Читать книгу Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - James A. Cooper - Страница 12

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The Latham house stood in the middle of the shallow valley behind Wreckers' Head. The fields surrounding it were arable and well kept. The house was not as old as the Ball house and was of an entirely different style of architecture. Whereas the Ball house was low-roofed and sprawling, squatting like a huge and ugly toad on the gale-swept Head, the house Tunis Latham's grandfather had built was three-story, including the mansard roof, painted a tobacco brown, and it was surrounded by wry-limbed cedars which could grow here because they were sheltered from the gales.

It was a gloomy-looking house even in midsummer, standing like a grim figure menaced by the tortured limbs of the trees surrounding it, stark and alone. No other human habitation was in view from its site. The Latham who had built the twelve-room house had built on hope. He desired and expected to fill the great house with a breed of Lathams that would do honor to the Cape on sea and on land. But his young wife had died the next year, after giving birth to her second child.

Tunis Latham's father, Randall Latham, had been the elder Latham's sole hope of perpetuating the family name and filling the big, ugly brown house behind Wreckers' Head with tow-headed little Lathams, for the other child was a girl.

It was said that Medford Latham had seldom spoken to or of his daughter, Lucretia. She must have led a very lonely and repressed life while she was a little girl. Medford Latham did not go to sea, for he had business that kept him on shore.

Medford Latham lived long enough to see Randall grow up, walk his own quarter-deck, and marry a maiden from the port who promised to be able to fulfill his hopes of a flourishing houseful of children. She bore Tunis while young Captain Randall Latham was away, and he came back in time to christen the boy with the name of the most colorful city he had touched on the trip, not an uncommon practice of seagoing fathers on the Cape. But Mrs. Randall Latham, watching her husband's ship bear off to seaward in the face of a keen gale, caught a severe cold, and when Captain Randall returned the next time he came not to a cradle in the great living room of the big, brown house, but to an already-sodden grave in the family plot on the west side of the saucerlike valley.

Lucretia Latham had grown to be a tall, large-boned, silent, and quick-stepping woman—a woman of understanding and infinite tenderness, although this tenderness was exhibited in deeds, not words.

The big, quiet-faced woman, who had never had a lover and on whom no man had ever looked with admiration, seemed to the casual observer cold and uncompromising. She might speak to the dog, call the fowls to their meals, but she never otherwise spoke unless she was forced to. When he was little, Tunis had found in her arms and against her breast a refuge from all hurt and fear, but it was a wordless comfort Aunt Lucretia gave him.

When he walked over from the cove that afternoon, after seeing the anchor of the Seamew over-side for the first time in this roadstead, Tunis found his Aunt Lucretia much as usual. She watched him approach from the side porch, a warm smile of greeting on her rather gaunt face. He knew that she must have watched the Seamew skim by, making for the channel into the cove; for he had written her when to expect him. But she would say nothing about it unless he forced the gates of her silence by some direct question which demanded more than a "yes" or a "no."

Lucretia folded him in her arms, however, and patted his broad shoulder with little love pats as he put his arms about her. Her kiss for him was as warm on his lips as a girl's. They understood each other pretty well, these two; for Tunis had caught something of her muteness, living so long alone with her.

He went to wash and change his shirt. Then he sat down in one of the huge porch chairs and rocked quietly, waiting for supper. He could see into the kitchen, which was the family dining room as well, and when he saw his Aunt Lucretia take the coffee-pot from the stove and put it on the square Dutch tile by her own place, Tunis knew it was the only call to supper there would be.

He rose and went in, taking his place at the head of the table. His aunt's head was bowed and her lips moved soundlessly. He respected her whispered grace and always felt that he could add nothing to it in thankfulness or reverence if he uttered an orison himself. During the cheerful and plentiful meal the young captain of the Seamew related certain matters he thought would interest the woman regarding his purchase of the schooner and the voyage down to the Cape. He told her he was sure the Seamew was fast enough for a Boston market boat.

"Speed is what is wanted now to compete with the Old Colony," Tunis declared. "We've got fish and clams and cranberries in season, and some vegetables, that have to be shaken up and jounced together and squashed on those jolting steam trains. I'll lay down a crate of lobsters at the T-wharf without a hair being ruffled. I know how to stow a cargo."

She nodded both her understanding and her belief that Tunis was right. The legacy he had received from the estate of Peleg Latham, Medford Latham's brother, had enabled Tunis to buy this beautiful schooner. Undoubtedly an eye for the beauty of the craft had more than a little drawn the young man into her purchase. Yet there was a foundation of solid sense under his streak of romance.

In this day a man must serve a long apprenticeship before he gets a command unless he owns the craft on which he is skipper. To own a schooner of the size of the Seamew is not enough. One must be a good merchant as well as a good skipper.

The coast trade from port to port along the North Atlantic shore must be fostered and coaxed like a stumbling baby. The tentacles of the hated railroad reach to many of the Cape ports. Yet everybody knows that a cargo properly stowed in a seaworthy craft reaches market in much the better condition than by rail, though perhaps it is some hours longer on the way.

There were docks, too, at which Tunis Latham could pick up well-paying freights which would have to be carted over bad roads to the nearest railway station. And there were always full or part cargoes to be had at Boston for certain single consignees along the Cape, which would pay a fair profit on the upkeep of the schooner. Medford Latham had lost almost all his fortune before he died so unhappily, leaving only the homestead and small farm to his son. The son, Captain Randall Latham, had lost the ship Ada May and every cent he possessed. Tunis had only his great uncle's legacy to begin on, and he had waited for that until he was thirty.

In the morning the young man arose early, for the tide was then low, and started forth with basket and clam hoe on his arm. Aunt Lucretia had promised him, by a smiling nod, a mess of fritters for dinner if he would supply the necessary clams. Alongshore the soft clam is the only clam used for fritters; the tough, long-keeping quahog is shipped to the less-enlightened "city trade."

It was not yet sunrise, but as Tunis walked down through one of those cuts in the edge of the headland, following a well-defined cart track, he saw the rose-glow of the sun's round face staining the mist on the eastern horizon.

He came down upon the hard sand of the beach and walked toward a tiny cove into which the mud flats extended and on which he knew the clams were plentiful and ripe. Glistening pools of black water, showing where other diggers had raided the flat, were interspersed with trembling patches of black sand. When Tunis began to cross the flat the sand before his boots became alive with tiny, shooting geysers of clean water. He set to work.

And while he was thus engaged he heard suddenly a shrill outcry and a most mysterious sound up in one of the gullies toward the summit of Wreckers' Head. Here thousands of tons of sand had run out of the cut in the steep bank and formed a dykelike way to the beach itself. More and more sand was slipping down this way all the time. A strong man could scarcely make his way up the incline, the sand was so unstable.

Tunis stood and stared up the slope. There shot into view, carried rapidly upon the forefront of the avalanche, a white-haired old man who waved a stick in one hand and a cocked pistol in the other, while from his mouth came shrill cries of excitement, if not of alarm.

But it was what followed Cap'n Ira Ball—whom Tunis immediately recognized—that caused the captain of the Seamew such utter surprise. Sitting on her rump, pawing at the sliding sand with her front hoofs, and whistling her terror and amazement, the Queen of Sheba appeared flying after the harassed old man.

It was a scene to surprise more than to entertain the beholder. The avalanche promised disaster to the participants in it. Tons upon tons of sand, undulating and sinuous in appearance, traveled faster and yet faster behind the old gray mare and the gray old sea captain. The smoke of the slide hid all that lay behind them, and these wreaths of sand dust threatened a higher wave that might, at any moment, entirely overwhelm both the equine and the human victim of the catastrophe.

Tunis dropped his clam hoe and started for the dyke of sand on the crest of which the old man and the old mare were sliding like naughty children down a woodshed roof.

"Hey, Tunis! Tunis!" bawled the captain. "Take her off'n me! She'll be afoul my hawser in another second, I do believe."

It was evident that he spoke of the Queen of Sheba, but Tunis could not see how the mare was intentionally threatening Cap'n Ira's peace of mind or safety of body. She was, however, "close aboard" Cap'n Ira as he tobogganed down the sandy way.

"Stern all!" shouted the old man, throwing another startled, backward glance at the Queen of Sheba. "Drat the derned old critter! Don't she know nothin' at all? Tunis! Do you see what's goin' to happen?"

While the young man had been running toward the ridge of sand, the avalanche bearing Cap'n Ira and the Queen of Sheba on its bosom swept down the slope of the huge windrow, but not altogether along its spine. The mass slid over one pitch of the ridge, and suddenly, following on the heels of Cap'n Ira's final question, the old man was shot to the beach, several tons of loose sand and the snorting mare almost on top of him.

In fact, he would have been overwhelmed, and perhaps seriously hurt, had not Tunis Latham arrived at the spot at just the time Cap'n Ira did, and suddenly pulled out the old man.

"What are you doing? Trying to run a race with Queenie?" demanded the captain of the Seamew.

The mare had come down right side up, more by good luck than by good management. She stood deep in the sand, her naturally surprised expression vastly enhanced. In all her twenty-two years Queenie had never before gone through such an experience.

"I swan!" ejaculated Cap'n Ira. "Ain't this the beatenest you ever heard of, Tunis?"

Tunis stared from the old mare to the old mariner, especially at the cocked revolver in the captain's hand. He pointed at the tightly gripped weapon.

"What's that for, Cap'n Ira?" he asked.

"I—I—well, I swan!" stammered Cap'n Ira, now looking, himself, at the old seven-chambered revolver as though he had never seen it before. "I cal'late it does look sort o' funny to you, Tunis, to see me come sailing down this way, armed like a pirate."

"I wouldn't call it exactly funny. But it is surprising," admitted Tunis. "And Queenie looks as surprised as anybody."

"Yes, she does, for a fact," agreed Cap'n Ira, squinting across the heap of loose sand at the gray mare. "I kind o' wonder what she's thinking about."

"I'm wondering hard enough myself," put in Tunis pointedly.

"I swan!" murmured Cap'n Ira reflectively.

He carefully lowered the hammer of the pistol, his cane stuck upright in the sand before him. Then he put the weapon back in the inside pocket of his coat. He tapped the knob of his cane for a pinch of snuff before he said another word. His mighty "A-choon!" startled the Queen of Sheba almost as it startled Prudence.

"Avast!" exclaimed Cap'n Ira. "Did you ever see such a scary old lubber, Tunis?"

"But what's it all about?" again demanded the younger man, seizing the rope halter and aiding the mare to flounder out upon the firmer sand below high-water mark. "What are you doing up so early? And what were you going to do with Queenie?"

"I swan!" groaned Cap'n Ira again. "I don't wonder that you ask me that. It don't really seem reasonable that a sane man would get in such a jam, does it? Me and the Queen of Sheby sailin' down that sand pile. Tunis! We'll never be able to get up it in this world."

"No. You must come along to our road, and get up that way," his young friend told him. "It is longer, but easier. But tell me how you came down that gully, you and Queenie?"

"I'm sort of ashamed to tell you, Tunis, and that's a fact," the old captain said, wagging his head. "And don't you ever tell Prudence."

"I'll not say a word to Aunt Prue," promised the captain of the Seamew.

"Yet," grumbled the old man, "that dratted Queen of Sheby is too much for Prudence. You see yourself only yesterday how she is like to come to her death because of the mare."

"I know that you should have somebody living with you, Cap'n Ira," urged Tunis. "But what does this mean?"

"I—I can't scurcely tell you, Tunis. I swan! I was goin' to murder the old critter."

"What do you mean?" gasped Tunis in apparent horror. "Not Aunt Prue?"

"What's the matter with you?" snapped Cap'n Ira. "I mean that old mare. I was going to murder her in cold blood, only the sand slide wrecked my plans."

"If you had killed her, Aunt Prue would have had hard work to forgive you. Come on now. I'll lead Queenie up to our barn. Let her stay there for a spell. I tell you, Cap'n Ira, you and Aunt Prue must have somebody to live with you."

"Who?"

"Get a girl from the port."

"Huh! One o' them Portygees? They're as dirty and useless in the kitchen as their men folks are aboard ship."

"Oh, they are not all like that!" objected the captain of the Seamew. "I've got a good crew of 'em aboard my schooner."

"You think so. Wait till you get in a jam. And the men ain't so bad as the gals. All hussies."

"I don't know, then, what you'll do."

"I do," interrupted the old man, hobbling along the hard sand beside Tunis and the horse. "It's just like I told Prudence yesterday. I know just what we've got to do whether you or Prue or anybody else knows," and he was very emphatic.

"Let's hear your plan, Cap'n," said Tunis.

"It's like this," went on Cap'n Ira. "Prudence ain't got but one living relative, a grandniece, that's kin to her. That Ida May Bostwick we must have come and live with us, and that's all there is about it."

Tunis stared. He said:

"Never heard of her. She doesn't live anywhere around here, does she?"

"No, no! Lives to Boston."

"Boston!"

Why was it Tunis Latham felt that his heart skipped a beat? Memory of that pale, violet-eyed girl who worked in the restaurant on Scollay Square flashed across his mind like a shooting star. Indeed, he was so confused that he heard only a little at first of Cap'n Ira's rambling explanation. Then he caught:

"And if you will go to that address—Prue's got the street and number—and see Ida May Bostwick and tell her about us, you'd be doing us a kindness, Tunis."

"Me?" exclaimed the startled captain of the Seamew.

"Yes, you. The gal won't bite you. You're going to Boston next week, you say. Will you do it?"

"Sure I will, Cap'n Ira," said the young man heartily. "It's a good move, and I'll say all I can to get the girl to come down here."

"That's the boy! You're going on an errand of mercy; that's as sure as sure. Prue and me need that gal. And maybe she needs us. I don't know what sort of a place she works at, but no city job for a gal can be the equal of living down here on the Cape, with her own folks, as you might say. Yes, Tunis, you'll be doing an errand of mercy mebbe both ways."