CHAPTER XXVI

CAP'N JONAH'S CHALLENGE

There was a satisfaction for Joe Helmford in his present mood, in putting his head down, clenching his fists, and struggling with the blowing sleet and snow as though the storm were an actual enemy. The rather impassive, gentle-mannered young man craved action to appease the turmoil aroused in his heart.

Unlike 'Liphalet Truitt, who had allowed ten unfruitful years to drag by while his heart and soul starved for the woman whose fortune kept him at a distance, Helmford's young blood surged against the barrier he was setting between himself and Pearl Holden.

He wanted Pearl. He believed the girl had shown him as plainly as a modest girl could, that she was interested in him. Hang Cap'n Jonah's fortune! Was it to spoil his life and that of Pearl as well?

Helmford desired to take Pearl away from her present environment and to make her the object of his own care. He wanted her to come to him with empty hands but a full heart. He was quite romantic enough to feel that a single thought of the fortune which Cap'n Jonah had promised her, would utterly spoil their happiness.

As he pressed on down the Shell Road in the face of the gale, he glanced in passing up the Petty lane. He saw no sign of life about the house; but had he been a few minutes earlier he would have seen Tom Petty, fresh from Cap'n Abe's store, black-browed and passion-inflamed, stamp up the porch steps and burst into the kitchen where his mother was cooking dinner and his father sat reading the Paulmouth _Argus_.

But Helmford did meet Cap'n Jonah as he issued from the store and was about to head homeward.

"Well, well!" was the master mariner's greeting, "you're a fine feller. Where have you been keepin' yourself? And why in tarnation did you cut your cable and put to sea as you did? Do you s'pose you ain't got any friends--or don't you want any?"

"Why, Cap'n Jonah," said Helmford, leading the old man into the shelter of one of Cap'n Abe's sheds, "I had no intention of ignoring you. I fancied you would hear all about it from the Pettys and--and Miss Pearl."

"Pearly? What does she know about it? She says you never told her you were goin' to leave. And Sarah Petty's ne'er mentioned your name from that day to this."

"Didn't Miss Pearl tell you of what happened yonder on the road, when she was coming home from church?"

"The night before you slipped your moorings? Nary a word," declared Cap'n Jonah, emphatically.

Helmford was rather taken aback. If Pearl had not told the old seaman of the incident perhaps she did not want it mentioned to him. Just how much the girl might be attached to Tom Petty, rough and uncouth as he was, Helmford did not know.

"Come now!" exclaimed Cap'n Jonah. "Let's hear the whole on't. I thought that gal was keepin' something back, but I didn't know what 'twas. You an' she didn't have no quarrel?"

"Pearl and I? Certainly not!" replied Helmford indignantly. Then he smiled grimly. "But I did have a brief set-to with Tom Petty."

"Whatever!" ejaculated Cap'n Jonah. "And you let that lout put you out?"

"I put myself out. I did not care to remain and quarrel with him continually--as I should."

"'Hem! Ye-as. I expect there might ha' been bad blood 'twixt you. Over Pearly, of course."

"Now, Cap'n Hand," interrupted Helmford emphatically. "I will not discuss Miss Pearl's private affairs at all. It is not my business to do so. You have told me that you intend making her the beneficiary of your will. Whatever my personal regard may be for Miss Pearl that fact, in itself, would preclude my being a rival of Tom Petty's for her favor----"

"Hoity-toity!" ejaculated Cap'n Jonah. "The kettle _has_ b'iled over for a fac'! Air you another loony feller like Life Truitt? Afraid of a woman if she has a little tad of money?"

"At least, I respect myself--and Miss Pearl--too much to have it said that I address her because she expects to possess your fortune, Cap'n Jonah, when you are gone. Tom Petty has already accused me of that."

"And what did you say to him?" demanded the old man.

"I didn't say much. I knocked him down," confessed Helmford.

"Whew!" whistled the captain, his eyes snapping with excitement "I'd like to have seen you do that. And I bet Pearly would too!"

"She did."

"She was there an' saw the fracas?"

"It wasn't a fracas," explained Helmford, rather shamefaced. "He tried to hit me with a club, and I got at him first. That's all."

"And Pearly saw it? With her own eyes? How'd she act?" demanded the eager captain.

"She--she cried. Of course she was frightened," the young man said, somewhat puzzled by the other's questions.

"'Hem! She didn't throw herself on Tom an' cry 'cause you'd fetched him a wallop?"

"Certainly not!" exclaimed Helmford somewhat angrily.

"Looks, then," observed Cap'n Jonah shrewdly, "as though she wasn't much int'rested in Tom. Dunno how she could be. I reckon you air no rival of his'n----"

"If you please, Cap'n Hand," interrupted Helmford gruffly, "we will not discuss the matter at all. Miss Pearl is not for me. She should marry a man of equal fortune."

He turned abruptly, and instead of entering the store as had been his intention, he stormed along the road and up the easy ascent toward Tapp Point and the exposed sand cliff beyond which, at that moment, 'Liphalet Truitt was searching for Sue Ambrose.

Cap'n Jonah allowed the young man to go without further speech; but he watched him out of sight in the driving snow, shaking his head thoughtfully.

"Whatever!" he muttered. "Dern the fortune, anyway! Looks as though 'twas a boomerang. If them phony sheers sarves to keep them two young folks apart, then I have made a mess, and no mistake!"

He was only half an hour or so behind Tom in reaching the house. But that half hour had served to change the atmosphere of the Petty household from that of cheerful complacency to one of fierce and eager antagonism to Cap'n Jonah.

Tom had brought into the kitchen something worse than the snow that stuck to his boots, although his mother had first of all begun to scold about that.

"What's got into you, Tom Petty? Don't you know enough to stomp your boots in the porch? One would think you was born and brought up in a barn," fretted Sarah. "If you air goin' to be a rich man some day, you better l'arn how to behave nice."

"Rich!" exploded her son, finally getting his breath. "Who's goin' to make me rich, I want to know?"

"Your Uncle Jonah," said Sarah placidly. "If you manage to behave yourself."

"Uncle Jonah! That consarned old cheat?" bawled Tom, so angry that he all but choked.

"What is the matter with you, Tom?" demanded his father, laying down his paper. "What's bitin' of you now, I want to know?"

"That dod-rotted old cheat!" began Tom again, when his mother interrupted him with:

"Now, Tom Petty! I won't hear you use sech language about your uncle. What mess have you managed to stir up?"

"I tell you what I have been doin'," vouchsafed the lout, his voice trembling, his face inflamed. "I've been listenin' to Cap'n Cheatin' Jonah and Abram Silt chucklin' over the way they've fooled us all--an' ev'rybody else 'round here. You might have known when this old sea-devil was so almighty thick with Abe Silt that they'd cook up something----"

"What do you mean, Tom Petty?"

Sarah's voice rose almost to a shriek. She started for Tom, her green eyes snapping, her fingers crooked like talons. Her rage was that of the feline. Tom actually retreated from her threatening front.

"I mean that old scoundrel ain't got scurce a cent to bless himself with. I heard him say it!" Tom panted.

"Goshamighty!" gasped Orrin.

"What d'ye mean? Them securities you told us about?" demanded Sarah.

"Was phony--make-believe. He just said so. He an' Cap'n Abe hatched it all up to fool you--so you'd treat him nice, an' treat Pearly nice."

"I can't believe it!" wailed Orrin weakly.

"If you air tryin' to fool us, Tom Petty, with one o' your silly jokes," declared his mother, "I'll near 'bout kill you!"

"I tell you we've been done--an' done good. That box was sent over from the bank for a joke. Cap'n Abe engineered it all, you bet! And you give this old sea-robin your parlor, and fed him up, and made much of him, and showed him off to Uncle 'Poley and Uncle Perse, an' the rest----"

"You shet your mouth!" commanded Sarah. Her face was as inflamed as his own. Her sharp features threatened dire work. Her lips, drawn back from her ragged teeth, were sprayed with foam like those of a maddened wolf.

Pearl, who had been doing the upstairs work, entered the kitchen on this tableau. With one accord the three Pettys turned upon her. Tom, in a single stride, reached the girl's side and seized her by the wrist with a grip that brought a cry of pain from her lips.

"Here's one that knew it all the time, I bet my hat!" growled the son.

"The ungrateful little baggage!" snarled Sarah, coming at Pearl from the other side.

Orrin had risen, and now leaned over the table, his hairy fists clenched and resting on it, his eyes glaring under penthouse brows.

Their attack was so sudden--so unexpected after the recent treatment they had accorded her--that Pearl was made speechless.

She had been about to slip into her coat, throw a hood over her hair, and venture up to the chapel to see if the committee on decorations had gathered there. She had not forgotten that Helmford had promised to help, and the girl hoped to meet him.

"Let me go, Tom Petty!" she demanded, dropping her outdoor garments and trying to break away from his rough grasp.

Sarah seized the girl's other arm and twisted it spitefully.

"Tell me!" hissed the woman. "Have you knowed this all along, you little viper, you? Tell me!"

She shook Pearl one way. Tom shook her another. Orrin demanded from across the table:

"Answer us! Is this here true? Has that old whelp been foolin' us? Ain't Cap'n Jonah got no fortune?"

"Cap'n Jonah?"

Pearl gasped the name as the door was flung open allowing the old seaman and, seemingly, a good part of the storm, to enter. It was such a furious blast that accompanied Cap'n Jonah into the kitchen that he had to put his back against the door and so force it shut against wind and snow.

He cleared his eyes with the back of his hand. He beheld the three Pettys surrounding the girl with an astonishment that turned instantly to indignation.

"Belay there!" he commanded. "What do you folks mean to do to that gal? Ain't I told you what I'd do if you didn't stop pickin' on her? Belay all! What d'you mean?"

Sarah flung around on him, her eyes fairly sparking. "Ah! Here ye be!" she cried. "You're the rich Jonah Hand, I hear tell? You got a box full of securities and money, I wouldn't wonder? _And who loaned 'em to you?_"

Cap'n Jonah was, for the moment, staggered. But he was already leaning against the door for support and his grim old mahogany face showed no flicker of emotion as he listened to his niece's tirade.

"We know all about it now, you pauper!" the woman cried. "Comin' here an' deceivin' your own blood rel'tives. Livin' on our bounty an' makin' a show out'n us that has give ye bit an' sup."

"Easy! Easy!" murmured Cap'n Jonah, grim-lipped. "Ye ain't lost nothin' by _me_, Sarah Petty."

"Shet up!" she shrieked at him. "I've been slavin' for you--ev'rybody knows it. Aunt 'Poley, an' Aunt Perse seen it. Miz Enoch Petty said I was a fool to do so much for any old tramp of a sailor----"

"Sarah Petty!" Cap'n Jonah's voice thundered through the room and silenced the woman. He was no longer aghast at the discovery the Pettys had made. His commanding voice and manner held his three relatives in abeyance as though he were speaking from his quarterdeck.

"Sarah Petty, I am your father's brother. There was a time, as you well know, when poor John--and you and your mother--might have been cast on a lee shore if it hadn't been for me standin' by an' seein' that you weathered the storm.

"If I had come to you when I landed here from China and demanded that you take me in and do for me, 'twould ha' been no more than right, as you know, Sarah Petty. As 'tis, I don't owe you nothin'.

"If you let yourself be fooled into believin' I was a wealthy man, you done it easy. _I never said I was!_

"I've paid you every cent I agreed to for board and lodgin'--_an'_ wash. My money is jest as good somewhere else, I reckon, as 'tis here, as long as it lasts. I'd ruther go to strangers and hire my keep from 'em, than stay under _your_ roof, Sarah Petty, on any terms. I'll go now. I'll find a shelter somewhere and send for my duffel."

He thumped his cane resoundingly on the floor and wheeled toward the door again. Pearl started toward him, both hands held out appealingly:

"Oh, Cap'n Jonah!"

"Pick up your coat, gal," Cap'n Jonah said firmly. "You come along o' me, if you will. I'll not leave you here to be hounded by these Pettys. Whether I've got money or not, I guarantee we can make a home together, an' 'twill be a peaceful one--that's whatever!

"I ain't on my last legs yet. I'm as good a man as Washy Gallup is, barrin' when the rheumatiz gets me. I can airn a dollar yet--an' so can you. Will you come along o' me, Pearly--an' take potluck?"

She was already struggling into her coat. She was laughing and crying together.

"Oh, Cap'n Jonah! Oh, Cap'n Jonah. You make me happier than I've been for a long while back. I wouldn't be afraid to start out with you right now for a voyage around the world!"

"That's the talk!" cried the stout-hearted old mariner. "We'll show 'em, Pearly--you an' me."

He tore the door open. He pulled his southwester more firmly over his ears. He took Pearl's arm within the crook of his own. The two marched out of the Petty kitchen and were almost instantly swallowed in the smother of the storm.