Well, everything was over now, he told himself. He could take his defeat since Nellie did not care for him.
Then he suddenly recalled Burns"s actions and manner of speaking during the harrowing moments of the fire.
"I wonder if Nat really loves her?" he asked himself. "And if not, why did he become engaged?"
CHAPTER V
STARTLING NEWS
The home-coming of Captain Bijonah Tanner and his wife did not provide the thrill looked for by the more morbid inhabitants of Freekirk Head.
In the excitement of the fire all hands had forgotten that cable communication between Mignon and the mainland was unbroken.
The operator, in the pursuance of his duty, had sent word of the fire to Eastport, and then concocted some cable despatches for Boston and Portland papers that left nothing to be desired from the viewpoint of sensationalism. In his zeal for filling s.p.a.ce and eking out his slender income, the operator left nothing standing on Grande Mignon except the eternal rocks and the lighthouse.
It was such an account that Bijonah Tanner fed upon that morning in the tiny cabin of the _Rosan_, and half an hour after he had read it he was under way. Special mention had been made of Code Schofield"s rescue of little Bige, with a sentence added that the Tanner place had been wiped out.
With their minds filled with desperate scenes of cataclysm and ruin, the Tanners raced the complaining _Rosan_ around Flag Point six hours later, only to fall upon one another and dance for joy at the sight of the village nestling as of yore against the green mountains and gleaming white in the descending sun.
An acrid smell and a smudge of smoke told of what had really been, and a black heap of ruins where the familiar house had stood for so long confirmed their fears for their own property; but to see the village content and smiling, except for a poor building or two, was joy enough to overbalance the personal loss.
So those who expected a tearful and emotional home-coming were disappointed.
Code met the dory that rowed ash.o.r.e after Bijonah had made fast to his mooring in the little cove that was the roadstead for the fishing fleet. He had half expected to share the duty with Nat Burns since the recent change in his relations to the Tanners, but Burns did not put in an appearance, although it was three o"clock in the afternoon.
Bijonah shook hands with him, and Ma Tanner kissed him, the latter ceremony being a baptism of happy tears that all were safe and alive.
Bijonah cleared his voice and pulled hard at his beard.
"Understand you"re quite a hero, Code," he ventured bluffly, careful to conceal any emotion, but resolved to give the occasion its due.
"Oh, rot, captain!" said Code equally bluffly, and the ceremony was over.
But not so with Ma Tanner. She wept and laughed over the preserver of her offspring, and called him so many exalting names that he was glad to turn her over to Nellie and his mother at the Schofield gate.
Hot and flushed with the notoriety she had given him along the main road, he retired to the corner shop and drank wonderful cold ginger-beer out of a white stone jug until his temperature had returned to normal.
But later he returned to the house, and found the Tanners about to depart. The widow Sprague, near the Odd Fellows" Hall, who lived, as she expressed it, "all deserted and alone," had agreed to take the family into her rambling cottage. Luke Fraser had brought his truck-cart up alongside the rescued Tanner belongings, and they were already half loaded.
"Can you come down to the widdy"s to-night, Code?" asked Bijonah. "I"ve got somethin" to tell ye that ought to int"rest ye consid"able."
"Yes, I"ll be there about eight," was the reply as Schofield joined in loading the truck.
He found the captain that night smoking a pipe on the low front porch of the Widow Sprague"s cottage, evidently very much at home. Bijonah motioned him to a chair and proffered a cigar with a slightly self-conscious air. Inside the house, Code could hear the sound of people moving about and the voice of a woman singing low, as though to a child. He told himself without question that this was Nellie getting the kiddies to sleep.
"A feller hears queer things over in St. John"s sometimes," announced Bijonah suddenly, sucking at his pipe.
"Yes."
"An" this time I heard somethin" about you."
"Me? I don"t know three people in St. John"s."
"Guess I met one of the three, then."
"Where? How? Who was it?"
Bijonah Tanner coughed and shifted uneasily in his chair.
"Wal," he said, "I was takin" a little turn along the water-front, just a _leetle_ turn, as the wife will tell you, when I dropped into a--er--that is--a rum-shop and heard three men at the table next to mine talking about you."
Schofield smiled broadly in the darkness. Bijonah"s little turns along the water-front of St. John"s or any other port had been the subject for much prayer and supplication in the hearts of many devout persons thoroughly interested in their neighbor"s welfare. And of late years Ma Tanner had been making trips with him to supply stimulus to his conscience.
"What were they talking about?" So far from being suspicious, Code was merely idly curious of the gossip about him.
"My boy," said Tanner, suddenly grave, "I was the best friend your father had for forty years, and I"m goin" to try and be as good a friend to his son. But you mustn"t mind what I tell ye."
"I won"t, captain. Go ahead," said Code, his interest awakening.
"Wal, them men was talkin" about the loss of the old _May Schofield_, and one of "em in particular allowed as how he didn"t think it should have foundered when it did. What d"ye think of that?"
Schofield had stiffened in his chair as though undergoing a spasm of pain. The sentences smote him between the eyes of his sensibilities.
Had it come to this, that his name was being bandied dishonorably about the barrooms of St. John"s? If so, how and why?
"Then I suppose you"ve heard the talk in Grande Mignon before this?"
"Yes, Code, I have; and I"ve called every man a liar that said anything definite against you. I"m gettin" old, but there ain"t very many men here able enough to shove that name back down my throat, an"
I notice none of "em tried. It"s all idle talk, that"s all; an" there ain"t a soul that can prove a single thing against you, even cowardice. An" that"s more"n can be said o" some men in this village."
Code was grateful, and he said so. It was something to find a friend so stanch and loyal that suspicion had never even found soil in his mind where it might take root. Two such he had now: Elsa Mallaby and Bijonah Tanner.
"What else did those men say?" he asked in conclusion.
"If I remember right, an" I was perfectly clear at the time, this is what one said: "Fellers," sez "e to the other two, "e sez--"fellers, that young Captain Schofield in Freekirk Head is goin" on the rocks, or I don"t hear what"s goin" on in my office."
""Then they"re goin" to sue him to recover part of his insurance on the old schooner _May Schofield_?" asks the second.
""If I didn"t hear the chief say that this mornin" you can shoot me on sight!" the first answers. An" then for a while I couldn"t hear any more, an" you can bet I was watchin" the door somethin" awful for fear ma would come in an" spoil it all by draggin" me off."
"But who were these men?" asked Code. "Whom did they mean by the chief?"
"I was just gettin" to that. After a while, from a little bit here an"
a little there, I made out that the first young feller was private secretary to the president of the Marine Insurance Company. That"s the firm that carried the old _May_, isn"t it?"
"Yes."