Fair Harbor Part 31

"She's Isaac Berry's daughter," he went on, "and Ike Berry was my best friend. More than that, she's a good girl, a fine girl. Her mother is more or less of a fool, but that isn't the girl's fault. Keep an eye on her, will you, Kendrick?"

"Why--why, I'll do what I can, of course."

"Like her, don't you?"

"Yes. Very much."

"You couldn't help it. She is pretty thick with that young Kent, I believe. He's a bright boy."

"Yes."

"All right.... But there's time enough for that; they're both young....

Watch her, Kendrick. See that she doesn't make too big mistakes.

She--she's going to have a little money of her own pretty soon--just a little. Don't let that--that Phillips or--or anybody else get hold of it. I.... Oh, here you are! Confound you, Sheldon, you're a nuisance!"

The doctor opened the door and entered. He nodded significantly to Kendrick. The latter understood. So, too, did Judge Knowles.

"Time's up, eh?" he panted. "Well, all right, I suppose. Good luck to you, Kendrick. And good night."

He smiled cheerfully. One might have thought he expected to see his caller the next morning. The captain simply could not believe this was to be the last time.

"Good night, Judge," he said. "I'll drop in to-morrow, early."

The judge did not answer. His last word had to do with other things.

"Don't you forget, Kendrick," he whispered. "I've banked on you."

The feeling of the absolute impossibility of the situation still remained with Sears as Mike drove him to his own door and Judah helped him down from the chaise. It was not possible that a brain like that, a bit of machinery capable of thinking so clearly and expressing itself so vigorously, could be so near its final breakdown. A personality like Judge Knowles' could not end so abruptly. He would not have it so. The doctor must be mistaken. He was over pessimistic.

He sat in the rocking chair until nearly half-past one thinking of the judge's news, that Lobelia Phillips was dead, and of the charge to him.

Fight Egbert--there was an element of humor in that; Knowles certainly did hate Phillips. But for him, Kendrick, to a.s.sume a sort of guardianship over the fortunes of Elizabeth Berry! The fun in that was too sardonic to be pleasant. He thought of many things before he retired, but the way ahead looked foggy enough. And behind the fog was--what? Why, little sunshine for him, in all human probability.

Before blowing out his lamp he peered out of the window at the Knowles house. The lights there were still burning.

The next morning when he came out for breakfast, Judah met him with a solemn face.

"Bad news for Bayport this mornin', Cap'n Sears," said Judah. "Judge Knowles has gone. Slipped his cable about four o'clock, so Mike told me. There's a good man gone, by Henry! Don't seem hardly as if it could be, does it?"

That was exactly what Bayport said when it heard the ill tidings. It did not seem as if it could be. The judge had been so long a dominant figure in town affairs, his strong will had so long helped to mould and lead opinion and his shrewd common sense had so often guided the community, and individuals, through safe channels and out of troubled waters, that it was hard to comprehend the fact that he would lead and guide no more.

He had many enemies, no man with his determined character could avoid that, but they were altogether of a type whose enmity was, to decent people, preferable to their friendship. During his life it had seemed as if he were a lonely man, but his funeral was the largest held in Bayport since the body of Colonel Seth Foster, killed at Gettysburg, was brought home from the front for burial.

It was a gloomy, drizzly day when the long line of buggies and carryalls and folk on foot followed the hea.r.s.e to the cemetery amid the pines.

Captain Sears, looking back at the procession, thought of the judge's many prophecies and grim jokes concerning this very journey, and he wondered--well, he wondered as most of us wonder on such occasions. Also he realized that, although their acquaintanceship had been brief, he was going to miss Judge Knowles tremendously.

"I wish I had been lucky enough to know him sooner," he told Judah that evening.

Judah pulled his nose reflectively. "It kind of surprised me," he observed, "to hear what the minister said about him. 'Twas the Orthodox minister, and he's pretty strict, too, but you heard him say that the judge was one of the best men in Ostable County. Yet he never went to meetin' what you'd call reg'lar and he did cuss consider'ble. He did now, didn't he, Cap'n Sears?"

Sears nodded. He was thinking and paying little attention to the Cahoon moralizing.

"Um-hm," went on Judah. "He sartin did. He never said 'sugar' when he meant 'd.a.m.n.' But I don't know, I cal'late I'd ruther been sworn at by Judge Knowles than had a blessin' said over me by some others in these lat.i.tudes. The judge's cussin' would have been honest, anyhow. And he never put one of them swear words in the wrong place. They was always just where they belonged; even when he swore at me I always agreed with him."

Feeling, somehow, that the death of the man who had chosen and employed him for the position increased his responsibility in that position, Captain Sears worked harder than ever to earn his salary as general manager of the Fair Harbor. He had already made some improvements in systematizing and thereby saving money for the inst.i.tution. The groceries, flour, tea, sugar, and the rest, had heretofore been purchased at Ba.s.sett's store in the village. He still continued to buy certain articles of Eliphalet, princ.i.p.ally from motives of policy and to retain the latter's good will, but the bulk of supplies he contracted for in Boston at the houses from which he had so often bought stores for his ships. He could not go to the city and negotiate by word of mouth, more was the pity, and so was obliged to make his trades by mail, but he got bids from several firms and the results were quite worth while.

Besides groceries he bought a hogshead of corned beef, barrels of crackers, a barrel of salt pork, and, from one of the local fishermen, a half dozen kegs of salt mackerel. The saving altogether was a very appreciable amount.

The Fair Harbor property included, besides the land upon which the house was situated, several acres of wood lot timbered with pine and oak. Mrs.

Berry--or her daughter--had been accustomed to hire a man to cut and haul such wood as was needed, from time to time, for the stoves and fireplaces. Also, when repairs had to be done, they hired a carpenter to make them. Sears, when he got around to it, devoted some consideration to the wood and repair question and, after much haggling, affected a sort of three-cornered swap. Benijah Black, the carpenter, was a brother-in-law of Burgess Paine, who owned the local coal, wood, lumber and grain shop by the railway station. The captain arranged that Black should do whatever carpenter work might be needed at the Harbor and take his pay in wood at the wood lot, selling the wood--or a part of it--to Paine, for whom he was in debt for coal and lumber; and, also, for whom he, Black, was building a new storage shed. It was a complicated process, but it resulted in the Fair Harbor's getting its own firewood cut, hauled and split for next to nothing, its repair costs cut in half, its coal bills lessened, while Black and Paine seemed to be perfectly satisfied. Altogether it was a good deal of a managerial triumph, as even the manager himself was obliged to admit.

Elizabeth was loud in her praises.

"I don't see how you ever did it, Cap'n Kendrick," she declared. "And Benijah and Mr. Paine are just as contented as we are. It is a miracle."

Sears grinned. "I don't know quite how I did it, myself," he said.

"'Twas the most complicated piece of steerin' I ever did, and if we come out without shipwreck it _will_ be a miracle! I'm goin' to tackle that hay question next. There's hay enough on that lower meadow of ours to pay for corn for the hens for quite a spell. I'll see if I can't make a d.i.c.ker there somehow. Then if I can fix up a deal with the hens to trade corn for eggs, we'll come out pretty well, won't we?"

This sort of thing interested him and made him a trifle more contented with his work. His talents as a diplomat, such as they were, were needed continually. The interior of the Fair Harbor was a sort of incubator for petty squabbles, jealousies, prejudices and complaints, some funny, many ridiculous, and almost all annoying. The most petty he refused to be troubled with, bidding the complainants go to Mrs. Berry. His refusals were good-natured but determined.

"Well, I tell you, Miss Peasley," he said, when that lady had come to him with a long, involved wail concerning the manner in which Mrs.

Constance Cahoon, who occupied the seat next her at table, insisted on keeping the window open all through meals, "so's I sit there with a draft blowin' right down my neck the whole time." "I tell you, Miss Peasley," said the captain, "if I were you I would shut the window."

"But I do shut it," declared Desire. "And every time I jump up and shut it, up she bounces and opens it again."

"Humph! I see.... Well, exercise helps digestion, so they say. You can jump as long as she can bounce, can't you?"

Miss Peasley was disgusted. "Well," she snapped, "I don't call that much help. I supposed if I went to the _manager_ he'd put his foot down."

"He's goin' to--and then take it up and put it down again. I've got to hobble out to see to mowin' the meadow. You tell Mrs. Berry all about it."

As a part of his diplomacy he made it a point to spend half an hour each morning in consultation with Cordelia Berry. The matron of the Fair Harbor was at first rather suspicious and ready to resent any intrusion upon her rights and prerogatives. But at each conference the captain listened so politely to her rambling reports, seemed to receive her suggestions so eagerly and to ask her advice upon so many points, that her suspicions were lulled and she came to accept the new superintendent's presence as a relief and a benefit.

"He is so very gentlemanly, Elizabeth," she told her daughter. "And so willing to learn. At first, as you know, I couldn't see why the poor dear judge appointed him, but now I do. He realized that I needed an a.s.sistant. In many ways he reminds me of your father."

"But, mother," exclaimed her daughter, in surprise, "Cap'n Kendrick isn't nearly as old as father was."

"Oh it isn't the age that reminded me. It's the manner. He has the same quick, authoritative way of making decisions and saying things. And it is so very gratifying to see how he defers to my judgment and experience."

Captain Sears did defer, that is he seldom opposed. But, when each conference was over, he went his own sweet way, using his own judgment and doing what seemed to him best. With Elizabeth, however, he was quite different. When she offered advice--which was seldom--he listened and almost invariably acted upon it. He was daily growing to have a higher opinion of her wisdom and capabilities. Whether or not it was the wisdom and capabilities alone which influenced that opinion he did not attempt to a.n.a.lyze. He enjoyed being with her and working with her, that he knew. That the constant companionship might be, for him, a risky and perhaps dangerous experience, he did not as yet realize. When he was with her, and busy with Fair Harbor affairs, he could forget the slowness with which his crippled legs were mending, and the increasing longing--sometimes approaching desperation--for the quarter deck of his own ship and the sea wind in his face.

He worked hard for the Harbor and did his best to justify his appointment as manager, but, work as he might, he knew perfectly well that such labors would scarcely earn his salary. But, on the other hand, he knew that the man who appointed him had not expected them to do so.

He had been put in charge of the Fair Harbor for one reason alone and that was to be in command of the ship when the redoubtable Egbert came alongside. Judge Knowles had as much as told him that very thing, and more than once. Egbert Phillips had been, evidently, the judge's pet aversion and, in his later days illness and fretfulness had magnified and intensified that aversion. When Sears attempted to find good and sufficient reasons for belief that the husband of Lobelia Seymour was any such bugbear he was baffled. He asked Judah more questions and he questioned citizens of Bayport who had known the former singing teacher before and after his marriage. Some, like Judah, declared him "slick" or "smooth." Others, and those the majority, seemed to like him. He was polite and educated and a "perfect gentleman," this was the sum of feminine opinion. Captain Sears was inclined to picture him as what he would have called a "sissy," and not much more dangerous than that. The judge's hatred, he came to believe, was an obsession, a sick man's fancy.

He had, of course, read the Phillips letter, that which Judge Knowles bade him take away and read that night of his death. He hurriedly read it on that occasion before going to bed; he had reread it several times since.

It was a well-written letter, there was no doubt of that, a polite letter, almost excessively so, perhaps. In fact, if Sears had been obliged to find a fault with it it would have been that it was a little too polite, a little too polished and flowery. It was not the sort of letter that he, himself, would have written under stress of grief, but he realized that it was not the sort of letter he could have written at all. Taken as a whole it was hard to pick flaws which might not be the result of prejudice, and taken sentence by sentence it stood the test almost as well.

"Our life together has been so happy," wrote Phillips, "so ideal, that the knowledge of its end leaves me stunned, speechless, wordless."

That was exaggeration, of course. He was not wordless, for the letter contained almost a superfluity of words; but people often said things they did not mean literally.

"My dear wife and I spoke of you so often, Judge, her affection for you was so great--an affection which I share, as you know----"