Flood Tide | Page 2

I wouldn't
have nothin'."
The wistfulness in the sensitive face would instantly transform
Celestina's irritation into sympathy and cause her to respond:
"Nonsense, Willie! What are you talkin' about? Ain't you got more
friends than anybody in this town? Nobody's poor so long as he has

good friends."
"Oh, 'taint bein' poor I mind," laughed Willie, now quite himself again.
"It's knowin' nothin' an' bein' nothin' that discourages me. If I'd only
had the chance to learn somethin' when I was a youngster I wouldn't
have to be goin' it blind now like I do. There's times, Celestina," added
the man solemnly, "when I really believe I've got stuff inside me that's
worth while if only I knew what to do with it."
"Pshaw! Ain't you usin' what's inside you all the time to help the folks
of this town out of their troubles? I'd like to know how they'd get along
if it warn't fur you. Ain't you doctorin' an' fixin' up things for the whole
of Cape Cod from one end to the other, day in and day out? I call that
amountin' to somethin' in the world if you don't."
Willie paused thoughtfully.
"I do do quite a batch of tinkerin', that's true," admitted he, brightening,
"an' I'm right down glad to do it, too. Don't think I ain't. Still, I can't
help knowin' there's better ways to go at it than blunderin' along as I
have to, an' sometimes I can't help wishin' I knew what the right way is.
There must be folks that know how to do in half the time what I do by
makeshift an' fussin'. Sometimes it seems a pity there never was
anybody to steer me into findin' out the kind of things I've always
wanted to know."
Celestina began to rock nervously.
Being of New England fiber, and classing as morbid all forms of
introspection, she always so dreaded to have the conversation drift into
a reflective channel that whenever she found Willie indulging in
reveries she was wont to rout him out of them, tartly reproaching
herself for having even indirectly been the cause of stirrin' him up.
"Next time I'll set the chowder back on the stove an' say nothin'," she
would vow inwardly. "I'd much better have waited 'til his dream was
over an' done with. S'pose I am put out a bit--'twon't hurt me. If I don't
care enough for Willie to do somethin' for him once in a while, good as

he's always been to me, I'd oughter be ashamed of myself."
Hence it is easily seen that neither to Wilton in general nor to Celestina
in particular was Willie Spence a trial.
No, it was to himself that Willie was the torment. "I plague myself
'most to death, Tiny," he would not infrequently confess when the two
sat together at dusk in the little room that looked out on the reach of
blue sea. "It's gettin' all these idees that drives me distracted. 'Tain't that
I go huntin' 'em; they come to me, hittin' me broadside like as if they'd
been shot out of a gun. There's times," ambled on the quiet voice,
"when they'll wake me out of a sound sleep an' give me no peace 'til
I've got up and 'tended to 'em. That notion of hitchin' a string to the
slide in the stove door so'st you could open the draught without stirrin'
out of your chair--that took me in the night. There warn't no waitin' 'til
mornin'! Long ago I learned that. Once the idee has a-holt of me there's
nothin' to do but haul myself out of bed, even if it's midnight an'
colder'n the devil, an' try out that notion."
"The plan was a good one; it's saved lots of steps," put in Celestina.
"It had to be done, Tiny," Willie answered simply. "That's all there was
to it. Good or bad, I had to carry it to a finish if I didn't sleep another
wink that night."
The assertion was true; Celestina could vouch for that. After ten years
of residence in the gray cottage she had become too completely inured
to hearing the muffled sound of saw and hammer during the wee small
hours of the night to question the verity of the statement. Therefore she
was quite ready to agree that there was no peace for Willie, or herself
either, until the particular burst of genius that assailed him had been
transformed from a mirage of the imagination to the more tangible
form of tacks and strings.
For strings played a very vital part in Willie Spence's inspirational
world. Indeed, when Celestina had first come to the weathered cottage
on the bluff to keep house for the lonely little bachelor and had
discovered that cottage to