Part 10 (1/2)
”Cap'n Sears, answer me right straight out. Have those dummed everlastin' Fair Harbor hens been in my garden again?”
”Yes, Judah.”
”Have they--have they?----” Words failed him. He strode up the path to the garden. Then, after a moment's comprehensive gaze upon the scene of ruin, the words returned.
CHAPTER IV
Sears Kendrick's prophecy that Bayport would, within the next day or two, talk about him even more than it had before was a true one. As soon as it became known that he had left the Macomber home and was boarding and lodging with Judah Cahoon in the rear portion of the General Minot house every tongue in the village--tongues of animals and small children excepted--wagged his name. At the sewing-circle, at the Shakespeare Reading Society--convening that week at Mrs. Tabitha Crosby's--after Friday night prayer-meeting at the Orthodox meeting-house, in Eliphalet Ba.s.sett's store at mail times, in the sitting-rooms and kitchens and around breakfast, dinner and supper tables from West Bayport to East Bayport Neck and from Poverty Lane to Woodchuck's Misery--the princ.i.p.al topic was Captain Kendrick's surprising move.
”Why?” that was the question.
Various answers were offered, many reasons suggested, but none satisfied everybody.
At the Shakespeare Society meeting, just before the reading aloud of ”Cymbeline” began--”Cymbeline” carefully edited, censored and kalsomined by the selective committee, Mrs. Reverend David Dishup and Miss Tryphosa Taylor--the feelings of the genteel section of the community were expressed by no less a personage than Mrs. Captain Elkanah Wingate. Mrs.
Wingate, speaking from the Mount Sinai of Bayport's aristocracy, made proclamation thus:
”Why, if the man must leave his sister's and go somewhere else to live, _why_ in the world does he choose to go _there_? Aren't there good, respectable, genteel boarding-houses like--well, like yours, Naomi, for instance? _I_ should say so.”
Mrs. Naomi Newcomb, whose home sheltered a few ”paying guests,” smiled and shook her head. The shake indicated not a doubt of Mrs. Wingate's judgment, but complete loss as to Sears Kendrick's reasons for behaving as he had. Other members shook their heads also. Mary-Pashy Foster, who had spent a winter in France when her husband was ill with the small-pox at Havre, shrugged her shoulders.
”And,” continued Mrs. Captain Wingate, ”when you consider the place he has gone to and the person he has gone with! Good heavens, _I_ say! Good heavens!”
More words and exclamations of approval. Several others declared that they said so, too.
”Gone to live,” went on Mrs. Wingate, ”not in the General Minot house proper--there might be some explanation for _that_, perhaps--but they tell me that this Judah Cahoon only uses the back part of the house and that Cap'n Kendrick has got a room just off the kitchen or thereabouts.”
”And Judah himself!” broke in Miss Taylor. ”He is as rough and common as--as--I don't know what. How a man like Cap'n Kendrick can lower himself--debase himself to such a person's level I _do_ not see. You would as soon expect a needle to go through a camel's eye, as the saying is.”
There was a slight interval of embarra.s.sment after this outburst. The majority of those present realized that the speaker had gotten her proverb twisted, but, she being Miss Tryphosa Taylor, no one felt like venturing to set her right. Mrs. Captain G.o.dfrey Peasley relieved the situation; she had a habit of relieving situations--when she did not make them tenser. She had gotten into the Shakespeare Reading Society purely by persistence and the possession of adamantine self-confidence.
From that shot-proof exterior snubs, hints and reproofs glanced like blown peas from the hull of a battles.h.i.+p. ”Heaven knows,” confided Mrs.
Captain Wingate to Miss Taylor and the Reverend Mrs. Dishup, ”why Amelia Peasley ever wanted to join the Society. She doesn't know whether Shakespeare is a man or a disease.” Which may or not have been true, the fact remaining that Mrs. Peasley _had_ wanted to join the Society and--joined.
Now, while others hesitated, following Miss Tryphosa's little blunder, she spoke.
”I think,” she declared, with conviction, ”that Sears Kendrick ought to be ashamed of himself. _I_ think such actions are degradatin'--yes, indeed, right down degradatin'.”
After that, further comments upon the captain's conduct would have seemed like anti-climaxes. Therefore the Society proceeded to read ”Cymbeline.” Mrs. Peasley had something to say about ”Cymbeline,” also.
Captain Sears himself merely grinned when told of the sensation his conduct was causing.
”All right,” he said, ”let 'em talk. If they aren't talkin' about me they will be about somebody else.”
Judah, to whom this remark was made, snorted.
”Humph!” he growled. ”They _be_ talkin' about somebody else. Don't you make no mistake about that, Cap'n Sears.”
”That so, Judah? Who's the other lucky man?”