The Tides of Barnegat Part 34

"He's a liar! A dirty liar! Bring him in!" Each word hissed from his lips like an explosive.

Tod opened the door of the sitting-room and the Swede stepped in. The captain whirled his chair suddenly and faced him. Anger, doubt, and the flicker of a faint hope were crossing his face with the movement of heat lightning.

"You know my son, you say?"

"I do." The answer was direct and the tone positive.

"What's his name?"

"Barton Holt. He signs it different, but that's his name."

"How old is he?" The pitch of the captain's voice had altered. He intended to riddle the man's statement with a cross-fire of examination.

"'Bout forty, maybe forty-five. He never told

"What kind of eyes?"

"Brown, like yours."

"What kind of hair?"

"Curly. It's gray now; he had fever, and it turned."

"Where--when?" Hope and fear were now struggling for the mastery.

"Two years ago--when I first knew him; we were in hospital together."

"What's he been doin'?" The tone was softer. Hope seemed to be stronger now.

"Mining out in Brazil."

The captain took his eyes from the face of the man and asked in something of his natural tone of voice:

"Where is he now?"

The Swede put his hand in his inside pocket and took out a small time-book tied around with a piece of faded tape. This he slowly unwound, Tod's and the captain's eyes following every turn of his fingers. Opening the book, he glanced over the leaves, found the one he was looking for, tore it carefully from the book, and handed it to the captain.

"That's his writing. If you want to see him send him a line to that address. It'll reach him all right. If you don't want to see him he'll go back with me to Rio. I don't want yer supper and I don't want yer job. I done what I promised and that's all there is to it. Good-night,"

and he opened the door and disappeared in the darkness.

Captain Holt sat with his head on his chest looking at the floor in front of him. The light of the banging lamp made dark shadows under his eyebrows and under his chin whiskers. There was a firm set to his clean-shaven lips, but the eyes burned with a gentle light; a certain hope, positive now, seemed to be looming up in them.

Tod watched him for an instant, and said:

"What do ye think of it, cap'n?"

"I ain't made up my mind."

"Is he lyin'?"

"I don't know. Seems too good to be true. He's got some things right; some things he ain't. Keep your mouth shut till I tell ye to open it--to Cobden, mind ye, and everybody else. Better help Green overhaul that line. That'll do, Fogarty."

Tod dipped his head--his sign of courteous a.s.sent--and backed out of the room. The captain continued motionless, his eyes fixed on s.p.a.ce.

Once he turned, picked up the paper, scrutinized the handwriting word for word, and tossed it back on the desk. Then he rose from his seat and began pacing the floor, stopping to gaze at a chart on the wall, at the top of the stove, at the pendulum of the clock, surveying them leisurely. Once he looked out of the window at the flare of light from his swinging lamp, stencilled on the white sand and the gray line of the dunes beyond. At each of these resting-places his face a.s.sumed a different expression; hope, fear, and anger again swept across it as his judgment struggled with his heart. In one of his turns up and down the small room he laid his hand on a brick lying on the window-sill--one that had been sent by the builders of the Station as a sample. This he turned over carefully, examining the edges and color as if he had seen it for the first time and had to pa.s.s judgment upon its defects or merits. Laying it back in its place, he threw himself into his chair again, exclaiming aloud, as if talking to someone:

"It ain't true. He'd wrote before if he were alive. He was wild and keerless, but he never was dirt-mean, and he wouldn't a-treated me so all these years. The Swede's a liar, I tell ye!"

Wheeling the chair around to face the desk, he picked up a pen, dipped it into the ink, laid it back on the desk, picked it up again, opened a drawer on his right, took from it a sheet of official paper, and wrote a letter of five lines. This he enclosed in the envelope, directed to the name on the slip of paper. Then he opened the door.

"Fogarty."

"Yes, cap'n."

"Take this to the village and drop it in the post yourself. The weather's clearin', and you won't be wanted for a while," and he strode out and joined his men.

CHAPTER XIX

THE BREAKING OF THE DAWN

September weather on Barnegat beach! Fine gowns and fine hats on the wide piazzas of Beach Haven! Too cool for bathing, but not too cool to sit on the sand and throw pebbles and loll under kindly umbrellas; air fresh and bracing, with a touch of June in it; skies full of mares'-tails--slips of a painter's brush dragged flat across the film of blue; sea gone to rest; not a ripple, no long break of the surf, only a gentle lift and fall like the breathing of a sleeping child.

Uncle Isaac shook his head when he swept his eye round at all this loveliness; then he turned on his heel and took a look at the aneroid fastened to the wall of the sitting-room of the Life-Saving Station.

The arrow showed a steady shrinkage. The barometer had fallen six points.

"What do ye think, Captain Holt?" asked the old surfman.

"I ain't thinkin', Polhemus; can't tell nothin' 'bout the weather this month till the moon changes; may go on this way for a week or two, or it may let loose and come out to the sou'-east I've seen these dog-days last till October."

Again Uncle Isaac shook his head, and this time kept his peace; now that his superior officer had spoken he had no further opinion to express.

Sam Green dropped his feet to the floor, swung himself over to the barometer, gazed at it for a moment, pa.s.sed out of the door, swept his eye around, and resumed his seat--tilted back against the wall. What his opinion might be was not for publication--not in the captain's hearing.

Captain Holt now consulted the gla.s.s, picked up his cap bearing the insignia of his rank, and went out through the kitchen to the land side of the house. The sky and sea--feathery clouds and still, oily flatness--did not interest him this September morning. It was the rolling dune that caught his eye, and the straggly path that threaded its way along the marshes and around and beyond the clump of scrub pines and bushes until it was lost in the haze that hid the village.

This land inspection had been going on for a month, and always when Tod was returning from the post-office with the morning mail. The men had noticed it, but no one had given vent to his thoughts.

Tod, of course, knew the cause of the captain's impatience, but no one of the others did, not even Archie; time enough for that when the Swede's story was proved true. If the fellow had lied that was an end to it; if he had told the truth Bart would answer, and the mystery be cleared up. This same silence had been maintained toward Jane and the doctor; better not raise hopes he could not verify--certainly not in Jane's breast.

Not that he had much hope himself; he dared not hope. Hope meant a prop to his old age; hope meant joy to Jane, who would welcome the prodigal; hope meant relief to the doctor, who could then claim his own; hope meant redemption for Lucy, a clean name for Archie, and honor to himself and his only son.

No wonder, then, that he watched for an answer to his letter with feverish impatience. His own missive had been blunt and to the point, asking the direct question: "Are you alive or dead, and if alive, why did you fool me with that lie about your dying of fever in a hospital and keep me waiting all these years?" Anything more would have been superfluous in the captain's judgment--certainly until he received some more definite information as to whether the man was his son.

Half a dozen times this lovely September morning the captain had strolled leisurely out of the back door and had mounted the low hillock for a better view. Suddenly a light flashed in his face, followed by a look in his eyes that they had not known for weeks--not since the Swede left. The light came when his glance fell upon Tod's lithe figure swinging along the road; the look kindled when he saw Tod stop and wave his hand triumphantly over his head.

The letter had arrived!