CAP'N IRA SPEAKS OUT
Wrung as Sheila's heart had been by the expression of the old
woman's utter confidence in her and by Cap'n Ira's warm words of
approbation spoken before the elder, it was nevertheless for Tunis
Latham's sake that she had abetted the minister's desire and had
agreed that the real Ida May Bostwick should come to the Ball house
on Wreckers' Head.
By extracting a promise from Ida May that she would talk to nobody
for the present--especially about the connection of the captain of
the _Seamew_ with Ida May's affairs--Sheila believed she had entered
a wedge which might open the way for the young man to escape from a
situation which threatened both his reputation and his peace of
mind.
To save Tunis! She was fairly obsessed by that thought. Her vow
before the picture of Tunis' mother in the _Seamew's_ cabin must be
in Sheila's view to the very end. She had a sufficient share of
that vision of the Celt to be deeply impressed by a promise made as
that had been made--though in secret. It was a sacred pledge.
It was no easy matter for any of the Ball household to consider the
coming of Ida May with serenity. Prudence, at heart, shrank from the
claimant on her hospitality almost as much as Sheila did. If Cap'n
Ira hid his perturbation better than the others, he nevertheless
hobbled about with a very solemn countenance.
"I swan!" he muttered within Sheila's hearing. "It's most like there
was a corpse in the house. This ain't no way to live. I do wish
Elder Minnett could have minded his own business and let well enough
alone. Let the girl talk, and other folks, too. Trying to stop
gossip is like trying to put your finger on a drop of quicksilver.
There won't be no good come o' that girl being here. That's as sure
as sure."
The elder's car came wheezing up the hill again about the middle of
the forenoon. He did not alight himself, but Ida May needed the
presence of nobody to lend her assurance. She hopped out of the car
with her bag and flaunted her cheap finery through the gate and in
at the front door.
Her reception at this end of the house marked the unmistakable fact
that Prudence and Cap'n Ira received her as a stranger rather than
in a confidential way.
"Well, Aunt Prue! For you are my aunt whatever you may say," was
Ida May's prologue. "And you are my uncle," she added, her
greenish-brown eyes flashing a glance at the grimly observant
captain. "I must say it's pretty shabby treatment I've got from you
so far. But I don't blame you--not at all. I blame that girl and
Tunis Latham."
"Avast there!" put in Cap'n Ira so sternly and with so threatening a
tone of voice and visage that even Ida May was silenced. "We've let
you come here, my girl, because Elder Minnett asked us to; and not
at all because our opinion of you is changed. Far from it. You're
here on sufferance and you'd best be civil spoken while you remain.
Ain't that the ticket, Prudence?"
His wife nodded, in full accord with his statement of the situation,
although she could not bear to look so sternly on any person as
Cap'n Ira now looked at Ida May.
"Well! I like that!" sniffed the girl, tossing her head, but she
actually shrank from the captain.
"Furthermore, as regards Tunis Latham, you was to say nothing about
him outside of this house if you was let come here. And I warn you,
we don't care to hear nothing in his disfavor _in_ this house."
"Oh! I can see he's a favorite with you," muttered Ida May.
"Then trim your sails according," admonished the old man. "In
addition, you mentioned the young woman we already got here in a way
we don't like none too well. I want to impress on your mind that it
was only through her saying she was agreeable to your coming here
that we agreed to the elder's request and let you come."
"She did, eh?" cried Ida May, flouncing in her chair. "Well, I don't
thank her."
"No. I cal'late you ain't of a thanking disposition," said Cap'n
Ira. "But you like enough won't drop your bread butter-side down.
That's all."
Ida May, startled by his speech, stared with less impudence at the
old man. For his part, the captain watched her pretty closely, and
he had met and judged too many people in his day not to form
gradually, as the hours passed, a decided opinion regarding Ida May.
Nor did he cling to his first impression--the one made in haste and
some vexation, when she had first tried to thrust herself into the
Ball household and demanded the place filled by Sheila Macklin. This
girl certainly was not insane. But with all her apparent smartness,
Cap'n Ira easily saw that she was not intelligent--that she had
scarcely ordinary understanding. Beside the newcomer's shallow
nature and even more shallow endowments, Sheila seemed to be from a
different world.
"I swan!" whispered Cap'n Ira to Prudence some time later. "The
difference between them two girls! They ain't to be spoke of in the
same county, I declare. Look at that one, Prudence," he said, with a
side glance at the newcomer. "Ain't she a sight with them thin and
flashy clothes?"
"I can't see anything about her that looks like any of the Honeys,
let alone Sarah."
"Huh! No. Only that her hair's sorter red," returned Cap'n Ira,
"like Sarah's was."
The visitor proved her position in the household by sitting idly in
a rocking-chair looking over some pictures which were on the table
or staring out of the window. She offered to do nothing for
Prudence. But, of course, Ida May was not very domestic. Living in a
furnished room and working behind the counter in a department store
does not develop the domestic virtues to any appreciable degree.
She did not see Sheila until dinner was on the table and she was
called to the meal with Cap'n Ira and the old woman. The stiff,
little bow with which Ida May favored the girl in possession was
returned by the latter quite as formally.
Sheila had regained complete control of voice and face now. Although
she did not actually address Ida May, her manner was such that there
was no restraint put upon the company. It was the newcomer's manner,
if anything, that curtailed the usual friendly intercourse at the
Ball table.
Ida May possessed some powers of observation. She would have said
herself that she was able to "put two and two together." The way the
meal had been cooked, the way it was served, and the work entailed
in doing both these things, were matters not overlooked by the
visitor.
She knew that Prudence had given neither thought nor attention to
getting the dinner. The girl the Balls had received in Ida May's
name and supposed identity had done it all herself. It seemed to be
expected of her!
She saw, before the day was over, that Sheila was a very busy person
indeed. That she not only did the housework, but that she waited
upon Prudence and Cap'n Ira "hand and foot." She did it with such
unconcern that the new girl could be sure these tasks were quite
what was expected of her.
"Why," exclaimed Ida May to herself, "she's just hired help! Is
_that_ what they wanted me for when they sent Tunis Latham up to
Boston after me? I'd like to see myself!"
She had foreseen something of this kind when she had refused so
unconditionally to come down here to the Cape. And her observation
of the house and its furnishings, as well as the appearance of the
old couple, had confirmed her suspicion that her belief in the Balls
"being pretty well fixed" was groundless.
After her interview with Elder Minnett, although she had refrained
from detailing her story and her spiteful comments about Sheila and
Tunis Latham to the Paulings, she had not ceased to question Zebedee
and his mother about the financial condition of the Balls.
She had learned that a couple of thousand dollars would probably buy
all the real property the old people owned on Wreckers' Head. There
was a certain invested sum which secured them a fair living. Beyond
that, the Big Wreck Cove people knew of no wealth belonging to
either Cap'n Ira or Prudence.
Ida May already considered that she had come down here to the Cape
on a fool's errand. She would like to make herself solid, however,
with the old folks so as to benefit when they were dead and gone, if
that were possible. But to make herself a kitchen drudge for them?
She would like to see herself!
There was a phase of the situation which held Ida May to the course
she had set sail upon, and one which would hold her to it to the
bitter end. Her spitefulness and determination to be revenged upon
this unknown girl who had usurped the place originally offered her
by the Balls, and who had stolen her name as well, was quite
sufficient to cause a person of Ida May Bostwick's character to
fight for her rights.
She would be revenged on Tunis, too. Or, at least, she would make
him, as well as the other girl, suffer for the slight he had put
upon her.
Had she not preened her feathers and strutted her very best on the
occasion when he interviewed her at Hoskin & Marl's and taken her
out to lunch? And to no end at all! He had been quite unimpressed by
Ida May's airs and graces.
Yet he would take up with this other girl--a mere nobody. Worse than
a nobody, of course. She must be both a bad and a cunning woman to
have done what it was plain she had done. She had wound Tunis Latham
around her finger, and had hoodwinked the old people in the bargain!
Ida May saw the other girl waiting on Prudence and Cap'n Ira; she
observed her tenderness toward them and their delight in her
ministrations; and these things which she regarded with her
green-glinting eyes made her taste the bitterness of wormwood. She
hated Sheila more and more as the day wore on; and she scorned the
old people both for what she considered this niggardliness and for
their simplicity, as well, in being fooled by this other girl.
For, of course, to Ida May's mind, Sheila's kindness and the love
shown for the Balls on her part was all put on. It could not be
otherwise. Ida May Bostwick could not, in the first place, imagine
any sane girl "falling for the two old hicks."
Prudence could seldom show herself other than kindly toward any
person whether she exactly approved of that person or not. So she
chatted cheerfully at Ida May, if not with her. She was quite as
insistent as Cap'n Ira, however, in keeping away from the vexing
question of the identity of the two girls.
Right at the first the question had been raised: where should the
visitor be put to sleep? Ida May was prepared to object strenuously
if any slight was put upon her, such as being given some little,
tucked-up attic room away from the rest of the family. Had she
dared, she would have demanded the use of the room the false Ida May
occupied; only she was not sure, after seeing the position Sheila
seemed to hold in the household, that she cared to be put to sleep
in the room of the "hired help."
But Sheila herself settled that question.
"The guest room is ready. Aunt Prue," she said to Prudence. "I
cleaned it this week and the little stove is set up in there if it
should grow cold overnight. All the bed needs is aired sheets. I'll
get them out of the press."
So Prudence took Ida May to the guest chamber, which was beyond the
parlor. A black-walnut set, which had been the height of
magnificence when Cap'n Ira and Prudence were married, filled the
shade-drawn room with shadows. There was an ingrain carpet on the
floor of a green groundwork with pale-yellow flowers on it, of a
genus known to no botanist. The tidies on the chair backs were so
stiff with starch that it would be a punishment to lay one's head
against them.
On a little marble-topped table between the windows was something
made of shells and seaweed in a glass-topped case. It looked to Ida
May like a dead baby in a coffin.
"Of all the junk!" she muttered to herself when Prudence left her to
arrange the contents of her bag as she chose. "And that girl likes
it here! Well, I'll show her who's who and what's what!
"I'd like to know where I ever saw her face before? I bet it was
somewhere she'd no business to be--just as she has sneaked in here
where she doesn't belong. The nasty, hateful thing!
"If Bessie Dole or Mayme Leary could only see this dump!" she added,
looking over the room again. "Anyhow, I've made 'em give me the best
they've got. I'll show 'em how to treat a _real_ relation that comes
to see 'em."
Supper time came and passed no more cheerfully than had the midday
meal. The society of the old people was anything but enlivening for
Ida May. In desperation she began to talk, and out of sheer
perverseness she lighted upon the subject of the establishment of
Hoskin & Marl.
Now Prudence found this topic of interest, for since Annabel
Coffin--she who was a Buttle--had dilated upon those great marts of
trade in Boston, the old woman had been vastly curious. Sheila had
never cared to talk of her experiences as saleswoman behind the
counter.
"They tell me they sell most everything you could name in those
stores," Prudence said reflectively. "Heaps of dry goods, I suppose.
Let me see, what did you sell, my dear?"
"I'm in the laces," said Ida May. "But Hoskin & Marl sell lots
besides dry goods."
"Oh, yes! Annabel did say something about automobiles and--and
plasters; didn't she, Ira?"
"Goodness knows," rejoined her husband with a groan. "Annabel Coffin
said so much the last time she was here that my head buzzes now when
I think of her."
"Now, you hesh!" said Prudence. "Never can interest a man in such
things. So you sold laces, did you, my dear? Oh, Ida May!" she
exclaimed suddenly to Sheila, sitting on the other side of the
table. "Ida May, what did you say you sold in that store? You worked
for Hoskin & Marl, didn't you?"
"Ye-es. I--I was in the silverware and jewelry department,"
stammered Sheila, the question coming so unexpectedly that she could
not exercise consideration before making answer.
"Now, is that so?" cried Prudence. "That must have been nice. To
handle all them pretty things. But lace is pretty, too," she added,
turning quickly to the guest again. "I expect you find it so."
The old woman was startled into silence by the expression she saw
upon Ida May's face. The latter was glaring across the table at
Sheila. No other word could so express the intense and malevolent
look in those greenish-brown eyes and on that sharp countenance.
Sheila's gaze was enthralled as well by Ida May's sudden emotion.
She half rose from her chair. But her strength left her limbs again,
and she fell back into the seat.
"What's the matter, Ida May?" demanded Cap'n Ira, in wonder and
alarm.
The real Ida May sprang up with a shriek. She shook her hand at
Sheila and for a moment could not articulate. Then she said:
"I know her now! I knew I'd seen that creature before and I thought
I'd remember what and who she is. And she dares come down here and
sneak her way into honest people's houses! The gall of her!"