Tobias O' The Light Part 2

CHAPTER II

CONFIDENCES

The blast struck the light tower so heavily that Ralph Endicott felt the whole structure vibrate as he followed Tobias up the spiral stairway after supper. In spite of the lightkeeper's jollity and Miss Heppy's kindness, the supper had seemed to hearten but little the spirits of the young man.

He had offered to attend Tobias in his duty at the top of the tower more for the purpose of getting away from the women than for any other reason. He seized the broom and followed Tobias with the sc.r.a.per out upon the open gallery. If the storm had seemed furious before supper, it had risen to a top gale now. The two men could scarcely face it on the windward side.

The gale came in blasts that slapped their burden of snow against the lighthouse with great force. Ralph was barely able to keep his feet.

But the st.u.r.dy lightkeeper went about the task with a certain phlegm.

They managed to free the gla.s.s of its curtain of snow. Then Ralph staggered around to the sheltered gallery, on the heels of Tobias. The younger man's was a gloomy face when they once more entered the lamp room.

"Cheer up," said Tobias, getting his breath and eyeing Ralph aslant.

"They tell me the worst is yet to come. Though I tell you fair, Ralphie, if the last end o' my life is anywhere as hard as what happened me when I s.h.i.+pped cabin boy on the old _Sarah Drinkwater_, the good Lord help me to bear it!

"Why, Ralphie, from the time she was warped out o' the dock at Provincetown till we unloaded them box shocks at Santiago I didn't git to git my clothes off-no, sir!

"We _did_ have bad weather, I cal'late, though I never got out on deck often enough the whole endurin' v'y'ge to observe the sea and sky. I was was.h.i.+ng dishes, making up berths, cleaning pots and pans, peeling 'taters and turmits, and seeding raisins for the skipper's plum duff most o' the time.

"Seeding raisins! Oh, sugar, I got to thinkin' that if that was all going to sea meant, I might better have got a job in a scullery and kept on an even footing. And I purty nigh got my lips in such a pucker whistling while I seeded them raisins (cookie wouldn't trust me otherwise) that I never did get 'em straight since.

"Say, lemme tell you!" proceeded Tobias, his weather-stained face beaming in the glow of the great Argand light. "Cap'n Drinkwater demanded his plum duff for supper ev'ry endurin' day of the v'y'ge, no matter what the weather was. He had an old black cook, Sam s...o...b..ll, that had got so's he could make that pudding to the queen's taste.

"Lemme tell you! The skipper was that stingy that he fed the crew rusty pork and weevilly beans, and a grade of salt horse that would make a crew of Skowegians mutiny. But the _Sarah Drinkwater_ never made long enough v'y'ges for her crew to mutiny-no, sir!

"But that plum duff-oh, sugar! Bein' the boy, I never got more'n the lickin's of the dish. If I got enough 'taters and salt horse to fill my belly so's to keep my pants up, I was lucky. The skipper and the mate divided the duff between 'em.

"Ahem!" he added critically, "you don't look as though there was any plums at all in your duff, Ralph."

"There isn't," returned the young man shortly.

"Oh, sugar!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the lightkeeper, drawing forth a short clay pipe and a sack of cut tobacco. "I cal'late that you folks with money have more real troubles than what we poor folks do."

"Huh! _Money!_" scoffed Endicott.

"Yep. It's mighty poor bait for fish, I cal'late. You can't even chum with it."

"Money isn't everything," said the young man shrugging his shoulders.

"True. True as preaching," cried Tobias. "But 'twill buy most everything you're likely to need in this world. And you've got enough, Ralph, to keep you from getting gray-headed before your time worrying about where your three meals a day are coming from. I don't see what can be wrong with you. And that purty gal--"

"Now stop, Tobias Ba.s.sett!" exclaimed Endicott. "Don't keep reminding me of Lorna. I get enough of that at home."

"Wal!" gasped the lightkeeper. "For you to speak so of Lorna! Why, that's the main-skys'l-pole of the whole suit of spars-only needs the main-truck to cap it. What do you mean?"

"Now, mind you," Endicott said earnestly. "I haven't a thing to say against Lorna. She's a nice girl-for some other fellow. But I declare to you, Tobias, _I won't marry her_."

"Oh, sugar!"

"Just because my Uncle Henry and her Aunt Ida have planned for us to do so since we were little tads running about the beaches here, is no reason why I should be tied up to Lorna forever and ever, Amen!"

"That's a mighty hard sayin'--"

"You think, like everybody else, that Lorna and I were made for each other. We weren't! We'd fight all the time. We always do fight. Look at to-night. The first little thing that goes wrong she jumps at me.

I'm sick of playing dog and rolling over every time Lorna orders me to.

"And look at the mess we're in to-night!"

"What's the matter with you, boy?" demanded the lighthouse keeper.

"You're under shelter. There's grub enough in the light to stave off starvation for a spell. Nothing can't happen to your buzz-cart worse than its being drifted under with snow."

"Oh, you don't understand, Tobias!" said the exasperated Ralph. "Our going off in my car the way we did, and not getting back to-night-why!

it'll be all over Harbor Bar that we've eloped."

"I see," said the lightkeeper between puffs of his short pipe. Then: "You don't cal'late to marry Lorna?"

"I won't have her thrown at me."

"I never had no gal throwed at me," Tobias reflected. "I dunno how 'twould feel. But I will say that if I had to catch such a throw as Lorna Nicholet, I surely wouldn't make a m.u.f.f of it!"

"That's all right," observed Endicott. "I'm not saying she isn't a nice enough girl. But I don't believe she really wants me any more than I want her. In fact, I know there was another fellow last year that she was interested in. A chap named Conny Degger. He was in my cla.s.s at college. Kind of a sport, but I guess he's all right, at that. But Lorna's Aunt Ida broke it up. Wouldn't let Conny s.h.i.+ne around Lorna any more when she learned about it.

"They've got us both thrown and tied, Tobias! That's the way Uncle Henry, and Aunt Ida, and all the rest of my family and Lorna's people have got us fixed. They act as though we'd just got to marry each other. And after this mischance-breaking down here in the snow-they'll all say we're disgraced forever if we don't announce the engagement."

"Oh, sugar!" said the lightkeeper again, puffing away placidly.

In the kitchen Lorna Nicholet was making a confidante of Miss Heppy quite as Ralph had trusted Tobias. Nor was the girl less determined to thwart the intention of her family in this matrimonial affair, than was Ralph in his att.i.tude toward his relatives.

"For love's sake!" murmured the lightkeeper's sister, realizing at last how much in earnest the girl was, "Miss Ida'll near about have a conniption. She's set her heart on you an' Ralph marrying, for years."

"And his Uncle Henry is just as foolish," sighed Lorna, wiping her eyes.

"Why will old people never have sense enough to let young people's affairs alone?"

"Well, now, as you might say," Miss Heppy observed, "Miss Ida and Henry Endicott ain't re'lly old. Forty-odd ain't what ye might call aged-not in a way of speaking. But I cal'late they are some sot in their ways."

"'Some sot' is right, Miss Heppy," repeated Lorna, suddenly giggling and her vivid face a-smile once more. "In her own case Aunt Ida is a misogamist; yet she urges marriage on me. And Ralph's Uncle Henry is a misogynist in any case. Why he is so anxious to force Ralph into the wedded state I do not see."

"Seems to me them air purty hard names to call your aunt and Henry Endicott," murmured Miss Heppy.

"Oh!" Lorna laughed again. "They just mean that Aunt Ida hates marriage and Uncle Henry hates women."

Miss Heppy waggled a doubtful head.

"They wasn't like that when I first remember them, Lorny," she said.