Fair Harbor Part 39

"No, there isn't. He and I are friends, good friends, and have been for a long time, but that doesn't---- Well, Cap'n, I shall look for you and the Foam Flake--oh, that _is_ a wonderful name--about one to-morrow. And I'll promise not to keep you waiting."

"If the Foam Flake doesn't die in the meantime I'll be on hand. He'll be asleep probably, but Judah declares he walks in his sleep, so that---- Oh, heavens and earth!"

This exclamation, although but a mutter, was fervent indeed. The captain and Elizabeth had turned to the vine-shaded doorway of the Eyrie, and there, in that doorway, was Miss Snowden and, peering around her thin shoulder, the moon face of Mrs. Chase. Sears looked annoyed, Miss Berry looked more so, and Elvira looked--well, she looked all sorts of things.

As for Aurora, her expression was, as always, unfathomable. Judah Cahoon once compared her countenance to a pink china dish-cover, and it is hard to read the emotions behind a dish-cover.

Miss Snowden spoke first.

"Oh!" she observed; and much may be expressed in that monosyllable.

Elizabeth spoke next. "Your book is there on the seat, Elvira," she said, carelessly. "At least I suppose it is yours. It has your bookmark in it."

Elvira simpered. "Yes," she affirmed, "it is mine. But I'm not in a hurry, not a single bit of hurry. I _do_ hope we haven't _disturbed_ you."

"Not a bit, not a bit," said Sears, crisply. "Miss Elizabeth and I were havin' a business talk, but we had finished. The coast is clear for you now. Good afternoon."

"You're _sure_, Cap'n Kendrick? Aurora and I wouldn't interrupt a _business_ talk for the _world_. And in such a romantic place, too."

As Sears and Elizabeth walked up the path from the summer-house the voice of Mrs. Chase was audible--as usual very audible indeed.

"Elviry," begged Aurora, eagerly, "Elviry, what did he say to you? He looked awful kind of put out when he said it."

The captain was "put out," so was Elizabeth apparently. The latter said, "Oh, dear!" and laughed, but there was less humor than irritation in the laugh. Sears's remark was brief but pointed.

"I like four-legged cats first-rate," he declared.

The next day at one o'clock he and his pa.s.senger, with the placid Foam Flake as motor power, left the Fair Harbor together. And, as they drove out of the yard, both were conscious that behind the shades of the dining-room windows were at least six eager faces, and whispering tongues were commenting, exclaiming and surmising.

The captain, for his part, forgot the faces and tongues very quickly. It was a pleasant afternoon, the early fall days on the Cape are so often glorious; the rain of a few days before had laid the dust, at least the upper layer of it, and the woods were beginning to show the first sprinklings of crimson and purple and yellow. The old horse walked or jogged or rambled on along the narrow winding ways, the ancient buggy rocked and rattled and swung in the deep ruts. They met almost no one for the eight miles between Bayport and Orham--there were no roaring, shrieking processions of automobiles in those days--and when Abial Gould, of North Harniss, encountered them at the narrowest section of highway, he steered his placid ox team into the huckleberry bushes and waited for them to pa.s.s, waving a whip-handle greeting from his perch on top of his load of fragrant pitch pine. The little ponds and lakes shone deeply blue as they glimpsed them in the hollows or over the tree tops and, occasionally, a startled partridge boomed from the thicket, or a flock of quail scurried along the roadside.

They talked of all sorts of things, mostly of s.h.i.+ps and seas and countries far away, subjects to which Elizabeth led the conversation and then abandoned it to her companion. They spoke little of the Fair Harbor or its picayune problems, and of the errand upon which they were going--the judge's will, its reading and its possible surprises--none at all.

"Don't," pleaded Elizabeth, when Sears once mentioned the will; "don't, please. Judge Knowles was such a good friend of mine that I can't bear to think he has gone and that some one else is to speak his thoughts and carry out his plans. Tell me another sea story, Cap'n Kendrick. There aren't any Elvira Snowdens off Cape Horn, I'm sure."

So Sears spun his yarns and enjoyed the spinning because she seemed to so enjoy listening to them. And he did not once mention his crippled limbs, or his despondency concerning the future; in fact, he pretty well forgot them for the time. And he did not mention George Kent, a person whom he had meant to mention and praise highly, for his unreasonable conscience had pestered him since the talk in the summer-house and, as usual, he had determined to do penance. But he forgot Kent for the time, forgot him altogether.

Bradley's law offices occupied a one-story building on Orham's main road near the center of the village. There were several rigs standing at the row of hitching posts by the steps as they drove up. Sears climbed from the buggy--he did it much easier than had been possible a month before--and moored the Foam Flake beside them. Then they entered the building.

Bradley's office boy told them that his employer and the others were in the private room beyond. The captain inquired who the others were.

"Well" said the boy, "there's that Mr. Barnes--he's the one from California, you know, Judge Knowles' nephew. And Mike--Mr. Callahan, I mean--him that took care of the judge's horse and team and things; and that Tidditt woman that kept his house. And there's Mr. Dishup, the Orthodox minister from over to Bayport, and another man, I don't know his name. Walk right in, Cap'n Kendrick. Mr. Bradley told me to tell you and Miss Berry to walk right in when you came."

So they walked right in. Bradley greeted them and introduced them to Knowles Barnes, the long-looked-for nephew from California. Barnes was a keen-eyed, healthy-looking business man and the captain liked him at once. The person whom the office boy did not know turned out to be Captain Noah Baker, a retired master mariner, who was Grand Master of the Bayport lodge of Masons.

"And now that you and Miss Berry are here, Cap'n Kendrick," said Bradley, "we will go ahead. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the will of our late good friend, Judge Knowles. He asked you all to be here when it was opened and read. Mr. Barnes is obliged to go West again in a week or so, so the sooner we get to business the better. Ahem!"

Then followed the reading of the will. One by one the various legacies and bequests were read. Some of them Sears Kendrick had expected and foreseen. Others came as surprises. He was rather astonished to find that the judge had been, according to Cape Cod standards of that day, such a rich man. The estate, so the lawyer said, would, according to Knowles' own figures, total in the neighborhood of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

Judge Knowles bequeathed:

To the Endowment Fund of the Fair Harbor for Mariners' Women $50,000

To the Bayport Congregational Church 5,000

To the Building Fund of the Bayport Lodge of Masons 5,000

To Emmeline Tidditt (his housekeeper) 5,000

To Michael Callahan (his hired man) 5,000

To Elizabeth Berry--in trust until she should be thirty years of age 20,000

Other small bequests, about 7,000

The balance, the residue of the estate, amounting to a sum approximating fifty-five thousand, to Henry Knowles Barnes, of San Francisco, California.

There were several pages of carefully worded directions and instructions. The fifty thousand for the Fair Harbor was already invested in good securities and, from the interest of these, Sears Kendrick's salary of fifteen hundred a year was to be paid as long as he wished to retain his present position as general manager. If the time should come when he wished to relinquish that position he was given authority to appoint his successor at the same salary. Or should Cordelia Berry, at any time, decide to give up her position as matron, Kendrick and Bradley, acting together, might, if they saw fit, appoint a suitable person to act as manager _and_ matron at a suitable salary. In this event, of course, Kendrick would no longer continue to draw his fifteen hundred a year.

The reading was not without interruptions. Mr. Callahan's was the most dramatic. When announcement was made of his five thousand dollar windfall his Celtic fervor got the better of him and he broke loose with a tangled ma.s.s of tearful e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns and prayers, a curious mixture of glories to the saints and demands for blessings upon the soul of his benefactor. Mrs. Tidditt was as greatly moved as he, but she had her emotions under firmer control. The Reverend Mr. Dishup was happy and grateful on behalf of his parish, so too was Captain Baker as representative of the Masonic Lodge. But each of these had been in a measure prepared, they had been led to expect some gift or remembrance.

It was Elizabeth Berry who had, apparently, expected nothing--nothing for herself, that is. When the lawyer announced the generous bequest to the Fair Harbor she caught her breath and turned to look at Sears with an almost incredulous joy in her eyes. But when he read of the twenty thousand which was hers--the income beginning at once and the princ.i.p.al when she was thirty--she was so tremendously taken aback that, for an instant, the captain thought she was going to faint. "Oh!" she exclaimed, and that was all, but the color left her face entirely.

Sears rose, so did the minister, but she waved them back. "Don't," she begged. "I--I am all right.... No, please don't speak to me for--for a little while."

So they did not speak, but the captain, watching her, saw that the color came back very slowly to her cheeks and that her eyes, when she opened them, were wet. Her hands, clasped in her lap, were trembling. Sears, although rejoicing for her, felt a pang of hot resentment at the manner of the announcement. It should not have been so public. She should not have had to face such a surprise before those staring spectators. Why had not the judge--or Bradley, if he knew--have prepared her in some measure?

But when it was over and he hastened to congratulate her, she was more composed. She received his congratulations, and those of the others, if not quite calmly at least with dignity and simplicity. To Mr. Dishup and Bradley and Captain Baker she said little except thanks. To Barnes, whose congratulations were sincere and hearty, and, to all appearances at least, quite ungrudging, she expressed herself as too astonished to be very coherent.

"I--I can scarcely believe it yet," she faltered. "I can't understand--I can't think why he did it.... And you are all so very kind. You won't mind if I don't say any more now, will you?"

But to Sears when he came, once more, to add another word and to shake her hand, she expressed a little of the uncertainty which she felt.

"Oh," she whispered; "oh, Cap'n Kendrick, do you think it is right? Do you think he really meant to do it? You are sure he did?"

His tone should have carried conviction. "You bet he meant it!" he declared, fervently. "He never meant anything any more truly; I know it."

"Do you? Do you really?... Did--did you know? Did he tell you he was going to?"

"Not exactly, but he hinted. He----"

"Wait. Wait, please. Don't tell me any more now. By and by, on the way home, perhaps. I--I want to know all about it. I want to be sure. And,"

with a tremulous smile, "I doubt if I could really understand just yet."

The group in the lawyer's office did not break up for another hour.

There were many matters for discussion, matters upon which Bradley and Barnes wished the advice of the others. Mike and Mrs. Tidditt were sent home early, and departed, volubly, though tearfully rejoicing. The minister and Captain Noah stayed on to answer questions concerning the church and the lodge, the former's pressing needs and the new building which the latter had hoped for and which was now a certainty. Sears and Elizabeth remained longest. Bradley whispered to the captain that he wished them to do so.

When they were alone with him, and with Barnes of course, he took from his pocket two sealed letters.

"The judge gave me these along with the will," he said. "That was about three weeks before he died. I don't know what is in them and he gave me to understand that I wasn't supposed to know. They are for you two and no one else, so he said. You are to read yours when you are alone, Cap'n Kendrick, and Elizabeth is to read hers when she is by herself. And he particularly asked me to tell you both not to make your decision too quickly. Think it over, he said."