Flood Tide

  CHAPTER II

  WILLIE HAS AN IDEE

  On a day in June so clear that a sea gull loomed mammoth against thesky; a day when a sail against the horizon was visible for miles; a daywhen the whole world seemed swept and garnished as for a festival,Zenas Henry Brewster drew rein before the Spence cottage, hitched theAdmiral to the picket fence that bordered the highway, and ascendingthe bank which sloped abruptly to the road presented himself at thekitchen door from which issued the aroma of baking bread.

  "Mornin', Tiny," called the visitor, poking his head across thethreshold. "Willie anywheres about?"

  Celestina, who was washing the breakfast dishes, glanced up at the lankfigure with a start.

  "Law, Zenas Henry, what a turn you gave me!" she exclaimed. "I neverheard a footfall. Yes, Willie's outside somewheres. He and JanEldridge have been tinkerin' with the pump since early mornin'.They've had it apart a hundred times, I guess, an' like as not they'reround there now pullin' it to pieces for the hundred-an'-oneth."

  Zenas Henry grinned.

  "That's a queer to-do," he remarked. "What's got all the pumps?Bewitched, I reckon. Ours ain't workin' fur a cent either, an' I droveround thinkin' I'd fetch Willie home with me to have a look at it.He's got a knack with such things an' I calculate he'd know what's thematter with it. Darned if I do."

  The man began to move away across the grass.

  Celestina, however, who was in the mood for gossip, had no mind to lethim escape so easily.

  "How's your folks?" questioned she, dropping her dishcloth into the panand following him to the door.

  "Oh, we're all right," returned Zenas Henry with a backward glance."Captain Benjamin's shoulder pesters him some about layin', but I tellhim he can't expect rain an' fog not to bring rheumatism."

  "That's so," agreed Celestina. "What a spell of weather we've had! Iguess it's about over now, though. I'm sorry Benjamin's shouldersshould hector him so. We're gettin' old, Zenas Henry, that's the plaintruth of it, an' must cheerfully take our share of aches an' pains, Is'pose. Are Captain Phineas an' Captain Jonas well?"

  "Oh, they're nimble as crabs."

  "An' Abbie?"

  "Fine as a clipper in a breeze!" responded the man with enthusiasm."Best wife that ever was! The sun rises an' sets in that woman,Celestina. What she can't do ain't worth doin'! Turns off work likeas if it was of no account an' grows better lookin' every day a-doin'it."

  Celestina laughed.

  "I reckon you didn't make no mistake gettin' married, Zenas Henry,"mused she.

  "Mistake!" repeated Zenas Henry.

  "An' no mistake takin' in the child, either," went on Celestina,unheeding the interruption.

  She saw his face soften and a glow of tenderness overspread it.

  "Delight was sent us out of heaven," he declared with solemnity."'Twas as much intended that ship should come ashore here an' the threecaptains an' myself bring that little girl to land as that the sunshould rise in the mornin'. The child was meant fur us--fur us an' furnobody else on earth. Was she our own daughter we couldn't be fonderof her than we are. It's ten years now since the wreck of the_Michleen_. Think of it! How time flies! Ten years--an' the girl'smost twenty. I can't realize it. Why, it seems only yesterday she wasclingin' to my neck an' I was bringin' her home."

  "She's grown to be a regular beauty," Celestina observed.

  "I s'pose she has; folks seem to think so," replied Zenas Henry. "Butit wouldn't make an ounce of difference to me how she looked; I'd loveher just the same. I reckon she'll never seem to me anyhow like shedoes to other people. Still I ain't so blind that I don't know she'spretty. Her hair is wonderful, an' she's got them big brown eyes an'pink cheeks. I'm proud as Tophet of her. If it warn't fur Abbie Ifigger the three captains an' I would have the child clean spoilt. ButAbbie's always kept a firm hand on us an' prevented us from puttin'nonsensical notions into Delight's head. Much of the way she's turnedout is due to Abbie's common sense. Well, the girl's a mighty niceone," concluded Zenas Henry. "There's none to match her."

  "You're right there!" Celestina assented cordially. "She's one in ahundred, in a thousand. She has the sweetest way in the world withher, too. A body couldn't see her an' not love her. I guess there'smany a young feller along the Cape thinks so too, or I'm muchmistaken," added she slyly. "She must have a score of beaux."

  "Beaux!" snapped Zenas Henry, wheeling abruptly about. "Indeed shehasn't. Why, she's nothin' but a child yet."

  "She's most twenty. You said so yourself just now."

  "Pooh! Twenty! What's twenty?" Zenas Henry cried derisively. "Why,I'm three times that already an' more too, an' I ain't old. So areyou, Tiny. Twenty? Nonsense!"

  "But Delight is twenty, Zenas Henry," persisted Celestina.

  "What of it?"

  "Well, you mustn't forget it, that's all," continued the woman softly."Many a girl her age is married an'----"

  "Married!" burst out the man with indignation. "What under heaven areyou talkin' about, Celestina? Delight marry? Not she! She's tooyoung. Besides, she's well enough content with Abbie an' the threecaptains an' me. Marry? Delight marry! Ridiculous!"

  "But you don't mean to say you expect a creature as pretty as she isnot to marry," said Celestina aghast.

  "Oh, why, yes," ruminated Zenas Henry. "Of course she's goin' to getmarried sometime by an' by--mebbe in ten years or so. But not now."

  "Ten years or so! My goodness! Why, she'll be thirty or thirty-five,an' an old maid by that time."

  "No, she won't. I was forty-five before I married, an' it didn't do meno hurt or spoil my chances."

  "You might have been livin' with Abbie all them years, though."

  "I know it."

  He paused thoughtfully.

  "Yes," he reflected aloud, "I've often thought what a pity it was Abbiean' I didn't have our first youth together. It took me half a lifetimeto find out how much I needed her."

  "You wouldn't want Delight should do that," ventured Celestina.

  "Delight? We ain't discussin' Delight," retorted Zenas Henry, promptlyon the defensive. "Delight's another matter altogether. She's nothin'but a baby. There's no talk of her marryin' for a long spell yet."

  Peevishly he kicked the turf with the toe of his boot.

  Although he said no more, it was quite evident that he was muchirritated.

  "Well," he presently observed in a calmer tone, "I reckon I'll go roundan' waylay Willie."

  Celestina, leaning against the door frame, watched the gaunt,loose-jointed figure stride out into the sunshine and disappear behindthe corner of the house.

  What a day it was! From beneath the lattice that arched the entranceto the cottage and supported a rambler rose bursting into bloom shecould see the bay, blue as a sapphire and scintillating with ripples ofgold. A weather-stained scow was making its way out of the channel,and above it circled a screaming cloud of tern that had been routedfrom their nesting place on the margin of white sand that bordered thepath to the open sea. Mingling with their cries and the rhythmicpulsing of the surf, the clear voices of the men aboard the tug reachedher ear. It was flood tide, and the water that surged over the barstained its reach of pearl to jade green and feathered its edges withsnowy foam.

  It was no weather to be cooped up indoors doing housework.

  Idly Celestina loitered, drinking in the beauty of the scene. Thelanguor of summer breathed in the gentle, pine-scented air and rosefrom the warm earth of the garden. Voluptuously she stretched her armsand yawned; then straightening to her customary erectness she went intothe house, being probably the only woman in Wilton who that morning hadabandoned her domestic duties long enough to take into her soul thebenediction of the world about her.

  It was such detours from the path of duty that had helped to win forCelestina her pseudonym of "easy goin'." Perhaps this very vagrantquality in her nature was what had aided her in so thoroughlysympathizing with Willie in his sporadic outbursts of in
dustry. ForWillie was not a methodical worker any more than was Celestina. Therewere intervals, it is true, when he toiled steadily, feverishly, allday long and far into the night, forgetting either to eat or sleep;then would follow days together when he simply pottered about, or dideven worse and remained idle in the sunny shelter of the grape arbor.Here on a rude bench constructed from a discarded four-poster he wouldoften sit for hours, smoking his corncob pipe and softly humming tohimself; but when genius went awry and his courage was at a low ebb,strings, wires, and pulleys having failed to work, he would neithersmoke nor sing, but with eyes on the distance would sit immovable as ifcarved from stone.

  To-day, however, was not one of his "settin' days." He had been upsince dawn, had eaten no breakfast, and had even been too deeplypreoccupied to fill and light the blackened pipe that dangled limplyfrom his lips. Yet despite all his coaxings and cajolings, the ironpump opposite the shed door still refused to do anything but emit fromits throat a few dry, profitless gurgles that seemed forced upward fromthe very caverns of the earth. Both Willie and Jan Eldredge lookedtired and disheartened, and when Zenas Henry approached stood at bay,surrounded by a litter of wrenches, hammers, and scattered fragments ofmetal.

  "What's the matter with your pump?" called Zenas Henry as he strolledtoward them.

  Willie turned on the intruder, a smile half humorous, halfcontemptuous, flitting across his face.

  "If I could answer that question, Zenas Henry, I wouldn't be standin'here gapin' at the darn thing," was his laconic response. "It's justtook a spell, that's all there is to it. It was right enough lastnight."

  "There's no accountin' fur machinery," Zenas Henry remarked.

  The observation struck a note of pessimism that rasped Willie'spatience.

  "There's got to be some accountin' fur this claptraption," retorted he,a suggestion of crispness in his tone. "I shan't stir foot from thisspot 'til I find out what's set it to actin' up this way."

  Zenas Henry laughed at the declaration of war echoing in the words.

  "I've given up flyin' all to flinders over everything that gets out ofgear," he drawled. "If I was to be goin' up higher'n a kite everytime, fur instance, that the seaweed ketches round the propeller of mymotor-boat, I'd be in mid-air most of the time."

  Willie raised his head with the alertness of a hunter on the scent.

  "Seaweed?" he repeated vaguely.

  Zenas Henry nodded.

  "Ain't there no scheme fur doin' away with a nuisance like that?"

  "I ain't discovered any," came dryly from Zenas Henry. "We've all hada whack at the thing--Captain Jonas, Captain Phineas, Captain Benjamin,an' me--an' we're back where we were at the beginnin'. Nothin' we'vetried has worked."

  "U--m!" ruminated Willie, stroking his chin.

  "I've about come to the conclusion we ain't much good as mechanics,anyhow," went on Zenas Henry with a short laugh. "In fact, Abbie's ofthe mind that we get things out of order faster'n we put 'em in."

  Janoah Eldridge rubbed his grimy hands and chuckled, but Willie deignedno reply.

  "This propeller now," he presently began as if there had been nodigression from the topic, "I s'pose the kelp gets tangled around theblades."

  "That's it," assented Zenas Henry.

  "An' that holds up your engine."

  "Uh-huh," Zenas Henry agreed with the same bored inflection.

  "An' that leaves you rockin' like a baby in a cradle 'til you can getthe wheel free."

  "Uh-huh."

  There was a moment of silence.

  "It can't be much of a stunt tossin' round in a choppy sea like as ifyou was a chip on the waves," commented Jan Eldridge with acommiserating grin.

  "'Tain't."

  "What do you do when you find yourself in a fix like that?" he inquiredwith interest.

  "Do?" reiterated Zenas Henry. "What a question! What would any fooldo? There ain't no choice left you but to hang head downwards over thestern of the boat an' claw the eel-grass off the wheel with a gaff."

  Janoah burst into a derisive shout.

  "Oh, my eye!" he exclaimed. "So that's the way you do it, eh? Don'ttalk to me of motor-boats! A good old-fashioned skiff with aleg-o'-mutton sail in her is good enough fur me. How 'bout you,Willie?"

  No reply was forthcoming.

  "I say, Willie," repeated Jan in a louder tone, "that these new fangledmotor-boats, with their noise an' their smell, ain't no match fur agood clean dory."

  Willie came out of his trance just in time to catch the final clause ofthe sentence.

  "Who ever saw a clean dory in Wilton?"

  Jan faltered, abashed.

  "Well, anyhow," he persisted, "in my opinion, clean or not, a straightwholesome smell of cod ain't to be mentioned in the same breath with amix-up of stale fish an' gasoline."

  Zenas Henry bridled.

  "You don't buy a motor-boat to smell of," he said tartly. "You seem toforget it's to sail in."

  "But if the eel-grass holds you hard an' fast in one spot most of thetime I don't see's you do much sailin'," taunted Jan. "'Pears to meyou're just adrift an' goin' nowheres a good part of the time."

  "No, I ain't" snapped Zenas Henry with rising ire. "It's onlysometimes the thing gets spleeny. Most always--"

  "Then it warn't you I saw pitchin' in the channel fur a couple of hoursyesterday afternoon," commented the tormentor.

  "No. That is--let me think a minute," meditated Zenas Henry. "Yes, Iguess it was me, after all," he admitted with reluctant honesty. "Thetide brought in quite a batch of weeds, an' they washed up round theboat before I could get out of their way; quicker'n a wink we wereneatly snarled up in 'em. Captain Jonas an' Captain Phineas tried toget clear, but somehow they ain't got much knack fur freein' the wheel.So we did linger in the channel a spell."

  "Linger!" put in Willie. "I shouldn't call bobbin' up an' down in onespot fur two mortal hours lingerin'. I'd call it nearer bein'hypnotized."

  Zenas Henry was now plainly out of temper. He was well aware thatWilton had scant sympathy with his motor-boat, the first innovation ofthe sort that had been perpetrated in the town.

  "Hadn't you better turn your attention from motor-boats to pumps?" heasked testily.

  "I reckon I had, Zenas Henry," Willie answered, unruffled by thethrust. "As you say, if you chose to wind yourself up in the eel-grassit's none of my affair."

  Turning his back on his visitor, he bent once more over the pump andadjusted a leather washer between its rusty joints.

  "Now let's give her a try, Jan," he said, as he tightened the screws."If that don't fetch her I'm beat."

  By this time Jan's faith had lessened, and although he obedientlyraised the iron handle and began to ply it up and down, it was obviousthat he did not anticipate success. But contrary to his expectationsthere was a sudden subterranean groan, followed by a rumble ofgradually rising pitch; then from out the stubbed green spout a streamof water gushed forth and trickled into the tub beneath.

  "Hurray!" shouted Jan. "There she blows, Willie! Ain't you thedabster, though!"

  The inventor did not immediately acknowledge the plaudits heaped uponhim, but it was evident he was gratified by his success for, as hewiped the beads of perspiration from his forehead he sighed deeply.

  "If I hadn't been such a blame fool I'd 'a' known what the matter wasin the first place," he remarked. "Well, if we knew as much when we'reborn as we do when we get ready to die, what would be the use of livin'seventy odd years?"

  In spite of his irritation Zenas Henry smiled.

  "I don't s'pose you're feelin' like tacklin' another pump to-day," heventured with hesitation. "Ours up at the white cottage has gone on astrike, too."

  Instantly Willie was interested.

  "What's got yours?" he asked.

  "Blest if I know. We've took it all to pieces an' ain't found nothin'out with it, an' now to save our souls we can't put it together again,"Zenas Henry explained. "I drove round, thinkin' that mebbe you'd goback wi
th me an' have a look at it."

  "Course I will, Zenas Henry," Willie said without hesitation. "I'dadmire to. A pump that won't work is like a fishline without ahook--good for nothin'. Have you got room in your team for Jan, too?"

  "Sure."

  "Then let's start along," said the inventor, stooping to gather up histools.

  But he had reckoned without his host, for as he swept them into ajagged piece of sailcloth and prepared to tie up the bundle, Celestinacalled to him from the window.

  "Where you goin', Willie?" she demanded.

  "Up to Zenas Henry's to mend the pump."

  "But you can't go now," objected she. "It's ten o'clock, an' you ain'thad a mouthful of breakfast this mornin'."

  The little man regarded her blankly.

  "Ain't I et nothin'?" he inquired with surprise.

  "No. Don't you remember you got up early to go fishin', an' then youfound the pump wasn't workin', an' you've been wrestlin' with it eversince."

  "So I have!"

  A sunny smile of recollection overspread the old man's face.

  "Ain't you hungry?"

  "I dunno," considered he without interest. "Mebbe I am. Yes, now youspeak of it, I will own to feelin' a mite holler. Can't you hand me asnack to eat as I go along?"

  "You'd much better come in an' have your breakfast properly."

  "Oh, I don't want nothin' much," the altruist protested. "Just fetchme out a slice of bread or a doughnut. We've got to get at that pumpof Zenas Henry's. I'm itchin' to know what's the matter with it."

  Celestina looked disappointed.

  "I've been savin' your coffee fur you since seven o'clock," murmuredshe reproachfully.

  "That was very kind of you, Tiny," Willie responded with aningratiating glance into her eyes. "You just keep it hot a spelllonger, an' I'll be back. Likely I won't be long."

  "You've been workin' five hours on your own pump!"

  "Five hours? Pshaw! You don't say so," mused the tranquil voice."Think of that! An' it didn't seem no time. Well, it's a-pumpin' now,Celestina."

  The mild face beamed with satisfaction, and Celestina had not the heartto cloud its brightness by annoying him further.

  "That's capital!" she declared. "Here's your bread an' butter, Willie.An' here's some apple turnovers fur you, an' Jan, an' Zenas Henry.They'll be nice fur you goin' along in the wagon." Then turning to Janshe whispered in a pleading undertone:

  "Do watch, Jan, that Willie don't lay that bread down somewheres an'forget it. Mebbe if he sees the rest of you eatin' he'll remember toeat himself. If he don't, though, remind him, for he's just as liableto bring it back home again in his hand. Keep your eye on him!"

  Jan nodded understandingly, and climbing into the dusty wagon, thethree men rattled off over the sandy road. Willie dropped his toolsinto the bottom of the carriage but the slice of bread remaineduntouched in his fingers. Now that triumph had brought a respite inhis labors he seemed silent and thoughtful. It was not until theAdmiral turned in at the Brewster gate that he roused himselfsufficiently to observe with irrelevance:

  "Speakin' about that propeller of yours, Zenas Henry--it must be no endof a temper-rasper."

  Zenas Henry slapped the reins over the horse's flank and waitedbreathlessly, hoping some further comment would come from the littleinventor, but as Willie remained silent, he at length could restrainhis impatience no longer and ventured with diffidence:

  "S'pose you ain't got any notion what we could do about it, have you,Willie?"

  The old man shrugged his shoulders.

  "No, not the ghost," was his terse reply.

  That night, however, Celestina was awakened from her dreams by the ringof a hammer. She rose, and lighting her candle, tip-toed into thehall. It was one o'clock, and she could see that Willie's bedroom doorwas ajar and the bed untouched.

  With a little sigh she blew out the flame in her hand and crept backbeneath the shelter of her calico comforter.

  She knew the symptoms only too well.

  Willie was once again "kitched by an idee!"