The Pentle place had been closed up and the servants were gone; but
Mrs. Pentle's car was still waiting at the gate, and Mrs. Pentle
herself--old John Ferguson, on his way to the lookout, could see Mrs.
Pentle perched up on her flat rock and looking out on Gloucester harbor
and the sea.
There was a fishing-schooner sailing out. John put his glasses on her
and was entering her in his book when he heard some one's step on the
ladder leading to his tower, and then the hatch sliding back. It was
Mrs. Pentle.
"I've heard of your book, John. May I look at it?"
"Surely, ma'am, surely." He passed it to her. "For seventeen years
now I've been keeping it--the account o' the fishing-vessels sailin'
out o' Gloucester, ma'am. A column for the day o' departure, one for
the name o' the vessel, one for the master, and one for the day she
comes back home."
She was turning the pages.
"So many never come back home, do they?"
"Nacherally--they bein' fishermen, ma'am."
"Ah-h, here's the year!" She ran her finger down the page. "And
here!" and read: "'_Valorous_--sailed December seventeenth--and never
returned.'"
"I mind her, ma'am, with the proud name--George's handlin'."
"I know. My father was one of her crew.... But here"--she stopped in
her turning of the pages--"isn't this the entry of one they've just
given up for lost?"
"That's her, ma'am--the _Conqueror_. It's queer what bad luck goes
with those proud names, ma'am. Peter Crudden was master of her."
"Peter Crudden! I played with Peter Crudden when we were children
together. And he's lost?"
"When they print the names o' the crew in the Gloucester papers, it's a
hundred to one they're gone, ma'am. A married sister o' Peter's is a
neighbor o' my married daughter's up in Boston, and they're cryin'
their heart out a'ready, she writes me--Peter's sister an' her
children."
Mrs. Pentle closed the book.
"We live such sheltered lives here ashore, most of us, don't we, John?
And we complain at the smallest little discomfort--many of us, I mean.
And those brave men sail out to the dangerous waters in their little
boats, where the best of it is hardship and death comes so often. It
must be born in me--I just can't help feeling different toward those
fishermen from what I do toward the men I meet in my business in the
city."
She left; and, watching her swing down the ladder, John Ferguson was
thinking that for a woman of her build--full-bosomed and no
slimling--she was cert'nly light on her feet, and wondering why a young
and good-looking widow as she was--dang good-looking--why more o' those
wealthy young men she must know hadn't hooked her afore that. "Must
be," mused John, "none of 'em's used the right bait."
John turned, just naturally to have another look out to sea,
and--"Well, you old gadabout!" muttered John and hurried to point his
glasses at what he saw wabbling in.
"Dang me if she c'n be!" cried John. "Dang me, but she is!"
It was the _Conqueror_--her foremast gone half-way to the deck, her
mainmast gone clean to the deck, and her bowsprit broken off at the
knight-heads. And she was a foot thick, or more, in ice; and in her
jury-rigging was her flag--at half-mast.
"That's one, ye ravenous sea, dang ye, ye didn't get!" muttered John.
"And she'll have a tale to tell!" And wondering how many of 'em were
gone, and who they were, he entered the month and day of her return.
The _Conqueror_ had fitted out at Duncan's; and Duncan's wharf and
store had not changed in twenty years. Mr. Duncan did not like changes.
The old shelves of canned goods in Duncan's, the long packages of
blue-papered macaroni, the little green cartons of fish-hooks, the
piled-up barrels of flour and boxes of hardtack--they were all of the
same old reliable brands. And the woollen mitts in strings! And in
back was an area of kegs of red lead and hanks of tarred ground-line
and coils of stout rope, and oilskins and sou'-westers, and rubber
boots and the heavy leather redjacks--the smell of them was all over
Duncan's.
Fred Lichens, who had kept books for thirty years for Mr. Duncan, was
looking down the wharf at the _Conqueror_ warping into the slip when
Mrs. Pentle arrived in her car. Her arrival was not surprising. She
had half a dozen small charities in Gloucester, and she came regularly
to Mr. Duncan's for advice about them.
Fred knew all this exactly, because he kept the books for the
Gloucester end of these things--drawing a few extra dollars a month
therefor--and he had known Mrs. Pentle since she was a little girl and
used to come with her mother, and without her as she grew older, to Mr.
Duncan's to draw, against whatever would be her father's share, the
stores which the family needed to keep them alive while the father was
out to sea.
Fred remembered when the girl who was now Mrs. Pentle left high school
to go to work in Boston. She was a bouncingly pretty girl, and within
two years married Pentle, the millionaire department-store man.
Fred dusted a chair for Mrs. Pentle and set it in her favorite spot,
which was beside a window in Mr. Duncan's own office looking out on the
harbor. Sitting there, she saw an iced-up wreck of a vessel and some
of her crew leaping up onto the wharf, where a crowd was surrounding
them. She asked what vessel it was, and Fred told her--the
_Conqueror_, Peter Crudden; and she said No! and Fred said Yes, ma'am,
it was.
"I wonder if I should know him now," she said; and then: "Which is
Peter Crudden?"
"Captain Crudden," said Fred, "is the one Mr. Duncan is bending toward
to hear better."
The crowd was moving up toward the store. Mrs. Pentle jumped up on her
chair so as to be able to look over the glazed lights of glass between
the private office and the store as they came in.
Peter Crudden was a hard-looking figure of a man, coming into Duncan's
store that day. He had not shaved for days, and his thick hair looked
enormous--it was so tangled. He had not slept in a week; and when he
took his seat on the long store bench and let his head settle wearily
back against the wall he looked old.
He was telling about the big gale coming on and how her spars went,
which maybe saved her from going into the shoals and being lost right
there, and how they worked her way clear o' the shoals under jury-rig,
how they were lookin' for a little ease and comfort, when aboard comes
this unlucky sea, with no more warning than a shooting star out of the
sky, and sweeps--cleaner than ever you could sweep the floor o' the
store--her deck and all, everything. And atop o' that a sea to fill
her cabin full. Four of 'em makin' for the deck were thrown back into
the cabin again--smashed afoul o' the stove one, and atop o' the
lockers and into a looard bunk another; and how they picked themselves
up and made the deckhand when they got there--as if a clean-swept deck
warn't hard luck enough--there was Dave Elwell that was to the wheel,
his breast smashed again' the wheel spokes and he dead.
"And the two on the deck gone--gone, sir, so quick that we never even
got a sight o' them or a smothered hail from them goin'," concluded
Peter. "An' cold! And ice! And--" But once more he let his head
fall back against the wall.
Fred was so wrapped up in Peter's story that he forgot Mrs. Pentle till
he found her beside him and heard her saying in a low voice:
"When I was a little girl I listened to fishermen on that same bench,
with their stories of toil and death. And I remember how I would
linger, making believe to retie my packages into a tighter bundle, to
hear more of what they had to say. It was a man sitting on that bench,
Mr. Lichens, in just that way, not knowing who I was, who brought word
of my father's vessel gone down--and all hands with her."
"I cal'late the hard tales told from that same bench would fill more
books than was ever writ about Gloucester, an' there's been a many--an'
some foolish ones among 'em," said Fred.
"Those two men washed overboard"--Peter was speaking again--"some one
has got to tell their people how they come to be lost. And poor Dave
in the ice-house aboard the vessel--some one has got to 'tend to him."
"I'll 'tend to Dave," said Mr. Duncan.
"That'll help," said Peter. "And now--I'm through with
fishin'--through with goin' to sea! I'm goin' to stop ashore!"
It was then Mrs. Pentle ran from beside Fred and into the store.
"Captain Crudden----"
"This is Mrs. Pentle, captain," said Mr. Duncan.
"Celia Curtin that was," explained Mrs. Pentle. "I knew you as a boy."
"I know," said Peter. And then he almost smiled: "And no girl in
Gloucester ever better able to take care of herself!"
"If I could get you something to do in my store, would you take it,
captain? If it was fit work, I mean, for a man?"
"It wouldn't have to be fit--I'll trim bonnets for ladies before I go
back to fishin'," said Peter, "and thank you for the chance."
Peter passed out with his crew.
Mrs. Pentle turned to Mr. Duncan.
"So that's settled! I shall telephone you, Mr. Duncan, about Captain
Crudden's place in my store--the work will not be disagreeable."
Mr. Duncan and Fred watched Mrs. Pentle's car racing up the street; and
then Fred said:
"Mr. Duncan, Peter didn't look like any magazine cover of a hero I've
seen lately, but--sitting there on that bench awhile ago--did you take
a look at Mrs. Pentle's face while he was telling the story of that
wreck?"
Mr. Duncan looked at his old bookkeeper.
"Reef down your imagination, Fred. She's a woman who likes to manage
things and to do good; but what I'm afraid she'll do now will be to
ruin the makings of a smart young skipper with her soft job ashore."
Mr. Henston, the manager of Pentle's, brought Peter Crudden to Flaxley,
the head shipper.
"Flaxley, you are to break in this man," said Henston, "and he's to go
on the pay-roll at twenty dollars per week."
Flaxley wondered why a new man, who was to be only a shipper's helper,
should go on the payroll for twenty dollars a week; and he wondered yet
more why Henston should be telling him about the pay-roll, which was
made up in the office and not in the shipping-room. He wondered, too,
why the manager himself should take the trouble to introduce the new
man.
"You needn't make it easy for him on my account," whispered Henston,
going out.
Flaxley had seen a lot of things happen in Pentle's, where he had been
so long that, when Mrs. Pentle wanted to know about anything that went
back beyond the memory of even the ancient cashier Herrick, she would
send down for Flaxley.
He was no older than Herrick, but he had started to work in the store
younger.
Flaxley was like something that went with the store. He had
privileges; and he did not like Henston and would not have minded
telling him so, but that he had great respect for Mrs. Pentle and
thought--what many more in the store thought--that Henston was dressing
his windows so as to catch Mrs. Pentle's eye, and some day--you can't
tell about women, especially young widows--some day Henston might marry
her.
Flaxley looked Peter over and rather liked his make-up, and pointed out
a big dry-goods case and told him what he wanted done. Flaxley saw the
new man hook into the box, which weighed eight hundred pounds, up-end
it, claw-hammer it, and toss the heavy bolts of cloth out onto the long
table.
"Jeepers!" said Flaxley. "He did that while some o' the other young
fellows here would be peeking around for help!" He studied Peter for
two days more, and from then on wearied the head shippers of other
emporiums, whenever he met one, with his tales of the strength and
niftiness of the new man he'd "picked up."
Peter took his lunch in the basement where he worked, the same being
put up by his married sister in a package made to look like a
camera-box.
He had bought this lunch-box in Pentle's--he remembered it was sold to
him by a pretty girl with a pleasant manner. It was just the thing for
lunch--she had said--all the girls in Pentle's carried 'em; and there
was ten per cent off for employees. It was the first time in his life
that Peter ever got anything off on anything he'd ever bought, and he
said so; and the salesgirl looked at him again and then smiled.
"You're not a city man?" she said. Peter said he wasn't; and then his
change came and he went off.
It was his third day in Pentle's. He sat on a stool by the door
leading into a passageway, to eat his lunch. Just across the
passageway was the door into the girls' rest-room, where there were
lounges and chairs and a big heater on which they set their cans of
coffee to warm up.
"My new helper, girls--height five feet eleven, weight a hundred
ninety, thirty-two teeth in his head and not married--look him over,"
said old Flaxley, making Peter blush. "And now warm his coffee for
him--he's been too shy to ask," and Flaxley handed Peter's coffee
across the passageway.
They looked him over, some of them saucily. And hearing Flaxley call
him Peter, in a week or so some of them were calling him Peter and
offering him pickles and doughnuts from their lunch-boxes; and there
were always three or four ready to take his coffee from him when he
reached it across the passageway to be heated.
One day a group of them, with their heads bunched in the doorway as
usual, chaffed him across the passageway. Peter was looking at a
lovely white neck and dark little head, back of the row of heads in the
door, and wondering where he had seen that girl before. And biting
into a thick corned-beef sandwich, he remembered where--it was the girl
who had sold him the lunch-box.
"Ten per cent off for employees," shouted Peter; "all the girls carry
'em!" and held up the lunch-box. The others caught the idea and
laughed uproariously--except the one who had sold it. She only blushed
scarlet and disappeared, and did not come back.
"She must 'a' thought I was tryin' to get acquainted," said Peter later
to old Flaxley, "and didn't like it."
That same afternoon Mrs. Pentle looked into the shipping-room. It was
one of those warm days in winter and, of course, the steam was on.
Peter was wearing only a sleeveless white jersey above his belt. Peter
was wide-shouldered and trim-waisted, with the easy lines of the man
who is quick as well as powerful in action.
Flaxley saw Mrs. Pentle in the doorway. Henston was with her and,
because Henston was with her, Flaxley stepped quickly over to the door.
If Mr. Henston had anything to say about Peter he wanted to be there to
hear it.
Mrs. Pentle was watching Peter at work.
"He doesn't look like the same man," said Mrs. Pentle. "When I last
saw him his jaws were set like steel, his eyes like hard lights back in
his head, and his voice was rough. And his skin was like something
worn raw by the beating of hammers on it. He looked like a middle-aged
man then, and now--why, he doesn't look twenty-two now!"
"He ain't much more," said Flaxley.
Just then Peter up-ended a big dry-goods case, ripped off a boarded
side, tore away a layer of thick paper, and tossed onto a table ten
feet away a bolt of cloth that Mrs. Pentle knew weighed fifty pounds;
and he did not even bend his knees to do it.
"A powerful brute," said Henston.
"Brute?" said Mrs. Pentle.
"I mean--" said Henston; but Mrs. Pentle had stepped inside the
shipping-room door.
Peter was whistling; but he had to up-end another case. It took a
little effort, this one, and he stopped his whistling.
"Up--up--upsie boy!" cooed Peter. It did not up. He set himself and
tugged. He grew impatient. "Come here, you loafer!" he shouted, and
braced and heaved. The case came up.
"When Peter takes to heavin' in earnest they generally come," said
Flaxley.
While old Flaxley stood there looking from Peter to Mrs. Pentle he
couldn't help thinking--much as he respected her--he couldn't help
wondering if she was comparing Peter to Pentle that was dead and gone.
"If she is," thought Flaxley, "Lord help the memory o' Pentle--who was
never any Apoller for build and about as much blood in him as a man'd
find in four pounds of excelsior packin'."
Peter was whistling again and carolling and heaving facetious comment
at anybody and everybody, when he felt the silence. He looked round
and saw Mrs. Pentle.
"How do you do, captain?"
Peter shifted his cotton-hook from right hand to left and shook her
extended hand.
"I'm cert'nly glad to see you again, Mrs. Pentle."
"How are you getting on, captain?"
"Fine--fine!"
"The work is not too hard?"
"Hard?" Peter smiled. "Often enough I think of those fellows out on
the Banks turning out on a good, cold, blizzardy day in winter, Mrs.
Pentle--turning out at four o'clock in the mornin' and goin' into a
cold hold with the ice and baitin' up, so's to be ready to go over the
side in the dory by the first o' the daylight. And then all day long
it's heave and haul trawls, with maybe a sea that they don't know what
minute'll get 'em. An' dressin' down a deck-load o' fish on top o'
that afore they turn in of a night--an' maybe standin' watch in the
night again, standin' to the wheel beatin' home in a nor'wester, when
it's so cold you have to wear a woollen mask over your face with two
holes to see through and another to breathe through, and your
watch-mates have to relieve you--and you them--every six or eight
minutes to keep from freezin' to death!
"Hard work, Mrs. Pentle!" It was too ridiculous--Peter laughed aloud
this time.
"I live with my married sister, Mrs. Pentle, and goin' home these cold
winter nights I sit down to supper, and after supper I slip into my
slipshods, an' I get out my pipe, an' I spread my feet out before a
nice, hot fire, in a rockin'-chair, an' the sister's six children they
climb up all over me and we have one good time together. Some nights I
take one or two of the oldest of 'em to the movies."
"You like children, then, captain?"
"The man, Mrs. Pentle, that ain't got children is bein' cheated out o'
something," said Peter. "An' sittin' there after the children are put
to bed, I say to myself: 'Well, Peter Crudden, you're cert'nly one
lucky dog. Here's you into your warm, dry bed every night, an' work
that there's about enough of to exercise you, an' no matter how the
weather is--no matter about sea and wind so rough you can't
fish--there's your pay-envelope every week with the same old reg'lar
amount in it.'"
"I'm glad you like it here, captain, and--I'm partners with Mr. Duncan
in a new vessel to be named after me."
"I hope," said Peter earnestly, "that she won't shame her name--that
she'll be fast an' weatherly--and always find her way back home."
"I hope so, captain. And now--if there is anything about your work you
do not like, let me know." There was a tramping of girls hurrying
through the passageway. Two or three were gazing curiously in from the
doorway.
"Closing-up time, is it?" Mrs. Pentle had suddenly become nervous.
"Good-by." She passed out with Henston.
Old Flaxley looked kindly at Peter. "No airs to her, Peter; all men
look alike to her," said old Flaxley.
"She's all right," said Peter. "But as for hard work--Lord!"
And he was chuckling over that all the while he was washing up and
still smiling at the thought of it when he overhauled a girl in the
passageway on his way out. He said good evening politely and was
hurrying by when the figure said: "Good evening, captain."
It was something in the voice that held him. He had another look--it
wasn't very light in the passageway. Well, if it wasn't the girl who
had sold him the lunch-box!
Peter walked to the corner with her; when her car came along, it
happened to be his car. She lived not very far from Peter's sister.
He walked to her door with her. Her name was Sarah Hern.
After work next day Peter waited at the door of the shipping-room.
When she came out of the girls' room he fell into step with her and
they rode home together. Sarah invited him in. Peter stepped in for a
minute and met Sarah's mother.
He stayed to supper. There must have been eight or nine Hern boys and
girls, some grown up, with a widowed mother. And they all but the
mother sat down together; and the girls kept bouncing up and down,
hopping back and forth between table and kitchen when things didn't
come fast enough.
Peter felt as if he had known them for years; and after supper, an
older brother passed Peter a cigar and up-stairs in the living-room
talked in a casually friendly way on baseball, prize-fighting, the big
war, the latest movies. One of Sarah's sisters played the piano and
Sarah and another sister sang. Other young men called. Peter was a
good listener until a little brother of Sarah's peeked in and finally
came over by Peter and shyly said:
"Won't you tell something, captain, about the big ocean?"
Peter told them a little about the big ocean, as he knew it, and
stopped. He himself wanted to hear more songs--"Annie Laurie," or "The
_Robert E. Lee_," or something like them--but they asked him to keep
on. He told more--he would have told them more, in the first place,
but he had no idea shore-going people, especially girls, cared much for
rough fishing life. In a little while he was warmed up and going good.
When he stopped this time they were all bent over and staring at him.
The big brother straightened up first and pulled out his watch and said:
"What d'y'know--I'm chairman o' the house committee down to the club,
and we had a meeting scheduled for an hour and a half ago!"
Sarah sang "Asthore" and "Mother Machree" and there was more playing.
And they all had ice-cream and cake, and the older brother gave Peter a
great grip of the hand going; and they all asked him to call again soon
and waved him good night from the doorway. And Peter, walking up the
street, began to think that maybe he had been sticking round his
sister's too much nights.
Mrs. Pentle called into the shipping-room on a tour of inspection the
next day again and regularly after that; and regularly Peter rode home
with Sarah and one night he asked her if she would go to the theatre
with him. She looked so pleased that he was sorry he hadn't got his
courage up sooner.
It was to a musical show that Peter took Sarah. All the time he was
there he felt uncomfortable--some of the people on the stage cert'nly
did carry some things pretty far.
However, it was over, and Peter suggested supper at a restaurant.
Peter knew nothing of the night restaurants of the city. He picked out
one he saw advertised in the theatre programme and because it also
happened to be on the way to their trolley-line. He felt Sarah shrink
a little going in; and after he was inside and seated he wished he had
paid more attention to her shrinking. But he had been too excited to
notice. He had been lashed to the wheel of his vessel steering her in
a living gale and not half so much excited as he was now. It wasn't
just the kind of place, maybe, to bring a young girl; but they were in
there now and he guessed they would weather whatever happened. He
asked Sarah if she would have a glass of beer or anything like that.
He didn't want her to think him too slow. He was pleased when she said
no.
What would she have to eat? Sarah picked up the card. "Suppose we try
a tarble dote?" she said.
"All right. Where is it?"
Sarah pointed it out: