TWO ENVELOPES
Betty’s flight had been of such short duration, and her return home
accomplished under such peculiar circumstances, that the stories in
regard to her elopement had multiplied with the hours. One feature of
her escapade excited universal comment,—her spending the night at
Mrs. Leroy’s. The only explanation that could be given of this
extraordinary experience was that so high a personage as Mrs. Leroy
must have necessarily been greatly imposed upon by Betty, or she could
never have disgraced herself and her home by giving shelter to such a
woman.
Mrs. Leroy’s hospitality to Betty inspired another theory,—one that,
not being contradicted at the moment of its origin by Aunty Bell, had
seemed plausible. Miss Peebles, the schoolmistress, who never believed
ill of anybody, lent all her aid to its circulation. The conversation
out of which the theory grew took place in Aunty Bell’s kitchen. Betty
was upstairs in her room, and the talk went on in lowered tones, lest
she should overhear.
“I never shall believe that a woman holding Mrs. Leroy’s position
would take Betty West into her house if she knew what kind of a woman
she was,” remarked the elder Miss Nevins.
“And that makes me think there’s some mistake about this whole thing,”
said Miss Peebles. “Who saw her with Lacey, anyhow? Nobody but the
butcher, and he don’t know half the time what he’s talking about, he
rattles on so. Maybe she never went with Lacey at all.”
“What did she go ’way for, then?” asked the younger Nevins girl, who
was on her way to the store, and had stopped in, hoping she might, by
chance, get a look at Betty. “I guess Lacey’s money was all
gone—that’s why she imposed on Mrs. Leroy.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Miss Peebles. “Betty may have been foolish,
but she never told a lie in her life.”
“Well, it may be,” admitted the younger sister in a softened tone. “I
hope so, anyhow.”
Aunty Bell kept still. Betty was having trouble enough; if the
neighbors thought her innocent, and would give her the benefit of the
doubt, better leave it so. There were one or two threads of worldly
wisdom and canny policy twisted about the little woman’s heart which
now and then showed their ends.
Captain Joe was in the sitting-room, reading. He had come in from the
Ledge, wet, as usual, had put on some dry clothes, and while waiting
for supper had picked up the “Noank Times.” Aunty Bell and the others
saw him come in, but thought he had changed his clothes and had gone
to the dock.
He had overheard every word of the discussion. There were no raveled
threads in the captain’s make-up. He threw down his paper, pushed his
way into the group, and said:—
“There’s one thing I don’t want no mistake over, and I won’t have it.
Betty didn’t tell no lies to Mrs. Leroy nor to nobody else, an’ I
ain’t a-goin’ to have nobody lie for ’er. Mrs. Leroy knows all about
it. She took care of her ’cause she’s got a heart inside of her. Betty
went off with Bill Lacey ’cause he’d hoodooed ’er, an’ when she come
to herself she come home agin: that’s all ther’ is to that. She’s
sorry for what she’s done, an’ ther’ ain’t nobody outside o’ heaven
can do more. She’s goin’ to stay here ’cause me and Aunty Bell love
her now more’n we ever did before. But she’s goin’ to start life agin
fair an’ square, with no lies of her own an’ no lies told about ’er by
nobody else.” The captain looked at Aunty Bell. “Them that don’t like
it can lump it. Them as don’t like Betty after this can stay away from
me,” and he turned about on his heel and went down to the dock.
Two currents had thus been started in Betty’s favor: one the outspoken
indorsement of Captain Joe; and the other the protection of Mrs.
Leroy, “the rich lady who lived at Medford, in that big country-seat
where the railroad crossed, and who had the yacht and horses, and who
must be a good woman, or she wouldn’t have come to nurse the men, or
sent them delicacies, and who came herself to put up the mosquito-nets
over their cots.”
As the August days slipped by and the early autumn came, the gossip
gradually died. Caleb continued to live alone, picking up once more
the manner of life he had practiced for years aboard the light-ship:
having a day every two weeks for his washing,—always Sunday, when the
neighbors would see him while on their way to church,—hanging out his
red and white collection on the line stretched in the garden. He
cooked his meals and cleaned the house himself. Nobody but Captain Joe
and Aunty Bell crossed his threshold, except the butcher who brought
him his weekly supplies. He had been but seldom to the village in the
daytime,—somehow he did not like to pass Captain Joe’s when any one
could see him,—and had confined his outings to going from the cabin
to the Ledge and back again as his duties required, locking the rear
door and hanging the key on a nail beside it until his return.
He had seen Betty only once, and that was when he had passed her on
the road. He came upon her suddenly, and he thought she started back
as if to avoid him, but he kept his eyes turned away and passed on.
When he reached the hill and looked back he could see her sitting by
the side of the road, a few rods from where they met, her head resting
on her hand.
Only one man had dared to speak to him in an unsympathetic way about
Betty’s desertion, and that was his old friend Tony Marvin, the keeper
of Keyport Light. They had been together a year on Bannock Rip during
the time the Department had doubled up the keepers. He had not heard
of Caleb’s trouble until several weeks after Betty’s flight;
lighthouse-keepers staying pretty close indoors.
“I hearn, Caleb, that the new wife left ye for that young rigger what
got his face smashed. ’Most too young, warn’t she, to be stiddy?”
“No, I ain’t never thought so,” replied Caleb quietly. “Weren’t no
better gal ’n Betty; she done all she knowed how. You’d ’a’ said so if
ye knowed her like I did. But ’twas agin natur’, I bein’ so much
older. But I’d rather had her go than suffer on.”
“Served ye durn mean, anyhow,” said the keeper. “Did she take anything
with ’er?”
“Nothin’ but the clo’es she stood in. But she didn’t serve me mean,
Tony. I don’t want ye to think so, an’ I don’t want ye to say so, nor
let nobody say so, neither; an’ ye won’t if you’re a friend o’ mine,
which you allers was.”
“I hearn there was some talk o’ yer takin’ her back,” the keeper went
on in a gentler tone, surprised at Caleb’s blindness, and anxious to
restore his good feeling. “Is that so?”
“No, that ain’t so,” Caleb answered firmly, ending the conversation on
that topic and leading it into other channels.
This interview of the light-keeper’s was soon public property. Some of
those who heard of it set Caleb down as half-witted over his loss, and
others wondered how long it would be before he would send for Betty
and patch it all up again, and still others questioned why he didn’t
go over to Stonington and smash the other side of Lacey’s face; they
heard that Billy had been seen around there.
As for Betty, she had found work with a milliner on the edge of the
village, within a mile of Captain Joe’s cottage, where her taste in
trimming bonnets secured her ready employment, and where her past was
not discussed. That she was then living with Captain Joe and his wife
was enough to gain her admission.
There had been days, however, after her return, when she would have
given way under the strain, had it not been for her remembered promise
to Mrs. Leroy,—the only woman, except Aunty Bell, who had befriended
her,—and for the strong supporting arm of Captain Joe, who never lost
an opportunity to show his confidence in her.
And yet in spite of these promises and supports she could have plunged
into the water many a time at the end of the dock and ended it all.
She would sit for hours in her little room next Aunty Bell’s, on
Saturday afternoons, when she came earlier from work, and watch for
the Screamer or one of the tugs to round in, bringing Caleb and the
men. She could not see her own cottage from the window where she sat,
but she could see her husband come down the sloop’s side and board the
little boat that brought him to his landing. She would often think
that she could catch his good-night as he pushed off. On Monday
mornings, too, when she knew he was going out, she was up at daylight,
watching for a meagre glimpse of him when the skiff shot out from
behind the dock and took him aboard to go to his work on the Ledge.
Little by little the captain’s devotion to Betty’s interests, and the
outspoken way in which he praised her efforts to maintain herself,
began to have their effect. People who had passed her by without a
word, as they met her on the road, volunteered a timid good-morning,
which was answered by a slight nod of the head by Betty. Even one of
the Nevins girls—the younger one—had joined her and walked as far as
the milliner’s, with a last word on the doorstep, which had detained
them both for at least two minutes in full sight of the other girls
who were passing the shop.
Betty met all advances kindly, but with a certain reserve of manner.
She appreciated the good motive, but in her own eyes it did not
palliate her fault,—that horrible crime of ingratitude, selfishness,
and waywardness, the memory of which hung over her night and day like
a pall.
Most of her former acquaintances respected her reserve,—all except
Carleton. Whenever he met her under Captain Joe’s roof he greeted her
with a nod, but on the road he had more than once tried to stop and
talk to her. At first the attempt had been made with a lifting of the
hat and a word about the weather, but the last time he had stopped in
front of her and tried to take her hand.
“What’s the matter with you?” he said in a coaxing tone. “I ain’t
going to hurt you.”
Betty darted by him, and reached the shop all out of breath. She said
nothing to any one about her encounter, not being afraid of him in the
daytime, and not wanting her affairs talked of any more.
If Caleb knew how Betty lived, he never mentioned it to Captain Joe or
Aunty Bell. He would sometimes ask after her health and whether she
was working too hard, but never more than that.
One Saturday night—it was the week Betty had hurt her foot and could
not go to the shop—Caleb came down to Captain Joe’s and called him
outside the kitchen door. It was pay-day with the men, and Caleb had
in his hand the little envelope, still unopened, containing his
month’s pay. The lonely life he led had begun to tell upon the diver.
The deathly pallor that had marked his face the first few days after
his wife’s departure was gone, and the skin was no longer shrunken,
but the sunken cheeks remained, and the restless, eager look in the
eyes that told of his mental strain.
Caleb was in his tarpaulins; it was raining at the time.
“Come in, Caleb, come in!” cried Captain Joe in a cheery voice, laying
his hand on the diver’s shoulder. “Take off yer ileskins.” The captain
never despaired of bringing husband and wife together, somehow.
Betty was sitting inside the kitchen, reading by the kerosene lamp,
out of sound of the voices.
“No, I ain’t washed up nor had supper yit, thank ye. I heared from
Aunty Bell that Betty was laid up this week, an’ so I come down.” Here
Caleb stopped, and began slitting the pay-envelope with a great
thumb-nail shaped like a half-worn shoe-horn. “I come down, thinkin’
maybe you’d kind’er put this where she could git it,” slowly unrolling
two of the four bills and handing them to the captain. “I don’t like
her to be beholden to ye for board nor nothin’.”
“Ye can’t give me a cent, Caleb. I knowed her ’fore you did,” said the
captain, protesting with his hand upraised, a slightly indignant tone
in his voice. Then a thought crept into his mind. “Come in and give it
to her yerself, Caleb,” putting his arm through the diver’s.
“No,” said Caleb slowly, “I ain’t come here for that, and I don’t want
ye to make no mistake, cap’n. I come here ’cause I been a-thinkin’ it
over, and somehow it seems to me that half o’ this is hern. I don’t
want ye to tell ’er that I _give_ it to her, ’cause it ain’t so.
I jes’ want ye to lay it som’eres she’ll find it; and when she asks
about it, say it’s hern.”
Captain Joe crumpled the bills in his hand.
“Caleb,” he said, “I ain’t goin’ to say nothin’ more to ye. I’ve said
all I could, and las’ time I said too much; but what seems to me to be
the cussedest foolishness out is for ye to go back an’ git yer supper
by yerself, when the best little gal you or I know is a-settin’ within
ten feet o’ ye with her heart breakin’ to git to ye.”
“I’m sorry she’s sufferin’, Cap’n Joe. I don’t like to see nobody
suffer, leastways Betty, but ye don’t know it all. Jes’ leave them
bills as I asked ye. Tell Aunty Bell I got the pie she sent me when I
come home,—I’ll eat it to-morrow. I s’pose ye ain’t got no new orders
’bout that last row of enrockment? I set the bottom stone to-day, an’
I ought’er get the last of ’em finished nex’ week. The tide cut
turrible to-day, an’ my air comin’ so slow through the pump threw me
’mong the rocks an’ seaweed, an’ I got a scrape on my hand,” showing a
deep cut on its back; “but it’s done hurtin’ now. Good-night.”
On his way home, just before he reached his cabin, Caleb came upon
Bert Simmons, the shore road letter-carrier, standing in the road,
under one of the village street lamps, overhauling his package of
letters.
“About these letters that’s comin’ for yer wife, Caleb? Shall I leave
’em with you or take ’em down to Cap’n Joe Bell’s? I give the others
to her. Here’s one now.”
Caleb took the letter mechanically, looked it over slowly, noted its
Stonington postmark, and, handing it back, answered calmly, “Better
leave ’em down to Cap’n Joe’s, Bert.”