“I presume,” began Captain Luffkin in a confidential rumble, addressing
Caleb Whitman, “that a young feller like you knows all there’s to know
about girls.”
“It’s the last claim I should make for myself,” his companion
deprecated, smilingly.
The Captain ruminated, his hand on the tiller, his eyes straying from
the face of his passenger to the mark on the shore toward which he
automatically steered.
“Knowed no end of ’em, I presume,” he continued, after a pause.
“Considerably fewer than that,” Whitman corrected.
The Captain did not heed the denial. “What I’d like to know,” he began
again, puckering his brow in a troubled frown, “is what makes ’em cry.”
“Cry! Do girls cry?”
“One I know does,” the Captain confided, lowering his voice and looking
uneasily over the water as if he would guard his confidence even from
the gulls. “Cries her pretty eyes out,” he added for good measure.
“Tell me something about her.” Whitman’s manner, in spite of himself,
was indifferent; for his thoughts were far from the good captain that
afternoon, circling instead about a leafy nook and a dark haired girl,
with a tempting mouth and a piquant chin, whom with stern self denial
he had not sought for three interminable days.
“Well,” the Captain began again, “I don’t want to tell tales, but I
suspect I’m responsible for one girl’s tears.”
“Really!” There was something so absurd in the prospect of sentimental
confidences from the gruff old captain, that Whitman found it hard not
to smile. And yet one look into the weather-beaten face and honest eyes
opposite, sobered him. There was a natural dignity in the ferryman’s
manner that made mockery impossible.
“You see,” the Captain continued, “I’m one of this girl’s few friends,
having knowed her since she was about so high.” (At this point, the
Captain measured off about six inches.) “Well, some time back, I seed
she was low in her mind, and well she might be, for this town ain’t
what it should be for young folks these days. So one day when she come
to me and asked if she could borrow my name, receiving a few letters
addressed to Luffkin--”
There was no question of the passenger’s interest now. “Yes,” he
prompted eagerly.
“I was willing enough,” the Captain went on, “for I knowed how strict
she was held down and hedged in, and how curious the postmaster was.
So, sez I, ‘Sure, get all the mail you want’; and I give her a key to
my box, No. 37.”
“Yes; and then?”
“Well, her spirits come up, and nobody could be gladder than I was. I
saw she had something to interest her, and, sez I, ‘That’s good.’ But
suddenly the wind shifted and another spell of bad weather set in.”
“Since when?” The young man’s hand trembled as he rolled one of the
cigarettes the Captain scorned.
“Well, I can’t say just when the trouble set in, because I ain’t seen
her until to-day.”
“To-day?”
“She crossed with me last trip. I presume she’s waiting on the other
side now to be fetched back. She never lifted her pretty head from her
arm all the way over.”
“Didn’t she!” The sole passenger’s voice was husky with emotion. He
looked straight out to sea, wondering if Nancy’s fall in spirits could
possibly be coincident with the neglect his conscience had dictated.
“Now,” asked the Captain, loosening the main sheet from the cleat,
preparatory to going about, “to come back to where we started, what
makes her cry?”
“What’s your theory?” Whitman forced himself to say, overcoming the
temptation to tell the Captain what he knew of Nancy.
“I suspect a man,” said the Captain with energy.
“A man?”
“Yes; you know we’ve an army post some ten miles from here, and I’ve
been wondering if my little girl hadn’t gotten in with one of them
yellow jackets. I’ve had several things to make me think that might be
so, and that he ain’t treating her right. Why else would she want to
get letters unbeknownst to those that has her in charge?”
“She might be attempting some business venture,” Whitman suggested,
“writing for a magazine, selling drawings, something of that kind. Has
she literary ambitions?”
“Not that I ever heard of. It strikes me natur’ made her too pretty to
be a lady writer.”
“Does she lack for money?”
The Captain considered the possibilities suggested by this question.
“It don’t seem likely,” he said. “Old Miss Lowell is reputed well to
do.”
He brought the ferry about and made a neat landing at the port called
Fair View, where a group of country folk waited. A quick glance showed
Whitman that Nancy was not among them; but just as the Captain cast off
for the return voyage, she ran breathlessly down the pier.
“Well,” said the Captain, sighting her at the same moment that Whitman
did. “Here’s my girl. I was afraid she wasn’t coming.” And he held the
bobbing cat boat to the pier with one hairy hand while Nancy clambered
aboard.
“I was delayed,” she explained confusedly, seating herself between two
substantial village women.
If she saw Caleb Whitman, she made no sign of recognition, unless a
shy flutter of her eyelids in his direction, and a cheek that grew
a little rosier could be called an acknowledgment of their former
meetings.
The man who had denied himself a sight of her for three long days
let his eyes rest hungrily on the little figure squeezed between the
village women. The Captain was right. She had been crying. Could it
be, Whitman wondered, that his avoidance accounted for the change. The
thought was so disturbing, so deliciously disturbing, that he refrained
with difficulty from forcibly removing the stout protectors on either
side of Nancy and taking his place beside her.
Suddenly, as if he read Whitman’s thoughts, the good old Captain spoke.
“Nancy,” he said, “would you mind setting on this side? The boat don’t
ride right.”
The girl looked at him demurely, as the cat boat stole steadily across
the bay in the light summer wind. “Wouldn’t you rather have somebody a
little heavier, Captain?” she teased; and her glance suggested a fat
woman with a basket.
“You’re just the right weight,” the Captain affirmed shamelessly; and
he made room for her between Whitman and himself. “Miss Rose,” he said
formally, when the change had been made, “let me make you acquainted
with Mr. Whitman. He’s summering with me. Mr. Whitman, let me make you
acquainted with Miss Rose. She lives down the road about a mile from
the village, in a house you may have noticed, built before the war. A
British ball took off part of the roof, didn’t it, Nancy?”
“Yes,” the girl nodded listlessly.
“I’ve seen the house,” Whitman managed to say. “I don’t wonder the
British singled it out. I’ve done the same thing myself.”
“Did you like it?” Nancy asked.
Whitman’s answer was prompt. “So much that I haven’t been able to
forget it for the past three days.”
Nancy did not answer but leaned over the gunwale, letting one small
hand drag in the water. Whitman leaned towards her. “Nancy,” he
whispered under his breath, “is something wrong? What’s the matter?
Won’t you tell me? Don’t you know I want to help you?”
“Do you?” The luminous eyes that had been fixed on the dancing water
searched his face.
“I do, indeed. You must know that.”
“Then where have you been?”
The words so innocently uttered, accompanied by a glance from soft gray
eyes where tears still lurked, gave Whitman a thrill of joy. “Why,
Nancy,” he whispered ardently, “you yourself told me I was not to come.”
“I hadn’t finished telling you so,” said Nancy tremulously.
“Hadn’t you?” The man’s voice was very tender. “I’ve only stayed away
from a sense of duty. I thought about you every hour of the day. I’ve
been trying to find some excuse to appear openly. Isn’t there some way
I can meet you with your aunt’s consent?”
She shook her head. “Not yet. Not unless I can bring the Great
Happiness to pass.”
“The Great Happiness?” he questioned.
“Yes.” She sighed. “It seems a long way off to-day.”
“Won’t you tell me what you mean?”
“No. I can tell no one. It’s a secret. But once it comes, everything
will change.” She lifted her eyes to the sky line, like a prophet who
sees a vision.
“Is the Great Happiness so much to you, Nancy?” Whitman murmured,
struck by the solemnity of her manner.
“It’s everything,” she said unsmilingly, turning her earnest eyes to
his. “It’s what I live for. When I think it will never come, my heart
is like a stone. When I think it _will_ come--and it must, oh, it
must--then my heart is like thistledown.”
“Nancy,” Whitman said, “surely you will let me help you to bring your
joy to pass. Have you any other friend to whom to turn?”
“One other,” was the unexpected answer.
“The Captain?”
“No, not the Captain.”
“Tell me who it is.” He did not know that the emotion that welled in
his breast was jealousy.
“I can’t.”
“Is it a man?”
“Yes, it’s a man. The best man in the world, I fancy.”
“Nancy, are you joking?”
“No, just telling the truth.”
Captain Luffkin’s supposition of a soldier at the post, flashed across
Whitman’s mind. “Does he live near here?” he demanded.
“Would you call New York near?”
“He lives in New York, then?”
“Yes.”
“A man who lives in New York, who would do more for you than I would.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“It amounted to the same thing.” Whitman stared gloomily across the
boat, scowling unconsciously at the row of passengers opposite. “What’s
his name?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“You mean you don’t choose to tell me.”
“I mean what I say.” Nancy was dimpling. “I _can’t_ tell you.”
“Well,” he began after a moment’s stormy thought, “it’s not my affair,
but I have your welfare at heart, Miss Rose” (Nancy started in surprise
at the formality of his address), “and so I can’t help warning you
against confiding in strange men. I hope you understand the spirit in
which I say this.”
“What spirit is it?” Nancy asked innocently.
Caleb Whitman hesitated, checked for a moment in his moralizing. Then
he said with conviction, “It’s the spirit of a big brother.”
“Oh,” said Nancy.
“You’re an inexperienced girl,” Whitman went on.
“Yes, I am.”
“And so I’m going to be very bold indeed, and ask you a few questions,
which of course you need not answer.”
“Of course not,” Nancy disconcertingly agreed.
“And yet--I hope you will answer.”
“What’s the first question?”
“Where did you meet this man from New York?”
“I’ve never really met him.”
“Never really met him?”
“No.”
“Then how can you say that you know him?”
“I know him from his letters--and his presents.”
“Nancy!” Caleb Whitman cried aghast; and then he added with conviction,
“He’s a scoundrel. New York is full of them. Did he see you somewhere
and force a correspondence upon you?”
“No,” Nancy weighed the question. “I suppose you would say I forced it
on him,” she said.
“For heaven’s sake, Nancy, tell me what you mean. Speak low, one of
those women opposite is trying to hear what we are saying.”
“I wrote to him first. He answered--very kindly. I sent him a present.
He sent me two.”
“Nancy Rose, are you teasing me?”
“I’m answering your question.”
Whitman was silent a moment, racked by a thousand fears. He forced his
lips to ask one more question. “What kind of a man is your friend?”
“He’s very old,” said Nancy, turning her candid eyes to his; “that’s
the only thing I’d like to change about him.”
“Old!” The young man by her side gave a start of joyful recognition.
He had forgotten the past shadowy acquaintance with Nancy in the
intoxication of actual meeting. “Old, Nancy?” his voice shook with
eagerness.
“Yes, old and fat, with chin whiskers, a white waistcoat and a thick
watch chain. Old and kind. Don’t you think it’s safe to trust him?”
“Yes,” said Whitman softly. “Yes, trust him, Nancy. But promise me one
thing.”
“Well?”
“Don’t make any other friend by correspondence.”
“I won’t,” she promised sweetly. And the cat boat having crept to the
pier at Deep Harbor, she followed in the wake of the other passengers,
clambered out the boat and disappeared down the street.
“Well,” said the Captain as he and Whitman were left alone, “wasn’t I
right? Hadn’t she been crying?”
“Yes,” the young man admitted.
“What I want to know,” the Captain continued, “is who’s making her cry.”
“You think it’s a person?”
“I’m sure it is. Moreover, I think I’ve spotted him.”
For a moment Whitman feared the Captain’s glance, bent upon himself,
was accusing. Then the ferryman asked: “See any one loitering on the
bank across the water?”
“No.”
“Well, I did. And he was one of them yellow jackets. As soon as he
sighted the ferry he disappeared into the trees. Notice the little girl
was late in getting aboard?”
Unwillingly Whitman was forced to admit that Nancy had been late, and
flustered in her manner.
“Well,” the Captain finished grimly, “I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts
that the yellow jacket has coaxed her over there to meet him, and
what’s more that it’s not the first time he’s done it.”