第10章

"I love you, Father," Jane wrote in the letter."I love you and Mother so very, VERY much.Oh, PLEASE believe that! But I love him, too.And I could not give him up.You will see why when you know him, really know him.If it were not for you I should be SOhappy.I know you can't forgive me now, but some day I am sure you will forgive us both."Captain Zelotes was far, far from forgiveness as he read that letter.His first mate, who was beside him when he opened and read it, was actually frightened when he saw the look on the skipper's face."He went white," said the mate; "not pale, but white, same as a dead man, or--or the underside of a flatfish, or somethin'.

'For the Lord sakes, Cap'n,' says I, 'what's the matter?' He never answered me, stood starin' at the letter.Then he looked up, not at me, but as if somebody else was standin' there on t'other side of the cabin table.'Forgive him!' he says, kind of slow and under his breath.'I won't forgive his black soul in hell.' When Iheard him say it I give you my word my hair riz under my cap.If ever there was killin' in a man's voice and in his looks 'twas in Cap'n Lote's that night.When I asked him again what was the matter he didn't answer any more than he had the first time.A few minutes afterwards he went into his stateroom and shut the door.Ididn't see him again until the next mornin'."Captain Zelotes made no attempt to follow the runaway couple.He did take pains to ascertain that they were legally married, but that was all.He left his schooner in charge of the mate at Savannah and journeyed north to South Harniss and his wife.A week he remained at home with her, then returned to the Olive S.and took up his command and its duties as if nothing had happened.But what had happened changed his whole life.He became more taciturn, a trifle less charitable, a little harder and more worldly.Before the catastrophe he had been interested in business success and the making of money chiefly because of his plans for his daughter's future.Now he worked even harder because it helped him to forget.

He became sole owner of the Olive S., then of other schooners.

People spoke of him as one destined to become a wealthy man.

Jane lived only a few years after her marriage.She died at the birth of her second child, who died with her.Her first, a boy, was born a year after the elopement.She wrote her mother to tell that news and Olive answered the letter.She begged permission of her husband to invite Jane and the baby to visit the old home.At first Zelotes said no, flatly; the girl had made her bed, let her lie in it.But a year later he had so far relented as to give reluctant consent for Jane and the child to come, provided her condemned husband did not accompany them."If that low-lived Portygee sets foot on my premises, so help me God, I'll kill him!"declared the captain.In his vernacular all foreigners were "Portygees."But Jane was as proud and stubborn as he.Where her husband was not welcome she would not go.And a little later she had gone on the longest of all journeys.Speranza did not notify her parents except to send a clipped newspaper account of her death and burial, which arrived a week after the latter had taken place.The news prostrated Olive, who was ill for a month.Captain Zelotes bore it, as he had borne the other great shock, with outward calm and quiet.Yet a year afterward he suddenly announced his determination of giving up the sea and his prosperous and growing shipping business and of spending the rest of his days on the Cape.

Olive was delighted, of course.Riches--that is, more than a comfortable competency--had no temptations for her.The old house, home of three generations of Snows, was painted, repaired and, to some extent, modernized.For another year Captain Zelotes "loafed," as he called it, although others might have considered his activities about the place anything but that.At the end of that year he surprised every one by buying from the heirs of the estate the business equipment of the late Eben Raymond, hardware dealer and lumber merchant of South Harniss, said equipment comprising an office, a store and lumber yards near the railway station."Got to have somethin' to keep me from gettin'

barnacled," declared Captain Lote."There's enough old hulks rottin' at their moorin's down here as 'tis.I don't know anything about lumber and half as much about hardware, but I cal'late I can learn." As an aid in the learning process he retained as bookkeeper Laban Keeler, who had acted in that capacity for the former proprietor.

The years slipped away, a dozen of them, as smoothly and lazily as South Harniss years have always slipped.Captain Zelotes was past sixty now, but as vigorous as when forty, stubborn as ever, fond of using quarter-deck methods on shore and especially in town-meeting, and very often in trouble in consequence.He was a member of the Board of Selectmen and was in the habit of characterizing those whose opinions differed from his as "narrow-minded." They retorted by accusing him of being "pig-headed." There was some truth on both sides.His detest of foreigners had not abated in the least.