CHAPTER X

"PEARLY"

It was true that Cap'n Jonah was more disturbed by the Pettys' treatment of Pearl Holden than he was by his own uncertain financial situation. He had been taking chances all his life, and the fact that his ready cash would soon run low held nothing new or strange in his experience.

Like most seafaring men, the captain held all women in great respect. And a young girl in Pearl's situation was bound to appeal very strongly to his chivalrous spirit.

"Whatever!" he muttered often and again. "If I could jest fool Sarah and Orrin, like 'Liphalet says. If them two money-lovers only believed that I had a fortune, as they at first suspected, I could make 'em treat Pearly decent, an' that's a fac'."

As the days passed he could not help seeing that there was something troubling Pearl deeply. He supposed that it must be the harshness meted out to her by Sarah Petty.

Before Mr. Helmford, Sarah and Orrin were both on their best behavior. They really desired, it seemed, to retain the new boarder's respect, and at table spoke in fair kindness to the girl, as well as treated Cap'n Jonah with more consideration.

Tom, of course, was hopeless. His bad manners Mr. Helmford ignored. And really, the lout gave Cap'n Jonah nothing of which to complain. Tom, in fact, held a contrary opinion from his parents' regarding Cap'n Jonah's financial circumstances; and he had reason to.

The young fellow could not well forget that his Uncle Jonah had given him a twenty-dollar bill without his even asking for it; and Tom could not imagine anybody giving away money in such sums unless they really had more than they knew what to do with.

Tom had no mind to tell his father or mother his reasons for holding to the belief that Uncle Jonah Hand was a wealthy man. It would open too fruitful a field for inquiry.

Despite the fact that Sarah Petty had examined every scrap of Cap'n Jonah's possessions save what he carried about with him all the time, and had found no bankbook or any account of his investments, Tom backed his father strongly in the declaration that the old man might be hiding securities or other valuables.

"Jest because he's savin' and won't buy new clo'es and things he needs," said Orrin on one occasion, "ain't no sure proof that he's short of money. Mebbe that's how he got it--bein' careful."

Orrin could appreciate to the full such a miserly character as he gave Cap'n Jonah. He was worried, it must be confessed, by his wife's treatment of her uncle. He remembered that Cap'n Jonah admitted he had some money invested in oil shares; and what the bank cashier had said about such investments could not fail to impress his suspicious and avaricious mind.

"You may wake up, Sarah, and find you've made a bad mistake," he urged.

"I guess I can trim my sails to a change of wind if need be," she returned sharply. "But I've about made up my mind that old tramp is soon to be without a cent to bless himself with. And when that time comes, out he goes, bag and baggage! The poor farm's good enough for the like of him."

"But if he's got that old note of your father's----"

"Let's wait till that kettle boils," said Sarah Petty grimly. "I scare't myself enough about that at the start. I ain't found a single scrap of paper--not even any of my father's letters in which he mentioned the note. Jonah Hand says he lost his ship and all year afore last. I reckon all his private papers went down with it. I don't calc'late to be 'fraid again of no bugaboo."

Sarah's was a much bolder spirit than her husband's. She was the lion, he the jackal. He wrung his hands reflectively and made no reply. But privately he intimated to Cap'n Jonah that he did not approve of Sarah's putting the old seaman "into that poky garret room." It was well, Orrin thought, to have an anchor to windward.

Cap'n Jonah took both Orrin's and Tom's advances for what they were worth, and no more. And he continued to worry about his finances as little as possible. But Pearly----

There was something wrong between the girl and Tom. The captain began to realize that, and it, too, disturbed him. He saw them privately talking in corners--the girl angry and earnest, Tom slouching and with sneering face.

The lazy fellow did not go to work. He idled around the house, helped his father under protest, and occasionally went fishing or clamming and thus added to the family larder. His mother must have supplied him with money, the captain decided, for he was able to buy tobacco and such other small luxuries as he wanted. Sarah bought all his clothing, as she did Orrin's; and hard bargains she drove indeed for them with the peddlers and with Cap'n Abe.

Once Tom went to Paulmouth and came home with the unmistakable smell of liquor on his breath.

"You're a good-for-nothing, lazy fellow!" Cap'n Jonah once heard Pearl tell the youth, and with vigor. "And you won't ever do what you promised me you would--and 'twill soon be Christmas."

The captain wondered what it was Tom Petty had promised her. At least, the girl evidently had no love for the lout, and Cap'n Jonah was glad of that.

He watched her intercourse with Helmford, however, with high delight. When the "fish hatchery man" was near Pearl could not help preening her feathers for him. Her pretty face glowed with interest when he spoke. When he addressed her directly she was by no means tongue-tied; yet there was a sweet shyness in Pearl's manner at such times that was very attractive.

The young man could not fail to be charmed with the girl's unaffected sweetness when he was in her presence. But he held himself back, and treated Pearl only with that courtesy and kindness that he gave to every woman.

He presumed the girl was already chosen as the future mate for the son of the house. Helmford did not purpose to make Pearl's situation more difficult than it was by offering her any particular attention. Yet Tom Petty glowered at the two, and occasionally dropped a caustic remark for which his mother took him privately to task.

Helmford had brought a great store of books with him and bookshelves on which to arrange them. It was Pearl's duty to dust these from time to time, for, after having once gone through the new boarder's possessions quite as thoroughly as she had Cap'n Jonah's, Sarah Petty gave the care of the new boarder's room over to her willing little drudge.

Pearl had obtained a fair education in the simpler branches before she had been allotted by the selectmen to Orrin Petty, her mother's step-brother's cousin-by-marriage--a relationship which even the closest student of genealogy would have found difficulty in figuring out.

She loved to read and all the time she could steal from her multitudinous tasks was spent in that way. Not that her selection of fiction had been very wise, perhaps, before Helmford came to board at the Petty homestead. The romances in the _Ladies' Home Provider_ were not strong intellectual food; but they were amusing, even enthralling, to the mind of Pearl Holden.

These stories kept alive in the hearts of the women and girls who read them the fires of real romance. Their belief in the existence of chivalrous youth and beauteous maidens was nursed by these tales, and they added nothing if not a saccharine quality to life as it is lived on the Cape.

But Pearl's dippings into Helmford's books began to open her mind to the appreciation of other worlds. The highest attribute of man had heretofore been in Pearl's thought his ability to make love in a gushing, moving-picture-hero way. Perhaps her belief in the existence of such lovers had helped her hold aloof Tom Petty and his maudlin attempts at love making.

In Helmford's books she found the clash of real life--in itself a more enthralling romance than any Pearl had ever before dreamed. The heroines were, too, of a different character from the girls she had actually known. Why, sometimes they were more heroic than the men themselves!

She quickly awoke to the fact that romance was not something of which she could only dream. As she had told Cap'n Jonah, she thought of marriage, even if she might never reach that much-to-be-desired state.

Pearl saw that Sarah Petty, for instance, was stronger than her husband, that she took the lead. She knew she, herself, was more assertive than Tom. These new book-heroines seemed to possess all the push and determination that Pearl felt simmering in her own blood.

"If it was not unwomanly for those girls in the books to assert themselves, to go out into the world and be self-supporting, and in the end to choose the man they wanted for a mate instead of sitting down to wait for the right man to look them up--if it was all right for girls in books to do this, why," Pearl asked herself, "wasn't it the correct thing for real girls to do?"

Pearl determined when her "time was out" at Orrin Petty's to do just as some of these new heroines did. There was even Gusty Durgin, for a local example. Modesty or a shrinking from the unknown had not kept Gusty from setting forth with the single talent of being able to cry real tears to be a moving picture actress. The rather clumsy, overfed Gusty had never before seemed a heroine to Pearl Holden; but now she saw the ex-waitress of the Cardhaven Inn in a new light.

As for Pearl's opinion of Helmford himself, she at first placed him on a pedestal so high that he was scarcely in range of her humble worship. But a girl cannot take intimate care of a man's belongings--dust and sweep for him, clean up his litter, put away his garments, wash and iron his clothes, darn his socks, and otherwise care for him and for his possessions, without gaining a familiarity which, if it does not breed the proverbial contempt, certainly does tarnish any heroic quality he may have at first assumed.

Not that Joe Helmford was a man who held himself aloof. Quite the contrary. He was as simple and unaffected as Pearl herself. Only he had seen more of the world than she, and he had no idea of becoming too familiar with Pearl, or with any other member of the Petty household.

In other words, he knew his place and kept to it. He was friendly enough at mealtime; but he seldom appeared in the kitchen at any other hour save to ask for shaving water or to pass through to his room.

He had immediately purchased an open grate stove in Paulmouth and had had Perry Baker, the expressman, bring it over, along with a ton of coal from the Cardhaven dock where the freight schooner tied up. So he had his own fire, before which he spent most of his free time in study.

There was not much to do at the fish hatchery at this season, and Helmford had assistants there to watch things day and night. So he was able to study and read. Finding Pearl interested in books he advised her a little in the selection of reading matter from his library, which she bore off to her room, unknown to Sarah Petty.

Tom Petty, however, soon became aware of the innocent intimacy between Pearl and the new boarder. He snarled and sneered and spoke so pointedly about it that his mother said, in wonder:

"What do you care whether that feller, Helmford, pays attention to Pearl Holden or not? I sh'd hope you'd respect yourself too much to take any notice of hired help. What would your uncles, 'Poley and Perseus Heath, say--let alone their wives--if you undertook to hitch up with a pauper?"

For once his mother's advice was not calculated to impress Tom Petty. He assumed, at least, the attitude of the dog in the manger. If he did not want Pearl himself, he did not purpose that Joe Helmford should have her.

"You don't want to mix up none with that city feller, Pearly," he told her. "He's no good. You know what them city fellers are that come down here to the Cape in summer. He's like all the rest of 'em."

"He isn't," declared Pearl, briefly and with firmness.

"You don't know nothin' at all about him--who he is or where he comes from."

"Did I say I wanted to know?" responded Pearl proudly.

"Wal," said Tom, "you know you can't keep your eyes off'n him at table, and when he talks your ears hang open like the mouth of a dyin' codfish."

"I don't, either, Tom Petty!" she cried furiously.

They were out in the yard after their supper, and Pearl had been taking down a batch of washed clothes frozen to the clothesline. It was a cloudy night with no moon and was almost pitch dark. The clothes basket was at the girl's feet and separated her from Tom.

"I don't, either, Tom Petty," she repeated. "Mr. Helmford is nothing to me. But he's a gentleman."

"Aw, cat's foot!" scoffed Tom. "What's a gentleman? A dude with his pants ironed to a crease."

"A gentleman is something you ain't, and never will be!" cried the girl. "You're not gentleman enough to keep your word to a girl. You've broke your word to me. You won't go to work and earn money to pay your debts. You're as mean, Tom Petty, as you can be--an' I've a good mind to tell your mother after all," she ended in anger.

"You said you wouldn't tell," sneered Tom. "If you tell, who's the biggest liar--you or me?"

"I guess," said Pearl practically, "that a bad promise is better broken than kep'."

"You tell Marm," threatened the youth, "and I'll fix you, Pearl Holden!"

He actually raised his hand to her. She stepped back, seeing his gesture in the darkness, and at that very moment a tall figure thrust itself between them.

"Shall I carry the basket indoors for you, Miss Pearl?" asked Helmford's calm voice. "I am just going in."

He had come up the grassy lane unheard by Pearl or Tom. He noticed Tom not at all as he picked up the basket.

Pearl choked, stifled a sob, and scurried ahead of him without a word. Tom's protest died in his throat as Helmford strode after the girl, carrying the clothes basket.