WILLIE HAS AN IDEE
On a day in June so clear that a sea gull loomed mammoth against the
sky; a day when a sail against the horizon was visible for miles; a day
when the whole world seemed swept and garnished as for a festival,
Zenas Henry Brewster drew rein before the Spence cottage, hitched the
Admiral to the picket fence that bordered the highway, and ascending
the bank which sloped abruptly to the road presented himself at the
kitchen door from which issued the aroma of baking bread.
"Mornin', Tiny," called the visitor, poking his head across the
threshold. "Willie anywheres about?"
Celestina, who was washing the breakfast dishes, glanced up at the lank
figure with a start.
"Law, Zenas Henry, what a turn you gave me!" she exclaimed. "I never
heard a footfall. Yes, Willie's outside somewheres. He and Jan
Eldridge have been tinkerin' with the pump since early mornin'.
They've had it apart a hundred times, I guess, an' like as not they're
round 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 drove
round 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 the
matter 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 let
him escape so easily.
"How's your folks?" questioned she, dropping her dishcloth into the pan
and 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 tell
him he can't expect rain an' fog not to bring rheumatism."
"That's so," agreed Celestina. "What a spell of weather we've had! I
guess it's about over now, though. I'm sorry Benjamin's shoulders
should hector him so. We're gettin' old, Zenas Henry, that's the plain
truth of it, an' must cheerfully take our share of aches an' pains, I
s'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 like
as 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 three
captains an' myself bring that little girl to land as that the sun
should rise in the mornin'. The child was meant fur us--fur us an' fur
nobody else on earth. Was she our own daughter we couldn't be fonder
of 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's
most twenty. I can't realize it. Why, it seems only yesterday she was
clingin' 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. "But
it wouldn't make an ounce of difference to me how she looked; I'd love
her just the same. I reckon she'll never seem to me anyhow like she
does to other people. Still I ain't so blind that I don't know she's
pretty. 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 I
figger the three captains an' I would have the child clean spoilt. But
Abbie'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 turned
out is due to Abbie's common sense. Well, the girl's a mighty nice
one," concluded Zenas Henry. "There's none to match her."
"You're right there!" Celestina assented cordially. "She's one in a
hundred, in a thousand. She has the sweetest way in the world with
her, too. A body couldn't see her an' not love her. I guess there's
many a young feller along the Cape thinks so too, or I'm much
mistaken," added she slyly. "She must have a score of beaux."
"Beaux!" snapped Zenas Henry, wheeling abruptly about. "Indeed she
hasn'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 are
you, 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 are
you talkin' about, Celestina? Delight marry? Not she! She's too
young. Besides, she's well enough content with Abbie an' the three
captains an' me. Marry? Delight marry! Ridiculous!"
"But you don't mean to say you expect a creature as pretty as she is
not to marry," said Celestina aghast.
"Oh, why, yes," ruminated Zenas Henry. "Of course she's goin' to get
married 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 me
no 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 Abbie
an' I didn't have our first youth together. It took me half a lifetime
to 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, promptly
on 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 much
irritated.
"Well," he presently observed in a calmer tone, "I reckon I'll go round
an' waylay Willie."
Celestina, leaning against the door frame, watched the gaunt,
loose-jointed figure stride out into the sunshine and disappear behind
the corner of the house.
What a day it was! From beneath the lattice that arched the entrance
to the cottage and supported a rambler rose bursting into bloom she
could see the bay, blue as a sapphire and scintillating with ripples of
gold. A weather-stained scow was making its way out of the channel,
and above it circled a screaming cloud of tern that had been routed
from their nesting place on the margin of white sand that bordered the
path to the open sea. Mingling with their cries and the rhythmic
pulsing of the surf, the clear voices of the men aboard the tug reached
her ear. It was flood tide, and the water that surged over the bar
stained its reach of pearl to jade green and feathered its edges with
snowy foam.
It was no weather to be cooped up indoors doing housework.
Idly Celestina loitered, drinking in the beauty of the scene. The
languor of summer breathed in the gentle, pine-scented air and rose
from the warm earth of the garden. Voluptuously she stretched her arms
and yawned; then straightening to her customary erectness she went into
the house, being probably the only woman in Wilton who that morning had
abandoned her domestic duties long enough to take into her soul the
benediction of the world about her.
It was such detours from the path of duty that had helped to win for
Celestina her pseudonym of "easy goin'." Perhaps this very vagrant
quality in her nature was what had aided her in so thoroughly
sympathizing with Willie in his sporadic outbursts of industry. For
Willie was not a methodical worker any more than was Celestina. There
were intervals, it is true, when he toiled steadily, feverishly, all
day long and far into the night, forgetting either to eat or sleep;
then would follow days together when he simply pottered about, or did
even worse and remained idle in the sunny shelter of the grape arbor.
Here on a rude bench constructed from a discarded four-poster he would
often sit for hours, smoking his corncob pipe and softly humming to
himself; but when genius went awry and his courage was at a low ebb,
strings, wires, and pulleys having failed to work, he would neither
smoke nor sing, but with eyes on the distance would sit immovable as if
carved from stone.
To-day, however, was not one of his "settin' days." He had been up
since dawn, had eaten no breakfast, and had even been too deeply
preoccupied to fill and light the blackened pipe that dangled limply
from his lips. Yet despite all his coaxings and cajolings, the iron
pump opposite the shed door still refused to do anything but emit from
its throat a few dry, profitless gurgles that seemed forced upward from
the very caverns of the earth. Both Willie and Jan Eldredge looked
tired and disheartened, and when Zenas Henry approached stood at bay,
surrounded by a litter of wrenches, hammers, and scattered fragments of
metal.
"What's the matter with your pump?" called Zenas Henry as he strolled
toward them.
Willie turned on the intruder, a smile half humorous, half
contemptuous, 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 just
took a spell, that's all there is to it. It was right enough last
night."
"There's no accountin' fur machinery," Zenas Henry remarked.
The observation struck a note of pessimism that rasped Willie's
patience.
"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 this
spot '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 of
gear," he drawled. "If I was to be goin' up higher'n a kite every
time, fur instance, that the seaweed ketches round the propeller of my
motor-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 had
a whack at the thing--Captain Jonas, Captain Phineas, Captain Benjamin,
an' me--an' we're back where we were at the beginnin'. Nothin' we've
tried 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 of
the mind that we get things out of order faster'n we put 'em in."
Janoah Eldridge rubbed his grimy hands and chuckled, but Willie deigned
no reply.
"This propeller now," he presently began as if there had been no
digression from the topic, "I s'pose the kelp gets tangled around the
blades."
"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 get
the 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 if
you was a chip on the waves," commented Jan Eldridge with a
commiserating grin.
"'Tain't."
"What do you do when you find yourself in a fix like that?" he inquired
with interest.
"Do?" reiterated Zenas Henry. "What a question! What would any fool
do? There ain't no choice left you but to hang head downwards over the
stern 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't
talk to me of motor-boats! A good old-fashioned skiff with a
leg-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 fangled
motor-boats, with their noise an' their smell, ain't no match fur a
good clean dory."
Willie came out of his trance just in time to catch the final clause of
the sentence.
"Who ever saw a clean dory in Wilton?"
Jan faltered, abashed.
"Well, anyhow," he persisted, "in my opinion, clean or not, a straight
wholesome smell of cod ain't to be mentioned in the same breath with a
mix-up of stale fish an' gasoline."
Zenas Henry bridled.
"You don't buy a motor-boat to smell of," he said tartly. "You seem to
forget it's to sail in."
"But if the eel-grass holds you hard an' fast in one spot most of the
time I don't see's you do much sailin'," taunted Jan. "'Pears to me
you're just adrift an' goin' nowheres a good part of the time."
"No, I ain't" snapped Zenas Henry with rising ire. "It's only
sometimes the thing gets spleeny. Most always--"
"Then it warn't you I saw pitchin' in the channel fur a couple of hours
yesterday afternoon," commented the tormentor.
"No. That is--let me think a minute," meditated Zenas Henry. "Yes, I
guess it was me, after all," he admitted with reluctant honesty. "The
tide brought in quite a batch of weeds, an' they washed up round the
boat before I could get out of their way; quicker'n a wink we were
neatly snarled up in 'em. Captain Jonas an' Captain Phineas tried to
get 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 one
spot fur two mortal hours lingerin'. I'd call it nearer bein'
hypnotized."
Zenas Henry was now plainly out of temper. He was well aware that
Wilton had scant sympathy with his motor-boat, the first innovation of
the sort that had been perpetrated in the town.
"Hadn't you better turn your attention from motor-boats to pumps?" he
asked testily.
"I reckon I had, Zenas Henry," Willie answered, unruffled by the
thrust. "As you say, if you chose to wind yourself up in the eel-grass
it's none of my affair."
Turning his back on his visitor, he bent once more over the pump and
adjusted 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 obediently
raised the iron handle and began to ply it up and down, it was obvious
that he did not anticipate success. But contrary to his expectations
there was a sudden subterranean groan, followed by a rumble of
gradually rising pitch; then from out the stubbed green spout a stream
of water gushed forth and trickled into the tub beneath.
"Hurray!" shouted Jan. "There she blows, Willie! Ain't you the
dabster, though!"
The inventor did not immediately acknowledge the plaudits heaped upon
him, but it was evident he was gratified by his success for, as he
wiped 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 was
in the first place," he remarked. "Well, if we knew as much when we're
born 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," he
ventured with hesitation. "Ours up at the white cottage has gone on a
strike, 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 go
back with me an' have a look at it."
"Course I will, Zenas Henry," Willie said without hesitation. "I'd
admire to. A pump that won't work is like a fishline without a
hook--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 his
tools.
But he had reckoned without his host, for as he swept them into a
jagged piece of sailcloth and prepared to tie up the bundle, Celestina
called 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't
had 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 you
found the pump wasn't workin', an' you've been wrestlin' with it ever
since."
"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 you
speak of it, I will own to feelin' a mite holler. Can't you hand me a
snack 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 fetch
me out a slice of bread or a doughnut. We've got to get at that pump
of 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," murmured
she reproachfully.
"That was very kind of you, Tiny," Willie responded with an
ingratiating glance into her eyes. "You just keep it hot a spell
longer, 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 heart
to 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 Jan
she 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 to
eat himself. If he don't, though, remind him, for he's just as liable
to bring it back home again in his hand. Keep your eye on him!"
Jan nodded understandingly, and climbing into the dusty wagon, the
three men rattled off over the sandy road. Willie dropped his tools
into the bottom of the carriage but the slice of bread remained
untouched in his fingers. Now that triumph had brought a respite in
his labors he seemed silent and thoughtful. It was not until the
Admiral turned in at the Brewster gate that he roused himself
sufficiently to observe with irrelevance:
"Speakin' about that propeller of yours, Zenas Henry--it must be no end
of a temper-rasper."
Zenas Henry slapped the reins over the horse's flank and waited
breathlessly, hoping some further comment would come from the little
inventor, but as Willie remained silent, he at length could restrain
his 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 ring
of a hammer. She rose, and lighting her candle, tip-toed into the
hall. It was one o'clock, and she could see that Willie's bedroom door
was ajar and the bed untouched.
With a little sigh she blew out the flame in her hand and crept back
beneath the shelter of her calico comforter.
She knew the symptoms only too well.
Willie was once again "kitched by an idee!"