CHAPTER XXII
SHOCKING NEWS
"Ford Tapp was here last night," Cap'n Amazon told Louise at the breakfast table. "I cal'late he was lookin' for you, though he didn't just up an' say so. Seemed worried like for fear't you wouldn't have a good opinion of him."
"Mercy! what has he done?" cried the girl laughing, for even the sound of Lawford's name made her glad.
"Seems it's what he ain't done. What's all this 'bout your jumpin' overboard t'other day and savin' him from drownin'?" and the mariner fairly beamed upon her.
"Oh, uncle, you mustn't believe everything you hear!"
"No? But Bet Gallup says 'tis so. You air a hi-mighty plucky girl, I guess. I allus have thought so—and so did Abe. But I kind of feel as though I'm sort o' responsible for your safety an' well-bein' while you air here, and I can't countenance no such actions."
"Now, uncle!"
"Fellers like Ford Tapp air as plenty as horse-briers in a sand lot; but girls like you ain't made often, I cal'late. Next time that feller has to be rescued, you let Bet Gallup do it."
She knew Cap'n Amazon well enough now to see that his roughness was assumed. His eyes were moist as his gaze rested on her face, and he blew his nose noisily at the end of his speech.
"You take keer o' yourself, Louise," he added huskily. "If anything should happen to you, what—what would Abe say?"
The depth of his feeling for her—so plainly and so unexpectedly displayed—halted Louise in her already formed intention. She had arisen on this morning, determined to "have it out" with Cap'n Amazon Silt. On several points she wished to be enlightened—felt that she had a right to demand an explanation.
For she was quite positive that Cap'n Amazon was not at all what he claimed to be. His actual personality was as yet a mystery to her; but she was positive on this point: He was not Captain Amazon Silt, master mariner and rover of the seas. He was an entirely different person, and Louise desired to know what he meant by this masquerade.
His seamanship, his speech, his masterful manner, were assumed. And in the matter of his related adventures the girl was confident that they were mere repetitions of what he had read.
Now Louise suddenly remembered how Cap'n Abe had welcomed her here at the old store, and how cheerfully and tenderly this piratical looking substitute for the storekeeper had assumed her care. No relative or friend could have been kinder to her than Cap'n Amazon.
How could she, then, stand before him and say: "Cap'n Amazon, you are an impostor. You have assumed a character that is not your own. You tell awful stories about adventures that never befell you. What do you mean by it all? And, in conclusion and above all, Where is Cap'n Abe?"
This had been Louise's intention when she came downstairs on this morning. The nagging of Betty Gallup, the gossip of the other neighbors, the wild suspicions whispered from lip to lip did not influence her so much. It was what she had herself discovered the evening before in the captain's "cabin" that urged her on.
Now Cap'n Amazon's display of tenderness "took all the wind out of her sails," as Betty Gallup would have said.
Louise watched him stirring about the living-room, chirruping to old Jerry and thrusting his finger into the cage for the bird to hop upon it, and finally shuffling off into the store. She hesitatingly followed him. She desired to speak, but could not easily do so. And now Cap'n Joab Beecher was before her.
Amiel Perdue had been uptown and brought down the early mail, of which the most important piece was always the Boston morning paper. Cap'n Joab had helped himself to this and was already unfolding it.
"What's in the Globe paper, Joab?" asked Cap'n Amazon. "You millionaires 'round here git more time to read it than ever I do, I vum!"
"It don't cost you nothin' to have us read it," said Cap'n Joab easily.
"The news is all here arter we git through."
"Uh-huh! I s'pose so. I'd ought to thank ye, I don't dispute, for keepin' the paper from feelin' lonesome.
"I dunno why Abe takes it, anyway, 'cept to foller the sailin's and arrivals at the port o' Boston—'nless he finds more time to read than ever I do. I ain't ever been so busy in my life as I be in this store—'nless it was when I shipped a menagerie for a feller at a Dutch Guinea port and his monkeys broke out o' their cages when we was two days at sea and they tried to run the ship.
"That was some v'y'ge, as the feller said," continued Cap'n Amazon, getting well under way as he lit his after-breakfast pipe. "Them monkeys kep' all the crew on the jump and the afterguard scurcely got a meal in peace, I was——"
"Belay there!" advised Cap'n Joab, with disgust. "Save that yarn for the dog watch. What was it ye said that craft was named Cap'n Abe sailed in?"
Cap'n Amazon stopped in his story-telling and was silent for an instant. Louise, who had stood at the inner doorway listening, turned to go, when she heard the substitute storekeeper finally say:
"Curlew, out o' Boston."
The name caught the girl's instant attention and she felt suddenly apprehensive.
"Here's news o' her," Cap'n Joab said in a hushed voice. "And it ain't good news, Cap'n Silt."
"What d'ye mean?" asked the latter.
"Report from Fayal. A Portugee fisherman's picked up and brought in a boat with 'Curlew' painted on her stern, and he saw spars and wreckage driftin' near the empty boat. There's been a hurricane out there. It—it looks bad, Cap'n Silt."
Before the latter could speak again Louise was at his side and had seized his tattooed arm.
"Uncle Amazon!" she gasped. "Not the Curlew? Didn't I tell you before? That is the schooner daddy-prof's party sailed upon. Can there be two Curlews?"
"My soul and body!" exclaimed Cap'n Joab.
It was Cap'n Amazon who kept his head.
"Not likely to be two craft of the same name and register—no, my dear," he said, patting her hand. "But don't take this so much to heart. It's only rumor. A dozen things might have happened to set that boat adrift. Ain't that so, Cap'n Joab?"
Cap'n Joab swallowed hard and nodded; but his wind-bitten face displayed much distress. "I had no idee the gal's father was aboard that schooner with Cap'n Abe."
"Why, sure! I forgot it for a minute," Cap'n Amazon said cheerfully. "There, there, my dear. Don't take on so. Abe's with your father, if so be anything has happened the Curlew; and Abe'll take keer o' him. Sure he will! Ain't he a Silt? And lemme tell you a Silt never backed down when trouble riz up to face him. No, sir!"
"But if they have been wrecked?" groaned Louise. "Both father and
Uncle Abram. What shall we do about it, Uncle Amazon?"
In this moment of trouble she clung to the master mariner as her single recourse. And impostor or no, he who called himself Amazon Silt did not fail her.
"There ain't nothing much we can rightly do at this minute, Niece Louise," he told her firmly, still patting her morsel of a hand in his huge one. "We'll watch the noospapers and I'll send a telegraph dispatch to the ship news office in N'York and git just the latest word there is 'bout the Curlew.
"You be brave, girl—you be brave. Abe an' Professor Grayling being
together, o' course they'll get along all right. One'll help t'other.
Two pullin' on the sheet can allus h'ist the sail quicker than one.
Keep your heart up, Louise."
She looked at him strangely for a moment. The tears frankly standing in his eyes, the quivering muscles of his face, his expression of keen sorrow for her fears—all impressed her. She suddenly kissed him in gratitude, impostor though she knew him to be, and then ran away. Cap'n Joab hissed across the counter:
"Ye don't know that Cap'n Abe's on that there craft, Am'zon Silt!"
"Well, if I don't—an' if you don't—don't lemme hear you makin' any cracks about it 'round this store so't she'll hear ye," growled Cap'n Amazon, boring into the very soul of the flustered Joab with his fierce gaze.
Louise did not hear the expression of these doubts; but she suffered uncertainties in her own mind. She longed to talk with somebody to whom she could tell all that was in her thoughts. Aunt Euphemia was out of the question, of course; although she must reveal to her the possible peril menacing Professor Grayling. Betty Gallup could not be trusted, Louise knew. And the day dragged by its limping hours without Lawford Tapp's coming near the store on the Shell Road.
This last Louise could not understand. But there was good reason for Lawford's effacing himself at this time. In the empire of the Taffy King there was revolution, and this trouble dated from the hour on the previous morning when Louise had met and greeted Aunt Euphemia on the beach.
The Tapp sisters may have been purse-proud and a little vulgar—from Aunt Euphemia's point of view, at least—but they did not lack acumen. They had seen and heard the greeting of Louise by the Ferritons and the extremely haughty Lady from Poughkeepsie, and knew that Louise must be "a somebody."
Cecile, young and bold enough to be direct, was not long in making discoveries. With a rather blank expression of countenance L'Enfant Terrible, for once almost speechless, beckoned her sisters to one side.
"Pestiferous infant," drawled Marian, "tell us who she is?"
"Is she a Broadway star?" asked Prue.
"Oh, she's a star all right," Cecile said, with disgust in her tone. "We've been a trio of sillies, ignoring her. Fordy's fallen on both feet—only he's too dense to know it, I s'pose."
"Tell us!" commanded Prue. "Who is she?"
"She's no screen actress," answered the gloomy Cecile.
"Who is she, then?" gasped Marian.
"Sue Perriton says she is Mrs. Conroth's niece, and Mrs. Conroth is all the Society with a capital letter there is. Now, figure it out," said Cecile tartly. "If you smarties had taken her up right at the start——"
"But we didn't kno-o-ow!" wailed Marian.
"Go on!" commanded Prue grimly.
"Why, Miss Grayling's father is a big scientist, or something, at Washington. Her mother happened to be born here on the Cape; she was a Card. This girl is just stopping over there with that old fellow who keeps the store—her half-uncle—for a lark. What do you know about that?"
"My word!" murmured Marian.
"And Ford———"
"He's mamma's precious white-haired boy this time," declared the slangy Cecile.
"Do—do you suppose he knew it all the time?" questioned Marian.
"Never! Just like old Doc Ambrose says, there isn't much above Fordy's ears but solid bone," scoffed L'Enfant Terrible.
"Wait till ma hears of this," murmured Prue, and they proceeded to beat a retreat for home that their mother might be informed of the wonder. Lawford was already out of sight.
"How really fortunate Fordy is," murmured Mrs. Tapp, having received the shocking news and been revived after it. "Fancy! Mrs. Conroth's own niece!"
"It's going to put us in just right with the best of the crowd at The
Beaches," Prue announced. "We've only been tolerated so far."
"Oh, Prudence!" admonished Mrs. Tapp.
"That's the truth," her second daughter repeated bluntly. "We might as well admit it. Now, if Fordy only puts this over with this Miss Grayling, they'll have to take us up; for it's plain to be seen they won't drop Miss Grayling, no matter whom she marries."
"If Fordy doesn't miss the chance," muttered Cecile.
"He can't!"
"He mustn't!"
"He wouldn't be mean enough to drop her just to spite us!" wailed
Marian.
"No," said Prue. "He won't do that. Ford isn't a butterfly. You must admit that he's as steadfast as a rock in his likes and dislikes. Once he gets a thing in that head of his———Well! I'm sure he's fond of Miss Grayling."
"But that big actor?" suggested Cecile.
"Surely," gasped Mrs. Tapp, "the girl cannot fancy such a person as that?"
"My! you should just see Judson Bane," sighed Cecile.
"He's the matinee girl's delight," drawled Marian. "Ford has the advantage, however, if he will take it. He's too modest."
Mrs. Tapp's face suddenly paled and she clasped a plump hand to her bosom. "Oh, girls!" she gasped.
"Now what, mother?" begged Prue.
"What will I. Tapp say?"
"Oh, bother father!" scoffed L'Enfant Terrible.
"He doesn't care what Ford does," Prue said.
"Does he ever really care what any of us does?" observed Marian, yet looking doubtfully at her mother.
"You don't understand, girls!" wailed Mrs. Tapp, wringing her hands.
"You know he made me write and invite that Johnson girl here."
"Oh, Dot Johnson!" said Prue. "Well, she is harmless."
"She's not harmless," declared Mrs. Tapp. "I. Tapp ordered me to get her here because, he wants Ford to marry her."
"Marry Dot Johnson?" gasped Prue.
"Oh, bluey!" ejaculated the slangy Cecile.
"But of course Ford won't do it," drawled Marian.
"Then he means to disinherit poor Ford! Oh, yes, he will!" sobbed the lady. "They've had words about it already. You know very well that when once I. Tapp makes up his mind to do a thing, he does it." And there she broke down utterly, with the girls looking at each other in silent horror.