Chapter 8 SOMETHING ABOUT SALT WATER TAFFY

During the day Cap'n Amazon and Amiel Perdue carried Louise's trunks upstairs and into the storeroom, handy to her own chamber. It seems Cap'n Amazon had not brought his own sea chest; only a "dunnage bag," as he called it.

"But there's plenty of Abe's duds about," he said; "and we're about of a size."

When Louise went to unpack her trunks she found a number of things in the storeroom more interesting even than her own pretty summer frocks. There were shells, corals, sea-ivory-curios, such as are collected by seamen the world over. Cap'n Abe was an indefatigable gatherer of such wares. There was a green sea chest standing with its lid wide open, tarred rope handles on its ends, that may have been around the world a score of times. It was half filled with old books.

All the dusty, musty volumes in the chest seemed to deal with the sea and sea-going. Many of them, long since out of print and forgotten, recounted strange and almost unbelievable romances of nautical life-stories of wrecks, fires, battles with savages and pirates, discoveries of lone islands and marvelous explorations in lands which, since the date of publication, have become semi-civilized or altogether so.

Here were narratives of men who had sailed around the world in tiny craft like Captain Slocum; stories of seamen who had become chiefs of cannibal tribes, like the famous Larry O'Brien; several supposedly veracious narratives of the survivors of the Bounty; stories of Arctic and Antarctic discovery and privation. There were also several scrapbooks filled with newspaper clippings of nautical wonders-many of these clipped from New Bedford and Newport papers which at one time were particularly rich in whalers' yarns.

Interested in skimming these wonderful stories, Lou Grayling spent most of the afternoon. Here was a fund of entertainment for rainy days-or wakeful nights, if she chanced to suffer such. She carried one of the scrapbooks into her bedroom that it might be under her hand if she desired such amusement.

In arranging her possessions in closet and bureau, she found no time on this first day at Cap'n Abe's store to stroll even as far as The Beaches; but the next morning she got up betimes, as soon as Cap'n Amazon himself was astir, dressed, and ran down and out of the open back door while her uncle was sweeping the store.

The sun was but then opening a red eye above the horizon. The ocean, away out to this line demarcating sea and sky, was perfectly flat. Unlike the previous dawn, this was as clear as a bell's note.

Louise had been wise enough to wear high shoes, so the sands above high-water mark did not bother her. The waves lapped in softly, spreading over the dimpling gray beach, their voice reduced to a whispering murmur.

Along the crescent of the sands, above on the bluffs, were set the homes of the summer residents-those whom Gusty Durgin, the waitress at the hotel, termed "the big bugs." On the farthest point visible in this direction was a sprawling, ornate villa with private dock and boathouses, and a small breakwater behind which floated a fleet of small craft. Louise heard the "put-put-a-put" of a motor and descried a swift craft coming from this anchorage.

She saw, by sweeping it with her glance, that not a soul but herself was on the shore-neither in the direction of the summer colony nor on the other hand where the beach curved sharply out to the lighthouse at the end of the Neck. The motor boat was fast approaching the spot where Louise stood.

It being the single moving object on the scene, save the gulls, she began to watch it. There was but one person in the motor boat. He was hatless and was dressed in soiled flannels. It was the young man, Lawford Tapp, of whom Cap'n Abe did not altogether approve.

"He must work for those people over there," Louise Grayling thought.

"He is nice looking."

It could not be possible that Lawford Tapp had descried and recognized the figure of the girl from the Tapp anchorage!

He no longer wore his hip boots. After shutting off his engine, he guided the sharp prow of the launch right up into the sand and leaped into shallow water, bringing ashore the bight of the painter to throw over a stub sunk above high-water mark.

"Good-morning! What do you think of it?" he asked Louise, with a cordial smile that belonged to him.

"It is lovely!" she said. "Really wonderful! I suppose you have lived here so long it does not appeal to you as strongly as to the new-beholder?"

"I don't know about that. It's the finest place in the world; I think.

There's no prettier shore along the Atlantic coast than The Beaches."

"Perhaps you are right. I do not know much about the New England coast," she confessed. "And that-where the spray dashes up so high, even on this calm morning?"

"Gull Rocks. The danger spot of all danger spots along the outer line of the Cape. In rough weather all one can see out there is a cauldron of foam."

Before she could express herself again the purr of a swiftly moving motor car attracted her attention, and she turned to see a low gray roadster coming toward them from the north. The Shell Road, before reaching the shore, swerved northward and ran along the bluffs on which the bungalows and summer cottages were built. These dwellings faced the smooth white road, the sea being behind them.

As Louise looked the car slowed down and stopped, the engine still throbbing. A girl was at the wheel. She was perhaps fifteen, without a hat and with two plaits of yellow hair lying over her slim shoulders.

"Hey, Ford!" she shouted to the young man, "haven't you been up to Cap'n Abe's yet? Daddy's down at the dock now and he's in a tearing hurry."

She gazed upon Lou Grayling frankly but made no sign of greeting. She did not wait, indeed, for a reply from the young man but threw in the clutch and the car shot away.

"I've got to go up to the store," he said. "L'Enfant Terrible is evidently going to Paulmouth to meet the early train. Must be somebody coming."

Louise looked at him quickly, her expression one of perplexity. She supposed this child in the car was the daughter of Lawford's employer. But whoever before heard a fisherman speak just as he did? Had Cap'n Abe been at home she certainly would have tapped that fount of local knowledge for information regarding Lawford. He did not look so much the fisherman type without his jersey and high boots.

"How do you like the old fellow up at the store?" Lawford asked, as they strolled along together. "Isn't he a curious old bird?"

"You mean my Uncle Amazon?"

"Goodness! He is your uncle, too, isn't he?" and a flush of embarrassment came into his bronzed cheek. "I had forgotten he was Cap'n Abe's brother. He is so different!"

"Isn't he?" responded Louise demurely. "He doesn't look anything like

Uncle Abram, at least."

"I should say not!" ejaculated Lawford. "Do you know, he's an awfully-er-romantic looking old fellow. Looks just as though he had stepped out of an old print"

"The frontispiece of a book about buccaneers, for instance?" she suggested gleefully.

"Well," and he smiled down upon her from his superior height, "I wasn't sure you would see it that way."

"Do you know," she told him, still laughing, "that Betty Gallup calls him nothing but 'that old pirate.' She has taken a decided dislike to him and I have to keep smoothing her ruffled feathers. And, really, Cap'n Amazon is the nicest man."

"I bet he's seen some rough times," Lawford rejoined with vigor. "We used to think Cap'n Abe told some stretchers about his brother; but Cap'n Amazon looks as though he had been through all that Cap'n Abe ever told about-and more."

"Oh, he's not so very terrible, I assure you," Louise said, much amused.

"Did you notice the scar along his jaw? Looks like a cutlass stroke to me. I'd like to know how he came by it. It must have been some fight!"

"You will make him out a much more terrible character than he can possibly be."

"Never mind. If he's anything at all like Cap'n Abe, we'll get it all out of him. I bet he can tell us some hair-raisers."

"I tell you he's a nice old man, and I won't have you talk so about him," Louise declared. "We must change the subject."

"We'll talk about you," said Lawford quickly. "I'm awfully curious.

When does your-er-work begin down here?"

"My work?" Then she understood him and dimpled. "Oh, just now is my playtime."

"Making pictures must be interesting."

"I presume it looks so to the outsider," she admitted. It amused her immensely that he should think her a motion picture actress.

"Your coming here and Cap'n Amazon exchanging jobs with his brother have caused more excitement than Cardhaven and the vicinity have seen in a decade. Or at least since I have lived here."

"Oh! Then are you not native to the soil?"

"No, not exactly," he replied. And then after a moment he added: "It's a great old place, even in winter."

"Not dull at all?"

"Never dull," he reassured her. "Too much going on, on sea and shore, to ever be dull. Not for me, at least. I love it."

They reached the store. Louise bade the young man good-morning and went around to the back door to greet Betty.

Lawford made his purchases in rather serious mood and returned to his motor boat. His mind was fixed upon the way Louise Grayling had looked as he stepped ashore and greeted her.

He had been close enough to her now, and for time enough as well, to be sure that there was nothing artificial about this girl. She was as natural as a flower-and just as sweet! There was a softness to her cheek and to the curve of her neck like rich velvet. Her eyes were mild yet sparkling when she became at all animated. And that demure smile! And her dimples!

When a young man gets to making an accounting of a girl's charms in this way, he is far gone indeed. Lawford Tapp was very seriously smitten.

He saw his youngest sister, Cicely, whom the family always called L'Enfant Terrible, speeding back to the villa in the automobile. She had not gone as far as Paulmouth, after all, and she reached home long before he docked the launch. Lawford did not pay much attention to what went on in the big villa. His mother and sisters lived a social life of their own. He merely slept there, spending most of his days on the water.

The Salt Water Taffy King was not at the private dock when Lawford arrived. Mr. Israel Tapp was an irritable and impatient man. He "flew off the handle" at the slightest provocation. Many times a day he lost his temper and, as Lawford phlegmatically expressed it, "blew up."

These exhibitions meant nothing particularly to Mr. Tapp. They were escape-valves for a nervous irritability that had grown during his years of idleness. Born of a poor Cape family, but with a dislike for fish-seines and lobster-pots, he had turned his attention from the first to the summer visitors, even in his youth beginning to flock to the old-fashioned ports of the Cape. Catering to their wants was a gold mine but little worked at that time.

He began to sell candy at one of the more popular resorts. Then he began to make candy. His Salt Water Taffy became locally famous. He learned that a good many of the wealthier people who visited the Cape in summer played all the year around. They went to Atlantic City or to the Florida beaches in the winter.

So Israel Tapp branched out and established salt water taffy kitchens all up and down the coast. "I. Tapp, the Salt Water Taffy King" became a catch-word. It was then but a step to incorporating a company and establishing huge candy factories. I. Tapp went on by leaps and bounds. While yet a comparatively young man he found himself a multi-millionaire. Even a rather expensive family could not spend his income fast enough.

He built the ornate villa at The Beaches and, like Lawford, preferred to live there rather than elsewhere. His wife and the older girls insisted upon having a town house in Boston and in traveling at certain times to more or less exclusive resorts and to Europe. Their one ambition was to get into that exclusive social set in which they felt their money should rightfully place them. But a house on the Back Bay does not always assure one's entrance to the circles of the "gilded codfish."

Mr. Tapp went down to the dock again after a time. Lawford had the Merry Andrew all ready to set out on the proposed fishing trip. The sloop was a pretty craft, clinker built, and about the fastest sailing boat within miles of Cardhaven. Lawford was proud of her.

"So you're back at last, are you?" snapped the Salt Water Taffy King.

He was a portly little man with a red face and a bald brow. His very strut pronounced him a self-made man. He glared at his son, whose cool nonchalance he often declared was impudence.

"I've been waiting some time for you, dad. Hop aboard," Lawford calmly said.

"You took your time in getting back here," responded his father, by no means mollified. "And you knew I was waiting. But you had to stand and talk to a girl over there. Cicely says it is that picture actress who is staying at Cap'n Abe's. Is that so?"

"I presume Cicely is right," his son answered. "There is no other here at present to my knowledge."

"Of all things!" ejaculated Mr. Tapp. "You are always making some kind of a fool of yourself, Lawford. Don't, for pity's sake, be that kind of a fool."

"What do you mean, dad?" and now the young man's eyes flashed. It was seldom that Lawford turned upon his father in anger.

"You know very well what I mean. Keep away from such women. Don't get messed up with actor people. I won't have it, I tell you! I am determined that at least one rich man's son shall not be the victim of the wiles of any of these stage women."

The flush remained in Lawford's cheek. It hurt him to hear his father speak so in referring to Louise Grayling. He, too, possessed some of the insular prejudice of his kind against those who win their livelihood in the glare of the theatrical spotlight. This gentle, well-bred, delightful girl staying at Cap'n Abe's store was a revelation to him. He held his tongue, however, and held his temper in check as well.

"I don't see," stormed I. Tapp, "why you can't take up with a nice girl and marry. Why, at your age I was married and we had Marian!"

"Don't you think that should discourage me, dad?" Lawford put in.

"Marian is nobody to brag of, I should say."

"Hah!" ejaculated his father. "She's a fool, too. But there are nice girls. I was talking to your mother about your case last night. Of course, I don't want you to say anything to her about what I'm going to tell you now. She's got the silliest notions," pursued Mr. Tapp who labored under the belief that all the wisdom of the ages had lodged under his own hat. "Expects her daughters to marry dukes and you to catch a princess or the like."

"There are no such fish in these waters," laughed Lawford. "At least, none has so much as nibbled at my hook."

"And no nice girl will nibble at it if you don't come ashore once in a while and get into something besides fisherman's duds."

"Now, dad, clothes do not make the man."

"Who told you such a fool thing as that? Some fool philosopher with only one shirt to his back said it. Bill Johnson proved how wrong that was to my satisfaction years and years ago. Good old Bill! I wanted to branch out. We had just that one little candy factory and I worked in it myself every day.

"I got the idea," continued I. Tapp, launched on a favorite subject now, "that my balance sheet and outlook for trade might impress the bank people. I wanted to build a bigger factory. So I took off my apron one day and walked over to the bank. I saw the president. He looked like a fashion plate himself and he swung a pair of dinky glasses on a cord as he listened to me and looked me over. Then he turned me down-flat!

"I told Bill about it. Bill was kind of tied up just then himself. That was before he made his big strike. But he was a different fellow from me. Bill always looked like ready money.

"'Isra,' he says to me, 'I'll tell you how to get that money from the bank.'

"'It can't be done, Bill,' I told him. 'The president of the bank showed me that my business was too weak to stand such spread-eagling.

"'Nonsense!' says Bill. 'It isn't your business, it's your nerve that you've got to hire money on-and your clothes. You do what I tell you. Come to my tailor's in the morning.'

"Well, to cut a long story short, I did it. I rigged up to beat that bank president himself. When he saw me in about two hundred dollars' worth of good clothes he considered the case again and recommended the loan to his board. 'You put your facts much more lucidly to-day, Mr. Tapp,' is the way he expressed himself. But take it from me, Lawford, it was my clothes that made the impression.

"So!" ruminated Mr. Tapp, "that is one thing Bill Johnson did for me. And later, as you know, he came into the candy business with me and his money helped make I. Tapp, the Salt Water Taffy King. Lawford, Bill is like a brother to me. His girl, Dorothy, is one of the nicest girls who ever stepped in a slipper."

"Dorothy Johnson is a really sweet girl, dad," Lawford agreed. "I like her."

"There!" ejaculated I. Tapp. "You let that liking become something stronger. Dorothy's just the girl for you to marry."

"What?" gasped the skipper of the Merry Andrew, almost losing his grip on the steering wheel.

"You get my meaning," said his father, scowling. "I've always meant you should marry Bill's daughter. I had your mother write her last night inviting her down here. Of course, your mother and the girls think Bill Johnson's folks are too plain. But I'm boss once in a while in my own house."

"And you call mother a matchmaker!"

"I know what I want and I'm going to get it," said I. Tapp doggedly.

"Dorothy is the girl for you. Don't you get entangled with anybody

else. Not a penny of my money will you ever handle if you don't do as

I say, young man!"

"You needn't holler till you're hit, dad," Lawford said, trying to speak carelessly.

"Oh! I sha'n't holler," snarled the Taffy King. "I warn you. One such play as that and I'm through with you. I'm willing to support an idle, ne'er-do-well; but he sha'n't saddle himself with one of those theatrical creatures and bring scandal upon the family. Do you know what I was doing when I was your age? I had a booth at 'Gansett, two at Newport, a big one at Atlantic City, and was beginning to branch out. I worked like a dog, too."

"That's why I think I don't have to work, dad," said Lawford coolly.