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 passed 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 passed out
into the street.