With something of the serene imperturbability that was a part of
his habitual attitude toward life, the Rev. Robert Drew sat in a
rocking-chair on the little porch of his house and, slowly rocking,
looked out across the waters of the placid bay while he awaited Captain
March's summons. For twenty-four hours he had scarcely stirred from
home, that he might be in instant readiness for departure on the coming
of the captain's messenger; but the messenger still tarried, and the
_Henrietta C. March_, lying quietly at anchor off the harbor with her
mainsail up, seemed no nearer to sailing than she had been the day
before.
It was early in March--March that had come in like a lamb and now
lay drowsing under a sun that hourly reddened the buds and gleamed
white on the salt-meadows and the shining boles of trees. There were
bird-calls at intervals; barnyard fowls sunned themselves in garden
spaces and sent up cloudy veils of dust: the life of the earth was
awakening. Drew could see dark specks about the harbor's mouth: he knew
that the boats had begun to go out for flatfish. The thought of even
that mild activity moved him to impatience, and, getting to his feet,
he walked to an open window and looked in.
"Mother," he said, "I'm going to find Captain March and get some reason
from him why he doesn't sail. He can get a good mate, I hear; I don't
understand his delaying. I'm tired of it. If he isn't going, I wish to
know it, and arrange for a vacation elsewhere."
"Very well, Robert." His mother looked up brightly. Her son as an
instrument of strenuous aggressiveness amused her. She had the sense
of humor, which he had not inherited, and it was this sense that lured
her on to add: "Don't say anything that you may regret."
"Oh, no," he answered gravely, and went away, leaving her to the silent
laughter that always seemed to him, whenever he was a witness of it, as
something peculiarly elusive and almost pagan.
In all Blackwater there was no cooler spot than Myron Beckwith's
boat-shop. Facing the Shore Road, and standing on piles, with big
sliding doors opening at each end, on a hot summer afternoon one could
always find a cool breeze drawing through it and hear the water lapping
about the piles beneath the floor. The panorama of village life passed
by on the Shore Road, and at the back doors one could sit and watch all
the activity of harbor and wharves and see the vessels going up and
down the sound. To sailors ashore and to idlers in general it was an
attractive spot. Here Drew found Captain March standing in a little
group near the rear doors, ruminating on life.
"No," he was saying, "things go best by contraries. A sailor ought
to marry a girl from the inboard, who doesn't know a scow from a
full-rigged ship and is just a little scart at sight of salt water.
A man like the dominie here," he added, as Drew halted by the group,
"ought to marry a girl who's never been under conviction and has got a
spice of old Satan in her. That's what gives 'em variety and keeps 'em
interested. When you know just what you're going to have for your meals
every day, you kind o' lose interest in your eating."
"Dominie," said Jehiel Dace, "you ought to get the cap'n to supply
your pulpit while you're off on your vacation. He's a good deal of a
preacher."
"I have other uses for him," said Drew, with a smile.
"'Twouldn't be a bad notion if we'd all change places now and then,"
replied the captain. "We'd appreciate each other better. I don't
know but I could preach about as well as the dominie could run the
_Henrietta C._ I ain't so sure about the prayers. One thing, there's
several in that congregation I'd like to talk at."
"Nothin' to hender you from freein' your mind as it is," suggested
Dace, brightening at the prospect. "You don't need no pulpit for that."
There was a twinkle in Captain March's eyes, but he shook his head.
"No," he said with an air of finality, "it wouldn't be official. Wisdom
has got to have authority to give it weight. Otherwise it's just blamed
impudence."
"That's so," admitted Dace; "that's a good deal so. See what a man will
take from his wife without--"
Captain March turned suddenly.
"There he comes!" he exclaimed, and gazed steadily through the open
window.
All eyes, turning in the same direction, saw a horseman galloping down
the Mount Horeb road. He descended the hill, was lost to sight behind
the rigging-loft, flashed past a bit of the Shore Road, and was hidden
again for a moment while they heard the thunder of his horse's feet on
the mill-creek bridge. Captain March seated himself and, with knees
wide apart, faced the land-side door.
In front of the shop a boy threw himself from a panting horse. He
walked straight up to Captain March, and in much the same manner that a
courier might announce defeat to a king, said:
"He can't come. His wife's sick, he says. He can't come."
"That settles it," said the captain. "I heard Simeon Macy was ashore,
and I thought maybe I could get him for mate. Now I've got to go to
the city this afternoon and look one up."
No one spoke, but every man in the group except the captain and
Drew thought of Thomas Medbury, and wondered how far a man might be
justified in letting personal reasons override necessity when his
vessel was loaded and ready for sea.
Dace was the first to break the silence.
"As I was sayin'," he remarked, "speakin' of wives--"
Some one touched Drew on the shoulder and he turned quickly. It was
Deacon Taylor, anxious to talk over again the debated subject of a new
heater for the church. When Drew was again free the captain was gone.
"Where did the captain go?" he asked.
"My wisdom touchin' wives reminded him that his had sent him on an
errant," answered Dace. "He went to the market. I suppose by now he's
tryin' to explain to his wife how he happened to be three hours late
with the meat for dinner."
At the market Drew was told that Captain March had gone home. When,
after a momentary hesitation, Drew had gone thither, it was only to
find Mrs. March sitting by a window, apparently watching for her
recreant husband.
"And he wanted roast beef for dinner," sadly remarked that good lady
after she had told the minister that she knew no more about her
husband's whereabouts than she knew where Moses was buried. She turned
her face from him for an instant.
"It is twelve o'clock, lacking seventeen minutes," she added in a tone
that suggested the tragic stage. Drew hurried away.
When, after a hopeless search for the missing mariner, he wended his
way homeward half an hour later, he smiled to himself as he wondered if
it was not just as well: he could not for his life tell what he could
have said to urge the captain to sail. At his gate he came face to face
with a breathless small boy.
"Mr. Drew," he gasped, "Cap'n March he says--he says--you be
at--Myron's boat-shop--boat-shop by half-past one--yes, sir. He's goin'
to sail." Then he disappeared.
In wonder Drew hastened up to his house, to find his mother kneeling on
the floor and strapping a satchel.
"I've just put some crullers and a glass of jelly in your bag," she
told him, without turning. "I don't suppose you'll get a thing that
tastes like real cooking. And I put your winter flannels in, too. It
will be cold nights, and you will sit out on deck and get chilled
through. Now come to dinner."
"I don't understand this sudden haste," said Drew, as he took his seat
at the table. "I saw the captain an hour ago, and he showed no signs
of any impatience to be off. It seems too good to be true."
Mrs. Drew laughed.
"He says the same of you," she told him. "But if you really get away
you owe it to your mother. I am the god out of the machine--I. I was
tying up the flowering-currant bush by the fence, and Captain March
came by. He was hurrying, my dear. I never saw him hurry before. What
do sailors say--rolling both scuppers under? Yes; it was like that.
I called to him and asked him if he had seen my son. Yes, he had.
Then I told him that if he didn't sail soon you would need a second
vacation to recover from the nervous strain of waiting for this one to
begin. I let him know how you had done nothing for two days but sit by
your baggage and start at every sound. I told him, too, that you were
constantly worrying lest something should happen to keep you at home
at the last minute; so the sooner you got away the better."
"Oh, mother! mother!" protested Drew, smiling.
"Oh, I put it strongly--trust me for that. He said he had seen you,
but you had said nothing. I knew it would be like that. Oh, you were
two Buddhas sitting under the sacred Bo-tree, contemplating eternity.
Isn't that what the Buddha is supposed to do? You were like that, you
two, anyway. Well, he explained everything. He told me that two men
had promised to go out with him as mate, but changed their minds. He
thought it queer. Another asked to go, but, for personal reasons, he
didn't want him. But as soon as he knew just how you felt he said he'd
go right off for this man. I thought it very good of him. I hope the
man isn't a rough character. But, Robert, you didn't tell me that his
wife and daughter are going." She looked at her son reproachfully.
"Whose wife and daughter? I can't follow you," he said.
"The captain's, of course."
"I believe he did mention the fact that his wife and little girl
were going, but it made no impression on me," Drew told her. "I have
scarcely thought of it since."
"His little girl! Robert, haven't you ever seen her?"
"No, mother."
"Well, I suppose you knew of her, though they don't attend your
church." Then she changed the subject with an abruptness that was so
characteristic that Drew's thoughts slipped away from the question
he had been about to ask. "But, do you know," she said, "I think he
decided to go partly because he forgot his meat for dinner and he's
afraid of that round, good-natured-looking little wife of his. His
hurry to get away now looks as if he'd been too busy finding a mate to
get home earlier. He told me about it with an intimate chuckle that
seemed to take me right into his family closet and introduce me to the
skeleton."
As Drew made his way through Beckwith's boat-shop half an hour later
and stopped at the wide sliding doors at the rear, a large yawl was
lying at the float. Three sailors sat on the thwarts, leaning forward
with the characteristic rounded shoulders and relaxed look of idle
seamen. Up the long plank walk from the boat hurried a tall, beardless
young man of twenty-eight or thirty. He walked with a swinging gait,
his shoulders were well back, and his face wore the look of one whose
thoughts were pleasant.
He glanced from Drew to his baggage, then back to Drew again, and
smiled, showing firm white teeth.
"Mr. Drew?" His voice suggested a query, but went on again immediately,
without waiting for an answer: "Tumble in. The old man's gone aboard.
He wouldn't wait."
He paused while Drew gathered up his baggage, but did not offer to
assist. The American seaman is no burden-bearer for other men.
The sailors in the boat turned incurious faces as they heard the two
draw near, then quickly rose and held the yawl to the float till they
were seated in the stern-sheets. In silence the oarsmen then took their
places, shipped their oars, and at Medbury's word sped away.
Drew looked at his watch as they pulled away from the float.
"It's not yet the hour Captain March set for leaving," he said. "I hope
I did not misunderstand it."
"Oh, that's the old man's way," replied the other, lightly. "Now that
he's really off, he can't hurry fast enough--had to get Myron to take
him out in a sailboat while I was to wait for you."
"Are you a Blackwater man?" asked Drew, later.
"Born here, and my father and grandfather before me. I guess that makes
me a Blackwater man, all right. My name's Medbury. You know my mother;
she goes to your church."
Drew's face brightened.
"Yes, indeed. Now I understand why I've never seen you," he said. "Your
mother told me that you had not been home for more than two years. I've
not been here so long. She is very cheerful in her loneliness; I often
stop in to talk to her."
"Yes," answered Medbury, soberly; "she told me. It does her lots of
good. She thinks a great deal of you." He paused a moment, and then
said: "I've promised her to take no more long voyages. She's getting
old, and I'm all she's got."
"That's good," said Drew, heartily. He was very fond of the
bright-faced old woman who had lived to see the covetous ocean take all
but her youngest boy, and was quite prepared to like her son for her
sake.