A TRANQUIL HAVEN
Richard Cary’s younger brother William was waiting at the railroad
station with a noisy little automobile in need of paint. The New
Hampshire hills were no longer blanketed with snow as when he had driven
the tall sailor to the train in the pung and had bidden him good-bye for
the voyage to the Caribbean. In drowsy summer heat, the village street a
shimmering canopy of green, William seriously reflected:
“It was right here, by gosh, that Dick busted the big guy’s arm and
slapped him into a snowdrift for playing a dirty trick on a stray collie
dog. Huh, I guess I’d better watch my step while he’s home this time.
But mother’ll put him in his place. He dassn’t get gay with _her_. And
she’s got something to say to Dick. He never wrote her for weeks and
weeks—and now he’s fetchin’ home a wife, a Dago girl he found
somewheres down there. And he never consulted mother at all. I s’pose he
figures he can get away with it. I don’t think!”
The wandering Richard may have been in a state of trepidation when he
swung Teresa from the parlor car, but he masked it with that lazy,
amiable demeanor that had so annoyed William. The youngster displayed
both admiration and embarrassment as he caught sight of Richard’s
foreign bride. “Snappy and mighty easy to look at,” was William’s silent
verdict of approval, “and she sure would knock ’em cold in little old
Fairfield. Dick might act dumb sometimes, but he knew how to pick a
peach.”
And now Teresa won the boy’s undying allegiance by kissing him on the
cheek and exclaiming in English, instead of the Dago gibberish he had
dreaded to hear:
“My gracious, Bill, but I am so very glad to see you! Ricardo has told
me much about you, but it will give you the swelled head if I repeat
it.”
William blushed to the very last freckle and impetuously replied:
“He don’t have to tell me a thing about you, Mrs.—Mrs. Dick Cary. You
win.”
Teresa laughed and glanced, with a vivacious interest, down the quiet
street, at the square Colonial houses, the three or four stores, the
brick post-office, and the Grange hall, all shaded beneath the arching
elms. She turned to Richard to say:
“It is almost as sleepy as my old Cartagena, but different. It is your
home, where your ancestors have lived, and I shall love it.”
“For a while, perhaps,” smiled Richard Cary. “It will be soothing. I am
homesick for it myself, like finding a safe harbor to rest in.”
He went to look after the luggage while Teresa chose to sit in the front
seat of the battered little car with William. She had questions to ask,
by way of forewarning herself, and the younger brother answered them
artlessly.
“Well, it’s this way, Mrs.—Mrs.—do you really want me to call you
Teresa, honest?—all mother knows is what Dick wrote her from Panama
after he got shipwrecked or something. He didn’t spill much news—he
never does—about all he said was that he had made a voyage in the
Pacific and came near going to the bottom—and he was coming home to see
the folks for a spell before he beat it off somewheres else. Then he
mentioned that he had got married in Panama to a Miss Fernandez. And
there’s that.”
“And was his mother angry with him, Bill?” demurely inquired Teresa with
the air of a timid saint.
“Oh, not mad, but upset. Dick has always kept her guessing, and this was
one thing too much. Why, he told her last time he was home that he was
off the girls for keeps. She don’t think Dick is fit to look after
himself. Mothers get some funny ideas, don’t they? But say,
Mrs.—Miss—Teresa, you don’t have to worry. I’m hard to please myself,
and mighty particular when it comes to women. And you’ve put it across
with me already, let me tell you.”
This time it was Teresa who colored with pleasure. The omens seemed more
auspicious. When Richard rejoined them, he insisted upon riding in the
back seat with the luggage. William protested. He was expecting to make
a parade of it, with Dick and his pippin of a bride conspicuously
together in the tonneau. Fairfield would certainly sit up and take
notice. He, William, would give ’em an eye-full.
He accepted defeat with good grace because the consolation prize was
seated beside him. As he spurred the flivver down Main Street, he flung
over his shoulder to Richard:
“Did you have any adventures this trip? When I asked you last time you
joshed me something fierce, and I got sore. I hope you’re going to act
decent and loosen up to a fellow.”
“Well, Bill, it was exciting in spots down yonder in the Caribbean,”
answered the deep, leisurely accents of brother Dick. “Why, I went
ashore one night at Cartagena to buy some picture postcards to send you,
and first thing you know, I—”
Teresa gasped. It was no tale to tell in Fairfield.
“And then what?” eagerly demanded William.
“I had the most awful dose of prickly heat you ever saw in your life.
Hold on, Bill, stop the car. Here _is_ something really exciting—a new
porch on the minister’s house, and Charlie Schumacher has painted his
barber shop, and Frank Morrison is building an addition to the livery
stable. And you dare to tell me, Teresa, that my town is as dead as
Cartagena. Here comes Colonel Judah Mason to get his mail! Spry as ever
and ninety-five years old last Christmas Day.”
“You make me awful tired,” sulkily muttered William. “Just because
you’re bigger than a house, you think you can treat me like a kid
without any good sense.”
Teresa mollified him with flattering words and a deference that
indicated he had found a kindred soul who could appreciate him. She
became silent, however, when the car jolted into the lane between the
stone walls and approached the low-roofed farmhouse snuggled close to
the ground upon a windy hill. Her heart sank. She faced an ordeal more
disquieting than when she had ventured into The Broadway Front in the
guise of young Rubio Sanchez on pleasure bent. She fancied the mother of
Richard Cary to be a woman of formidable stature, harsh and imperious,
who ruled her household with a rod of iron.
Richard caught a glimpse of his mother’s face at a window, sitting there
in her best black gown where she had aforetime kept watch for him, or
had fluttered a handkerchief in farewell. Now she came quickly to the
granite doorstep, a wisp of a woman whose thin features were set in
lines of apprehension. Her mouth was austere, her eyes questioning. They
dwelt upon the huge figure of Richard Cary with an expression commingled
of affection and rebuke. Before she could greet him, he had leaped from
the car and picked her up in his arms like a feather-weight of a burden.
It was a rite of his home-coming and, as always, she objected:
“Bless me, Richard, that’s a trick you learned from your father that’s
dead and gone. I used to tell him it was dreadful undignified.”
He let her down at the threshold and turned to present his wife. Teresa
stood wistful and uncertain, yet with a certain amusement that she
should have felt terrified of meeting this gray-haired little woman who
looked as if a breath might blow her away. Richard cried, in a mood of
boyish elation:
“Didn’t I tell you I simply had to make the southern run, mother?
Something was pulling me. Now I know why. Teresa was at the other end of
the tow-rope.”
“I am pleased to meet your wife, Richard,” primly replied Mrs. Cary.
“We’ll do our best to make her comfortable and happy here, I am sure.
Your room is ready, and dinner will be on the table in half an hour.”
“All I ask is to make your son happy,” said Teresa, her emotions near
the surface. Her smile was disarming, and the inflections of her voice
stirred the mother’s heart. Presently Teresa went upstairs, but Richard
lingered below. Anxiously his mother exclaimed:
“You don’t know how thankful I am to have a few minutes alone with you.
Seems as if I couldn’t wait. I don’t mean to fret, but who is she and
who are her folks, and how did it happen? She don’t act as foreign as I
expected and she’s as pretty as a picture and has sweet, ladylike ways,
but—”
“Better get acquainted before you borrow trouble,” drawled the beaming
Richard. “To begin with, she is an orphan, which ought to appeal to your
sympathy. The last near relative she had, an uncle, died not long ago.
He was the old gentleman I sailed for in the _Valkyrie_ that was lost in
collision. When it comes to family, she can match ancestors with the
Carys and Chichesters and have some left over.”
“And where did you meet her, Richard?”
“On shipboard going south. It was a case of love at first sight.”
“Hum-m! I never set any great store by hasty marriages, but there’s
exceptions to every rule and let us hope and pray this will be one of
them. Isn’t Teresa a Romanist? Does she have to confess to a priest
every so often? Did you tell her we didn’t have such a thing in
Fairfield?”
“No; she confesses her sins to me and I grant her absolution,”
truthfully answered Richard. “Anything more?”
“Don’t be frivolous,” she admonished him. “I have a right to know. She
dresses real elegant, I must say—in good taste, but expensive. I’m
saying nothing against your wife, but if she’s extravagant and slack how
can you support her and keep her contented? Has she means of her own?”
“I didn’t marry her for money,” carelessly returned the son. “As far as
I know, she didn’t have a penny when I met her. Now please take time to
get your bearings and you’ll bless the day I first laid eyes on Teresa
Fernandez.”
Mrs. Cary sighed, brightened a little, and tripped to the kitchen to
look in the oven. In the low-raftered dining-room the table was already
set with the pink luster ware, the Canton cups, the thin silver spoons,
the hand-woven linen cloth treasured in Grandmother Cary’s cedar chest.
When Teresa came downstairs she wore a white waist and skirt much like
the uniform, plain, immaculate, in which Richard had first beheld her.
She appeared so briskly efficient, so different from Mrs. Cary’s
conceptions of the indolent ladies of Spanish America, that it was like
a rift in the cloud.
At the dinner table it was Teresa, alert and light of foot, who left her
chair when anything was needed from the sideboard or kitchen. To Mrs.
Cary’s objections she replied, like a gay mutineer, that she was one of
the family and expected to earn her passage. So gracefully did she wait
on them that the infatuated young William could not eat for watching
her. Richard Cary’s mother, a martinet of a New England housekeeper of
the old school, felt her doubts and scruples fading.
They were nearer vanishing entirely when, after dinner, Teresa donned an
apron and insisted upon washing the dishes and tidying up the kitchen.
Sweetly but firmly she refused to listen to the mother’s protestations
and sent her to the porch to sit and talk with Richard. William hovered
in the doorway until he was permitted to ply a dish-towel, subject to a
rigid supervision of his handiwork. Teresa sang lilting snatches of
Spanish ballads as she toiled. These New England women, she reflected,
so proud of their housekeeping? Pouf! Had they ever lived in a steamer
of a first-class passenger service?
When, at length, Ricardo’s mother was permitted to enter the kitchen
from which she had been so amazingly evicted, her demeanor was critical
in the extreme, as if expecting to have to do the work all over again.
The competent Teresa, still singing, was wiping the last specks of dust
from remote shelves and corners. William was polishing the copper
hot-water boiler for dear life.
“Captain’s inspection?” cried the blithe Teresa. “We are not quite
ready, Bill and I, but to-morrow—_Valgame Dios_, I will help you make
your house shine from the main deck to the top.”
Mrs. Cary inspected, marveled, and was conquered. It was beyond belief
that her careless, absent-minded Richard should have shown the
surpassing judgment to select a jewel of a wife like this! Inherited
reserve breaking its bonds, the mother exclaimed:
“Teresa, my dear, you are smarter than chain lightning. First thing you
know, I’ll be bragging about you to every woman in Fairfield. I intend
to propose you for membership in the home economics department of our
Woman’s Club.”
“And I will dance the fandango with William to amuse them,” said Teresa,
with a naughty twinkle in her eye.
In the afternoon she walked with Ricardo across the rolling fields of
the Cary farm. With a pair of black horses William was mowing a thick
stand of red clover. The strident clatter of the cutter bar was like a
familiar song to the elder son, to carry him back to his boyhood. His
mind was at peace, relaxed and untroubled by turbulent memories.
The tranquil landscape had laid its spell also upon the heart of Teresa.
Her eyes filled and her voice had a pensive cadence as she said:
“Is this a dream, Ricardo mine? Or was all that a dream, down by the
Caribbean Sea, and is this true? I feel just like you, that perhaps I
have had two lives to live. Ah, how I beseech the dear God and the Holy
Mary to let this life last, maybe not here, but anywhere with you. This
is what I told you when I found you drifting with the galleon bell.”
“Forget the galleon bell,” he told her, “I am sure it will never ring
again. And we will say no more about the Spanish Main. Let my mother
guess and wonder what happened.”
“Yes, Ricardo, it could not be told in Fairfield,” sighed Teresa, “not
the least little bit. Already I can see that. We will be a mystery, you
and I—”
Like a processional vestured in beautiful garments of green, the days of
the brief New England summer went gliding by. Brawny and untiring,
Richard helped William with the haying and did the work of three hired
men. Teresa took more and more of the household routine upon herself,
and the mother was affectionately compelled to enjoy the first vacation
in years. In their leisure hours the married lovers wandered through the
countryside in the disreputable little car, or went fishing on the pond.
To his mother Richard made no mention of future plans. She was
accustomed to his indifferent moods when at home from sea, but now he
was a man with new responsibilities. These ought to arouse his ambition
and make him bestir himself. Therefore she ventured to inquire:
“Are you calculating to spend the winter with me, Richard? Not but what
you and Teresa are as welcome as the flowers in May, but she is used to
more comforts and luxuries than we can give her on this old farm, and
how do you intend to take care of her? What money I’ve saved in the bank
belongs to you, and I don’t begrudge your spending every penny of it,
but, well, it kind of worries me. You told me she had no means of her
own—”
“That reminds me, mother,” her son replied, blandly unconcerned. “I
found a letter from Cartagena in the mail-box. Teresa has gone to the
village with Bill, so she hasn’t seen it yet. It is from a Señor Alonzo
de Mello, a banker who looked after the business interests of Teresa’s
uncle. I sent him a report from Panama of the loss of the _Valkyrie_ and
the death of Señor Ramon Bazán. He encloses a letter to Teresa in
Spanish. Here is what he writes me:”
DEAR CAPTAIN CARY:
I send you my joyful congratulations on your marriage to Teresa
Fernandez whom I have always loved like my own daughter. Your
report was received, informing me that both the ship and poor
Ramon Bazán were no more. It will interest you to know that on
the day before he sailed from Cartagena he made a will, properly
executed, leaving everything he possessed to his niece. There
had been other wills like this, but he had torn them up in fits
of temper.
Your report was confirmed in all respects by the officers and
crew of the _Valkyrie_ who, as you know, were landed at Corinto
by the Italian steamer _Giuseppe Balderno_ which sank your
vessel in collision. They made their way back to Panama,
arriving there soon after you sailed for New York. My agent
interviewed them in behalf of the estate of the deceased owner.
They proposed chartering a sailing vessel in all haste and
returning to Cocos Island. This information was confidentially
imparted.
The insurance underwriters have accepted the evidence of total
loss, with no negligence on the part of the masters and crew of
the _Valkyrie_. I am therefore remitting, as per draft enclosed
to the order of Señora Teresa Cary, the sum of thirty thousand
dollars in settlement of the marine policies issued against the
vessel. I am also writing Teresa regarding the house and
contents and such other property as belonged to her departed
uncle. Peace to his soul! My cordial salutations to a gallant
shipmaster who deserves better fortune on his next voyage.
Placing myself at your disposal, I am
Faithfully yours
ALONZO DE MELLO
Richard Cary’s mother was tremulous with excitement as she gasped: “Why,
Teresa is an heiress—_thirty thousand dollars_ right in her hands, and
other property besides. And she never so much as hinted that she might
be a rich woman!”
“Teresa didn’t know,” explained Richard. “There was no putting your
finger on poor Ramon Bazán. He was very flighty. Here comes Teresa now.
This ought to please her.”
“If she doesn’t get all stirred up, I shall feel like shaking you both.”
The heiress gracefully descended from the antique flivver, assisted by
the adoring William.
To her Richard calmly announced:
“Here is a draft for thirty thousand—insurance on the _Valkyrie_. Uncle
Ramon forgave you for all your insults.”
“And he did leave his money to me?” cried Teresa in accents of
self-reproach. “And I was so awful horrid to him! It is from Señor de
Mello? What does he say?”
Richard gave her the enclosure in Spanish. She read it swiftly to the
end and looked up to observe:
“He even left me the little brown monkey, Ricardo. That is too much. I
will send word to give that monkey to somebody that will be good to it,
with a pension, eh? The house he can sell or rent, Señor de Mello says,
if we do not wish to live in Cartagena. Poor Uncle Ramon! I am sad and
ashamed of myself because I was not always nice to him. I guess I must
cry a little.”
Presently the heiress brightened and went on to announce, with headlong
ardor:
“First I will buy William a big, new, shiny automobile and give him
plenty of money to go through college with. Then I will put an electric
light plant in this old farmhouse, and a tiled kitchen and plenty of
bathrooms and—let me see—I think I will give your heretic church in
Fairfield a new organ. How much money have I got left, Ricardo?”
“Quite a package, sweetheart. Don’t stop yet. I am enjoying it.”
Mrs. Cary raised her hands in horror, shaken to the depths of her
thrifty soul.
“For the land’s sake, child, keep the money for yourself. What sense is
there in spending it on us? I declare you make my head spin like a top.”
“Then I will talk it over with Ricardo,” said Teresa. “He can help me
find some more ways to spend it.”
These profligate intentions could not be thwarted, nor did Richard Cary
attempt to do so. He realized that gratitude and affection impelled her;
also that it was more than this. When alone in the world and earning a
living at sea, she had been anxious to gain money and save it. Now she
had a shield and a protector in her yellow-haired giant of a husband who
could master all things. And there was a sense that in doing good to
others she was doing penance for a certain tragic episode which the
fates had darkly, inscrutably thrust upon her.
Not many weeks after this sensational shower of riches, another letter
came to Captain Richard Cary. It had been mailed from a Costa Rican
port. The writer was the unterrified Charlie Burnham, late chief
engineer of the _Valkyrie_.
DEAR SKIPPER:
Here we are again, on Cocos Island, and all hands sorry you
aren’t bossing the outfit. Mr. Bradley Duff is still going
strong and sober, and is a good old scout. He didn’t fall off
the wagon even when we blew into Jerry Tobin’s dump in Panama.
You sure did put the fear of God into him. Mr. Panchito, the
second mate, bought a hundred dollars’ worth of fancy shirts and
neckties. He is one natural-born strutter. All hands are well
and still with us. You ought to have heard us yell when we
learned you had not been drowned in the silly old _Valkyrie_. We
had to give you up that night she went down. Bradley Duff
punched the Italian hophead of a skipper in the jaw because he
wouldn’t stick around the wreckage and hunt for you any longer.
Now about the treasure! Better come back and watch us root it
out. I extended Don Miguel O’Donnell’s hydraulic pipe-line and
it works pretty. We have been washing for two weeks and the
nozzle kicks the gravel out in great style. The dynamite that
Don Miguel touched off under us mussed things up something
frightful. What makes the worst trouble is the tremendous chunk
of cliff that was jarred loose and spilled all over the place.
The rock is soft, but hard to break up and handle.
Anyhow, we have uncovered some more silver, but no gold ingots
so far. What we are getting out now isn’t so scattering, but in
solid lots of bullion—sometimes as much as we can load into one
of Don Miguel’s two-wheel carts. You don’t see us quitting, do
you? Atta boy! The agreement stands, and all hands have signed a
paper to that effect. Half of what we get goes to you. Jerry
Tobin told us in Panama that you had married Papa Ramon’s niece,
and how the wedding was pulled off in his bungalow.
Now if Señor Bazán left his property to this Miss Fernandez, as
perhaps he did, you and she will have to split your fifty per
cent of the treasure. That is how Bradley Duff and I dope it
out. Your wife has a look-in because it was her uncle’s chart
that steered us to where the treasure was buried. And you draw
down your slice because if you hadn’t chased Don Miguel
O’Donnell off the island, where would we be at now?
This letter is sent in a Costa Rican fishing schooner that
touched here for fresh water, being blown offshore. We filled
the crew full of rum and kept them close to the beach so they
didn’t get wise to our finding any treasure. They thought we
were just another bunch of loonies that had come to rummage
Cocos Island.
I will send you another report as soon as I get a chance. Please
tell your wife that we have built a nice stone wall around her
uncle’s grave. _Adios_, and here’s looking at you!
Sincerely yours
CHARLES R. BURNHAM
Chief Engineer
There came a September day when summer lingered in the warm haze and the
soft westerly winds. A wanton touch of frost had painted the foliage,
here and there, in tints of yellow or crimson. Teresa and Ricardo
motored farther than usual nor turned until they reached the seacoast,
many miles from Fairfield. A small surf crooned among the weedy rocks or
ran hissing up the golden sands. On the distant horizon was a sooty
banner of smoke from a steamer’s funnel. A coasting schooner lifted a
bit of topsail as small and white as the wing of a gull.
Hand-in-hand, the lovers climbed the nearest headland. While they stood
there, the wind veered. Instead of breathing off the land, with the
scents of field and woodland, it blew strongly from the eastward. It
came sweeping over the salt sea, with a tang and a boisterous vigor
unlike the soft airs of the summer that tarried reluctant to depart.
Cool, pungent, it seemed to Richard Cary such a wind as had whipped the
Caribbean to foam and pelted the decks with spray when he had joyously
faced it upon the bridge of the swinging _Tarragona_, the wind that long
ago had blown the clumsy ships of Devon across to the Spanish Main.
He sighed and brushed a hand across his eyes. Teresa stood with parted
lips and face aglow. A long silence and she said:
“I feel it, too, Ricardo. Shall we go south again? Not to Cartagena,
but—”
His arm swept toward the south in a gesture large and eloquent as he
exclaimed:
“Nor to Cocos Island, Teresa dear. But you and I belong in those seas,
somewhere. We have always belonged there. We have been at anchor long
enough.”
“The wind and the sea,” she murmured. “Yes, they are calling us. We had
better go.”
THE END
TRANSCRIBER NOTES
Mis-spelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple
spellings occur, majority use has been employed.
Illustrations have been relocated due to using a non-page layout. Page
numbers have been removed due to a non-page layout.