_The Life Story of the Gallant Captain Aaron Sproul_
_Written by His Affectionate Wife_
"I reckon that Providunce put her finger on my compass when I steered
this way. Louada Murilla," said the Cap'n one day, pausing to relight
his pipe.
He had insisted on renaming his wife "Louada Murilla," and she had
patiently accepted the new name with the resignation of her patient
nature. But the name pleased her after her beloved lord had
explained.
"I was saving that name for the handsomest clipper-ship that money
could build," he said. "But when I married you, little woman, I got
something better than a clipper-ship; and when you know sailorman's
natur' better, you'll know what that compliment means. Yes,
Providunce sent me here," continued the Cap'n, poking down his
tobacco with broad thumb. "There I was, swashin' from Hackenny to
t'other place, livin' on lobscouse and hoss-meat; and here you was,
pinin' away for some one to love you and to talk to you about something
sensibler than dropped stitches and croshayed lamp-mats. Near's I
can find out about your 'sociates round here, you would have got more
real sense out of talkin' with Port and Starboard up there," he added,
pointing to his pet parrots, which had followed him in his wanderings.
"We was both of us hankerin' for a companion--I mean a married
companion. And I reckon that two more suiteder persons never started
down the shady side--holt of hands, hey?"
He caught her hands and pulled her near him, and she bent down and
kissed his weather-beaten forehead.
At that instant Col. Gideon Ward came clattering into the yard in
his tall wagon. He glared at this scene of conjugal affection, and
then lashed his horse savagely and disappeared in the direction of
the barn.
"I read once about a skelington at a feast that rattled his dry bones
every time folks there started in to enjoy themselves," said the
Cap'n, after he watched the scowling Colonel out of sight. "For the
last two weeks, Louada Murilla, it don't seem as if I've smacked you
or you've smacked me but when I've jibed my head I've seen that ga'nt
brother-in-law o' mine standing off to one side sourer'n a home-made
cucumber pickle."
"It's aggravatin' for you, I know it is," she faltered. "But I've
been thinkin' that perhaps he'd get more reconciled as the time goes
on."
"Reconciled?" snapped the Cap'n, a little of the pepper in his nature
coming to the surface. "If it was any one but you little woman, that
talked about me as though I was death or an amputated leg in this
family, I'd get hot under the collar. But I tell ye, we ain't got
many years left to love each other in. We started pritty late. We
can't afford to waste any time. And we can't afford to have the edge
taken off by that Chinese image standin' around and makin' faces.
I've been thinkin' of tellin' him so. But the trouble is with me that
when I git to arguin' with a man I'm apt to forgit that I ain't on
shipboard and talkin' to a tar-heel."
He surveyed his brown fists with a certain apprehensiveness, as
though they were dangerous parties over whom he had no control.
"I should dretfully hate to have anything come up between you and
Gideon, Cap'n," she faltered, a frightened look in her brown eyes.
"It wouldn't settle anything to have trouble. But you've been about
so much and seen human nature so much that it seems as though you
could handle him different than with--with--"
"Poundin' him, eh?" Smiles broke over the skipper's face. "See how
I'm softened, little woman!" he cried. "Time was when I would have
chased a man that made faces at me as he done just now, and I'd have
pegged him into the ground. But love has done a lot for me in makin'
me decent. If I keep on, I'll forgit I've got two fists--and that's
something for a shipmaster to say, now, I'll tell ye! A man has got
to git into love himself to know how it feels."
Sudden reflection illuminated his face.
"Ain't old pickalilly--that brother of yourn--ever been in love?"
he asked.
"Why--why," she stammered, "he's been in--well, sometimes now I
think perhaps it ain't love, knowin' what I do now--but he's been
engaged to Pharlina Pike goin' on fifteen years. And he's been
showin' her attentions longer'n that. But since I've met you and
found out how folks don't usually wait so long if they--they're in
love--well, I've--"
"Fifteen years!" he snorted. "What is he waitin' for--for her to grow
up?"
"Land sakes, no! She's about as old as he is. She's old Seth Pike's
daughter, and since Seth died she has run the Pike farm with hired
help, and has done real well at it. Long engagements ain't thought
strange of 'round here. Why, there's--"
"Fifteen years!" he repeated. "That's longer'n old Methus'lum
courted."
"But Gideon has been so busy and away from home so much in the woods,
and Pharlina ain't been in no great pucker, seein' that the farm was
gettin' on well, and--"
"There ain't no excuse for him," broke in the Cap'n, with vigor. He
was greatly interested in this new discovery. His eyes gleamed.
"'Tain't usin' her right. She can't step up to him and set the day.
'Tain't woman's sp'ere, that ain't. I didn't ask you to set the day.
I set it myself. I told you to be ready."
Her cheek flushed prettily at the remembrance of that impetuous
courtship, when even her dread of her ogre brother had been overborne
by the Cap'n's masterful manner, once she had confessed her love.
"I know what love is myself," went on the Cap'n. "He don't know;
that's what the trouble is with him. He ain't been waked up. Let him
be waked up good and plenty, and he won't be standin' around makin'
faces at us. I see what's got to be done to make a happy home of this.
You leave it to me."
They saw the Colonel stamping in their direction from the barn.
"You run into the house, Louada Murilla," directed the Cap'n, "and
leave me have a word with him."
The Colonel was evidently as anxious as the Cap'n for a word.
"Say, Sproul," he gritted, as he came under the tree, "I've got an
offer for the stumpage on township number eight. Seein' that you're
in equal partners with me on my sister's money," he sneered, "I reckon
I've got to give ye figures and prices, and ask for a permit to run
my own business."
"Seems 'most as if you don't enj'y talkin' business with me,"
observed the Cap'n, with a meek wistfulness that was peculiarly
aggravating to his grouchy partner.
"I'd about as soon eat pizen!" stormed the other.
"Then let's not do it jest now," the Cap'n returned, sweetly. "I've
got something more important to talk about than stumpage. Money and
business ain't much in this world, after all, when you come to know
there's something diff'runt. Love is what I'm referrin' to. Word has
jest come to me that you're in love, too, the same as I am."
The gaunt Colonel glared malevolently down on the sturdy figure
sprawling in the garden chair. The Cap'n's pipe clouds curled about
his head, and his hands were stuffed comfortably into his trousers
pockets. His face beamed.
"Some might think to hear you talk that you was a soft old fool that
had gone love-cracked 'cause a woman jest as soft as you be has showed
you some attention," choked the Colonel. "But I know what you're
hidin' under your innocent-Abigail style. I know you're a
jill-poke."
"A what?" blandly asked Sproul.
"That's woods talk for the log that makes the most trouble on the
drive--and it's a mighty ornery word."
"Er--something like 'the stabboard pi-oogle,' which same is a
seafarin' term, and is worse," replied the Cap'n, with bland interest
in this philological comparison. "But let's not git strayed off'm
the subject. Your sister, Louada Murilla--"
The gaunt man clacked his bony fists together in ecstasy of rage.
"She was christened Sarah Jane, and that's her name. Don't ye insult
the father and mother that gave it to her by tackin' on another. I've
told ye so once; I tell ye so--"
"Louada Murilla," went on the Cap'n, taking his huge fists out of
his pockets and cocking them on his knees, not belligerently, but
in a mildly precautionary way, "told me that you had been engaged
to a woman named Phar--Phar--"
"Oh, give her any name to suit ye!" snarled the Colonel. "That's what
ye're doin' with wimmen round here."
"You know who I mean," pursued Sproul, complacently, "seein' that
you've had fifteen years to study on her name. Now, bein' as I'm one
of the fam'ly, I'm going to ask you what ye're lally-gaggin' along
for? Wimmen don't like to be on the chips so long. I am speakin' to
you like a man and a brother when I say that married life is what
the poet says it is. It's--"
"I've stood a good deal from you up to now!" roared Ward, coming close
and leaning over threateningly. "You come here to town with so much
tar on ye that your feet stuck every time you stood still in one place;
you married my sister like you'd ketch a woodchuck; you've stuck your
fingers into my business in her name--but that's jest about as fur
as you can go with me. There was only one man ever tried to advise
me about gitting married--and he's still a cripple. There was no man
ever tried to recite love poetry to me. You take fair warnin'."
"Then you ain't willin' to listen to my experience, considerin' that
I've been a worse hard-shell than you ever was in marriage matters,
and now see the errors of my ways?" The Cap'n was blinking up
wistfully.
"It means that I take ye by your heels and snap your head off," rasped
Ward, tucking his sleeves away from his corded wrists. "You ain't
got your club with you this time."
The Cap'n sighed resignedly.
"Now," went on the Colonel, with the vigorous decision of a man who
feels that he has got the ascendency, "you talk about something that
amounts to something. That stumpage on number eight is mostly cedar
and hackmatack, and I've got an offer from the folks that want
sleepers for the railroad extension."
He went on with facts and figures, but the Cap'n listened with only
languid interest. He kept sighing and wrinkling his brows, as though
in deep rumination on a matter far removed from the stumpage question.
When the agreement of sale was laid before him he signed with a
blunted lead-pencil, still in his trance.
"Northin' but a cross-cut saw with two axe-handles for legs," he said
to himself, his eyes on the Colonel's back as that individual stamped
wrathfully away. "Teeth and edge are hard as iron! It's no good to
talk mattermony to him. Prob'ly it wouldn't do no good for me to talk
mattermony to Phar--Phar--to t'other one. She couldn't ask him to
go git a minister. 'Tain't right to put that much onto a woman's
shoulders. The trouble with him is that he's too sure of wimmen. Had
his sister under his thumb all them years, and thought less and less
of her for stayin' there. He's too sure of t'other. Thinks nobody
else wants her. Thinks all he's got to do is step round and git her
some day. Ain't got no high idee of wimmen like I have. Thinks they
ought to wait patient as a tree in a wood-lot. Has had things too
much his own way, I say. Hain't never had his lesson. Thinks nobody
else don't want her, hey? And she can wait his motions! He needs his
lesson. Lemme see!"
With his knurly forefinger at his puckered forehead he sat and
pondered.
He was very silent at supper.
The Colonel, still exulting in his apparent victory, said many
sneering and savage things, and clattered his knife truculently on
his plate. Sproul merely looked at him with that wistful
preoccupation that still marked his countenance.
"He's a quitter," pondered the Colonel. "I reckon he ain't playin'
lamb so's to tole me on. He's growed soft--that's what he's done."
Ward went to sleep that night planning retaliation.
Sproul stayed awake when the house was quiet, still pondering.