IT ALL COMES OUT RIGHT
Upon that tableau, flying down the steep path with a step lighter than
she had heard it for many a long day, came the pale lady's husband--or,
as Carolyn May would call him to the end, "Baby Laird's father."
"Girl," he cried, "I've put it through! Barzilla is up there trying to
make Molly I. understand the good news. I wrote Harvey Deering and he
made no bones of lending me the money. I could not tell you until I
was sure. We'll not have to go to Arizona after all. Harvey has sent
a certified check for two thousand and his blessing, and the firm of
Bassett and Ball is already born. By gad! Whom have we here?"
His wife had stumbled against him, her strength going from her; he
caught both her and the baby in his arms. He flashed a second glance at
the man who stood before them so straight and uncompromising--but much
greyer and older than when Joe Bassett had seen his father last.
"So, I have been making friends with my own grandson, have I?" said the
Griffin grimly. "And without knowing it!"
"I fancied so," Joe Bassett replied. "I only discovered the other day
that it was you and the _mater_ who had taken such a liking to little
Laird. My wife didn't know."
"'Laird,' eh? We never called _you_ that, Joe. I'd almost forgotten you
had a middle name. Humph!" muttered his father. "And this is why the
baby's father did not come to see me to talk over a loan, is it?"
"It is," responded his son shortly.
"Your mother is awfully taken with the baby, Joe," said the older man,
almost wistfully. "She has been quite cut-up that his father would
accept no favour from me."
"How about if she had known who I was?" asked the young man bitterly.
"Come away, Laird!" begged the pale lady.
"Hold on!" ejaculated the Griffin, harshly. "Am I a bear that I should
bite the child, perhaps?"
There was a momentary twinkle in Joe Bassett's eye. The success he had
achieved in raising the money needed for his partnership with Barzilla
had lent him a new confidence.
"You're a Griffin, sir," he said. "That's worse than a bear. And once,
you must remember, you came near running down the baby with your
automobile. His mother received a shock at that time from which she has
not even now wholly recovered."
"So I did! I remember well enough. And the money I gave little Carolyn
for her, _you_ returned!"
"We could scarcely accept anything under the circumstances," Joe
Bassett said, stiffly. "For the same reason I have refused your offer,
through Inness, of that position in Arizona."
"What offer?" demanded his father. "I made you no offer through Inness.
That scalawag has been up to other mischief, has he? But was that man
Cameron's visit to me on your behalf unknown to you, Joe?"
"Cameron? You mean Carolyn's father?" demanded Joe Bassett in surprise.
"I know nothing of it."
"Ha! It might have been the child's father," exclaimed the Griffin. "I
had not remembered _that_ was her last name."
He turned to look at the little girl who was now dragging her mother
forward. Mrs. Cameron had already seen that her suspicions were
correct. She hesitated to approach the Bassetts at this moment; but
Carolyn May was insistent.
"Oh, please, sir!" she cried to the Griffin. "My mamma wants to thank
you too for giving me such a splendid time."
"This is the baby's grandfather?" Mrs. Cameron observed quietly. "I
see!"
"Let me introduce my father," said Joe Bassett. "I think," he added,
with a warmer smile than usual, "that this lady and her husband are our
very good friends. I know Carolyn May is."
The Griffin was fast recovering his composure. He offered his hand
again to Carolyn May and she clung to it with both of hers.
"I fancy Carolyn is a friend to almost everybody," he remarked. "Your
mother, Joe, has been much more cheerful of late because of this little
girl--and the baby. You won't deny her the pleasure of seeing the boy
frequently, will you?" and he looked directly at the pale lady when
he made this humble request. It was a good deal to ask under the
circumstances, and the Griffin seemed to realize it.
Joe Bassett likewise looked down into his wife's face. Perhaps what
they had suffered--all their trials and difficulties--could be traced
directly to the harshness of this grey old man. But the very worst he
had thought of his son and the girl beside him, _they would never know_!
Little Carolyn suddenly felt the tenseness of the situation without
understanding what it meant. She let go of the Griffin's hand with one
of her own and reached for that of the pale lady, hanging timidly at
her side.
"Why!" she cried, "you didn't interduce my pale lady to my friend, Mr.
Laird. _This_ is the baby's mother, you know, sir," and the child drew
the fragile hand of the pale lady into that of the Griffin.
* * * * *
A group gathered in the grassy yard before the Ball cottage on an
afternoon not long thereafter showed that the younger Bassetts, if of
independent spirit, held no rancour in their hearts regarding the elder
Bassetts.
In the group sat the three women, the grandmother with the baby in her
lap, while his mother and Mrs. Cameron sewed. Molly Ball was getting
supper for all, to be served when Barzilla and Joe Bassett should
return from the fishing.
"I used to wait like this for Henry to come home from work," the
elder Mrs. Bassett said reflectively, with a smile upon her lips that
altogether softened her haughty look. "We lived in a seaboard village,
too, and we were much poorer than we are now--and much happier."
Her husband and Carolyn, with Prince and Nebuchadnezzar trailing them,
went hand in hand to meet the young men who were already in sight.
"And Baby Laird and his mamma and papa are going to live right here
with Molly and Barzilla all winter. Won't that be fine?" Carolyn cried.
"I 'most wish we were going to stay here, too. It's a lovely place, I
think."
"Humph! No bath in the winter," said her friend, but more to himself
than to her. "Don't see how they can stand it. But I'm going to build
a house for 'em right on the shoulder of Beacon Hill yonder. They
can't help my doing that, even if Joe is stubborn about beginning for
himself--laying the foundation of his own fortune.
"Yet, why not?" added the man ruminatively. "Swordfish may be just as
good a foundation as coopering. I made barrels for the herring fishers
when I began."
Carolyn scarcely appreciated this, and she ran ahead to greet the two
younger men. She came back swinging on one of Barzilla's great, brown
hands. The elder Bassett got into step with his son, who carried his
oilskins and other gear on one arm. They loitered behind the others.
"I would have sent Inness where he belonged, Joe, if it wasn't for
raking up the whole scandal. It would make a mess in the papers. And he
was scheming to get you as far out of the way as Arizona! He feared
we'd meet. He has been selling me out to the Cal Cummings crowd, too.
René got everything off his chest when once I put the screws on him. So
all I could really do was to discharge both of them.
"René I hired over again," he added rather ruefully. "I didn't know
where to find another chauffeur as good, or one who could handle the
_White Streak_ as well. And he was very penitent."
* * * * *
Carolyn May was a full week bidding good-bye to everybody with whom she
had become acquainted on the island.
"Never did see such a young 'un for cheerin' a body up," declared Aunt
Ardelia Dodge. "Smith an' me will miss her like she was a grandchild.
And she's a sight better than any of Smith's grandchildren ever dared
to be. You'm right. His branch of the Dodges ain't none too smart."
The wooden-legged Littlefields had gone back to their little cottage
near the Old Harbour; but Carolyn May spent an afternoon with them
before her departure for New York. She felt that she had a duty to
perform, and that she could ignore it no longer. Edna would expect her
to bring the information she craved and, polite or not, the little girl
felt that she just had to ask again about those wooden legs.
"How did Oly come to have his'n?" Captain Ozias repeated. "Wal, I'll
tell ye, if ye promise not to say a word to him about it. For it does
make him mad. 'Twarn't no accident at all--like I told you once.
_Any_body could have told Oly he was fixin' for broken bones--only
they'd 've said 'twas his neck he'd break, 'stead of his laig.
"Ye see that high, rocky head up yonder?" pointing to the rise of the
bluff almost behind the little cottage. "Wal, Oly would come down that
hill 'stead o' goin' 'round by the path proper, when he'd been to the
store. 'Twas a short cut. An' he took it on a winter's evening, when
'twas mistin' an' freezin'; an' he slipped."
"Oh!" cried Carolyn. "And did he fall right down here?"
"That's what he done. And he laid out 'most all night, unconscious.
Then he woke up and blatted and one of the surfmen from Station One
heard him and gathered him in. But that, and the delay in gettin' a
surgeon from the Main, and all, made it necessary fin'ly to ampertate.
So since then Oly's hopped around on a wooden stump.
"And me? Why, I don't talk none about it, leetle gal. 'Tain't nothin'
to crow over, as ye might say. I went through the Battle of Manila
'thout gittin' hurt; I was aboard the old _Olympia_ when she made her
dash from ocean to ocean so's to git into the fightin' around Cuby. I
was at the Battle of Santiago. All them, an' never got a scratch!
"But after I was mustered out o' the Navy and went into merchant
service and commanded my own three-stick windjammer, I was ashore at
Punta Arenas one trip and went to a feller's shop to sharpen some
knives, and what happens but a grin'stone fell on that laig and busted
it all to flinders!"
"Oh, Mr. Cap'n Littlefield!"
"Yep. That's the rights of it. I don't talk none about it--no more
than Oly talks about his laig. Ye see, an' ol' feller longshore with
a wooden laig is expected to be a hero. But there ain't nothin' a
mite heroic 'bout neither me nor Oly Littlefield. We was just plumb
unlucky--that's all!"
* * * * *
The elder Bassetts were going to remain longer. The season had ended,
and the Orowoc House would have closed as did most of the other hotels.
But a man with the money and the influence, to say nothing of the
determination (he called it "stubbornness" when it was repeated in his
son), that the Griffin possessed, would have changed the laws of the
Medes and Persians! He and his wife were comfortable where they were;
he could run to New York in a few hours in the _White Streak_ when it
was necessary. So they remained, and at least a part of the hotel help
remained likewise.
He wanted to see the foundation laid for the house he purposed to build
for his son. It was to be of island stone in the rough to the eaves of
the bungalow roof. That house, on a shoulder of the highest hill on the
island, would be seen for miles at sea and probably would be the most
expensive dwelling that a swordfisherman ever lived in.
His son, however, was in business with Barzilla in earnest. A
comfortable and cheaply-built shack on the shore of Dorris Cove would
satisfy the firm at first. That was being erected, too. Joe Bassett
gave more attention to the building of that shack than he did to the
plans for the bungalow.
"Business before pleasure," said the young man. "I've learned that
lesson."
"There is something in Joe Bassett," Carolyn's father observed to his
wife. "I didn't think much of him at first. In spite of the shadow that
overhung his character, though, I believe you, Hannah, thought well of
him."
"I could not believe that Joe Bassett was what his father said he was,"
Carolyn's mother said softly.
"Well, guess the Griffin is sorry enough now that he ever said it, or
ever believed it. He thought that nobody but he or Joe could open that
library safe; but Inness was smarter than he knew. He had duplicate
keys and copies of the combinations of safe-locks. He had been sifting
the most secret matters of the elder Bassett for years. And he went
free after all!
"That was bad. But I don't suppose Mr. Bassett could bring himself to
giving us newspaper chaps such a fat bit of news as it would have been.
Well, all's well that ends well!"
"But all wells don't end well," interposed Carolyn, who had only heard
and understood a part of what her father said. "You see, there's Uncle
Smith Dodge's well. He's been digging it, off an' on Aunt Ardelia says,
ever since they was married; and that was an _awful_ long time ago.
And he ain't never struck water yet, 'ceptin' when it rains into it.
It does seem, she says, Aunt Ardelia does, that a woman could ha' done
better--or she'd a-filled up the hole!"
"Carolyn May!" gasped Mamma Cameron. "It is time we take the child
back, Papa Cameron, or I am very much afraid she'll never speak English
again."
Papa Cameron only laughed, and said:
"Snuggy, you are a budding feminist, without a doubt." But Carolyn May
did not know what that meant.
THE END
* * * * *
[Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphenation left as printed.]