CHAPTER VIII
THE BALD TRUTH
It was a narrow, dark stair up which Cap'n Jonah poked his way. He bumped his head at the landing and said "Whatever!" with more than his usual emphasis.
"It's like goin' below in a Chinese junk," he muttered.
He got into the room, lit a match and found and ignited the wick of the lamp upon the bureau. He had seen more cramped quarters; but it was a fact that the loft room over the Pettys' kitchen was not his ideal of what his quarters were to be when he retired from the sea.
The room had been occupied by a foremast hand of a sloop that Orrin had once chartered. Orrin had agreed with the man to berth him afloat and ashore, and when the _Sarah May_ was not at the fishing, the foremast hand dug the garden and helped at the chores.
The man, it seemed, must have had an inordinate dislike for fresh air, for he had nailed the one window in the room shut, and neither Sarah nor Orrin had ever taken the trouble since to take the nails out.
The nights were becoming frosty; but Cap'n Jonah found the low-ceiled room very stuffy and unpleasant. It was a bare and unadorned place, with the cracked looking-glass in such a position that a man could not possibly see to shave himself, either by daylight or lamplight.
There was no closet for his chest as there had been in the larger chamber, and it was forced to stand just where the unwary might break their shins against it.
His niece had soon got over treating him nicely. Cap'n Jonah realized that he had all too quickly been made "one of the family." And he was being treated as Sarah Petty treated the poor relation branch.
"I'd ruther go to the Sailors' Snug Harbor and be done with it," the captain ruminated. "At least, if I was treated there like a step-child 'twouldn't be my own flesh and blood was doin' it. This Sarah Petty, now, she's a cleaner and no mistake. I dunno where she ever got her meanness. Never from her father. The Hands wasn't none of 'em so penny-squeezing. Poor John! If he'd lived to see me treated like this by his gal he'd have been broken-hearted, I do guess."
He could not sleep in the close and airless chamber and about midnight he got up and smashed a couple of panes of glass in the upper sash of the window with his cane.
It was not often that Cap'n Jonah gave way to his temper. He who would make others obey, must first control his own weaknesses. The master mariner had long since learned that lesson. The next day he took out the nails holding the window sashes and put in two new lights of glass; setting about, too, to make his new quarters as comfortable as possible.
Used as he was to the compactness of a ship's cabin, he still found the loft room cramped quarters. Nor was there a comfortable chair in it. When he was not in bed he must sit with the family or remain out of doors.
"I vow!" he thought, "if I was married to Sarah Petty, like Orrin, I would stay out in the barn."
He bethought him of the retired seamen he already knew in the neighborhood, and made up his mind that most of them had it better than he had. 'Liphalet Truitt, for instance, was a king on his throne beside Cap'n Jonah Hand.
He and the ex-steward had become rather good friends in the weeks of Cap'n Jonah's sojourn at Cardhaven. Indeed, almost everybody found it easy to be friends with Mr. Truitt.
The spry ex-steward, well-known to everybody about Cardhaven and along the Shell Road, had been welcomed heartily when he had come ten years or more before to settle here. Having bought the little house next to the Mariner's Chapel, he was from the first a particular object of interest to the scattered congregation of fishermen and their families who shouldered the burden of its upkeep.
He had been every man's friend for the years of his sojourn upon the Shell Road, and Cap'n Jonah heard him spoken of highly at the store, where all local opinion was strained and filtered. But the captain had to confess that 'Liphalet Truitt was a more than ordinarily glum looking man.
He had heard Doctor Ambrose make his diagnosis of the reason for Mr. Truitt's appearance and attitude toward life in general with no particular belief in the medical man's opinion. Cap'n Abe Silt stated as a fact that "Life Truitt had turned like old cider--and quite as sudden--here of late." But the newcomer to the neighborhood found the ex-steward a most satisfactory companion.
"Ye-es," said Cap'n Jonah reflectively, "you air a sight better off than I be, Truitt."
"And me without chick nor child belonging to me but a cat?" sniffed the ex-steward.
"You can have my sheer of Sarah Petty and her lout of a boy, and welcome," said Cap'n Jonah bitterly. "Orrin ain't nothin' to me by blood, and a nephew-in-law ain't a very close relation anyway, thanks be! He's such a snoopin', suspicious critter. I swan to man! I believe he wakes up mornings counting his fingers like a baby, for fear somebody's stole one of 'em during the night.
"And the hull batch of 'em--'cept Pearly--can't let my things alone. They've s'arched my chist to the bottom board. If I have anything I don't want them to nose into I've got to carry it on me, that's a fact. Why, Sarah Petty is as inquisitive as that Pandory woman you read about in the books. Mr. Truitt, you are better off than you know, living here by yourself."
The ex-steward scowled. "Don't you fool yourself," he grumbled. "The Pettys may be some wearin' on a man; but it ain't what it's cracked up to be, livin' alone with nobody but Bo'sun to speak to ha'f the time."
"I dunno----"
"You're a man o' means, Cap'n Jonah," urged 'Liphalet, in his brisk way. "You ain't married to Sarah Petty, if Orrin is. You ain't got to stay there. There are other places you could get board where the folks would treat you right."
Cap'n Jonah looked at his friend steadily and took a pinch of snuff. It was a way he had when he found it difficult to come to an immediate conclusion. He flourished his big handkerchief and sneezed reflectively. He desired to make a complete confession to 'Liphalet Truitt, and yet he hesitated.
He was in no haste to reveal his private affairs to any person. Yet he felt that he must advise with somebody. He said slowly:
"I might go elsewhere to board. It's true. But I'd made up my mind to settle down, when I did leave the sea, with the only rel'tives I have.
"I had no idea Sarah Petty was the sort she is--no, sir! The only time I ever seed her in her own home was when the boy was small an' she was a young woman an' hadn't got soured. As a girl at home she was a smart little thing and a good housekeeper. I always envied John, even after his wife died, his house was kep' so neat.
"'That's the woman I want to live with when I settle down,' said I, thinkin' o' Sarah Petty. And then----Why, I tell ye, Mr. Truitt," added Cap'n Jonah, earnestly, "there's a good reason why Sarah should be willin' to take me in and do for me. When she put it on me at the start, as she did for board and lodgin', you could have knocked me down with a feather duster!"
Mr. Truitt raised his eyebrows questioningly. But he did not ask Cap'n Jonah verbally to explain. However, the latter pursued his rather roundabout course:
"When Sarah was a young gal her father got into difficulties, an' it was my privilege to help him out. It was something that one brother sh'd always be glad to do for another, Mr. Truitt," the captain earnestly said, "and with no thought of repayment. Yet 'twas something that I know John bore in mind and didn't let his daughter forget as long as he lived. He never writ me, but he mentioned his obligation.
"On the stren'th of that," pursued Cap'n Jonah rather solemnly, "I had reason to expect better treatment than I get at Sarah Petty's hand. My bite and sup won't bankrupt them--that I know. She's got me tied up in a sack for twenty-two-fifty a month with washin'; and I tell you honest, Mr. Truitt, my little tad o' money ain't goin' to last long at that rate."
"Why, Cap'n Jonah!" ejaculated the ex-steward, shaken out of his usual poise. "You don't mean to say you air short of money?"
"Wal, I soon shall be," admitted the captain.
"You got investments you can't touch?" suggested 'Liphalet gently. "If you got to wait for dividends, or such like, and a hundred dollars would be of any use to you----"
Cap'n Jonah put up his hand admonishingly. His mahogany face showed no heightened color, but his eyes shone with gratitude.
"You air a good feller, Truitt," he said. "But I don't want to borrow. I might not be able to pay back. I ain't got no investments that are bringing me in dividends."
"Your fortune ain't in stocks and bonds, then?" commented 'Liphalet placidly.
"Fortune!" snorted Cap'n Jonah. Then he added: "My fortune, 'Liphalet Truitt, is in thin air--that's what it is invested in."
"By Hannah!" ejaculated the startled 'Liphalet.
"Ye-as," said Cap'n Jonah, rather relieved now that his confession was out. "The bald truth is, I ain't got no fortune. I did git some little money together at off times durin' my life; but allus something come up to scatter it.
"Once I went into tradin' to the South Sea Islands with a feller, and we made quite a pile--twenty to twenty-five thousand silver dollars. We agreed that if either of us died, t'other should have the whole lot.
"Wal, our schooner went ashore on an atoll and our crew was drowned, and we was both captured by a bunch of savages with their teeth filed to sharp p'ints. You know what that meant!
"My partner seen me carried off, along with a big pot such as old-fashioned whalers used to try out blubber in, by one gang of savages, and he reckoned I was due to make the foundation for a cannibal goulash. But a missionary happened to land on the island where my gang of savages lived, and he saved my life."
"Saved your life, Cap'n Jonah?" repeated the interested Eliphalet.
"Yep," said Cap'n Jonah grimly. "He was fatter than me. So I was saved, and before I got fatted up to suit 'em, I got a chance to escape and I didn't refuse it. I landed in Hongkong the next year, just the day after my partner, sure I was dead, had blowed our fortune in at a gambling joint trying to break the bank.
"Wal," sighed Cap'n Jonah, "that's where one fortune went. I'd get a little together and then lose it. Only last year I owned a tidy brig called the _Two Eyes_--named in compliment to the Chinese idea of havin' an eye painted on either side of the sprit. John Chinaman says: 'If junk no have eye, how can see?' She'd belonged to a Chinese company before I got her, and was named _The Beautiful Lily With Black Spots_.
"Wal, the _Two Eyes'_ insurance ran out 'tween ports, she struck an uncharted reef, and in two hours I didn't own a thing but the duds I stood in and my instruments--ship and cargo both gone to the bottom."
"And you haven't a thing to show for all your years of hard work, Cap'n Jonah?" asked Eliphalet Truitt, almost horror stricken.
"I have a fine line of experience," said Cap'n Jonah with disgust. "I have the remains of my last year's airnings as skipper of the _Rajah's Mate_, in cash. And I have some sheers a feller sawed off onto me that I reckon ain't wuth much more'n that wall paper on your kitchen wall, Mr. Truitt. I invested two thousand dollars sev'ral years ago in them ile sheers, and then found the comp'ny had gone bust. All they ever got out'n the ile wells they bored, so they told me, was a bad smell!"
"I want to know!" commented the ex-steward, vastly perturbed by Cap'n Jonah's story.
"You can guess," went on the latter, "how much I got left out o' my money after payin' my fare home to the Cape. But I knowed another v'y'ge might put me on my beam ends. The rheumatics certainly have got their teeth set into me," and he rubbed his knees reflectively, swaying back and forth in Mr. Truitt's kitchen rocker.
"I calc'lated I'd be welcome--for a while at least--to Sarah and her folks. She writ me more'n a year ago she'd make a warm nest for me if I come here. An' whatever! she's makin' it warm enough, for a fac'."
"And you really have no fortune at all?" repeated 'Liphalet in wonder.
"Not a snitch," returned Cap'n Jonah. "That's the bald truth. Ev'rything I own of value I have right in my pocket here," he slapped the breast of his coat, "an' it ain't makin' me stoop-shouldered none carryin' of it around."