Part 8

"That'll help," said Peter. "And now--I'm through with fishin'--through with goin' to sea! I'm goin' to stop ashore!"

It was then Mrs. Pentle ran from beside Fred and into the store. "Captain Crudden----"

"This is Mrs. Pentle, captain," said Mr. Duncan.

"Celia Curtin that was," explained Mrs. Pentle. "I knew you as a boy."

"I know," said Peter. And then he almost smiled: "And no girl in Gloucester ever better able to take care of herself!"

"If I could get you something to do in my store, would you take it, captain? If it was fit work, I mean, for a man?"

"It wouldn't have to be fit--I'll trim bonnets for ladies before I go back to fishin'," said Peter, "and thank you for the chance."

Peter passed out with his crew.

Mrs. Pentle turned to Mr. Duncan.

"So that's settled! I shall telephone you, Mr. Duncan, about Captain Crudden's place in my store--the work will not be disagreeable."

Mr. Duncan and Fred watched Mrs. Pentle's car racing up the street; and then Fred said:

"Mr. Duncan, Peter didn't look like any magazine cover of a hero I've seen lately, but--sitting there on that bench awhile ago--did you take a look at Mrs. Pentle's face while he was telling the story of that wreck?"

Mr. Duncan looked at his old bookkeeper.

"Reef down your imagination, Fred. She's a woman who likes to manage things and to do good; but what I'm afraid she'll do now will be to ruin the makings of a smart young skipper with her soft job ashore."

Mr. Henston, the manager of Pentle's, brought Peter Crudden to Flaxley, the head shipper.

"Flaxley, you are to break in this man," said Henston, "and he's to go on the pay-roll at twenty dollars per week."

Flaxley wondered why a new man, who was to be only a shipper's helper, should go on the payroll for twenty dollars a week; and he wondered yet more why Henston should be telling him about the pay-roll, which was made up in the office and not in the shipping-room. He wondered, too, why the manager himself should take the trouble to introduce the new man.

"You needn't make it easy for him on my account," whispered Henston, going out.

Flaxley had seen a lot of things happen in Pentle's, where he had been so long that, when Mrs. Pentle wanted to know about anything that went back beyond the memory of even the ancient cashier Herrick, she would send down for Flaxley.

He was no older than Herrick, but he had started to work in the store younger.

Flaxley was like something that went with the store. He had privileges; and he did not like Henston and would not have minded telling him so, but that he had great respect for Mrs. Pentle and thought--what many more in the store thought--that Henston was dressing his windows so as to catch Mrs. Pentle's eye, and some day--you can't tell about women, especially young widows--some day Henston might marry her.

Flaxley looked Peter over and rather liked his make-up, and pointed out a big dry-goods case and told him what he wanted done. Flaxley saw the new man hook into the box, which weighed eight hundred pounds, up-end it, claw-hammer it, and toss the heavy bolts of cloth out onto the long table.

"Jeepers!" said Flaxley. "He did that while some o' the other young fellows here would be peeking around for help!" He studied Peter for two days more, and from then on wearied the head shippers of other emporiums, whenever he met one, with his tales of the strength and niftiness of the new man he'd "picked up."

Peter took his lunch in the basement where he worked, the same being put up by his married sister in a package made to look like a camera-box.

He had bought this lunch-box in Pentle's--he remembered it was sold to him by a pretty girl with a pleasant manner. It was just the thing for lunch--she had said--all the girls in Pentle's carried 'em; and there was ten per cent off for employees. It was the first time in his life that Peter ever got anything off on anything he'd ever bought, and he said so; and the salesgirl looked at him again and then smiled.

"You're not a city man?" she said. Peter said he wasn't; and then his change came and he went off.

It was his third day in Pentle's. He sat on a stool by the door leading into a passageway, to eat his lunch. Just across the passageway was the door into the girls' rest-room, where there were lounges and chairs and a big heater on which they set their cans of coffee to warm up.

"My new helper, girls--height five feet eleven, weight a hundred ninety, thirty-two teeth in his head and not married--look him over," said old Flaxley, making Peter blush. "And now warm his coffee for him--he's been too shy to ask," and Flaxley handed Peter's coffee across the passageway.

They looked him over, some of them saucily. And hearing Flaxley call him Peter, in a week or so some of them were calling him Peter and offering him pickles and doughnuts from their lunch-boxes; and there were always three or four ready to take his coffee from him when he reached it across the passageway to be heated.

One day a group of them, with their heads bunched in the doorway as usual, chaffed him across the passageway. Peter was looking at a lovely white neck and dark little head, back of the row of heads in the door, and wondering where he had seen that girl before. And biting into a thick corned-beef sandwich, he remembered where--it was the girl who had sold him the lunch-box.

"Ten per cent off for employees," shouted Peter; "all the girls carry 'em!" and held up the lunch-box. The others caught the idea and laughed uproariously--except the one who had sold it. She only blushed scarlet and disappeared, and did not come back.

"She must 'a' thought I was tryin' to get acquainted," said Peter later to old Flaxley, "and didn't like it."

That same afternoon Mrs. Pentle looked into the shipping-room. It was one of those warm days in winter and, of course, the steam was on. Peter was wearing only a sleeveless white jersey above his belt. Peter was wide-shouldered and trim-waisted, with the easy lines of the man who is quick as well as powerful in action.

Flaxley saw Mrs. Pentle in the doorway. Henston was with her and, because Henston was with her, Flaxley stepped quickly over to the door. If Mr. Henston had anything to say about Peter he wanted to be there to hear it.

Mrs. Pentle was watching Peter at work.

"He doesn't look like the same man," said Mrs. Pentle. "When I last saw him his jaws were set like steel, his eyes like hard lights back in his head, and his voice was rough. And his skin was like something worn raw by the beating of hammers on it. He looked like a middle-aged man then, and now--why, he doesn't look twenty-two now!"

"He ain't much more," said Flaxley.

Just then Peter up-ended a big dry-goods case, ripped off a boarded side, tore away a layer of thick paper, and tossed onto a table ten feet away a bolt of cloth that Mrs. Pentle knew weighed fifty pounds; and he did not even bend his knees to do it.

"A powerful brute," said Henston.

"Brute?" said Mrs. Pentle.

"I mean--" said Henston; but Mrs. Pentle had stepped inside the shipping-room door.

Peter was whistling; but he had to up-end another case. It took a little effort, this one, and he stopped his whistling.

"Up--up--upsie boy!" cooed Peter. It did not up. He set himself and tugged. He grew impatient. "Come here, you loafer!" he shouted, and braced and heaved. The case came up.

"When Peter takes to heavin' in earnest they generally come," said Flaxley.

While old Flaxley stood there looking from Peter to Mrs. Pentle he couldn't help thinking--much as he respected her--he couldn't help wondering if she was comparing Peter to Pentle that was dead and gone.

"If she is," thought Flaxley, "Lord help the memory o' Pentle--who was never any Apoller for build and about as much blood in him as a man'd find in four pounds of excelsior packin'."

Peter was whistling again and carolling and heaving facetious comment at anybody and everybody, when he felt the silence. He looked round and saw Mrs. Pentle.

"How do you do, captain?"

Peter shifted his cotton-hook from right hand to left and shook her extended hand.

"I'm cert'nly glad to see you again, Mrs. Pentle."

"How are you getting on, captain?"

"Fine--fine!"

"The work is not too hard?"

"Hard?" Peter smiled. "Often enough I think of those fellows out on the Banks turning out on a good, cold, blizzardy day in winter, Mrs. Pentle--turning out at four o'clock in the mornin' and goin' into a cold hold with the ice and baitin' up, so's to be ready to go over the side in the dory by the first o' the daylight. And then all day long it's heave and haul trawls, with maybe a sea that they don't know what minute'll get 'em. An' dressin' down a deck-load o' fish on top o' that afore they turn in of a night--an' maybe standin' watch in the night again, standin' to the wheel beatin' home in a nor'wester, when it's so cold you have to wear a woollen mask over your face with two holes to see through and another to breathe through, and your watch-mates have to relieve you--and you them--every six or eight minutes to keep from freezin' to death!

"Hard work, Mrs. Pentle!" It was too ridiculous--Peter laughed aloud this time.

"I live with my married sister, Mrs. Pentle, and goin' home these cold winter nights I sit down to supper, and after supper I slip into my slipshods, an' I get out my pipe, an' I spread my feet out before a nice, hot fire, in a rockin'-chair, an' the sister's six children they climb up all over me and we have one good time together. Some nights I take one or two of the oldest of 'em to the movies."

"You like children, then, captain?"

"The man, Mrs. Pentle, that ain't got children is bein' cheated out o' something," said Peter. "An' sittin' there after the children are put to bed, I say to myself: 'Well, Peter Crudden, you're cert'nly one lucky dog. Here's you into your warm, dry bed every night, an' work that there's about enough of to exercise you, an' no matter how the weather is--no matter about sea and wind so rough you can't fish--there's your pay-envelope every week with the same old reg'lar amount in it.'"

"I'm glad you like it here, captain, and--I'm partners with Mr. Duncan in a new vessel to be named after me."

"I hope," said Peter earnestly, "that she won't shame her name--that she'll be fast an' weatherly--and always find her way back home."

"I hope so, captain. And now--if there is anything about your work you do not like, let me know." There was a tramping of girls hurrying through the passageway. Two or three were gazing curiously in from the doorway.

"Closing-up time, is it?" Mrs. Pentle had suddenly become nervous. "Good-by." She passed out with Henston.

Old Flaxley looked kindly at Peter. "No airs to her, Peter; all men look alike to her," said old Flaxley.

"She's all right," said Peter. "But as for hard work--Lord!"

And he was chuckling over that all the while he was washing up and still smiling at the thought of it when he overhauled a girl in the passageway on his way out. He said good evening politely and was hurrying by when the figure said: "Good evening, captain."

It was something in the voice that held him. He had another look--it wasn't very light in the passageway. Well, if it wasn't the girl who had sold him the lunch-box!

Peter walked to the corner with her; when her car came along, it happened to be his car. She lived not very far from Peter's sister. He walked to her door with her. Her name was Sarah Hern.

After work next day Peter waited at the door of the shipping-room. When she came out of the girls' room he fell into step with her and they rode home together. Sarah invited him in. Peter stepped in for a minute and met Sarah's mother.

He stayed to supper. There must have been eight or nine Hern boys and girls, some grown up, with a widowed mother. And they all but the mother sat down together; and the girls kept bouncing up and down, hopping back and forth between table and kitchen when things didn't come fast enough.

Peter felt as if he had known them for years; and after supper, an older brother passed Peter a cigar and up-stairs in the living-room talked in a casually friendly way on baseball, prize-fighting, the big war, the latest movies. One of Sarah's sisters played the piano and Sarah and another sister sang. Other young men called. Peter was a good listener until a little brother of Sarah's peeked in and finally came over by Peter and shyly said:

"Won't you tell something, captain, about the big ocean?"

Peter told them a little about the big ocean, as he knew it, and stopped. He himself wanted to hear more songs--"Annie Laurie," or "The _Robert E. Lee_," or something like them--but they asked him to keep on. He told more--he would have told them more, in the first place, but he had no idea shore-going people, especially girls, cared much for rough fishing life. In a little while he was warmed up and going good. When he stopped this time they were all bent over and staring at him. The big brother straightened up first and pulled out his watch and said:

"What d'y'know--I'm chairman o' the house committee down to the club, and we had a meeting scheduled for an hour and a half ago!"

Sarah sang "Asthore" and "Mother Machree" and there was more playing. And they all had ice-cream and cake, and the older brother gave Peter a great grip of the hand going; and they all asked him to call again soon and waved him good night from the doorway. And Peter, walking up the street, began to think that maybe he had been sticking round his sister's too much nights.

Mrs. Pentle called into the shipping-room on a tour of inspection the next day again and regularly after that; and regularly Peter rode home with Sarah and one night he asked her if she would go to the theatre with him. She looked so pleased that he was sorry he hadn't got his courage up sooner.

It was to a musical show that Peter took Sarah. All the time he was there he felt uncomfortable--some of the people on the stage cert'nly did carry some things pretty far.

However, it was over, and Peter suggested supper at a restaurant.

Peter knew nothing of the night restaurants of the city. He picked out one he saw advertised in the theatre programme and because it also happened to be on the way to their trolley-line. He felt Sarah shrink a little going in; and after he was inside and seated he wished he had paid more attention to her shrinking. But he had been too excited to notice. He had been lashed to the wheel of his vessel steering her in a living gale and not half so much excited as he was now. It wasn't just the kind of place, maybe, to bring a young girl; but they were in there now and he guessed they would weather whatever happened. He asked Sarah if she would have a glass of beer or anything like that. He didn't want her to think him too slow. He was pleased when she said no.

What would she have to eat? Sarah picked up the card. "Suppose we try a tarble dote?" she said.

"All right. Where is it?"

Sarah pointed it out:

TABLE D'HÔTE $1.50

Peter had a notion she was trying to save his money, and he liked her for it, but he wasn't looking to save money. He pointed out various things on the other side of the bill, picking out always the high-priced ones, but Sarah shook her head. She always preferred the "tarble dote" to ordering à la carte.

The waiter approached.

"What to drink?" he asked briskly.

"Nothing to drink," answered Peter, and, pointing out the caption, Table D'Hôte $1.50, said "Two."

"Two what?" asked the waiter.

"Why, two of what it says--two tarble dotes."

"And what drinks did you say?" The waiter bent a confidential ear and scratched his head with his pencil while he waited. Peter looked up at the ear; then he stretched up and whispered into it:

"Ever hear of the _Boundin' Biller_, Captain Hanks?"

"The _Boundin' Biller_?" Well, all kinds of queer ones blow into restaurants--the waiter slewed his head round, looked at Peter, put his ear down, and whispered back: "What about it?"

And Peter whispered up into the waiting ear:

"The _Boundin' Biller_, Captain Hanks, She was hove flat down on th' Western Banks."

"Huh!" The waiter slewed his head round again to have another look, which pulled his ear out of position and forced Peter to raise his voice.

"He had the greatest ear, that Captain Hanks," explained Peter. "He could hear a sound when no other mortal ever sailed a vessel could. He heard a steamer's whistle in a gale o' wind and fog one time, and--runnin' fair before the wind at the time he was--he jibed her over, and o' course you know what happens to a vessel that's runnin' with her main sheet to the knot an' somebody jibes her over all standin'?"

The waiter stared with increasing doubt at Peter.

"Captain Hanks had nothing on you for hearing," explained Peter. "I said no drinks."

"Oh, oh, excuse me! I begin to get yuh now. No drinks," and the waiter retreated and returned in silence, but with the food.

Two women on a platform, one very stout and one very thin, danced and sang; and then they half-wiggled and half-danced in and out among the tables. Here and there they chucked a chin or kissed a bald head, and one, on invitation, sat on a man's knee and had a sip of wine with him.

Sarah herself was knots prettier than either of the singing girls--Peter could see that--and she was dressed pretty, too. He didn't know what kind of stuff it was she was wearing, except that it was a kind of slaty sea-gray color and fitted snug. And she had a hat that was shaped like a little capsized dory and listed to starboard, just about the same list a vessel takes when she puts her scuppers under to a light breeze.

Peter, by and by, began to have a notion that Sarah wasn't enjoying herself. There was a party in one of the booths--Peter could not see them without turning, but he had a feeling in the back of his head that they were paying more attention to Sarah than she liked. But perhaps he was wrong about it. What with the lights and the music and the dancing, he was beginning to feel like rolling out a little song himself--a little more maybe about the _Boundin' Biller_--but Sarah suddenly started to draw on her gloves. And she looked tired; and Peter hurried to pay the bill and tip the waiter--fifty cents. The waiter thanked him with more respect than Peter would have thought was in him.

Peter was jumping up to put Sarah's coat on her before his waiter could do it, when a strange waiter came over with a glass of champagne and set it on the table before Sarah.

"The gentleman wishes to know if the young lady will have a glass of wine with him."

Some joker, of course. Peter smiled till he saw that Sarah was looking frightened.

"Who sent it?" asked Peter.

The waiter looked over to the booth which Peter had had in mind earlier. Peter looked over that way. A head darted out and back into the corner of the booth. Peter's eyebrows lowered and his eyes narrowed. It looked like a familiar sail.

"Did he say anything about a drink for me?" asked Peter.

The waiter started to smile and then said "No, sir," very quickly.

Peter picked up the glass delicately.

"Do you want to drink this wine, Sarah?"

"Oh, Peter!"

"It's all right--I knew you didn't," assured Peter.

He stepped over to the booth. He was right about the man in the corner--it was Henston.

More than the shipping of goods was discussed in the shipping-room, and there was more than that glass of wine in Peter's mind when he looked in on Henston in the booth. There was a sales-girl who had lost her job in Pentle's. It was Henston who had taken advantage of his position to start her on the wrong road.

"The young lady," said Peter to Henston, "don't want to drink your health."

"Too bad--she drank it before," said Henston.

Peter had hard work to keep the wine from spilling.

"If you don't believe me, ask her," said Henston.

"What's that?" Peter said that to gain time to get his balance.

"I said, Ask her."

"You--you squid, you!"

Peter whipped the glass of wine into Henston's face and with that reached across for him. The two men nearest to Peter in the booth stood up to stop him. Peter reached a hand to the collar of each, stepped back, and brought their faces crashing together.

"It's my fight and his--keep out, you!" said Peter, and swept them back and down into their seats.

A waiter attacked Peter from behind. It took Peter a few seconds to wiggle round, get the heel of his hand under the waiter's chin, and jolt him down to where, falling backward on his heels all the while, he hit solidly with the back of his head between the plump shoulders of the fat one of the singing ladies who was fervidly warbling:

"Mem-moh-reez--mem-moh-reez!"

to an elderly male with a proud smile on his face.

A little cloud of powder flew into the air above the singer; an ejaculation of shocked surprise from her lips. Peter felt sorry, but didn't see how he could help her just then.

It was Henston Peter wanted, and all the waiters tugging from behind warn't going to stop him. He reached across the table and took a good hold and hauled. It was like hauling a two-hundred-pound halibut over the gunnel of a dory, only he had nothing against any halibut that ever he hauled into a dory. He braced and heaved, and Henston came out of his corner and over the table, and kept on coming till he was clear over the table behind Peter and flat into the aisle beyond.

"You'll have to excuse me," said Peter to the diners at that table--all men; but they spoke right up, three of them, to say hurriedly:

"It's all right; it's all right." And the other, as if to himself: "And they're scourin' the country for White Hopes!"

"Stop him, some of you, before he smashes the place up!" roared a frantic man who came running up then; and two, four, six waiters piled onto Peter, who, having no quarrel with them, gently shoved them off and went over to get Sarah.

A pugnacious-looking, prematurely gray-haired man stood at the café door as they were passing out. Peter was wondering if he would have to fight him, too.

The man's face--it was the cafe bouncer--broke into a sudden grin.

"You're all right," he said. "I been watchin' that fuhler an' his crowd. An' you leave it to the manager to stick the damages onto him. You're all right, and that young lady--you take it from me, young fuhler--she's all right, too."

Sarah felt grateful to the bouncer for that tribute. She hoped that it would bring a smile to Peter's face. But all the way home in the trolley there was no smile from Peter; he clung grimly to his strap and stared straight at the advertising cards. At her door he only spoke to say "Good night."

"Good night, Peter." And then, with a little clutch at his sleeve: "You're not mad with me, Peter?"

"I'm mad with myself for makin' the show o' you that I did to-night; but when he said you'd drunk wine with him there--said it with a bunch o' people like himself listenin'--when he said that----"

Sarah's curling little hand had been reaching out for his. It came back flat to her side again.

"I got a bad temper, Sarah. It don't come out often, but it's there. And to-night, Sarah, when he lied about you like that, and his crowd, and maybe others round, believin' him maybe----"

Sarah shivered. She knew now that in Peter's good opinion of her lay much of what she cared for in this world. In the good opinion of some man or other lay most of what the other girls in the store cared for. Always with them was the undying note--to hold and keep men's good opinion, to keep it at no matter what sacrifice of everything else.