CHAPTER III
THE RED BALDWIN
It was the fifth Sunday, or Sabbath (for it was always that in Salthaven) since Ben's return. The sun was coppery. Even the landward breeze had expired, and the lightest leaf seemed to weight the swooning air. Captain Fell sat, jelled on the porch and quivering with heat.
At last he opened his eyes. He hadn't been asleep, just slyly cogitating a plan, as Sally knew from the next question:
"Sally, will you swap a promise with me?"
"Oh, Father, do you mean it?"
"Yes, even if it's the worst fool contraption ever a female wanted, you can have it."
"Cross your heart?"
Now if frequently he talked to her as a child, it was because he thought she was one, while she kept her conversation in kind because she knew he was. So with a maternal tolerance, her eyes followed the puffy fingers as they registered the vow.
"Now, do you know what it is?"
"Of course, haven't you asked me often enough the past six months? A little benzine gig to throw dust in the eyes of honest people that walk, and spoil the wash on Mondays." And how his sea-salted soul hated them! Like him, thought Sally. Wherever was he to get the money for an automobile? It was lucky he had a woman(!) to handle what he had! But there was a method in his madness, also one in hers.
"No, it's permission for Ben to come and see me," she returned demurely, but triumphantly.
His mouth fell open.
"You little fox!" he sputtered in admiration, then he stormed "I—will—not!"
"But you promised!"
"I said the thing—you wanted permission to see a fool boy isn't a thing. It's got to be something you can feel, handle, touch. See my girl?"
It was his turn to be triumphant, and the cane stamped victoriously into the house.
However he must have relented in part, for the red-wattled face again appeared in the doorway.
"Changed your mind, Daughter? Shall I order that dod-gasted devil's gig?"
"No thank you."
She looked up at the tree. Her eyes blinked rapidly, though the big Baldwin gave plenty of shade.
Suddenly they were focussed on that gate, which somehow seemed to have a personality of its own. To strangers its click might always be in one key, but she could distinguish many changes in pitch, and varying intimations. It always served as a sort of wooden butler announcing new arrivals.
Phil Huntington slammed it boldly. He always did everything with that air of smiling audacity which from time immemorial has been reputed to charm the feminine heart. And he was good to look at,—brown, slender, and wiry, with a straight-enough, posturesque profile, challenging feminine admiration, likewise sometimes the equally ardent masculine desire to despoil it, and in his gait a perfect blending of two philosophies,—the classical "carpe diem" and the more synchronistic "pep."
However, opinions differed about him. To nervous Salthaven mothers "that Philip Huntington" was a cogent reason for adding to their prayers for "those that go down to the sea in ships," another for "those that go down to big cities in trains." Cap'n Bluster approved him—or his prospects; Cap'n Fairwinds disliked him cordially. And even silent Ben had been known to allude—rather witheringly—to "the dude."
As for Sally, she was sure she detected a little over-consciousness and pride in two things, one in the fact that his father owned the large ship-building plant at New Bedford, as well as the pretentious home on the hill, the other, in that fatal facility which his room-mate had once described as "getting away with murder." He had just achieved a master-stroke in this fine art,—nothing less than the interception of both the Dean's and Registrar's letters which were to announce his ignominious and ultimate flunking at Yale. His allowance therefore secure for the summer, he was as triumphant as her father, and needed a taking down, "comeuppance," the villagers would have called it.
So she vouchsafed him only a most nonchalant "hello," and signed him to a place beside her on the rustic seat under the apple-tree. He would have taken it anyway.
Her caller promptly and characteristically resented her inattention to His Princeship, and particularly to that new straw and its bright fraternity band.
"Welcome to our city!" he jeered sarcastically, twirling the ribbon into a rainbow gyroscope, then,—"What's that you're doing, there?"
Absent-mindedly she withdrew her foot from the bare patch between the ridged roots and surveyed the hieroglyphics she had been tracing. There, they were,—seven little cones in seven circles. Funny, wasn't it? All night long she had been pursuing them—or they her—entrancing, beautiful, and always beckoning. Through her dreams the lovely shining things had floated on the giant sea-saucer. Sometimes they formed strange fantastic figures, and once they had even fallen in line and like children "snapped the whip." And in the moment that always comes between complete unconsciousness and half-awaking, they had dropped quite over the edge of the sea-saucer, vanishing into a golden void. And she had knelt on the edge, looking over to see what could be underneath—and was disappointed because she could not see.
But "Nothing," was all she answered Phil.
Then, for just at this unpropitious moment Ben must come up the street, she looked at her father, all curves and parabola outlines like some recumbent hippo of Lewis Carroll's fancy. The audible assurance that he was asleep was really so overpowering that a quaint conceit of her childhood came back,—he would make such a fine illustration in the Picture Bible for that story of the Fall of Jericho. So she waved to Ben, and forthwith entered into that game called, in different ages, banter, persiflage, repartee—"jollying" in hers—at which, for all her straightforwardness, she was quite as expert as Master Phil.
The banished first mate sauntered by; looked chagrined, bashful, wistful, and envious, all at once; then gazed up at the apple-tree. The reddening Baldwins offered a suggestion which, seated upon an upturned skiff, a little way up the street, he promptly began to put into execution.
First he halved the apple very carefully, then removed the core. On the leaf of a pocket log-book he wrote something, tore out the page, placed it in the cavity, and fitted the two halves together. Picking up a shingle, he made two long skewers, thrusting them through the apple so that the halves would not part; and finished the job by nipping off the protruding ends of the skewers.
A minute later a perfectly harmless apple fell into Sally's lap. The Captain still slept and Master Phil did not notice the premature fall, but Sally, womanlike, connected a man with that apple. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw Ben, who nodded and disappeared under the green tunnel of the elms.
Now only a faint radiance powdered them with gold.
Sally rose.
"Excuse me, Phil, I must get supper."
She didn't ask him to stay, thus doing violence to Salthaven hospitality, but she had to examine that apple.
He held her hand a little longer than was necessary for an ordinary farewell. She wriggled her fingers out of his clasp.
"There, Phil, you're not going away for a year, you know, and," she added to herself as she skipped up the steps, "I'm afraid—someone else is."
The western sky through the kitchen window glowed no more rosily than her cheeks, or the apple, as she groped for the note inside.
"Dear Sally," it read, "I sail Monday. Won't you meet me tonight at eight and walk to the Light? As ever—Ben."