A DIPLOMATIC EFFORT

The young ship builder by Sophie Swett is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. CHAPTER XI

A DIPLOMATIC EFFORT

Loveday retired at once, with a lemon, although the harbor was as smooth as a mill-pond. She was not in the mood for confidences and vouchsafed only the pessimistic declarations that she was “an old idiot,” and that “in this world folks wa’n’t generally no better’n they pretended to be, and ’twas foolish to try to wind a gauze round ’em.”

Loveday was human and homesick, and her honest old heart ached, I knew, with disappointment. She was very tired, too, having thriftily walked to the steamboat wharf and missed her way several times. So I was forced to forgive her for arriving just in time to interrupt young Carruthers, as he was telling me about Dave’s design. That it was Dave’s design I had no doubt from the young man’s manner. Dear Dave! whatever he had done no one could say that he was not bringing forth works meet for repentance now.

It was tantalizing not to know what Mr. Solomon Salter had said about the design. Perhaps Ned Carruthers would write and tell me; he had certainly shown himself very friendly. He was covered with dust from head to foot; people had stared at him on the wharf, a young man in such fashionable attire and so unkempt. It was presumably the result of his search through the “stack” of designs. Drawings were consigned, it seemed, to the same prolonged and dusty oblivion as manuscripts.

Perhaps this friendly act might be regarded as a work meet for repentance on Ned Carruthers’ part. Certainly, my heart warmed toward the young man.

I kept Dave’s secret. When he succeeded would be time enough to have it known. When he succeeded, I said to myself, with perfect confidence, even with a vision before my eyes of the great dusty stack of drawings. I thought I had caught a glimpse of how things worked together. As for Dave’s wrong-doing—I was not “winding a gauze” around it, but I realized that in God’s blessed providence one may sin and yet repent.

When we landed in the forenoon at the pier on our own pretty river, I went, traveling-bag and travel-stains and all, to the shipyard.

Dave was not there. Rob was very ill again; he had had a bad night, and Dave had spent it with him, Cyrus told me, with a weary frown on his face.

“I suppose Dave ought to be at his work,” I said, tentatively, not feeling quite sure what the frown meant, but observing, suddenly, that Cyrus had grown old and care-worn.

“There is not much work to do,” said Cyrus, with a sharp accent. “There is no fear that Dave will not do his share. But I think he allows Rob to impose upon him. There is a nurse to take the proper care, and Dave ought not to be robbed of his rest, night after night. Invalidism makes some people very selfish. I can see that Rob’s exactions weigh heavily on Dave.”

This tone of sympathetic interest in Dave was new for Cyrus. A sort of hard patience was the kindest tone he had taken with him, in my hearing, since his expulsion from college.

“Is Rob worse?” I asked.

“Yes,” he answered. “He suffers, poor fellow, and the suffering is wearing on his nervous system. The doctor says he mustn’t be crossed and they can’t do anything with him—no one but his father, at least. Rob is always afraid of him. His suffering is wearing on Dave, too, and that seems unnecessary. He manifests the most self-sacrificing devotion toward Rob.”

“Cy, sometimes I can’t believe that Dave was so bad,” I said, impulsively. “Would he have left Rob when he was so ill?”

“Oh, he did that, of course,” said Cyrus, with an impatient sigh. “The betting instinct carries everything before it. But he has behaved nobly here—nobly. There’s no denying that. His steady industry has had an effect on the men.” Cyrus spoke so heartily that I was tempted to reveal the secret; but I refrained, it was such a small secret and might only end in disappointment.

“Cyrus, of course he mustn’t do such work as this for long,” I said, obeying a sudden impulse. Cyrus looked at me, narrowing his near-sighted eyes.

“He isn’t likely to have it to do,” he said, slowly. And then he arose and shut the counting-room door, which I had left ajar and stood by the little cylinder stove, as if he were cold, although the April air was mild.

“After all, Bathsheba, I am forced to give it up,” he said. And if he had been anybody but Cyrus, I should have said there was a sob in his throat.

“Give what up?” I asked, stupidly. And it occurred to me that I had never seen him look so long and “gawky” as he did standing there dejectedly, hanging his fine head—it was a fine head!

“Haven’t you seen?” he said, patiently, although with a trace of suppressed irritability in his tone. “I have proved that I have not a talent for business. It has all gone to the bad. The prospects are so poor that the creditors cannot be induced to give us an extension of time. We shall be sold out under the hammer before very long.”

“Cyrus, don’t feel so!” I cried, for there was a white line around his mouth—in our family we all show that when we suffer intensely. “It isn’t—no one can say that it is your fault!”

“No, only my incapacity,” said Cyrus, bitterly.

“And the dull times,” I added, quickly.

“I think the finger of Providence pointed me clearly to the vocation that I was adapted to. I think I was called, as Loveday would say, and I hadn’t sufficient courage and faith to obey the call. I thought I must trust in myself. My heart has never been in this work, and only where your heart is will your real success be,” said Cyrus, reflectively.

“One cannot be sure always which way the finger of Providence points,” I retorted. “You meant to do your duty.”

“Did I?” said Cyrus. “I felt like a machine that goes because it must. Sometimes there seemed to be scarcely anything about me that wasn’t mechanical, except the bitterness.”

“But it will all work together for good! You will see!” I cried, eagerly. “You will be a minister yet!”

“Give to God’s service what has been a failure in man’s!” said Cyrus, with a keenness of self-contempt that I felt to be exaggerated—after Cy’s old fashion.

“You have been serving God, don’t you know you have?” I insisted. “And you have grown, too! You are broader and better and more sympathetic than you ever were before! You will be a better minister because you have been a shipbuilder and failed. And you need not think any longer of us.” And I poured out my tale of practical success, and Estelle’s gleam of promise, although I had wished her to tell that herself. I said nothing about “Evelyn Marchmont,” that seemed a doubtful prospect; moreover, I knew that Octavia would never forgive me.

Cyrus seemed very much surprised. I remarked, triumphantly, that he couldn’t possibly call the production of hogs’-head-cheese a lady-like accomplishment, and he assented gravely. And he looked with respect at the check which I produced from my pocket-book. There is nothing queerer than the way in which a man of the old-fashioned, protecting sort looks at the earnings of his women-kind. But he seemed more astonished that Estelle had a commission to make illustrations. He said that he had no idea that she could do anything that was worth paying for.

“But, after all, Bathsheba, the real bitterness is in the thought of what grandfather would have felt to have his business go out of the family! In the thought that I could not hold on to what ought to be, what will be some time, in the right hands, so valuable.”

I said all I could to comfort him and he rewarded me by a great compliment—drawn forth, I knew, not so much by the comforting words as by the hogs’-head-cheese:

“If only you had been a boy, Bathsheba!”

“There is Dave,” I ventured. “Is there nothing that he can do about it?”

“At his age, with his past record, what could he possibly do?” said Cyrus.

And I left him and climbed our lovely orchard slope, with the greening grass under my feet and a bluebird singing on the pear-tree, and felt that life was a burden almost too heavy to bear.

I found, when I reached the house, that Dave was in his room, asleep.

“He’s all beat out, he hain’t no more pertness than a draggled rooster,” said Loveday, who was already rustling cheerfully around in a brand new calico dress and bringing to light Viola’s hidden misdeeds. “I don’t see but what I shall have to make spring bitters before I set my soft soap b’ilin’, though it always did ’pear to me shif’less not to get soft soap out of the way before bitters come on.”

Loveday’s spirits had risen; she was thoroughly happy to be at home. “If there’s anything that folks had ought to be thankful for it’s to be under their own vine and fig-tree, especially after they have resked the perils and temptations of the city. I never slep’ hardly a wink whilst I was there, Miss Bathsheba, not hardly a wink, a-thinkin’ of Sodom and Gomorrah. ’N’ then I couldn’t help thinkin’ that if everything was blowed up there wa’n’t no way for folks to know me. I had forgot my nightcap and Aunt Lois had lent me one that belonged to her niece that moved out west, and was marked Nancy Turner. I kep’ a-picturin’ that I was buried in one of them crowded graveyards, with a stone a-top of me marked Nancy Turner! Of course I knew, Miss Bathsheba, that it wouldn’t make a mite of difference”—Loveday’s voice grew suddenly grave and sweet—“I knew the Lord’s resurrection angel would find me anywheres, but, you see, if you’ve always lived respectable and with folks knowin’ who you be, why you do want to die so!”

I went over to see Rob, before Dave had wakened. I had never seen him look so ill. There were deep hollows around his eyes and one could trace the blue veins in his high forehead. He extended a painfully thin arm from the loose sleeve of his dressing-gown—a boy’s arm is always so pathetic when it is wasted. He gave me his hand in a half-reluctant way and scowled at me, resenting, as I afterwards found, the fact that I was the wrong one.

“Where is Dave? I thought it was Dave when I heard some one at the door. Dave stays away so long!” he said, peevishly. “And I worry so that it makes me ill. And then, when he comes, he is not satisfactory—not nowadays.”

“Dave works hard and is very tired,” I said, in a reproving tone. “You ought to depend more upon your nurse.”

“Nurse! What good does she do me?” he exclaimed, fretfully. “I wish you would go away! Won’t you, please?” he added, plaintively to the nurse—Sally Tibbetts, from the back road, whom Dr. Yorke had tried to teach some of the duties of a trained nurse. And Sally Tibbetts, after glancing at me with a warning finger on her lip, left the room.

“Well, if she’s gone, it’s a wonder!” said Rob, in a tone of petulant satisfaction. “She hangs round here so I can’t get a chance to speak to Dave. He doesn’t want me to speak to him, either. He behaves very queerly. There is some mystery.”

“That’s just what I’ve been thinking for a good while, Rob,” I said, and I looked steadfastly at him.

He started up from his pillows and looked at me and his wistful eyes dilated.

“I don’t know what you mean, if it’s anything about me,” he said quickly. “I meant something that—that’s happened lately; something that Dave and I know about, and I don’t think he tells me all about it.”

I had preserved an unmoved countenance and disarmed some apparent suspicions that I had aroused in him and he sank back, with a sigh, and returned to his grievance against Dave.

“They don’t let him talk to me because it agitates me, they say—as if it didn’t hurt me more to worry and worry about things. And you know how Dave keeps things to himself. He takes advantage—I’m afraid he takes advantage of the fuss they make to keep something from me that he doesn’t want me to know. I’m afraid something has happened to—to something that I’m very fond of. Dave ought to go and see, and he doesn’t. It’s very cruel of Dave when I’m this way and can’t do anything about it myself.”

“I think Dave does all he can for you,” I replied, and it was not easy to keep my indignation out of my voice. “He is not in a very easy place himself. Of course, it is not strange that he is not in an easy place; but he brought it upon himself and you are not responsible for your illness. ‘The way of the transgressor is hard,’ but at the same time——”

“Dave a transgressor? Pooh!” he said, and then a sudden flush overspread his pale face. “You—you mean about his being expelled? I—I’d be ashamed to be his own sister and not know Dave any better than you do!” He raised himself on one elbow and regarded me steadfastly, his eyes dark with scorn. “But you’re not his own sister, are you? I wonder if Estelle knows any better. Such a silly lot as girls are, always ready to believe the worst of a fellow!”

“If Estelle knows any better than what?” I asked shrewdly.

“Oh, now you’re pumping me, aren’t you?” he flashed out. “A pretty way to treat a fellow who’s as ill as I am—to come here and pretend to be so beautifully sympathetic just to get something out of me!”

I had learned, at least, that there was something to find out, and my heart thrilled with hope that Dave had after all never done those dreadful things of which he was accused. I leaned over Rob, and took one of his boyish, wasted, sharp-knuckled hands in mine.

“Rob, surely you wouldn’t keep any secret for Dave that was costing him and all who love him so much?” I said earnestly. “If he was wrongfully expelled from college, if he was innocent of the wrong-doing with which he was charged and you knew it, you couldn’t be so wicked, so cruel as to keep silent?”

The color came and went on his sharp-featured, sensitive face and his breathing became stertorous. I was cruel, but I persisted—so much was at stake!

“I don’t know what you come here tormenting me for!” he cried shrilly. “Dave manages his own affairs. Girls make such a fuss about everything. It was no great harm to be expelled from that little six-penny college—the old dolts, they weren’t fit to untie Dave’s shoes, not one of them! Wouldn’t anybody with common sense know that Dave wasn’t the sort of fellow to——”

There was a shout from the lawn; it was only Uncle Horace calling out sharply to his horse as he mounted him, but Rob caught himself up with a terrified gasp.

“I wish you’d go away! You’ve treated Dave badly enough and now you come here and try to kill me! You needn’t think I would tell you anything if I could. Dave will be a great man yet, I’ll tell you that, in spite of those old college ninnies, and in spite of you who have treated him as if he were an outlaw. And I—I should be treated worse; he didn’t have anybody like father! Dave said he didn’t”—this came eagerly—“he said he could very well stand the blame and live it down. That’s what he said—live it down. But you go away!” The boy was positively fierce now. “You make me say things that I don’t mean to. I haven’t slept at all, scarcely at all for five nights, and you know I’m weak and you take advantage of it. Dave—even Dave takes advantage of it!” The boy burst into a passion of tears. “He won’t tell me something that I want to know; he puts me off. There’s something that he ought to have seen to and he hasn’t done it! I’m worried almost out of my mind. You—you think a lot of your old dog Gyp. What would you do if cruel things were happening to Gyp?”

I sat like a statue and listened. A ray of light seemed about to break upon me, but it was elusive.

“I can’t get at Dave because that nurse is always here and her ears are as long as from here to the river! She won’t stay away like this when he’s here. You tell Dave that I want him to see to things and let me know how they are! Tell him I shall die if he doesn’t. There’s—there’s money that I’m afraid hasn’t been paid. Nobody knows what would happen if the money wasn’t paid.”

“Do—do you mean the money that Dave borrowed?” I stammered stupidly.

“Who cares about the money that Dave borrowed from that rich fellow? Let him wait for it! He’s a sneak anyhow.”

“I don’t think you quite understand him,” I ventured, but my small protest fell unheeded.

“Girls fret themself about such small things,” continued Rob scornfully. “But they have no feeling for living things that suffer. Was it you or Estelle, who wanted me to shoot a blue jay to trim a hat? Of course a fellow pays his debts, but that isn’t all that he’s called upon to do.”

I denied the blue jay vehemently, for both Estelle and myself. I declared that none of us had ever been guilty of wearing so much as the wing of a bird upon a hat. But Rob knew that it was “some girl,” and it was “just like all of them.”

“And when your old Gyp had pneumonia you let Hiram Nute doctor him, instead of sending to the Port, for the vet.” That was Rob’s next fiercely uttered accusation.

“But Hiram is better than any veterinary surgeon that every lived!” I cried. “We were so thankful that he was at home.”

“He has ‘a tarlent for combernations,’” quoted Rob, with a little gleam of humor, although his voice was like a growl, “but I wouldn’t trust him with a sick sparrow. But there are such a lot of people who haven’t any feeling for animals!”

“You can’t accuse us of that,” I said with some heat. “We sat up nights with Gyp, and he got well.”

“God made them tough; he knew how people were going to treat them,” said Rob sharply.

I so far sympathized with him as to almost forget that I was trying to discover the secret that was ruining Dave’s life.

“I know you always were kind to animals, Rob,” I said heartily. “You never wanted to kill the forest things or catch them in traps, like other boys.”

“Dave didn’t either—though he always would go fishing,” said Rob reflectively. “I don’t suppose Dave would neglect anything—any animal when he ought to see that it was well-treated, do you?” he asked wistfully.

“I am sure he wouldn’t,” I answered heartily.

“But he behaves queerly, all the same,” repeated Rob, with his anxious frown deepened.

“Why don’t you tell me all about it, Rob? Perhaps I could influence him,” I said, with what I felt to be Machiavellian diplomacy.

But it was not successful.

“I don’t, because you’re a girl, and you’d begin to think things were your duty. Girls always kick up a fuss when they think things are their duty,” he said crisply. “But you may tell Dave that he ought to attend to things, and he’ll know what you mean. I haven’t any money. Father keeps me so short. I’m treated as if I were a baby. I’ve money in the bank that was my mother’s, but I can’t touch it until I’m of age.”

“If it’s a question of money, why Dave’s pockets are not overflowing,” I said a little sharply.

He struggled up and stared at me, and the hollows around his eyes seemed to grow deeper.

“I’m afraid that’s the trouble,” he half whispered hoarsely, for the nurse was at the door. “And, Bathsheba, I’m afraid something dreadful will happen. You—you can’t help thinking an awful lot of the first thing you ever owned, especially when it’s a colt——” He stopped short with a sudden sense that he was betraying himself, and sank back upon his pillows drawing his breath in gasps.

“You—go—away!” he cried fiercely. “I don’t want you here, prying and spying! You needn’t think you can find out anything by me, I’m far too sharp for you! And I don’t want your jelly or your pity any more than I do your prying. There’s only one nice thing about any of you girls, and that is that you are Dave’s sisters!

“But I’m—I’m afraid Dave has gone back on me! You tell him, Bathsheba, that he mustn’t.” His anxiety was again overbearing his resentment and prudence.

Poor boy! His nervous system was certainly weakened, I thought, with a thrill of pity. And yet I did not relent in my purpose of discovering the secret that was injuring Dave.

“Tell him that he must—must get the money some way and go and see where it is!” he said imploringly.

I stood beside him and stroked his hair, my heart divided between real pity and my purpose.

“Where what is? Trust me, Rob!” I said. “Is it Alf Reeder’s race-horse, Prince Charley?”

He started and his face turned pale. At that moment Uncle Horace opened the door. Rob had not heeded the nurse, who busied herself about the room, but at sight of his father the blood rushed in a flood to his face and his sensitive lips quivered as from a blow.

“I think you are staying too long, Bathsheba,” said Uncle Horace anxiously. The boy in whom he inspired such fear was the very pulse of his heart. “I don’t think he had better see any one, he is so easily agitated.”

The boy, indeed, shook now in all his slender frame as with a nervous chill, but he clung to my hand although his eyes were fixed on mine with a startled expression.

“It will be quite safe for me to know, Rob,” I whispered. But he shut his lips tightly and shook his head.

“I really think you had better go, Bathsheba,” said Uncle Horace insistently.

“You tell Dave I want him right away!” called Rob, as Uncle Horace opened the door for me. “Bathsheba, Bathsheba!” he called with what I thought was relenting in his tone. If I could go back I should be in full possession of the secret, and it would be a relief rather than a harm to tell me. But Uncle Horace firmly shut the door, and there was really no one in our family with courage enough to open a door that Uncle Horace had shut.

When I got outside of the house I heard Rob’s voice raised shrilly, insistently. He evidently wished for something and his father was objecting. Finally, as I lingered the nurse opened the window a little wider than it had been open before.

“Bathsheba! Bathsheba!” cried Rob. “It is—what you said! Tell Dave to go and get him—get him quick or I shall die!”

The boy was certainly desperate, for his father must have been within hearing. Alf Reeder’s race-horse, Prince Charley! Little by little the secret pieced itself together, like patchwork, in my brain.

It was vague. I could not be sure. But I longed, with a longing that was like a prayer, as I ran homeward across the bridge, to find it true.

Dave had wakened and gone down to the shipyard when I reached home. I started off at once. I could not rest until I had seen Dave. Alice Yorke was there, having come in search of some of her belongings that had been stored away in Estelle’s traveling-bag. Viola was ringing the dinner bell, and Estelle urged Alice to stay.

“No, no, don’t stay! Come with me!” I urged, and fairly dragged her toward the shipyard. I fancied—well, we have many blind and foolish fancies, I don’t quite know to this day whether this was a blind and foolish one or not—I fancied that it would do Dave good, to the marrow of his bones, to have Alice Yorke know that he had never merited the disgrace that had come upon him.

Before I rushed away I drew Estelle behind the hall door and hugged her. “Dave never did it!” I gasped rapturously.

“Is it possible that you have just found that out?” returned Estelle with cold dignity. But her eyes shone.

I was tempted to drag her also to the shipyard, but I feared that her chilling dignity might bolster up Dave in a determination not to reveal anything. I was taking Alice Yorke with me to melt him and I fondly fancied myself a diplomat.

He was at work with his brawny arms bare; he did not even pull down his sleeves, he did not show even the slightest consciousness of his workman’s dress as I had seen him do in Alice Yorke’s presence. He went on wielding his axe as if he did not care to be interrupted and I began to feel myself a little at a loss.

Both the “aliens” had a certain personal dignity that almost amounted to aloofness, when they chose that it should, and made familiar intercourse difficult, even for their nearest of kin.

Then, suddenly, his white and worn looks went to my heart and, in the queer workings of human nature, made my indignation flame up.

“You had no right to do it, Dave!” I cried. “It was a cruel, a wicked deception. It hurt others as well as yourself. You had no right to sacrifice yourself to Rob, for there were others to think of. You can’t live to yourself in this world!”

A flush slowly overspread the face of my young giant. He glanced at Alice Yorke, then around at the workmen. Some of the latter were within hearing. They call me slow but I am too hasty when my temper is up.

“I am going to eat my dinner now,” said Dave coolly; and he threw aside his axe and drew a basket out from under a pile of boards. He had been eating cold dinners, in true workingman fashion while Estelle was away. It occurred to me that she might come down with something hot for him now—and reinforce his reticence. I wished that I had been less impulsive and chosen a more opportune time. But now I would not retreat.

Dave stood irresolute, basket in hand.

“There’s a pretty place on the river bank where I go to eat my dinner,” he said. “Perhaps you would like to come; I always have enough to share. I can’t say that the doughnuts have been quite up to the mark since Loveday went away, but of course the sage cheese is always superlatively good,” with a little bow in my direction, which did not offset the irritated look in his eyes.

While Alice and I hesitated, something very funny occurred. Cyrus appeared from the counting-house with a battered coffee-pot in his hand.

“He’s been roasting himself to make that coffee for us; we have no fire in the vessel now,” said Dave. “Come! there’ll be enough for all!” His tone was cordial now, and we followed him toward the shore while Cyrus came along after us, carrying the battered old coffee-pot carefully and squinting wonderingly at us with his near-sighted eyes.

About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books.

This book is part of the public domain. Sophie Swett (2023). The young ship builder. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/71346/pg71346-images.html

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org, located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html.