Flood Tide Part 16

Wilton had never offered a husband of the type pictured in Willie's mind. The hamlet could boast of but few young men, and the greater part of those who lingered within its borders had done so because they lacked the ambition and initiative to hew out for themselves elsewhere broader fields of activity. Those of ability had gravitated to the colleges, the business schools, or gone to test their strength in the city's marts of commerce. Who could blame them for not resting content with baiting lobster pots and dredging for scallops? Were he a young man with his path untrodden before him he would have been one of the first to do the same, Willie confessed. Did he not constantly covet their youth and opportunity? Nevertheless, praiseworthy as their motive had been, the fact remained that nowhere in the village was there a man the peer of Delight Hathaway. Rare in her girlish beauty, rarer yet in her promise of womanhood, what a prize she would be for him who had the fineness of fiber to appreciate the guerdon!

Willie was wont to attest that he himself was not a marrying man; yet notwithstanding the a.s.sertion, deep down within the fastness of his soul he had had his visions,--visions pure, exalted and characteristic of his sensitively attuned nature. They were the exquisite secrets of his life; the unfulfilled dreams that had kept him holy; a part of the divine in him; echoes of hungers and longings that reached unsatisfied into a world other than this. Earth had failed to consummate the loves and ambitions of the dreamer. His had been a flattened, warped, starved existence whose perfecting was not of this sphere. And as without bitterness he reviewed the glories that had pa.s.sed him by, he prayed that these bounties might not also be denied her who, rounding into the full splendor of her womanhood, was worthy of the best heaven had to bestow.

From her childhood he had watched her virtues unfold and none of their potentialities had gone un.o.bserved by the quiet little old man.

Through the beauty of his own soul he had been enabled to translate the beauties of another, until gradually Delight Hathaway had come to symbolize for him universal woman, the prototype of all that was purest, most selfless, most tender; most to be revered, watched over, beloved. Yet for all his wors.h.i.+p the girl remained for him very human, a creature with bewitching and appealing ways. In the same spirit in which he rejoiced in the tint of a rose's petal or the sh.e.l.l-like flush of a cloud at dawn did he find pleasure in the crimson that colored her cheek, in the perfection of her features, in the shadowy, fathomless depths of her eyes. Father, brother, lover, artist, at her shrine he offered up a composite devotion which sought only her happiness.

With such an att.i.tude of mind to satisfy was it a marvel that in the matter of selecting a husband for his divinity Willie was difficult to please; or that he studied with a criticism quite as jealous as Zenas Henry's own every male who crossed the girl's path?

Yet with all his idealism Willie was a keen observer of life, and from the first moment of their meeting he had detected in Robert Morton qualities more nearly akin to his standards than he had discovered in any of the other outsiders who had come into the hamlet. There was, for example, the son of the Farwells who owned the great colonial mansion on the point,--Billy Farwell, with his racing car and his dogs and his general air of elegance and idleness. Delight had known him since she was a child. And there was Jasper Carlton, the scholarly scientist, years the girl's senior, who annually came to board with the Brewsters during the vacation months. Both of these men paid court to the village beauty, Billy with a half patronizing, half audacious a.s.surance born of years of intimacy; and the professor with that old-fas.h.i.+oned reserve and deference characteristic of the older generation. There were days when the two caused Willie such perturbation of spirit that he would willingly have knocked their heads together or cheerfully have wrung their necks.

Delight unhesitatingly acknowledged that she liked both of them and harmlessly coquetted first with the one, then with the other, until the old inventor was at his wit's end to fathom which she actually favored or whether she seriously favored either of them. Yet irreproachable as were these suitors, to place a man of Bob Morton's attributes in the same category with them seemed absurd. Why, he was head and shoulders above them mentally, morally, physically,--from whichever angle one viewed him. Moreover, blood will tell, and was he not of the fine old Morton stock? Whatever the Carlton forbears might be, young Farwell's ancestry was not an enviable one. Yes, Willie had settled Delight's future to his entire satisfaction and for nights had been sleeping peacefully, confident that with such a husband as Robert Morton her happiness and good fortune would be a.s.sured.

And then, like a thunderbolt out of the heavens, had come this Cynthia Galbraith with her fetching clothes, her affluence and her air of proprietors.h.i.+p! By what right had she acquired her monopoly of Bob Morton, and was its exclusiveness gratifying or irksome to its recipient? Might not this strange young man, concerning whom Willie was forced to own he actually knew nothing, be playing a double game, and the frankness of his face belie his real nature? And was it not possible that his annoyance and irritation were caused by having been trapped in it?

Well, avowed Willie, he would see that Delight encountered this Don Giovanni but seldom, at least until he gave a more trustworthy account of himself than he had vouchsafed up to the present moment. Contrary to the common law, the guest must be rated as guilty until he had proved himself innocent. Yet as he darted a glance at the earnest young face bending over the workbench Willie's conscience smote him and he questioned whether he might not be doing his comrade a dire injustice. The thought caused him to flush uncomfortably, and he flushed still redder when Bob suddenly straightened up and met his eye.

Both men stood alert, held tensely by the same sound. It was the low music of a girlish voice humming a s.n.a.t.c.h of song, and it was accompanied by the soft crackling of the needles that carpeted the grove of pine between the Spence and Brewster houses. In another instant Delight Hathaway strolled slowly out of the wood and entered the workshop. With her coming a radiance of suns.h.i.+ne seemed to flood the shabby room. She nodded a greeting to Bob, then went straight to Willie and, placing her hands affectionately on his shoulders, looked down into his face. They made a pretty picture, the bent old man with his russet cheeks and thin white hair, and the girl erect as an arrow and beautiful as a young Diana.

The little inventor lifted his mild blue eyes to meet the haunting eyes of hazel.

"Well, well, my dear," he said, as he covered one of her hands with his own worn brown one, "so you have come for your buckle, have you? It is all done, honey, an' good as the day when 'twas made. Bob has it in his pocket for you this minute."

By a strange magic the truth and sunlight of the girl's presence had for the time being dispelled all baser suspicions and Willie smiled kindly at the man beside him.

Holding out the crisp white package, Robert Morton came forward.

Delight looked questioningly from the box with its immaculate paper and neat pink string to its giver.

"He found he couldn't fix it himself," explained Willie, immediately interpreting the interrogation. "Neither him or I were guns enough for the job. So Bob got somebody he knew of to tinker it up."

"That was certainly very kind," returned Delight with gravity. "If you will tell me what it cost I--"

Again the old man stepped into the breach.

"Oh, I figger 'twarn't much," said he with easy unconcern. "The feller who did it was used to mendin' jewelry an' knew just how to set about it, so it didn't put him out of his way none."

"Yes," echoed Bob, with a grateful smile toward Willie. "It made him no trouble at all."

The two men watched the delicate fingers unfasten the package.

"See how nice 'tis," Willie went on. "You'd never know there was a thing the matter with it."

"It's wonderful!" she cried.

Her pleasure put to flight the old inventor's last compunction at his compromise with truth.

"I am so pleased, Mr. Morton!" she went on. "You are quite sure there was no expense."

"Nothing to speak of. I'm glad you like it," murmured the young man.

"Indeed I do!"

She stretched the band of white leather round her waist and Bob noticed how easily its clasp met.

"There!" exclaimed she, raising her hand in mocking imitation of a military salute, "isn't that fine?"

Willie laughed with involuntary admiration at the gesture, and as for Robert Morton he could have gone down on his knees before her and kissed her diminutive white shoe.

The girl did not prolong the tableau. All too soon she relaxed from rigidity into gaiety and came flitting to the work bench.

"What are you doing, Willie dear?" she asked. "You know you never have secrets from me. What is this marvellous thing you are busy with?"

Before answering, Willie glanced mysteriously about.

"It's because I know you can keep secrets that I ain't afraid to trust you with 'em," said he. "Bob an' I are workin' on the quiet at an idee I was kitched with a day or two ago. It's a bigger scheme than most of the ones I've tackled, an' it may not turn out to be anything at all; still, Bob has studied boats an' knows a heap about 'em, an' he believes somethin' can be made of it. But 'til our fish is hooked we ain't shoutin' that we've caught one. If the contrivance works," went on the little old man eagerly, "it will be a bonanza for Zenas Henry.

It's--" he lowered his voice almost to a whisper, "it's an idee to keep motor-boats from gettin' snagged."

The words were scarcely out of his mouth before his listeners saw him start and look apprehensively toward the door.

They were no longer alone. On the threshold of the workshop stood Janoah Eldridge.

CHAPTER IX

A WIDENING OF THE BREACH

"So," piped Janoah, "that's what you're doin', is it, Willie Spence?

Well, you needn't 'a' been so all-fired still about it. I guessed as much all the time." There was an acid flavor in the words. "Yes, I knowed it from the beginnin' well as if I'd been here, even if you did shut me out an' take this city feller in to help you in place of me.

Mebbe he has studied 'bout boats; but how do you know what he's up to?

How do you know, anyhow, who he is or where he came from? He says, of course, that he's Tiny's nephew, an' he may be, fur all I can tell; but what proof have you he ain't somebody else who's come here to steal your ideas an' get money for 'em?"

There was a moment of stunned silence, as the barbs from his tongue pierced the stillness.

Then Delight stepped in front of the interloper.

"How dare you, Janoah Eldridge!" she cried. "How dare you insult Willie's friend and--and--mine! You've no right to speak so about Mr.

Morton."

Before her indignation Janoah quailed. In all his life he had never before seen Delight Hathaway angry, and something in her flas.h.i.+ng eyes and flaming cheeks startled him.

"I--I--warn't meanin' to say 'twas actually so," mumbled he apologetically. "Like as not the young man's 'xactly what he claims to be. Still, Willie's awful gullible, an' there's times when a word of warnin' ain't such a bad thing. I'm sorry if you didn't like it."

"I didn't like it, not at all," the girl returned, only slightly mollified by his conciliatory tone. "If you are anything of a gentleman you will apologize to Mr. Morton immediately."

"Ain't I just said I was sorry?" hedged the sheepish Janoah.