CHAPTER XXI

THE WISE MEN OUT OF THE SOUTH

The two members of the Petty household who, after all, were to be the more affected by the abrupt departure of Joe Helmford, knew nothing about it until the expressman came for the young man's baggage and his books. His absence at breakfast and dinner chanced to draw no comment or question from Cap'n Jonah; and Pearl, after the incident on the road coming from chapel, dreaded meeting the man from the fish hatchery.

Tom's brutality and his insulting words had utterly overpowered her. Again, because of her excitement, she had scarcely noted the reference to Cap'n Jonah's threatened disposal of his fortune. Of all the inhabitants of this longshore community Pearl Holden probably was the least interested in money, either in large or small sums.

But she owned now to a deep and abiding interest in Joe Helmford. For the moment she was in his arms as he steadied her against the wind squall, she found herself giving in utterly to the thrill of his embrace. Had Tom not burst so unexpectedly upon them what might not have happened?

The contact of Pearl and Helmford at that exciting instant was as innocent as that of two children. Yet she had lain awake for hours after it, living over again the sweet significance of their coming together through grace of the wind.

She shrank from meeting Helmford because of what Tom Petty had blurted out. She would feel shamefaced she knew; and yet she could scarcely wait to see him.

When he did not appear at breakfast and dinner she wondered. Sarah Petty looked grim indeed. She had forced Tom to tell the truth about his trouble with Helmford--or as near the truth as the lout ever spoke--and she realized that there was nothing to be made by quarreling with Pearl.

Helmford had stated an incontrovertible fact: Her son was "impossible," and Sarah knew it.

They were giving the lower part of the house a thorough cleaning on this day in preparation for the coming of the expected guests. The chambers were left until after dinner. So Pearl did not discover the condition of Helmford's room. Sarah refrained from ordering no plate set for the young man at dinner. For once the woman shrank from telling her mind outright.

When Perry Baker came for Helmford's goods the truth came out. Amazement sat upon Cap'n Jonah's mahogany countenance. Pearl was bewildered.

Had Helmford gone without a word--without saying good-bye? Grim-lipped, Sarah Petty would not explain, and both Orrin and Tom had been ordered to keep their mouths closed. There had been a contest in the kitchen the night before, and for once Sarah Petty was worsted by her husband and son. Orrin, as he had previously promised Tom, had backed the lout in his determination to get rid of the boarder.

Pearl could not ask anybody to solve the mystery of Helmford's brusk departure, and all Sarah would vouchsafe her uncle was:

"It didn't suit for him to be here no longer."

"Something fishy 'bout that--something very fishy," whispered Cap'n Jonah to Pearl. "Wonder what 'tis?"

"Oh, Cap'n Jonah!"

"What do you know 'bout it, my gal? Joe Helmford was a good friend of yours."

"He--he's gone without a word!" sobbed Pearl.

"You dunno no reason?"

"He didn't say anything to me about leaving," she replied, shrinking from telling anybody of the incident on the road the previous evening.

"Nor to me. And he's usually a mighty open-spoken, friendly chap. I don't understand it," declared Cap'n Jonah. "I'm going to look him up and find out what it means."

But this was poor comfort for Pearl. To her mind a great gulf had opened between Joe Helmford and herself. He had gone away without one word--or look--or handclasp! Had Tom's rude speech the night before warned him from the dangerous salient into which he and Pearl had ventured? Unsophisticated as was Pearl Holden she had felt, her woman's intuition told her, that the young man, too, had experienced the same pulsation she herself had known as they stood together on the wintry road.

Had he run away from her? The thought one moment stung her pride; the next she was deep in despair because Helmford's abrupt departure did not seem to conform to his unfailing courtesy.

She knew, of course, that Tom's ugliness was the spring from which all this trouble flowed. The actual cause of Helmford's departure must be his brief struggle with the lout.

Pearl had felt some primal passion stir within her when Helmford had so easily overcome the lout. It seemed almost a miracle that one man with only his bare hands could beat another who held the advantage of a stout club. And a studious, seemingly gentle man, like Joe Helmford! Pearl knew nothing about the athletic training our American youth gain at college; nor did she dream that the lanky, apparently "loose hung" man from the fish hatchery was the acclaimed champion boxer of his class.

But she knew she had been glad, _glad_ when Helmford struck the blow that knocked Tom Petty to the ground.

She saw the swollen and inflamed spot upon the side of the lout's neck which advertised the blow, and she was glad again.

Nevertheless she could not bring herself to explain to Cap'n Jonah what had happened, or discuss in any way the disappearance of Joe Helmford. She was relieved that there was so much to do in preparing for the coming of the guests from the "south." One cannot entirely give way to sorrow where one's time is so fully occupied with work. Pearl Holden sought her bed that night so tired that she would have slept soundly in any case.

The four families represented by the four wise men from out of the south and their wives, lived near Harwich. They came by train to Paulmouth, from whence Willy Peebles and another driver of an auto car brought them over to the Petty place on the Shell Road.

It was a crisp, delightfully cold day, and the extra fires indoors made most of the house comfortable. Still, the visiting women sat around the sitting-room stove with knit shawls over their shoulders and gossiped with Sarah Petty while the men made the usual pilgrimage to the barn to look over Orrin's stock and to swap stories and tobacco.

In spite of the fact that Solon Petty was one of the legislators of the Commonwealth, and Enoch, his cousin, carried a large section of the politics of Harwich in his vest pocket, as the saying went, they were longshore born and longshore bred, and would never be anything under their skins save a combination of farmer and fisherman.

'Poley and Perseus Heath were storekeepers. All their long lives (they were now upward of sixty) they had looked, talked, and dressed just alike. So much alike were they that if you addressed, as you supposed, Uncle 'Poley, more than likely you would be answered by Uncle Perse. It was gossip that the twins' wives had certain marks of identification by which they could tell with precision "which was which"; but nobody else had such omniscience regarding the Heath twins.

"Ye haven't even got as much chance," said Cap'n Abe, discussing the wonder at the Shell Road store, "as they had with them twins, Bill and Tom, they tell about down to Chatham. Bill fin'ly lost all his teeth; so if anybody wanted to distinguish 'twixt them two brothers he'd stick his finger into Bill's mouth, an' if he bit ye, 'twas Tom!"

To see the Heath twins sitting in the sun on Orrin Petty's barnyard fence, chewing tobacco in unison, reminded one of a couple of ancient billygoats--for their sparse chin whiskers moved up and down, and back and forth, just like a goat chewing a particularly succulent mouthful of food.

Naturally Solon and Enoch Petty were looked upon as wise men because of the political prominence they had gained; but the Heath twins had gained an equal reputation for wisdom by keeping still tongues in their heads. Nothing "got by" Apollo and Perseus Heath; but they seldom gave a verbal opinion on any point.

"A pair of quahogs with the lockjaw ain't got nothin' on 'Poley and Perse for dead silence," Orrin Petty observed to Sarah.

"You'd better take example by them," she snapped. "They've made money keepin' their mouths shet."

Cap'n Jonah was down at the store when the "Wise Men from the South" arrived. So there was plenty of opportunity to discuss him and his fortune, both in the sitting-room and on the sheltered panel of the barnyard fence, before the old seaman returned.

"Ye see, he's re'l old," Sarah Petty explained, "and he don't re'lly know how broken he is. The rheumatism has settled on him, an'--well, you know how these deep bottom sailors be when they finally come back to the Cape and settle down. They ain't long in anybody's way."

"But ye say he's well fixed, Sarah?" said Uncle 'Poley Heath's wife--a massive woman with well-developed chin whiskers.

"Why, he don't talk none of his money, Uncle Jonah don't," confessed Sarah Petty, as though she thought this was a fault and should be excused. "Putting the best foot forward" was almost a religion with her. "He's a Hand," she explained, "and they was always tight-mouthed. But when he had his strong box over from the Paulmouth Bank the other day he showed Tom some securities. You know how boys be," hesitated Tom's mother. "Tom was curious and he took note. Uncle Jonah had him tot up the amounts of some of his sheers an' such, and Tom says it comes to more than a hundred thousand dollars."

"A hundred thousand!" gasped Mrs. Enoch Petty.

"For the good land's sake!" wheezed Mrs. Perseus Heath, who was little, and fat, and asthmatic.

"I sh'd say he was well fixed!" said Solon Petty's wife, who was almost as sharp of tongue and feature as Sarah herself. "A hundred thousand dollars! My!"

Mrs. Enoch Petty was the only one that expressed suspicion: "I s'pose you are _sure_ he's got all this money, Sarah? He might be foolin' you. And if he does it just to work on your sympathies, and you took care of him----"

"Oh! Indeed!" sniffed Sarah Petty. "Uncle Jonah Hand is one that pays his way wherever he goes. Of course, I give him our front room and we have to get along as best we can without a parlor. But he insists on paying his shot."

"Oh!" said Mrs. Enoch.

"That's what I call proper," said Mrs. 'Poley in her heavy voice.

"How nice!" panted Mrs. Perse.

"_That's_ an uncle wuth havin'," admitted Mrs. Solon.

On the barnyard barrier it was the same:

"This here uncle of your wife's a pretty far-seeing man, Orrin?" asked Enoch Petty. "The boy that drove us over here said 'twas all around the neighborhood that Cap'n Jonah Hand had come back from China with his pockets full of cash."

"_My_ driver," said Solon, who was a ponderous man, "said the cap'n brought home more than his pockets full. Said he had a safe here at the house stuffed full of gold and silver, and that Perry Baker, the expressman, who brought it over from the bank, was so scare't of being robbed on the way that he was threatened with nervous prostration--er, haw! haw! haw!"

"Hoh!" snorted Tom, in echo, and with disgust.

"No," said Orrin coolly. "That strong box has gone back to the bank. I guess Cap'n Jonah is a pretty careful man."

"But he _has_ got money?" queried Enoch.

"Some," said the cautious Orrin.

"Think we could get him interested in that Short Line 'twixt Harwich and Beanport, Enoch?" suggested Solon slyly.

The twins' jaws wagged more swiftly. As one man they opened their lips and together cried:

"Ye might let us in on that!"

"No, boys," said Enoch, shaking his head. "This is not a family matter. We don't let the family in on nothin' but sure things. This here Harwich and Beanport Line is a sort of gamble."

"Huh!" ejaculated Orrin. "Ain't Uncle Jonah one of the fam'ly, I'd like to know?"

"Not exactly," drawled Enoch.

"Er-haw! haw! haw!" laughed Solon loudly. "Cap'n Hand's a sort of step-child in this case. We need money for that Short Line development----"

"You seine for some other man's money," Orrin said shortly. "Uncle Jonah's too old to go in with you boys in any onsartain scheme. He may not be a Petty; but we don't propose he shall lose any of his hard-airned money that may in time _come_ to a Petty."

"Well said!" chorused the twins, with vigorous approval.

"Never take no risks," added Uncle 'Poley.

"Penny saved is a penny airned," said Uncle Perse.

They were full of old saws and sayings, were the Heath twins. Solon Petty burst out with his rumbling laugh.

"Those are the tight-lipped and tight-fisted boys. They ought to be bankers instead of storekeepers. It's taking chances that makes Big Business."

"Ye-as. Mebbe," said Orrin. "But Cap'n Jonah Hand has taken all the chances he's ever goin' to take if _I_ have any influence with him. We know what he's _got_; we don't know how much less he might have if he fooled with these gambling games. Why, there ain't any of 'em square!"

"Ain't it so?" agreed Tom, with a vivid remembrance of his experience at the cattle show.