Caleb West, Master Diver Part 18

Caleb did not raise his eyes nor move. "I can't do her no good no more, Cap'n Joe. It was jes' like ye to try an' help her. Ye'd do it for anybody that was a-sufferin'; but I don't see _my_ way clear.

I done all I could for her 'fore she lef' me,-leastwise I thought I had." There was no change in the listless monotone of his voice.

"You allus done by her, Caleb." The captain's hand had slipped from the chair-back to Caleb's shoulder. "I know it, and she knows it now.

She ain't ever goin' to forgive herself for the way she's treated ye,-tol' me so to-day comin' up. She's been hoodooed, I tell ye,-that's what's the matter; but she's come to now. Come along; I'll git yer hat. She ought'er go to sleep purty soon."

"Ye needn't look for my hat, Cap'n Joe. I ain't a-goin'," said Caleb quietly, leaning back in his chair. The lamp shone full on his face and beard. Captain Joe could see the deep lines about the eyes, seaming the dry, shrunken skin. The diver had grown to be a very old man in a week.

"You say you ain't a-goin', Caleb?" In his heart he had not expected this.

"No, Cap'n Joe; I'm goin' to stay here an' git along th' best way I kin. I ain't blamin' Betty. I'm blamin' myself. I been a-thinkin' it all over. She done 'er best to love me and do by me, but I was too old for 'er. If it hadn't been Billy, it would'er been somebody else,-somebody younger 'n me."

"She don't want n.o.body else but you, Caleb." The captain's voice rose quickly. He was crossing the room for a chair as he spoke. "She told me so to-day. She purty nigh cried herself sick comin' up. I was afeard folks would notice her."

"She's sorry now, cap'n, an' wants ter come back, 'cause she's skeered of it all, but she don't love me no more 'n she did when she lef' me.

When Billy finds she's gone, he'll be arter her agin"-

"Not if I git my hands on him," interrupted the captain angrily, dragging the chair to Caleb's side.

"An' when she begins to hunger for him," continued Caleb, taking no notice of the outburst, "it'll be all to do over agin. She won't be happy without him. I ain't got nothin' agin 'er, but I won't take 'er back. It'll only make it wus for her in the end."

"Ye ain't a-goin' ter chuck that gal out in the road, be ye?" cried Captain Joe, seating himself beside the table, his head thrust forward in Caleb's face in his earnestness. "What's she but a chit of a child that don't know no better?" he burst out. "She ain't more 'n twenty now, and here's some on us more 'n twice 'er age and liable to do wus every day. Think of yerself when ye was her age. Do ye remember all the mean things ye done, and the lies ye told? S'pose you'd been chucked out as ye want to do to Betty. It ain't decent for ye to talk so, Caleb, and I don't like ye fur it, neither. She's a good gal, and you know it," and the captain, in his restlessness, shifted the chair and planted it immediately in front of Caleb, where he could look him straight in the eye. Aunty Bell had told him just what Caleb would say, but he had not believed it possible.

"I ain't said she warn't, Cap'n Joe. I ain't blamin' her, nor never will. I'm blamin' myself. I ought'er stayed tendin' light-ship instead'er comin' ash.o.r.e and spilin' 'er life. I was lonely, and the fust one was allus sickly, an' I thought maybe my time had come then; and it did while she was with me. I'd ruther heared her a-singin', when I come in here at night, than any music I ever knowed." His voice broke for a moment. "I done by her all I could, but I begin to see lately she was lonelier here with me than I was 'board ship with nothin' half the time to talk to but my dog. I didn't think it was Billy she wanted, but I see it now."

Captain Joe rose from his chair and began pacing the room. His onslaughts broke against Caleb's indomitable will with as little effect as did the waves about his own feet the day he set the derricks.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "What's she but a chit of a child that don't know no better"]

His faith in Betty's coming to herself had never been shaken for an instant. If it had, it would all have been restored the morning she met him at Mrs. Leroy's, and, throwing her arms about him, clung to him like a frightened kitten. His love for the girl was so great that he had seen but one side of the question. Her ingrat.i.tude, her selfishness in ignoring the disgrace and misery she would bring this man who had been everything to her, had held no place in the captain's mind. To him the case was a plain one. She was young and foolish, and had committed a fault; she was sorry and repentant; she had run away from her sin; she had come back to the one she had wronged, and she wanted to be forgiven. That was his steadfast point of view, and this was his creed: "Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more." That Caleb did not view the question in the same way at first astonished, then irritated him. If she had broken the Master's command again, he would perhaps have let her go her way,-for what was innately bad he hated,-but not now, when she had awakened to a sense of her sin. He continued to pace up and down Caleb's kitchen, his hands behind his broad back, his h.o.r.n.y, stubby fingers twisting nervously together.

Caleb sat still in his chair, the lamplight streaming over his face.

In all the discussion his voice had been one low monotone. It seemed but a phonographic echo of his once clear tones.

The captain resumed his seat with a half-baffled, weary air.

"Caleb," he said,-there was a softness now in the tones of his voice that made the diver raise his head,-"you and me hev knowed each other off 'n' on for nigh on to twenty years. We've had it thick and nasty, and we've had as clear weather as ever a man sailed in. You've tried to do square 'tween man and man, and so far's I know, ye have, and I don't believe ye're goin' to turn crooked now. From the time this child used to come down to the dock, when I fust come to work here, and talk to me 'tween school hours, and Aunty Bell would take her in to dinner, down to the time she got hoodooed by that smooth face and lyin' tongue,-d.a.m.n him! I'll spile t'other side for him, some day, wus than the Screamer did,-from that time, I say, this 'ere little gal ain't been nothin' but a bird fillin' everything full of singin'

from the time she got up till she went to bed agin. I ask ye now, man to man, if that ain't so?"

Caleb nodded his head.

"During all that time there ain't been a soul up and down this road, man, woman, nor child, that she wouldn't help if she could,-and there's a blame' sight of 'em she did help, as you an' I know: sick child'en, sittin' up with 'em nights; an' makin' bonnets for folks as couldn't git 'em no other way, without payin' for 'em; and doin' all she could to make this place happier for her bein' in it. Since she's been yer wife, there ain't been a tidier nor nicer place along the sh.o.r.e road than yours, and there ain't been a happier little woman nor home nowheres. Is that so, or not?"

Again Caleb nodded his head.

"While all this is a-goin' on, here comes that little skunk, Bill Lacey, with a tongue like 'n ile-can, and every time she says she's lonely or tired-and she's had plenty of it, you bein' away-he up's with his can and squirts it into 'er ear about her bein' tied to an old man, and how if she'd married him he wouldn't 'a' lef her a minute"-

Caleb looked up inquiringly, an ugly gleam in his eyes.

"Oh, I ketched him at it one day in my kitchen, and I tol' him then I'd break his head, and I wish to G.o.d I had, now! Purty soon comes the time with the Screamer, and his face gets stove in. What does Betty do? Leave them men to git 'long best way they could,-like some o' the folks round here that was just as well able to 'ford the time,-or did she stand by and ketch a line and make fast? I'll tell ye what she done, 'cause I was there, and you warn't. Fust one come ash.o.r.e was Billy; he looked like he'd fallen off a topgall'nt mast and struck the deck with his face. Lonny Bowles come next; he warn't so bad mashed up. What did Betty do? Pick out the easiest one? No, she jes' anch.o.r.ed right 'longside that boy, and hung on, and never had 'er clo'es off for nigh on to forty-eight hours. If he's walkin' round now he owes it to her. Is that so, or not?"

"It's true, cap'n," said Caleb, his eyes fastened on the captain's face. The lids were heavy now; only his will held back the tears.

"For three weeks this went on, she a-settin like a little rabbit with her paws up starin' at him, her eyes gettin' bigger all the time, an'

he lyin', coiled up like a snake, lookin' up into her face until he'd hoodooed her and got her clean off her centre. Now there's one thing I'm a-goin' to ask ye, an' before I ask ye, an' before ye answer it, I'm a-goin' to ask ye another: when the Three Sisters come ash.o.r.e on Deadman Shoal las' winter in that sou'easter, 'cause the light warn't lit, an' all o' them men was drownded, whose fault was it?"

"Why, you know, Cap'n Joe," Caleb interposed quickly, eager to defend a brother keeper, a pained and surprised expression over-spreading his face. "Poor Charles Edwards had been out o' his head for a week."

"That's right, Caleb; that's what I heard, an' that's true, an' the dead men and the owners hadn't n.o.body to blame, an' didn't. Now I'll ask ye the other question: When Betty, after livin' every day of her life as straight as a marlin spike, run away an' lef' ye a week ago, an' broke up yer home, who's to blame,-Betty, or the hoodoo that's put 'er out'er her mind ever since the Screamer blowed up?"

Caleb settled back in his chair and rested his chin on his hand, his big fluffy beard hiding his wrist and shirt-cuff. For a long time he did not answer. The captain sat, with his hands on his knees, looking searchingly into Caleb's face, watching every expression that crossed it.

"Cap'n Joe," said the diver in his calm, low voice, "I hearn ye talk, an' I know ye well 'nough to know that ye believe every word ye say, an' I don't know but it's all true. I ain't had much 'sperience o'

women folks, only two. But I don't think ye git this right. It ain't for myself that I'm thinkin'. I kin git along alone, an' do my own cookin' an' washin' same as I allus used to. It's Betty I'm thinkin'

of. She's tried me more'n a year, an' done her best, an' give it up.

She wouldn't 'a' been 'hoodooed,' as ye call it, by Bill Lacey if her own heart warn't ready for it 'fore he began. It's agin natur' for a gal as young's Betty to be happy with a man 's old's me. She can't do it, no matter how hard she tries. I didn't know it when I asked her, but I see it now."

"But she knows better now, Caleb; she ain't a-goin' to cut up no more capers." There was a yearning, an almost pitiful tone in the captain's voice. His face was close to Caleb's.

"Ye think so, an' maybe she won't; but there's one thing yer don't seem to see, Cap'n Joe: she can't git out'er love with me an' inter love with Billy an' back agin to me in a week."

These last words came slowly, as if they had been dragged up out of the very depths of his heart.

"She never was out'er love with ye, Caleb, nor in with Lacey. Don't I tell ye?" he cried impatiently, too absorbed in Betty's welfare to note the seriousness of Caleb's tone.

"Yes," said Caleb. His voice had fallen almost to a whisper. "I know ye think so, but th' bes' thing now for the little gal is to give 'er 'er freedom, an' let 'er go 'er way. She shan't suffer as long's I've got a dollar, but I won't have 'er come home. It'll only break her heart then as well's mine. Now-now-it's only me-that is"-Caleb's head sank to the table until his face lay on his folded arms.

Captain Joe rose from his chair, bent down and laid his hand softly on the diver's shoulder. When he spoke his voice had the pleading tones of a girl.

"Caleb, don't keep nothin' back in yer heart; take Betty home. You needn't go down for her. I'll go myself an' bring her here. It won't be ten minutes 'fore her arms'll be round yer neck. Lemme go for her?"

The diver raised his head erect, looked Captain Joe calmly in the eye, and, without a trace of bitterness in his voice, said: "She'll never set foot here as my wife agin, Cap'n Joe, as long 's she lives. I ain't got the courage to set still an' see her pine away day arter day, if she comes back, an' I won't. I love 'er too much for that. If she was my own child instead o' my wife, I'd say the same thing. It's Betty I'm a-thinkin' of, not myself. It'd be twict 's hard for 'er the next time she got tired an' wanted to go. It's all over now, an' she's free. Let it all stay so."

"Don't say that, Caleb." The shock of the refusal seemed to have stunned him. "Don't say that. Think o' that child, Caleb: she come back to ye, an' you shut your door agin 'er."

Caleb shook his head, with a meaning movement that showed the iron will of the man and the hopelessness of further discussion.

"Then she ain't good 'nough for ye, 's that it?"

The captain was fast losing his self-control. He knew in his heart that in these last words he was doing Caleb an injustice, but his anger got the better of him.

Caleb did not answer.

"That's it. Say it out. You don't believe in her." His voice now rang through the kitchen. One hand was straight up over his head; his lips quivered. "Ye think she's some low-down critter instead of a poor child that ain't done n.o.body no wrong intentional. I ask ye for th'

las' time, Caleb. Be decent to yerself. Be a father to 'er, if ye can't be no more; an' if ye can't be that,-d.a.m.n ye!-stan' up an'

forgive her like a man."

Caleb made no sign. The cruel thrust had not reached his heart. He knew his friend, and he knew all sides of his big nature. The clear blue eyes still rested on the captain's face.

"You won't?" There was a tone almost of defiance in the captain's words.