_ CHAPTER VI
The troublesome microbes, of which Captain Pott had so unmelodiously sung, had been driven out into the open, and were now doing a war-dance to a jazz tune. Into the domestic life of the Captain there wormed the most subtle microbe of all. Just what to do with it, or how to meet it, he did not know. But it continued to bob up at every meal time with a clamorous demand for attention.
One Monday evening the two men sat in the minister's study, the clergyman wrapped in silence, and the Captain in a cloud of tobacco smoke. The seaman was the first to break through his cloud.
"Mack, I'm awful sorry to disturb your meditations, but if they ain't a heap sight more entertaining than mine, I cal'late you won't mind to give 'em up for a spell."
"It wouldn't be much of a sacrifice, Cap'n," acknowledged Mr. McGowan, laughing. "What is troubling you?"
"Well, it's this,"--the Captain blew a cloud of smoke,--"this here's slow navigating on land without a woman's hand on the wheel. We need some one to set things to rights round here once in a while."
Mr. McGowan had been lounging lazily before the open fire, but now rose and stretched himself.
"The idea is all right, but how can we put it into effect?"
"I ain't just exactly sure."
"You must have something to propose, else you wouldn't have mentioned it."
"There ain't going to be no proposing, leastwise not by me."
The minister smiled. "Afraid of the fair sex, Cap'n?"
"No. Just wise to 'em."
"Why don't you take the suggestion I made some time ago?"
"Meaning, which?"
"Have some one come in once a week to clean up."
"It needs something more than a cleaner round here. What we want is a cook. I cal'late we'd best ship a general housekeeper."
"A housekeeper!" exclaimed Mr. McGowan, suddenly breaking off a wide yawn.
The skipper blew a cloud of smoke and watched it thin out into the air above his head.
"And you have just declared that you didn't intend to propose. I'm afraid----"
"I ain't interested in your fears, young man. I'm too old a sea-dog for any of them new-fangled tricks. But being as you're set on staying here I've decided that we'll take a woman aboard to look after the mess and swab decks."
The minister became serious. "Is that practical in our present position?"
"Practical in our present position? If it ain't, then I'd like to know when in the name of all my ancestors such a thing is practical. Mack----"
"I mean from the financial point of view. The boxing match seems to have hit the pocketbooks of the church members harder than the man from the city hit me. At least, something has given them almost total paralysis."
"Who's asking you to consarn yourself with a woman's keep? I ain't, be I?"
"I hope you don't think that I'd permit you to bring a housekeeper in here for me unless you give me the privilege of sharing in the expense."
"Mack, this here place ain't your house. Cal'late I'll do about as I please on that p'int."
"If I can't stand the expense with part salary, you certainly can't stand it with none," persisted the minister.
"I ain't sartin it would cost anything. Leastwise, it won't cost much. I ain't sartin,"--repeated the Captain as though in meditation,--"but I think she'll come."
"Who?"
"Don't let your cur'osity get away with you, young feller. I ain't promising nothing, but I'm just thinking, that's all. How'd you like to cruise round the P'int to-morrow, Mack?"
"You have a delightful way of changing the subject when it gets too hot. But I'd certainly like the cruise and the air."
"I cal'late I ain't changed no subject. We'll go over Riverhead way. It'll be sort of a vacation from all this mess, and give me a chance to see about this puzzling woman question."
With this declaration, the Captain retreated into a silence which all of Mr. McGowan's questions failed to penetrate. The old man was thinking of Clemmie Pipkin!
Clemmie had been the object of his boyhood ardor till the day when his dashing half-brother had kidnapped her affections. But no sooner had he won her from the Captain than he disappeared, leaving the faithful Miss Pipkin, never to return. She had remained unmarried all these years, in spite of the oft-repeated attempt on the part of Captain Pott to rekindle her love. He wondered now, as he sat before the dying fire, if her presence in his home would change her attitude toward him. This question wakened anew the desire of his youth, and after he had retired it kept sleep from his eyes through the long hours of the night. He must have Clemmie Pipkin to take care of his house.
Daylight had barely kindled her fires over the eastern waters when the two men boarded the
Jennie P. Mr. McGowan noticed that the Captain took particular pains in cleaning and polishing the few brass trimmings. They both worked hard till the sun appeared, and then hastily ate a lunch which they had brought aboard with them. After finishing the sandwiches, the Captain went forward and dropped a measuring-stick into the gasoline tank.
"I'll swan!" he ejaculated. "There ain't a drop of 'ile in that there tank. And I left the cans ashore."
"I'll go for them."
"No, you don't, young feller! You stay right aboard here," ordered the skipper. "You can be working on the engine, or something. I'll get that 'ile myself."
Surprised at the seaman's earnestness, the minister obeyed. He was working over the engine, his hands covered with grease, when the dory scraped the side of the boat. He came out of the cockpit, and, to his amazement, saw the Captain assisting two young ladies into the
Jennie P. Each carried a large basket. They were no less surprised than he.
"Why, Mr. McGowan!" exclaimed Elizabeth, the color flooding her already rosy cheeks.
"Captain Pott!" cried Miss Splinter.
Mr. McGowan said nothing. He folded his hands behind him and looked foolish.
"I thought maybe a little company might liven up the trip," observed the seaman, looking like a schoolboy who had sprung a surprise on his teacher. "Ain't you going to welcome 'em? You'll find their name on the roster, and they brought their grub with 'em."
"This is a very delightful surprise," faintly declared the minister.
Elizabeth looked troubled, and her discomfort did not add to the minister's ease. She had been anything but cordial since the incident at her home when Mr. Fox had taken ill. He had not seen her since the fight. He feared that the interpretation placed on that by her father had not bettered his standing.
"I didn't go to bed last night right off, Mack, when I said I was going," explained the Captain. "I went out and fixed up this little party for a sort of surprise to all hands. I stowed that 'ile in the boat-house on purpose so as I could get ashore without too many questions."
"I trust that our going will make no difference."
The minister's embarrassment had grown painful. With a hopeless gesture he brought out a pair of black grimy hands. "Indeed, it will make a difference, Miss Fox, all the difference in the world. If the Captain had kept his engine cleaner I'd have been able to give you a more hearty welcome."
The sight of the greasy hands broke the tension, and although Mr. McGowan cordially extended them neither young lady offered hers in return.
The cruise was a great success, if we take the Captain's word for it, which word was given to Mrs. Beaver on their return to Little River. "Them young folks had the time of their lives, and I never see a more likely pair than that little Beth and the minister as they stood by the wheel together steering the
Jennie P. through them rollers. Beth takes to water just the same way she takes to everything, with her whole soul."
It was noon when they cast anchor in the Riverhead Inlet. The men prepared to go ashore while the girls took out the lunches. As the baskets were opened, and bundles untied, Mr. McGowan suggested that they make for shore before their appetites demanded otherwise.
At the landing the men parted, for the Captain had expressed the desire to make his visit alone. He did not tell the minister that his destination was the County Farm for fear that he, Mr. McGowan, would not understand that Clemmie Pipkin was the matron, and not an inmate.
Captain Pott found Miss Pipkin without difficulty. During the past ten years, he had been a frequent visitor at the Farm, and many knew him. He went at once to the bare little reception-room and made known his presence. As Miss Pipkin entered a slight tinge crept into the hollow of her sallow cheeks. She extended a bony hand.
"I'm real glad to see you, Josiah. It's been a long time since you called."
"Howdy, Clemmie. It has been a mite long, but I've been purty busy of late trying to keep people out of trouble."
"Then you must have changed a lot."
"You ain't looking well," he observed solicitously. "Ain't sick, be you?"
"No," she answered with a deep sigh. "That is, I ain't real sick. I ain't been feeling quite myself for a spell, but I reckon it will wear off."
"You'll wear off if you don't get out of this place," replied the Captain.
Miss Pipkin was far from being a beautiful woman. From all appearances she had never been pretty, or even good-looking. Her form had a few too many sharp angles where it should have been curved. Her face was long and thin, and now age and worry had dug deeply into the homely features, obliterating the last trace of middle life. She always dressed in black, and to-day the Captain saw that her clothes were worn and faded. He moved uneasily as his quick eye took in the meaning of these signs.
"I cal'late they're working you too hard here, Clemmie," he said tenderly. "You'd best get away for a spell."
"I'd like to have a rest, but I can't leave. There's no one to take my place."
"Pshaw! There's plenty who'd be glad for the place."
"Anyhow, I ain't got no place to go."
"That's what I've come to see you about, Clemmie."
Miss Pipkin straightened with cold dignity, and her eyes flashed fires of warning.
"Josiah Pott! Be you proposing to me
again?"
"Now, don't get mad, Clemmie. I ain't proposing to you," he explained as calmly as possible. "But as I've said afore----"
"I know what you've said, learnt it like a book. And you know what I've said, too. My no means NO."
"I cal'late you ain't left no room for me to doubt that. You've made that purty tolerable plain. I reckon we're getting too old for that now, anyway. Leastwise, I be," he finished hurriedly, noting a rising color in her thin cheeks.
"Huh!" she grunted indignantly. "A body'd think you was the grandfather of Methuselah to hear you talk."
"I am getting on purty well, Clemmie."
"Josiah Pott! If you come over here to talk that nonsense you can go right back."
"I really come on another matter. I want you to come over and keep house for me and another man. We're living on the old place, and it ain't what you'd call hum sweet hum for two males to live alone in a big house like mine. Thought maybe you wouldn't mind keeping the decks swabbed and the galley full of pervisions if I'd only pay you the same as you're getting here. I'd----"
"That will be enough!"
"Thought maybe 'twould."
"I'll not listen to another word from you!" exclaimed the shocked Miss Pipkin. The expression on her face gave the Captain the feeling that he had dived into icy water, and had come up suddenly against a hidden beam.
"Two of you! And you want me to do your work! Well, of all the nerve!"
"I ain't told you yet who the other feller is," suggested the Captain.
"I don't care if he's an angel from heaven. I'd think you'd be ashamed of yourself to come here and speak of such a thing."
"But I ain't ashamed, Clemmie. A drowning man is willing to grab the first straw he sees. Listen to me, Clemmie," he pleaded, as she turned to leave the room.
"Me listen to you proposing for me to come over to Little River and start talk that would ruin the town? Not if I know what Clemmie Pipkin's doing."
"I tell you I ain't proposing to you, I'm just asking you. As far as that town goes, a few things more for it to talk about can't do her no harm."
Miss Pipkin paused on the threshold to give a parting shot, but the Captain spoke first and spiked her guns.
"The other feller happens to be the new parson."
Her expression changed. Preachers had long been her specialty at the Poor Farm, and she knew exactly the care and food they needed.
"What was that you said, Josiah?"
"The other feller living with me is the minister at the brick church."
"The minister living with you!"
"Yes."
"With you? But you ain't got religion."
"I cal'late that's the safest guess you ever made, Clemmie, but just now it's cooking, and not religion, that's bothering me."
"Lan' sakes! You ain't trying to cook for the minister, be you?" she asked incredulously.
"You put it just right, I'm trying to. I don't know how long he'll be able to stand it, but he won't go nowhere else."
"Poor thing!" she exclaimed. "Poor thing!"
"Them's my sentiments, too, Clemmie."
"And no doubt he's a frail creature, too, and ought to have the best of care. So many of them are that way."
A violent fit of coughing seized the Captain.
"Lan' sakes! Now, what's the matter with you? Been going out without your rubbers, I'll warrant. Men are worse than babies when left to themselves. I do believe they'd die if the women-folks didn't look after them once in a while."
"We sartin would," choked out the Captain. "Do you suppose you can arrange it to come over?"
"When do you want me?"
"Right now. To-day. I come special for you."
"I'll go," decided Miss Pipkin impulsively. "It's plain as day that it's my duty. I am getting wore out in this place. They've been putting the work of three on me, and I ain't got the strength."
"It ain't right, Clemmie, for you to be wearing yourself out in this kind of work. God intended you for something better. I ain't proposing," he hastily added, lest his bird take the sudden notion to wing her way back into the bush.
Miss Pipkin gave him a quick look, and left the room. She very soon returned carrying a bundle beneath one arm, and clutching a bulging telescope suit-case in the other hand. From one end of the bundle protruded the head of a cat.
"What in tarnation you got in there, Clemmie?" asked the seaman, pointing toward the bundle.
"You didn't think I was going to leave my Tommy behind to be starved and abused, did you?"
"Hadn't thought about that," meekly admitted the Captain, as he took the telescope.
"Have you got a trunk to send over?"
"No."
Miss Pipkin breathed a deep sigh of relief as they passed out of the gates. She looked back at the weather-beaten old buildings of the County Farm into which ten years of her life had gone. But she felt no pang on leaving.
The Captain kept up a constant stream of conversation on the way down to the wharf. Suddenly, Miss Pipkin stopped, and suspiciously eyed the seaman.
"Josiah, how are we going back?"
"In my
Jennie P."
"In your what?"
"In my power-boat, the
Jennie P."
"Josiah Pott! You know I ain't been aboard a boat for more than twenty year, and I ain't going to start out on the thing, whatever-you-call-it!"
It appeared as if the Captain would have to come another day, in another sort of vehicle, to carry home his newly-found housekeeper. He again led trumps.
"The minister come all the way over with me to get you."
"He did?"
"Sartin did."
"Poor thing! He's been treated so scandalously that he's willing to do 'most anything. Well, it may be the death of me, but I've got this far, and I may as well go on."
Mr. McGowan was waiting for them at the end of the wharf. The skipper introduced them with a malicious wink at Miss Pipkin as he indicated the physical strength of the minister. Her face flushed as nearly crimson as it had in years. When they finally got into the dory she leaned close to the Captain and set his staid old heart palpitating. Mr. McGowan was engaged, waving to the girls in the
Jennie P. "You ain't going to tell him what I said about his being delicate, and the like, are you, Josiah?"
He answered with a vigorous shake of the head as he leaned back to draw the oars through the water. Each time he swung forward he looked into the eyes of Miss Pipkin. Did he imagine it, or did he see there something more than interest in her own question?
Aboard the
Jennie P. the young ladies took charge of Miss Pipkin, and soon they were chatting companionably. The girls had removed the door to the cabin, and laying it from seat to seat, had improvised a table. Over it they had spread cloths, and on the cloths were plates piled high with good things. The odor of coffee greeted the Captain's nostrils, as he came forward after securing the dory.
"Well, I'd like to know! Where in tarnation did you get the stove to b'ile the coffee on?" he asked, sniffing the air.
"We brought it with us," replied Elizabeth.
"You fetched a stove in them baskets?"
"Certainly. Come and see it."
She drew her old friend toward the cockpit. There stood the steaming coffee-pot over an alcohol flame.
"Well, I swan!"
Paper plates were scattered about over the improvised table, chicken piled high on some, sandwiches on others, doughnuts, cream-puffs, and apple tarts on still others. Indeed, not a thing had been left out, so far as the Captain could see.
"If this ain't the likeliest meal I ever see, then, I'd like to know. I feel right now as if I could eat the whole enduring lot, I'm that hungry," declared the skipper.
Elizabeth served, moving about as gracefully as a fawn. Mr. McGowan watched her with no attempt to hide his admiration. The one question in his mind all day had been: what did she think of him for his part in the affair at the Inn? He decided that he would take advantage of the first opportunity to prove to her that no other course had been left open for him.
Dinner over, the Captain filled his pipe, and stood in the door of the cabin. He smoked quietly, and watched the ladies put the things away. Miss Pipkin was folding the cloths, and on her the seaman's gaze came to a rest. Would the old home seem different with her in it?
"Hadn't we better start?"
The Captain jumped. "I cal'late I'm getting nervous, jumping like that."
"Or in love?"
"Maybe you're right, Mack."
"Honest confession?"
"I ain't confessing nothing. I was referring to your idea that we'd best be under way," explained the Captain, with a wry smile.
As he spoke he leaned over the engine, and gave it a turn. Tommy, Miss Pipkin's black cat, was mincing contentedly at some scraps when the chug-chug of the exhaust shot from the side of the boat. Tommy shot from the cockpit. He paused on the upper step, a startled glare in his eyes. He forgot the tempting morsels; he forgot his rheumatism; he was bent on flight. And fly he did. With a wild yodeling yell he sprang forward. Like a black cyclone he circled the deck. On his fourth time round he caught sight of the minister's legs. He and Elizabeth were standing at the wheel, ready to steer the boat out of the harbor. To the cat's excited glance the man's legs suggested the beginnings of tree trunks, at the top of which there was safety and repose from the spitting demon at the side of the boat. Like a flying bat he made the leap. But he had misjudged both the distance and his own rheumatic muscles. He landed on the girl, and came to a rest half-way to her shoulder. His claws sank into the thick folds of her sweater. Elizabeth released her hold on the wheel, and with a cry fell back against the minister. A pair of strong arms lost neither time nor opportunity. With a little persuasion Tommy saw his mistake, and dropped to the deck. He took up his interrupted flight, finally coming to an uncertain rest somewhere aloft.
Elizabeth looked up, smiled, blushed like a peony, took hold the wheel, and gently released herself.
"Oh, thank you! Wasn't it stupid of me to let that old cat frighten me so?"
Mr. McGowan declared that he was delighted to have been of service, and his emotions began to be very evident to him.
It took considerable coaxing on the part of the Captain, and more clawing on the part of Tommy, before he could be convinced that the cabin was as safe as the mast. At last he gave in and came down, and as the boat left the harbor he was purring contentedly, folded safely in the arms of Miss Pipkin.
Before they reached Little River harbor, Miss Pipkin had many times declared she was going to die. The Captain as many times remonstrated with her, but she only showed a greater determination to die. When the boat was anchored, she refused to move or be moved. The minister lifted her bodily, and carried her to the dory. As he was handing her over the side into the Captain's arms, she objected to the transference by a sudden lurch, which sent the minister to his knees. His foot caught on the gunwale, and his ankle was severely wrenched. On releasing his shoe string that night he discovered a serious sprain. _