CHAPTER IX

A SHELL ROAD IDYL

"I wouldn't so much care about myself," Cap'n Jonah went on reflectively after a minute. "There's always the Sailors' Snug Harbor, and I've made inquiries about that. I've got money enough right now, if I don't let Sarah Petty take no more away from me, to buy my way into the Harbor, where I'll prob'ly get decent treatment for the rest of my life.

"Course, livin' in an institution," sighed the captain, "an' being called an inmate in the yearly reports, ain't prob'ly all it's cracked up to be. But I jest 'bout as soon live with a steam calliope as with Sarah Petty; and Orrin pesters me like an auger going through a pine knot.

"It ain't so much myself," repeated Cap'n Jonah, "as 'tis the way they treat that poor gal, Pearly. I can scurcely keep my feelin's to myself sometimes when they are a-houndin' of that poor gal."

"Yep. I've heard tell of it," Mr. Truitt said, nodding. "Miss Sue said to me once't she didn't see how the gal stood it."

"Sarah Petty claims her services, I believe, and the gal says herself she ain't eighteen. Sarah don't care a mite how bad she treats me; how much less does she care how she makes Pearly feel? Whatever!"

"It's a master hard situation," admitted Mr. Truitt frankly.

"'Hem! I know what would fix 'em," growled Cap'n Jonah. "If I did have the slew of money they at first thought I might have, I could bully 'em into treatin' the gal half decent, I vow! Now they've gone all through my duds and duffel an' ain't found so much as a pen scratch about a fortune, Sarah and Orrin air 'bout convinced I ain't got much laid by."

"By Hannah!" ejaculated 'Liphalet, his eyes widening. "If you could fool 'em--if you could make 'em think you did have a fortune, Cap'n Jonah----"

"Whatever!" responded the master mariner. "How could I do that? Nothin' but hard cash would convince Sarah and Orrin Petty, I allow. And hard cash I ain't got."

"There ought to be some way to fool 'em," insisted 'Liphalet. "We'd ought to be able to think up something."

"Think up what?" growled Cap'n Jonah, shaking his head. "I ain't got the conscience to try to sell them old ile sheers I hold. Though I calc'late Orrin would ha' bit on them when I first come."

"By Hannah!" said 'Liphalet again, which was his emasculated pronunciation of "Gehenna!" "It would sarve 'em right if they got fooled, good and plenty. You needn't be too tender with such folks. And there's a hull lot like 'em around here," he added, in an undertone. It was plain the ex-steward's opinion of his neighbors--some of them, at least--had become as the storekeeper suggested, somewhat soured.

"I tell ye what," he went on. "You'd ought to talk with Cap'n Abe about this."

"Talk with who?" ejaculated the other in surprise.

"With Abram Silt."

"Whatever! That old gasbag?" snorted Cap'n Jonah. "Ev'ry time I go into that store for my snuff he starts tellin' me some silly yarn! I been to sea too long myself to enjoy hearin' about other sea-farers an' their hard luck. Why! they tell me he didn't even come fair an' honest by his title of Cap'n. All he was ever skipper of was a wreckin' comp'ny."

"Wal, now, cap'n is one of the easiest titles to come by on the Cape," said Mr. Truitt excusingly. "And as for Cap'n Abe--wal, sir, I do allow he is one of the smartest men we have around here, if he didn't never go but one v'y'ge in a deep bottom craft."

"Didn't know as he ever done even that," scoffed Cap'n Jonah. "To hear him tell those yarns of his you'd think he'd sailed longer without seeing land than old Noah did."

"He loves seafarin' and always has," commented 'Liphalet. "And I reckon he's the only Silt that warn't as salt as a haddocker. Now, his brother, Cap'n Am'zon Silt, _he_ was a corker. Spent the last summer of his life here on the Shell Road, did Cap'n Am'zon. We had a bad wreck off the Gull Rocks an' Cap'n Am'zon went out with the life-saving crew an' never come ashore again. Was washed off'n the wreck of the _Curlew_ schooner.

"Cap'n Abe's been kind of diff'rent since his brother was drowned. Don't begin to tell so many stories as he did, and he's a sight more stern. B'sides, Cap'n Am'zon could fair burn him up when it come to relatin' of adventures. Consider'ble of a man, Cap'n Am'zon was.

"Jest the same," pursued 'Liphalet, "Cap'n Abe Silt has got a head on him. I'd like you to tell your story to him, Cap'n Jonah. I b'lieve he might be able to give you an idee wuth follerin'.

"Hullo! Who's boarded us now?"

A quick _tap, tap_ of heels on the steps and porch. Then a gentle rap on the door. 'Liphalet's brick-burned face became more inflamed, if that were possible, as he arose to answer the unexpected summons.

"Oh! Good morning, 'Liphalet," came the sweet contralto of Miss Sue Ambrose. "I wanted to remind you that the Christmas committee meets this afternoon in the vestry. You'll see to the fire for us, won't you?"

"I calc'late to," the ex-steward replied in evident confusion of mind, for he was striving to cram his big-bowled pipe into a vest pocket far too small to receive it.

"And 'Liphalet!" pursued the doctor's sister, "you'll be at the meeting, too, won't you? We shall need some of you menfolk when it comes to the real work, and we shall be glad to have your advice now."

"Hum! I'll see," muttered 'Liphalet not at all inclined, it would seem, to make the promise.

"We shall be looking for you," said the gentle little woman, as she turned from the door. "Please remember."

Eliphalet Truitt stepped back into his kitchen and found it empty save for Bo'sun, the big white cat, who purred contentedly on the stove hearth. Cap'n Jonah, thinking his friend was about to receive other company, had slipped out of the rear door and departed, 'cross-lots, toward the Petty place.

'Liphalet glanced out of the partly closed door again, holding it ajar with his hand, and watched the trim figure of the doctor's sister hurrying along the Shell Road. How often he had thus peered after Sue Ambrose since his establishment ten years before in this little box of a house next to the Mariner's Chapel!

The ex-steward was old-fashioned in dress and speech; but he was as spry "alow and aloft" as when he had retired from the sea and had come to Cardhaven to live. Nor did he expect, when he so retired, that he would remain a bachelor for the rest of his life. He had a competence ample for two plain people, much more than one would possibly need. For several years before leaving the sea he had looked forward to the time when he could settle down, ask a "certain party" (as he always expressed it even in his own mind) to share his little fortune, and to sag into comfortable old age on one side of a cheerful hearth while she sat on the other.

He visualized this idea often while at sea to keep his heart up in storm and stress during long and tedious voyages to the world's end; for Eliphalet Truitt had been a deep bottom sailor--none more so among the ancient skippers of the Cape than this taut little ship's steward.

He had made friends of every soul along the Shell Road, for they found Eliphalet Truitt a true man, and liberal in every sense--with money, with his time, and, as well, in his religious views. The chapel was a union church; all manner of doctrinal beliefs were represented in its congregation, even to the Roman Catholic in the person of 'Suz Montevedo, the Portuguese, who was indefatigable in his attendance at Sunday-school and took his weekly golden-text reward cards home and hoarded them.

'Liphalet, living so close to the chapel, acted as an unpaid sexton. He was at hand to light the lamps, to build and care for fires, and the key of the vestry door was always to be found hanging on a nail on the ex-steward's porch.

The theological student, whoever he chanced to be, sent down once a month from the seminary to try his apprentice hand upon the chapel congregation, was always advised to see 'Liphalet Truitt when he first arrived; and in the summer boarder season, when the women were all busy, he was more than likely to be fed and housed over Sunday by Mr. Truitt, who came near to being deacon of the congregation.

'Liphalet was the mainstay of the Ladies' Aid Society. He was the one called into the breach whenever failure, financial or otherwise, seemed to threaten any branch of the church work. He was the head and spirit of the annual Sunday-school picnic, and he was always present in the winter, and active, at the semimonthly bean or oyster-suppers rounding out the regular sessions of the Ladies' Aid Society meetings.

Thus, 'Liphalet was the ladies' stand-by. And it was at Christmas that the taut little ex-steward shone more brightly than at any other season. Being a lover of children, he helped make the greatest holiday of all the year a delight for those who attended the chapel Sunday-school.

He supplied most of the toys and candy hung for each child on the tree, buying the gifts himself and distributing them from his sack, with other presents for the older people, in the guise of good Saint Nicholas on Christmas night. He aided in dressing the chapel in Christmas garb, and sometimes secured the tree itself from some dealer in Paulmouth.

It might be that a selfish thought had entered into his mind at first regarding these holiday activities. But what good thing, after all, has not the germ of selfishness at the root of it?

"A certain party" had been on the Christmas celebration committee from time immemorial. Eliphalet Truitt had first given his money and personal endeavor to make the occasion a success because it offered the opportunity for an association that was very sweet indeed to him.

Between voyages, during his brief visits to Cardhaven, he had been wont to take his flute in the evening and call at the cottage where "a certain party" kept house for Doctor Ambrose. Demure, pink-cheeked Sue Ambrose, with the pretty waves of silvering hair drawn over her shell-like ears, the soft white bands at throat and wrists, her trim figure, her low throaty, contralto voice like a bird call when she laughed, seemed to 'Liphalet to possess the most delightful personality in all the world.

There was an ancient melodeon in the doctor's parlor; and from it Miss Sue coaxed sweet sounds that combined harmoniously with the steward's rather uncertain flutings. And she loved the old sea ditties as did 'Liphalet himself. He had been born with that dumb joy of sweet sounds that is actually an infliction to those unfortunates who never learn to express it through some musical instrument. Perhaps 'Liphalet had not chosen the most fortunate means of expressing his musical soul, for the flute in the hands of an amateur can be provocative of a good deal of pain as well as pleasure.

But standing in Doctor Ambrose's little parlor, with his head and shoulders thrown well back, and accompanied by the notes of the melodeon, the taut little steward had been in his glory. Those visits between voyages were glimpses of heaven to Eliphalet Truitt.

For forty years he had known no home but a ship's forecastle or cabin. Was it strange that within his breast grew that vision of a hearthside that now, unfulfilled, racked his very soul when it rose specter-like in his mind?

He came in again and closed the door of his kitchen. He dropped into the low rocking-chair Cap'n Jonah had occupied, and tapped the cold pipe upon the hearth to knock the dottle out of it.

"Hum!" he growled in his throat (but did he believe it?), "I spect all _she_ thinks of, too, is what she can git out of me for Christmas. Christmas--_bah_!"