Flood Tide Page 8

  CHAPTER VIII

  SHADOWS

  In the meantime the two men resumed their labors in the shop, touchingshoulders before the bench where their tools lay. They planed andchiselled and sawed together as before, but as they worked each wasconscious that a barrier of sudden reserve had sprung up between them,obstructing the perfect confidence that had previously existed. Atfirst the old inventor tried to bridge this gulf with trivial jests,but as these passed unnoticed he at length lapsed into silence. Nowand then, as he stole a look at his companion, he thought he detectedin the youthful face a suppressed nervousness and irritation that foundwelcome vent in the hammer's vigorous blow. Nevertheless, as theyounger man vouchsafed no information regarding the morning'sadventure, Willie asked no questions.

  He would have given a great deal to have satisfied himself aboutCynthia Galbraith. It was easily seen that her family were persons ofwealth and position with whom Robert Morton was on terms of thegreatest intimacy. It even demanded no very skilled psychologist toperceive the girl's sentiment toward his guest, for Miss Galbraith wasa petulent, self-willed creature who did not trouble to conceal herpreferences. Her attitude was transparent as the day. But with whatfeeling did Robert Morton regard her? That was the burning questionthe little man longed to have answered.

  Wearily he sighed. Alas, human nature was a frail, incalculablephenomenon.

  How was it likely a young man with his fortune to make would regard agirl as rich and attractive as Cynthia Galbraith, especially if herbrother chanced to be his best friend and all her family reached forthwelcoming arms to him.

  Willie was not a matchmaker. Had he been impugned with the accusationhe would have denied it indignantly: Nevertheless, he had been mixed upin too many romances not to find the relation between the sexes aproblem of engrossing interest. Furthermore, of late he had been doinga little private castle-building, the foundations of which now abruptlycollapsed into ruins at his feet. The cornerstone of thisdream-structure had been laid the day he had first seen Robert Mortonand Delight Hathaway together. What a well-mated pair they were! Foryears it had been his unwhispered ambition to see his favorite happilymarried to a man who was worthy of the priceless treasure.

  The Brewster household was aging fast. Captain Jonas, CaptainBenjamin, and Captain Phineas were now old men; even Zenas Henry's hairhad thinned and whitened above his temples, and Abbie, once sotireless, was becoming content to drop her cares on younger shoulders.Yes, Wilton was growing old, thought the inventor sadly, and he andCelestina were unquestionably keeping pace with the rest. In thenatural course of events, before many years Delight would be deprivedof her protectors and be left alone in the great world to fend forherself. She was well able to do so, for she was resourceful andcapable and would never be forced to marry for a home as was many alonely woman. Nor would she ever come to want; the village would seeto that. Notwithstanding this certainty, however, he could not bear tothink of a time when there would be no one to stand between her and theharsher side of life; no man who would count the championship aprivilege, an honor, his dearest duty.

  Wilton had never offered a husband of the type pictured in Willie'smind. The hamlet could boast of but few young men, and the greaterpart of those who lingered within its borders had done so because theylacked the ambition and initiative to hew out for themselves elsewherebroader fields of activity. Those of ability had gravitated to thecolleges, the business schools, or gone to test their strength in thecity's marts of commerce. Who could blame them for not resting contentwith baiting lobster pots and dredging for scallops? Were he a youngman with his path untrodden before him he would have been one of thefirst to do the same, Willie confessed. Did he not constantly covettheir youth and opportunity? Nevertheless, praiseworthy as theirmotive had been, the fact remained that nowhere in the village wasthere 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 forhim who had the fineness of fiber to appreciate the guerdon!

  Willie was wont to attest that he himself was not a marrying man; yetnotwithstanding the assertion, deep down within the fastness of hissoul he had had his visions,--visions pure, exalted and characteristicof his sensitively attuned nature. They were the exquisite secrets ofhis life; the unfulfilled dreams that had kept him holy; a part of thedivine in him; echoes of hungers and longings that reached unsatisfiedinto a world other than this. Earth had failed to consummate the lovesand ambitions of the dreamer. His had been a flattened, warped,starved existence whose perfecting was not of this sphere. And aswithout bitterness he reviewed the glories that had passed him by, heprayed that these bounties might not also be denied her who, roundinginto the full splendor of her womanhood, was worthy of the best heavenhad to bestow.

  From her childhood he had watched her virtues unfold and none of theirpotentialities had gone unobserved by the quiet little old man.Through the beauty of his own soul he had been enabled to translate thebeauties of another, until gradually Delight Hathaway had come tosymbolize for him universal woman, the prototype of all that waspurest, most selfless, most tender; most to be revered, watched over,beloved. Yet for all his worship the girl remained for him very human,a creature with bewitching and appealing ways. In the same spirit inwhich he rejoiced in the tint of a rose's petal or the shell-like flushof a cloud at dawn did he find pleasure in the crimson that colored hercheek, in the perfection of her features, in the shadowy, fathomlessdepths of her eyes. Father, brother, lover, artist, at her shrine heoffered up a composite devotion which sought only her happiness.

  With such an attitude of mind to satisfy was it a marvel that in thematter of selecting a husband for his divinity Willie was difficult toplease; or that he studied with a criticism quite as jealous as ZenasHenry's own every male who crossed the girl's path?

  Yet with all his idealism Willie was a keen observer of life, and fromthe first moment of their meeting he had detected in Robert Mortonqualities more nearly akin to his standards than he had discovered inany of the other outsiders who had come into the hamlet. There was,for example, the son of the Farwells who owned the great colonialmansion on the point,--Billy Farwell, with his racing car and his dogsand his general air of elegance and idleness. Delight had known himsince she was a child. And there was Jasper Carlton, the scholarlyscientist, years the girl's senior, who annually came to board with theBrewsters during the vacation months. Both of these men paid court tothe village beauty, Billy with a half patronizing, half audaciousassurance born of years of intimacy; and the professor with thatold-fashioned reserve and deference characteristic of the oldergeneration. There were days when the two caused Willie suchperturbation of spirit that he would willingly have knocked their headstogether or cheerfully have wrung their necks.

  Delight unhesitatingly acknowledged that she liked both of them andharmlessly coquetted first with the one, then with the other, until theold inventor was at his wit's end to fathom which she actually favoredor whether she seriously favored either of them. Yet irreproachable aswere these suitors, to place a man of Bob Morton's attributes in thesame category with them seemed absurd. Why, he was head and shouldersabove them mentally, morally, physically,--from whichever angle oneviewed him. Moreover, blood will tell, and was he not of the fine oldMorton stock? Whatever the Carlton forbears might be, young Farwell'sancestry was not an enviable one. Yes, Willie had settled Delight'sfuture to his entire satisfaction and for nights had been sleepingpeacefully, confident that with such a husband as Robert Morton herhappiness and good fortune would be assured.

  And then, like a thunderbolt out of the heavens, had come this CynthiaGalbraith with her fetching clothes, her affluence and her air ofproprietorship! By what right had she acquired her monopoly of BobMorton, and was its exclusiveness gratifying or irksome to itsrecipient? Might not this strange young man, concerning whom Williewas forced to own he actually knew nothing, be playing a double game,and the frankness of his face belie his real nature?
And was it notpossible that his annoyance and irritation were caused by having beentrapped in it?

  Well, avowed Willie, he would see that Delight encountered this DonGiovanni but seldom, at least until he gave a more trustworthy accountof himself than he had vouchsafed up to the present moment. Contraryto the common law, the guest must be rated as guilty until he hadproved himself innocent. Yet as he darted a glance at the earnestyoung face bending over the workbench Willie's conscience smote him andhe questioned whether he might not be doing his comrade a direinjustice. The thought caused him to flush uncomfortably, and heflushed still redder when Bob suddenly straightened up and met his eye.

  Both men stood alert, held tensely by the same sound. It was the lowmusic of a girlish voice humming a snatch of song, and it wasaccompanied by the soft crackling of the needles that carpeted thegrove of pine between the Spence and Brewster houses. In anotherinstant Delight Hathaway strolled slowly out of the wood and enteredthe workshop. With her coming a radiance of sunshine seemed to floodthe shabby room. She nodded a greeting to Bob, then went straight toWillie and, placing her hands affectionately on his shoulders, lookeddown into his face. They made a pretty picture, the bent old man withhis russet cheeks and thin white hair, and the girl erect as an arrowand beautiful as a young Diana.

  The little inventor lifted his mild blue eyes to meet the haunting eyesof hazel.

  "Well, well, my dear," he said, as he covered one of her hands with hisown worn brown one, "so you have come for your buckle, have you? It isall done, honey, an' good as the day when 'twas made. Bob has it inhis pocket for you this minute."

  By a strange magic the truth and sunlight of the girl's presence hadfor the time being dispelled all baser suspicions and Willie smiledkindly at the man beside him.

  Holding out the crisp white package, Robert Morton came forward.

  Delight looked questioningly from the box with its immaculate paper andneat pink string to its giver.

  "He found he couldn't fix it himself," explained Willie, immediatelyinterpreting the interrogation. "Neither him or I were guns enough forthe job. So Bob got somebody he knew of to tinker it up."

  "That was certainly very kind," returned Delight with gravity. "If youwill tell me what it cost I--"

  Again the old man stepped into the breach.

  "Oh, I figger 'twarn't much," said he with easy unconcern. "The fellerwho did it was used to mendin' jewelry an' knew just how to set aboutit, so it didn't put him out of his way none."

  "Yes," echoed Bob, with a grateful smile toward Willie. "It made himno trouble at all."

  The two men watched the delicate fingers unfasten the package.

  "See how nice 'tis," Willie went on. "You'd never know there was athing the matter with it."

  "It's wonderful!" she cried.

  Her pleasure put to flight the old inventor's last compunction at hiscompromise with truth.

  "I am so pleased, Mr. Morton!" she went on. "You are quite sure therewas no expense."

  "Nothing to speak of. I'm glad you like it," murmured the young man.

  "Indeed I do!"

  She stretched the band of white leather round her waist and Bob noticedhow easily its clasp met.

  "There!" exclaimed she, raising her hand in mocking imitation of amilitary salute, "isn't that fine?"

  Willie laughed with involuntary admiration at the gesture, and as forRobert Morton he could have gone down on his knees before her andkissed her diminutive white shoe.

  The girl did not prolong the tableau. All too soon she relaxed fromrigidity into gaiety and came flitting to the work bench.

  "What are you doing, Willie dear?" she asked. "You know you never havesecrets from me. What is this marvellous thing you are busy with?"

  Before answering, Willie glanced mysteriously about.

  "It's because I know you can keep secrets that I ain't afraid to trustyou with 'em," said he. "Bob an' I are workin' on the quiet at an ideeI was kitched with a day or two ago. It's a bigger scheme than most ofthe ones I've tackled, an' it may not turn out to be anything at all;still, Bob has studied boats an' knows a heap about 'em, an' hebelieves somethin' can be made of it. But 'til our fish is hooked weain't shoutin' that we've caught one. If the contrivance works," wenton the little old man eagerly, "it will be a bonanza for Zenas Henry.It's--" he lowered his voice almost to a whisper, "it's an idee to keepmotor-boats from gettin' snagged."

  The words were scarcely out of his mouth before his listeners saw himstart and look apprehensively toward the door.

  They were no longer alone. On the threshold of the workshop stoodJanoah Eldridge.