A NEW HAND AT THE HELM
Tunis ran to the old man's rescue, but it was the girl who lifted Prudence from out the laundry-basket.
"Drat the thing!" ejaculated Cap'n Ira, fighting off the starched dress. "Feel like I was being smothered by a complete suit of sails. That you, Tunis?"
"Yes, Cap'n Ira. You're all right now. Hold on! Don't let's mess up Aunt Prue's wrapper more than can be helped. 'Vast there!"
"I swan! Don't it beat all what a pickle we get into? We ain't no more fit to be alone, me an' Prue, than a pair o' babies. For the lan's sake, Tunis! Who is that?"
He was staring at the girl, who led forward the trembling old woman, her strong, young arms about the thin shoulders. Prudence was tearful but smiling.
"This is the girl you sent me for," said the captain of the Seamew.
The girl was smiling, too. To the delight of the young man there was no suspicion of fear or shyness in her expression. Her eyes were luminous. Her smile he thought would have ravished the heart of a misogynist.
"I swan!" murmured Cap'n Ira, almost prayerfully.
"Ain't she pretty, Ira?" cried Prudence, almost girlish herself in her new happiness. "Just like Sarah Honey was when she was Ida May's age. And ain't it sweet, her coming to us this way? She's brought her trunk. She's going to stay."
"And I know I shall be happy here, Uncle Ira," said the girl, giving him her hand.
Cap'n Ira's smile was as ecstatic as that of his wife. He looked sidewise at Tunis, a glance of considerable admiration.
"It takes you to do it, Tunis. I couldn't have brought home a nicer lookin' gal myself. I swan!"
"Now, you hesh your foolin', Ira," cried his wife, while the younger man's blush admitted unmistakably his feelings. "Don't you mind him, Ida May. Come into the house, now, and you, too, Tunis. We'll have supper in a jiffy."
"No," said the captain of the Seamew. "I must be getting on. Aunt Lucretia will be expecting me, for, of course, she saw the schooner heading in for the cove. Good night, Ida May." He shook hands with her quietly. "I know you will be happy here, with your own folks."
The girl looked deep into the young man's eyes; nor did she free her hand from his clasp immediately. At one side stood the two old people, both smiling, and not a little knowingly and slyly at each other, while the captain of the Seamew and the girl bade each other good night. Cap'n Ira whispered in his wife's ear:
"Look at that now! How long d'you think we'll be able to keep Ida May with us? I cal'late we'd better build our boundary fence a great sight higher and shut him out o' walkin' across this farm."
But Prudence only struck at him with a gently admonitory hand. Tunis and Ida May had taken down the remainder of the wash and the former carried it into the house before he started on for his own home.
The girl, walking behind the old couple into the homelike kitchen, sensed the warming hospitality of the place. It was just as though she had known all this before, as though, in some past time, she had called the Ball homestead home.
"Lay off your hat and coat, Ida May, on the sitting-room lounge," said Prudence. "We'll have supper before I show you upstairs. Me and Ira sleep down here, but there's a nice, big room up there I've fixed up for you."
"Before you were sure I could come?" the girl asked in some wonder.
"She's got faith enough to move mountains, Prudence has," broke in Cap'n Ira proudly. "At least, I cal'late she's got enough to move this here Wreckers' Head if she set out to." And he chuckled.
"But you believed Ida May would come, too. You said so, Ira," cried his wife.
"I swan! I had to say it to keep up with you," he returned. "Otherwise you'd have sailed fathoms ahead of me. However, if you hadn't come, gal, neither of us could have well said to the other them bitterest of all human words: 'I told you so!'"
"How could you suppose I would not come?" asked the girl gayly. "Who would refuse such a generous offer?"
"I knowed you'd see it that way," said Prudence happily.
"But there might have been circumstances we could not foresee," Cap'n Ira said. "You—you didn't have many friends where you was stopping?"
"No real friends."
"Well, there is a difference, I cal'late. No young man, o' course, like Tunis Latham, for instance?"
"Now, Ira!" admonished Prudence.
But Ida May only laughed.
"Nobody half as nice as Captain Latham," she said with honesty.
"Well, I cal'late he would be hard to beat, even here on the Cape," agreed the inquisitive old man.
He took a pinch of snuff and prepared to enjoy it. Suddenly remembering his wife's nervousness, he shouted in a high key:
"Looker—out—Prue! A-choon!"
"Good—Well, ye did warn me that time, Ira, for a fact. But if I had a cake in the oven 'stead of biscuit, I guess 'twould have fell flat with that shock. I do wish you could take snuff quiet. Look an' see, will you, Ida May, if those biscuits are burning?"
The girl opened the oven door to view briefly the two pans of biscuit.
"They are not even brown yet, Aunt Prue. But soon."
"The creamed fish is done. I hope you like salt fish, Ida May?"
"I adore it!"
"Lucky you do," put in Cap'n Ira. "I can't say that I think it is actually 'adorable.' But then, I ain't been eatin' it as a steady shore diet much more'n sixty-five year."
"Don't you run down your victuals, Ira," said his wife.
"No, I don't cal'late to. But if I may be allowed to express my likes and dislikes, I got to be honest and say that there's victuals I eat that would have suited me better for a steady diet than pollack and potatoes. And now we don't even have the potatoes, 'cause we can't raise 'em no more."
"But you have land. I see a garden," said Ida May briskly.
"Yes, it's land," said Cap'n Ira, in the same pessimistic way. "But it ain't had a coat of shack fish for three years and this spring not much seaweed. Besides that, after the potatoes are planted, who is to hoe 'em and knock the bugs off?"
"Oh!" commented Ida May, with a small shudder.
He grinned broadly.
"There's a whole lot o' work to farming. I'd rather plow the sea than plow the land, and that's no idle jest! Never could see how a man could be downright honest when he says he likes to putter with a garden. Why, it's working in one place all the time. When he looks up from his job, there's the same old reefs and shoals he's been beatin' about for years. No matter how often he shoots the sun, the computation's bound to be just the same. He's there, or thereabout."
"That's the way with most longshoremen, Ida May," said Prudence, sighing. "They make awful poor farmers if they are good seamen. Can't seem to combine the two trades."
"I cal'late that's so," agreed Cap'n Ira, his eyes twinkling. "They'd ought to examine all the babies born on the Cape first off, and them that ain't web-footed ought to be sent to agricultural school 'stead of to the fishing. But that ain't why our potato crop's a failure this year. And as far as I see, talking won't cure many fish, either."
"Can't I help?" asked Ida May in her gentle voice. "You know, I've come here to work. I don't expect to play lady."
"Well, I don't know. It ain't the kind of work you are used to."
"I've been used to work all my life, and all kinds of work," interposed the girl bravely.
"But you seem so eddicated," Prudence said.
"Getting an education did not keep me from learning how to use my hands."
"Well, Sarah Honey was a right good housekeeper," granted Prudence.
At that the girl fell suddenly silent, as she did whenever Sarah Honey's name was mentioned. And yet she knew she must get used to such references to her presumed mother. Prudence frequently recalled incidents which had happened when Sarah Honey visited the Ball house before she was married.
They had supper, a plentiful meal if there was not much variety. Prudence had made a "two-egg cake" and opened a jar of beach-plum preserves to follow the creamed fish and biscuits.
"I must learn to make biscuit as good as these," said Ida May.
"I expect you are more used to riz bread. City folks are. But on the Cape we don't have that much. Our men folks want hot bread at every meal. We pamper 'em," said Prudence.
"I'm pampered 'most to death, that's a fact," grumbled Cap'n Ira.
Ida May briskly cleared the table and washed the dishes. She would not allow Prudence even to wipe them.
"I'm sitting here like a lady, Ira," said the little old woman. "This child will work herself to death if we let her."
"A willin' horse always does get driv' too fast," commented Cap'n Ira.
"A new broom sweeps clean," laughed the girl, rinsing out the dishcloths and hanging them on the line behind the stove.
They went outside in the gloaming and sat in a sheltered nook where they could watch the lights twinkling all along the coast to the southward, the revolving lantern at Lighthouse Point, the steady beacon on Eagle's Head, and now and then the flash of the great one of Monomoy Point so far away. It was peaceful, quiet, assuring, and, the girl thought, heavenly! She thought for a moment of Sellers' restaurant and the little room she had occupied on Hanover Street. This was contentment.
Old Pareta had brought her trunk and bag and carried them up to the big, well-furnished room she was to occupy. By and by Prudence went up with her to see that she was made comfortable there, and to watch her unpack, for the old woman was not without curiosity regarding the "city fashions."
One window of the room looked to the north. Through this Ida May saw the steady beam of a lamp shining from a house down in what seemed to be a depression behind the Head. She asked Prudence what that was.
"That must be a light at 'Latham's Folly,' Tunis' house, you know," said the little old woman, likewise peering through the window. "Shouldn't be surprised if 'twas right in his room. He sleeps this end of the house. Yes, that's what it is."
"So Captain Latham lives just there?" the girl said softly.
"When he's ashore. He and his Aunt Lucretia. They are the only Lathams left of their branch of the family."
Afterward, when Ida May had come upstairs to go to bed, she looked to the northward again. The light was still there. She knelt by the open window in her nightgown and watched the light for a long time. When it finally was extinguished she crept into bed.
She heard the nasal tones of the two old people below, for her door on the stairs was open. She heard, too, the occasional cry of a night fowl and, in the distance, the barking of an uneasy watchdog.
But after all, and in spite of the many, many thoughts which shuttled to and fro in her mind, she did not lie awake for long. It was a clear and sparkling night; there were no foghorns to disturb her dreams with their raucous warnings, and the surf along the beaches below the Head merely scuffed its way up and down the strand with a soothing "Hush! Hush-sh!"
At dawn, however, there came a noise which roused the newcomer to Wreckers' Head. She awoke with a start. Something had clattered upon her window sill, that window looking toward the north. She sat upright in bed to listen. The clatter was repeated. In the dim, gray light she saw several tiny objects bounding into the room.
She scrambled out of the high four-poster and shrugged her feet into slippers. She crept to the window, holding the nightgown close at the neck. She felt one of the tiny objects under the soft sole of her slipper and stooped to secure it. It was a pebble.
More pebbles rattled on the window sill. She stepped forward then with considerable bravery, and looked down. What she saw at first startled her. A tall, misty, gray object stood below the window, something quite ghostly in appearance, something which moved in the dim light.
"Why, what—"
Then the thing stamped and blew a faint whinny. She saw a pale, long face raised and two pointed ears twitching above it.
"A horse!"
A darker figure rose up suddenly from before the strange animal.
"Ida May!"
"Why, Captain Latham!"
"Cat's foot!" exclaimed the captain of the Seamew. "I thought I'd never wake you up without disturbing the old folks. No need to ask you if you rested well."
"Oh, gloriously!" whispered the girl, beaming down upon him, but keeping out of the full range of his vision.
"Sorry I had to wake you, but I'm due at the wharf right now to see that the hands get those clams stowed aboard. We want to get away on the morning tide. I brought Queenie home and thought I'd better tell you."
"Queenie?"
"The Queen of Sheba, you know. I was telling you about Cap'n Ira's old mare."
"Oh, yes! Wait. I'll dress and be right down."
"That's all right," said Tunis. "I'll wait."
She scurried into the clothes she had laid out before going to bed. In five minutes she crept down the stairs into the kitchen and out of the back door. Tunis, holding the sleepy mare by her rope bridle, met her between the kitchen ell and the barn.
"You look as bright as a new penny," he chuckled. "But it's early yet for you to be astir. I'll put Queenie in her stable and show you where the feed is. Aunt Prue will like to have her back. She sets great store by the old mare. She won't be much bother to you, Ida May."
"Nothing will ever be a bother to me here, Captain Latham," said the girl cheerfully.
"That's the way to talk," he said, with satisfaction. "Just you keep on that tack, Ida May, and things will go swimmingly, I've no doubt."
In ten minutes he was briskly on his way to the town. The girl watched him from the back stoop as long as he was to be seen in the morning mist. Then she went back into the house, made a more careful toilet, and when Cap'n Ira came hobbling into the kitchen an hour later breakfast was in preparation on the glowing stove.
"I swan! This is comfort, and no mistake," chuckled the old man, rubbing his chin reflectively. "You're going to be a blessing in this house, Ida May."
"I hope you'll always say so, Uncle Ira," returned the girl, smiling at him.
"I cal'late. Now I'll get washed, but that derned shavin'."
"You sit down in that rocker and I'll shave you," she said briskly. "Oh, I can do it! I shaved my own father when he was sick last—"
She stopped, turned away, and fell silent. It was the first time she had spoken of either of her parents, but Cap'n Ira did not notice her sudden confusion. He prepared for the ordeal, making his own lather and opening the razor.
"I can't strop it, Ida May," he groaned. "That's one of the things that's beyont my powers."
She came to him with a clean towel which she tucked carefully in at the neckband of his shirt. Practically she lathered his face and rubbed the lather into the stubble with brisk hands. He grunted ecstatically, lying back in the chair in solid comfort. He eyed her manipulation of the razor on the strop with approval.
For the first time in many a morning he was shaved neatly and with dispatch. When Prudence came feebly into the room, he hailed her delightedly.
"You've lost your job, old woman!" he cried.
"And ain't there a thing for me to do?" queried Prudence softly, yet smiling.
"Just sit down at the table, auntie," said the girl. "The coffee is made. How long do you want your eggs boiled? The water is bubbling."
"Eggs!" exclaimed Cap'n Ira. "I thought them hens of Prue's had give up layin' altogether."
"I found some stolen nests in the barn," returned Ida May. "They have been playing tricks on you."
It was near noon when Ida May from an upper window saw the Seamew beating out of the cove on her return trip to Boston. She watched the schooner as long as the white sails were visible. But her heart was not wholly with the beautiful schooner. A great content filled her soul. Afterward she bustled about, straightening up the house, her cheerful smile always ready when the old folks spoke. They watched her with such a feeling of thankfulness as they could not openly express.
After dinner she started on the ironing and proved herself to be as capable in that line as in everything else.
"Maybe she's been a shopgirl, Ira," Prudence observed in private to her husband; "but Sarah Honey didn't neglect teaching her how to keep any man's home neat and proper."
"Sh!" admonished Cap'n Ira. "Don't put no such ideas in the gal's head."
"What ideas?" the old woman asked wonderingly.
His eyes twinkled and he rewarded himself with a generous pinch of snuff before repeating his bon mot:
"If you don't tell her she'll make some man a good wife, maybe she won't never know it! Looker out, Prudence! A-choon!"