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Flood Tide

<h3> CHAPTER VI </h3> <h3> MARRYING AND GIVING IN MARRIAGE </h3> That afternoon, after making this elaborate but by no means misleading explanation to Willie, Bob sent off to a Boston jeweler a registered package and while impatiently awaiting its return set to work with redoubled zest at the new invention. What an amazingly different aspect the motor-boat enterprise had assumed since yesterday! Then his one idea had been to humor Willie's whim and in return for the old man's hospitality lend such aid to the undertaking as he was able. But now Zenas Henry's launch had suddenly become a glorified object, sacred to the relatives of the divinity of the workshop, and how and where the flotsam of the tides ensnared it was of colossal importance. Into solving the nautical enigma Robert Morton now threw every ounce of his energy and while at work artfully drew from his companion every detail he could obtain of Delight Hathaway's strange story. He learned how the Michleen had been wrecked on the Wilton Shoals in the memorable gale of 1910; how the child's father had perished with the ship, leaving his little daughter friendless in the world; how Zenas Henry and the three aged captains had risked their lives to bring the little one ashore; and how the Brewsters had taken her into their home and brought her up. It was a simple tale and simply told, but the heroism of the romance touched it with an epic quality that gripped the listener's imagination and sympathies tenaciously. And now the waif snatched from the grasp of the covetous sea had blossomed into this exquisite being; this creature beloved, petted, and well-nigh spoiled by a proudly exultant community. For although legally a member of the Brewster family, Willie explained, the girl had come to belong in a sense to the entire village. Had she not been cast an orphan upon its shores, and were not its treacherous shoals responsible for her misfortune? Wilton, to be sure, was not actually answerable for the crimes those hidden sand bars perpetrated, but nevertheless the fisherfolk could not quite shake themselves free of the shadow cast upon them by the tragedies ever occurring at their gateway. Too many of their people had gone down to the sea in ships never to return for them to become callous to the disasters they were continually forced to witness. The wreck of the Michleen had been one of the most pathetic of these horrors, and the welfare of the child who in consequence of it had come into the hamlet's midst had become a matter of universal concern. "'Tain't to be wondered at the girl is loved," continued Willie. "At first people took an interest in her, or tried to, from a sense of duty, for you couldn't help bein' sorry for the little thing. But 'twarn't long before folks found out 'twarn't no hardship to be fond of Delight Hathaway. She was livin' sunshine, that's what she was! Wherever she went, be it one end of town or t'other, she brought happiness. In time it got so that if you was to drop in where there was sickness or trouble an' spied a nosegay of flowers, you could be pretty sure Delight had been there. Why, Lyman Bearse's father, old Lyman, that's so crabbed with rhumatism that it's a cross to live under the same roof with him, will calm down gentle as a dove when Delight goes to read to him. As for Mis' Furber, I reckon she'd never get to the Junction to do a mite of shoppin' or marketin' but for Delight stayin' with the babies whilst she was gone. I couldn't tell you half what that girl does. She's here, there, an' everywhere. Now she's gettin' up a party for the school children; now makin' a birthday cake for somebody; now trimmin' a bunnit for Tiny or helpin' her plan out a dress." Willie stopped to rummage on a distant shelf for a level. "Once," he went on, "Sarah Libbie Lewis asked me what Delight was goin' to be. I told her there warn't no goin' to be about it; Delight was bein' it right now. She didn't need to go soundin' for a mission in life." "I take it you are not in favor of careers for women, Mr. Spence," observed Robert Morton, who had been eagerly drinking in every word the old man uttered. "Yes, I am," contradicted the inventor. "There's times when a girl needs a career, but there's other times when to desert one's plain duty an' go huntin' a callin' is criminal. Queer how people will look right over the top of what they don't want to see, ain't it? I s'pose its human nature though," he mused. A soft breeze stirred the shavings on the floor. "Tiny thinks," resumed the quiet voice, "that I mix myself up too much with other folks's concerns anyhow. Leastways, she says I let their troubles weigh on me more'n I'd ought. But to save my life I can't seem to help it. Don't you believe those on the outside of a tangle sometimes see it straighter than them that is snarled up in the mess?" Robert Morton nodded. "That's the way I figger it," rambled on the old man. "Mebbe that's the reason I can't keep my fingers out of the pie. You'd be surprised enough if you was to know the things I've been dragged into in my lifetime; family quarrels, will-makin's, business matters that I didn't know no more about than the man in the moon. Why, I've even taken a hand in love affairs!" He broke into a peal of hearty laughter. "That's the beatereee!" he declared, slapping his thigh. "'Magine me up to my ears in a love affair! But I have been—scores of 'em, enough I reckon, put 'em all together, to marry off the whole of Cape Cod." "You must be quite an authority on the heart by this time," Robert Morton ventured. "I ain't," the other declared soberly. "You see, none of the snarls was ever the same, so you kinder had to feel your way along every time like as if you was navigatin' a new channel. Women may be all alike, take 'em in the main, but they're almighty different when you get 'em to the fine point, an' that's what raises the devil with makin' any general rule for managin' 'em." The philosopher held the piece of wood he had been planing to the light and examined it critically. "Once," he resumed, taking up his work again, "when Dave Furber was courtin' Katie Bearse, I drove over to Sawyer's Falls with him to get Katie a birthday present an' among other things we thought we'd buy some candy. We went into a store, I recollect, where there was all kinds spread out in trays, an' Dave an' me started to pick out what we'd have. As I stood there attemptin' to decide, I couldn't help thinkin' that selectin' that candy was a good deal like choosin' a wife. You couldn't have all the different kinds, an' makin' up your mind which you preferred was a seven-days' conundrum." The little inventor took off his spectacles, wiped them, and replaced them upon his nose. "Luckily, as we was fixed, there was a chance in the box for quite a few sorts, so that saved the day. But s'pose, I got to thinkin', you could only have one variety out of the lot—which would you take? That's the sticker you face when choosin' a wife. S'pose, for instance, I was pinned down to nothin' but caramels. The caramel is a good, square, sensible, dependable candy. You can see through the paper exactly what you're gettin'. There's nothin' concealed or lurkin' in a caramel. Moreover, it lasts a long time an' you don't get tired of it. It's just like some women—not much to look at, but wholesome an' with good wearin' qualities. Should you choose the caramel, you'd feel sure you was doin' the wise thing, wouldn't you?" Robert Morton smiled into the half-closed blue eyes that met his so whimsically. "But along in the next tray to the caramel," Willie went on, "was bonbons—every color of the rainbow they were, an' pretty as could be; an' they held all sorts of surprises inside 'em, too. They was temptin'! But the minute you put your mind on it you knew they'd turn out sweet and sickish, an' that after gettin' 'em you'd wish you hadn't. There's plenty of women like that in the world. Mebbe you ain't seen 'em, but I have." "Yes." "Besides these, there was dishes of sparklin' jelly things on the counter, that the girl said warn't much use—gone in no time; they were just meant to dress up the box. I called 'em brainless candies—just silly an' expensive, an' if you look around you'll find women can match 'em. An' along with 'em you can put the candied violets an' sugared rose leaves that only make a man out of pocket an' ain't a mite of use to him." Willie scanned his companion's face earnestly. "Finally, after runnin' the collection over, it kinder come down to a choice between caramels or chocolates. Even then I still stood firm for the caramel, there bein' no way of makin' sure what I'd get inside the chocolate. I warn't willin' to go it blind, I told Dave. A chocolate's a sort of unknowable thing, ain't it? There's no fathomin' it at sight. After you've got it you may be pleased to death with what's inside it an' then again you may not. So we settled mostly on caramels for Katie. I said to Dave comin' home it was lucky men warn't held down to one sort of candy like they are to one sort of wife, an' he most laughed his head off. Then he asked me what kind of sweet I thought Katie was, an' I told him I reckoned she was the caramel variety, an' he said he thought so, too. We warn't fur wrong neither, for she's turned out 'bout as we figgered. Mebbe she ain't got the looks or the sparkle of the bonbons or jelly things, but she's worn almighty well, an' made Dave a splendid wife." "With all your excellent theories about women, I wonder you never picked out a wife for yourself, Mr. Spence," Robert Morton remarked mischievously. "Me get married?" questioned Willie, staring at the speaker open-eyed over the top of his spectacles. "Why not?" "Why, bless your heart, I never thought of it!" answered the little man na�vely. "It's taken 'bout all my time to get other folks spliced together. Besides," he added, "I've had my inventin'." He glanced out of the window at a moving figure, then shot abruptly to the door and called to some one who was passing: "Hi, Jack!" A man in coast-guard uniform waved his hand. "How are you, Willie?" he shouted. "All right," was the reply. "How are you an' Sarah Libbie makin' out?" "Same as ever." "You ain't said nothin' to her yet?" Robert Morton saw the burly fellow in the road sheepishly dig his heel into the sand. "N—o, not yet." "An' never will!" ejaculated the inventor returning wrathfully to the shop. "That feller," he explained as he resumed his seat, "has been upwards, of twenty years tryin' to tell Sarah Libbie Lewis he's in love with her. He knows it an' so does she, but somehow he just can't put the fact into words. I'm clean out of patience with him. Why, one day he actually had the face to come in here an' ask me to tell her—me! What do you think of that?" Robert Morton chuckled at his companion's rage. "Did you?" "Did I?" repeated Willie with scorn. "Can you see me doin' it? No, siree! I just up an' told Jack Nickerson if he warn't man enough to do his own courtin' he warn't man enough for any self-respectin' woman to marry. An' furthermore, I said he needn't step foot over the sill of this shop 'till he'd took some action in the matter. That hit him pretty hard, I can tell you, 'cause he used to admire to come in here an' set round whenever he warn't on duty. But he saw I meant it, an' he ain't been since." The old man paused. "I kinder bit off my own nose when I took that stand," he admitted, an intonation of regret in his tone, "'cause Jack's mighty good company. Still, there was nothin' for it but firm handlin'." "How long ago did you cast him out?" Bob asked with a chuckle. "Oh, somethin' over a week or ten days ago," was the reply. "I thought he might have made some progress by now. But I ain't given up hope of him yet. He's been sorter quiet the last two times I've seen him, an' I figger he's mullin' things over, an' mebbe screwin' up his courage." The room was still save for the purr of the plane. "I suppose you will be marrying Miss Hathaway off some day," observed Bob a trifle self-consciously, without raising his eyes from his work. "You bet I won't," came emphatically from the old inventor. "I've got some courage but not enough for that. You see, the man that marries her has got to have the nerve to face the whole village—brave Zenas Henry, the three captains, an' Abbie Brewster, besides winnin' the girl herself. 'Twill be some contract. No, you can be mortal sure I shan't go meddlin' in no such love affair as that. Anyhow, I won't be needed, for any man that Delight Hathaway would look at twice will be perfectly capable of meetin' all comers; don't you worry." With this dubious comfort Willie stamped with spirit out of the shop. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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