Sheila of Big Wreck Cove Part 41

To save Tunis! She was fairly obsessed by that thought. Her vow before the picture of Tunis' mother in the _Seamew's_ cabin must be in Sheila's view to the very end. She had a sufficient share of that vision of the Celt to be deeply impressed by a promise made as that had been made--though in secret. It was a sacred pledge.

It was no easy matter for any of the Ball household to consider the coming of Ida May with serenity. Prudence, at heart, shrank from the claimant on her hospitality almost as much as Sheila did. If Cap'n Ira hid his perturbation better than the others, he nevertheless hobbled about with a very solemn countenance.

"I swan!" he muttered within Sheila's hearing. "It's most like there was a corpse in the house. This ain't no way to live. I do wish Elder Minnett could have minded his own business and let well enough alone. Let the girl talk, and other folks, too. Trying to stop gossip is like trying to put your finger on a drop of quicksilver.

There won't be no good come o' that girl being here. That's as sure as sure."

The elder's car came wheezing up the hill again about the middle of the forenoon. He did not alight himself, but Ida May needed the presence of n.o.body to lend her a.s.surance. She hopped out of the car with her bag and flaunted her cheap finery through the gate and in at the front door.

Her reception at this end of the house marked the unmistakable fact that Prudence and Cap'n Ira received her as a stranger rather than in a confidential way.

"Well, Aunt Prue! For you are my aunt whatever you may say," was Ida May's prologue. "And you are my uncle," she added, her greenish-brown eyes flas.h.i.+ng a glance at the grimly observant captain. "I must say it's pretty shabby treatment I've got from you so far. But I don't blame you--not at all. I blame that girl and Tunis Latham."

"Avast there!" put in Cap'n Ira so sternly and with so threatening a tone of voice and visage that even Ida May was silenced. "We've let you come here, my girl, because Elder Minnett asked us to; and not at all because our opinion of you is changed. Far from it. You're here on sufferance and you'd best be civil spoken while you remain.

Ain't that the ticket, Prudence?"

His wife nodded, in full accord with his statement of the situation, although she could not bear to look so sternly on any person as Cap'n Ira now looked at Ida May.

"Well! I like that!" sniffed the girl, tossing her head, but she actually shrank from the captain.

"Furthermore, as regards Tunis Latham, you was to say nothing about him outside of this house if you was let come here. And I warn you, we don't care to hear nothing in his disfavor _in_ this house."

"Oh! I can see he's a favorite with you," muttered Ida May.

"Then trim your sails according," admonished the old man. "In addition, you mentioned the young woman we already got here in a way we don't like none too well. I want to impress on your mind that it was only through her saying she was agreeable to your coming here that we agreed to the elder's request and let you come."

"She did, eh?" cried Ida May, flouncing in her chair. "Well, I don't thank her."

"No. I cal'late you ain't of a thanking disposition," said Cap'n Ira. "But you like enough won't drop your bread b.u.t.ter-side down.

That's all."

Ida May, startled by his speech, stared with less impudence at the old man. For his part, the captain watched her pretty closely, and he had met and judged too many people in his day not to form gradually, as the hours pa.s.sed, a decided opinion regarding Ida May.

Nor did he cling to his first impression--the one made in haste and some vexation, when she had first tried to thrust herself into the Ball household and demanded the place filled by Sheila Macklin. This girl certainly was not insane. But with all her apparent smartness, Cap'n Ira easily saw that she was not intelligent--that she had scarcely ordinary understanding. Beside the newcomer's shallow nature and even more shallow endowments, Sheila seemed to be from a different world.

"I swan!" whispered Cap'n Ira to Prudence some time later. "The difference between them two girls! They ain't to be spoke of in the same county, I declare. Look at that one, Prudence," he said, with a side glance at the newcomer. "Ain't she a sight with them thin and flashy clothes?"

"I can't see anything about her that looks like any of the Honeys, let alone Sarah."

"Huh! No. Only that her hair's sorter red," returned Cap'n Ira, "like Sarah's was."

The visitor proved her position in the household by sitting idly in a rocking-chair looking over some pictures which were on the table or staring out of the window. She offered to do nothing for Prudence. But, of course, Ida May was not very domestic. Living in a furnished room and working behind the counter in a department store does not develop the domestic virtues to any appreciable degree.

She did not see Sheila until dinner was on the table and she was called to the meal with Cap'n Ira and the old woman. The stiff, little bow with which Ida May favored the girl in possession was returned by the latter quite as formally.

Sheila had regained complete control of voice and face now. Although she did not actually address Ida May, her manner was such that there was no restraint put upon the company. It was the newcomer's manner, if anything, that curtailed the usual friendly intercourse at the Ball table.

Ida May possessed some powers of observation. She would have said herself that she was able to "put two and two together." The way the meal had been cooked, the way it was served, and the work entailed in doing both these things, were matters not overlooked by the visitor.

She knew that Prudence had given neither thought nor attention to getting the dinner. The girl the b.a.l.l.s had received in Ida May's name and supposed ident.i.ty had done it all herself. It seemed to be expected of her!

She saw, before the day was over, that Sheila was a very busy person indeed. That she not only did the housework, but that she waited upon Prudence and Cap'n Ira "hand and foot." She did it with such unconcern that the new girl could be sure these tasks were quite what was expected of her.

"Why," exclaimed Ida May to herself, "she's just hired help! Is _that_ what they wanted me for when they sent Tunis Latham up to Boston after me? I'd like to see myself!"

She had foreseen something of this kind when she had refused so unconditionally to come down here to the Cape. And her observation of the house and its furnis.h.i.+ngs, as well as the appearance of the old couple, had confirmed her suspicion that her belief in the b.a.l.l.s "being pretty well fixed" was groundless.

After her interview with Elder Minnett, although she had refrained from detailing her story and her spiteful comments about Sheila and Tunis Latham to the Paulings, she had not ceased to question Zebedee and his mother about the financial condition of the b.a.l.l.s.

She had learned that a couple of thousand dollars would probably buy all the real property the old people owned on Wreckers' Head. There was a certain invested sum which secured them a fair living. Beyond that, the Big Wreck Cove people knew of no wealth belonging to either Cap'n Ira or Prudence.

Ida May already considered that she had come down here to the Cape on a fool's errand. She would like to make herself solid, however, with the old folks so as to benefit when they were dead and gone, if that were possible. But to make herself a kitchen drudge for them?

She would like to see herself!

There was a phase of the situation which held Ida May to the course she had set sail upon, and one which would hold her to it to the bitter end. Her spitefulness and determination to be revenged upon this unknown girl who had usurped the place originally offered her by the b.a.l.l.s, and who had stolen her name as well, was quite sufficient to cause a person of Ida May Bostwick's character to fight for her rights.

She would be revenged on Tunis, too. Or, at least, she would make him, as well as the other girl, suffer for the slight he had put upon her.

Had she not preened her feathers and strutted her very best on the occasion when he interviewed her at Hoskin & Marl's and taken her out to lunch? And to no end at all! He had been quite unimpressed by Ida May's airs and graces.

Yet he would take up with this other girl--a mere n.o.body. Worse than a n.o.body, of course. She must be both a bad and a cunning woman to have done what it was plain she had done. She had wound Tunis Latham around her finger, and had hoodwinked the old people in the bargain!

Ida May saw the other girl waiting on Prudence and Cap'n Ira; she observed her tenderness toward them and their delight in her ministrations; and these things which she regarded with her green-glinting eyes made her taste the bitterness of wormwood. She hated Sheila more and more as the day wore on; and she scorned the old people both for what she considered this n.i.g.g.ardliness and for their simplicity, as well, in being fooled by this other girl.

For, of course, to Ida May's mind, Sheila's kindness and the love shown for the b.a.l.l.s on her part was all put on. It could not be otherwise. Ida May Bostwick could not, in the first place, imagine any sane girl "falling for the two old hicks."

Prudence could seldom show herself other than kindly toward any person whether she exactly approved of that person or not. So she chatted cheerfully at Ida May, if not with her. She was quite as insistent as Cap'n Ira, however, in keeping away from the vexing question of the ident.i.ty of the two girls.

Right at the first the question had been raised: where should the visitor be put to sleep? Ida May was prepared to object strenuously if any slight was put upon her, such as being given some little, tucked-up attic room away from the rest of the family. Had she dared, she would have demanded the use of the room the false Ida May occupied; only she was not sure, after seeing the position Sheila seemed to hold in the household, that she cared to be put to sleep in the room of the "hired help."

But Sheila herself settled that question.

"The guest room is ready. Aunt Prue," she said to Prudence. "I cleaned it this week and the little stove is set up in there if it should grow cold overnight. All the bed needs is aired sheets. I'll get them out of the press."

So Prudence took Ida May to the guest chamber, which was beyond the parlor. A black-walnut set, which had been the height of magnificence when Cap'n Ira and Prudence were married, filled the shade-drawn room with shadows. There was an ingrain carpet on the floor of a green groundwork with pale-yellow flowers on it, of a genus known to no botanist. The tidies on the chair backs were so stiff with starch that it would be a punishment to lay one's head against them.

On a little marble-topped table between the windows was something made of sh.e.l.ls and seaweed in a gla.s.s-topped case. It looked to Ida May like a dead baby in a coffin.

"Of all the junk!" she muttered to herself when Prudence left her to arrange the contents of her bag as she chose. "And that girl likes it here! Well, I'll show her who's who and what's what!

"I'd like to know where I ever saw her face before? I bet it was somewhere she'd no business to be--just as she has sneaked in here where she doesn't belong. The nasty, hateful thing!

"If Bessie Dole or Mayme Leary could only see this dump!" she added, looking over the room again. "Anyhow, I've made 'em give me the best they've got. I'll show 'em how to treat a _real_ relation that comes to see 'em."

Supper time came and pa.s.sed no more cheerfully than had the midday meal. The society of the old people was anything but enlivening for Ida May. In desperation she began to talk, and out of sheer perverseness she lighted upon the subject of the establishment of Hoskin & Marl.

Now Prudence found this topic of interest, for since Annabel Coffin--she who was a b.u.t.tle--had dilated upon those great marts of trade in Boston, the old woman had been vastly curious. Sheila had never cared to talk of her experiences as saleswoman behind the counter.

"They tell me they sell most everything you could name in those stores," Prudence said reflectively. "Heaps of dry goods, I suppose.

Let me see, what did you sell, my dear?"