Kitabı oku: «The Harbor of Doubt», sayfa 2
CHAPTER III
THE TEST
The man behind him climbed to the ridge-pole and Code began the descent, necessarily slow and careful because the ladders were loaded with men passing buckets. When he reached the ground he started for home on the run.
Opposite Boughton’s general store was another shop that made a specialty of fishermen’s “oilers,” boots, and overalls. Two houses to the westward of that was the old Schofield place, a low, white house surrounded by a rickety fence and covered with ivy.
Once he reached the middle of the road Code saw that he had been mistaken in the location of the fire, for his mother’s place was intact. The flame was coming, however, from the house next but one–Bijonah Tanner’s place.
A crowd was gathering in the yard that was overgrown with dusty wire-grass, and the squire was pushing his way through to take charge. Code knew that only two days before Captain Bijonah and his wife had sailed in the Rosan to St. John’s for lumber, leaving Nellie alone in charge of the three small Tanners. He wondered where they all were now.
He found his mother on the edge of the crowd that was helping to save the furniture, and learned that Nellie and young Burns had already arrived and were doing what they could.
From the first it was apparent that the place was doomed, for although there were plenty of men eager to form a bucket brigade, the supply of water was limited, and most of the buckets were at the larger fire.
But the squire was working wonders, and enlisted Code to help him.
In fifteen minutes the whole roof and attic were ablaze, and the men turned their attention to wetting down the near walls of the houses on each side. All the valuables and most of the simple furniture had been saved.
At the earliest moment Schofield escaped from the squire and sought out Nellie. He found her, hysterical, surrounded by a group of women, and hovered over by Nat Burns. With each hand she held a child close to her.
“Bige! Where is little Bige?” she was crying as Code came up. “Tom and Mary are here, but I’ve lost Bige. Oh, Nat! Where is Bige?”
“Bless me if I know,” stammered Burns weakly. “Last I saw of him he was under that cherry-tree where you told him to stay until you got the others. It wa’n’t more’n five minutes ago I seen him there. He must be around somewheres. I’ll look.”
Without another word he hurried off in a frantic search, looking to left and right, behind every bush, and among the crowd, bellowing the boy’s name at the top of his voice.
Code walked up to the frantic girl and went straight to the point.
“Hello, Nellie!” he said. “Where do you cal’late little Bige might be? I hear you’ve lost him.”
“Yes, I have, Code. I stood him under that cherry-tree and told him not to move. When I got back he was gone. He was seven, and just old enough to run around by himself and investigate things. Oh, I’m so afraid he’s gone–”
“Listen!” Code’s sharp, masterful tone put a sudden end to her sobbing. “Was there anything in the house he valued much?” Suddenly she drew in her breath sharply.
“Yes, yes,” she cried, “his mechanical train. He asked me if I had got it and I said I had. He must have gone over to the furniture and found it hadn’t been brought down. Oh, Code, Code–”
“What’s the matter, Nellie?”
It was Nat Burns’s hard voice as he elbowed roughly past Code and bent solicitously over the girl. He had heard her last words and the pleading in them, and his brow was dark with question and anger.
“Did you find him, Nat?” queried Nellie in an agony of suspense.
“No, I don’t know where the little beggar can be,” he replied; “I’ve–” The girl screamed and fainted.
“What’s the matter here?” shouted Burns. “What’s the matter with her?”
“The boy went back into the house for his toy engine and hasn’t come out again,” said Code, facing the other and regarding him with a level eye.
There was a dramatic pause. After Nat’s proprietary interest in Nellie and her affairs it was distinctly his place to make the next move. Everybody felt it, and Code, subconsciously realizing this, said nothing.
It required another moment for the situation to become clear to Burns. Then, when he realized what alternatives he faced, he gradually grew pale beneath his deep tan and looked defiantly from one to another of the group about him.
“Rot!” he cried suddenly. “The boy can’t have gone back. It wasn’t five minutes ago I saw him under the cherry-tree. I haven’t looked in this direction. Wait! I’ll be back in a minute!” And again he was off in his frantic search, his voice rising above the roar of the fire.
Code waited no longer.
Snatching up a blanket from the ground, he raced toward the burning house.
The lower floor was still almost intact, but the upper floor and the roof were practically consumed. The danger lay not in entering the house, but in remaining in it, for although the roof had fallen in, yet the second floor had not burned through and was in momentary danger of collapse.
The spectators did not know what was in Code Schofield’s mind until he had burst into the danger zone. Then, with the blanket wound about his arm and shielding his face he plunged toward the open doorway. It was as though he stood suddenly before the open door of a vast furnace.
The blast of heat seemed an impenetrable force, and he struggled against it with all his strength.
One more look, a mighty effort, and he was in the temporary shelter of the doorway. He drew a long breath and plunged forward.
He knew the plan of the Tanner house as he knew his own, and he remembered that in the rear was a room where the children played. The hall ran straight back to the door of this room; but there was no egress from the rear except through the kitchen, which adjoined the play-room.
The heat that beat down upon his head made him dizzy, and he could not see for the smoke that filled the hall. Instinctively he went down on his hands and knees, discarding the blanket, and crawled toward the rear.
He had scarcely reached the closed door of the play-room when, with a thunderous roar, the ceilings at the front of the house fell in, cutting off any escape in that quarter. He knew that at any moment the rest of the ceilings would collapse.
Half-strangled with the increasing smoke, he staggered to his feet and lunged against the door, forcing it open. The dim light from the one square-paned window showed a small form huddled on the floor, the mouth open, and a tiny locomotive gripped in one hand.
A rush of smoke and flame followed the violent opening of the door, and Code felt himself growing giddy. A swift glance behind showed a wall of fire where the hall had once been, and for the first time he realized the seriousness of the task he had taken upon himself. But there was no fear. Rather there came a sense of gladness that a fighter feels when the battle has at last come to close grips.
He swept the small form of Bige up into his arms and leaped to the window that was built low in the wall and without weights. To raise it and manipulate the catch was out of the question. With all his strength he swung his foot against the pane squarely in the middle. Panes and frame splintered outward, leaving the casement intact except for a few jagged edges of glass.
Then, suddenly, as he dropped the boy to the ground outside, there came a blast of fire on the back draft created by the opening. Singed and strangling, with a last desperate effort he threw himself outward and fell on his shoulders beside little Bige.
Men who had heard the crash of glass when the window went out rushed forward and dragged man and boy to safety.
A quarter of an hour later, his head and neck bandaged with sweet-oil, Code made his way weakly to where Nellie sat among her belongings cradling in her arms the boy whom the doctor had just brought back to consciousness.
“He’s all right, is he?” asked Schofield.
She smiled up at him through her tears.
“Yes, the doctor says it was just too much smoke. Oh, Code, how can I thank you for this? And you are hurt! Is it bad? Can’t I do anything?”
She struggled to her feet, solicitude written on her face, for the moment even forgetting little Bige, who had begun to howl.
“No,” said Schofield, “you can’t do anything. It isn’t much. I’m only glad I succeeded. Don’t think anything about it.”
“Father and mother will never forget this, and I’m sure will do what they can to make it right with you.”
He looked at her as though she had struck him. Never in his life had she used that tone. Before the mute query of his eyes she turned her head away.
“What do you mean–by that?” he faltered, hardly knowing what he said.
“Nothing, Code, only–only–” She could not finish.
“What has happened, Nellie?” he began, and then halted, his gaze riveted upon her hand. A single diamond glittered from the dirt and grime that soiled her finger.
“That?” he gasped, stunned by a feeling of misery and helplessness.
“Nat and I are engaged,” she said in a low voice without answering his question. “Just since last night.”
There was nothing more to be said. The banal wishes for happiness would not rise to his lips. He looked at her intently for a moment, saw her eyes again drop, and walked away. He was suddenly tired and wanted to go home and rest. The reaction of his nervous and physical strain had set in.
The hundred yards to his own gateway was a triumphal procession, but he scarcely realized it. Somehow he answered the acclamations that were heaped upon him. He smiled, but he did not know how.
At the gate some one was waiting for him. At first he thought it was his mother, but he suddenly saw that it was Elsa Mallaby. He told himself that she must have come down to the village to watch the fire, and wondered why she was in that particular place.
“Code,” she cried, her face flushed with glad pride, “you were splendid! That was the bravest thing I ever heard of in my life. I knew you would do it!”
He smiled mechanically, thanked her, and passed on while she gazed after him, hurt and struck silent by the cold misery in his face.
“I wonder,” she said to herself slowly, “whether something besides what I told him has happened to him to-night?”
CHAPTER IV
REFUGEES
It was almost one o’clock in the morning when Code went into the parlor of his mother’s cottage and sank down upon the ancient plush sofa. His eyes ached, and the back of his head and neck, where the fire had singed him, were throbbing painfully.
There was apparently no one at home.
Even little Josie, the orphan that helped his mother, seemed to have been drawn out into the road by the excitement of the night, and the house, except for a single lamp burning on the table, was in darkness.
He thought of going up-stairs to bed, but remembered that his mother was not in, and decided he would rest a little while and then go out and find her. Suddenly it seemed very luxurious and grateful to be able to stretch at full length after so much labor, and within a few minutes this sense of luxury had become a pleasant oblivion.
Voices and a bright light woke him up. Dazed and alarmed, he struggled to a sitting posture, but a gently firm hand pushed him down again and he heard his mother’s voice.
“Lay down again, Code,” she said. “You must be pretty well beat out with all you’ve done to-night. We’ve just got some friends for the night. Poor boy, let me see your burns!”
Schofield, who had guided schooners for years through the gales and shoals of the Bay of Fundy without a qualm, became red and ashamed at his mother’s babying. Rubbing his sleepy eyes, he sat up again determinedly and made an effort to greet the company who, he knew, had come into the room with his mother.
Across the room, near the old melodeon, sat Nellie Tanner, holding little Bige and smiling wanly at him. The other two children leaned against her, asleep on either side.
“Don’t get up, Code,” she said. “You’ve earned your rest more than any man in Freekirk Head to-night. I’m afraid, though, we’re going to make more trouble for you. Ma Schofield wouldn’t let me go anywhere else but here till the Rosan gets back from St. John’s.
“Oh, I hate to think of their coming! They’ll sail around Flag Point and look for the kiddies waving in front of the house. And they won’t even see any house; but, thanks to you, Code, they’ll see the kiddies.”
He knew by the tense, strained tone of her voice that she was very near the breaking-point, and his whole being yearned to comfort her and try to make her happy.
Cursing himself for a lazy dolt, he sprang up and walked over toward her.
“Now, you just let me handle this, Nellie,” he said, “and we’ll soon have Tommie and Mary and Bige all curled up on that sofa like three kittens.”
With a sigh of ineffable relief she resigned the dead weight in her weary arms to him, and he, stepping softly, and holding him gently as a woman, soon had the boy more comfortable than he had been for hours. Mary and Tommie followed, and then Nellie, free of her responsibility at last, bent forward, put her elbows on her knees, and wept.
Code, racked and embarrassed, looked around for his mother, but that mainstay was nowhere in sight. He thought of whistling, so as to appear unconscious of her tears, but concluded that would be merely rude. To take up a paper or book and read it in the face of a woman’s weeping appeared hideous, although for the first time in many months, he felt irresistibly drawn to the ancient and dusty volumes in the glass-doored bookcase.
He compromised by turning his back on the affecting sight, thrusting his hands in his pockets, and studying the remarkably straight line formed by the abrupt junction of the wall and the ceiling.
“Do you mind if I cry, C–Code?” sobbed the girl, apparently realizing their position for the first time.
“No! Go right ahead!” he cried as heartily as though some one had asked for a match. He was intensely happy that the matter was settled between them. Now the harder she cried the more he liked it, for they understood one another. So she cried and he walked softly about, his hands in his pockets and his lips puckered for the whistle that he did not dare permit himself.
Ma Schofield interrupted this near-domestic scene by her arrival, carrying a tray, on which were several glasses covered with a film of frost and out of which appeared little green forests. Code ceased to think about whistling.
“Oh, Ma Schofield, what have you done?” cried Nellie, her tears for the moment forgetting to flow as her widening eyes took in the delights of the frosted glasses and piles of cake behind them.
“Done?” queried ma. “I haven’t done anything but what my conscience tells me ought to be done. If yours cal’lates to disturb you some you can go right on up to your room, lamb, for you must be dead with lugging them children around.”
Nellie’s tears disappeared not to return. She shook her head.
“No, ma,” she said; “my conscience is just like them children–sleeping so hard it would take Gabriel’s trumpet to wake ’em up. It’s more tired than I am.”
“All right,” said ma, with finality; “we will now proceed to refresh ourselves.”
It was two o’clock before they separated for the remainder of the night.
Code’s room, with its big mahogany double bed, was given over to Nellie and the children while he gladly resigned himself to the humpy plush sofa.
By this time they had received news from half a dozen neighbors that Bill Boughton’s general store had been only half destroyed and that the contents had all been saved. The wharfs and fish-houses were at last burning and property on the leeward side of the flames was declared to be safe.
A general exodus began along the King’s Road.
Men who had galloped up from Great Harbor, with an ax in one hand and a bucket in the other, mounted their horses and rode away. Others from Hayward’s Cove and Castalia, who had driven in buggies and buckboards, collected their families and departed. The King’s Road was the scene of a long procession, as though the people of Freekirk Head were evacuating the town.
A detachment of men under Squire Hardy’s orders remained about the danger zone ready to check any further advance of the flames or to rouse the town to further resistance should this become necessary. But for the most part the people of the village returned to their homes.
Wide-awake and nervous, Schofield lay open-eyed upon the couch while unbidden thoughts raced through his brain.
The very fact of his sleeping on the plush couch was enough to bring to his mind the memory of one whom he had irretrievably lost on this memorable night. Was she not at this moment under his own roof, miserable and nearly destitute? He knew that, as long as he might live, his humble room up-stairs would never be the same again.
It had been made a place sweet and full of wonder by the very fact that she was in it. Never again, he knew, could he enter it without its being faintly fragrant of her who, all his life, he had considered the divinest created thing on earth. By her presence she had sanctified it and made of it a shrine for his meditative and wakeful hours.
Ever since they had gone to school together, hand in hand, the names of Nellie Tanner and Code Schofield had been linked in the mouths of Grande Mignon busybodies. Living all their lives two doors away, they had grown up in that careless intimacy of constant association that is unconscious of its own power until such intimacy is removed.
To-night the shock had come.
It was not that Code had taken for granted that Nellie would marry him. Never in his life had he told her that he loved her. It is not the habit of men who rove the seas to keep those they love constantly supplied with literature or confectionery, or to waste too many words in the language of devotion.
He admitted frankly to himself that he had always hoped to marry her when he had acquired the quarter interest in Bill Boughton’s fishstand that had been promised him, but he had not told her so, nor did he know that she would accept him. The idea had been one to be thought of only at times of quietness and confidence in his future such as come to every man.
But he had not reckoned on Nat Burns. He had not realized quite to what an extent Burns had made progress. He recalled, now that it was brought forcibly home to him, that Nat had been constantly at the Tanners’ for the last four or five months. But Code had thought nothing of this, for Nat had paid similar court at times to others of the girls of Freekirk Head. He was, in fact, considered the village beau.
And Nellie herself had told him nothing. There had been a modest shyness about her in their relations that had kept him at an exasperating and piquant distance.
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 space 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 ashore 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.”
“I thought so. They’ve got my Rosan, too, though I wish mightily now that they hadn’t. This feller is the private secretary to the president, an’ the other two are clerks or something in the office. They may have been up to something crooked, and then again they may have just been talkin’ things over as young fellers often do when they’re interested in their work. Anyway, there’s enough in what they said to set you thinkin’, I cal’late.”
“Yes,” said Code slowly and grimly, “it is. I’ve only known that the island was talking since last night, and now I find St. John’s is, too. It’s spreading pretty fast, it seems; and I wonder where it will end?” He pondered silently for a while.
“If they sue to recover, what’ll you do?” ventured Tanner hesitatingly.
“God knows!” answered Schofield and laughed bitterly. “I haven’t got a thing on earth but the Charming Lass, an’ this year I haven’t caught enough fish to pay for my new mains’l. My credit is still good at Bill Boughton’s, but that’s all.”
“But the cottage–”
“That is my mother’s, and they could never get that. If they sue and I lose they must take the Lass, and after they’ve subtracted the judgment from the sale price I suppose I’ll get the rest–maybe enough to buy a second-hand sloop.”
“Yes, but that isn’t the worst part of it, Code. As soon as they bring suit they will attach the schooner, so that even if the trial doesn’t come up for weeks you still can’t use her, and will have to sit around idle or go hand-lining in your dory. And you know what that means with winter comin’ on.”
“I know.” He had seen hard winters that had tried the resources of the village to the utmost, but he had never faced one that promised to be like the next.
“Well, what would you advise me to do, captain?”
“Get out!” snapped Tanner. “Get a crew and take the Lass to sea. There’s one thing sure, a lawyer can’t serve you with a summons or anything else if he has to look for you on the Atlantic Ocean.”
Schofield smiled. The remedy called for was heroic, truly; but was it honorable?
“I wonder if they can do that, anyway?” he asked. “After the May was lost the insurance people settled without a complaint. Can they rake up that matter again now?”
“By Jove! That reminds me. Them fellers discussed that very thing; an’ the secretary said that if the law had been broke at the time of the sinkin’–I mean, if the schooner wasn’t fit or had been tampered with–that it was within the law. But, o’ course, somebody’s got to make the complaint.”
“That’s just it,” cried Code, springing up and throwing away the stump of his cigar; “somebody has got to make the complaint! Well, now, from what I can see, somebody’s made it. All this talk could not have gone on in the island unless it started from somewhere. And the question is, where?”
They were interrupted by the sound of footsteps. In the darkness the figure of a man appeared approaching the house. A moment later the newcomer stepped on the low veranda, and both men recognized him.
It was Nat Burns.
“Is Nellie here?” he asked without the formality of the usual greetings.
“I cal’late she is, Nat,” replied Tanner, rising to his feet. “Wait a minute an’ I’ll call her.”
But he had not reached the door before the girl herself stepped out on the porch. She ran out eagerly, but stopped short when she saw Code in the darkness. Their meeting was obviously reserved.
In the interim Tanner walked to where Schofield stood, silent.
“I cal’late I can give you a pretty good idea where all this trouble started from,” he growled in a low tone; but before he could go on Nellie interrupted him.
“Father,” she said, coming forward with Nat, “I want to tell you something that we’ve all been too busy to discuss before this. Nat and I are engaged. He gave me the ring night before last when you were in St. John’s. I hope you are pleased, father.”
