CHAPTER XXVIII

ALL ABOUT A BAD SMELL

The three Pettys were not happy. Somehow Cap'n Jonah's defiance and Pearl's joyful determination to put herself under the old mariner's protection, quite took the taste out of any pleasure Sarah Petty might have felt in seeing the two "paupers" start out into the storm.

Orrin sank gloomily into his chair and openly groaned. The sand was cut out from under him, and no mistake! The melting of Cap'n Jonah's fortune was a catastrophe of overwhelming proportions. Orrin felt that he would never get over it.

It was the son who first found voice and energy to put his thoughts into words.

"There!" he croaked. "_Now_ you've done it, an' I hope you're satisfied."

"What's the matter with you, Tom Petty?" demanded his mother, apprehending the young fellow's complaint before it was uttered.

"You've driv' Pearly away. She ain't got no business going off with that old sea-devil!" cried Tom.

"Wal, what d'ye want her here for?" queried Sarah. "She ain't wuth her salt no more. 'Twixt Uncle Jonah and that Helmford feller, they've nigh 'bout ruined her for work."

"_Work?_" repeated Tom, with scorn. "That's all you ever think of--you slave driver! I didn't want Pearl driv' out."

"Why not? What's she to _you_--when she ain't goin' to have no money?"

"She's my girl!" cried Tom hotly. "Or she would ha' been if it wasn't for that consarned Helmford. And it's your fault he ever come here and made trouble 'tween us."

"Why, you talk foolish!" declared Sarah.

"Is that so?" snarled the lout. "Well, I can tell you right now: If Pearly's goin' to be turned out o' house an' home, so'm I. I'll go with her."

This ridiculous statement, however, did not make Sarah Petty smile. After all, the woman's very soul was bound up in Tom. He could get his way with her by such threats at any time. And she was broken in spirit now.

"You--you can't get her to come back," she stammered.

"I can try," declared Tom. "And I'm goin' to. But you've got to promise to be good to her. If I marry Pearl I ain't goin' to let her be your slave no more."

"You ain't married her yet," said Sarah pursing her lips tightly.

"An' there's another thing," went on Tom, using the gaff without mercy. "How about if Uncle Jonah turns on you with that old note of gran'-pop's? He ain't forgot it. You can see that by what he just said to you. He was throwin' it up to you. An' now it's proved he ain't got a fortune, he'll try seeing what he can get out o' you."

"You hesh up," commanded Sarah Petty, suddenly recovering her poise. Orrin might be utterly helpless; but she had begun to think again. Tom's point was well taken. She could only judge other people by her own mind. That was the great lack in her character, after all. She measured every other person by her own warped standard.

It was possibly within Uncle Jonah's power to make the Pettys a great deal of trouble. Even if the old note for two thousand dollars was outlawed, if the old captain pressed the matter the fact would be made public that Sarah Petty had not settled her father's just debts when she had administered his estate.

The Petty family--Uncles 'Poley, Perse, Solon and Enoch, and their wives and connections--would hear all about it. Sarah was a social climber. She had desired to use the prestige of Cap'n Jonah's supposed fortune as a ladder on which to mount to the higher branches of the family tree.

There was nothing criminal in Sarah being deceived by the old sea captain regarding his financial affairs. That was not her fault. But if the story got abroad that she, after all, owed Cap'n Jonah all the attention she had given him--and much more--the Harwich Pettys would have something to say about it!

Sarah Petty could better bear being laughed at for being fooled by Cap'n Jonah, than be exposed as having cheated the old man out of two thousand dollars. Her calmer thought compassed this fact almost immediately. Shrewdly she readjusted her plans for the future.

"Tom Petty," she said briskly, "you go after that gal. You bring Pearl back here. She ain't got no right to leave us this-a-way in any case, for we're her guardeens, made so by the 'thority of the town _se_lectmen till she's eighteen."

"You want I should spoil ev'rything," her son complained. "If I try to order her back----"

"I didn't say so, did I?" snapped his mother. "We've got a hold on her just the same. But that's our last resort. You find Pearl an' tell her to come back. You be nice to her. If you want to marry the girl your father and I ain't got no objections. She's a fav'rite of Uncle Jonah Hand. A blind man can see that. And he won't do nothin' that'll hurt her or her'n. D'ye see? If Pearl an' you marry, he won't press no old note against this estate that's a-comin' to you some day. That is sure."

"I dunno can I git her back," grumbled Tom, buttoning his coat again. "But I'll find out where she's goin' and what she's goin' to do."

"You can look in at Abe Silt's store," said his mother, sharply. "If that old tramp's such good friends with Silt, that's where he an' Pearl's gone."

Tom thought this very likely, and he made the store his destination. It seemed as though the storm was abating; but Tom Petty was so deeply engaged in thought that he paid slight attention to the weather.

The lout had come to a juncture where he could no longer shift the burden of decision to other shoulders, or postpone settlement of this question until a future time. The shock of Pearl deliberately leaving the house with Cap'n Jonah had roused him to at least one fact.

He cared a great deal for the girl. His was an utterly selfish love; but such as it was, it was the very best imitation of affection that Tom Petty would probably ever experience.

To his mind Joe Helmford was but a passing fancy of Pearl's. Of course, in the end, he, Tom, would get her. It was foreordained. They had lived in such close companionship for so many years that he could imagine no change. That was why her actual departure had so shocked him.

Now he was going after her. He never considered that she might not return home with him. Why, any other outcome of his attempt he did not contemplate for a moment! He had bullied Pearl for so long that he expected to keep on doing so indefinitely. Pearl was "easy." That was the way Tom Petty expressed it to himself.

He did not enter Cap'n Abe's store, but went around the house to the kitchen door, expecting to find Betty Gallup there and learn from her how the land lay. It was not Mrs. Gallup, however, who came to the door in answer to his knuckles on the panel.

"Tom Petty!"

"Hi, Pearly!" the youth greeted her, calling up a grin. "Marm wants you should come home."

"I'm never going back to your house again, Tom Petty, only to get my things."

"Now, don't say that, Pearly," the young fellow went on, very mildly for him. "You don't want to be mean. Marm never said for you to go----"

"I came away with Cap'n Jonah on my own hook," she agreed. "And I'm not going back."

"Aw, yes you will," Tom repeated. "You know how much I like you, Pearly. I couldn't get along without you--no two ways about it! You got to stop this foolishness and come home. That old feller ain't got nothin'. He can't look out for himself, let alone do anything for you. And Helmford wouldn't look at you, you know well enough, if he didn't think you was goin' to be rich. Come on home, now."

"I won't!"

He thought she was about to close the door. Tom Petty had never learned patience, and his appearance of gentleness was only a veneer. His right hand shot out and he caught the girl's slim wrist. He jerked her out upon the step.

"You come home along o' me and stop your foolishness," he growled. "Do you hear me, Pearly?"

She struggled to escape. With her free hand she struck him across his inflamed and ugly face. She cried out as he forced her down the steps into the beating storm.

"Stop! Stop, Tom Petty! I won't go home with you!" she cried.

Around the corner of the kitchen ell charged Joe Helmford--the very person Pearl most desired to see.

"Let her alone!" commanded the man fiercely.

Tom turned on him, snarling. He was so enraged that he forgot for the moment to be afraid. Helmford stripped off his beclouded spectacles and handed them to Pearl. He unbelted and dropped his Mackinaw at his feet.

"Look out for yourself, Tom Petty!" he said threateningly. "I am going to give you what you have been suffering for ever since you got too big for your mother to spank."

They were not unevenly matched as to height and weight. Tom's muscles were fully as well developed, and he was as supple as his antagonist. In a rough and tumble fight he might even have been Helmford's superior.

But the latter would not allow the lout to get a wrestler's hold upon him. As Tom charged, Helmford stepped nimbly aside and drove his fist into Tom's face. Had the latter been wise he would have let that blow begin and finish the battle. But such courage as the lout owned was roused by the smart of the blow.

His face was a mask of blood as he rushed for Helmford a second time. His antagonist met this onslaught fairly. His hard and capable fists drove in with all the weight of his shoulders behind them, while Tom pawed the air blindly with clutching hands.

Tom could not reach his opponent at all; but it was several moments and he was a desperately bruised young man, before this truth came fully home to him. His own arms flung like flails, but to no purpose. Helmford reached his bruised face and battered it with such lusty blows that Tom thought his antagonist must have more than the usual number of fists.

Petty staggered; he slipped; he fell to his knees; he got up again. While all the time the blows rained upon him and he was blinded. He began to bleat like a calf in the grip of the butcher. He could not escape.

Finally arrived the last and merciful blow--Helmford's right to the point of the jaw. Tom was felled and lay there in the snow, for the moment quite unable to realize where he was or what had happened to him.

When he actually came to his senses Joe Helmford had taken Pearl away. They had been ready, as it was, to accompany Miss Sue to the chapel to trim the Christmas tree. But the storekeeper, Cap'n Jonah, and Betty Gallup, were grouped about the fallen lout, and were staring at him.

"I tell ye what 'tis," the able seaman said, in her jerky and emphatic way, "once in a while one o' these city fellers does somethin' that ye hafter admire 'em for. Who'd ha' thought Mr. Helmford, whose business 'tis, _he_ says, to teach fishes to hatch their aigs, had so much in him? Why, this Tom Petty's been sufferin' for this beatin' for years, an' there ain't been a loafer around this store with public sperit enough to do it."

Nevertheless it was Betty Gallup who helped the dazed youth to his feet and assisted him into the house and made him lie down upon Cap'n Abe's lounge in the living room. She brought warm water and laved his bruised face. And she brought vinegar and brown paper and put a patch on his inflamed eye.

"Now you lay up here as long as you feel like, Tom Petty," Mrs. Gallup said, as she cleared the table of the dinner dishes. "Mischief's done now, and you can't better it. Folks is bound to know you got licked, for your hull face advertises the fac'."

The storm kept many customers from interrupting Cap'n Abe, although the wind was moderating. He sat with Cap'n Jonah in the living room and discussed the latter's financial affairs more earnestly than heretofore.

"You say this here money you got in your wallet is all you got in the world, Cap'n Hand?"

"Whatever! Nor no more to be had," said Cap'n Jonah. "I got some ile sheers--but, pshaw! They ain't nothin'."

"What air them sheers?" demanded Cap'n Abe, suddenly. "Better take stock of ev'rythin', as the feller said when he listed the litter of kittens in the sheriff's sale. I was readin' in the _Globe_ paper only this mornin'----"

He got up and brought the Boston paper from the rack on the wall. Unfolding it he found the financial page and pointed a horny forefinger to the heading of an article there printed.

"What's this here?" Cap'n Abe asked. "Where's my readin' specs? Never can find 'em when they air wanted."

"On your forehead like they always be," said Cap'n Jonah, taking the paper after having adjusted his own eyeglasses. "'Hem! Whatever! What d'you make of this, Mr. Silt? Why, them's the very sheers! The Little Sandy Oil and Coal Company."

"Lemme see!" said Cap'n Abe eagerly, having twitched his silver-bowed spectacles astride his nose. "D'you mean to say, Cap'n Hand, that you got some o' them Little Sandy sheers?"

"Abe Silt!" ejaculated Cap'n Jonah, almost breathless. "I got two thousand of 'em! Right here in my pocket! D'you s'pose they can be the same?"

"'Little Sandy Oil and Coal Company,'" read Cap'n Abe, slowly. "'Lay dormant many years.' 'Outskirts of the thriving city of Decatur.' My soul, Cap'n Hand!"

"Why," said the other, "they told me two year ago that all they ever got out o' them wells they drove, was a bad smell."

"Hi-mighty!" shouted Cap'n Abe, slapping his knee in high delight. "That's exactly what they did git! Nateral gas! D'you know what that is, Cap'n Hand? Why, it means they air piping that 'nasty smell' you speak of into the city of Decatur, an' sellin' it to light _an'_ heat houses. What d'ye know 'bout that?"

"Whatever!" gasped Cap'n Jonah.

"How many of them sheers you got?" demanded the excited storekeeper.

Cap'n Jonah dragged from the breast pocket of his pilot coat a long envelope, much stained and worn. From this he produced the ornate certificate of the Little Sandy Oil and Coal Company, which stated upon its face that he was the owner of two thousand shares in the capital stock of the concern. A third pair of eyes, one very much "bunged up" at present, stared at the certificate. Tom Petty had seen that document before!

"Two thousand!" murmured Cap't Abe. "Hi-mighty! Look here! This paper says the sheers have gone to fifteen dollars already. By the great jib boom, Cap'n Hand! That there document in your hand is worth thirty thousand dollars!"

Cap'n Jonah stared at the storekeeper in utter bewilderment at first. He repeated slowly: "Thirty thousand dollars? Whatever!"

"There's your fortune, Cap'n Hand!" cried the storekeeper in vast delight. "An' a fortune that's wuth while. You needn't worry about the Pettys no more. Nor about Pearly----"

"Belay all!" gasped Cap'n Jonah, hoarsely, and laying a restraining hand on the storekeeper's knee. "Don't say a word to nobody."

"Huh?"

"Not a word," repeated Cap'n Jonah, sternly. "I don't want folks to know about _this_ fortune. Above all, don't let that fish trainer, Helmford, hear a word about it. For if he does, like as not he'll slip his moorings again and run out to sea. He's got a fool conviction, like 'Liphalet Truitt, that if a woman's got a little tad of money, he mustn't marry her."

He turned quickly to cast a suspicious glance at Tom Petty. The battered youth had fallen back on the pillow and his eyes were closed. To tell the truth, Tom was pretty near all in!