Clancy started on the run and I after him. "We'll go to his
boarding-house first, Joe, and if he's not there, to Minnie
Arkell's."
He wasn't in his boarding-house, and we hurried out. On the sidewalk
we almost ran into little Johnnie Duncan.
"Oh, Captain Clancy--or you, Joe Buckley--won't you tell me about the
race? Grandpa was too busy to tell me, but went down the wharf with a
lot of people to show them the Johnnie Duncan. They all left the
office and told me to mind it. And my cousin Alice came in with Joe's
cousin Nell. And I saw Captain Blake with some people and ran after
him and I just caught up with him and they went off and left me. And
then a little while ago he came back by himself and ran toward the
dock and didn't even see me. And Captain Blake used to be so good to
me!" Poor Johnnie was all but crying.
"Toward the dock? That's good," breathed Clancy. "Stay here, Johnnie,
and we'll tell you about the race when we get back," and led the way
to Mr. Duncan's office.
We found the skipper in the outer office, standing beside the
bookkeeper's desk and looking out of the window next the slip. Hearing
us coming he turned and then we saw that he held in his hands an open
box with a string of beautiful pearls. Noticing us gaze at the pearls
in surprise, he said, "Mr. Duncan gave me these for winning the race.
And I took them, thinking that somebody or other might like them."
"And don't she?" asked Clancy--it seemed to slip out of Tommie without
his knowing it.
"I guess not," said Maurice. Only then did it flash on me what it all
might mean.
"Did you try?" asked Clancy.
"Try! Yes, and was made a fool of. Oh, what's the use--what in
hell's the use?" He stood silent a moment. "I guess not," he said
then--looked out the window again, and hove the whole string out
of the open window and into the slip.
Clancy and myself both jumped to stop him, but we weren't quick
enough. They were gone--the whole beautiful necklace. The skipper
fixed his eyes on where they had struck the water. Then he turned and
left the office. At the door he stopped and said: "I don't know--maybe
I won't take the Johnnie next trip, and if I don't, Tommie, I hope
you'll take her--Mr. Duncan will let you have her if you want. I hope
you'll take her anyway, for you know what a vessel she is. You'll take
care of her--" and went and left us.
Clancy swore to himself for a while. He hadn't quite done when the
door of the rear office opened and Miss Foster herself came out. She
greeted me sweetly--she always did--but was going out without paying
any attention to Clancy. She looked pale--although perhaps I would not
have noticed her paleness particularly only for what had just
happened.
I was surprised to see then what Clancy did. Before she had got to the
door he was beside her.
"Miss Foster, Miss Foster," he said, and his tone was so different
from what I had ever heard from him before that I could hardly believe
it. He was a big man, it must be remembered, and still on him were the
double-banked oilskins and heavy jack-boots he wore through the race.
Also his face was flushed from the excitement of the day--the salt
water was not yet dry on him and his eyes were shining, shining not
alone with the glow of a man who had been lashed to a wheel steering a
vessel in a gale--and, too, to victory--for hours, and not alone with
the light that comes from two or three quarts of champagne--it was
something more than that. Whatever it was it surprised me and held
Alice Foster's attention.
"Mister Clancy," she said, and turned to him.
"Yes, Mister Clancy--or Tommie Clancy--or Captain Clancy, as
it is at times--master of an odd vessel now and again--but
Clancy all the time--just Clancy, good-for-nothing Clancy--hard
drinker--reveller--night-owl--disturber of the peace--at best
only a fisherman who'll by and by go out and get lost like
thousands of the other fishermen before him--as a hundred every
year do now and have three lines in the paper--name, age,
birthplace, street and number of his boarding-house, and that
will be the end of it. But that don't matter--Tommie Clancy,
whatever he is, is a friend of Maurice Blake's. And he means
to speak a word for Maurice.
"For a long time now, Miss Foster, Maurice has thought the world of
you. He never told me--he never told anybody. But I know him. He
waited a long time, I'm sure, before he even told himself--maybe even
before he knew it himself. But I knew it--bunk-mates, watch-mates,
dory-mates we've been. He's master of a fine vessel now and I'm one of
his crew. He's gone ahead and I've stayed behind. Why? Because he's
carried in his heart the picture of a girl he thought could be all a
woman ought to be to a man. And that was well A man like Maurice
needs that, and maybe--maybe--you're all that he thought and more
maybe, Miss Foster. Wait--he had that picture before his eyes all the
time. I hadn't any picture. Years ago, when I was Maurice's age, I
might have had something like it, and now look at me. And why? Why,
Miss Foster, you're a woman--could you guess? No? Think. What's
running in a man's head, do you think, in the long winter nights when
he's walking the deck, with the high heavens above and the great,
black rolling sea around him? What's in his head when, trawls hauled
and his fish aboard, when the danger and the hard work are mostly by,
his vessel's going to the west'ard? What when he's an hour to rest and
he's lying, smoking and thinking, in his bunk? What's been in
Maurice's head and in his heart all the years he's loafed with the
likes of me and yet never fell to my level? Anything he ever read
anywhere, do you think, or was it a warm image that every time he came
ashore and was lucky enough to get a look at you he could see was true
to the woman it stood for? When you had no more idea of it than what
was going on at the North Pole he was watching you--and thinking of
you. Always thinking of you, Miss Foster. He never thought he had a
chance. I know him. Who asks a woman like you to share a fisherman's
life? Is it a man like Maurice? Sometimes--maybe with the blood
racing through him after a great race he might. A while ago he did,
Miss Foster. And what gave him the courage?
"Listen to me now, Miss Foster, and say what you please afterward.
Maurice and I are friends. Friends. I've been with him on the bottom
of a capsized dory when we both expected we'd hauled our last
trawl--with the seas washing over us and we both getting weak and him
getting black in the face--and maybe I was, too. I told you this once
before, but let me tell it again. 'Come and take the plug strap,
Tommie,' he says to me. 'Come and take the plug strap.' Do you know
what that means, Miss Foster?--and the seas sweeping over you and your
whole body getting numb? And I've been with him four days and four
nights--astray in the fog of the Western Banks in winter, and, for all
we knew and believed, we were gone. In times like those men get to
know each other, and I tell you, Miss Foster--" Clancy choked and
stopped. "To-day he sailed a race the like of which was never sailed
before. A dozen times he took the chance of himself going over the
rail. And why? The better to keep an eye on things and help his vessel
along? Yes. But why that? For that cup we've drowned a dozen times in
wine to-day? He never looked twice at it when he got ashore. He
hasn't seen it since he handed it to me on the dock. The boys might
like to look at it, he said. He's forgot he ever won it by now. He let
us take it up to a rum-shop and drink out of it the same as if it was
a tin-pail--the beautiful gold and silver cup--engraved. We used it
for a growler for all Maurice cared for the value of it, and there's
forty men walking the streets now that's got a list they got out of
that cup. We might have lost it, battered each other's drunken heads
in with it, and he wouldn't have said a dozen words about it. But
there was a necklace of pearls, and he thought you'd like them. 'To
you, Maurice, for winning the race,' says Mr. Duncan, 'for winning the
race,' and hands Maurice the pearls--your own guardian, Miss Foster,
and most crazy, he was that pleased. And that's what Maurice ran up to
get when the race was over--there was something a girl might like, or
thought so. And then what? On the way down a woman that I know--that
you know--tried to hold him up. Kissed him before a hundred
people--she knew you were waiting--she knew, trust a woman--and walked
down part way with him, because you were looking. And he being a man,
and weak, and only twenty-six--and the racing blood still running
through him--maybe forgot himself for five minutes--not knowing you
were within a mile. That doesn't excuse him? No, you're right, it
don't. But he, poor boy, knowing nothing--what does a boy of
twenty-six know?--knowing nothing--suspecting nothing--and yet, if he
forgot himself, he never really forgot you. He hurries on to you and
offers you the necklace that he risked his life to get. And you--what
did you say?"
"What did I say? I told him that perhaps he knew somebody that he'd
rather give it to before me----"
"Before you? There's a woman. You're not satisfied when a man fights
all the devil in himself for you, but you must rub it into him while
he's doing it. Maurice--or maybe you don't understand. You could say
things like that to a dog--if a dog could understand--and he'd come
back and lick your hand. Maurice has blood and fire in him. And here's
a woman--whatever else she is--is warm-blooded too. She wants Maurice,
and, by God, she'll get him if you keep on. Do you remember the night
of the Master Mariners' ball--the night before we sailed on the
Southern cruise? Well, that night this woman, she waits for Maurice
and stops him on his way home. But she didn't get him. He was up in
the wind for a minute or two, but one spoke of the wheel and he found
his head again. Again last June in Newport on a warm summer's
night--flowers, music, wine--the cabin of a beautiful yacht--she asks
him to wait over a day or two in Newport harbor. Does he? Does he? Not
Maurice. With never a touch of the wheel, off he swings and drives for
home. And why didn't he stay? Why, do you suppose? Didn't he tell you
a while ago? Good God! Look here--you're no fool. Look at me--ten
years ago I was another Maurice. And this woman--I tell you she knows
men. She don't care whether a man is rich or poor, tall or short, thin
or fat, so long as she likes him. And I tell you she loves Maurice--as
well as she can love--and she's not a good enough woman--there it is.
And they're all saying you're likely to marry Withrow. Wait now.
Withrow, I'm telling you, isn't fit to wash the gurry off Maurice's
jack-boots. I'm a careless man, Miss Foster, and in my life I've done
things I wish now I hadn't, but I draw the line above the head of a
man like Withrow. Whatever I am, I'm too good to be company for Fred
Withrow. And on top of all that he's so carried away with this other
woman--this same woman--and she caring more for Maurice's eyelash than
Withrow's whole two hundred and ten pounds--Withrow is so carried away
with her that he is ready to elope with her--elope with her! I know
that--never mind how. Bring Withrow and me together, and I'll tell
him--tell him, yes, and throw him through the door afterward if he
denies it. This woman is enough of a woman to want Maurice--Maurice
with nothing at all--before Withrow with all he's got and all he can
get her or give her--and she's clever enough to come pretty near
getting what she wants. And now, Miss Foster, suppose you think it
over. I'm going to hunt up Maurice, though I'm not too sure we'll find
him in a hurry. Good-by."
He swept his sou'wester wide to her and went out the door. I said
good-by without looking at her. I was too ashamed--and went after
Clancy. But I think she was crying to herself as I went out.