"Yes; I'm Nan," she replied, "and you're Donald McKaye. You're a man
now, but somehow you haven't changed greatly."
"It's fine to meet you again, Nan." He shook her hand
enthusiastically.
She smiled a little sadly.
"I saw you at colors last night, Donald. When your flag came down and
the gun was fired, I knew you'd remembered."
"Were you glad?" he demanded, and immediately wondered why he had
asked such a childish question.
"Yes, I was, Donald. It has been a long time since--since--the gun has
been fired--for me. So long since we were children, Donald."
"You weren't at the barbecue yesterday. I missed you and Caleb. You
two are very old friends of mine, Nan. Was it quite loyal of you to
stay home?"
"You're the only person that missed us, Donald," she answered, with
just the suspicion of a tremor in her sweet voice. "But, then, we are
accustomed to being left out of things."
He made no effort to formulate an answer to this. Truth does not
require an answer. Yet he was sensible of a distinct feeling of
sympathy for her, and, manlike, he decided to change the topic of
conversation.
"You have neighbors on the Sawdust Pile, Nan."
"Yes. They came when The Laird was in Europe."
"They would never have dared it had he been in Port Agnew. I'm
surprised that Andrew Daney permitted it. I had thought of him as a
man of courage, but, strange to say, these people outgamed him."
"They didn't outgame him, Donald. He just didn't care. I--I--fancy he
concluded they would make agreeable neighbors--for me."
"I'm sorry, Nan. However, I'm the new laird of Tyee, and I've come
down to stage an eviction. I didn't know of this state of affairs
until this morning."
She smiled a little wistfully and bitterly.
"I had flattered myself, Donald, you had called to visit your old
friends instead. When you waved at me last night, I--oh, you can't
realize how happy it made me to know that _you_ had noticed me--that
you really were big enough to be the big man of Port Agnew. And I
thought perhaps you would come because of that."
He smiled tolerantly upon her.
"Something has occurred to make you bitter, Nan. You're not like the
girl I used to know before I went away to school. If it will help to
restore me to your previous good opinion, however, please believe that
when I waved at you last night, simultaneously I made up my mind to
make an early visit to the Sawdust Pile. The discovery that these
cattle have intruded upon you and your old father, because you were
unable to defend yourselves and no one in Port Agnew would defend you,
merely hastened my visit. I couldn't in decency come any earlier;
could I, Nan? It's just half after eight. And if you're going to keep
me standing at the gate, as if I were a sewing-machine agent instead
of a very old friend, I _may_ conclude to take offense and regret that
I called."
"Oh, I'm sorry! Please forgive me, Donald. I'm so much alone--so very
lonely--I suppose I grow suspicious of people and their motives."
"Say no more about it, Nan. May I come in, then, to greet Caleb and
your husband?"
"Father is in the house. I'll call him out, Donald. As for my
husband--" She hesitated, glanced out across the bight, and then
resolutely faced him. "You cannot have heard all of the town gossip,
then?"
"I hadn't even heard of your marriage. The first I knew of it was when
his little nibs here hailed me, and asked me if I was his father.
Then he informed me he was your boy. He's a lovely child, Nan, and I
have been the recipient of some of his extremely moist kisses."
She realized that he was too courteous to ask whether her husband was
dead or if there had been a divorce.
"I'm rather glad you haven't heard, Donald," she replied evenly. "I
much prefer to tell you myself; then you will understand why I cannot
invite you into our house, and why you must not be seen talking to me
here at the gate. I am not married. I have never been married. My
baby's name is--Brent, and I call him Donald, after the only male
human being that has ever been truly kind to my father and me."
"Ah," said Donald quietly, "so that's why he misses his father and
appears to want one so very much."
She gazed forlornly out to sea and answered with a brief nod.
Seemingly she had long since ceased to be tragic over her pitiful
tragedy.
"Well," he replied philosophically, "life is quite filled with a
number of things, and some of them make for great unhappiness." He
stooped and lifted the baby in his great arms. "You're named after me,
sonny; so I think I'll try to fill the gap and make you happy. Do you
mind, Nan, if I try my hand at foster-fathering? I like children. This
little man starts life under a handicap, but I'll see to it that he
gets his chance in life--far from Port Agnew, if you desire." She
closed her eyes in sudden pain and did not answer. "And whatever your
opinion on the matter may be, Nan," he went on, "even had I known
yesterday of your sorrow, I should have called to-day just the same."
"You call it my 'sorrow!'" she burst forth passionately. "Others call
it my trouble--my sin--my disgrace."
"And what does Caleb call it, Nan?"
"He doesn't call it, Donald. It hasn't appeared to make any difference
with him. I'm still--his little girl."
"Well, I cannot regard you as anything but a little girl--the same
little girl that used to help Caleb and me sail the sloop. I don't
wish to know anything about your sorrow, or your trouble, or your
disgrace, or your sin, or whatever folks may choose to call it. I just
want you to know that I know that you're a good woman, and when the
spirit moves me--which will be frequently, now that I have this young
man to look after--I shall converse with you at your front gate and
visit you and your decent old father in this little house, and be
damned to those that decry it. I am the young laird of Tyee. My father
raised me to be a gentleman, and, by the gods, I'll be one! Now, Nan,
take the boy and go in the house, because I see a rascally negro in
the doorway of that shack yonder, and I have a matter to discuss with
him. Is that white woman his consort?"
Nan nodded again. She could not trust herself to speak, for her heart
was full to overflowing.
"Come here--you!" Donald called to the negro. The fellow slouched
forth defiantly. He was a giant mulatto, and his freckled face wore an
evil and contemptuous grin.
"I'm Donald McKaye," Donald informed him. "I'm the new laird of Tyee.
I want you and that woman to pack up and leave."
"How soon, boss?"
"Immediately." Anticipating a refusal, Donald stepped closer to the
mulatto and looked him sternly in the eye.
"We-ll, is dat so?" the yellow rascal drawled. "So youh-all's de new
la'rd, eh? Well, ah'm de king o' de Sawdust Pile, an' mah house is mah
castle. Git dat, Mistah La'rd?"
Donald turned toward Nan.
"I'm going to have trouble here, Nan. Please go in the house."
"Proceed," she replied simply. "I have a most unwomanly and unladylike
desire to see that beast manhandled."
Donald turned, in time to go under a sizzling right-hand blow from the
mulatto and come up with a right uppercut to the ugly, freckled face
and a left rip to the mulatto's midriff. The fellow grunted, and a
spasm of pain crossed his countenance. "You yellow dog!" Donald
muttered, and flattened his nose far flatter than his mammy had ever
wiped it. The enemy promptly backed away and covered; a hearty thump
in the solar plexus made him uncover, and under a rain of blows on the
chin and jaw, he sprawled unconscious on the ground.
Donald left him lying there and stepped to the door of the shack. The
frightened drab within spat curses at him.
"Pack and go!" he ordered. "Within the hour, I'm going to purge the
Sawdust Pile with fire; if you stay in the house, you'll burn with
it."
She was ready in ten minutes. Three more of her kind occupying an
adjacent shack begged to be allowed time in which to load their
personal possessions in an express-wagon. The four Greeks were just
about to set out for a day's fishing, but, having witnessed the defeat
of the mulatto bully, the fever of the hegira seized them also. They
loaded their effects in the fishing-launch, and chugged away up river
to Darrow, crying curses upon the young laird of Tyee and promising
reprisal.
Donald waited until the last of the refugees had departed before
setting fire to the shacks. Then he stood by old Caleb Brent's house,
a circle of filled buckets around him, and watched in case the wind
should suddenly shift and shower sparks upon the roof. In half an hour
the Sawdust Pile had reverted to its old status and a throng of
curious townspeople who, attracted by the flames and smoke, had
clustered outside Caleb Brent's gate to watch Donald at work, finally
despaired of particulars and scattered when they saw Donald and Nan
Brent enter the house.
Caleb Brent, looking twenty years older than when Donald had seen him
last, sat in an easy chair by the window, gazing with lack-luster eyes
out across the bight. He was hopelessly crippled with rheumatism, and
his sea-blue eyes still held the same lost-dog wistfulness.
"Hello, Caleb!" Donald greeted him cordially. "I've just cleaned up
the Sawdust Pile for you. You're back in undisputed possession again."
He shook hands with old Caleb and sat down in a chair which Nan drew
up for him.
"It's good of you to call, Mr. Donald," the old man piped. "But isn't
that just like him, Nan?" he demanded. "Many's the day--aye, and the
night, too, for of late the nights have been bad here--we've thought
of you, sir, and wished you were back in Port Agnew. We knew what
would happen to those scoundrels when Mr. Donald got around to it."
And he laughed the asthmatic, contented chuckle of the aged as Nan
related briefly the story of Donald's recent activities.
Their conversation which followed was mostly of a reminiscent
character--recollections of boat-races in the bight, fishing
excursions off the coast, clambakes, hew boats, a dog which Donald had
given Nan when he left for prep school and which had since died of old
age. And all the while Nan Brent's child stood by Donald's knee,
gazing up at him adoringly.
During a lull in the conversation, he created some slight
embarrassment by reiterating his belief that this strange man must be
his father, and appealed to his mother for verification of his
suspicions.
Poor child! His baby mind had but lately grasped the fact that for him
there was something missing in the scheme of life, and, to silence his
persistent questioning, Nan had told him that some day his father
would come to see them; whereupon, with the calm faith of innocence,
he had posted himself at the front gate, to be in position to receive
this beloved missing one when the latter should appear. Donald
skilfully diverted the child's mind from this all-consuming topic by
sliding the boy down to his foot and permitting him to swing gently
there.
Presently Nan excused herself, for the purpose of looking after the
embers of Donald's recent raid. The instant the door closed behind
her, old Caleb Brent looked across at his visitor.
"You've heard--of course, Mr. Donald?" he queried, with a slight
inclination of his head toward the door through which his daughter had
disappeared.
"Yes, Caleb. Misfortune comes in various guises."
"I would I could die," the pitiful old fellow whispered. "I will,
soon, but, oh, what will my poor darling do then, Mr. Donald? After we
first came here, I was that prosperous, sir, you wouldn't believe it.
I gave Nan a good schooling, piano lessons, and fine dresses. We lived
well, and yet we put by a thousand dollars in six years. But that's
gone now, what with the expenses when the baby came, and my sickness
that's prevented me from working. Thank God, sir, I have my
three-quarter pay. It isn't much, but we're rent-free, and fuel costs
us nothing, what with driftwood and the waste from Darrow that comes
down the river. Nan has a bit of a kitchen-garden and a few
chickens--so we make out. But when I die, my navy-pay stops."
He paused, too profoundly moved by consideration of the destitution
that would face Nan and her nameless boy to voice the situation in
words. But he looked up at Donald McKaye, and the latter saw again
that wistful look in his sea-blue eyes--the dumb pleading of a kind
old lost dog. He thought of the thirty-eight-foot sloop old Caleb had
built him--a thing of beauty and wondrously seaworthy; or the sense of
obligation which had caused old Brent to make of the task a labor of
love; of the long, lazy, happy days when, with Caleb and Nan for his
crew, he had raced out of the bight twenty miles to sea and back
again, for the sheer delight of driving his lee rail under until Nan
cried out in apprehension.
Poor, sweet, sad Nan Brent! Donald had known her through so many years
of gentleness and innocence--and she had come to this! He was consumed
with pity for her. She had fallen, but--there were depths to which
destitution and desperation might still drive her, just as there were
heights to which she might climb again if some half-man would but give
her a helping hand.
"Do you know the man, Caleb?" he demanded suddenly.
"No, I do not. I have never seen him. Nan wrote me when they were
married, and told me his name, of course."
"Then there _was_ a marriage, Caleb?"
"So Nan wrote me."
"Ah! Has Nan a marriage certificate?"
"I have never seen it. Seems their marriage wasn't legal. The name he
gave wasn't his own; he was a bigamist."
"Then Nan knows his real name."
"Yes; when she learned that, she came home."
"But why didn't she prosecute him, Caleb? She owed that to herself and
the child--- to her good name and"
"She had her reasons, lad."
"But you should have prosecuted the scoundrel, Caleb."
"I had no money for lawyers. I knew I was going to need it all for Nan
and her child. And I thought her reasons sufficient, Donald. She said
it would all come out right in the end. Maybe it will."
"Do you mean she knowingly accepted the inevitable disgrace when she
might have--have--" He wanted to add, "proved herself virtuous," but,
somehow, the words would not come. They didn't appear to him to be
quite fair to Nan.
The old man nodded.
"Of course we haven't told this to anybody else," he hastened to add.
"'Twould have been useless. They'd have thought it a lie."
"Yes, Caleb--a particularly clumsy and stupid lie."
Caleb Brent looked up suddenly and searched, with an alert and wistful
glance, the face of the young laird of Tyee.
"But you do not think so, do you?" he pleaded.
"Certainly not, Caleb, If Nan told you that, then she told you the
truth."
"Thank you, lad."
"Poor old Caleb," Donald soliloquized, "you find it hard to believe it
yourself, don't you? And it does sound fishy!"
"I don't believe it's Nan's fault," Donald found himself saying next.
"She was always a good girl, and I can't look at her now and conceive
her as anything but virtuous and womanly. I'll always be a good friend
of hers, Caleb. I'll stand back of her and see that she gets a square
deal--she and her son. When you're gone, she can leave Port Agnew for
some city where she isn't known, and as 'Mrs. Brent' she can engage in
some self-supporting business. It always struck me that Nan had a
voice."
"She has, Mr. Donald. They had grand opera in Seattle, and I sent her
up there to hear it and having a singing teacher hear her sing 'Alice,
Where Art Thou.' He said she'd be earning a thousand dollars a night
in five years, Mr. Donald, if somebody in New York could train her.
That was the time," he concluded, "that she met _him!_ He was rich
and, I suppose, full of fine graces; he promised her a career if she'd
marry him, and so he dazzled the child--she was only eighteen--and
she went to San Francisco with him. She says there was some sort of
marriage, but he gave her no such gift as I gave her mother--a
marriage certificate. She wrote me she was happy, and asked me to
forgive her the lack of confidence in not advising with me--and of
course I forgave her, Mr. Donald. But in three months he left her, and
one night the door yonder opened and Nan come in and put her arms
round my neck and held me tight, with never a tear--so I knew she'd
cried her fill long since and was in trouble." He paused several
seconds, then added, "Her mother was an admiral's daughter--and she
married me!" He appeared to suggest this latter as a complete
explanation of woman's frailty.
"The world is small, but it is sufficiently large to hide a girl from
the Sawdust Pile of Port Agnew. Of course, Nan cannot leave you now,
but when you leave her, Caleb, I'll finance her for her career. Please
do not worry about it."
"I'm like Nan, sir," he murmured. "I'm beyond tears, or I'd weep, Mr.
Donald. God will reward you, sir. I can't begin to thank you."
"I'm glad of that. By the way, who is towing the garbage-barge to sea
nowadays?"
"I don't know, sir. Mr. Daney hired somebody else and his boat when I
had to quit because of my sciatica."
"Hereafter, we'll use your boat, Caleb, and engage a man to operate
it. The rental will be ten dollars per trip, two trips a week, eighty
dollars a month. Cheap enough; so don't think it's charity. Here's the
first month's rental in advance. I'm going to run along now, Caleb,
but I'll look in from time to time, and if you should need me in the
interim, send for me."
He kissed little Don Brent, who set up a prodigious shriek at the
prospect of desertion and brought his mother fluttering into the room.
He watched her soothe the youngster and then asked:
"Nan, where do you keep the arnica now? I cut my knuckles on that
yellow rascal."
She raised a sadly smiling face to his.
"Where would the arnica be--if we had any, Donald?" she demanded.
"Where it used to be, I suppose. Up on that shelf, inside the basement
of that funny old half-portion grandfather's clock and just out of
reach of the pendulum."
"You do remember, don't you? But it's all gone so many years ago,
Donald. We haven't had a boy around to visit us since you left Port
Agnew, you know. I'll put some tincture of iodine on your knuckles,
however."
"Do, please, Nan."
A little later, he said:
"Do you remember, Nan, the day I stuck my finger into the cage of old
Mrs. Biddle's South American parrot to coddle the brute and he all but
chewed it off?"
She nodded.
"And you came straight here to have it attended to, instead of going
to a doctor."
"You wept when you saw my mangled digit. Remember, Nan? Strange how
that scene persists in my memory! You were so sweetly sympathetic I
was quite ashamed of myself."
"That's because you always were the sweetest boy in the world and I
was only the garbage-man's daughter," she whispered. "There's a
ridiculous song about the garbage-man's daughter. I heard it once, in
vaudeville--in San Francisco."
"If I come over some evening soon, will you sing for me, Nan?"
"I never sing any more, Don."
"Nobody but you can ever sing 'Carry Me Back to Old Virginy' for me."
"Then I shall sing it, Don."
"Thank you, Nan."
She completed the anointing of his battle-scarred knuckles with
iodine, and, for a moment, she held his hand, examining critically an
old ragged white scar on the index-finger of his right hand. And quite
suddenly, to his profound amazement, she bent her head and swiftly
implanted upon that old scar a kiss so light, so humble, so benignant,
so pregnant of adoration and gratitude that he stood before her
confused and inquiring.
"Such a strong, useful big hand!" she whispered. "It has been raised
in defense of the sanctity of my home--and until you came there was
'none so poor to do me reverence.'"
He looked at her with sudden, new interest. Her action had almost
startled him. As their eyes held each other, he was aware, with a
force that was almost a shock, that Nan Brent was a most unusual
woman. She was beautiful; yet her physical beauty formed the least
part of her attractiveness, perfect as that beauty was. Instinctively,
Donald visualized her as a woman with brains, character, nobility of
soul; there was that in her eyes, in the honesty and understanding
with which they looked into his, that compelled him, in that instant,
to accept without reservation and for all time the lame and halting
explanation of her predicament he had recently heard from her father's
lips. He longed to tell her so. Instead, he flushed boyishly and said,
quite impersonally:
"Yes; you're beautiful as women go, but that's not the right word to
express you. Physically, you might be very homely, but if you were
still Nan Brent you would be sweet and compelling. You remind me of a
Catholic chapel; there's always one little light within that never
goes out, you know. So that makes you more than beautiful. Shall I
say--glorious?"
She smiled at him with her wistful, sea-blue eyes--a smile tender,
maternal, all-comprehending. She knew he was not seeking to flatter
her, that the wiles, the Artifices, the pretty speeches of the
polished man of the world were quite beyond him.
"Still the same old primitive pal," she murmured softly; "still
thinking straight, talking straight, acting straight, and--dare I say
it, Donald?--seeing straight. I repeat, you always were the sweetest
boy in the world--and there is still so much of the little boy about
you." Her hand fluttered up and rested lightly on his arm. "I'll not
forget this day, my dear friend."
It was characteristic of him that, having said that which was
uppermost in his mind, he should remember his manners and thank her
for dressing his knuckles. Then he extended his hand in farewell.
"When you come again, Donald," she pleaded, as he took her hand, "will
you please bring me some books? They're all that can keep me sane--and
I do not go to the public library any more. I have to run the gantlet
of so many curious eyes."
"How long is it since you have been away from the Sawdust Pile?"
"Since before my baby came."
He was silent a minute, pondering this. Since old Caleb had become
house-ridden, then, she had been, without books. He nodded assent to
her request.
"If I do not say very much, you will understand, nevertheless, how
grateful I am," she continued. "To-day, the sun has shone. Whatever
your thoughts may have been, Donald, you controlled your face and you
were decent enough not to say, 'Poor Nan.'"
He had no answer to that. He was conscious only of standing helpless
in the midst of a terrible tragedy. His heart ached with pity for her,
and just for old sake's sake, for a tender sentiment for lost youth
and lost happiness of the old comradely days when she had been
Cinderella and he the prince, he wished that he might take her in a
fraternal embrace and let her cry out on his breast the agony that
gnawed at her heart like a worm in an apple. But it was against his
code to indicate to her by word or action that she was less worthy
than other women and hence to be pitied, for it seemed to him that her
burden was already sufficient.
"Let me know if those people return to annoy you, Nan," was all he
said. Then they shook hands very formally, and the young laird of Tyee
returned to the mill-office to report to Andrew Daney that the Sawdust
Pile had been cleaned out, but that, for the present at least, they
would get along with the old drying-yard.
Somehow, the day came to an end, and he went home with tumult in his
soul.