CHAPTER XIII

FAIR AND FOUL WEATHER

Among other new worlds, that of poetry was being revealed to Pearl Holden. Although by no means sentimental, Joe Helmford had his bookshelves well supplied with the standard poets, as well as with the works of many of the minor versifiers.

"I do dearly love rhymes," Pearl said, and so Helmford pointed out these volumes to her. She began to learn that romance lay in other directions besides on the road of fiction.

"My!" she confessed to Helmford one evening, when she stopped in at his room on the way to her own for a book to read by the light of the small hand lamp Sarah Petty allowed her. "My! some of these pieces of poetry I read sound like chiming bells, and some flow sweet as honey. Some of the lines that I don't half understand, Mr. Helmford, thrill me through and through."

He watched her with something other than amusement behind his big, round glasses. Here was the budding of a soul into new life. Helmford began dimly to realize that Pearl was no ordinary girl after all. Had she been born in a different environment she would have eagerly absorbed such learning and culture as might have been within her reach.

"Some of 'em," Pearl went on to confess, "I guess I don't understand at all. I used to think all poetry must rhyme. You know, two lines ending with the same sound was all that made poetry, I thought," and she laughed.

"There must be a thought even in two rhyming lines to make poetry," Helmford suggested, gently smiling.

"Ain't it so?" she rejoined. "And some of these poets don't use rhyme at all. Here's this one. He puzzled me at first."

She seized a volume and opened it with a familiarity which plainly showed she had been browsing in it before.

"First I didn't know what to make of him. I read about 'When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd' and somehow I couldn't make it sound like poetry. Yet parts of it just made me shiver--just the reading of 'em." Helmford nodded appreciatively. "That was even before I knew the piece was about Abraham Lincoln and the passing of his funeral train through the country. That must have been wonderful!"

"It was wonderful," agreed the young man. "And it is wonderful how Whitman could touch the heartstrings without the tricks of rhyme or of alliteration."

"But it is--just--poetry?" slowly queried the girl.

"Are the Psalms poetry?" he began, quite as eagerly interested as she was now. "See! The man's style is based on them." He read, and with expression:

"'Now while I sat in the day and look'd forth,

In the close of the day with its light and the fields of spring, and the farmers preparing their crops,

In the large unconscious scenery of my land with its lakes and forests,

In the heavenly aerial beauty (after the perturb'd winds and the storms),

Under the arching heavens of the afternoon swift passing, and the voices of children and women,

The many-moving seatides, and I saw the ships how they sail'd,

And the summer approaching with richness, and the fields all busy with labor,

And the infinite separate houses, how they all went on, each with its meals and minutia of daily usages,

And the streets how their throbbings throbb'd, and the cities pent--lo, then and there,

Falling upon them all and among them all, enveloping me with the rest,

Appear'd the cloud, appear'd the long black trail,

And I knew death, its thought, and the sacred knowledge of death.'"

"But, oh!" cried Pearl, "he can write rhyming verses, too. This 'O Captain! My Captain!' He must have loved Mr. Lincoln. It makes me cry to read _that_ one. This about the lilacs--of course, it isn't about lilacs, only lilac time--thrills me, makes me _feel_."

"Ah, Pearly," murmured Helmford, "that is the acid test of all poetry."

Then he brought himself up "all a-standing," How was he talking to this girl? How was he thinking of her? This girl who seemed to him to possess only a certain beauty to recommend her? Was she, after all, like these other Cardhaven girls he had met?

Her sweet face was alive with interest. Her eyes glowed. Her figure palpitated before him, the full bosom rising and falling as the waves of feeling pressed on her while he read the lines.

"Isn't it wonderful? Isn't it beautiful?" sighed Pearl, when he had finished.

Her hand outstretched for the book met his lightly as he released the volume. The touch thrilled them both. Helmford sat forward in his chair. A flush mounted from the turned-back neck of her simple gown and flooded all her throat and face.

And at that instant, with their hands almost clasped, Tom Petty abruptly opened the door.

"What did I tell you, Marm?" snarled the lout, as the startled pair sprang apart. "Here she is."

Sarah Petty, her sharp face seemingly sharper than ever, thrust herself into the room before her son.

"Pearl Holden, you march yourself down to the kitchen! I want to see you, my gal. No! Leave that book here. I won't have you foolin' away your time on books when you leave ha'f your work undone. Go 'long, now, I tell you."

The girl went by her with flaming face and tear-bedewed eyes. To be thus spoken to before Mr. Helmford seemed hard indeed to bear.

Helmford arose promptly. There was something on the tip of his tongue that perhaps he would better have said. His mild look was gone and his shell-rimmed spectacles did not hide the sternness of his expression as he asked Tom:

"Did you wish to see me for anything?"

"Naw. I don't want to see you," sneered the scowling youth.

"When next you come to my room, _knock_," said Helmford. He turned his shoulder to them both and sat down again in his easy chair before the fire, picking up the book Pearl's slim fingers had so recently held.

"Hoh!" snorted the admonished Tom. But his mother pushed him out of the room and retired herself without making the boarder any reply.

In the cold hall she hissed into the enraged Tom's ear:

"_Now_ see what you've done! You want me to lose his board money, do ye, you good-for-nothin'? 'Twixt you an' that gal----"

"Yah!" snarled Tom, for once openly antagonizing her, "there ain't nothin' out of the way between me an' Pearly. It's what is between her an' that city feller."

"What do you care, Tom Petty?"

"I do care. Pearly ain't for him----"

"Nor she ain't for you," snapped his mother.

"I'll have her if I want," blustered her son, his pale eyes gleaming.

"I'll put her out of the house as sure as mornin' comes!" panted Sarah Petty.

"An' I'll go with her," declared Tom.

"You do, and you'll go for good," she threatened.

"Aw, what d'you s'pose I'd care?" he sneered, knowing full well his strength with her. "You ain't got nothin' here I can't get along without. You say yourself Uncle Jonah can take most of it away from you if he has that note of grandpop's, and is so minded."

"Sh!" she commanded fiercely.

"I won't 'sh!' for you," he growled. "Who do you think you're talkin' to--a kid?"

He grumbled on, following her down the stairs and back to the kitchen to which Pearl had preceded them. Orrin Petty, iron-rimmed glasses perched on nose, was reading the _Paulmouth Argus_ beside the kitchen lamp. Pearl stood defiantly, with clenched fists, in the middle of the room.

"You--you little rat!" gasped Sarah Petty, hoarsely, bursting into the kitchen and approaching the girl with an energy that seemed to precede a blow.

"Don't you strike me, Miz Petty!" cried Pearl, stepping back a pace. "Don't you ever strike me again! I'm too old for that and I won't stand it."

"Hoity-toity!" exclaimed Orrin, dropping his paper. "What a long tail our old cat's got! Can't you women folks give us no peace at all?"

Tom slouched into the kitchen without a word. Sarah Petty seemed poised like a rattlesnake, ready to strike. But there was something in the girl's attitude that held the woman back.

"You didn't have no call to speak to me the way you did before Mr. Helmford," said Pearl, her voice shrill. "I work for you, but I'm not your slave."

"You're a pauper!" hissed Sarah Petty. "You're beholden for your food and drink to me an' your uncle----"

"He isn't my uncle!" declared Pearl fiercely. "And you are not related to me, either. Nor Tom."

"Why, you impudent little baggage!" Sarah Petty gasped.

"And if you don't want me here, I can find some other place to work," went on Pearl desperately. "I'm not beholden to you from choice, and you know it."

"What's the matter? What's the matter?" inquired Orrin Petty again.

"This ungrateful baggage!" cried his wife. "I told you often enough, Orrin Petty, you'd never ought to brought her home. She's a temptation an' a stumbling-block to our Tom----"

"_Tom!_" Pearl's scorn pricked the shell of Tom's conceit. The look she gave the lout seared his very soul.

"Oh, yes!" he said harshly. "Think you're fit for something better than me, don't you? Ain't got no more use for me."

"Tom Petty!" shrilled his mother.

"No. I've no use for you," Pearl said, driven to desperation by her wrongs. "You can give me the money you borrowed of me to pay your gambling debts, and your mother can set me free. I'll go fast enough then, and thank you both."

"What's that? What do you mean?" shrieked Sarah Petty.

She sprang from the chair she had seated herself in but the moment before and darted at the girl, her fingers crooked and extended like talons. Sarah Petty's instincts were primeval.

But before she reached her victim the door at the foot of the rear staircase was burst open and Cap'n Jonah in his shirt and trousers, and with his stockinet nightcap on his head, thrust himself before the girl.

"Belay that!" he commanded in a deep-sea growl. "What's goin' on here? Ain't you satisfied, Sarah Petty, to work this gal double tides, without bringin' her to the mast ev'ry now an' then for a taste of the cat? I tell ye, I won't stand no more of it."

[Illustration: "Belay that!" he commanded in a deep sea growl.]

"You--you----" Sarah Petty could not find an expression to fit the occasion. Or else caution held her tongue with a sudden grip. "Did you hear what the little minx just said?"

"Yes," replied Cap'n Jonah. "I heard her. I heard her say that she lent money to Tom Petty to pay back to the Ladies Aid money that he'd took an' gambled away at the cattle show. And it s'prised me jest as much as it does you, Sarah."

He spoke more mildly, but his eyes flamed as he held the shrinking Tom with their gaze.

"She'd oughter be thrashed, old as she is!" cried Sarah Petty.

"I dunno but she had," agreed Cap'n Jonah, "for ever lending him a penny, anyway. I thought I'd headed off the young sculpin from borryin' of Pearly at all."

"What's that you say?" demanded his niece. "The little liar----"

"You air speakin' of Tom, ain't you, Sarah?" interrupted the master mariner boldly. "It ain't Pearly that's lied. I heard it all from my chamber winder. It was the first night I come here. Tom got into a pea-and-shell game at that fair and lost ev'ry dollar he had--Ladies Aid money and all.

"He whined around Pearly like a whipped puppy until the gal promised to lend him enough to pay you back, out of the little tad of money she'd saved up. I couldn't hear to that, you know," continued Cap'n Jonah, with less acrimony. "So I caught Tom airly the next mornin' and made him a present so't he wouldn't be tempted, as _I_ thought, to take money from the gal. But I didn't know the feller as well as I do now," and the mariner's scorn was biting. "Did he take your money that time, after all, Pearly?"

The girl, now unable to speak for the swelling of her throat, nodded.

"He's a purty poor fish, this boy, Tom, of yours, Sarah," said Cap'n Jonah. "He'll not only hide himself behind a gal, but he'll rob her."

"Aw," put in Tom in self-defense, "I'm goin' to pay her back all right. I was only teasin' her."

"Le's see you do it," said the captain tartly, striking for Pearly while the iron was hot.

Sarah Petty, silent for the moment with fury, suddenly dug under her skirt for the deep pocket she always wore. She drew forth her purse.

"_I'll_ pay the minx back," she said. "Of course Tom was only foolin'. But if you ever do sech a thing again, Tom Petty, I'll disown you! You see, now, I hope, what it means to mix up with pauper baggage like this gal."

"Belay that, I tell you!" commanded Cap'n Jonah, betrayed into an excitement he had occasion to regret later.

"I'd like to know, Jonah Hand, what int'rest _you_ have got in this gal?" snapped his niece, driven beyond the point of endurance.

"I'll tell ye right now," said the master mariner, sternly, "she ain't goin' to be treated like she was dirt under your feet no more. I've a mind to see the selectmen myself about it, and take her away."

"What do you mean?" gasped Orrin, putting in his oar at last. "After we carin' for her for seven year, an' jest as she's got of some use 'round the house, do you think we're goin' to let her go?"

"And who'd take the impudent thing in, I'd like to know?" demanded his wife. "After they heard that _we've_ got through with her?"

"She's beholden to us for every bite an' sup an' for the clo'es on her back," added the excited Orrin.

"She'd ought to be beholden to nobody," declared Cap'n Jonah, as Pearl sobbed upon his shoulder and his shirt-sleeved arm stole around her. "You folks don't appreciate her; but _I_ do. Whatever! If you don't take another tack with the gal, you an' Orrin, Sarah, I vow to man I'll will ev'ry cent I got and all my prop'ty--sech as it is--to Pearl Holden. She sha'n't be beholden to nobody after I die, anyway."

This bombshell, exploding in the Petty kitchen, left the trio dumb. Cap'n Jonah pushed the girl, her hand filled with the money Sarah Petty had paid to her, gently out of the room.

"You go up to bed, my gal, an' forgit it," he said. "I won't see you harrowed no more."

Then he passed the Petty group with scornful glance, opened the back stairway door again, and stormed heavily up to his room under the eaves.

"Whatever! Now I guess I have done it," was his murmured comment when he was again in bed.