CHAPTER VIII
SHADOWS
In the meantime the two men resumed their labors in the shop, touching shoulders before the bench where their tools lay. They planed and chiselled and sawed together as before, but as they worked each was conscious that a barrier of sudden reserve had sprung up between them, obstructing the perfect confidence that had previously existed. At first the old inventor tried to bridge this gulf with trivial jests, but as these passed unnoticed he at length lapsed into silence. Now and then, as he stole a look at his companion, he thought he detected in the youthful face a suppressed nervousness and irritation that found welcome vent in the hammer's vigorous blow. Nevertheless, as the younger man vouchsafed no information regarding the morning's adventure, Willie asked no questions.
He would have given a great deal to have satisfied himself about Cynthia Galbraith. It was easily seen that her family were persons of wealth and position with whom Robert Morton was on terms of the greatest intimacy. It even demanded no very skilled psychologist to perceive the girl's sentiment toward his guest, for Miss Galbraith was a petulent, self-willed creature who did not trouble to conceal her preferences. Her attitude was transparent as the day. But with what feeling did Robert Morton regard her? That was the burning question the little man longed to have answered.
Wearily he sighed. Alas, human nature was a frail, incalculable phenomenon.
How was it likely a young man with his fortune to make would regard a girl as rich and attractive as Cynthia Galbraith, especially if her brother chanced to be his best friend and all her family reached forth welcoming arms to him.
Willie was not a matchmaker. Had he been impugned with the accusation he would have denied it indignantly: Nevertheless, he had been mixed up in too many romances not to find the relation between the sexes a problem of engrossing interest. Furthermore, of late he had been doing a little private castle-building, the foundations of which now abruptly collapsed into ruins at his feet. The cornerstone of this dream-structure had been laid the day he had first seen Robert Morton and Delight Hathaway together. What a well-mated pair they were! For years it had been his unwhispered ambition to see his favorite happily married to a man who was worthy of the priceless treasure.
The Brewster household was aging fast. Captain Jonas, Captain Benjamin, and Captain Phineas were now old men; even Zenas Henry's hair had thinned and whitened above his temples, and Abbie, once so tireless, was becoming content to drop her cares on younger shoulders. Yes, Wilton was growing old, thought the inventor sadly, and he and Celestina were unquestionably keeping pace with the rest. In the natural course of events, before many years Delight would be deprived of her protectors and be left alone in the great world to fend for herself. She was well able to do so, for she was resourceful and capable and would never be forced to marry for a home as was many a lonely woman. Nor would she ever come to want; the village would see to that. Notwithstanding this certainty, however, he could not bear to think of a time when there would be no one to stand between her and the harsher side of life; no man who would count the championship a privilege, an honor, his dearest duty.
Wilton had never offered a husband of the type pictured in Willie's mind. The hamlet could boast of but few young men, and the greater part of those who lingered within its borders had done so because they lacked the ambition and initiative to hew out for themselves elsewhere broader fields of activity. Those of ability had gravitated to the colleges, the business schools, or gone to test their strength in the city's marts of commerce. Who could blame them for not resting content with baiting lobster pots and dredging for scallops? Were he a young man with his path untrodden before him he would have been one of the first to do the same, Willie confessed. Did he not constantly covet their youth and opportunity? Nevertheless, praiseworthy as their motive had been, the fact remained that nowhere in the village was there a man the peer of Delight Hathaway. Rare in her girlish beauty, rarer yet in her promise of womanhood, what a prize she would be for him who had the fineness of fiber to appreciate the guerdon!