“Here, give it to me!” he cried, snatching it and cramming it into his pocket. “I’ll fix it on the train.” In another moment he was halfway down the plank walk, waving his hand, shouting back over his shoulder, “Send word to Cap’n Bob to load them other big stone an’ git ’em to the Ledge to-day; the wind’s goin’ to haul to the south’ard. I’ll be back ’bout eight o’clock to-night.”
Aunty Bell looked after his hurrying figure until the trees shut it from view; then, gasping with excitement, angry with herself for having asked so little, she reëntered the kitchen and again dropped into a chair.
Betty’s flight had been a sore blow to the bustling little wife. She had been the last to believe that Betty had really deserted Caleb for Lacey, even after Captain Joe had told her how the mate of the Greenport boat had seen them board the New York train together.
As for the captain, he had gone about his work with his mind filled with varying emotions: sympathy for Caleb, sorrow and mortification over Betty’s fall, and bitter, intense, dangerous hatred of Lacey. These were each in turn, as they assailed her, consumed by a never ending hunger to get the child home again, that she might begin the undoing of her fatal step. To him she was still the little girl he used to meet on the road, with her hair in a tangle about her head, her books under her arm. As he had never fully realized, even when she married Caleb, that anything had increased her responsibilities, or that she could be anything but the child she looked,—so he could not now escape the conviction that somehow or other “she’d been hoodooed,” as he expressed it, and that when she came to herself her very soul would cry out in bitter agony.
Every day since her flight he had been early and late at the telegraph office, and had directed Bert Simmons, the letter-carrier on the shore road, to hunt him up wherever he might be,—on the dock or aboard his boat,—should a letter come bearing his name. The telegram, therefore, was not a surprise. That Sanford should have found her was what he could not understand.
Aunty Bell, with the big secret weighing at her heart, busied herself about the house, so as to make the hours pass quickly. She was more conservative and less impulsive in many things than the captain; that is, she was apt to consider the opinions of her neighbors, and shape her course accordingly, unless stopped by one of her husband’s outbursts and won over to his way of thinking. The captain knew no law but his own emotions, and his innate sense of right and wrong sustained by his indomitable will and courage. If the other folks didn’t like it, the other folks had to get out of the way; he went straight on.
“Ain’t nobody goin’ to have nothin’ to do with Betty, if she does git tired of Lacey an’ wants to come home, poor child,” Aunty Bell had said to Captain Joe only the night before, as they sat together at supper. “Them Nevins gals was sayin’ yesterday they’d pass her on the road and wouldn’t speak to her, not if they see her starvin’, and was a-goin’ on awful about it; and Mis’ Taft said”—
The captain raised his head quickly. “Jane Bell,”—when the captain called Aunty Bell “Jane” the situation was serious,—“I ain’t got nothin’ to do with them Nevins gals, nor Mis’ Taft, nor nobody else, and you ain’t got nothin’, neither. Ain’t we hed this child runnin’ in an’ out here jes’ like a kitten ever since we been here? Don’t you know clean down in yer heart that there ain’t no better gal ever lived 'n Betty? Ain’t we all liable to go ’stray, and ain’t we all of us so dirt mean that if we had our hatches off there ain’t nobody who see our cargo would speak to us? Now don’t let me hear no more about folks passin’ her by. I ain’t a-goin’ to pass her by, and you ain’t, neither, if them Nevins gals and old Mother Taft and the whole kit and caboodle of ’em walks on t’other side.”
She remembered the very sound of these words, as she rested for a moment, rocking to and fro, in the kitchen, after the captain had gone, her fat little feet swinging clear of the floor. She could even hear the tone of his voice, and could see the flashing of his eye. The remembrance gave her courage. She wanted some one to come in, that she might put on the captain’s armor and fight for the child herself.
She had not long to wait. Mrs. Taft was already coming up the walk,—for dinner, perhaps. Carleton was walking beside her. They had met at the gate.