Chapter 33

He turned on the Wall Street man. “I'm only asking for what is rightfully due my own people. I'm a man of few words and just now I'm sticking close to schedule. Until eleven o'clock to-night you'll find Vose, myself, and our lawyers at the Nicholas Hotel. After eleven o'clock we shall be in bed because we've got to get an early start for the wreck out on Razee. We're going to finance that job. And in case we don't come to terms with you tonight we shall use our club to keep you out of our business after this. You know what the club is.”

Marston was too busily engaged with Captain Wass to pay heed to his daughter. She went close to Mayo and whispered.

“You must quit them, Boyd. It's for my sake. You must help my father. They are wretches. Think of what it will mean to you if you can help us! You will do it. Promise me!”

He did not reply.

“Do you dare to hesitate for one moment--when I ask you--for my sake?”

“That's my last word,” bawled Captain Wass. “There's no blackmail about it--we're only taking back what's our own.”

“Are you one of those--creatures?” she asked, indignantly.

If she had shown one spark of sympathy or real understanding in that crisis of their affairs, if she had not been so much, in that moment, the daughter of Julius Marston, counseling selfishness, he might have fatuously continued to coddle his romance, in spite of all that had preceded. But her eyes were hard. Her voice had the money-chink in it. He started, like a man awakened. His old cap had fallen on the carpet. He picked it up.

“Good-by!” he said. “I have found out where I belong in this world.”

And in that unheroic fashion ended something which, so he then realized, should never have been begun. He followed Captain Wass across the saloon.

“Better advise your buckos to be careful how they handle them grate-bars,” shouted Captain Wass. “I'm loaded, and if I'm joggled I'm liable to explode.”

They were not molested when they left the yacht. The doryman who had brought Captain Wass rowed them to the wharf.

“Those papers--” Mayo had ventured, soon after they left the yacht's side.

“Not one word about 'em!” yelped the old skipper. “It's my business--entire! When the time comes right I'll show you that it's my private business. I never allow anybody to interfere in that.”

That night, after the conference at the hotel, and after Julius Marston, growling profanity, had put his name to certain papers, drawn by careful lawyers, Captain Wass explained why the matter of the sealed packet was his private business. He took Marston apart from the others for the purpose of explaining.

“I haven't said one word to Vose or his associates about this business of the documents. They think you have come because you wanted to straighten out a low-down trick worked by an understrapper. So this has put you in mighty well with the Vose crowd, sir.”

Marston grunted.

“It ought to be kind of pleasing to have a few men think you are on the square,” pursued Captain Wass.

“That's enough of this pillycock conversation. Hand over those papers!”

“Just one moment!” He signaled to Captain Mayo, who came to them. “I'm going to tell Mr. Marston why those documents were my especial business to-day, and why you couldn't control me in the matter. I may as well explain to the two of you at once. It was my own business for this reason: I don't know anything about any papers. I never saw any. I never opened that package. I handed it along just as it was given to me. That's true, on my sacred word, Mr. Marston; and I haven't any reason for lying to you--not after you have signed those agreements.”

“Come outside,” urged the financier. “I want to tell you what I think of you.”

“No,” said the old skipper, mildly. “And I'd lower your voice, sir, if I were you. These men here have a pretty good idea of you just now, and I don't want you to spoil it.”

“You're a lying renegade!”

“Oh no! I have only showed you that all the good bluffers are not confined to Wall Street. There's one still loose there. Your man Bradish probably had reasons for wanting to bluff your daughter--and save his own skin. He'll probably hand your papers to you!”

Marston swore and departed.

“I laid out that course whilst I was down on my knees in his cabin, sort of praying for a good lie in a time of desp'rit need,” Captain Wass confided to Mayo. “It wasn't bad, considering the way it has worked out.”

XXXII ~ A GIRL'S DEAR “BECAUSE!”

Cheer up, Jack, bright smiles await you From the fairest of the fair, And her loving eyes will greet you With kind welcomes everywhere. Rolling home, rolling home, Rolling home across the sea. Rolling home to dear old England, Rolling home, dear land, to thee! --Rolling Home.

There was no niggardliness in the trade the Vose folks made with Captain Mayo. They contracted to co-operate with him and his men in floating the steamship, repairing her in dry dock, and refitting her for her route. She would be appraised as she stood after refitting, as a going proposition, and Mayo was to receive stock to the amount of her value--stock in the newly organized Vose line.

“Furthermore,” stated old man Vose, “we shall need a chap of just about your gauge as manager. You have shown that you are able to do things.”

He was up on the _Conomo's_ deck after a long inspection of the work which had been done under difficulties.

“You would have had this steamer off with your own efforts if your money had lasted. Your next job is the _Montana_; but you'll simply manage that, Captain Mayo--use your head and save your muscle.”

“I'll get her off, seeing that I put her on.”

“We all know just how she was put on--and Marston will pay for it in his hard coin.”

Under these circumstances Razee Reef was no longer a mourners' bench! The dreary days of makeshift were at an end.

The lighters of one of the biggest wrecking companies of the coast hurried to Razee and flocked around the maimed steamer--Samaritans of the sea. Gigantic equipment embraced her; great pumps gulped the water from her; bolstered and supported, as a stricken man limps with his arms across the shoulders of his friends, the steamer came off Razee Reef with the first spring tide in July, and toiled off across the sea in the wake of puffing tugs, and was shored up and safe at last in a dry dock--the hospital of the crippled giants of the ocean.

No music ever sounded as sweet to Captain Mayo as that clanging chorus the hammers of the iron-workers played on the flanks of the _Conomo_. But he tore himself away from that music, and went down to Maquoit along with a vastly contented Captain Candage, who remembered now that he had a daughter waiting for him.

She had been apprised by letter of their success and of their coming.

Maquoit made a celebration of that arrival of the _Ethel and May_, and Dolph and Otie, cook and mate of the schooner, led the parade when the men were on shore.

They came back to their own with the full purses that the generosity of their employers had provided, and there was no longer any doubt as to the future of the men who once starved on Hue and Cry.

Captain Mayo had declared that he knew where to find faithful workers when it came time to distribute jobs.

Polly Candage had come to him when he stepped foot on shore, hands outstretched to him, and eyes alight. And when she put her hands in his he knew, in his soul, that this was the greeting he had been waiting for; her words of congratulation were the dearest of all, her smile was the best reward, and for her dear self he had been hungry.

But he would not admit to himself that he had come to woo.

When the soft dusk had softened the harsh outlines of the little hamlet, and the others were busy with their own affairs and had left Mayo and Polly to themselves, he sat with her on the porch of the widow's cottage, where they spent that first evening after they had been saved from the sea.

There had been a long silence between them. “We have had no opportunity--I have not dared yet to tell you my best hopes for the dearest thing of all,” she ventured.

“The one up inland. I know. I am glad for you.”

“What one up inland?”

“That young man--the only young man in all the world.”

“Oh yes! I had forgotten.”

He stared at her. “Forgotten?”

“Why--why--I don't exactly mean forgotten. But I was not thinking about him when I spoke. I mean that now--with your new prospects--you can go to--to--There may come a time when you can speak to Mr. Marston.”

“I have spoken to Mr. Marston, quite lately. He has spoken to me,” he said, his face hard. “We shall never speak to each other again, if I can have my way.”

He met her astonished gaze. “Polly, I hate to trouble you with my poor affairs of this kind. I can talk of business to Mr. Vose, and of the sea to your father. But there's another matter that I can't mention to anybody--except you will listen. I will tell you where I saw Mr. Marston--and his daughter.”

She listened, her lips apart.

“So, you see,” he said at the end, “it was worse than a dream; it was a mistake. It couldn't have been real love, for it was not built on the right foundation. I have never had much experience with girls. I have been swashing about at sea 'most all my life. Perhaps I don't know what real love is. But it seems to me it can't amount to much unless it is built up on mutual understanding, willingness to sacrifice for each other.”

“I think so,” returned Polly, softly.

“I want to see that young man of yours, up inland. I want to tell him that he is mighty lucky because he met you first.”

“Why?”

“I can't tell you just why. It isn't right for me to do so.”

“But a girl likes to hear such things. Please!”

“Will you forgive me for saying what I shouldn't say?”

“I will forgive you.”

“He's lucky, because if I didn't know you were promised and in love, I'd go down at your feet and beg you to marry me. You're the wife for a Yankee sailor, Polly Candage. If only there were two of you in this world, we'd have a double wedding.”

He leaped up and started away.

“Where are you going?” she asked, and there was almost a wail in her tones. “No, he does not understand girls well,” she told herself, bitterly.

“I'm going down to Rowley's store to see if he will take his money back and let us save interest. He told me I'd have to keep the money for a year.”

She called to him falteringly, but with such appeal in her tones that he halted and stared at her.

“Couldn't you--Isn't it just as well to let the matter rest until--till--”

“Oh, there's no time like the present in money matters,” he declared, with a laugh, wholly oblivious, not in the least understanding her embarrassment, her piteous effort to bar her little temple of love's sacrifice so that he could not trample in just then.

His laugh was a forced one. He realized that if he did not hurry away from this girl he would be reaching out his arms to her, declaring the love that surged in him, now that he had awakened to full consciousness of that love; his Yankee reticence, his instinct of honor between men, were fighting hard against his passion; he told himself that he would not betray a man he did not know, nor proffer love to a girl who, so he believed, loved another.

“May I not go with you?” she pleaded, restraining her wild impulse to run ahead of him and warn the deacon.

“Of course!” he consented, and they walked down the street, neither daring to speak.

They found Rowley alone in his store. He was puttering around, making ready to close the place for the night.

As they entered, the girl stepped behind Mayo and, catching the deacon's eye, made frantic gestures. In the half gloom those gestures were decidedly incomprehensible; the deacon lowered his spectacles and stared at her, trying to understand this wigwagging.

“I'd like to take up that loan and save the rest of the year's interest, Deacon Rowley,” stated Mayo, with sailorly bluntness.

The girl was trying to convey to the deacon the fact that he must not reveal her secret. She was shaking her head. This seemed to the intermediary like direct and conclusive orders from the principal.

“No, sir, Captain Mayo! It can't be done.”

“I don't call that a square deal between men, no matter what straight business may be.”

Polly now signaled eager assent, meaning to make the deacon understand that he must take the money. But the deacon did not understand; he thought the girl affirmed her desire for straight business.

“You took it for a year. No back tracks, captain.”

She shook her head, violently.

“No, sir! Keep it, as you agreed, and pay your interest.”

“Deacon Rowley, you're an old idiot!” blazed the girl.

When the deacon yanked off his spectacles, and Captain Mayo turned amazed eyes to her, she put her hands to her face and ran out of the store, sobbing. She was only a girl! She had no more resources left with which to meet that situation in men's affairs.

Mayo's impulse was to follow, but the deacon checked him.

“I ain't going to be made a fool of no longer in this, even to make three hundred dollars,” he rasped.

“A fool! What do you mean?”

“You go settle it with her.”

“What has Polly Candage got to do with this business?”

“It's her money.”

“You mean to say--”

“She drawed her money out of the bank, and horn-swoggled me into lying for her. What won't a girl do when she's in love with a fellow? If you 'ain't knowed it before, it's high time you did know it!”

That last remark of the deacon's had disgusted reference only to the matter of the money. But it conveyed something else to Captain Boyd Mayo.

He ran out of the store!

Far up the road he overtook her. She was hurrying home. When she faced him he saw tears on her cheeks, though the generous gloom of evening wrapped them where they stood. He took both her hands.

“Polly Candage, why did you risk your money on me?” he demanded.

“I knew you would succeed!” she murmured, turning her face away. “It was an--a good investment.”

“When you gave it, did you--Were you thinking--Was it only for an investment, Polly?”

She did not reply.

“Look here! This last thing ought to tie my tongue, for I owe everything to you. But my tongue won't stay tied--not now, Polly. I don't care if there is somebody else up-country. I ought to care. I ought to respect your--”

She pulled a hand free and put plump fingers on his lips. “There is nobody up-country; there never has been anybody, Boyd,” she whispered.

He took her in his arms, and kissed her, and held her close.

“Will you tell me one thing, now? I know the answer, sweetheart mine, but I want to hear you say it. Why did you give me all your money?”

She put her palms against his cheeks and spoke the words his soul was hungry for:

“Because I love you!”

THE END