Caleb West, Master Diver Part 14

"It was all I could get; there warn't nothin' else handy, Cap'n Joe."

The captain looked the frail sharpie over from stem to stern, and then called to Nickles: "Bring down one 'er them empty ker'sene five-gallon cans; we got some bailin' to do, I tell ye, 'fore we make Keyport Light. No, there ain't nothin' up," noticing Nickles's anxious face.

"Caleb wants me to Keyport,-that's all. Get breakfast, and tell the men, when they turn out, that I'll be back to-morrow in the Screamer, if it smooths down."

Caleb took his seat on the windward side of the tossing boat, holding the sheet. The captain sat in the stern, one hand on the tiller. The kerosene-can lay at their feet. The knees of the two men touched.

No better sailors ever guided a boat, and none ever realized more clearly the dangers of their position.

The captain settled himself in his seat in silence, his eyes watching every wave that raced by, and laid his course towards the white tower five miles away, blurred gray in the driving rain. Caleb held the sheet, his eyes facing the long, low line of hills where his cabin lay. As he hauled the sheet closer a heavy sigh broke from him. It was the first time since he had known Betty that he had set his face homeward without a thrill of delight filling his heart. Captain Joe heard the smothered sigh, and, without turning his head, laid his great hand with its stiff thole-pin fingers tenderly on Caleb's wrist.

These two men knew each other.

"I wouldn't worry, Caleb," he said, after a little. "That butcher sees too much, an' sometimes he don't know nothin'. He's allers got some c.o.c.k-an'-bull story 'bout somebody 'r other. Only las' week he come inter Gardiner's drug store with a yarn 'bout the old man bein'

pisened, when it warn't nothin' but cramps. Ease a little, Caleb-s-o.

Seems to me it's blowin' harder."

As he spoke, a quick slash of the cruel wind cut the top from a pursuing wave and flung it straight in Caleb's face. The diver, with his stiffened fingers, combed the dripping spray from his beard, and without a word drew his tarpaulins closer. Captain Joe continued:-

"Wust 'r them huckster fellers is they ain't got no better sense 'an to peddle everythin' they know 'long with their stuff. Take in-_take in, Caleb_! That _was_ a soaker." The big wave that had broken within a foot of the rail had drenched them from head to foot. "Butcher didn't say n.o.body was with Betty, did he?" he asked, with a cant of his sou'wester to free it from sea-water.

Caleb shook his head.

"No, and there warn't n.o.body. I tell ye this thing'll straighten itself out. Ye can't tell what comes inter women's heads sometimes.

She might'er gone over to Greenport to git some fixin's for Sunday, an' would'er come back in the afternoon boat, but it blowed so. Does she know anybody over there?"

Caleb did not answer. Somehow since he had seen Captain Joe hope had gone out of his heart. He had understood but too clearly the doubting question that had escaped the captain's lips, as he sprang from the bed and looked into his eyes. He was not a coward; he had faced without a quiver many dangers in his time; more than once he had cut his air-hose, the last desperate chance of a diver when his lines are fouled. But his legs had shaken as he listened to Captain Joe. There was something in the tone of his voice that had unmanned him.

For a mile or more the two men did not speak again. Wave after wave pursued them, and tossed its angry spray after them. Captain Joe now managed the sail with one hand, and steered with the other. Caleb bailed incessantly.

When they ran under the lee of the lighthouse the keeper hailed them.

He had recognized Captain Joe. Indeed, he had followed the sharpie with his gla.s.s until it reached the Ledge, and had watched its return "with two fools instead of one," he said.

"Anybody sick?" he shouted.

Captain Joe shook his head, and the sharpie plunged on and rounded the point into the perfect calm of the protecting sh.o.r.e.

Caleb made fast the boat when land was reached, while the captain sprang out. Then they both hurried up Caleb's garden walk to the cabin door.

There was no change in the house. The white china bowl still lay over the supper, the newspaper on the floor; no one had entered since Caleb had left.

The captain began a close search through the rooms: inside the clock, all over the mantelpiece, and on the sitting-room table. No sc.r.a.p of writing could he find that shed a ray of light on Betty's movements.

Then he walked upstairs, Caleb following him, and opened the bedroom closet door. Her dresses hung in their usual places,-all but the one she wore and her cloak, Caleb said.

"She ain't gone for long," said the captain thoughtfully, looking into the closet. "You wait here, Caleb, and git yerself some breakfast. I may be gone two hours, I may be gone all day. When I find out for sure I'll come back. I'm goin' to Noank fust, to see them hands aboard the boat. It's Sunday, an' she ain't a-runnin'."

Caleb waited by the fireless stove. Hour after hour went by. Now and then he would open the front door and peer down the road, trying to make out the captain's burly, hurrying form. When it grew dark he put a light in the window, and raised one shade on the kitchen side of the house, that the captain might know he was still at home and waiting.

About nine o'clock Caleb heard the whistle of a tug and a voice calling for some one to catch a line. He opened the kitchen door and looked out on the wet gloom, that was broken here and there by the masthead lights rocking in the wind. Then he recognized one of the big Medford tugs lying off the dock below his garden; the hands were making fast to a dock spile. Captain Joe sprang ash.o.r.e, and the tug steamed off.

The captain walked slowly towards the porch, entered the kitchen without a word, and sank heavily into a chair. Caleb made no sound; he stood beside him, waiting, one hand grasping the table.

"She's gone, ain't she?"

The captain nodded his head.

"Gone! Who with?" asked Caleb, unconsciously repeating the words that had rung all day in his ears.

"Bill Lacey," said the captain, with choking voice.

CHAPTER X

STRAINS FROM BOCK'S 'CELLO

Mrs. Leroy was one of the few women in town who realized what Sanford and his friends had long ago discovered,-the possibilities of New York in summer. To her it had now become its most delightful season, a season of long days and short nights-days and nights of utter idleness, great content, and blessed peace of mind; a season when one could dine where one chose without a waiting cab and a hurried departure at the bidding of somebody else; when the eleven o'clock lecturer is silent, the afternoon tea a memory, and the epidemic of the ten-course dinner a forgotten plague.

She had grown to believe with Sanford that if one could impress the possibility of these truths upon the friends one loved, so that they, and only they, could tiptoe back into their houses, keep their blinds closed and their servants hidden, and so delude the balance of the world-those they did not love, the uncongenial, the tiresome, the b.u.mptious, and the aggressive-into believing that they had fled; if this little trick could be played on the world every June, and for three long happy months only congenial spirits could spread themselves over s.p.a.ce and eat their lotus in peace (and with their fingers, if they so pleased), then would each one discover that New York in summer could indeed be made the Eldorado of one's dreams.

Her own front door on Gramercy Park was never barricaded, nor was her house dismantled. She changed its dress in May and put it into charming summer attire of matting and chintz, making it a rare and refres.h.i.+ng retreat; and more than half her time she spent within its walls, running down to Medford whenever the cares of that establishment required attention, or a change of mood made a change of scene desirable.

Since the visit when Captain Joe had dismissed her with his thanks from the warehouse hospital at Keyport she had gone to Medford but once.

The major had been a constant visitor, and Jack Hardy and his fiancee, Helen s.h.i.+rley, had on more than one occasion hidden themselves, on moonlight nights, in the shadows of the big palms fringing her balcony overlooking the Park. Sanford had not seen her as often as he wished.

Work on the Ledge had kept him at Keyport, and allowed him but little time in town.

With the setting of the derricks, however, he felt himself at liberty for a holiday, and he had looked forward with a feeling of almost boyish enthusiasm-which he never quite outgrew-to a few days'

leisure in town, and a morning or two with Mrs. Leroy.

When the maid brought up his card, Mrs. Leroy was at her desk in the little boudoir, with its heaps of silk cus.h.i.+ons, its disorder of books, and bloom of mignonette and red geraniums filling the windows that looked straight into the trees of the Park. Here the sun shone in winter, and here the moonlight traced the outlines of bare branches upon her window-shades, and here in summer the coolest of cool shadows fell from tree and awning.

"Why, I expected you yesterday, Henry," she said, holding out her hand, seating Sanford upon the divan, and drawing up a chair beside him. "What happened?"

"Nothing more serious than an elopement."

"Not Jack and Helen s.h.i.+rley?" she said, laughing.

"No; I wish it were; they would go on loving each other. This affair brings misery. It's Caleb West's wife. Captain Joe is half crazy about it, and poor Caleb is heartbroken. She has gone off with that young fellow she was nursing the day you came up with the major."

"Eloped! Pretty doings, I must say. Yes, I remember her,-a trim, rather pretty little woman with short curly hair. I caught a glimpse of Caleb, too, you know, as he came in from the Ledge. He seemed years older than she. What had he done to her?"

"Nothing, so far as I know, except love her and take care of her. Poor Caleb!"

"What did he let her go for, then? I'm sorry for the old diver, but it was his fault, somewhere. The girl had as good a face as I ever looked into. She never left her husband without some cause, poor child. What else has happened at Keyport?"

"Kate, don't talk so. She's treated him shamefully. They have only been married two years."

Mrs. Leroy bent her head and looked out under the awnings for a moment in a thoughtful way. "Only two years?" she said, with some bitterness.