CHAPTER I

PEARL OF THE CLOTHESLINE

Washy Gallup, who was general handy man along the Shell Road, came wheeling a barrow past Liphalet Truitt's and the Mariner's Chapel from the direction of Cardhaven proper and the docks. On the barrow was an iron-strapped sea-chest, of a bright blue color and with tarred rope handles.

"Wal, Cap'n, we're nigh to your anchorage," Washy declared, setting down the barrow to spit on his hands.

"Yes, yes! I reckernize the channel buoys. That's Orrin Petty's place on our weather bow, ain't it?"

The speaker, who closely followed Washy and the barrow, would have attracted attention anywhere, certainly here on the Shell Road had it not been that hour of the afternoon when most of the neighborhood womenfolk were engaged in supper preparations and were not, therefore, in sight of the highway.

He was a solidly built man without being at all pursy. He had wind-bitten cheeks and a flame in his black eyes that belied his age. Although he walked with a cane and his hair and beard were gray, there was a brisk air about the man that at the very start seemed to reduce his actual age by half a score of years.

A fringe of whisker framed his mahogany face and his lips were cleanly shaven. Nowhere out of Ireland save in longshore communities or among old-fashioned seafaring men are these "galways" still popular. He was dressed in a pilot-cloth suit, much wrinkled from lying, in all probability, for more than one voyage in that same chest that Washy Gallup now proceeded to wheel before him.

"Here we be, Cap'n," observed Washy finally, turning into the lane that led to the house already identified.

"I see! I see!" agreed the mariner, staring curiously at the high-shouldered, unpainted frame dwelling which stood with an unsocial end to the road.

But there was a pleasant side yard into which the lane led--grassy, with trees bordering it and a clothes'-drying green in the middle. There was a girl taking clothes from the lines in this yard and it was upon her the visitor's gaze became fixed.

She was of a slim figure, yet with prettily rounded limbs, as he could easily see while she stood with the fresh breeze blowing the scant gingham frock about her. Her arms were bare almost to her shoulders, displaying dimpled elbows and wrists. The short skirt became even shorter as she stood on tip-toes to reach a particularly obdurate clothespin, and the turn of her leg and ankle was as trim as that of a yacht's spars.

The neck of the simple frock she wore was cut square. As she turned toward the two men approaching, there was revealed the rising and falling of her full bosom--like the swell of the sea itself before a storm. But her face, save the dimpled, pink chin, was smothered in an enormous sunbonnet.

"Where's your Uncle Orrin, Pearly?" asked Washy, dropping the handles of the wheelbarrow once more.

The girl let fall the last garment she had taken from the line--a voluminous blue starched skirt--into the clothesbasket and vigorously punched it into smaller compass. Then she stood up again to face her questioner. The captain obtained a flashing glimpse of clouded dark eyes and little, even white teeth between full red lips.

"He _isn't_ my uncle!" said the girl with emphasis. "He's my mother's step-brother's cousin-by-marriage, Orrin Petty is. And if I had any livin' relative in the world to go to, I'd leave here just as fast as I could travel, Washy Gallup--so there!"

"Hoity-toity!" murmured Washy. "What's dragged anchor an' gone to sea on _this_ tide, I want to know? Where's Orrin?"

There was a flurry of tears in the girl's voice as she uttered her emphatic speech. She jerked another starched piece from the line and crowded it with the clothespins into the basket.

"He isn't at home; nor Miz Petty; nor Tom. They all went to the county fair down to Harwich."

"I snum! And left you to home, did they?" ejaculated Washy, suddenly seeing a great light.

"And I made this very dress to go to the fair in," confided Pearl. "Got the pattern out of the _Ladies' Home Provider_. And I picked out the very prettiest bolt of gingham Cap'n Abe had in his store. Now I've washed in it, and I'm going to iron in it. This was the day I meant to wear it, and I _have_ wore it!"

She snapped her pretty teeth together on this remark and jerked back her sunbonnet so that the captain could see her face. Despite the storm upon it, it was well worth seeing, as he was confident it would be. With all her fairness of skin and almost flaxen hair, Pearl's eyes were dark, and smoldering now with indignation.

The situation was too much for Washy. He had no further comment to make. But he waved an introductory hand toward the silent man in the pilot-cloth suit.

"This here's Cap'n Jonah Hand, Miz Petty's uncle," he said. "He's come to visit a spell. Come up on the two-master from Chatham, and fouled my hawse at Durgin's dock. So I helped him over with his chist."

"My goodness! Comp'ny?" gasped Pearl, staring wide-eyed at the broadly smiling visitor. "And there isn't a thing baked in the house but doughnuts!"

[Illustration: "My goodness! Comp'ny?" gasped Pearl, staring wide-eyed at the broadly smiling visitor.]

"Wal," observed Cap'n Jonah Hand, slowly, "I reckon I can fare on them, seein's I ain't set a tooth into one for many a long year. 'Way 'cross the world in Chinese waters, I took a hankerin' last year for 'fried holes,' as we used to call 'em when I was a boy. I told Ming, my Chinese cook, how they'd ought to be made, and he tackled 'em. Ming was putty nigh the bravest feller I ever did see. He'd tackle anything.

"When he got through with them doughnuts you could have used 'em for grommets. They warn't nothin' fit for a man's stomach. Don't worry about feedin' me, gal. I had a snack before I got off the Chatham schooner."

"You come right in, sir," said Pearl, recovering from her surprise and her natural Cape hospitality asserting itself. "You give him a hand with his chist, Washy."

She tripped up the steps in advance and opened the green slatted door. It was cool and dark in the hall, promising an interior speckless and flyless. There was barely light enough by which the two men might stumble up the ingrain-carpeted stair.

Pearl threw open the door of the guest room with a flourish. Its white and blue braided mats and counterpane to match, made the darkened chamber seem invitingly cool. Pearl seized the blue-banded water pitcher and went down to the pump while Cap'n Jonah paid Washy for his assistance.

She returned with the brimming pitcher and a cake of home-molded soap. There were already towels hanging upon the washstand rack.

"You come right down, sir, when you've freshened up," the girl said. "I'll put the coffee pot over and you can sample the doughnuts. Miz Petty and the others won't be home till late, like enough."

"All right, my gal," replied Cap'n Jonah. "But don't you go for to put yourself out none. I've seen lots worse quarters than these, I do assure you."

She descended the stairs and closed the door after Washy, who was already trundling the barrow down the lane. She desired to ask a few questions of the gossipy Mr. Gallup about Cap'n Jonah Hand; but she would not run after Washy.

Taking down the remainder of the clotheslines' burden she pressed down the running-over basket and, seizing it by its two handles, started for the kitchen door. The basket was so big and the wash so bulky that Pearl was very nearly hidden from sight as she came up the steps of the porch.

Cap'n Jonah had quickly made his toilet and found his way down to the kitchen. Pearl heard the latch of the screen door lifted and his voice say:

"You've got consider'ble of a haul there, ain't you?"

She set the basket down on one of the broad tables, panting and laughing. Her indignation seemed to have evaporated. The sunbonnet had fallen back, hanging by its strings tied under her chin. She had a lot of fluffy hair, and it was braided in two plaits which hung below her waist.

Hers was not a childish looking face, however, for her eyes had a steady, direct expression and her lips were molded in firm lines.

"How old be you, gal?" asked the captain.

"Goin' on eighteen. Miz Petty makes out I'm not seventeen yet. But I remember how old I was when I came here, and I know she can't keep me after I'm eighteen, if I don't want to stay."

"I take it you're not happy 'long o' Sarah Petty?"

"Do you reckon anybody'd be happy with Miz Petty? Tom's the only person on top of this foot-stool she's re'lly fond of; and she 'most nags him to death."

"Hum!" commented the captain. There did not seem much else to say. Yet, for the sake of sociability, he ventured: "So you'd like to get away from Sarah?"

"I'd have gone to the Cardhaven Inn to work this season, takin' Gusty Durgin's place--she that's gone to be a moving picture actress--" said Pearl briskly, "only Miz Petty said I couldn't. She claims me till I'm eighteen. Unless I get married before that time."

"Whatever!" gasped Cap'n Jonah. "You don't mean to say you're thinking of getting merried--a gal like you?"

"What girl doesn't think of it--even if she hasn't a living chance?" demanded Pearl, in her crisp, assertive way. "Of course I'm thinking of it; but that isn't saying I'm likely to be anything but a sour-cranberry old maid. That's what most of us Cape Cod girls turn out to be. There aren't men enough--real men, I mean--on the Cape to go 'round."

She dimpled, and her expression took all the sting out of her words. She was a pretty girl--the prettiest girl Cap'n Jonah remembered ever to have seen. Being a childless widower, for many years he had "paid little attention to the sect," as he frequently stated. But there was a freshness and sweetness about Pearl, in addition to her physical gifts, that charmed the old sea captain.

She stirred the fire, set the kettle forward to boil, and measured the aromatic coffee--as it seemed, all in one motion. Her activity and litheness delighted his seaman's eye.

"A tidy craft!" he muttered admiringly. There was a wistful thought in the captain's mind, too. He wished he had been vouchsafed a daughter like this girl.

"What's your name, Pearly?" he asked. "'Tain't Petty, I warrant."

"No, sir. My name's Pearl Holden. The Holdens belong Paulmouth way. But there aren't any of 'em belonging to me--worse luck! Orrin Petty put in a claim for me after my maw's sister--Aunt Becky--died, and the selectmen let him have me. Bein' parceled out like you belonged to a litter of puppies isn't as pleasant as you might think it."

"No. I guess not. I'd ought to know, too," said the captain. "I was bound out myself when I was a little skeezicks. But I run away and went to sea. Not that I bettered myself much by so doing--not for a spell," and he shook his head thoughtfully.

"I guess bad luck stuck to me like a barnacle, 'cause of my name. You'd think they'd make it a crime punishable by law to give the name of 'Jonah' to a helpless child. But 'twas taken out of the Bible, and therefore bound to be a good one, my folks thought like enough. I heard of a Cape Cod man once that was named Beelzebub for the same reason."

"I guess you've found," said the practical Pearl, "that a name isn't of much importance after all. Folks can be what they've a mind to be, I guess. Your name, for instance, didn't keep you from risin' to the quarterdeck."

"No. I riz in spite of it," the visitor said complacently.

He sat down at one end of the deal table where Pearl had spread a snowy napkin. In rapid succession she set before him cold baking-powder biscuit, as white and fluffy as down; a golden square of butter on a flowered plate; a wedge of creamy cheese; and a bowl heaped with flaky brown rings--the delight of the hearty appetite and despair of the dyspeptic.

"Them look some diff'rent from Ming's," said the captain dryly.

He "tucked away" a hearty meal and drank his third cup of coffee before he rose from the table. Pearl was busy sprinkling the clothes. She rolled each large piece tightly, finishing with a capable thump of her dimpled fist. The slanting rays of the sun touched her hair, revealing golden strands in it.

Cap'n Jonah seemed rather uncertain in his mind when he pushed his chair back to the wall after brushing the doughnut crumbs from his blue vest to the table. He stood at the screen door, looking out into the yard and to the vista of white shell road that led seaward.

Finally he drew from his pocket a battered silver box, the lid of which he snapped open. But the box was just as empty as he knew it to be.

"I say, Pearly," he said hopefully, "didn't I hear you speak of some store 'round here?"

"Cap'n Abe's; yes, sir," replied the girl. "Right down the road there."

"Does he sell anything besides caliker for dresses and other folderols?"

"Why, Cap'n Abe sells most ev'rything," laughed the girl. "From a thimble to a bow anchor, I do believe."

"Tobacker?"

"Of course. And snuff, Cap'n Hand. I see that's a snuff box in your hand."

"Ye-as. I do drift kinder to snuff when I can get it," confessed the captain. "Ye see, for many a v'y'ge I carried passengers, an' a feller can't smoke on duty nor yet chew in the presence of lady passengers. But they tell me kings and cardinals have used snuff; so I reckon it's allowable for an old sea cap'n. I'll step down the road and see what this storekeeper ye speak of carries in my line."

He set his glazed hat carefully upon his head, got his cane, and stepped through the kitchen doorway into the evening sunlight.