"PEARLY"
It was true that Cap'n Jonah was more disturbed by the Pettys'
treatment of Pearl Holden than he was by his own uncertain financial
situation. He had been taking chances all his life, and the fact that
his ready cash would soon run low held nothing new or strange in his
experience.
Like most seafaring men, the captain held all women in great respect.
And a young girl in Pearl's situation was bound to appeal very strongly
to his chivalrous spirit.
"Whatever!" he muttered often and again. "If I could jest fool Sarah
and Orrin, like 'Liphalet says. If them two money-lovers only believed
that I had a fortune, as they at first suspected, I could make 'em
treat Pearly decent, an' that's a fac'."
As the days passed he could not help seeing that there was something
troubling Pearl deeply. He supposed that it must be the harshness meted
out to her by Sarah Petty.
Before Mr. Helmford, Sarah and Orrin were both on their best behavior.
They really desired, it seemed, to retain the new boarder's respect,
and at table spoke in fair kindness to the girl, as well as treated
Cap'n Jonah with more consideration.
Tom, of course, was hopeless. His bad manners Mr. Helmford ignored. And
really, the lout gave Cap'n Jonah nothing of which to complain. Tom, in
fact, held a contrary opinion from his parents' regarding Cap'n Jonah's
financial circumstances; and he had reason to.
The young fellow could not well forget that his Uncle Jonah had given
him a twenty-dollar bill without his even asking for it; and Tom could
not imagine anybody giving away money in such sums unless they really
had more than they knew what to do with.
Tom had no mind to tell his father or mother his reasons for holding to
the belief that Uncle Jonah Hand was a wealthy man. It would open too
fruitful a field for inquiry.
Despite the fact that Sarah Petty had examined every scrap of Cap'n
Jonah's possessions save what he carried about with him all the time,
and had found no bankbook or any account of his investments, Tom backed
his father strongly in the declaration that the old man might be hiding
securities or other valuables.
"Jest because he's savin' and won't buy new clo'es and things he
needs," said Orrin on one occasion, "ain't no sure proof that he's
short of money. Mebbe that's how he got it--bein' careful."
Orrin could appreciate to the full such a miserly character as he
gave Cap'n Jonah. He was worried, it must be confessed, by his wife's
treatment of her uncle. He remembered that Cap'n Jonah admitted he had
some money invested in oil shares; and what the bank cashier had said
about such investments could not fail to impress his suspicious and
avaricious mind.
"You may wake up, Sarah, and find you've made a bad mistake," he urged.
"I guess I can trim my sails to a change of wind if need be," she
returned sharply. "But I've about made up my mind that old tramp is
soon to be without a cent to bless himself with. And when that time
comes, out he goes, bag and baggage! The poor farm's good enough for
the like of him."
"But if he's got that old note of your father's----"
"Let's wait till that kettle boils," said Sarah Petty grimly. "I
scare't myself enough about that at the start. I ain't found a single
scrap of paper--not even any of my father's letters in which he
mentioned the note. Jonah Hand says he lost his ship and all year
afore last. I reckon all his private papers went down with it. I don't
calc'late to be 'fraid again of no bugaboo."
Sarah's was a much bolder spirit than her husband's. She was the lion,
he the jackal. He wrung his hands reflectively and made no reply.
But privately he intimated to Cap'n Jonah that he did not approve of
Sarah's putting the old seaman "into that poky garret room." It was
well, Orrin thought, to have an anchor to windward.
Cap'n Jonah took both Orrin's and Tom's advances for what they were
worth, and no more. And he continued to worry about his finances as
little as possible. But Pearly----
There was something wrong between the girl and Tom. The captain began
to realize that, and it, too, disturbed him. He saw them privately
talking in corners--the girl angry and earnest, Tom slouching and with
sneering face.
The lazy fellow did not go to work. He idled around the house, helped
his father under protest, and occasionally went fishing or clamming and
thus added to the family larder. His mother must have supplied him with
money, the captain decided, for he was able to buy tobacco and such
other small luxuries as he wanted. Sarah bought all his clothing, as
she did Orrin's; and hard bargains she drove indeed for them with the
peddlers and with Cap'n Abe.
Once Tom went to Paulmouth and came home with the unmistakable smell of
liquor on his breath.
"You're a good-for-nothing, lazy fellow!" Cap'n Jonah once heard Pearl
tell the youth, and with vigor. "And you won't ever do what you
promised me you would--and 'twill soon be Christmas."
The captain wondered what it was Tom Petty had promised her. At least,
the girl evidently had no love for the lout, and Cap'n Jonah was glad
of that.
He watched her intercourse with Helmford, however, with high delight.
When the "fish hatchery man" was near Pearl could not help preening her
feathers for him. Her pretty face glowed with interest when he spoke.
When he addressed her directly she was by no means tongue-tied; yet
there was a sweet shyness in Pearl's manner at such times that was very
attractive.
The young man could not fail to be charmed with the girl's unaffected
sweetness when he was in her presence. But he held himself back, and
treated Pearl only with that courtesy and kindness that he gave to
every woman.
He presumed the girl was already chosen as the future mate for the son
of the house. Helmford did not purpose to make Pearl's situation more
difficult than it was by offering her any particular attention. Yet Tom
Petty glowered at the two, and occasionally dropped a caustic remark
for which his mother took him privately to task.
Helmford had brought a great store of books with him and bookshelves on
which to arrange them. It was Pearl's duty to dust these from time to
time, for, after having once gone through the new boarder's possessions
quite as thoroughly as she had Cap'n Jonah's, Sarah Petty gave the care
of the new boarder's room over to her willing little drudge.
Pearl had obtained a fair education in the simpler branches before
she had been allotted by the selectmen to Orrin Petty, her mother's
step-brother's cousin-by-marriage--a relationship which even the
closest student of genealogy would have found difficulty in figuring
out.
She loved to read and all the time she could steal from her
multitudinous tasks was spent in that way. Not that her selection of
fiction had been very wise, perhaps, before Helmford came to board at
the Petty homestead. The romances in the _Ladies' Home Provider_ were
not strong intellectual food; but they were amusing, even enthralling,
to the mind of Pearl Holden.
These stories kept alive in the hearts of the women and girls who
read them the fires of real romance. Their belief in the existence of
chivalrous youth and beauteous maidens was nursed by these tales, and
they added nothing if not a saccharine quality to life as it is lived
on the Cape.
But Pearl's dippings into Helmford's books began to open her mind to
the appreciation of other worlds. The highest attribute of man had
heretofore been in Pearl's thought his ability to make love in a
gushing, moving-picture-hero way. Perhaps her belief in the existence
of such lovers had helped her hold aloof Tom Petty and his maudlin
attempts at love making.
In Helmford's books she found the clash of real life--in itself a
more enthralling romance than any Pearl had ever before dreamed. The
heroines were, too, of a different character from the girls she had
actually known. Why, sometimes they were more heroic than the men
themselves!
She quickly awoke to the fact that romance was not something of which
she could only dream. As she had told Cap'n Jonah, she thought of
marriage, even if she might never reach that much-to-be-desired state.
Pearl saw that Sarah Petty, for instance, was stronger than her
husband, that she took the lead. She knew she, herself, was more
assertive than Tom. These new book-heroines seemed to possess all the
push and determination that Pearl felt simmering in her own blood.
"If it was not unwomanly for those girls in the books to assert
themselves, to go out into the world and be self-supporting, and in the
end to choose the man they wanted for a mate instead of sitting down to
wait for the right man to look them up--if it was all right for girls
in books to do this, why," Pearl asked herself, "wasn't it the correct
thing for real girls to do?"
Pearl determined when her "time was out" at Orrin Petty's to do just
as some of these new heroines did. There was even Gusty Durgin, for a
local example. Modesty or a shrinking from the unknown had not kept
Gusty from setting forth with the single talent of being able to cry
real tears to be a moving picture actress. The rather clumsy, overfed
Gusty had never before seemed a heroine to Pearl Holden; but now she
saw the ex-waitress of the Cardhaven Inn in a new light.
As for Pearl's opinion of Helmford himself, she at first placed him on
a pedestal so high that he was scarcely in range of her humble worship.
But a girl cannot take intimate care of a man's belongings--dust and
sweep for him, clean up his litter, put away his garments, wash and
iron his clothes, darn his socks, and otherwise care for him and for
his possessions, without gaining a familiarity which, if it does not
breed the proverbial contempt, certainly does tarnish any heroic
quality he may have at first assumed.
Not that Joe Helmford was a man who held himself aloof. Quite the
contrary. He was as simple and unaffected as Pearl herself. Only he had
seen more of the world than she, and he had no idea of becoming too
familiar with Pearl, or with any other member of the Petty household.
In other words, he knew his place and kept to it. He was friendly
enough at mealtime; but he seldom appeared in the kitchen at any other
hour save to ask for shaving water or to pass through to his room.
He had immediately purchased an open grate stove in Paulmouth and had
had Perry Baker, the expressman, bring it over, along with a ton of
coal from the Cardhaven dock where the freight schooner tied up. So he
had his own fire, before which he spent most of his free time in study.
There was not much to do at the fish hatchery at this season, and
Helmford had assistants there to watch things day and night. So he was
able to study and read. Finding Pearl interested in books he advised
her a little in the selection of reading matter from his library, which
she bore off to her room, unknown to Sarah Petty.
Tom Petty, however, soon became aware of the innocent intimacy between
Pearl and the new boarder. He snarled and sneered and spoke so
pointedly about it that his mother said, in wonder:
"What do you care whether that feller, Helmford, pays attention to
Pearl Holden or not? I sh'd hope you'd respect yourself too much to
take any notice of hired help. What would your uncles, 'Poley and
Perseus Heath, say--let alone their wives--if you undertook to hitch up
with a pauper?"
For once his mother's advice was not calculated to impress Tom Petty.
He assumed, at least, the attitude of the dog in the manger. If he did
not want Pearl himself, he did not purpose that Joe Helmford should
have her.
"You don't want to mix up none with that city feller, Pearly," he told
her. "He's no good. You know what them city fellers are that come down
here to the Cape in summer. He's like all the rest of 'em."
"He isn't," declared Pearl, briefly and with firmness.
"You don't know nothin' at all about him--who he is or where he comes
from."
"Did I say I wanted to know?" responded Pearl proudly.
"Wal," said Tom, "you know you can't keep your eyes off'n him at
table, and when he talks your ears hang open like the mouth of a dyin'
codfish."
"I don't, either, Tom Petty!" she cried furiously.
They were out in the yard after their supper, and Pearl had been taking
down a batch of washed clothes frozen to the clothesline. It was a
cloudy night with no moon and was almost pitch dark. The clothes basket
was at the girl's feet and separated her from Tom.
"I don't, either, Tom Petty," she repeated. "Mr. Helmford is nothing to
me. But he's a gentleman."
"Aw, cat's foot!" scoffed Tom. "What's a gentleman? A dude with his
pants ironed to a crease."
"A gentleman is something you ain't, and never will be!" cried the
girl. "You're not gentleman enough to keep your word to a girl. You've
broke your word to me. You won't go to work and earn money to pay your
debts. You're as mean, Tom Petty, as you can be--an' I've a good mind
to tell your mother after all," she ended in anger.
"You said you wouldn't tell," sneered Tom. "If you tell, who's the
biggest liar--you or me?"
"I guess," said Pearl practically, "that a bad promise is better broken
than kep'."
"You tell Marm," threatened the youth, "and I'll fix you, Pearl Holden!"
He actually raised his hand to her. She stepped back, seeing his
gesture in the darkness, and at that very moment a tall figure thrust
itself between them.
"Shall I carry the basket indoors for you, Miss Pearl?" asked
Helmford's calm voice. "I am just going in."
He had come up the grassy lane unheard by Pearl or Tom. He noticed Tom
not at all as he picked up the basket.
Pearl choked, stifled a sob, and scurried ahead of him without a word.
Tom's protest died in his throat as Helmford strode after the girl,
carrying the clothes basket.