He had seen Betty only once, and that was when he had passed her on the road. He came upon her suddenly, and he thought she started back as if to avoid him, but he kept his eyes turned away and passed on. When he reached the hill and looked back he could see her sitting by the side of the road, a few rods from where they met, her head resting on her hand.
Only one man had dared to speak to him in an unsympathetic way about Betty’s desertion, and that was his old friend Tony Marvin, the keeper of Keyport Light. They had been together a year on Bannock Rip during the time the Department had doubled up the keepers. He had not heard of Caleb’s trouble until several weeks after Betty’s flight; lighthouse-keepers staying pretty close indoors.
“I hearn, Caleb, that the new wife left ye for that young rigger what got his face smashed. ’Most too young, warn’t she, to be stiddy?”
“No, I ain’t never thought so,” replied Caleb quietly. “Weren’t no better gal ’n Betty; she done all she knowed how. You’d ’a’ said so if ye knowed her like I did. But ’twas agin natur’, I bein’ so much older. But I’d rather had her go than suffer on.”
“Served ye durn mean, anyhow,” said the keeper. “Did she take anything with ’er?”
“Nothin’ but the clo’es she stood in. But she didn’t serve me mean, Tony. I don’t want ye to think so, an’ I don’t want ye to say so, nor let nobody say so, neither; an’ ye won’t if you’re a friend o’ mine, which you allers was.”
“I hearn there was some talk o’ yer takin’ her back,” the keeper went on in a gentler tone, surprised at Caleb’s blindness, and anxious to restore his good feeling. “Is that so?”
“No, that ain’t so,” Caleb answered firmly, ending the conversation on that topic and leading it into other channels.
This interview of the light-keeper’s was soon public property. Some of those who heard of it set Caleb down as half-witted over his loss, and others wondered how long it would be before he would send for Betty and patch it all up again, and still others questioned why he didn’t go over to Stonington and smash the other side of Lacey’s face; they heard that Billy had been seen around there.
As for Betty, she had found work with a milliner on the edge of the village, within a mile of Captain Joe’s cottage, where her taste in trimming bonnets secured her ready employment, and where her past was not discussed. That she was then living with Captain Joe and his wife was enough to gain her admission.