Chapter 7

He lit his pipe, drawing strongly at the pungent ship's tobacco, and seated himself on the edge of the lower bunk, facing old Noble. The old man continued to sew, his hand moving rhythmically to and fro with the needle, his work spread conveniently in his lap. But for the rusty red of his tanned skin, he looked like a handsome and wise old woman.

"Jim," said Goodwin at last.

"Yes?" The old man did not look up.

"There wasn't nothin' doin' ashore there," said Goodwin. "I just went for a walk along the street, and then I well, there wasn't nothin' doin', ye see, so I went into a sort o' mission that there was."

"Eh?" Old Noble raised his head sharply and peered at him. "Ye ain't been an' got religion, Dan?"

"No, I haven't," answered Goodwin. "But say, Jim, I went into the place, and there was a girl there. She come over to loan me a hymn-book first of all, an' afterwards what ye laughin' at, blast ye?"

Old Noble had uttered no sound, but he had bent his head over his sewing and his broad shoulders were shaking. He lifted a face of elderly, cynical mirth.

"It ain't nothin', Dan," he protested. "It's just me thinkin' first ye'd bin robbed and then ye'd got religion; an' all the time it's just a girl ye've seen. Go on, Dan; how much did she get out of ye?"

"Stow that!" warned Goodwin. "She wasn't that kind. This one was say, Jim, if you was to see her just once, you'd know things ashore ain't all as bad as you fancy. Sort of soft, she was all tender and gentle and shining! Gosh, there ain't no words to put her in. I didn't know there was any girls like that."

"Nor me," put in old Noble dryly. He inspected Goodwin with a shrewd and suspicious eye. For him, a citizen of the womanless seas, beauty, grace, femininity were no more than a merchandise. "Then, to put it straight, she didn't get yer money from ye?" he demanded.

"No, she didn't," retorted Goodwin. "Not a cent, is that plain enough? Ain't you ever known no women but the rotten ones, man?"

Noble shook his head.

"Then you don't know what you're talkin' about," said Goodwin. "This one it ain't no use tellin' you, Jim. I seen her, that's all; an' I'm goin' to quit. This sailorizin' game ain't the only game there is, an' I'm done with it."

"Ah!" The old man sat with both gnarled and labor-stained hands lying upon the unfinished work in his lap. The cynical, half-humorous expression faded from his thin, strong face. He frowned at the younger man consideringly, seriously.

"Then she did get something out o' ye," he said harshly. "You're talkin' like a fool, Dan. This old ship ain't no soft berth, I know; but then, you ain't no quitter, either. This girl's got ye goin'; ye want to watch out."

"Quitter!" Goodwin took him up hotly. They faced each other across the narrow fo'c'sle vehemently; their shadows sprawled on deck and bulkhead as they bent forward and drew back in the stress of talk. "When a man's shanghaied aboard a blasted hooker like this, with three months of his wages stolen before he gets the knockout drops out o' his head, is he a quitter when he takes his chance to leave her an' look for a white man's job?"

"Yes, he is," answered Noble. "You're a sailor, ain't you? Then stick by your ship."

"Oh, it ain't no use talkin' to you!" Goodwin rose to his feet. "You'd make out that a man 'u'd go to heaven for stickin' to his ship, even if he done forty murders. I'm goin' to quit, an' that's all there is to it."

Old Noble looked up at him where he stood. The old face, that had been mild and indulgent, was hardened to an angry contempt. He was old and strong, dexterous in all seamanlike arts, a being shaped for good and evil both by half a century of seafaring, of wrong and hardship, or danger and toil, of scant food and poor pay. Never in his life had he held back from a task because it was dangerous or difficult, nor sided with an officer against a man before the mast, nor deserted a ship. His code was simple and brief, but it was of iron.

"Well, quit, then," he said. "Quit like the Dutchmen! There's no one will stop ye."

"They better not," menaced Goodwin angrily.

He had been shanghaied, of course, without chest or bag, without even bedding, so that he had worked his way around the Horn in shoddy clothes and flimsy oilskins obtained from the ship's slop-chest. There was little that he had a mind to take ashore with him; it went quickly into a small enough bundle. While he turned out his bunk, old Noble sat watching him without moving, with judgment in his face, and sorrow. He was looking on at the death of a good seaman.

"Say, Jim!" Goodwin was ready; he stood with his bundle in his hand, his cap on his head. "You don't want to be a fool, now. I reckon we can shake hands, anyhow."

He felt himself loath to leave the old man in anger; he had for him both liking and respect. But Noble did not answer only continued for some moments to look him in the face, unsoftened, stern and grieved, then bent again above his sewing.

Goodwin withdrew the hand he had held out.

"Have it your own way," he said, and went forth from the forecastle, leaving the old man, with the lamplight silvering his sparse hair, at work upon the patched overalls. And, in that moment, not even the vision of the girl and his hope of the future could save him from a pang of sadness. It was as if he had, by his going, darkened a home.

Outside upon the deck he stayed to cast a glance about him. The big ship, beautiful as a work of art in her lines and proportions, showed vacant of life. A light glimmered from the galley door, where the decrepit watchman slumbered at his ease. There was nothing to detain him. The great yards, upon which he had fought down the sodden and frozen canvas in gales off the Horn, spread over him. She was fine, she was potent, with a claim upon a man's heart; and she was notorious for a floating, hell upon the seas. It was her character; she was famous for brutality to seamen, so that they deserted at the first opportunity and forfeited their wages. And Noble would have him loyal to her!

He swore at her shortly, and forced himself to cross the deck and climb over the rail to the wharf. The conduct of Noble was sore in his mind. But, as the earth of the shore gritted under his boots, that trouble departed from him. The world, after all, was wider than the decks of the Etna; and in it, an item in its wonder and complexity, there lived and smiled the girl.

Miss James, who smiled so indescribably and asked so many questions about seafaring in the way of civil conversation, would probably have shown small interest in the adventures of a seaman in search of a lodging ashore. She would have smiled, of course, with her own little lift and fall of shy eyes, and been as intangible and desirable as ever; but one could never tell her of carrying a small bundle of underclothes from one obdurate door to another, unable to show money in any convincing amount because one's capital was in a belt under one's shirt. Othello told Desdemona of "antres vast and deserts idle," not of skeptical landladies. Goodwin felt all this intensely when, in the evening of the following day, having finally established himself in a room, he beheld her again in the mission. He beheld her first, indeed, as she entered the hall, he watching from the opposite side of the street. He had no intention of going in if she were not present. As it was, a swoop across the street and a little brisk maneuvering secured him a place next to her.

He had been a little at a loss all day; it was years since he had lived altogether apart from sailors and he had found himself lonely and depressed; but the sight of her sufficed to restore him. She gave him the welcome of a look, and a slow flush mounted on her face. The missioner was already preparing to open the service, and conversation was impossible. Nevertheless, as she turned over the pages of her hymn-book, Goodwin bent toward her.

"Didn't I say I'd be along?" he whispered, and saw her cheek move with her smile.

To be close to her, knowing her to be conscious of him, was in itself a gladness; but Goodwin was impatient for the end of the service. It was not his way to stand off and on before a thing he meant to do, and he wanted more talk with her, to get within her guard, to touch the girl who was screened behind the smile and dim sweetness and the polite questions of Miss James. He sat frowning through the latter part of the service, till the missioner, standing upright with tight-shut eyes, gave the closing benediction. Then, compellingly, he turned upon the girl.

"Say," he said, "let's get out o' this. I'd like to walk along with you and talk. Come on!"

Miss James looked at him with startled eyes. He was insistent.

"Aw, come on," he pressed. "That preacher'll be here in a minute if you don't, and we've had enough of him for one time. I tell you, I want to talk to you."

He rose, and by sheer force of urgency made her rise likewise. He got her as far as the door. "But" she began, hesitating there.

"Steady as ye go," bade Goodwin, and took her down the shallow steps to the sidewalk. "Now, which way is it to be?" he demanded suddenly.

She did not reply for a couple of moments. The light that issued from the hall showed her face as she stood and considered him doubtfully, a little uncertain of what was happening. Even in that half-obscurity of the long street, where she was seen as an attitude, a shape, she made her effect of a quiet, tender beauty. Then, at last, she smiled and turned and began to walk. Goodwin fell into step beside her, and the confusion of voices within the hall died down behind them.

"I had to make you come," said Goodwin presently. "I just had to. An' you don't want to be scared."

She glanced sideways at him, but said nothing.

"You ain't scared, are ye?" he asked.

"No," she replied.

The answer even the brevity of it fulfilled his understanding of her. He nodded to himself.

"I said I wanted to talk to ye," he went on; "an' I do. I want to talk to you a whole lot. But there ain't much I got to say. 'Ceptin', maybe, one thing. I'd like to know what your first name is. Oh, I ain't goin' to get fresh an' call you by it I reckon you know that. But thinkin' of you all day an' half the night, like I do, 'Miss James' don't come handy, ye see."

"Oh!" murmured the girl. It was plain that he had startled her a little.

"My first name is Mary," she answered.

"Ah!" said Goodwin, and repeated it again and again under his breath. "I might 'most ha' guessed it," he said. "It's well, it's a name that fits ye like a coat o' paint, Miss James, A clean, straight name, that is. Mary b'gosh, it was my mother's name."

"I'm glad you like it," said the girl, in her deep-toned, pleasant voice. "You know, Mr. Goodwin, it was a bit queer the way you made me come away from the hall."

"Ah, but that's not troublin' you," replied Goodwin quickly. "I reckon you know what's wrong wi' me, Miss James. I'm not askin' you for much yet; only to let me see you, when you go to that mission-joint, and talk to ye sometimes."

They were at an intersection of streets, where a few shops yet shone and surface-cars went by like blazing ships. There was a movement of folk about them; yet, by reason of what had passed between them, it seemed that they stood in a solitude of queer, strained feeling. The girl halted in the light of a shop-window.

"I get my car here," she said.

Goodwin stopped, facing her. She looked up at the tense seriousness of his young, set face, hard and strong, with the wind-tan coloring it. She was kindly, eager to handle him tactfully, and possibly a little warmed by his sincerity and admiration. To him she seemed the sum of all that was desirable, pathetic, and stirring in womanhood.

"No," she said; "that's not much to ask. I'll be glad to meet you at the mission, Mr. Goodwin, and maybe we can talk, too, sometimes. And when you go away again, when your ship sails."

"Eh?" Goodwin's exclamation interrupted her. "Goin' away? Why, Miss James, I ain't goin' away. That was all fixed up last night. I've quit goin' to sea."

She stared at him, with parted lips.

"You don't understand," said Goodwin gently. "I knew, just as soon as I seen you, that I wasn't going away no more. I went down an' fetched my dunnage ashore right off."

She continued to stare. "Not going away?" she repeated.

Goodwin shook his head, smiling. He did not in the least understand the embarrassment of a young woman who finds herself unexpectedly the object of a romantic and undesired sacrifice.

A street-car jarred to a halt beside them. The girl made a queer little gesture, as if in fear.

"My car!" she flustered indistinctly, and, turning suddenly, ran from him towards it, taking refuge in its ordinariness against Goodwin and all the strangeness with which he seemed to assail her.

He, smiling fatuously on the curb, saw it carry her off, swaying and grinding. "Mary," he repeated. "Mary!"

Following his purpose, within the next few days he found himself employment as one of a gang of riggers at work on a great German four-masted barque which had been dismasted in a squall off Fire Island. In the daytime he dealt with spars and gear, such stuff as he knew familiarly, in the company of men like himself. Each evening found him, washed and appareled, at the mission, furnishing a decorous bass undertone to the hymns, looked on with approval by the missioner and his helpers. Commonly he got himself a seat next to Miss James; but he could not again contrive a walk with her along the still street to the lighted corner where she ran to catch her car. There seemed always to be a pair of voluminous elderly matrons in attendance upon her, to daunt and chill him. She herself was unchanged; her soft, beneficent radiance, her elusive, coy charm, all her maddening quality of delicacy and shrinking beauty, uplifted him still.

"Say," he always whispered, as he let himself down beside her, "are we goin' to have a talk tonight?"

And she would shake her averted head hurriedly, and afterwards the iron-clad matrons would close in on her and make her inaccessible. And, in the end, he would go off to get a drink in a saloon before going back to his room, baffled and discontented.

There were three evenings running on which she did not come to the mission at all. On the fourth Goodwin was there before her. He looked at her steadily as she came to her place.

"I want to talk to you to-night," he said, varying his formula, as she sat down.

She gave him a swift, uncertain glance.

"Got to," he added gravely. "It's a case, an' I just got to."

"What about?" she asked, with a touch of resentment that was new in her.

"I guess you know," he answered quietly, and hitched nearer to her along the bench to make room for a new-comer who was thrusting in beside him. He turned perfunctorily to see who it might be. It was old Noble.

"Friends!" grated the voice of the missioner. "Let us begin by singing hymn number seventy-nine: 'Pull for the shore, sailor; pull for the shore!'"

The noise of the harmonium drowned the rustling of hymn-book pages. Noble's elbow drove against Goodwin's.

"Found ye!" rumbled the old man. "Say, come on out where I can talk to ye. We're sailin' in the mornin'."

"Hush!" whispered Goodwin. "I can't come out. What d'you want?"

The little congregation rose to its feet for the singing of the hymn. Old Noble, rising with them, leaned forward and peered past Goodwin at the girl. His keen old face inspected her inscrutably for a while.

"That's her, I reckon," he said to Goodwin in a windy whisper. "Well, I'm not sayin' nothin'. Come on out."

"I can't, I tell ye," breathed Goodwin. "Don't you go startin' anything here, now! Say what ye got to say, an' be done with it."

Old Noble scowled. About him the simple hymn rose and fell in its measured cadences. Among the honest folk who sang it there was none more venerable and seemly than he. His head was white with the sober snow of years; by contrast with his elderly gravity, the young vividness and force of Goodwin seemed violent and crude.

"I won't start nothin'," whispered Noble harshly. "Don't be afeared. I bin lookin' for ye, Dan; I want ye to have a chanst. We're sailin' in the mornin', an', Dan, we're short-handed three hands short, we are!"

His words came and went under cover of the hymn.

"Men won't ship aboard of her; she's got a bad name," the whisper continued. "She's full o' Dutchmen an' Dagoes again. It's goin' to be the hell of a passage an' the Horn in August, too. Come on an' stand yer share of it, Dan."

Goodwin glared down indignantly at the old rusty-red face beside him.

"You're crazy," he said shortly.

"Ye ain't comin'?"

For answer Goodwin only shrugged. It sufficed. With no further word Noble turned away and walked forth on heavy feet from the hall. There followed him to the street, as if in derision, the refrain of that landsman's hymn: "Leave the poor old stranded wreck, and pull for the shore!"

"Now!" said Goodwin, when at last the missioner had closed the service with his blessing.

The girl was nervous; plainly, she would have been glad to refuse. But Goodwin was in earnest, and, unwillingly enough, she surrendered to the compulsion of his will and went out with him. Outside upon the sidewalk she spoke angrily.

"I don't like the way you act," she said, and her voice had tears in it. "You think a person's got."

Goodwin interrupted. "I don't think nothin'," he said. "I got to find out. An' I can't find out while we're hustlin' to the corner. Come down towards the docks. You're all right with me; an' I got to find out."

He did not even touch her arm, but she went with him.

"Find out what?" she asked uncertainly, as they crossed the street.

"Come on," he answered. "We'll talk by an' by."

He took her down a dark side way which led them to the water-front. Wharves where work was going on roared and shone. The masts and spars of ships rose stark against the sky. Beyond, the river was dotted with lights against the luminous horizon of Manhattan. He slackened his pace. At his side the silent girl trembled and sulked.

"Kid," said Goodwin, "there's one of us two that hasn't made good. Which is it?"

A jib-boom slanted across a wall over their heads. They were alone among sleeping ships.

"I don't know what you mean," answered the girl. "You say you've got to talk to me, and you act--." She stopped.

"You don't know what I mean?" repeated Goodwin. "I'll have to tell you, then."

They had come to a pause under the jib-boom of the silent ship. She waited for him to go on, servile to the still mastery of his mien.

"That night the night I come to the mission for the first time," went on Goodwin, "when you loaned me the book, I quit my ship to keep close to you. That ain't nothin'; the ship was a terror, anyway. But I seen you, and, girl, I couldn't get you out o' my head. You was all right the next night, when I went along with you to your car; it wasn't just because the missionary feller set you at me, neither. What's gone wrong with me since?"

He asked the question mildly, with a tone of gentle and reasonable inquiry.

"I haven't said anything was wrong with you," Answered the girl sullenly. "I don't have to answer your questions, anyway."

"I reckon you do these questions," said Goodwin. "What is it, now? Am I different to what you reckoned I was, or what? I never set up to be anythin' but just plain man. Tell me what I'm shy of. Are you scared you'll have to to marry me?"

"Oh!" The girl shrank away from him.

"That's it, is it? Well, you don't need to be." His voice was bitter. "I'd never ha' dared to ask you before, an' now I wouldn't, anyway. See? But I know, all the same, if I wasn't just a blasted sailor if I was a storekeeper or a rich man I c'd have ye. Why, damme, I c'd have ye anyway!"

She had backed before him; and now she was against the wall, uttering a small moan of protest.

"I could," he repeated. "You know it. I'd only to go chasin' you, an' in the end you'd give in. You're pretty; you got a shine on you that fools a man. But you're a quitter a quitter! See? An' now you can come away from that wall an' I'll see you back on the street."

He was very lofty and erect in the meager light, rather a superb figure, if the girl had had eyes for it. But she, to all seeming, was dazed. He went in silence at her side till they reached the street and saw that the open door of the mission still showed lights.

"There ye are," said Goodwin, halting.

The girl hesitated, looking back and forth. It was wonderful how her suggestion of soft beauty persisted. She was abashed, stricken, humiliated upon the dark street; and still she was lovely. She moved away and paused.

"Good night!" said her faintly ringing voice, and she passed towards the mission.

"Yes, it's me!" said Goodwin, answering the dumb surprise of old Noble as he entered the fo'c'sle of the Etna. "An' you want to shut your head. See?"

VI

THE BREADWINNER

The noonday bivouac was in a shady place nigh-hand the road, where a group of solemn trees made a shadow on the dusty grass. It was a day of robust heat; the sky arched cloudless over Sussex, and the road was soft with white dust that rose like smoke under the feet. Trotter no sooner saw the place than he called a halt and dropped his bundle. The Signor smiled lividly and followed suit; Bill, the dog, lay down forthwith and panted.

"Look at 'im!" said Trotter. "Just look at 'im, will yer! 'E ain't carried no bundle; 'e ain't got to unpack no grub. And there 'e lies, for us to wait on 'im."

"Where ees da beer?" demanded the Signor, who had the immediate mind.

The word drew Trotter from his wrongs, and together the men untied the shabby bundles and set forth their food.

They made a queer picture in that quiet place of English green. Trotter still wore tights, with hobnailed boots to walk in and a rusty billycock hat for shelter to his head. He somewhat clung to this garb, though his tumbling days were over. One had only to look at his bloated, pouchy face to see how drink and sloth had fouled his joints and slacked his muscles. Never again could he spread the drugget in a rustic village street and strut about it on his hands for the edification of a rustic audience. But the uniform he still wore; he seemed to think it gave him some claim to indulgent notice. The Signor, in his own way, was not less in contrast with his background. His lean, predatory face and capacious smile went fitly with the shabby frock coat and slouched hat he affected. He carried a fiddle under his arm, but the most he could do was strum on it with his thumb. Together, they made a couple that anyone would look twice at, and no one care to meet in a lonely place.

Bill, the dog, shared none of their picturesque quality. An uglier dog never went footsore. A dozen breeds cropped out here and there on his hardy body; his coat was distantly suggestive of a collie; his tail of a terrier. But something of width between the patient eyes and bluntness in the scarred muzzle spoke to a tough and hardy ancestor in his discreditable pedigree, as though a lady of his house had once gone away with a bulldog. His part in the company was to do tricks outside beerhouses. When the Signor's strumming had gathered a little crowd, Trotter would introduce Bill.

"Lydies and gents all," he would say, "with yore kind permission, I will now introduce to yer the world-famous wolf 'ound Boris, late of the Barnum menagerie in New York. 'E will commence 'is exhibition of animal intelligence by waltzin' to the strines of Yankee Doodle on the vi'lin."