Flood Tide Part 37

"You don't see nothin' of 'em?"

"Not yet."

There was an anxious frown on his forehead.

"Why don't you eat somethin'?" suggested she. "It might take your mind off worryin'."

"I ain't worryin', Tiny," was the confident reply. "The boat's all right."

"S'pose it should be snagged or somethin' outside the bay?" she ventured. "I wish to goodness they'd come back. Look, here's Delight an' Abbie comin' through the grove. Likely they've been gettin'

uneasy, too."

Sure enough, moving among the low pines that shaded the slope between the Spence and Brewster houses they saw the two women.

Abbie was stouter now than when she had come as a bride to Zenas Henry's white cottage, but there was a serenity in her mien that softened her expression into charming womanliness. As she neared the shed she glanced at Willie with an uneasiness she could not wholly conceal.

"Don't it seem to you, Willie, that it's gettin' most time for 'em to be gettin' home?"

"You ain't nervous, Abbie," smiled the little old man.

"N--o, not really. Of course, I know they're all right. Still, they ain't never stayed clammin' so long before."

"I wouldn't worry, Auntie," Delight put in, taking her hand rea.s.suringly. "A thousand things may have delayed them. I am sure--"

"They're comin'!" broke in Willie with sudden excitement. "The boat's comin'. Ain't that her makin' the point, Bob? She's clippin' along like a race horse, too. Lord! Watch her go."

"That's the _Sea Gull_!" cried Abbie. "I don't need no gla.s.ses to make her out. That's her! How foolish I was to go fussin'. Still, I always have a kind of dread--"

"I know, I know," interrupted the inventor gently. "But there warn't no call for worry this time. I felt mortal certain they'd be heavin'

into sight pretty soon."

"I guess likely now we know they're on the way, we'd better slip home again," Abbie smiled. "I'd feel silly enough to have 'em find us here."

"Nonsense, Abbie!" said Celestina. "They needn't know you was worried.

Ain't it possible you might have come down here on an errand? Wait 'til they pa.s.s and walk back with 'em. What difference does it make if your dinner is late?"

Abbie hesitated. Her dinner never was late; yet, for that matter, she never was out visiting her neighbors in the middle of the day, either.

Perhaps, as she had followed one demoralizing impulse and transgressed all her domestic traditions, the breaking of another did not matter.

"I--s'pose I might wait," she answered. "I'd love dearly to hear what they'll have to say."

"Oh, do wait, Auntie!" Delight begged. "It won't be long now before they get here."

"Better stay, Abbie," put in Willie. "Bob an' I won't be inventin'

every day."

"Well," was the half unwilling answer.

"Don't you wonder how it worked?" cried Delight, addressing Bob, her cheeks scarlet with excitement. "See, here they come! Did you ever hear such a chatter! Zenas Henry is swinging that clam bucket as if there wasn't a thing in it. He will spill them all out if he isn't careful."

On strode the four men. With a bound they cleared the bank before the Spence cottage and crowded in at the narrow gate.

"Whar is he? Whar's Willie?" demanded Zenas Henry. Then, catching sight of the old inventor half concealed behind his workbench, he shouted:

"Here, Willie, you rascal, out with you! Don't go hidin' there behind that table. Man alive, why didn't you tell us what you was up to?"

"Did it work, Zenas Henry?" queried the little fellow eagerly.

"Did it work!" mimicked Zenas Henry with a guffaw. "Say, Phineas, did it?"

The fishermen gave an exuberant roar of laughter.

"Did it work?" repeated Zenas Henry so out of breath that he could scarcely articulate the words. "Good Lord, don't it just! Why, we clipped along through that seaweed as if it warn't there."

"You didn't get snagged then?"

"Snagged? Not much! Ain't we been ridin' in an' out every little eel gra.s.s cove along the sh.o.r.e just for the sheer deviltry of seein' if we could get snagged?" piped Captain Benjamin. "There'll be no more rockin' in the channel for us. My eye! Think of that!"

"How ever did you manage it, Willie?" Zenas Henry questioned.

"What makes you so sure it was me?"

"Oh, Lord! Who else would it be?"

"Well, it warn't all me," protested the little inventor modestly.

"Most of it was Bob. I got the idee an' he did the rest--him an' Mr.

Galbraith's friend, Mr. Snellin'."

"Well, I'm clean beat--that's all I can say," observed Zenas Henry, mopping his brow. "I tell you what, it's made a new thing of that motor-boat. There's no thankin' you. All is, Willie, if you want anything of mine it's yours for the askin'. Just speak up an' you can have it."

A radiant smile spread over the face of the spinner of cobwebs.

"You ain't got nothin' I covet, Zenas Henry," he answered slowly, "but you've got somethin' Bob Morton wants powerful bad."

He saw a mystified expression steal into Zenas Henry's face.

"Happiness didn't come to you early in life, Zenas Henry," went on Willie, his voice taking on a note of gentle persuasion, "an' often I've heard you lament you was cheated out of spendin' your youth with Abbie. Of course, marryin' late is better than not marryin' at all, though. Some of the rest of us--" he motioned toward the three captains and Celestina, "have got pa.s.sed by altogether. But Delight an' Bob have found love early, while the bloom is still on it. You wouldn't wish to keep 'em from their birthright, would you, Zenas Henry?"

In the hush that followed the plea, Abbie crept up to her husband and slipped her hand into his.

"The child loves him, dear," she said, looking up into the man's stern face. "I read it in her eyes long ago. You want her to be happy, don't you?"

Her voice trembled. Only the mother instinct, supreme in its selflessness, gave her the strength to continue: "We must not think of ourselves. Real love is heaven-sent. It is ours neither to give nor to deny."

How still the room was. Suddenly it had been transformed into a battle ground on which a soul waged mortal combat. There was no question in the minds of those who viewed the struggle that the issue presented had come as a shock, and that to meet it taxed every ounce of forbearance and control that the man possessed. He looked as one stricken, his face a turmoil of jealousy, grief, despair, and disappointment. But gradually a gentler light shone in his eyes,--a light radiant, and triumphant; love was conqueror and raising his head he murmured:

"Where is the child?"

She sped to his side.