CAPTAIN JOE’S CREED
When Captain Joe flung open Caleb’s cabin door, the same cry was on
his lips: “She’s home, Caleb, she’s home! Run 'way an’ lef’ him, jes’
’s I knowed she would, soon’s she got the spell off’n her.”
Caleb looked up over the rim of his glasses into the captain’s face.
He was sitting at the table in his shirt-sleeves and rough overalls,
the carpet slippers on his feet. He was eating his supper,—the supper
that he had cooked himself.
“How d’ ye know?” he asked. The voice did not sound like Caleb’s; it
was hoarse and weak.
“She come inter Mr. Sanford’s place night 'fore last, scared almost to
death, and he tuk her to them Leroy folks; they was stavin’ good to
her an’ kep’ ’er till mornin’, an’ telegraphed me. I got the eight-ten
this mornin’. There warn’t no time, Caleb,”—in an apologetic
tone,—“or I’d sent for ye, jes’ ’s Aunty Bell wanted me to; but I
knowed ye’d understand. We jes’ got back. I’d brought ’er up, only
she’s dead beat out, poor little gal.”
It was a long answer of the captain’s to so direct a question, and it
was made with more or less misgiving. It was evident from his manner
that he was a little nervous over the result. He did not take his eyes
from the diver’s face as he fired these shots at random, wondering
where and how they would strike.
“Where is she now?” inquired Caleb quietly.
“Down on my kitchen floor with her head in Aunty Bell’s lap. Git yer
hat and come 'long.” The captain leaned over the table as he spoke,
and rested one hand on the back of Caleb’s chair.
Caleb did not raise his eyes nor move. “I can’t do her no good no
more, Cap’n Joe. It was jes’ like ye to try an’ help her. Ye’d do it
for anybody that was a-sufferin’; but I don’t see _my_ way clear.
I done all I could for her 'fore she lef’ me,—leastwise I thought I
had.” There was no change in the listless monotone of his voice.
“You allus done by her, Caleb.” The captain’s hand had slipped from
the chair-back to Caleb’s shoulder. “I know it, and she knows it now.
She ain’t ever goin’ to forgive herself for the way she’s treated
ye,—tol’ me so to-day comin’ up. She’s been hoodooed, I tell
ye,—that’s what’s the matter; but she’s come to now. Come along; I’ll
git yer hat. She ought’er go to sleep purty soon.”
“Ye needn’t look for my hat, Cap’n Joe. I ain’t a-goin’,” said Caleb
quietly, leaning back in his chair. The lamp shone full on his face
and beard. Captain Joe could see the deep lines about the eyes,
seaming the dry, shrunken skin. The diver had grown to be a very old
man in a week.
“You say you ain’t a-goin’, Caleb?” In his heart he had not expected
this.
“No, Cap’n Joe; I’m goin’ to stay here an’ git along th’ best way I
kin. I ain’t blamin’ Betty. I’m blamin’ myself. I been a-thinkin’ it
all over. She done ’er best to love me and do by me, but I was too old
for ’er. If it hadn’t been Billy, it would’er been somebody
else,—somebody younger ’n me.”
“She don’t want nobody else but you, Caleb.” The captain’s voice rose
quickly. He was crossing the room for a chair as he spoke. “She told
me so to-day. She purty nigh cried herself sick comin’ up. I was
afeard folks would notice her.”
“She’s sorry now, cap’n, an’ wants ter come back, ’cause she’s skeered
of it all, but she don’t love me no more ’n she did when she lef’ me.
When Billy finds she’s gone, he’ll be arter her agin”—
“Not if I git my hands on him,” interrupted the captain angrily,
dragging the chair to Caleb’s side.
“An’ when she begins to hunger for him,” continued Caleb, taking no
notice of the outburst, “it’ll be all to do over agin. She won’t be
happy without him. I ain’t got nothin’ agin ’er, but I won’t take ’er
back. It’ll only make it wus for her in the end.”
“Ye ain’t a-goin’ ter chuck that gal out in the road, be ye?” cried
Captain Joe, seating himself beside the table, his head thrust forward
in Caleb’s face in his earnestness. “What’s she but a chit of a child
that don’t know no better?” he burst out. “She ain’t more ’n twenty
now, and here’s some on us more ’n twice ’er age and liable to do wus
every day. Think of yerself when ye was her age. Do ye remember all
the mean things ye done, and the lies ye told? S’pose you’d been
chucked out as ye want to do to Betty. It ain’t decent for ye to talk
so, Caleb, and I don’t like ye fur it, neither. She’s a good gal, and
you know it,” and the captain, in his restlessness, shifted the chair
and planted it immediately in front of Caleb, where he could look him
straight in the eye. Aunty Bell had told him just what Caleb would
say, but he had not believed it possible.
“I ain’t said she warn’t, Cap’n Joe. I ain’t blamin’ her, nor never
will. I’m blamin’ myself. I ought’er stayed tendin’ light-ship
instead’er comin’ ashore and spilin’ ’er life. I was lonely, and the
fust one was allus sickly, an’ I thought maybe my time had come then;
and it did while she was with me. I’d ruther heared her a-singin’,
when I come in here at night, than any music I ever knowed.” His voice
broke for a moment. “I done by her all I could, but I begin to see
lately she was lonelier here with me than I was 'board ship with
nothin’ half the time to talk to but my dog. I didn’t think it was
Billy she wanted, but I see it now.”
Captain Joe rose from his chair and began pacing the room. His
onslaughts broke against Caleb’s indomitable will with as little
effect as did the waves about his own feet the day he set the
derricks.
[Illustration: “What’s she but a chit of a child that don’t know no
better”]
His faith in Betty’s coming to herself had never been shaken for an
instant. If it had, it would all have been restored the morning she
met him at Mrs. Leroy’s, and, throwing her arms about him, clung to
him like a frightened kitten. His love for the girl was so great that
he had seen but one side of the question. Her ingratitude, her
selfishness in ignoring the disgrace and misery she would bring this
man who had been everything to her, had held no place in the captain’s
mind. To him the case was a plain one. She was young and foolish, and
had committed a fault; she was sorry and repentant; she had run away
from her sin; she had come back to the one she had wronged, and she
wanted to be forgiven. That was his steadfast point of view, and this
was his creed: “Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more.” That
Caleb did not view the question in the same way at first astonished,
then irritated him. If she had broken the Master’s command again, he
would perhaps have let her go her way,—for what was innately bad he
hated,—but not now, when she had awakened to a sense of her sin. He
continued to pace up and down Caleb’s kitchen, his hands behind his
broad back, his horny, stubby fingers twisting nervously together.
Caleb sat still in his chair, the lamplight streaming over his face.
In all the discussion his voice had been one low monotone. It seemed
but a phonographic echo of his once clear tones.
The captain resumed his seat with a half-baffled, weary air.
“Caleb,” he said,—there was a softness now in the tones of his voice
that made the diver raise his head,—“you and me hev knowed each other
off 'n’ on for nigh on to twenty years. We’ve had it thick and nasty,
and we’ve had as clear weather as ever a man sailed in. You’ve tried
to do square 'tween man and man, and so far’s I know, ye have, and I
don’t believe ye’re goin’ to turn crooked now. From the time this
child used to come down to the dock, when I fust come to work here,
and talk to me 'tween school hours, and Aunty Bell would take her in
to dinner, down to the time she got hoodooed by that smooth face and
lyin’ tongue,—damn him! I’ll spile t’other side for him, some day,
wus than the Screamer did,—from that time, I say, this ’ere little
gal ain’t been nothin’ but a bird fillin’ everything full of singin’
from the time she got up till she went to bed agin. I ask ye now, man
to man, if that ain’t so?”
Caleb nodded his head.
“During all that time there ain’t been a soul up and down this road,
man, woman, nor child, that she wouldn’t help if she could,—and
there’s a blame’ sight of ’em she did help, as you an’ I know: sick
child’en, sittin’ up with ’em nights; an’ makin’ bonnets for folks as
couldn’t git ’em no other way, without payin’ for 'em; and doin’ all
she could to make this place happier for her bein’ in it. Since she’s
been yer wife, there ain’t been a tidier nor nicer place along the
shore road than yours, and there ain’t been a happier little woman nor
home nowheres. Is that so, or not?”
Again Caleb nodded his head.
“While all this is a-goin’ on, here comes that little skunk, Bill
Lacey, with a tongue like ’n ile-can, and every time she says she’s
lonely or tired—and she’s had plenty of it, you bein’ away—he up’s
with his can and squirts it into ’er ear about her bein’ tied to an
old man, and how if she’d married him he wouldn’t ’a’ lef her a
minute”—
Caleb looked up inquiringly, an ugly gleam in his eyes.
“Oh, I ketched him at it one day in my kitchen, and I tol’ him then
I’d break his head, and I wish to God I had, now! Purty soon comes the
time with the Screamer, and his face gets stove in. What does Betty
do? Leave them men to git 'long best way they could,—like some o’ the
folks round here that was just as well able to 'ford the time,—or did
she stand by and ketch a line and make fast? I’ll tell ye what she
done, ’cause I was there, and you warn’t. Fust one come ashore was
Billy; he looked like he’d fallen off a topgall’nt mast and struck the
deck with his face. Lonny Bowles come next; he warn’t so bad mashed
up. What did Betty do? Pick out the easiest one? No, she jes’ anchored
right 'longside that boy, and hung on, and never had ’er clo’es off
for nigh on to forty-eight hours. If he’s walkin’ round now he owes it
to her. Is that so, or not?”
“It’s true, cap’n,” said Caleb, his eyes fastened on the captain’s
face. The lids were heavy now; only his will held back the tears.
“For three weeks this went on, she a-settin like a little rabbit with
her paws up starin’ at him, her eyes gettin’ bigger all the time, an’
he lyin’, coiled up like a snake, lookin’ up into her face until he’d
hoodooed her and got her clean off her centre. Now there’s one thing
I’m a-goin’ to ask ye, an’ before I ask ye, an’ before ye answer it,
I’m a-goin’ to ask ye another: when the Three Sisters come ashore on
Deadman Shoal las’ winter in that sou’easter, ’cause the light warn’t
lit, an’ all o’ them men was drownded, whose fault was it?”
“Why, you know, Cap’n Joe,” Caleb interposed quickly, eager to defend
a brother keeper, a pained and surprised expression over-spreading his
face. “Poor Charles Edwards had been out o’ his head for a week.”
“That’s right, Caleb; that’s what I heard, an’ that’s true, an’ the
dead men and the owners hadn’t nobody to blame, an’ didn’t. Now I’ll
ask ye the other question: When Betty, after livin’ every day of her
life as straight as a marlin spike, run away an’ lef’ ye a week ago,
an’ broke up yer home, who’s to blame,—Betty, or the hoodoo that’s
put ’er out’er her mind ever since the Screamer blowed up?”
Caleb settled back in his chair and rested his chin on his hand, his
big fluffy beard hiding his wrist and shirt-cuff. For a long time he
did not answer. The captain sat, with his hands on his knees, looking
searchingly into Caleb’s face, watching every expression that crossed
it.
“Cap’n Joe,” said the diver in his calm, low voice, “I hearn ye talk,
an’ I know ye well 'nough to know that ye believe every word ye say,
an’ I don’t know but it’s all true. I ain’t had much ’sperience o’
women folks, only two. But I don’t think ye git this right. It ain’t
for myself that I’m thinkin’. I kin git along alone, an’ do my own
cookin’ an’ washin’ same as I allus used to. It’s Betty I’m thinkin’
of. She’s tried me more’n a year, an’ done her best, an’ give it up.
She wouldn’t ’a’ been 'hoodooed,’ as ye call it, by Bill Lacey if her
own heart warn’t ready for it ’fore he began. It’s agin natur’ for a
gal as young’s Betty to be happy with a man ’s old’s me. She can’t do
it, no matter how hard she tries. I didn’t know it when I asked her,
but I see it now.”
“But she knows better now, Caleb; she ain’t a-goin’ to cut up no more
capers.” There was a yearning, an almost pitiful tone in the captain’s
voice. His face was close to Caleb’s.
“Ye think so, an’ maybe she won’t; but there’s one thing yer don’t
seem to see, Cap’n Joe: she can’t git out’er love with me an’ inter
love with Billy an’ back agin to me in a week.”
These last words came slowly, as if they had been dragged up out of
the very depths of his heart.
“She never was out’er love with ye, Caleb, nor in with Lacey. Don’t I
tell ye?” he cried impatiently, too absorbed in Betty’s welfare to
note the seriousness of Caleb’s tone.
“Yes,” said Caleb. His voice had fallen almost to a whisper. “I know
ye think so, but th’ bes’ thing now for the little gal is to give ’er
’er freedom, an’ let ’er go ’er way. She shan’t suffer as long’s I’ve
got a dollar, but I won’t have ’er come home. It’ll only break her
heart then as well’s mine. Now—now—it’s only me—that is”—Caleb’s
head sank to the table until his face lay on his folded arms.
Captain Joe rose from his chair, bent down and laid his hand softly on
the diver’s shoulder. When he spoke his voice had the pleading tones
of a girl.
“Caleb, don’t keep nothin’ back in yer heart; take Betty home. You
needn’t go down for her. I’ll go myself an’ bring her here. It won’t
be ten minutes 'fore her arms’ll be round yer neck. Lemme go for her?”
The diver raised his head erect, looked Captain Joe calmly in the eye,
and, without a trace of bitterness in his voice, said: “She’ll never
set foot here as my wife agin, Cap’n Joe, as long ’s she lives. I
ain’t got the courage to set still an’ see her pine away day arter
day, if she comes back, an’ I won’t. I love ’er too much for that. If
she was my own child instead o’ my wife, I’d say the same thing. It’s
Betty I’m a-thinkin’ of, not myself. It’d be twict ’s hard for ’er the
next time she got tired an’ wanted to go. It’s all over now, an’ she’s
free. Let it all stay so.”
“Don’t say that, Caleb.” The shock of the refusal seemed to have
stunned him. “Don’t say that. Think o’ that child, Caleb: she come
back to ye, an’ you shut your door agin ’er.”
Caleb shook his head, with a meaning movement that showed the iron
will of the man and the hopelessness of further discussion.
“Then she ain’t good 'nough for ye, ’s that it?”
The captain was fast losing his self-control. He knew in his heart
that in these last words he was doing Caleb an injustice, but his
anger got the better of him.
Caleb did not answer.
“That’s it. Say it out. You don’t believe in her.” His voice now rang
through the kitchen. One hand was straight up over his head; his lips
quivered. “Ye think she’s some low-down critter instead of a poor
child that ain’t done nobody no wrong intentional. I ask ye for th’
las’ time, Caleb. Be decent to yerself. Be a father to ’er, if ye
can’t be no more; an’ if ye can’t be that,—damn ye!—stan’ up an’
forgive her like a man.”
Caleb made no sign. The cruel thrust had not reached his heart. He
knew his friend, and he knew all sides of his big nature. The clear
blue eyes still rested on the captain’s face.
“You won’t?” There was a tone almost of defiance in the captain’s
words.
The diver again shook his head.
“Then I’ll tell ye one thing, Caleb, right here” (he was now bent
forward, his forefinger in Caleb’s face straight out like a spike):
“ye’re doin’ the meanest thing I ever knowed a man to do in my whole
life. I don’t like ye fur it, an’ I never will ’s long ’s I live. I
wouldn’t serve a dog so, let alone Betty. An’ now I’ll tell ye
another: if she ain’t good 'nough to live with you, she’s good 'nough
to live with Aunty Bell an’ me, an’ there’s where she’ll stay jes’ ’s
long ’s she wants to.”
Without a word of good-night he picked up his hat and strode from the
room, slamming the door behind him with a force that rattled every
plate on the table.
Caleb half started from his chair as if to call him back. Then, with a
deep indrawn sigh, he rose wearily from the chair, covered the
smouldering fire with ashes, locked the doors, fastened the two
shutters, and, taking up the lamp, went slowly upstairs to his empty
bed.
* * * * *
The following Sunday Captain Joe shaved himself with the greatest
care,—that is, he slashed his face as full of cuts as a Heidelberg
student’s after a duel; squeezed his big broad shoulders into his
black coat,—the one inches too tight across the back, the cloth all
in corrugated wrinkles; tugged at his stiff starched collar until his
face was purple; hauled taut a sleazy cravat; and, in a determined
quarterdeck voice rarely heard from him, ordered Aunty Bell to get on
her best clothes, call Betty, and come with him.
“What in natur’ ’s got into ye, Cap’n Joe?”
“Church’s got inter me, and you an’ Betty’s goin’ along.”
“Ye ain’t never goin’ to church, be ye?” No wonder Aunty Bell was
thunderstruck. Neither of them had been inside of a church since they
moved to Keyport. Sunday was the captain’s day for getting rested, and
Aunty Bell always helped him.
“I ain’t, ain’t I? That’s all ye know, Jane Bell. You git Betty an’
come along, jes’ ’s I tell ye. I’m a-runnin’ this ship.” There was
that peculiar look in the captain’s eye and tone in his voice that his
wife knew too well. It was never safe to resist him in one of these
moods.
Betty burst into tears when the little woman told her, and said she
dared not go, and couldn’t, until a second quick, not-to-be-questioned
order resounded up the staircase:—
“Here, now, that church bell’s purty nigh done ringin’. We got ter git
aboard ’fore the gangplank’s drawed in.”
“Come along, child,” said Aunty Bell. “’T ain’t no use; he’s got one
o’ his spells on. Which church be ye goin’ to, anyway?” she called to
him, as they came downstairs. “Methodist or Dutch?”
“Don’t make no difference,—fust one we come to; an’ Betty’s goin’ to
set plumb in the middle ’tween you an’ me, jes’ so’s folks kin see. I
ain’t goin’ to have no funny business, nor hand-whispers, nor
head-shakin’s about the little gal from nobody along this shore, from
the preacher down, or somebody’ll git hurted.”
All through the service—he had marched down the middle aisle and
taken the front seat nearest the pulpit—he sat bolt upright, like a
corporal on guard, his eyes on the minister, his ears alert. Now and
then he would sweep his glance around, meeting the wondering looks of
the congregation, who had lost interest in everything about them but
the three figures in the front pew. Then, with a satisfied air, now
that neither the speaker nor his hearers showed anything but
respectful curiosity, and no spoken word from the pulpit bore the
remotest connection with the subject uppermost in his mind,—no
Magdalens nor Prodigal Sons, nor anything of like significance (there
is no telling what would have happened had there been),—he settled
himself again, and looked straight at the minister.
When the benediction had been pronounced he waited until the crowd got
thickest around the door,—he knew why the congregation lagged behind;
then he made his way into its midst, holding Betty by the arm as if
she had been under arrest. Singling out old Captain Potts, a retired
sea-captain, a great churchgoer and something of a censor over the
morals of the community, he tapped him on the shoulder, and said in a
voice loud enough to be heard by everybody:—
“This is our little gal, Betty West, Cap’n Potts. Caleb’s gin her up,
and she’s come to live with us. When ye’re passin’ our way with yer
folks, it won’t do ye no harm to stop in to see her.”