The streets of Port Linton were empty under the brazen glare of the sun,
so that Captain Vincey’s steps rang loud. They were unsteady, too. The
heat came up from the white coral road in tremulous waves, and worried
him. The blue sea and the blue sky, the white buildings and the white
roads, and the great, fierce, brassy sun all dazzled him. He dropped his
stick with a clatter, and from under the swing door of Willie’s Bar a
dog ran out, sniffed at the stick, and ran back again.
“It’s the heat,” said Vincey to himself, as he straightened up.
But in his heart he was a little frightened by the giddiness, the
surging in his head, and by the theatrically empty look of the world. He
could not quite remember what had brought him out at this hour, but his
footsteps were certainly directed toward the club.
He decided not to go there, and went on down the hill--a big, swaggering
man, in a rumpled white linen suit and a green-lined helmet.
“A t-touch of the sun,” he said to himself.
He realized now that he could not very well go home alone, though he
wanted to go home. He had had no lunch. He had sat in his office,
looking over some papers, with a bottle of whisky on the desk.
“Got to c-cut down on that,” he thought. “Plays the devil with a man’s
health!”
Sometimes, in his blackest hours, he felt that perhaps it was not only
his health that had suffered. He would remember the James Vincey who had
come to Port Linton twenty years ago, and sometimes he even shed tears,
thinking of that promising young man and of what he had become.
Turning the corner, he saw before him the cool, dim office of the Green
Arrow Navigation Company. He made for it with what haste he could. There
was his refuge.
The doors stood open, and in he went. It was a dignified and handsome
office. Along one side was a mahogany counter, and facing it were groups
of wicker chairs and tables beneath palms in pots. At the end was a low
wooden railing with a gate, and behind this a girl sat at a typewriter.
As he went toward her, she came hurrying out of the inclosure, shutting
the gate behind her.
“Hello, Uncle James!” she said casually.
“’Lo, Joey!” he answered. “T-touch--sun.”
He sank heavily into one of the wicker chairs and took off his helmet.
“Shall I get you a carriage?” she asked.
“Might be ‘visable,” he said.
She turned, went back through the barrier to a door at the rear, and
knocked.
“Come in!” said a voice.
She entered the private office, where a mild little gray-haired man sat
at a desk.
“Uncle James isn’t feeling very well,” she said. There was no
embarrassment in her manner, nor in the gray-haired man’s. “I want to
get a carriage, and I left my purse at home,” she went on. “Can I get
ten shillings, Mr. Brown, please?”
He pulled forward a little tin cash box, unlocked it, and took out a
ten-shilling note. The girl, bending over his desk, wrote on a slip of
paper:
July 8--ten shillings--J. CRAIG.
The transaction was a familiar one to both of them.
She was a thin young creature with dark gray eyes and bobbed hair cut
square across her wide brow. She would have been pretty, with more
color and animation. She might even have been beautiful; but her face
was pale and impassive, and she had an air of quiet indifference, like
one accustomed to being taken for granted and thankful to have it so.
“Why don’t you drive home with him, Joey?”
“It’s only half past two, Mr. Brown.”
“There’s nothing much to be done, Joey. Sprague will be back in a few
moments. You go along with the captain.”
“But the last day, Mr. Brown!”
“Pshaw!” said he. “Everything’s ready for the new man, Joey.
Everything’s in order.”
“I’m going to miss you awfully, Mr. Brown!”
There was a subdued sort of distress in her voice that touched him. He
patted her shoulder kindly.
“I’ll be coming back to the island in six months, Joey, and then I’ll
look in now and then to see how things are getting along. This new
man--I don’t fancy he’ll make many changes. Things will go on in the
same old way. You go along home with the captain, Joey.”
“I wish you a good trip, Mr. Brown. Good-by!”
“Pshaw!” he said again. “_Au revoir_, we’ll say, Joey.”
“_Au revoir_, Mr. Brown, and thank you.”
They shook hands, smiling at each other.
“I’ll just step out now and say good afternoon to your uncle,” said
Brown.
Captain Vincey rose politely, dropping his helmet and stick.
“Wish you--besht--short of trip,” he said.
He was perfectly aware that he was swaying on his feet and speaking
indistinctly, and that his niece and Mr. Brown were both aware of it;
but none of them felt constrained or embarrassed. Captain Vincey’s
little weakness was simply to be taken for granted.
The hack driver took it for granted. He helped the captain into the
carriage--carriages are the only vehicles in Port Linton--with a grave
and sympathetic air. Joey climbed in on the other side, and they set
off. Every one who saw them took it for granted.
“There goes Vincey--tight again! Joey’s taking him home.”
They drove through the little town and out into the country, along the
white road lined with oleanders, rose pink, creamy white, and scarlet,
under the blue, blue sky. When she had first come here, this loveliness
had stirred Joey to delight, but not any longer. She dare not be stirred
now. She saw before her a way interminably long and weary, and she went
forward in a sort of blindness, not stopping, not thinking, only
enduring.
The carriage drew up before a little house standing on a hill, and the
driver got down to assist the captain. He had a great deal of trouble,
for Vincey was a big man and he a small one.
Joey picked up the helmet and stick from the road, and followed them to
the house. Mrs. Vincey opened the door and received her son, and Joey
paid the driver. All taken for granted!
“Your Uncle James says he doesn’t care for any tea. It’s this heat.”
An unconquerable woman was Captain Vincey’s mother--slight and small,
straight as a dart, always neat and dignified and smiling. She was
nearly seventy, but she did not look it, so great was the spirit that
animated her fragile body.
She had made a pot of tea, and she and her granddaughter drank it in the
kitchen.
“Joey,” she said, “I’ll have to ask you to get me a little money
to-morrow.”
“To-morrow? But the new man’s coming to-morrow, gran.”
Both were silent for a time, looking out of the window, where below them
the blue Atlantic stretched, unendurably bright in the sun. Mrs. Vincey
was thinking of her old home in Kent, of green fields and dripping trees
under the soft blue of an April sky. It was strange that the days of her
girlhood seemed so close to her, so much more real than all the years of
wandering with her engineer husband in South America, in Canada, in New
York. That was all a little nebulous. What was vivid was the memory of
her Kentish fields.
But to Joey the memory of her girlhood seemed so remote as to be
incredible. She was the only child of Mrs. Vincey’s daughter and her
American husband, left an orphan now, and penniless. She had come to
Port Linton from New York, three years ago, a jolly, lively schoolgirl
of seventeen, ready for adventure; and she had found--this.
“I think you’d be happier if you found something to do, wouldn’t you,
Joey?” Mrs. Vincey had said.
Joey had gone to see Mr. Brown--who was expecting her--and he had taken
her into his office.
Mrs. Vincey stayed home and kept house. With smiling dignity she faced
tradesmen who explained why they could give her no more credit. Morning
after morning she telephoned her son’s business partner, to tell him
that “Captain Vincey was ill, and couldn’t come to the office.” She
cooked meals and served them decently, out of Heaven knows what pitiful
materials. She had kept the house neat, she had sat up at night,
patching and turning and mending clothes for them all.
And she would not see, she dared not see, what was happening to
Joey--the jolly schoolgirl turning into this pale, still woman. She
would willingly have given her life for Joey, but she would not admit
her son’s shame. It _must_ be taken for granted!
Better to look at the dazzling blue sea than at Joey’s pale face.
“Another cup of tea, Joey?”
“Yes, thank you, gran.”
They did not mention the money again. Joey knew that her grandmother
would not have asked for it, if it had not been urgently needed; and
Mrs. Vincey knew that if it were in any way possible, Joey would get it
for her at any cost.
The sun went down and a fresh breeze sprang up. The two women ate their
supper of bread and cheese and more tea, in the kitchen, while Captain
Vincey slept upstairs in his room. The moon came up and made a silver
path on the dark sea, for prisoners to look at, if they chose.
“Good night, gran dear!”
“Good night, Joey. You’re a good girl, Joey. Sleep well!”
But Joey did not sleep very well. She sat up in bed, looking out at the
garden, where the moon was shining. A breeze blew in her face, fragrant
with jasmine.
“If only the new manager will be nice!” she thought. “Oh, please let him
be nice!”
The captain was much better in the morning. He bathed and shaved, put on
a clean white suit, and came down to breakfast in a witty and cheerful
humor.
“Left my bicycle at the club,” he said. “You’d better telephone for a
carriage, Joey. The walk into town is a little too much for me--at my
age.”
As Joey had had to leave her own bicycle at the office the day before,
in order to take him home, he asked her to drive in with him; but she
said she would enjoy the walk.
Two miles of white coral road in the blazing sun, after an insufficient
breakfast! It was better, though, than sitting beside the captain,
driving in state past the shops where they owed money.
She was a little late, and the boat had come in unusually early. She was
lying alongside the wharf, already unloading, and the door of the
private office was shut.
“He’s come!” Sprague whispered to her. “He’s in there, talking to
McLean.”
“What’s he like?” asked Joey.
“Hard as nails!” said Sprague.
She uncovered her typewriter and sat down before it, but she had no work
to do. She could only sit there, with her heart like lead.
The door of the private office opened, and McLean came out.
“Mr. Napier wants to see you,” he said briefly to Joey. As he moved
away, she heard him mutter: “New brooms sweep clean!”
She got up and went into the private office, and there, at Mr. Brown’s
desk, sat the new man. It was a shock to find him so young. He looked
almost boyish. He was thin and dark, with a careless, preoccupied air.
“Miss Craig?” he said. “Sit down! Take a letter, please. ‘Messrs. Pryden
& Fort, P-r-y--’”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t take shorthand,” Joey interrupted in her quiet
way.
He glanced up at her.
“I thought--” he began, and stopped short as their eyes met.