THE AFFAIRS OF BRECK
The day after Frances’ adventure on the hilltop found both Jane and
Frances stiff in their shoulder muscles. Aside from that, there were
no ill effects from their long and heavy lift. The man they had
rescued was more than hospitably received by Mr. Wing and had been
urged to make the boat his home until he was able to go down the sea
ladder unassisted. Breck had set his leg with sure skill and the
patient had eaten a hearty breakfast and declared that he was in no
pain at all.
After breakfast, the little party had gathered around him to hear his
story. Out of consideration of his weariness the night before, they
had unanimously refrained from questioning him. However, Frances had
kept Jane awake well into the night with surmises of her find’s looks
and personality.
“What do you suppose he would look like, Jane, with a clean face and a
shave and his hair combed and decent clothes?” she had asked. “He has
such a lot of red hair that I bet he is cross as the dickens.”
“Child,” said Jane with the superior wisdom of one who has lived for
twenty-one years with a wifeless father and a motherless brother, “all
men are cross when they are sick. He is probably quite nice.”
Consequently the strange man’s discoverer was delightfully surprised
when she came down from on deck to hear his story and found him nicely
shaven, with his red hair, which she immediately decided was auburn,
brushed till it shone and his dirty white ducks replaced by a gay
bathrobe of Jack’s.
“I would like to make it awfully interesting,” he began with a grin,
“I feel that the two girls who carried my hundred and eighty pounds
down that hill should have the reward of having saved a movie hero or
the lost heir--anyone, in fact, except just plain Tim Reynolds, who is
doing nothing more romantic than spending the summer with his family
at Nantucket Island. That is I am supposed to be--the fact is I am
proud possessor of a thirty-foot sailboat and, as the result of that,
I had the misfortune, or the fortune rather,” this with a friendly
little nod at Frances, “to sail into Old Harbor and climb up that hill
and break my leg.”
“We are glad you did,” announced Mabel genially and then as everybody
laughed at her she added, “Of course, I don’t mean I am glad he broke
his leg, you all are so silly. Mr. Reynolds, you know I meant that we
are glad you are on board the ‘Boojum,’ don’t you?”
Tim Reynolds nodded reassuringly and begged them not to call him
“Mister.”
“You must let us take you to Nantucket, Tim,” said Mr. Wing.
“I couldn’t think of it, sir, you have been far too good already.”
“But we are going to Nantucket anyway. All of us want to see
’Sconset,” put in Frances.
“There is nothing I would like better, if you are really going there
and I won’t be too much of a care. And, now that I have accepted,
don’t you suppose it would be a good idea to get a message to my fond
parents to the effect that their son is still inhaling and exhaling at
regular intervals?”
Ellen said in her quiet way, “I have just been looking at the chart
and Vinal Haven is only a short distance from here. Why can’t Mabel
and Charlie and Jack and I take the tender and go to Vinal Haven and
send a telegram to the fond parents? I know that they have laid a
cable to Nantucket from Martha’s Vineyard. We could be back in time
for lunch.”
“Isn’t that a good idea?” asked Jack proudly.
“It is if you four can remember what you are going for,” teased his
sister. “Mr. Wing, will it leave you too stranded if I get Breck to
row me over to Hurricane Island in the dinghy? I am wild to know why
there are so many deserted houses there. So far, I haven’t seen a sign
of life.”
“Would you mind very much rowing round the island I stumbled over and
see if my boat is still there? I put over the two anchors; she ought
to hold,” Tim said to Breck.
“And what are you going to do about getting her home?” Frances asked
Tim, coming over to sit on the companion steps as the others went
above.
“We’ve decided enough for one day. Let’s worry about that tomorrow.
Why don’t you tell me how you and Jane happen to be such quick
thinkers and how you happened to have enough grit to get me down that
long hill?”
There was a great noise and bustle on deck, as was always the case
when Mabel was about to do anything. Soon the sound of the tender’s
motor was heard and its wash licked against the “Boojum’s” sleek black
sides. Jane peered down the hatch with intent to ask Frances to come
along with Breck and herself, but on seeing the pleasant conversation
that was beginning, she decided not to interrupt it.
“Let’s go over to Hurricane Island first and come back by the island
of adventure to see if Tim Reynolds’ boat is there,” suggested Breck,
as he pulled the dinghy along with sure strokes.
Watching him, Jane thought how very well he did whatever he set his
hand to do. This was their first moment alone since the startling
disclosure Breck had made about himself the day before. Not that it
had come as a very great surprise to Jane, because she had always felt
that he was some one other than a deck hand and she might have known
that he would have been among the first to offer himself to serve
humanity.
As he rowed, he watched her and, seeing her thoughtful expression,
suddenly asked her, “Jane, what are you wondering about?”
“About Breck,” she said frankly.
“What do you want to know about him?” he asked, smiling at her utter
frankness.
“Whatever he wants to tell me.”
“That is a large order, because do you know, Jane, I want to tell you
everything good or bad that has ever happened to me. I’ve wanted to
tell you several things for some time, but I felt that I had no right
to burden you with my affairs.”
“Breck, you know I’ve wanted to know about you but felt that I had no
right to pry into those same affairs. Do you remember that night at
Gloucester, when you got those two telegrams? I saw you frown at one
and grin at the other. It was all I could do to keep from asking what
had happened, ’specially about the one you didn’t seem to like,” she
confessed.
“The one I liked was from a friend of mine in New York. I left a lot
of stories with him and asked him to get the stuff decently copied and
send some of them around to different magazines for me. The telegram
told me that the Saturday Evening Post had accepted a story and wanted
to see more. That tickled me mightily, because it is the first luck I
have had with a big magazine. The other was from my sister, assuring
me that my father was as mad at me as ever.”
“I wondered why you didn’t write, Breck, you are always so keenly
interested in people’s actions and reactions. I am awfully glad the
Post took the story. Will you tell me why your father is mad at you,
too?”
“To begin with, we have always disagreed from the time he sent me to a
norfolk-jacket-and-buster-brown-collar-country-school-for-rich-little-boys
and I wanted to wear a jersey and go to a public school in town. Not
that I didn’t love the country, because the part of my life I remember
with most pleasure is the summers I spent on my uncle’s ranch in the
west.” Breck’s sunburned face took on the sad look that was so
distressing to Jane. He continued, “A surprising thing happened. Both
of us agreed on my going to Harvard and finally on my going into
medicine. Everything was all right for two years and a half, when, at
Christmas vacation, I decided to spend my holidays with some friends
in New York instead of taking the trip across the continent to spend
the time with my family in California.”
“But surely, just the failure to be with him at Christmas was not
enough to cause a real breach,” Jane broke in.
“No, but what happened next was,” Breck went on. “My two friends and
I had ridiculously large allowances. One night, we thought it would be
fun to go slumming and see how the other half lived. For their sakes,
I hope they have forgotten. For my part, I don’t believe I ever shall.
The wretchedness, the sick misery of those people! At any rate, after
my trip, I became fired with a great desire to do something for those
people and wrote home to Father that I intended to hang out my shingle
in the east side and, of course, practice for nothing. It never
entered my head that Father wouldn’t abet me in such a work. He is
very, very rich indeed and I thought that he would not only continue
my allowance but probably give me large donations from time to time so
that I might be able even to have an infirmary in connection with my
office. My dream was short lived. When I got back to college, I found
a curt note saying that my plan was ridiculous and that my allowance
would be stopped immediately and that he would decline to foot the
bill for my tuition with any such career in view. I wrote him in reply
that I intended to do as I had written him before. He made good his
threat and I stayed on at college for a few months, doing that
supposedly romantic thing, ‘working my way through’ mostly by selling
short things to small magazines. It is something that no one should be
allowed to do too, let me tell you. Why there aren’t more cases of
brain fag among the students that attempt it, I don’t see. Then things
got so rotten on the other side that I couldn’t stand not being in it.
So at last I got over with a bunch of my older friends with a French
ambulance unit.”
Dismissing the part he played in the war as rapidly as possible, he
hurried on to tell of what took place at his return.
“When you came back from overseas, didn’t his attitude change toward
you a bit?” Jane asked anxiously.
“Oh, of course, I suppose he was proud of me in a way. They gave a
huge ball and my sister made me meet all her blasé friends. After
being so close to the realities, all their little affectations and
vanities grated on me terribly. At any rate, after a very melodramatic
scene in which my father offered to forget my silliness at Harvard and
take me in as a junior partner in his tremendous exporting business, I
saw that it wasn’t any use arguing, so I just told them good-bye and
came to New York and got a job as reporter for one of the papers.
Don’t let me bore you to death, will you, Jane? Everybody likes to
talk about himself, I suppose, and it means an awful lot to me to be
able to talk to somebody. I am not whining around for sympathy, you
know that, don’t you?” he said quickly. “And I don’t mean to run down
my family, they are all right in their way. We just don’t hit it off.”
“I know,” Jane said, “some people seem to get born in the wrong
families and some families just seem to have the wrong children. But
how did you happen to come on the ‘Boojum’?”
“I thought that, if I got outdoors, I would be able to write better
stuff. You see, after I had been writing regular newspaper things all
day, I needed to get out and do something else at night besides
sitting in my room and writing at stories. Out on the coast at home, I
had always had a boat of some sort or other and I was crazy about the
water. So I thought that I could make enough money to see me through
the summer, get a chance to do some writing and put in an enjoyable
healthy summer if I signed on as deck hand on some yacht. ‘Boojum’
happened to be the one. So far, it is the best thing that has happened
to me.”
“Wasn’t it awful hard pretending that you were just a plain deck
hand? When we talked about things you knew about, didn’t you want to
butt in?”
“It was harder than I dreamed it would be. I thought that you girls
would be like my sister’s friends and, knowing how rich Mr. Wing was,
I thought that he would run his yacht just as most of the sound
yachtsmen do, as though it was some fragile little boat that couldn’t
stand an all day sail, or rather that he couldn’t. When I found out
what a peach of a bunch you all were and I realized what my position
was, I admit I used to get pretty gloomy.”
“What a shame, Breck, when all of us wanted to be nice to you, but
were afraid to be because we couldn’t bear to have you think we were
the patronizing sort.”
“It wasn’t really bad,” Breck hastened to assure seeing the distressed
look she gave him. “You see, when you girls began to get so keen about
sailing the ship, it left me very little work to do on deck, so I had
lots of time to put in on my writing.”
“Is it hard living in such close quarters in the galley with that
funny little Dutch steward?”
“It is rather interesting. He has been everywhere and has splendid
tales to tell. Do you remember at Plymouth when you said that you
would like to arrange the orchestration of his snores? That is the
only real objection I have to him. He is the best-hearted little
fellow in the world, so I suppose we ought to be ready to forgive him
his only vice.”
“He is a marvelous cook, don’t you think? But look here, Breck, you
are just rowing anywhere, we’ll never get to the island unless we stop
talking,” said Jane coming to the realization that for about half an
hour they had been aimlessly drifting along, Breck occasionally
dipping the copper tipped oars in the water from habit.
As they drew nearer the island they saw that a huge crane hung out
over the water and that there was the remains of quite a large dock.
Several dories and a small catboat were moored in the little harbor. A
great many lobster pots were slung up on the rocks that shelved above
the beach.
“It can’t be entirely deserted or I don’t suppose they would have left
these perfectly good boats. And where there are lobsters there must be
some lobsterers,” said Jane, a little disappointed that it wasn’t
really a deserted island.
“Let’s carry it a little farther and hope that if the presence of the
lobster pots can prove that there are lobsterers, then the presence of
the lobsterers might prove some lobsters,” said Breck, remembering
that Mabel had asked him to try and see if he couldn’t find some for
her.
The water near shore was so clear that they could see the pebbles
gleaming at least ten feet below the surface.
“I wish we had one of those glass bottom boats that the natives row
the tourists around in at some of the South Sea Islands,” Breck said.
“There still doesn’t seem to be any sign of natives on this island to
row us around in even an oak bottomed boat. Shall we just snoop about
and hunt for some one or shall we stand here and yell till some one
materializes?” Jane asked as she stepped out on the beach.
At the sound of her voice, there was a slight movement on one of the
big slabs of granite and a boy of about sixteen, dressed in a gray
flannel shirt and faded dungarees, stood up.