ALL ABOUT A BAD SMELL
The three Pettys were not happy. Somehow Cap'n Jonah's defiance and
Pearl's joyful determination to put herself under the old mariner's
protection, quite took the taste out of any pleasure Sarah Petty might
have felt in seeing the two "paupers" start out into the storm.
Orrin sank gloomily into his chair and openly groaned. The sand was
cut out from under him, and no mistake! The melting of Cap'n Jonah's
fortune was a catastrophe of overwhelming proportions. Orrin felt that
he would never get over it.
It was the son who first found voice and energy to put his thoughts
into words.
"There!" he croaked. "_Now_ you've done it, an' I hope you're
satisfied."
"What's the matter with you, Tom Petty?" demanded his mother,
apprehending the young fellow's complaint before it was uttered.
"You've driv' Pearly away. She ain't got no business going off with
that old sea-devil!" cried Tom.
"Wal, what d'ye want her here for?" queried Sarah. "She ain't wuth her
salt no more. 'Twixt Uncle Jonah and that Helmford feller, they've nigh
'bout ruined her for work."
"_Work?_" repeated Tom, with scorn. "That's all you ever think of--you
slave driver! I didn't want Pearl driv' out."
"Why not? What's she to _you_--when she ain't goin' to have no money?"
"She's my girl!" cried Tom hotly. "Or she would ha' been if it wasn't
for that consarned Helmford. And it's your fault he ever come here and
made trouble 'tween us."
"Why, you talk foolish!" declared Sarah.
"Is that so?" snarled the lout. "Well, I can tell you right now: If
Pearly's goin' to be turned out o' house an' home, so'm I. I'll go with
her."
This ridiculous statement, however, did not make Sarah Petty smile.
After all, the woman's very soul was bound up in Tom. He could get his
way with her by such threats at any time. And she was broken in spirit
now.
"You--you can't get her to come back," she stammered.
"I can try," declared Tom. "And I'm goin' to. But you've got to promise
to be good to her. If I marry Pearl I ain't goin' to let her be your
slave no more."
"You ain't married her yet," said Sarah pursing her lips tightly.
"An' there's another thing," went on Tom, using the gaff without
mercy. "How about if Uncle Jonah turns on you with that old note of
gran'-pop's? He ain't forgot it. You can see that by what he just said
to you. He was throwin' it up to you. An' now it's proved he ain't got
a fortune, he'll try seeing what he can get out o' you."
"You hesh up," commanded Sarah Petty, suddenly recovering her poise.
Orrin might be utterly helpless; but she had begun to think again.
Tom's point was well taken. She could only judge other people by her
own mind. That was the great lack in her character, after all. She
measured every other person by her own warped standard.
It was possibly within Uncle Jonah's power to make the Pettys a great
deal of trouble. Even if the old note for two thousand dollars was
outlawed, if the old captain pressed the matter the fact would be made
public that Sarah Petty had not settled her father's just debts when
she had administered his estate.
The Petty family--Uncles 'Poley, Perse, Solon and Enoch, and their
wives and connections--would hear all about it. Sarah was a social
climber. She had desired to use the prestige of Cap'n Jonah's supposed
fortune as a ladder on which to mount to the higher branches of the
family tree.
There was nothing criminal in Sarah being deceived by the old sea
captain regarding his financial affairs. That was not her fault. But
if the story got abroad that she, after all, owed Cap'n Jonah all the
attention she had given him--and much more--the Harwich Pettys would
have something to say about it!
Sarah Petty could better bear being laughed at for being fooled by
Cap'n Jonah, than be exposed as having cheated the old man out of
two thousand dollars. Her calmer thought compassed this fact almost
immediately. Shrewdly she readjusted her plans for the future.
"Tom Petty," she said briskly, "you go after that gal. You bring
Pearl back here. She ain't got no right to leave us this-a-way in any
case, for we're her guardeens, made so by the 'thority of the town
_se_lectmen till she's eighteen."
"You want I should spoil ev'rything," her son complained. "If I try to
order her back----"
"I didn't say so, did I?" snapped his mother. "We've got a hold on her
just the same. But that's our last resort. You find Pearl an' tell her
to come back. You be nice to her. If you want to marry the girl your
father and I ain't got no objections. She's a fav'rite of Uncle Jonah
Hand. A blind man can see that. And he won't do nothin' that'll hurt
her or her'n. D'ye see? If Pearl an' you marry, he won't press no old
note against this estate that's a-comin' to you some day. That is sure."
"I dunno can I git her back," grumbled Tom, buttoning his coat again.
"But I'll find out where she's goin' and what she's goin' to do."
"You can look in at Abe Silt's store," said his mother, sharply. "If
that old tramp's such good friends with Silt, that's where he an'
Pearl's gone."
Tom thought this very likely, and he made the store his destination.
It seemed as though the storm was abating; but Tom Petty was so deeply
engaged in thought that he paid slight attention to the weather.
The lout had come to a juncture where he could no longer shift the
burden of decision to other shoulders, or postpone settlement of this
question until a future time. The shock of Pearl deliberately leaving
the house with Cap'n Jonah had roused him to at least one fact.
He cared a great deal for the girl. His was an utterly selfish love;
but such as it was, it was the very best imitation of affection that
Tom Petty would probably ever experience.
To his mind Joe Helmford was but a passing fancy of Pearl's. Of course,
in the end, he, Tom, would get her. It was foreordained. They had lived
in such close companionship for so many years that he could imagine no
change. That was why her actual departure had so shocked him.
Now he was going after her. He never considered that she might not
return home with him. Why, any other outcome of his attempt he did not
contemplate for a moment! He had bullied Pearl for so long that he
expected to keep on doing so indefinitely. Pearl was "easy." That was
the way Tom Petty expressed it to himself.
He did not enter Cap'n Abe's store, but went around the house to the
kitchen door, expecting to find Betty Gallup there and learn from her
how the land lay. It was not Mrs. Gallup, however, who came to the door
in answer to his knuckles on the panel.
"Tom Petty!"
"Hi, Pearly!" the youth greeted her, calling up a grin. "Marm wants you
should come home."
"I'm never going back to your house again, Tom Petty, only to get my
things."
"Now, don't say that, Pearly," the young fellow went on, very mildly
for him. "You don't want to be mean. Marm never said for you to go----"
"I came away with Cap'n Jonah on my own hook," she agreed. "And I'm not
going back."
"Aw, yes you will," Tom repeated. "You know how much I like you,
Pearly. I couldn't get along without you--no two ways about it! You
got to stop this foolishness and come home. That old feller ain't got
nothin'. He can't look out for himself, let alone do anything for you.
And Helmford wouldn't look at you, you know well enough, if he didn't
think you was goin' to be rich. Come on home, now."
"I won't!"
He thought she was about to close the door. Tom Petty had never learned
patience, and his appearance of gentleness was only a veneer. His right
hand shot out and he caught the girl's slim wrist. He jerked her out
upon the step.
"You come home along o' me and stop your foolishness," he growled. "Do
you hear me, Pearly?"
She struggled to escape. With her free hand she struck him across his
inflamed and ugly face. She cried out as he forced her down the steps
into the beating storm.
"Stop! Stop, Tom Petty! I won't go home with you!" she cried.
Around the corner of the kitchen ell charged Joe Helmford--the very
person Pearl most desired to see.
"Let her alone!" commanded the man fiercely.
Tom turned on him, snarling. He was so enraged that he forgot for the
moment to be afraid. Helmford stripped off his beclouded spectacles and
handed them to Pearl. He unbelted and dropped his Mackinaw at his feet.
"Look out for yourself, Tom Petty!" he said threateningly. "I am going
to give you what you have been suffering for ever since you got too big
for your mother to spank."
They were not unevenly matched as to height and weight. Tom's muscles
were fully as well developed, and he was as supple as his antagonist.
In a rough and tumble fight he might even have been Helmford's superior.
But the latter would not allow the lout to get a wrestler's hold upon
him. As Tom charged, Helmford stepped nimbly aside and drove his fist
into Tom's face. Had the latter been wise he would have let that blow
begin and finish the battle. But such courage as the lout owned was
roused by the smart of the blow.
His face was a mask of blood as he rushed for Helmford a second time.
His antagonist met this onslaught fairly. His hard and capable fists
drove in with all the weight of his shoulders behind them, while Tom
pawed the air blindly with clutching hands.
Tom could not reach his opponent at all; but it was several moments
and he was a desperately bruised young man, before this truth came
fully home to him. His own arms flung like flails, but to no purpose.
Helmford reached his bruised face and battered it with such lusty blows
that Tom thought his antagonist must have more than the usual number of
fists.
Petty staggered; he slipped; he fell to his knees; he got up again.
While all the time the blows rained upon him and he was blinded. He
began to bleat like a calf in the grip of the butcher. He could not
escape.
Finally arrived the last and merciful blow--Helmford's right to the
point of the jaw. Tom was felled and lay there in the snow, for the
moment quite unable to realize where he was or what had happened to him.
When he actually came to his senses Joe Helmford had taken Pearl away.
They had been ready, as it was, to accompany Miss Sue to the chapel to
trim the Christmas tree. But the storekeeper, Cap'n Jonah, and Betty
Gallup, were grouped about the fallen lout, and were staring at him.
"I tell ye what 'tis," the able seaman said, in her jerky and emphatic
way, "once in a while one o' these city fellers does somethin' that ye
hafter admire 'em for. Who'd ha' thought Mr. Helmford, whose business
'tis, _he_ says, to teach fishes to hatch their aigs, had so much in
him? Why, this Tom Petty's been sufferin' for this beatin' for years,
an' there ain't been a loafer around this store with public sperit
enough to do it."
Nevertheless it was Betty Gallup who helped the dazed youth to his
feet and assisted him into the house and made him lie down upon Cap'n
Abe's lounge in the living room. She brought warm water and laved his
bruised face. And she brought vinegar and brown paper and put a patch
on his inflamed eye.
"Now you lay up here as long as you feel like, Tom Petty," Mrs. Gallup
said, as she cleared the table of the dinner dishes. "Mischief's done
now, and you can't better it. Folks is bound to know you got licked,
for your hull face advertises the fac'."
The storm kept many customers from interrupting Cap'n Abe, although the
wind was moderating. He sat with Cap'n Jonah in the living room and
discussed the latter's financial affairs more earnestly than heretofore.
"You say this here money you got in your wallet is all you got in the
world, Cap'n Hand?"
"Whatever! Nor no more to be had," said Cap'n Jonah. "I got some ile
sheers--but, pshaw! They ain't nothin'."
"What air them sheers?" demanded Cap'n Abe, suddenly. "Better take
stock of ev'rythin', as the feller said when he listed the litter of
kittens in the sheriff's sale. I was readin' in the _Globe_ paper only
this mornin'----"
He got up and brought the Boston paper from the rack on the wall.
Unfolding it he found the financial page and pointed a horny forefinger
to the heading of an article there printed.
"What's this here?" Cap'n Abe asked. "Where's my readin' specs? Never
can find 'em when they air wanted."
"On your forehead like they always be," said Cap'n Jonah, taking the
paper after having adjusted his own eyeglasses. "'Hem! Whatever! What
d'you make of this, Mr. Silt? Why, them's the very sheers! The Little
Sandy Oil and Coal Company."
"Lemme see!" said Cap'n Abe eagerly, having twitched his silver-bowed
spectacles astride his nose. "D'you mean to say, Cap'n Hand, that you
got some o' them Little Sandy sheers?"
"Abe Silt!" ejaculated Cap'n Jonah, almost breathless. "I got two
thousand of 'em! Right here in my pocket! D'you s'pose they can be the
same?"
"'Little Sandy Oil and Coal Company,'" read Cap'n Abe, slowly. "'Lay
dormant many years.' 'Outskirts of the thriving city of Decatur.' My
soul, Cap'n Hand!"
"Why," said the other, "they told me two year ago that all they ever
got out o' them wells they drove, was a bad smell."
"Hi-mighty!" shouted Cap'n Abe, slapping his knee in high delight.
"That's exactly what they did git! Nateral gas! D'you know what that
is, Cap'n Hand? Why, it means they air piping that 'nasty smell' you
speak of into the city of Decatur, an' sellin' it to light _an'_ heat
houses. What d'ye know 'bout that?"
"Whatever!" gasped Cap'n Jonah.
"How many of them sheers you got?" demanded the excited storekeeper.
Cap'n Jonah dragged from the breast pocket of his pilot coat a long
envelope, much stained and worn. From this he produced the ornate
certificate of the Little Sandy Oil and Coal Company, which stated upon
its face that he was the owner of two thousand shares in the capital
stock of the concern. A third pair of eyes, one very much "bunged up"
at present, stared at the certificate. Tom Petty had seen that document
before!
"Two thousand!" murmured Cap't Abe. "Hi-mighty! Look here! This paper
says the sheers have gone to fifteen dollars already. By the great jib
boom, Cap'n Hand! That there document in your hand is worth thirty
thousand dollars!"
Cap'n Jonah stared at the storekeeper in utter bewilderment at first.
He repeated slowly: "Thirty thousand dollars? Whatever!"
"There's your fortune, Cap'n Hand!" cried the storekeeper in vast
delight. "An' a fortune that's wuth while. You needn't worry about the
Pettys no more. Nor about Pearly----"
"Belay all!" gasped Cap'n Jonah, hoarsely, and laying a restraining
hand on the storekeeper's knee. "Don't say a word to nobody."
"Huh?"
"Not a word," repeated Cap'n Jonah, sternly. "I don't want folks to
know about _this_ fortune. Above all, don't let that fish trainer,
Helmford, hear a word about it. For if he does, like as not he'll slip
his moorings again and run out to sea. He's got a fool conviction,
like 'Liphalet Truitt, that if a woman's got a little tad of money, he
mustn't marry her."
He turned quickly to cast a suspicious glance at Tom Petty. The
battered youth had fallen back on the pillow and his eyes were closed.
To tell the truth, Tom was pretty near all in!