Chapter 20

ONE MORE OF WILLIE'S SHIPS REACHES PORT

Three feverish days passed, days of constant hard work and myriad trivial annoyances. A train of misadventures had attended the transference of Willie's "idee" to Zenas Henry's boat. Parts had failed to fit, and much wearisome toil had been demanded before the device was actually in place. At last, however, all was ready, and Abbie Brewster, a party to the conspiracy, had on a sunny morning urged her reluctant spouse and the three captains to make a trip out to the Bar for clams. They were none too keen about the proposed expedition, for the weather was warm and their course lay through shallow waters which after the recent storm were turbid with seaweed. Nevertheless, ignoring their unwillingness, Abbie declared she must have the clams, and was not her word law?

Therefore, without enthusiasm, the four fishermen had set forth with their buckets and their clam forks, and it was now a full three hours since the motor-boat that carried them had disappeared around the point of sand jutting into the sparkling waters of the bay.

Bob and Willie, secreted in the workshop, had breathlessly watched the _Sea Gull_ thread her way through the channel and make the curving shelter of the dunes, and ever since the old inventor had sat alert on an overturned nail keg, his binoculars in one hand and his great silver watch in the other, counting the moments until the little craft should return from its momentous cruise. The vigil had been long and tedious, with only the ticking of the mammoth timepiece and the far-off rumble of the surf to break the stillness.

Presently Celestina came from the kitchen into the shop.

"I'm bringin' you a dish of hot doughnuts," she said, a kindly sympathy in her face. "Oughtn't them men to be comin' pretty soon now?"

For the hundredth time Willie raised the glasses and scanned the shimmering golden waters.

"We should sight 'em before long," he nodded.

"You don't see nothin' of 'em?"

"Not yet."

There was an anxious frown on his forehead.

"Why don't you eat somethin'?" suggested she. "It might take your mind off worryin'."

"I ain't worryin', Tiny," was the confident reply. "The boat's all right."

"S'pose it should be snagged or somethin' outside the bay?" she ventured. "I wish to goodness they'd come back. Look, here's Delight an' Abbie comin' through the grove. Likely they've been gettin' uneasy, too."

Sure enough, moving among the low pines that shaded the slope between the Spence and Brewster houses they saw the two women.

Abbie was stouter now than when she had come as a bride to Zenas Henry's white cottage, but there was a serenity in her mien that softened her expression into charming womanliness. As she neared the shed she glanced at Willie with an uneasiness she could not wholly conceal.

"Don't it seem to you, Willie, that it's gettin' most time for 'em to be gettin' home?"

"You ain't nervous, Abbie," smiled the little old man.

"N--o, not really. Of course, I know they're all right. Still, they ain't never stayed clammin' so long before."

"I wouldn't worry, Auntie," Delight put in, taking her hand reassuringly. "A thousand things may have delayed them. I am sure--"

"They're comin'!" broke in Willie with sudden excitement. "The boat's comin'. Ain't that her makin' the point, Bob? She's clippin' along like a race horse, too. Lord! Watch her go."

"That's the _Sea Gull_!" cried Abbie. "I don't need no glasses to make her out. That's her! How foolish I was to go fussin'. Still, I always have a kind of dread--"

"I know, I know," interrupted the inventor gently. "But there warn't no call for worry this time. I felt mortal certain they'd be heavin' into sight pretty soon."

"I guess likely now we know they're on the way, we'd better slip home again," Abbie smiled. "I'd feel silly enough to have 'em find us here."

"Nonsense, Abbie!" said Celestina. "They needn't know you was worried. Ain't it possible you might have come down here on an errand? Wait 'til they pass and walk back with 'em. What difference does it make if your dinner is late?"

Abbie hesitated. Her dinner never was late; yet, for that matter, she never was out visiting her neighbors in the middle of the day, either. Perhaps, as she had followed one demoralizing impulse and transgressed all her domestic traditions, the breaking of another did not matter.

"I--s'pose I might wait," she answered. "I'd love dearly to hear what they'll have to say."

"Oh, do wait, Auntie!" Delight begged. "It won't be long now before they get here."

"Better stay, Abbie," put in Willie. "Bob an' I won't be inventin' every day."

"Well," was the half unwilling answer.

"Don't you wonder how it worked?" cried Delight, addressing Bob, her cheeks scarlet with excitement. "See, here they come! Did you ever hear such a chatter! Zenas Henry is swinging that clam bucket as if there wasn't a thing in it. He will spill them all out if he isn't careful."

On strode the four men. With a bound they cleared the bank before the Spence cottage and crowded in at the narrow gate.

"Whar is he? Whar's Willie?" demanded Zenas Henry. Then, catching sight of the old inventor half concealed behind his workbench, he shouted:

"Here, Willie, you rascal, out with you! Don't go hidin' there behind that table. Man alive, why didn't you tell us what you was up to?"

"Did it work, Zenas Henry?" queried the little fellow eagerly.

"Did it work!" mimicked Zenas Henry with a guffaw. "Say, Phineas, did it?"

The fishermen gave an exuberant roar of laughter.

"Did it work?" repeated Zenas Henry so out of breath that he could scarcely articulate the words. "Good Lord, don't it just! Why, we clipped along through that seaweed as if it warn't there."

"You didn't get snagged then?"

"Snagged? Not much! Ain't we been ridin' in an' out every little eel grass cove along the shore just for the sheer deviltry of seein' if we could get snagged?" piped Captain Benjamin. "There'll be no more rockin' in the channel for us. My eye! Think of that!"

"How ever did you manage it, Willie?" Zenas Henry questioned.

"What makes you so sure it was me?"

"Oh, Lord! Who else would it be?"

"Well, it warn't all me," protested the little inventor modestly. "Most of it was Bob. I got the idee an' he did the rest--him an' Mr. Galbraith's friend, Mr. Snellin'."

"Well, I'm clean beat--that's all I can say," observed Zenas Henry, mopping his brow. "I tell you what, it's made a new thing of that motor-boat. There's no thankin' you. All is, Willie, if you want anything of mine it's yours for the askin'. Just speak up an' you can have it."

A radiant smile spread over the face of the spinner of cobwebs.

"You ain't got nothin' I covet, Zenas Henry," he answered slowly, "but you've got somethin' Bob Morton wants powerful bad."

He saw a mystified expression steal into Zenas Henry's face.

"Happiness didn't come to you early in life, Zenas Henry," went on Willie, his voice taking on a note of gentle persuasion, "an' often I've heard you lament you was cheated out of spendin' your youth with Abbie. Of course, marryin' late is better than not marryin' at all, though. Some of the rest of us--" he motioned toward the three captains and Celestina, "have got passed by altogether. But Delight an' Bob have found love early, while the bloom is still on it. You wouldn't wish to keep 'em from their birthright, would you, Zenas Henry?"

In the hush that followed the plea, Abbie crept up to her husband and slipped her hand into his.

"The child loves him, dear," she said, looking up into the man's stern face. "I read it in her eyes long ago. You want her to be happy, don't you?"

Her voice trembled. Only the mother instinct, supreme in its selflessness, gave her the strength to continue: "We must not think of ourselves. Real love is heaven-sent. It is ours neither to give nor to deny."

How still the room was. Suddenly it had been transformed into a battle ground on which a soul waged mortal combat. There was no question in the minds of those who viewed the struggle that the issue presented had come as a shock, and that to meet it taxed every ounce of forbearance and control that the man possessed. He looked as one stricken, his face a turmoil of jealousy, grief, despair, and disappointment. But gradually a gentler light shone in his eyes,--a light radiant, and triumphant; love was conqueror and raising his head he murmured:

"Where is the child?"

She sped to his side.

"So you love him, do you, little girl?" he asked, smiling faintly down at her as he encircled her with his great arm.

"Yes, Zenas Henry," she whispered.

For a moment he held her close as if he could never let her go.

"Well, Tiny," he said, "I don't know as we have anything to say against it. He's your nephew an' she's my daughter--yes, my daughter," he added fiercely, "in spite of the Lees and the Galbraiths." With a swift gesture he turned toward Robert Morton. "Young man, I am payin' you a heavy fee for that motor-boat. I'm handin' over to you the most precious thing I have in the world. See you value it as you should or, by God, your life won't be worth a straw to Willie, the three captains, or me."

They saw him wheel abruptly and stride alone into the shadow of the low pines. Silently the others drifted from the room and Delight was left alone with her lover.

As Bob caught the girl in his arms, a great wave of passion surged through his body, causing its every fiber to vibrate in tune with the mad beating of his heart. He kissed her hair, her cheeks, the white curve of her exquisite throat; he buried his face in her hair and let his hands wander over its silky ripples.

"I love you," he panted,--"I love you with all my heart. Tell me you love me, Delight."

"You know I do," was the shy answer.

Again he kissed her soft lips.

"I mustn't stay, Bob," she said at last, trying to draw herself from his embrace. "Zenas Henry is alone somewhere, almost broken-hearted; I must find and comfort him."

But the arms that held her did not loosen their hold.

"Please let me go, Bob dear," she coaxed. "We mustn't be selfish."

Her request struck the right note and instantly she was free.

Robert Morton followed her to the door and stood watching as she hurried along the copper-matted path of the woods sunflecked and mottled with shadow.

What a sweet miracle it was, he mused! She was his now before all the world, thanks to Willie's skilful pilotage. Where was the little old man--that dreamer of dreams, who with Midas-like touch left upon everything with which he came in contact the golden impress of his heart? He must seek him out and thank him for his aid.

Perhaps the thought carried with it a potent charm of magic, for no sooner had Robert Morton framed it than the inventor himself appeared on the threshold.

"Well, another of my ships has made port!" cried he triumphantly.

His delicate face was illumined with a joy so transcendent that one might easily have believed that it was to him love's touchstone had been given.

"I never can thank you, Willie!" burst out the young man.

"Be good to Delight, my boy, an' make her happy; that's all the thanks I want," was the grave response.

A pause fell between them. Perhaps Willie was thinking of the days that must inevitably come when the girl he had loved since childhood would be far away. How dull the gray house would be when she no longer flitted in and out its doors! Try as he would to banish the selfish reflection, it returned persistently. Then suddenly something quite outside himself put the reverie to rout.

It was the querulous voice of Janoah Eldridge.

"I was right about them Galbraiths," he cried exultantly, standing in the doorway and hurling the words into the room where the two men lingered. "'Twas exactly as I said. Lyman Bearse's boy went up on the Boston train one afternoon in front of Snelling an' that other feller who was here, an' he heard every word they uttered. He said they talked the whole way about gettin' a patent out on your invention. Now, Willie Spence, was I right or warn't I? Mebbe you'll believe me the next time I warn you against folks."