She won’t be happy without him. I ain’t got nothin’ agin ’er, but I won’t take ’er back. It’ll only make it wus for her in the end.”
“Ye ain’t a-goin’ ter chuck that gal out in the road, be ye?” cried Captain Joe, seating himself beside the table, his head thrust forward in Caleb’s face in his earnestness. “What’s she but a chit of a child that don’t know no better?” he burst out. “She ain’t more ’n twenty now, and here’s some on us more ’n twice ’er age and liable to do wus every day. Think of yerself when ye was her age. Do ye remember all the mean things ye done, and the lies ye told? S’pose you’d been chucked out as ye want to do to Betty. It ain’t decent for ye to talk so, Caleb, and I don’t like ye fur it, neither. She’s a good gal, and you know it,” and the captain, in his restlessness, shifted the chair and planted it immediately in front of Caleb, where he could look him straight in the eye. Aunty Bell had told him just what Caleb would say, but he had not believed it possible.
“I ain’t said she warn’t, Cap’n Joe. I ain’t blamin’ her, nor never will. I’m blamin’ myself. I ought’er stayed tendin’ light-ship instead’er comin’ ashore and spilin’ ’er life. I was lonely, and the fust one was allus sickly, an’ I thought maybe my time had come then; and it did while she was with me. I’d ruther heared her a-singin’, when I come in here at night, than any music I ever knowed.” His voice broke for a moment. “I done by her all I could, but I begin to see lately she was lonelier here with me than I was 'board ship with nothin’ half the time to talk to but my dog. I didn’t think it was Billy she wanted, but I see it now.”
Captain Joe rose from his chair and began pacing the room. His onslaughts broke against Caleb’s indomitable will with as little effect as did the waves about his own feet the day he set the derricks.
“What’s she but a chit of a child that don’t know no better”
His faith in Betty’s coming to herself had never been shaken for an instant. If it had, it would all have been restored the morning she met him at Mrs. Leroy’s, and, throwing her arms about him, clung to him like a frightened kitten. His love for the girl was so great that he had seen but one side of the question. Her ingratitude, her selfishness in ignoring the disgrace and misery she would bring this man who had been everything to her, had held no place in the captain’s mind. To him the case was a plain one. She was young and foolish, and had committed a fault; she was sorry and repentant; she had run away from her sin; she had come back to the one she had wronged, and she wanted to be forgiven. That was his steadfast point of view, and this was his creed: “Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more.” That Caleb did not view the question in the same way at first astonished, then irritated him. If she had broken the Master’s command again, he would perhaps have let her go her way,—for what was innately bad he hated,—but not now, when she had awakened to a sense of her sin. He continued to pace up and down Caleb’s kitchen, his hands behind his broad back, his horny, stubby fingers twisting nervously together. Caleb sat still in his chair, the lamplight streaming over his face. In all the discussion his voice had been one low monotone. It seemed but a phonographic echo of his once clear tones.
The captain resumed his seat with a half-baffled, weary air.
“Caleb,” he said,—there was a softness now in the tones of his voice that made the diver raise his head,—“you and me hev knowed each other off 'n’ on for nigh on to twenty years. We’ve had it thick and nasty, and we’ve had as clear weather as ever a man sailed in. You’ve tried to do square 'tween man and man, and so far’s I know, ye have, and I don’t believe ye’re goin’ to turn crooked now. From the time this child used to come down to the dock, when I fust come to work here, and talk to me 'tween school hours, and Aunty Bell would take her in to dinner, down to the time she got hoodooed by that smooth face and lyin’ tongue,—damn him! I’ll spile t’other side for him, some day, wus than the Screamer did,—from that time, I say, this ’ere little gal ain’t been nothin’ but a bird fillin’ everything full of singin’ from the time she got up till she went to bed agin. I ask ye now, man to man, if that ain’t so?”
Caleb nodded his head.
“During all that time there ain’t been a soul up and down this road, man, woman, nor child, that she wouldn’t help if she could,—and there’s a blame’ sight of ’em she did help, as you an’ I know: sick child’en, sittin’ up with ’em nights; an’ makin’ bonnets for folks as couldn’t git ’em no other way, without payin’ for 'em; and doin’ all she could to make this place happier for her bein’ in it. Since she’s been yer wife, there ain’t been a tidier nor nicer place along the shore road than yours, and there ain’t been a happier little woman nor home nowheres. Is that so, or not?”
Again Caleb nodded his head.
“While all this is a-goin’ on, here comes that little skunk, Bill Lacey, with a tongue like ’n ile-can, and every time she says she’s lonely or tired—and she’s had plenty of it, you bein’ away—he up’s with his can and squirts it into ’er ear about her bein’ tied to an old man, and how if she’d married him he wouldn’t ’a’ lef her a minute”—
Caleb looked up inquiringly, an ugly gleam in his eyes.
“Oh, I ketched him at it one day in my kitchen, and I tol’ him then I’d break his head, and I wish to God I had, now! Purty soon comes the time with the Screamer, and his face gets stove in. What does Betty do? Leave them men to git 'long best way they could,—like some o’ the folks round here that was just as well able to 'ford the time,—or did she stand by and ketch a line and make fast? I’ll tell ye what she done, ’cause I was there, and you warn’t. Fust one come ashore was Billy; he looked like he’d fallen off a topgall’nt mast and struck the deck with his face. Lonny Bowles come next; he warn’t so bad mashed up. What did Betty do? Pick out the easiest one? No, she jes’ anchored right 'longside that boy, and hung on, and never had ’er clo’es off for nigh on to forty-eight hours. If he’s walkin’ round now he owes it to her. Is that so, or not?”
“It’s true, cap’n,” said Caleb, his eyes fastened on the captain’s face. The lids were heavy now; only his will held back the tears.
“For three weeks this went on, she a-settin like a little rabbit with her paws up starin’ at him, her eyes gettin’ bigger all the time, an’ he lyin’, coiled up like a snake, lookin’ up into her face until he’d hoodooed her and got her clean off her centre. Now there’s one thing I’m a-goin’ to ask ye, an’ before I ask ye, an’ before ye answer it, I’m a-goin’ to ask ye another: when the Three Sisters come ashore on Deadman Shoal las’ winter in that sou’easter, ’cause the light warn’t lit, an’ all o’ them men was drownded, whose fault was it?”
“Why, you know, Cap’n Joe,” Caleb interposed quickly, eager to defend a brother keeper, a pained and surprised expression over-spreading his face. “Poor Charles Edwards had been out o’ his head for a week.”
“That’s right, Caleb; that’s what I heard, an’ that’s true, an’ the dead men and the owners hadn’t nobody to blame, an’ didn’t. Now I’ll ask ye the other question: When Betty, after livin’ every day of her life as straight as a marlin spike, run away an’ lef’ ye a week ago, an’ broke up yer home, who’s to blame,—Betty, or the hoodoo that’s put ’er out’er her mind ever since the Screamer blowed up?”
Caleb settled back in his chair and rested his chin on his hand, his big fluffy beard hiding his wrist and shirt-cuff. For a long time he did not answer. The captain sat, with his hands on his knees, looking searchingly into Caleb’s face, watching every expression that crossed it.
“Cap’n Joe,” said the diver in his calm, low voice, “I hearn ye talk, an’ I know ye well 'nough to know that ye believe every word ye say, an’ I don’t know but it’s all true. I ain’t had much ’sperience o’ women folks, only two. But I don’t think ye git this right. It ain’t for myself that I’m thinkin’. I kin git along alone, an’ do my own cookin’ an’ washin’ same as I allus used to. It’s Betty I’m thinkin’ of. She’s tried me more’n a year, an’ done her best, an’ give it up. She wouldn’t ’a’ been 'hoodooed,’ as ye call it, by Bill Lacey if her own heart warn’t ready for it ’fore he began. It’s agin natur’ for a gal as young’s Betty to be happy with a man ’s old’s me. She can’t do it, no matter how hard she tries. I didn’t know it when I asked her, but I see it now.”
“But she knows better now, Caleb; she ain’t a-goin’ to cut up no more capers.” There was a yearning, an almost pitiful tone in the captain’s voice. His face was close to Caleb’s.
“Ye think so, an’ maybe she won’t; but there’s one thing yer don’t seem to see, Cap’n Joe: she can’t git out’er love with me an’ inter love with Billy an’ back agin to me in a week.”
These last words came slowly, as if they had been dragged up out of the very depths of his heart.
“She never was out’er love with ye, Caleb, nor in with Lacey. Don’t I tell ye?” he cried impatiently, too absorbed in Betty’s welfare to note the seriousness of Caleb’s tone.
“Yes,” said Caleb. His voice had fallen almost to a whisper. “I know ye think so, but th’ bes’ thing now for the little gal is to give ’er ’er freedom, an’ let ’er go ’er way. She shan’t suffer as long’s I’ve got a dollar, but I won’t have ’er come home. It’ll only break her heart then as well’s mine. Now—now—it’s only me—that is”—Caleb’s head sank to the table until his face lay on his folded arms.
Captain Joe rose from his chair, bent down and laid his hand softly on the diver’s shoulder. When he spoke his voice had the pleading tones of a girl.
“Caleb, don’t keep nothin’ back in yer heart; take Betty home. You needn’t go down for her. I’ll go myself an’ bring her here. It won’t be ten minutes 'fore her arms’ll be round yer neck. Lemme go for her?”
The diver raised his head erect, looked Captain Joe calmly in the eye, and, without a trace of bitterness in his voice, said: “She’ll never set foot here as my wife agin, Cap’n Joe, as long ’s she lives. I ain’t got the courage to set still an’ see her pine away day arter day, if she comes back, an’ I won’t. I love ’er too much for that. If she was my own child instead o’ my wife, I’d say the same thing. It’s Betty I’m a-thinkin’ of, not myself. It’d be twict ’s hard for ’er the next time she got tired an’ wanted to go. It’s all over now, an’ she’s free. Let it all stay so.”
“Don’t say that, Caleb.” The shock of the refusal seemed to have stunned him. “Don’t say that. Think o’ that child, Caleb: she come back to ye, an’ you shut your door agin ’er.”
Caleb shook his head, with a meaning movement that showed the iron will of the man and the hopelessness of further discussion.
“Then she ain’t good 'nough for ye, ’s that it?”
The captain was fast losing his self-control. He knew in his heart that in these last words he was doing Caleb an injustice, but his anger got the better of him.
Caleb did not answer.
“That’s it. Say it out. You don’t believe in her.” His voice now rang through the kitchen. One hand was straight up over his head; his lips quivered. “Ye think she’s some low-down critter instead of a poor child that ain’t done nobody no wrong intentional. I ask ye for th’ las’ time, Caleb. Be decent to yerself. Be a father to ’er, if ye can’t be no more; an’ if ye can’t be that,—damn ye!—stan’ up an’ forgive her like a man.”
Caleb made no sign. The cruel thrust had not reached his heart. He knew his friend, and he knew all sides of his big nature. The clear blue eyes still rested on the captain’s face.
“You won’t?” There was a tone almost of defiance in the captain’s words.
The diver again shook his head.
“Then I’ll tell ye one thing, Caleb, right here” (he was now bent forward, his forefinger in Caleb’s face straight out like a spike): “ye’re doin’ the meanest thing I ever knowed a man to do in my whole life. I don’t like ye fur it, an’ I never will ’s long ’s I live. I wouldn’t serve a dog so, let alone Betty. An’ now I’ll tell ye another: if she ain’t good 'nough to live with you, she’s good 'nough to live with Aunty Bell an’ me, an’ there’s where she’ll stay jes’ ’s long ’s she wants to.”
Without a word of good-night he picked up his hat and strode from the room, slamming the door behind him with a force that rattled every plate on the table.
Caleb half started from his chair as if to call him back. Then, with a deep indrawn sigh, he rose wearily from the chair, covered the smouldering fire with ashes, locked the doors, fastened the two shutters, and, taking up the lamp, went slowly upstairs to his empty bed.
The following Sunday Captain Joe shaved himself with the greatest care,—that is, he slashed his face as full of cuts as a Heidelberg student’s after a duel; squeezed his big broad shoulders into his black coat,—the one inches too tight across the back, the cloth all in corrugated wrinkles; tugged at his stiff starched collar until his face was purple; hauled taut a sleazy cravat; and, in a determined quarterdeck voice rarely heard from him, ordered Aunty Bell to get on her best clothes, call Betty, and come with him.
“What in natur’ ’s got into ye, Cap’n Joe?”
“Church’s got inter me, and you an’ Betty’s goin’ along.”
“Ye ain’t never goin’ to church, be ye?” No wonder Aunty Bell was thunderstruck. Neither of them had been inside of a church since they moved to Keyport. Sunday was the captain’s day for getting rested, and Aunty Bell always helped him.
“I ain’t, ain’t I? That’s all ye know, Jane Bell. You git Betty an’ come along, jes’ ’s I tell ye. I’m a-runnin’ this ship.” There was that peculiar look in the captain’s eye and tone in his voice that his wife knew too well. It was never safe to resist him in one of these moods.
Betty burst into tears when the little woman told her, and said she dared not go, and couldn’t, until a second quick, not-to-be-questioned order resounded up the staircase:—
“Here, now, that church bell’s purty nigh done ringin’. We got ter git aboard ’fore the gangplank’s drawed in.”
“Come along, child,” said Aunty Bell. “’T ain’t no use; he’s got one o’ his spells on. Which church be ye goin’ to, anyway?” she called to him, as they came downstairs. “Methodist or Dutch?”
“Don’t make no difference,—fust one we come to; an’ Betty’s goin’ to set plumb in the middle ’tween you an’ me, jes’ so’s folks kin see. I ain’t goin’ to have no funny business, nor hand-whispers, nor head-shakin’s about the little gal from nobody along this shore, from the preacher down, or somebody’ll git hurted.”
All through the service—he had marched down the middle aisle and taken the front seat nearest the pulpit—he sat bolt upright, like a corporal on guard, his eyes on the minister, his ears alert. Now and then he would sweep his glance around, meeting the wondering looks of the congregation, who had lost interest in everything about them but the three figures in the front pew. Then, with a satisfied air, now that neither the speaker nor his hearers showed anything but respectful curiosity, and no spoken word from the pulpit bore the remotest connection with the subject uppermost in his mind,—no Magdalens nor Prodigal Sons, nor anything of like significance (there is no telling what would have happened had there been),—he settled himself again, and looked straight at the minister.
When the benediction had been pronounced he waited until the crowd got thickest around the door,—he knew why the congregation lagged behind; then he made his way into its midst, holding Betty by the arm as if she had been under arrest. Singling out old Captain Potts, a retired sea-captain, a great churchgoer and something of a censor over the morals of the community, he tapped him on the shoulder, and said in a voice loud enough to be heard by everybody:—
“This is our little gal, Betty West, Cap’n Potts. Caleb’s gin her up, and she’s come to live with us. When ye’re passin’ our way with yer folks, it won’t do ye no harm to stop in to see her.”
CHAPTER XIII—A SHANTY DOOR
Sanford had expected, when he led Betty from his door, that Mrs. Leroy would give her kindly shelter, but he had not been prepared for all that he heard the next day. Kate had not only received the girl into her house, but had placed her for the night in a bedroom adjoining her own; arranging the next morning a small table in her dressing-room where Betty could breakfast alone, free from the pryings of inquisitive servants. Mrs. Leroy told all these things to Sanford: describing the heartbroken weariness of the girl when she arrived; the little joyful cry she gave when big, burly Captain Joe, his eyes blinded by the hot midday glare outside, came groping his way into the darkened boudoir; and Betty’s glad spring into his arms, where she lay while the captain held her with one hand, trying to talk to both Betty and herself at once, the tears rolling down his cheeks, his other great hand with the thole-pin fingers patting the girl’s tired face. Mrs. Leroy told Sanford all these things and more, but she did not say how she herself had sat beside Betty on the divan that same morning, before Captain Joe arrived, winning little by little the girl’s confidence, until the whole story came out. Neither did she tell him with what tact and gentleness she, the woman of the world, whose hours of loneliness had been more bitter and intense than any that Betty ever knew, had shown this inexperienced girl how much more noble it would have been to suffer and stand firm, doing and being the right, than to succumb as she had done. Nor yet did she tell Sanford how Betty’s mind had cleared, as she talked on, and of the way in which the girl’s brown hand had crept toward her own till it nestled among her jeweled fingers, while with tender words of worldly wisdom she had prepared her foster sister for what she still must face in penance for her sin; instructing her in the use of those weapons of self-control, purity of purpose, and patience, with which she must arm herself if she would win the struggle. Nor how, before the morning hours were gone, she had received the girl’s promise to go back to her home, and, if her husband would not receive her, to fight on until she again won for herself the respect she had lost, and among those, too, who had once loved her. Least of all did she tell Sanford that when the talk was over and Betty was gone, she had thrown herself on her own bed in an agony of tears, wondering after all which one of the two had done the better for herself in the battle of life,—she or the girl.
Sanford knew nothing of this. As he sat in the train, on his way back to Keyport, his heart had gone out to the girl, for he had been greatly wrought up by the story Kate told him and by the pictures she had given of the interview. Yet, strange to say, he found himself bewildered by the fact that, even more than the story, he remembered the tones of Kate’s voice and the very color of her eyes as she talked. He was constantly seeing, too, as he lingered over its details, a vision of Kate herself as she stood in the hall and bade him good-by,—her full white throat above the ruffles of her morning-gown. As he rode on, he found it difficult to turn his mind to other things, or to quiet his inner enthusiasm for her gentleness and charity.
And yet there were important affairs to which he owed immediate attention. Carleton’s continued refusal to sign a certificate for the concrete disk, without which no payment would be made by the government, would, if persisted in, cause him serious embarrassment. The difficulty with Carleton had already reached an acute stage. Captain Joe had altogether failed in his efforts to make the superintendent sign the certificate, and Carleton had threatened to wire the Department and demand a board of survey if his orders were not complied with at once. The captain generally retired from the field and left the campaign to Sanford whenever, in the course of their work, it became necessary to fight the United States government—the sea was his enemy.
In this discussion, however, he had taken the pains to explain to Carleton patiently, and he thought intelligently, the falsity of the stand he took, showing him that his idea about the concrete base being too low was the result of a mere optical illusion, due to the action of the tide which backed the water up higher within the breakwater on the southeast side; that when the first course of masonry was laid, bringing the mass of concrete out of water, his—Carleton’s—mistake would be instantly detected.
Captain Joe was as much out of patience as he ever permitted himself to be with Carleton, when he shook Sanford’s hand on his arrival.
“Ain’t no man on earth smart ’nough to make eleven inches a foot, let alone a critter like him!” he said, as he explained the latest development.
Once over the sloop’s side, Sanford laid his bag on the deck and turned to the men.
“Who saw the concrete at dead low water during that low tide we had after the last northwest blow?” he inquired.
“I did, sir,” answered Captain Brandt. “I told Mr. Carleton he was wrong. The water jes’ tetched the outer iron band all round when I see it. It was dead calm an’ dead low water.”
“What do you say to that, Mr. Carleton?” asked Sanford, laughing.
“I’m not here to take no back talk from nobody,” replied Carleton in a surly tone.
“Lonny,” said Sanford,—he saw that further discussion with the superintendent was useless,—“go ashore and get my transit and target rod; you’ll find them in my bedroom at the captain’s; and please put them here in the skipper’s bunk, so they won’t get broken. I’ll run a level on the concrete myself, Mr. Carleton, when we get to the Ledge.”
“There ain’t no use of your transit,” retorted Carleton, with a sneer. “It’s six inches too low, I tell you. You’ll fix it as I want it, or I’ll stop the work.”
Sanford looked at him, but held his peace. It had not been his first experience with men of Carleton’s class. He proposed, all the same, to know for himself who was right. He had seen Carleton use a transit, and had had a dim suspicion at the time that the superintendent was looking through the eyepiece while it was closed.
“Get ready for the Ledge, Captain Brandt, as soon as Lonny returns,” said Sanford. “Where’s Caleb, Captain Joe? We may want him.”
The captain touched Sanford on the shoulder and moved down the deck with him, where he stood behind one of the big stones, out of hearing of the other men.
“He’s all broke up, sir. He ain’t been to work since the little gal left. I want to thank ye, Mr. Sanford, for what ye did for ’er; and that friend o’ yourn couldn’t ’a’ been no better to her if she’d been her sister.”
“Oh, that’s all right, captain,” said Sanford, laying a hand on his shoulder. “Betty is at your house, I hear. How does she bear it?”
“Gritty as she kin be, but she ain’t braced up much; Aunty Bell’s got ’er arms round ’er most of the time. I wish you’d send for Caleb; nothin’ else’ll bring him out. He won’t come for me. I’ll go for him myself, if ye say so.”
“Go get him. I may want him to hold a rod in four or five feet of water. He won’t need his helmet, but he’ll need his dress. Do you hear anything about Lacey?”
“He ain’t been round where any of us could see him—and git hold of him,” answered Captain Joe, knitting his brows. “I jes’ wish he’d come once. I heared he was over to Stonin’ton, workin’ on the railroad.”
The captain jumped into the yawl and sculled away toward the diver’s cabin. He had not felt satisfied with himself since the night when Caleb had refused to take Betty back. He had said then, in the heat of the moment, some things which had hurt him as much as they had hurt Caleb. He would have told him so before, but he had been constantly at the Ledge receiving the big cut stones for the masonry, nine of which were then piled up on the Screamer’s deck. After that there had arisen the difficulty with Carleton. This now was his opportunity.
The men on the sloop, somehow, knew Caleb was coming, and there was more or less curiosity to see him. Nickles, standing inside the galley and within earshot, had probably overheard Sanford’s request.
All the men liked the old diver. His courage, skill, and many heroic acts above and under water had earned their respect, while his universal kindness and cheeriness had won their confidence. The calamity that had overtaken him had been discussed and re-discussed; and while many hopes were indulged in regarding the future condition of Lacey’s soul and the present state of his eyes, profane hopes that would have interfered seriously with the eternal happiness of the first and the seeing qualities of the second, and while numerous criticisms were as freely passed upon Betty, nothing but kindness and sympathy was felt for Caleb.
When Caleb came up over the sloop’s rail, followed by Captain Joe, it was easy to see that all was right between him and the captain. One hearty handshake inside the cabin’s kitchen, and a frank outspoken “I’m sorry, Caleb; don’t lay it up agin me,” had done that. When Caleb spoke to the men, in his usual gentle manner, each one of them said or did some little thing, as chance offered an unobtrusive opportunity, that conveyed to the diver a heartfelt sorrow for his troubles,—every one but Carleton, who purposely, perhaps, had gone down into the cabin, his temper still ruffled over his encounter with Captain Joe and Sanford.
And so Caleb once more took his place on the working force.
As the Screamer rounded to and made fast in the eddy, the Ledge gang were engaged in using the system of derricks, which since the final anchoring had never needed an hour’s additional work. They were moving back from the landing-wharf the big cut stones required to lay the first course of masonry, the work to begin as soon as the controversy over the proper level of the concrete was settled.
With the making fast of the Screamer to the floating buoys in the eddy, the life-boat from the Ledge pulled alongside, and landed Sanford, Carleton, Captain Joe, Caleb, and the skipper,—Lonny Bowles carrying the transit and rod as carefully as if they had been two long icicles. When the party reached the Ledge the concrete was found to be awash with three feet of water; nothing of the mass itself could be seen by the naked eye. It was therefore apparent that if the dispute was to be settled it could be done only by a series of exact measurements. Carleton showed every evidence of satisfaction. He had begun to suspect he might be wrong, but his obstinacy sustained him. Now that the disk was covered with water there was still reason for dispute.
Caleb squeezed himself into his diving-dress, and began operations, Captain Joe fastening the water-tight cuffs over his wrists, leaving his hands free. The diver then picked up the rod with its adjustable target and plunged across the shallow basin, the water coming up to his hips. Sanford meanwhile arranged the tripod on the platform, leveled his instrument, directing Caleb where to hold the rod, and began his survey. Captain Joe stood one side recording his findings with a big blue lead pencil on a short strip of plank.
The first entries showed that the two segments of the circle—the opposite segments, southeast and northwest—varied barely three tenths of an inch in height. This, of course, was immaterial over so large a surface. The result proved conclusively that Carleton’s claim that one section of the concrete was six inches too low was absurd.
“I’m afraid I shall have to decide against you this time, Mr. Carleton,” said Sanford pleasantly. “Run your eye through this transit; you can see yourself what it shows.”
“Right or wrong,” broke out Carleton, now thoroughly angry, both over his defeat and at the half-concealed, jeering remarks of the men, “it’s got to go up six inches, or not a cut stone will be laid. That’s what I’m here for, and what I say goes.”
“But please take the transit and see for yourself, Mr. Carleton,” urged Sanford.
“I don’t know nothin’ about your transit, nor who fixed it to suit you,” snarled Carleton.
Sanford bit his lip, and made no answer. There were more important things to be done in the building of a light than the resenting of such insults or quarreling with a superintendent. The skipper, however, to whom the superintendent was a first experience, and who took his answer as in some way a reflection on his own veracity, walked quickly toward him with his fist tightly clinched. His big frame towered over Carleton’s.
“Thank you, Captain Brandt,” said Sanford, noticing the skipper’s expression and intent. “But Mr. Carleton isn’t in earnest. His transit is not here, and we cannot tell who fixed that.”
The men laughed, and the skipper stopped and stood aside, awaiting any further developments that might require his aid.
“In view of these measurements,” asked Sanford, as he held before Carleton’s eyes the piece of plank bearing Captain Joe’s record, “do you still order the six inches of concrete put in?”
“Certainly I do,” said Carleton. His ugly temper was gradually being hidden under an air of authority. Sanford’s tact had regained him a debating position.
“And you take the responsibility of the change?”
“I do,” replied Carleton in a blustering voice.
“Then please put that order in writing,” said Sanford quietly, “and I will see it done as soon as the tide lowers.”
Carleton’s manner changed; he saw the pit that lay before him. If he were wrong, the written order would fix his responsibility; without that telltale record he could deny afterward having given the order, if good policy so demanded.
“Well, that ain’t necessary; you go ahead,” said Carleton, with less vehemence.
“I think it is, Mr. Carleton. You ask me to alter a bench-mark level which I know to be right, and which every man about us knows to be right. You refuse a written certificate if I do not carry out your orders, and yet you expect me to commit this engineering crime because of your personal opinion,—an opinion which you now refuse to back up by your signature.”
“I ain’t given you a single written order this season: why should I now?” in an evasive tone.
“Because up to this time you have asked for nothing unreasonable. Then you refuse?”
“I do, and I’m not to be bulldozed, neither.”
“Caleb,” said Sanford, with the air of a man who had made up his mind, raising his voice to the diver, still standing in the water, “put that rod on the edge of the iron band.”
Caleb felt around under the water with his foot, found the band, and placed on it the end of the rod. Sanford carefully adjusted the instrument.
“What does it measure?”
“Thirteen feet six inches, sir!” shouted Caleb.
“Lonny Bowles,” continued Sanford, “take three or four of the men and go along the breakwater and see if Caleb is right.”
The men scrambled over the rocks, Lonny plunging into the water beside Caleb, so as to get closer to the rod.
“Thirteen feet six inches!” came back the voices of Lonny and the others, speaking successively.
“Now, Captain Joe, look through this eyepiece and see if you find the red quartered target in the centre of the spider-web lines. You, too, skipper.”
The men put their eyes to the glass, each announcing that he saw the red of the disk.
“Now, Caleb, make your way across to the northwest derrick, and hold the rod on the band there.”
The old diver waded across the concrete, and held the rod and target over his head. The men followed him around the breakwater,—all except Bowles, who, being as wet as he could be, plunged in waist-deep.
Sanford turned the transit without disturbing the tripod, and adjusted it until the lens covered the target.
“Raise it a little, Caleb!” shouted Sanford,—“so! What is she now?”
“Thirteen feet six inches and—a—half!”
“Right! How is it, men?”
“Thirteen six and a half!” came back the replies, after each man had assured himself.
“Now bring me a clean, dry plank, Captain Joe,” said Sanford. “That’s too small,” as the captain held out the short piece containing the record. Clean planks were scarce on the cement-stained work; dry ones were never found.
Everybody went in search of a suitable plank. Carleton looked on at this pantomime with a curl on his lips, and now and then a little shiver of uncertain fear creeping over him. Sanford’s quiet, determined manner puzzled him.
“What’s all this circus about?” he broke out impatiently.
“One minute, Mr. Carleton. I want to make a record which will be big enough for the men to sign; one that won’t get astray, lost, or stolen.”
“What’s the matter with this?” asked Captain Joe, opening the wooden door of the new part of the shanty. “Ye can’t lose this ’less ye take away the house.”
“That’s the very thing!” exclaimed Sanford. “Swing her wide open, Captain Joe. Please give me that big blue pencil.”
When the door flew back it was as white and clean as a freshly scrubbed pine table.
Sanford wrote as follows:—
August 29, Shark Ledge Light.
We, the undersigned, certify that the concrete disk is perfectly level except opposite the northwest derrick, where it is three tenths of an inch too high. We further certify that Superintendent Carleton orders the concrete raised six inches on the southeast segment, and refuses to permit any cut stone to be set until this is done.
Henry Sanford, Contractor.
“Come, Captain Joe,” said Sanford, “put your signature under mine.”
The captain held the pencil in his bent fingers as if it had been a chisel, and inscribed his full name, “Joseph Bell,” under that of Sanford. Then Caleb and the others followed, the diver fumbling inside his dress for his glasses, the search proving fruitless until Captain Joe ran his arm down between the rubber collar of the diving-dress and Caleb’s red shirt and drew them up from inside his undershirt.
“Now, Captain Joe,” said Sanford, “you can send a gang in the morning at low water and raise that concrete. It will throw the upper masonry out of level, but it won’t make much difference in a circle of this size.”
The men gave a cheer, the humor of the situation taking possession of everyone. Even Caleb forgot his sorrow for a moment. Carleton laughed a little halting laugh himself, but there was nothing of spontaneity in it. Nickles, the cook, who, now that the cut stone was about to be laid, was permanently transferred from the Screamer to the shanty, and under whose especial care this door was placed by reason of its position,—it opened into the kitchen,—planted his fat, oily body before the curious record, read it slowly word for word, and delivered himself of this opinion: “That ’ere door’s th’ biggest receipt for stores I ever see come into a kitchen.”
“Big or little,” said Captain Joe, who could not see the drift of most of Nickles’s jokes, “you spatter it with yer grease or spile it any, and ye go ashore.”
CHAPTER XIV—TWO ENVELOPES
Betty’s flight had been of such short duration, and her return home accomplished under such peculiar circumstances, that the stories in regard to her elopement had multiplied with the hours. One feature of her escapade excited universal comment,—her spending the night at Mrs. Leroy’s. The only explanation that could be given of this extraordinary experience was that so high a personage as Mrs. Leroy must have necessarily been greatly imposed upon by Betty, or she could never have disgraced herself and her home by giving shelter to such a woman.
Mrs. Leroy’s hospitality to Betty inspired another theory,—one that, not being contradicted at the moment of its origin by Aunty Bell, had seemed plausible. Miss Peebles, the schoolmistress, who never believed ill of anybody, lent all her aid to its circulation. The conversation out of which the theory grew took place in Aunty Bell’s kitchen. Betty was upstairs in her room, and the talk went on in lowered tones, lest she should overhear.
“I never shall believe that a woman holding Mrs. Leroy’s position would take Betty West into her house if she knew what kind of a woman she was,” remarked the elder Miss Nevins.
“And that makes me think there’s some mistake about this whole thing,” said Miss Peebles. “Who saw her with Lacey, anyhow? Nobody but the butcher, and he don’t know half the time what he’s talking about, he rattles on so. Maybe she never went with Lacey at all.”
“What did she go ’way for, then?” asked the younger Nevins girl, who was on her way to the store, and had stopped in, hoping she might, by chance, get a look at Betty. “I guess Lacey’s money was all gone—that’s why she imposed on Mrs. Leroy.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Miss Peebles. “Betty may have been foolish, but she never told a lie in her life.”
“Well, it may be,” admitted the younger sister in a softened tone. “I hope so, anyhow.”
Aunty Bell kept still. Betty was having trouble enough; if the neighbors thought her innocent, and would give her the benefit of the doubt, better leave it so. There were one or two threads of worldly wisdom and canny policy twisted about the little woman’s heart which now and then showed their ends.
Captain Joe was in the sitting-room, reading. He had come in from the Ledge, wet, as usual, had put on some dry clothes, and while waiting for supper had picked up the “Noank Times.” Aunty Bell and the others saw him come in, but thought he had changed his clothes and had gone to the dock.
He had overheard every word of the discussion. There were no raveled threads in the captain’s make-up. He threw down his paper, pushed his way into the group, and said:—
“There’s one thing I don’t want no mistake over, and I won’t have it. Betty didn’t tell no lies to Mrs. Leroy nor to nobody else, an’ I ain’t a-goin’ to have nobody lie for ’er. Mrs. Leroy knows all about it. She took care of her ’cause she’s got a heart inside of her. Betty went off with Bill Lacey ’cause he’d hoodooed ’er, an’ when she come to herself she come home agin: that’s all ther’ is to that. She’s sorry for what she’s done, an’ ther’ ain’t nobody outside o’ heaven can do more. She’s goin’ to stay here ’cause me and Aunty Bell love her now more’n we ever did before. But she’s goin’ to start life agin fair an’ square, with no lies of her own an’ no lies told about ’er by nobody else.” The captain looked at Aunty Bell. “Them that don’t like it can lump it. Them as don’t like Betty after this can stay away from me,” and he turned about on his heel and went down to the dock.
Two currents had thus been started in Betty’s favor: one the outspoken indorsement of Captain Joe; and the other the protection of Mrs. Leroy, “the rich lady who lived at Medford, in that big country-seat where the railroad crossed, and who had the yacht and horses, and who must be a good woman, or she wouldn’t have come to nurse the men, or sent them delicacies, and who came herself to put up the mosquito-nets over their cots.”
As the August days slipped by and the early autumn came, the gossip gradually died. Caleb continued to live alone, picking up once more the manner of life he had practiced for years aboard the light-ship: having a day every two weeks for his washing,—always Sunday, when the neighbors would see him while on their way to church,—hanging out his red and white collection on the line stretched in the garden. He cooked his meals and cleaned the house himself. Nobody but Captain Joe and Aunty Bell crossed his threshold, except the butcher who brought him his weekly supplies. He had been but seldom to the village in the daytime,—somehow he did not like to pass Captain Joe’s when any one could see him,—and had confined his outings to going from the cabin to the Ledge and back again as his duties required, locking the rear door and hanging the key on a nail beside it until his return.
He had seen Betty only once, and that was when he had passed her on the road. He came upon her suddenly, and he thought she started back as if to avoid him, but he kept his eyes turned away and passed on. When he reached the hill and looked back he could see her sitting by the side of the road, a few rods from where they met, her head resting on her hand.
Only one man had dared to speak to him in an unsympathetic way about Betty’s desertion, and that was his old friend Tony Marvin, the keeper of Keyport Light. They had been together a year on Bannock Rip during the time the Department had doubled up the keepers. He had not heard of Caleb’s trouble until several weeks after Betty’s flight; lighthouse-keepers staying pretty close indoors.
“I hearn, Caleb, that the new wife left ye for that young rigger what got his face smashed. ’Most too young, warn’t she, to be stiddy?”
“No, I ain’t never thought so,” replied Caleb quietly. “Weren’t no better gal ’n Betty; she done all she knowed how. You’d ’a’ said so if ye knowed her like I did. But ’twas agin natur’, I bein’ so much older. But I’d rather had her go than suffer on.”
“Served ye durn mean, anyhow,” said the keeper. “Did she take anything with ’er?”
“Nothin’ but the clo’es she stood in. But she didn’t serve me mean, Tony. I don’t want ye to think so, an’ I don’t want ye to say so, nor let nobody say so, neither; an’ ye won’t if you’re a friend o’ mine, which you allers was.”
“I hearn there was some talk o’ yer takin’ her back,” the keeper went on in a gentler tone, surprised at Caleb’s blindness, and anxious to restore his good feeling. “Is that so?”
“No, that ain’t so,” Caleb answered firmly, ending the conversation on that topic and leading it into other channels.
This interview of the light-keeper’s was soon public property. Some of those who heard of it set Caleb down as half-witted over his loss, and others wondered how long it would be before he would send for Betty and patch it all up again, and still others questioned why he didn’t go over to Stonington and smash the other side of Lacey’s face; they heard that Billy had been seen around there.
As for Betty, she had found work with a milliner on the edge of the village, within a mile of Captain Joe’s cottage, where her taste in trimming bonnets secured her ready employment, and where her past was not discussed. That she was then living with Captain Joe and his wife was enough to gain her admission.
There had been days, however, after her return, when she would have given way under the strain, had it not been for her remembered promise to Mrs. Leroy,—the only woman, except Aunty Bell, who had befriended her,—and for the strong supporting arm of Captain Joe, who never lost an opportunity to show his confidence in her.
And yet in spite of these promises and supports she could have plunged into the water many a time at the end of the dock and ended it all. She would sit for hours in her little room next Aunty Bell’s, on Saturday afternoons, when she came earlier from work, and watch for the Screamer or one of the tugs to round in, bringing Caleb and the men. She could not see her own cottage from the window where she sat, but she could see her husband come down the sloop’s side and board the little boat that brought him to his landing. She would often think that she could catch his good-night as he pushed off. On Monday mornings, too, when she knew he was going out, she was up at daylight, watching for a meagre glimpse of him when the skiff shot out from behind the dock and took him aboard to go to his work on the Ledge.
Little by little the captain’s devotion to Betty’s interests, and the outspoken way in which he praised her efforts to maintain herself, began to have their effect. People who had passed her by without a word, as they met her on the road, volunteered a timid good-morning, which was answered by a slight nod of the head by Betty. Even one of the Nevins girls—the younger one—had joined her and walked as far as the milliner’s, with a last word on the doorstep, which had detained them both for at least two minutes in full sight of the other girls who were passing the shop.
Betty met all advances kindly, but with a certain reserve of manner. She appreciated the good motive, but in her own eyes it did not palliate her fault,—that horrible crime of ingratitude, selfishness, and waywardness, the memory of which hung over her night and day like a pall.
Most of her former acquaintances respected her reserve,—all except Carleton. Whenever he met her under Captain Joe’s roof he greeted her with a nod, but on the road he had more than once tried to stop and talk to her. At first the attempt had been made with a lifting of the hat and a word about the weather, but the last time he had stopped in front of her and tried to take her hand.
“What’s the matter with you?” he said in a coaxing tone. “I ain’t going to hurt you.”
Betty darted by him, and reached the shop all out of breath. She said nothing to any one about her encounter, not being afraid of him in the daytime, and not wanting her affairs talked of any more.
If Caleb knew how Betty lived, he never mentioned it to Captain Joe or Aunty Bell. He would sometimes ask after her health and whether she was working too hard, but never more than that.
One Saturday night—it was the week Betty had hurt her foot and could not go to the shop—Caleb came down to Captain Joe’s and called him outside the kitchen door. It was pay-day with the men, and Caleb had in his hand the little envelope, still unopened, containing his month’s pay. The lonely life he led had begun to tell upon the diver. The deathly pallor that had marked his face the first few days after his wife’s departure was gone, and the skin was no longer shrunken, but the sunken cheeks remained, and the restless, eager look in the eyes that told of his mental strain.
Caleb was in his tarpaulins; it was raining at the time.
“Come in, Caleb, come in!” cried Captain Joe in a cheery voice, laying his hand on the diver’s shoulder. “Take off yer ileskins.” The captain never despaired of bringing husband and wife together, somehow.
Betty was sitting inside the kitchen, reading by the kerosene lamp, out of sound of the voices.
“No, I ain’t washed up nor had supper yit, thank ye. I heared from Aunty Bell that Betty was laid up this week, an’ so I come down.” Here Caleb stopped, and began slitting the pay-envelope with a great thumb-nail shaped like a half-worn shoe-horn. “I come down, thinkin’ maybe you’d kind’er put this where she could git it,” slowly unrolling two of the four bills and handing them to the captain. “I don’t like her to be beholden to ye for board nor nothin’.”
“Ye can’t give me a cent, Caleb. I knowed her ’fore you did,” said the captain, protesting with his hand upraised, a slightly indignant tone in his voice. Then a thought crept into his mind. “Come in and give it to her yerself, Caleb,” putting his arm through the diver’s.
“No,” said Caleb slowly, “I ain’t come here for that, and I don’t want ye to make no mistake, cap’n. I come here ’cause I been a-thinkin’ it over, and somehow it seems to me that half o’ this is hern. I don’t want ye to tell ’er that I give it to her, ’cause it ain’t so. I jes’ want ye to lay it som’eres she’ll find it; and when she asks about it, say it’s hern.”
Captain Joe crumpled the bills in his hand.
“Caleb,” he said, “I ain’t goin’ to say nothin’ more to ye. I’ve said all I could, and las’ time I said too much; but what seems to me to be the cussedest foolishness out is for ye to go back an’ git yer supper by yerself, when the best little gal you or I know is a-settin’ within ten feet o’ ye with her heart breakin’ to git to ye.”
“I’m sorry she’s sufferin’, Cap’n Joe. I don’t like to see nobody suffer, leastways Betty, but ye don’t know it all. Jes’ leave them bills as I asked ye. Tell Aunty Bell I got the pie she sent me when I come home,—I’ll eat it to-morrow. I s’pose ye ain’t got no new orders ’bout that last row of enrockment? I set the bottom stone to-day, an’ I ought’er get the last of ’em finished nex’ week. The tide cut turrible to-day, an’ my air comin’ so slow through the pump threw me ’mong the rocks an’ seaweed, an’ I got a scrape on my hand,” showing a deep cut on its back; “but it’s done hurtin’ now. Good-night.”
On his way home, just before he reached his cabin, Caleb came upon Bert Simmons, the shore road letter-carrier, standing in the road, under one of the village street lamps, overhauling his package of letters.
“About these letters that’s comin’ for yer wife, Caleb? Shall I leave ’em with you or take ’em down to Cap’n Joe Bell’s? I give the others to her. Here’s one now.”
Caleb took the letter mechanically, looked it over slowly, noted its Stonington postmark, and, handing it back, answered calmly, “Better leave ’em down to Cap’n Joe’s, Bert.”
CHAPTER XV—A NARROW PATH
When Sanford, after dining, rang her bell, Mrs. Leroy was seated on the veranda that overlooked the garden,—a wide and inviting veranda, always carpeted in summer with mats and rugs, and made comfortable with cane chairs and straw divans that were softened into luxurious delights by silk cushions. During the day the sunshine filtered its way between the thickly matted vines, lying in patterns on the floor, or was held in check by thin Venetian blinds. At night the light of a huge eight-sided lantern festooned with tassels shed its glow through screens of colored gauze.
Mrs. Leroy was dressed in a simple gown of white crêpe, which clung and wrinkled about her slight figure, leaving her neck and arms bare. On a low table beside her rested a silver tray with a slender-shaped coffee-pot and tiny egg-shell cups and saucers.
She looked up at him, smiling, as he pushed aside the curtains. “Two lumps, Henry?” she called, holding the sugar-tongs in her hand. Then, as the light of the lantern fell upon his face, she exclaimed, “Why, what’s the matter? You are worried: is there fresh trouble at the Ledge?” and she rose from her chair.
“No; only Carleton,” he replied, looking down at her. “He holds on to that certificate, and I can get no money until he gives it up; yet I have raised the concrete six inches to please him. I wired Captain Joe yesterday to see him at once and to get his answer,—yes or no. What do you suppose he replied? ‘Tell him he don’t own the earth. I’ll sign it when I get to it.’ Not another word, nor would he give any reason for not signing it.”
“Why don’t you appeal to the Board? General Barton would not see you suffer an unjust delay. I’ll write him myself,” she said, sitting bolt upright on the divan.
Sanford smiled. Her rising anger soothed him as flattery might have done at another time. He felt in it a proof of how close to her heart she really held his interests and his happiness.
“That would only prolong the agony, and might lose us the season’s work. The Board is always fair and honest, only it takes so long for it to move.” As he spoke he piled the cushions high behind her head, and drew a low chair opposite to her. “It’s torture to a contractor who is behind time,” he continued, flecking the ashes of his cigar into his saucer. “It means getting all tangled up in the red tape of a government bureau. I must give up my holiday and find Carleton; there is nothing else to be done now. I leave on the early train to-morrow. But what a rest this is!” he exclaimed, breaking into the strained impetuosity of his own tones with a long-drawn sigh of relief, as he looked about the dimly lighted veranda. “Nothing like it anywhere.”
As he spoke his eyes wandered over her dainty figure, half reclining before him,—the delicately modeled waist, the shapely wrists, and the tiny slippers peeping beneath the edge of her dress that fell in folds to the floor. “Another new gown, I see?”
“Never mind about my gown. I want to hear more about this man Carleton,” she said. Her face was alight with the pleasure of his tribute, but she spoke as though she had hardly heard it. “What have you done to him to make him hate you?”
“Nothing but try to keep him from ruining the work.”
“And you told him he was ruining it?”
“Certainly; there was nothing else to do. He’s got the concrete now six inches out of level; you can see it plainly at low water.”
“No wonder he takes his revenge,” she said, cutting straight into the heart of the matter with that marvelous power peculiar to some women. “What else has gone wrong?” She meant him to tell her everything, knowing that to let him completely unburden his mind would give him the only real rest that he needed. She liked, too, to feel her influence over him. That he always consulted her in such matters was to Kate one of the keenest pleasures that his friendship brought.
“Everything, I sometimes think. We are very much behind. That concrete base should have been finished two weeks ago. The equinoctial gale is nearly due. If we can’t get the first two courses of masonry laid by the middle of November, I may have to wait until spring for another payment, and that about means bankruptcy.”
“What does Captain Joe think?”
“He says we shall pull through if we have no more setbacks. Dear old Captain Joe! nothing upsets him. We certainly have had our share of them this season: first it was the explosion, and now it is Carleton’s spite.”
“Suppose you do lose time, Henry, and do have to wait until spring to go on with the work. It will not be for the first time.” There was a sympathetic yet hopeful tone in her voice. “When you sunk the coffer-dam at Kingston, three years ago, and it lay all winter in the ice, didn’t you worry yourself half sick? And yet it all came out right. Oh, you needn’t raise your eyebrows; I saw it myself. You know you are better equipped now, both in experience and in means, than you were then. Make some allowance for your own temperament, and please don’t forget the nights you have lain awake worrying over nothing. It will all come out right.” She leaned toward him and laid her hand on his, as an elder sister might have done, and in a gayer tone added, “I’m going to Medford soon, myself, and I’ll invite this dreadful Mr. Carleton to come over to luncheon, and you’ll get your certificate next day. What does he look like?”
Sanford broke into a laugh. “You wouldn’t touch him with a pair of tongs, and I wouldn’t let you,—even with them.”
“Then I’ll do it, anyway, just to show you how clever I am,” she retorted, with a pretty, bridling toss of her head. She had taken her hand away. Sanford still held his own extended.
Kate’s tact was having its effect. Under the magic of her sympathy his cares had folded their tents. Carleton was fast becoming a dim speck on the horizon, and his successive troubles were but a string of camels edging the blue distance of his thoughts.
It was always like this. She never failed to comfort and inspire him. Whenever his anxieties became unbearable it was to Kate that he turned, as he had done to-night. The very touch of her soft hand, so white and delicate, laid upon his arm, and the exquisite play of melody in her voice, soothed and strengthened him. Things were never half so bad as they seemed, when he could see her look at him mischievously from under her lowered eyelids as she said, “Mercy, Henry! is that all? I thought the whole lighthouse had been washed away.” And he never missed the inspiration of the change that followed,—the sudden quiet of her face, the very tensity of her figure, as she added in earnest tones, instinct with courage and sympathy, some word of hopeful interest that she of all women best knew how to give.
With the anxieties dispelled which had brought him hurrying to-night to Gramercy Park, they both relapsed into silence,—a silence such as was common to their friendship, one which was born neither of ennui nor of discontent, the boredom of friends nor the poverty of meagre minds, but that restful silence which comes only to two minds and hearts in entire accord, without the necessity of a single spoken word to lead their thoughts; a close, noiseless fitting together of two temperaments, with all the rough surfaces of their natures worn smooth by long association each with the other. In such accord is found the strongest proof of true and perfect friendship. It is only when this estate no longer satisfies, and one or both crave the human touch, that the danger-line is crossed. When stealthy fingers set the currents of both hearts free, and the touch becomes electric, discredited friendship escapes by the window, and triumphant love enters by the door.
The lantern shed its rays over Kate’s white draperies, warming them with a pink glow. The smoke of Sanford’s cigar curled upward in the still air and drifted out into the garden, or was lost in the vines of the jessamine trailing about the porch. Now and then the stillness was broken by some irrelevant remark suggested by the perfume of the flowers, the quiet of the night, the memory of Jack’s and Helen’s happiness; but silence always fell again, except for an occasional light tattoo of Kate’s dainty slipper on the floor. A restful lassitude, the reaction from the constant hourly strain of his work, came over Sanford; the world of perplexity seemed shut away, and he was happier than he had been in weeks. Suddenly and without preliminary question, Mrs. Leroy asked sharply, with a strange, quivering break in her voice, “What about that poor girl Betty? Has she patched it up yet with Caleb? She told me, the night she stayed with me, that she loved him dearly. Poor girl! she has nothing but misery ahead of her if she doesn’t.” She spoke with a certain tone in her voice that showed but too plainly the new mood that had taken possession of her.
“Pity she didn’t find it out before she left him!” exclaimed Sanford.
“Pity he didn’t do something to show his appreciation of her, you mean!” she interrupted, with a quick toss of her head.
“You are all wrong, Kate. Caleb is the gentlest and kindest of men. You don’t know that old diver, or you wouldn’t judge him harshly.”
“Oh, he didn’t beat her, I suppose. He only left her to get along by herself. I wish such men would take it out in beating. Some women could stand that better. It’s the cold indifference that kills.” She had risen from her seat, and was pacing the floor of the veranda.
“Well, that was not his fault, Kate. While the working season lasts he must be on the Ledge. He couldn’t come in every night.”
“That’s what they all say! If it’s not one excuse, it’s another. I’m tired to death of hearing about men who would rather make money than make homes. Now that he has driven her out of her wits by his brutality, he closes his door against her, even when she crawls back on her knees. But don’t you despise her.” She stood before him, looking down into his face for a moment. “Be just as sweet and gentle to her as you can. If she ever goes wrong again, it will be the world’s fault or her husband’s,—not her own. Tell her from me that I trust her and believe in her, and that I send her my love.”
Sanford listened to her with ill-concealed admiration. It was when she was defending or helping some one that she appealed to him most. At those times he recognized that her own wrongs had not imbittered her, but had only made her the more considerate.
“There’s never a day you don’t teach me something,” he answered quietly, his eyes fixed on her moving figure. “Perhaps I have been a little hard on Betty, but it’s because I’ve seen how Caleb suffers.”
She stopped again in her walk and leaned over the rail of the veranda, her chin on her hand. Sanford watched her, following the bend of her exquisite head and the marvelous slope of her shoulders. He saw that something unusual had stirred her, but he could not decide whether it was caused by the thought of Betty’s misery or by some fresh sorrow of her own. He threw away his cigar, rose from his chair, and joined her at the railing. He could be unhappy himself and stand up under it, but he could not bear to see a shade cross Kate’s face.
“You are not happy to-night,” he said.
She did not answer.
Sanford waited, looking down over the garden. He could see the shadowy outlines of the narrow walks and the white faces of the roses drooping over the gravel. When he spoke again there were hesitating, halting tones in his voice, as if he were half afraid to follow the course he had dared to venture on.
“Is Morgan coming home, Kate?”
“I don’t know,” she replied dreamily, after a pause.
“Didn’t he say in his last letter?”
“Oh yes; answered as he always does,—when he gets through.”
“Where is he now?”
“Paris, I believe.”
She had not moved nor lifted her chin from her hand.
Minutes went by without her speaking again. A strange hush fell about them. Sanford could hear the click of the old clock in the hall, and the monotonous song of the crickets in the grass below.
A sense of great remoteness from her came over him. It was as though she had gone into a room alone with her griefs and her sobs, and had locked the door behind her. He had not meant to wound her by his questions, only to discover whether some new phase of the old grief were hurting her. If it were anything else but the sorrow he never touched, he stood ready to give her all his strength.
He looked at her intently. She had never appeared to him so beautiful, so pathetic: there was a hopeless weariness in her pose that vibrated through him as nothing had done in months. The change in her mood had come suddenly, as all changes did in her, but to-night he seemed unable to meet them. A great rush of feeling surged over him. He stepped closer, lifting his hand to lay on her head. Then, with an abrupt gesture, he turned and began pacing the veranda, his head bowed, his hands clasped behind his back. Strange, unutterable thoughts whirled through his brain; unbidden, unspeakable words crowded in his throat. He made one great effort at self-control, stopped once more, this time laying his hand upon her shoulder. He felt in his heart that it was the same old sorrow which now racked her, but an uncontrollable impulse swept him on. All the restraint of years seemed slipping from him.
“Kate, what is it? You break my heart. Is there something else to worry you,—something you haven’t told me?”
She shivered slightly as she felt the hand tighten on her shoulder. Then a sudden, tingling thrill ran through her.
“I have never any right to be unhappy when I have you, Henry. You are all the world to me,—all I have.”
It was not the answer he had expected. For an instant the blood left his face, his heart stood still.
Kate raised her head, and their eyes met.
There are narrow paths in life where one fatal step sends a man headlong. There are eyes in women’s heads as deep as the abyss below. Hers were wide open, with the fearless confidence of an affection she was big enough to give. He saw down into their depths, and read there—as they flashed toward him in intermittent waves over the barrier of the reserve she sometimes held—love, truth, and courage. To disturb these, even by the sympathy she longed to receive and he to give, might, he knew, endanger the ideal of that loyalty to another in her which he venerated most. To go behind it and break down the wall of that self-control of hers which held in check the unknown, untouched springs of her heart might loosen a flood that would wreck the only bark which could keep them both afloat on the troubled waters of life,—their friendship.
Sanford bent his head, raised her hand to his lips, kissed it reverently, and without a word walked slowly toward his chair.
As he regained his seat the butler pushed aside the light curtains of the veranda, and in his regulation monotone announced, “Miss Shirley, Major Slocomb, and Mr. Hardy.”
“My dear madam,” broke out the major in his breeziest manner, before Mrs. Leroy could turn to greet him, “what would life be in this bake-oven of a city but for the joy of yo’r presence? And Henry! You here, too? Do you know that that rascal Jack has kept me waiting for two hours while he took Helen for a five minutes’ walk round the square, or I would have been here long ago. Where are you, you young dog?” he called to Jack, who had lingered in the darkened hall with Helen.
“What’s the matter now, major?” inquired Jack, shaking hands with Mrs. Leroy, and turning again toward the Pocomokian. “I asked your permission. What would you have me do? Let Helen see nothing of New York, because you”—
“Do hush up, cousin Tom,” said Helen, pursing her lips at the major. “We stayed out because we wanted to, didn’t we, Jack? Don’t you think he is a perfect ogre, Mrs. Leroy?”
“He forgets his own younger days, my dear Miss Shirley,” she answered. “He shan’t scold you. Henry, make the major join you in a cigar, while I give Miss Helen a cup of coffee.”