THE DROP OF WORMWOOD
When Lorna Nicholet first appeared at the Twin Rocks Light after
arriving at her summer home, she gave no evidence of needing the
lightkeeper's--or any other person's--good offices. She was her usual
brisk, contented and fun-loving self.
Conway Degger chanced to be present when Lorna came to the Light. Miss
Ida had not seen the young man when she had called on Tobias and Heppy.
"What a surprise, Mr. Degger!" the girl said, giving him a warmly
welcoming hand. "I had no idea you were in this locality."
"I am a waif from the sea, Miss Nicholet," he told her. "You ask the
skipper, here, about it. I can never thank him enough. And Miss Heppy,
too, who has so kindly taken me in and ministered to my well-being."
"He says it pretty, don't he now?" whispered Miss Heppy to Tobias.
"Pretty is as pretty does," muttered the lightkeeper. "Somehow them
fanciful speeches of his'n don't bait much trawl with me."
But Miss Heppy considered Conny Degger quite worthy of approval. Lorna
found him interesting, too. Perhaps the very fact that her Aunt Ida had
opposed her acquaintance with the young man caused Lorna to be the more
contrary. And, really, Degger betrayed some rather attractive traits.
During the next few days the girl and the boarder at Twin Rocks Light
became close companions. They went fishing together in Tobias's dory.
They tramped the beach as far as the Lower Trillion life-saving station,
Degger's sprained foot being quite well again. And the young man
appeared regularly on the Clay Head bathing beach at the morning bathing
hour.
Among the few families already at the resort, who made up a little
social world of their own, it soon became a topic of conversation--this
companionship of Lorna Nicholet and Conny Degger. Particularly was it
commented upon, because for so many summers the girl and Ralph Endicott
had been such close chums.
Although the Endicotts had already arrived at the Clay Head, Ralph did
not at once put in an appearance. This fact perhaps threw Lorna the
more into Conny Degger's company. Tongues began to wag.
"I should say," squeaked Amos Pickering, who was a very busy man these
days because of the influx of summer visitors, "that Lorny Nicholet has
got another feller. That long-laiged Endicott boy's always been tagging
her other summers. Now this here boarder you got, Tobias, is stickin'
to her like a barnacle. What d'ye think it'll amount to?"
"I give it as my opinion," retorted the lightkeeper, pursing his lips,
"that it won't add none to your burdens, Amos. I don't see no weddin'
invitations in the offing for you to distribute."
"She's jest a-flirtin', is she?"
"Like a sandpiper," declared Tobias. "Keepin' her hand in as ye might
say. There ain't a mite o' harm in Lorny, but she's got to have some
amusement."
He was nevertheless glad to see Ralph arrive. The lightkeeper believed
that Lorna would much better have her old friend at hand to compare
Degger with.
Had he been present at the first meeting of the trio, Tobias Bassett
might have experienced some doubt of the value after all of such
comparison. Lorna greeted Ralph very coolly. She and Degger were about
to launch the lightkeeper's dory for a fishing trip when Ralph came
striding down from the Clay Head.
"'Lo, Ralph," was the girl's careless hail. "Did you put the bait-pail
in, Mr. Degger?"
"All right, Miss Lorna. It's right here. How do, Endicott?"
"I heard you were here, Degger," said Ralph, merely nodding to Lorna.
"What's running now?"
"Mostly squeteague and fluke," replied the girl. "Occasionally a tautog
on rocky bottom. No snappers yet."
"Nothing worthy of Your Majesty's prowess," gibed Degger. "I understand
you are a real fisherman," and he pushed off the boat.
Ralph's gaze narrowed and his brow clouded. He sat down on the sand.
There was room enough in the dory for a third; but neither of them had
suggested his joining them.
Perhaps Ralph's attitude was not exactly that of a dog in the manger.
But it did trouble him to see his erstwhile chum so friendly with Conny
Degger. Not that he knew of anything actually bad about the fellow.
Merely, he had seemed so inconsequential and, at times, rather vulgar.
Ralph was quite aware that some men are one thing to their masculine
friends while they act entirely differently in the company of women.
Degger, he thought, was of that kind. He hated to see Lorna "mixing
up," as he termed it, with the fellow.
He was not wise enough--wise in women's ways--to hide this feeling from
Lorna's sharp vision. She flattered herself that her old friend was
displaying jealousy. This supposition could not fail to please her.
Ralph had become such a nuisance in her opinion, that she was determined
to show him that she could easily attract other men. She would flout
him and his whole family--as well as her own--by playing about with
Conny Degger.
"Ralph thinks that he is the only man who ever pays me any attention,"
Lorna secretly ruminated. "And goodness knows, he has hung around so
close that almost everybody else has been driven off. Conceited! That
is just what Ralph Endicott is. Always looking over a tall collar at the
rest of the world. If he didn't believe that Adam's last name was
Endicott he never would admit relationship with the first of the race!
Humph!"
So she treated Degger particularly nicely on this occasion. She
overlooked some rather crude things about the young man, and from the
shore where Ralph lay she appeared to be having a most delightful time
with her fishing partner.
It made her angry to see how Ralph hung around. She delayed coming
ashore as long as she could, hoping he would go away. She did not want
a scene with him.
Ralph, however, did not even rise from his recumbent position when the
fishing party beached the dory on the strand between the out-thrust
reefs. Lorna hurried away, and Ralph did not attempt to join her, as she
had feared he would. Instead, he got up slowly and aided Degger draw up
the lightkeeper's dory.
"Awf'ly nice girl, that," said Degger boldly.
"Yes."
"Good sport, too. I never met a nicer girl."
"I don't believe you ever did," said the other, his level gaze boring
Degger rather unpleasantly.
"Oh, I don't know!" ejaculated Degger, with sudden warmth and a sneer on
his lips. "I've known a lot of girls----"
"But not of her kind," broke in Ralph. "And don't you think it! Watch
your step with Lorna."
"What's the matter with you, Endicott?" snapped Degger. "I don't have
to take orders from you."
"Not as long as you go straight you don't," Ralph assured him. "But we
all think too much of Lorna Nicholet around her to see anybody try to
misbehave with her."
"Oh--you----"
"I know a few things about you. It's none of my business what you try
out with other girls," Ralph hastily added. "But you be mighty careful
with Lorna."
He turned on his heel then and strode away. Degger sneered after him.
"Think's he is the Great I Am!" he muttered. "You'd think he owned the
girl. And putting on his airs with _me_!" Degger's scowl grew darker
as he added: "Guess the beggar wants me to pay up. That is like these
rich fellows. They are mighty free offering to lend you money; but they
make you feel the obligation forever after."
Now, Conway Degger quite wronged Ralph on this point. The latter had
entirely forgotten that Degger was in his debt from some time back in
their college days.
Indeed, Ralph Endicott was never one to trouble about money, for he
never remembered putting his hand into his pocket when he wanted that
commodity without finding it. His family had been wealthy for
generations. Just how well-to-do they were in the present generation he
had never troubled to ask. Uncle Henry and the family attorneys
attended to all that.
It did seem odd that just at this time the money matters of other people
should begin to disturb Ralph Endicott. Not that he bothered his head
about Conny Degger's affairs. It was somebody entirely different of
whose financial difficulties he was unexpectedly made aware.
Coming up from the shore following his brief conversation with Degger,
Ralph found the old lightkeeper mending a seine outside the lighthouse
door.
"Wal, now," said Tobias, "ye look some het up. I seen ye soaking
yourself out there on the sand in the sun, and I cal'lated you'd look
like a b'iled lobster when you come up. And you do."
Ralph knew that it was an angry flush Tobias saw on his face. He
grinned ruefully.
"More than the sun to make a fellow's blood boil, Mr. Bassett,
sometimes."
"Oh, sugar!" rejoined the lightkeeper. "Ye don't let that feller bother
ye none, do you, Ralph?"
"I do not like him much," the young man said stiffly.
"You mean you don't like him to be fooling around Lorny, hey?" said
Tobias, his head shrewdly on one side.
"It is none of _my_ business----"
"Course it is! Course it is!" exclaimed the lightkeeper vigorously.
"I've just about sized this Degger feller up, I cal'late. His folks
ain't any too well off, and I bet he'll never get round-shouldered
carrying his money around."
"What has that to do with it, Mr. Bassett?" demanded Ralph, rather
startled.
"Why, Lorny can't afford to waste her time with a feller like him," the
lightkeeper declared coolly. "She's got to marry somebody with money. I
know by the way Miss Ida was talkin' the other day over here, she was
worried about Lorny marrying."
"What _do_ you mean, Tobias Bassett?" ejaculated Ralph, dropping down on
the bench beside him.
"Why, I cal'late you know more about the Nicholets' affairs than I do."
"I don't understand you at all," said the young man. "Do you mean to
say----"
"That Lorny's got to marry money--yep!" exclaimed Tobias, pursing his
lips and nodding. "It 'ud ease matters a whole lot for Miss Ida and
Lorny's father if she gets a rich husband. Why, Ralph! I s'posed you
knowed _that_."
"I never dreamed it!"
"Cal'late that is why they were so anxious for you and her to make a
match of it," pursued the lightkeeper. "O' course, she don't know
nothing about it. But I give it as my opinion that a rich husband for
Lorny is going to take a great burden off the shoulders of her family."
"You amaze me." Ralph's face was a study.
"So ye see," said Tobias, with a cheerfulness that grated on Ralph's
nerves, "this Degger feller, unless he's got more money than he's showed
any sign of having, ain't got no chance with Lorna. Leastways," he
added, "not with her folks."
"I--I never thought of it before," said Ralph reflectively, "but I do
not think Degger has much money."
"Then he'd better be shooed away from the vicinity, as ye might say,"
the matchmaker said vigorously. "For if you air bound not to marry her
yourself, Ralph, no use her fallin' into the lap of a poor man."
"You know very well Lorna wouldn't marry me, Tobias Bassett!" exclaimed
Ralph angrily. "You needn't talk as though _I_ were at fault."
"Oh, sugar! I don't see you fallin' over your own feet none, young man,
to _make_ her marry ye."
"Don't you remember how she talked to me that night we were stormbound
here? Didn't she fairly drive me out of the lighthouse right at the
worst of the gale? You said yourself it wasn't a night fit for a dog to
be out in. If I'd undertaken to walk to Clinkerport they'd have found
me along the road somewhere, frozen stiff! That's all she cared about
me."
"Oh, sugar!" said Tobias again, "I wouldn't hold that against her.
She's spirited, Lorny is. She was mad with you----"
"I should say she was!"
"But she didn't re'lly mean it," pursued the lightkeeper. "If she had
thought you were in danger she'd never driv' you out. I'm sartain sure,
Ralph, that she thinks a heap of you."
"She shows it!"
"No, she don't show it. No more than you show how you re'lly feel
toward her."
"Huh!"
"Oh, I know," declared Tobias wagging a confident head. "You wouldn't
see no harm come to Lorny. That's why I tell you as I do that this
Degger--'nless he's a sight richer than he 'pears to be--ain't got no
business shining around her. I give it as my opinion that Lorna's
friends have got to come to her rescue and see that she marries a rich
man."
He stopped right there. Tobias Bassett was wise in his iniquity.
Without coming out unequivocally and stating in so many words that the
Nicholets had lost the greater part of their wealth, he had intimated
enough to trouble the waters of Ralph's mind.
The latter could not visualize the luxury-loving, softly-bred girl as a
poor man's wife. Why, Lorna never could in this world endure privation,
or even a lack of those things which only money--and plenty of it--could
purchase.
"Poor girl!" was the young man's secret thought. "She has always
expected to have plenty of money in her own right some day. Wonder what
John Nicholet has been doing with the family fortune? Speculating, I
bet! He's a visionary chap.
"But--but it seems terrible for Lorna if she must marry wealth to save
the family from penury. And she all unconscious of the fate in store
for her. It is a wicked, wicked shame!"