Wide Courses Part 25

The boy tucked the bill away. "I'm wise! I'm wise!" He winked at Jan and left the room.

Jan turned to her. "I'll have a few things sent up in the morning."

She was standing straight and motionless in the middle of the room.

"You're good," she said, but without looking at him.

"And--oh, my mother! I most forgot her. She lives in Port Rock.

To-morrow night I'll put you aboard the boat for Port Rock. And I won't be able to see you till then."

"Not till to-morrow night?"

"I has to be at the dry dock early in the morning or they can't start work. Good-night." He was holding his hat very stiffly in one hand. The other hand he extended to her.

"Good-night," the woman said, and took his hand and clung to it.

Suddenly she lifted it to her lips and sobbed.

A woman crying and kissing his hand, and all done so suddenly he couldn't stop it--Jan was shocked at himself. "Sh-h!" said Jan. "Sh-h!

You mustn't."

"I will. You're the first man ever came to the house who didn't look at me as if I was a streetwalker. And he tried his best to make me one. And I fought him--and fought him; but not a soul to help me. And a woman can't hold out forever. I'd 'a' killed myself, but I was afraid to die that way. I was beginning to weaken when you came. And if you had been the wrong kind of a man--"

"Sh-h! Don't say things like that."

"But it's so. And you helped me to get over it. Before I was married I used to dream of a man like you. But what chance had I in the dance-halls along the water-front and my people dead? And he was a dance-hall hero, the kind girls used to write notes to. I was never as bad as that--believe me I wasn't,--but I married him just the same--at seventeen, and what does a girl know of life at seventeen? And him!

Almost on my wedding-day he began to abuse me."

"No, no!"

"It's true. And when you told me you'd take me to your mother--that was the first message I'd got in five years from a man except what was meant for my harm. But a good mother--I'll tell her so she'll understand."

"She'll understand without you telling her. She's brought up a dozen of us and has grand-children--lots of 'em. Sunday morning you'll be in my mother's house in Port Rock."

She stooped to kiss his hand again.

"Here! Here--you mustn't!"

"I will--I will! And there! And there! And now good-night."

"Good-night," mumbled Jan. He hurried out of the room and all but fell over the bell-boy in the hall. "What you hanging round for?" Jan almost hissed. "Go below."

The bell-boy hurried downstairs and "Say, but that's a new kind of an elopement for this shack!" he exploded to the clerk, and repeated what he had heard.

The clerk took a look at the register and read: "'Mrs. H.G. Goles, City.' Now I didn't notice that before. 'Mrs. Goles' he registered, and not himself. Goles? I wonder if that's Hen's woman? Well, if it is he'll get his good and plenty before Hen's done with him."

"Yes, and the police'll get Hen. And, say, that Swede ain't such a gink when yuh get a second look at him."

"I don't know. I didn't get a second look at him; but the way he pulled out that wad--I charged him four bucks for a dollar-'n'-a-half room.

And--"

"S-st!" warned the boy.

It was Jan re-entering the office.

"What's wrong?" demanded the clerk.

"Paper and envelope, please," said Jan.

"Oh!" The clerk looked relieved and pa.s.sed them over. Jan took out a carpenter's thick-leaded pencil and wrote on the sheet of paper: "You must buy some things for the trip on the boat." He looked at the clerk and then at the boy, and went out into the hall, folded one ten-dollar bill and two twenty-dollar bills inside the sheet, sealed and addressed the envelope, and brought it in to the boy.

"You take this up to the lady. Give it to her and hurry away before she can open it. And if you are back in two minutes--"

The boy was back in less time. Jan gave him half a dollar and pa.s.sed out into the street.

THE PORT ROCK BOAT

The Port Rock boat was due _to_ leave her dock. The first mate made his way to the upper deck. He found his captain in the pilot-house, studying the barometer.

"Freight all aboard, sir."

"All right," nodded the captain; "but did you hear about the storm flags being up?"

"So I heard, sir."

"M-m! Close that door. It's cold." The mate closed the door; but almost immediately the captain raised a window and gazed down the harbor. "It looks bad to me," he said after a while.

"It is a bad-looking night," a.s.sented the mate.

"A wicked night!" barked the captain; and gathering one end of his moustache between his teeth, began to chew on it.

The mate pursed his lips. "What will I do, sir?"

The captain stopped chewing his moustache. "It all comes down to dollars and cents. Use our judgment and stay tied up to the dock here and it's go hunt another berth. Do you want to hunt another job?"

"Not me. I got a family to look after."

"N' me. We'll put out."

"All right, sir." The mate descended to the wharf. "In with that freight runway and plank!" he called out to the waiting longsh.o.r.emen.

"And you"--a colored steward was at his elbow--"tell 'em all aboard on the dock and all ash.o.r.e on the boat that's goin' ash.o.r.e."

The steward voiced the mate's instructions; the last pa.s.senger came aboard and the last friend went ash.o.r.e. The gangplank was hauled in, the lines cast off and the Port Rock steamer slid out from her slip.

She was well down the harbor before Jan took a piece of paper from his pocket. "Number two hundred and seventy-six," he read. "That's it--two hundred and seventy-six." And seeking out the number he knocked on the door. It opened slightly and Jan saw peeking out at him the lips, chin and half an eye each side of the nose of a pretty and well-dressed girl.

Jan looked up at the number over the door again to see if he had made a mistake. Then the door opened more widely--and it was she, smiling out at him; but so rosy and terribly pretty that Jan felt afraid and drew back.

"I thought maybe you would like to get out for some fresh air soon," he stammered.