Sheila of Big Wreck Cove Part 37

"'Tis a shame. I won't stand to have that gal come here again.

Prudence has been starting and crying out all night, too. She's as much upset as you be. I cal'late you don't feel like shaving of me this morning, Ida May."

"Oh, yes, I do, Uncle Ira! Don't mind how I look."

"But I do mind," he grumbled. "Folks' looks is a great p'int. I've always held to it. Talk about a singed cat being better than it looks--I doubt it!"

"People of my complexion always look worse after a sleepless night,"

explained Sheila, trying to smile at him.

"That's a pity, too. And I feel the need of being spruced up a good deal myself this morning, Ida May," he continued. "D'you see how straggly my hair is gettin'? Do you think you could trim it a mite?"

"Why, of course I can, Uncle Ira," she rejoined cheerfully.

"I swan! You be a likely gal, Ida May," said the old man, both reflectively and gratefully. "What would Prue and me do without you?

And no other girl but just you would have begun to fill the bill o'

lading. That's as sure as sure! See now," he went on, with emphasis, "suppose you'd been such a one as that half-crazy critter that come here yesterday! Where'd Prudence and me been with her in the house?

Well!"

"She--she may not be as bad as she seemed under those particular circ.u.mstances," Sheila said hesitatingly. "If she had come here--had come here first and you and Aunt Prue had not known me at all--"

"I swan! Don't say no more! Don't say no more, I tell ye!" gasped Cap'n Ira. "It's bad luck to talk such a way; I do believe it is.

Come on, Ida May. You tackle my hair and let's see what you can do with it. I know right well you'll make it look better than Prudence used to do."

Cap'n Ira was talking for effect, and the result he wished to achieve was bringing a smile to Sheila's face and a brighter light into her eyes, the violet hues of which were far more subdued than he desired. His success was not marked, but he changed to some degree the forlorn expression of the girl's countenance, so that when Prudence appeared in the midst of the operation of shaving, Sheila could greet the old woman with a tremulous smile.

"You deary-dear!" crooned Prudence, with her withered arms about the strong, young frame of the girl, drawing her close. "I know you've suffered this night. That mad girl was enough to put us all out o'

kilter. But don't let any thought of her bother you, Ida May. Your uncle and I love you, and if forty people said you didn't belong here, we should keep you just the same. Ain't that so, Ira?"

"Sure is," declared the captain vigorously. "No two ways about it.

We couldn't get along without Ida May, and I cal'late, the way things look, that I'd better get that high fence I spoke of built around this place at once. We're likely to have somebody come here and carry the gal off almost any time. I can see that danger as plain as plain!"

Prudence laughed, yet there was a catch in her voice too. She kissed the girl's tear-wet face tenderly. Sheila's heart throbbed so that she could scarcely go on with the task of shaving Cap'n Ira. How could she continue to live this lie before two people who were so infinitely kind to her and who loved her so tenderly?

And the girl loved them in return. It was no selfish thought which held Sheila Macklin here in the old house on Wreckers' Head. She had put aside all concern for her own personal comfort or ease. Had it not been for her desire to shield Tunis and continue to aid and comfort Cap'n Ira and Prudence, she might quickly and quietly have left the place and thus have escaped all possibility of punishment for the deception she had practiced.

Yes, had these other considerations not been involved, she would have run away! Although she chanced to have no money just at this time, she would have left the Ball homestead and Wreckers' Head and the town itself and walked so far away that n.o.body who knew her would ever see her again. She had thought of doing this even as far back as the time when she was so lonely and miserable in Boston.

Now, she would willingly have become a tramp for the purpose of getting out of the affliction which enmeshed her.

She could not, nevertheless, yield to this temptation. If she ran away from the b.a.l.l.s and Big Wreck Cove, she would tacitly admit the truth of all Ida May Bostwick's claims, and possibly involve Tunis in the wreckage. Therefore she held to her determination of keeping her place here until she was actually driven forth.

As a last resort, having now worked out the detail of that plan in her mind, she believed she could save Tunis from much calumny if it became positively necessary for her to depart under this cloud and abandon her place to the real Ida May. The latter must, however, come with positive proof of her ident.i.ty--evidence sufficient to convince Cap'n Ira and Prudence--before Sheila Macklin would release her grasp upon what she had obtained by trickery and deceit.

Not for a moment did the girl try to excuse to herself what she had done. In spite of the b.a.l.l.s' need of her, and in spite of Tunis'

love, Sheila did not try to deceive herself with any sophistry about the end justifying the deed. Such thinking could not satisfy her now.

Sheila's eyes were opened. She beheld before her both the wide and the narrow way. If she took the pleasanter path, it was with a full knowledge of what she did. Yet would it be the pleasanter path? She doubted this. If she continued to fight for a place which was not hers by right, she must walk for all time in a slippery way. This claim of the real Ida May might be perennial; the girl might return again and again to the attack. For years--as long as the b.a.l.l.s lived and Sheila remained with them--she must be ever on the alert to defend her position with them.

And after the good old people died--what then? Their property here on the Head and their money would no more belong to Sheila Macklin than it did now. She shrank in horror from the thought of swindling the real Ida May out of anything which might legally be hers when the b.a.l.l.s were gone. Of course, Cap'n Ira and Prudence could will their property to whom they pleased. Still, Ida May was Prudence's niece!

As the day dragged on, Ida May did not appear, but the old folks talked about her continually, until Sheila thought she must cry aloud to them to stop.

"The poor thing must be half-witted, of course," Mrs. Ball said ruminatively. "Can't be otherwise. But she must have known something about Sarah Honey and her folks."

"Seems likely," agreed Cap'n Ira.

"Now, you know, Ira, Sarah was an orphan and I was her mother's only relation--and only that in a kind of a left-handed way, for I wasn't really her aunt. That branch of the Honeys--Sarah's father's folks--had all died out. Sarah lived about--kinder from pillar to post as you might say--till she went to Boston and met Mr. Bostwick.

Isn't that so, Ida May?"

"Yes. So I understand," agreed the girl faintly.

"Now, you don't remember your mother much, Ida May," pursued Prudence confidently. "You was too young when she died. And you being brought up among the Bostwicks, you didn't know much about us down here on the Cape. But don't you remember any neighbor that lived near you there in Boston that had a gal something like this crazy one that come here?"

"I swan!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Cap'n Ira. "You're coming out strong, old woman, I do say."

Sheila could only shake her head.

"Why, see," said Prudence, encouraged by her husband's commendation, "there might have been a neighbor woman that Sarah--your mother, you know, Ida May--was close acquainted with. Maybe she used to talk with this neighbor a good deal about her young days, and how she lived down here. You know women often gossip that way."

"I'll say they do!" put in Cap'n Ira, tapping the k.n.o.b of his cane.

"Well, now," said the old woman, greatly interested in her own idea, and a little proud of it, "suppose that neighbor had a little girl who heard all these things Sarah Bostwick might have said. And if that child's brain wasn't just right--if she was a little weak-minded, poor thing--what's more reasonable than that she treasured it all up in her mind and after years, in one of her spells of weak-mindedness, she got the idea _she_ was Ida May Bostwick, and determined to come here and visit us!"

"I swan, Prudence!" exclaimed Cap'n Ira. "It's like a story-book--a reg'lar novel."

"Well, it might be," said his wife, smiling quite proudly.

"Only after all, that gal didn't seem so very weak-minded," muttered Cap'n Ira. "She seemed more mean and ugly than weak."

Sheila had thought somewhat along this line herself. At least, she knew how weak the real Ida May's story must sound to most people in the neighborhood, unless the claimant had actual proof of birth and name to bolster her attempt to win the b.a.l.l.s. There was but a tenuous thread connecting Ida May with Big Wreck Cove, or any other part of Cape Cod. The Bostwicks--the girl's immediate family, at least--were dead.

These facts, already gathered by Sheila from Aunt Prudence's conversation with the neighboring women, were the foundation on which she had built her desperate hope of keeping up the deception and thwarting the other girl, no matter how bitterly the latter might press her claim.

Nor was she, Sheila felt, depriving Ida May of anything which the latter, if she obtained it, would actually prize. The shallow girl was not the sort of person to appreciate the kindness of the two old people or give them any comfort and sympathy in return. Why, both Cap'n Ira and Prudence already shrank from the new claimant!

This fact, however, did not cause Sheila, the imposter, to lose sight of the point that Cap'n Ira and his wife could both be very stern in att.i.tude and speech toward the evildoer. They made no compromises with evil.

Even the old man, philosophical as he was and wont to look upon most human frailities with a lenient if not a humorous eye, would not excuse actual crime. And something very like a crime had been committed.

The day pa.s.sed without any reappearance of Ida May upon Wreckers'

Head, but just after nightfall and while the supper dishes were being cleared away, Zebedee Pauling knocked at the kitchen door. All three of the Ball household looked upon the young fellow expectantly when he stepped in.

"I was just pa.s.sing by and thought I'd look in and see how you all were," said Zeb, with his usual shy manner and apologetic smile.

"Come in and set down, Zeb," said the captain eagerly. "I cal'late you've got some news for us."

"I don't know," said Zeb thoughtfully, "but what you've got some news that might satisfy mom and me. That is, about that girl Tunis brought to the house."

"What about her, Zeb?" queried Prudence anxiously.