Read Ebook: La Fe by Palacio Vald S Armando

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Ebook has 137 lines and 5340 words, and 3 pages

"You!"

"That's what I said," Medbury replied.

For a moment Davis stood grinning uncertainly; then he looked up.

"Where's the joke?" he asked. "Blamed if I see it."

Davis gazed up and down the street with an abstracted air; but all at once he drew himself together and exclaimed:

"Well, I'll be--" He broke off suddenly, and, turning sharply, began to walk back to the village.

"Where are you going?" asked Medbury, still standing in the road.

Over his shoulder Davis answered laconically:

"To tell the ol' man I can't go." He did not stop.

"It's mighty good of you, John," Medbury called humbly. "I'll make it up to you somehow--see if I don't."

"Make it up!" cried Davis, stopping in the road. "I don't want nothin' made up. You made it up, years ago, when you got me out of that affair in Para. You didn't ask no questions that night; nor when you run across our bar in that no'theaster to fish up my boy when his boat capsized. I don't know what you're up to, and I don't care. It's all right." He waved his hand lightly, as if to dismiss all obligations, and departed in search of Captain March.

But half a dozen steps away, Medbury heard him laugh, and turned to see him standing in the road, looking back.

"Just this minute saw what you was aimin' at," he called to Medbury. "Well, good luck to you!" And, grinning to himself, he went his way.

"Now," thought Medbury, "if Cap'n March'll only keep his eyes open for the rest of the day, I guess he's not going to miss seeing me. I shall be near, but not too near. Only I wish I knew of something to hurry him up before too many people laugh and wish me luck."

Fate, in the hands of a woman, was to do that for him.

It was early in March--March that had come in like a lamb and now lay drowsing under a sun that hourly reddened the buds and gleamed white on the salt-meadows and the shining boles of trees. There were bird-calls at intervals; barnyard fowls sunned themselves in garden spaces and sent up cloudy veils of dust: the life of the earth was awakening. Drew could see dark specks about the harbor's mouth: he knew that the boats had begun to go out for flatfish. The thought of even that mild activity moved him to impatience, and, getting to his feet, he walked to an open window and looked in.

"Mother," he said, "I'm going to find Captain March and get some reason from him why he doesn't sail. He can get a good mate, I hear; I don't understand his delaying. I'm tired of it. If he isn't going, I wish to know it, and arrange for a vacation elsewhere."

"Very well, Robert." His mother looked up brightly. Her son as an instrument of strenuous aggressiveness amused her. She had the sense of humor, which he had not inherited, and it was this sense that lured her on to add: "Don't say anything that you may regret."

"Oh, no," he answered gravely, and went away, leaving her to the silent laughter that always seemed to him, whenever he was a witness of it, as something peculiarly elusive and almost pagan.

In all Blackwater there was no cooler spot than Myron Beckwith's boat-shop. Facing the Shore Road, and standing on piles, with big sliding doors opening at each end, on a hot summer afternoon one could always find a cool breeze drawing through it and hear the water lapping about the piles beneath the floor. The panorama of village life passed by on the Shore Road, and at the back doors one could sit and watch all the activity of harbor and wharves and see the vessels going up and down the sound. To sailors ashore and to idlers in general it was an attractive spot. Here Drew found Captain March standing in a little group near the rear doors, ruminating on life.

"No," he was saying, "things go best by contraries. A sailor ought to marry a girl from the inboard, who doesn't know a scow from a full-rigged ship and is just a little scart at sight of salt water. A man like the dominie here," he added, as Drew halted by the group, "ought to marry a girl who's never been under conviction and has got a spice of old Satan in her. That's what gives 'em variety and keeps 'em interested. When you know just what you're going to have for your meals every day, you kind o' lose interest in your eating."

"Dominie," said Jehiel Dace, "you ought to get the cap'n to supply your pulpit while you're off on your vacation. He's a good deal of a preacher."

"I have other uses for him," said Drew, with a smile.

"Nothin' to hender you from freein' your mind as it is," suggested Dace, brightening at the prospect. "You don't need no pulpit for that."

There was a twinkle in Captain March's eyes, but he shook his head.

"No," he said with an air of finality, "it wouldn't be official. Wisdom has got to have authority to give it weight. Otherwise it's just blamed impudence."

"That's so," admitted Dace; "that's a good deal so. See what a man will take from his wife without--"

Captain March turned suddenly.

"There he comes!" he exclaimed, and gazed steadily through the open window.

All eyes, turning in the same direction, saw a horseman galloping down the Mount Horeb road. He descended the hill, was lost to sight behind the rigging-loft, flashed past a bit of the Shore Road, and was hidden again for a moment while they heard the thunder of his horse's feet on the mill-creek bridge. Captain March seated himself and, with knees wide apart, faced the land-side door.

In front of the shop a boy threw himself from a panting horse. He walked straight up to Captain March, and in much the same manner that a courier might announce defeat to a king, said:

"He can't come. His wife's sick, he says. He can't come."

"That settles it," said the captain. "I heard Simeon Macy was ashore, and I thought maybe I could get him for mate. Now I've got to go to the city this afternoon and look one up."

No one spoke, but every man in the group except the captain and Drew thought of Thomas Medbury, and wondered how far a man might be justified in letting personal reasons override necessity when his vessel was loaded and ready for sea.

Dace was the first to break the silence.

"As I was sayin'," he remarked, "speakin' of wives--"

Some one touched Drew on the shoulder and he turned quickly. It was Deacon Taylor, anxious to talk over again the debated subject of a new heater for the church. When Drew was again free the captain was gone.

"Where did the captain go?" he asked.

"My wisdom touchin' wives reminded him that his had sent him on an errant," answered Dace. "He went to the market. I suppose by now he's tryin' to explain to his wife how he happened to be three hours late with the meat for dinner."

At the market Drew was told that Captain March had gone home. When, after a momentary hesitation, Drew had gone thither, it was only to find Mrs. March sitting by a window, apparently watching for her recreant husband.

"And he wanted roast beef for dinner," sadly remarked that good lady after she had told the minister that she knew no more about her husband's whereabouts than she knew where Moses was buried. She turned her face from him for an instant.

"It is twelve o'clock, lacking seventeen minutes," she added in a tone that suggested the tragic stage. Drew hurried away.

When, after a hopeless search for the missing mariner, he wended his way homeward half an hour later, he smiled to himself as he wondered if it was not just as well: he could not for his life tell what he could have said to urge the captain to sail. At his gate he came face to face with a breathless small boy.

"Mr. Drew," he gasped, "Cap'n March he says--he says--you be at--Myron's boat-shop--boat-shop by half-past one--yes, sir. He's goin' to sail." Then he disappeared.

In wonder Drew hastened up to his house, to find his mother kneeling on the floor and strapping a satchel.

"I've just put some crullers and a glass of jelly in your bag," she told him, without turning. "I don't suppose you'll get a thing that tastes like real cooking. And I put your winter flannels in, too. It will be cold nights, and you will sit out on deck and get chilled through. Now come to dinner."

"I don't understand this sudden haste," said Drew, as he took his seat at the table. "I saw the captain an hour ago, and he showed no signs of any impatience to be off. It seems too good to be true."

Mrs. Drew laughed.

"Oh, mother! mother!" protested Drew, smiling.

"Oh, I put it strongly--trust me for that. He said he had seen you, but you had said nothing. I knew it would be like that. Oh, you were two Buddhas sitting under the sacred Bo-tree, contemplating eternity. Isn't that what the Buddha is supposed to do? You were like that, you two, anyway. Well, he explained everything. He told me that two men had promised to go out with him as mate, but changed their minds. He thought it queer. Another asked to go, but, for personal reasons, he didn't want him. But as soon as he knew just how you felt he said he'd go right off for this man. I thought it very good of him. I hope the man isn't a rough character. But, Robert, you didn't tell me that his wife and daughter are going." She looked at her son reproachfully.

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