TYKE GRIMSHAW AND HIS AFFAIRS
"I beg your pardon," Drew said, bowing low, "but can I be of any
further assistance?"
The girl looked up at him a little doubtfully, but what she saw in his
frank brown eyes must have reassured her, for she spoke without
hesitation.
"You are very kind," she answered, "but I fear it is too late. I had
some letters in my hand, and when I slipped they went into the water.
I'm afraid you can't get them."
Mentally resolving to dive for them if such a procedure became
necessary, Drew stepped upon the stringpiece of the pier beside her and
looked down.
She gave a joyous exclamation as she saw the package lying in the
bottom of a small boat that floated at the stern of a steamer moored to
the pier.
"Oh, there they are!" she cried delightedly. "How lucky!" Then her
face changed. "But after all it is going to be hard to get them," she
added. "The pier is high and there don't seem to be any cleats here to
climb down by."
"Easiest thing in the world," returned Drew confidently. "I'll go
aboard the steamer, haul the boat up to the stern, and drop into it."
"But the stern is so very high," she said, measuring it with her eye.
"That doesn't matter," he replied. "If you'll just wait here, I'll go
aboard and be back with the letters before you know it." He glanced
around swiftly. "I don't think that fellow will trouble you again."
"I am not at all afraid of that man. He only startled me for the
moment. But I hate to put you to so much trouble," she added, looking
at him shyly.
"It will be a pleasure," protested Drew, returning her look with
another from which he tried to exclude any undue warmth.
It is to be feared that he was not altogether successful, judging from
the faint flush that rose in her cheek as she dropped her gaze before
his.
His mind awhirl, the young man hurried up to the gangway of the steamer
where he found one of the officers. He briefly explained that he
wanted to secure a package that a young lady had dropped into the boat
lying astern, and the officer, with an appreciative grin, readily
granted permission to him to go aboard.
Drew hurried to the stern, which, as the steamer had discharged her
cargo, rose fully twenty feet from the water. He hauled in the boat
until it lay directly beneath. Then he gathered up the slack of the
painter and wound it about a cleat until it was taut. This done, he
dropped over the rail and let himself down by the rope until his feet
touched the thwart of the tender.
He worked his way aft carefully, and picking up the package placed it
in his breast pocket. Then he caught hold of the rope and climbed up,
hand over hand.
It was unaccustomed work for a landsman, but Drew was supple and
athletic and he mounted rapidly. Not for a fortune would he have
faltered with those hazel eyes fixed upon him. With the girl watching
him, he felt as though he could have climbed to the top of the
Woolworth Building.
It was his misfortune that he could not see the look of admiration in
her eyes as they followed his movements--a look, however, which by the
exercise of maidenly repression she had changed to one of mere
gratitude when at last, breathing a little quickly, he approached her
with the packet he had recovered in his hand.
"Oh!" she exclaimed, taking it eagerly and clasping it tightly, "how
very good of you to take all that trouble! I don't know how to thank
you enough."
"It was no trouble at all," Drew responded. "I count myself lucky to
have happened along just when you needed me."
His speech won him a radiant smile, and he promptly decided that the
dimple in her cheek was not merely distracting. It was divine!
There was a moment of embarrassed silence. The young man was wild to
pursue the conversation. But he was too much of a gentleman to presume
on the service he had rendered, and he knew that he should lift his hat
and depart.
One feeble resource was left by which he might reconcile duty with
desire.
"It's very hard getting about on this crowded pier," he ventured, "and
you see there are some rough characters around. You might perhaps like
to have me see you safely to the street when you are ready to go?"
She hesitated for a moment, her own inclination evidently battling with
convention. But convention won.
"I think not," she said, flashing him a smile that softened her refusal
and at the same time completed his undoing. "You see it is broad
daylight and I am perfectly safe. Thank you for the offer though, and
thank you again for what you have done for me."
It was dismissal, none the less final because it was gracious, and Drew
yielded to the inevitable.
He glanced back once or twice, assuring himself that it was his plain
duty to keep her in sight in order to see that nothing happened to her.
He found himself wishing that she would drop the letters overboard
again--that the one-eyed man would reappear--that something would
occur, however slight, to call him to her side once more. It was with
a thrill of exultation that he saw her approach the gangplank of the
_Normandy_.
Then, for a moment, at least, he was sure he was going to have his
wish. He spied the one-eyed man coming into view from behind a heap of
freight and approach the boarding-plank. He spoke to the girl and she
halted.
Drew was on the point of darting back to the girl's rescue. But the
seaman's attitude was respectful, and it seemed that what he said was
not offensive. At least, the girl listened attentively, nodded when
the man had finished speaking, and as the latter fell back she tripped
lightly aboard the _Normandy_, and so disappeared.
Drew's curiosity was so great that he might have lingered until the
girl came ashore again, but the one-eyed man was coming up the dock and
the young fellow was cooler now and felt that it would not be the part
of wisdom to have another altercation with the rough looking stranger.
Perhaps, after all, the one-eyed man had merely spoken to the girl to
ask pardon for having previously startled her.
"Well," Drew said to himself, "Peters knows her and can tell me all
about her. Anyhow I know her name and I'll find out where she lives if
I have to search New York from end to end."
For on the envelope that had lain uppermost when he had picked up the
package from the grating of the tender, he had seen the name, "Ruth
Adams." The address had escaped him in that momentary glance, and
although he could have easily repaired the omission while he was
passing back along the steamer's deck, his instincts revolted at
anything that looked like prying.
But there was nothing in his code that forbade his using every
legitimate means of searching her out and securing an introduction in
the way dictated by the approved forms, and he promised himself that
the episode should not end here.
"Hope springs eternal in the human breast," especially when that breast
is a youthful one, and Allen Drew's thoughts spun a dozen rainbow
visions as he made his way back to the shop whose insistent call he had
for the last hour put aside. He walked automatically and only that
sixth sense peculiar to city dwellers prevented his being run down more
than once. But the objurgations of startled drivers as they brought up
their vehicles with a jerk bothered him not a whit. His physical
presence was on South Street but his real self was on the crowded pier
where he had left Ruth Adams.
Still moving on mechanically, he entered the door of the chandlery
shop, over which a signboard, dingy with age, announced that "T.
Grimshaw" was the proprietor. He nodded absently in response to the
salutations of Sam, the negro porter, and Winters, the junior clerk,
and sat down at his desk.
The building that housed the chandlery shop was a very old one, dating
back to a time previous to the Revolution. When it was erected the
Boston "Tea Party" was still in the future. If its old walls could
have spoken they might have told of the time when almost all New York
was housed below Chambers Street; when the "Bouwerie," free from its
later malodorous associations, was a winding country lane where lads
and lasses carried on their courtships in the long summer evenings;
when Cherry Hill, now notorious for its fights and factions, was the
abode of the city's wealth and fashion; when Collect Pond, on whose
site the Tombs now stands, was the skating center where New York's
belles and beaux disported themselves; when merry parties picnicked in
the woods and sylvan glades of Fourteenth Street.
Those same walls, looking across the East River, had seen the prison
ship _Jersey_, in whose foul and festering holds had died so many
patriots. And they had shaken to the salvos of artillery that greeted
Washington, when, at the end of the Revolutionary War, he had landed at
the Battery and had gone in pomp to Fraunce's Tavern for a farewell
dinner to his officers.
In its day it had been a stout and notable building, and even now it
might be good for another hundred years. But the inexorable march of
progress and the worth of the land on which it stood had sealed its
doom. Grimshaw had occupied it for twenty years, but when he sought to
renew his lease he had been told that no renewal would be granted. He
could still occupy the building and pay the rent from month to month.
But he now held possession only on sufferance, and it was distinctly
understood that he might be called upon to vacate at any time on a few
days' notice.
But "threatened men live long," and it was beginning to look as though
the same might be said of the old building. For two years the months
had come and gone without any hint of change, and Tyke had settled down
in the belief that the building would last as long as he did. After
that it did not matter. He had no kith or kin to whom to leave his
business.
He was a grim and grizzled old fellow, well on in his sixties. In his
earlier days he had been a master mariner, and had sailed all the Seven
Seas. He had rounded the Horn a dozen times; had scudded with reefed
topsails in the "roaring forties"; had lost two fingers of his left
hand in a fight with Malay pirates; had battled with waterspouts,
tornadoes and typhoons; had harpooned whales in the Arctic; had lost a
ship by fire, and been shipwrecked twice; and from these combats with
men and nature he had emerged as tough and hardy as a pine knot.
The profits of a notable whaling expedition from which he had returned
with the tanks filled to bursting, barrels crowded on the deck, and the
very scuppers running oil, together with a tidy little inheritance that
fell to him about the same time, had enabled him to buy the chandlery
shop from its former proprietor and settle down to spend the rest of
his life ashore and yet in sight and scent of salt water.
How he had gained the name of "Tyke," by which everybody called him,
nobody knew. He himself never volunteered to tell, and in all his
bills and accounts used only the initial "T." Some of his employees
favored Tyrus, others Titus. One in a wild flight of fancy suggested
Ticonderoga. But the mystery remained unsolved, and, after all, as the
checks that bore the scrawl, "T. Grimshaw," were promptly honored at
the bank, it did not matter.
He was not what could be called an enterprising business man and there
were many houses in his line that made a more pretentious appearance,
carried a larger stock, and had a much more extensive trade. But he
lived frugally, discounted his bills, and had such a broad acquaintance
among seafaring men that each year's end showed a neat profit on his
books.
His store force was modest, being only three in number. Allen Drew was
a sort of general manager, and Tyke was growing more and more into the
habit of leaving the conduct of the business to him. Winters was the
junior clerk. He had come direct from high school and was now in his
second year of service. Then there was Sam, the colored porter and man
of all work, whose last name was as much a mystery as Grimshaw's first.
Drew took up some papers that had been laid on his desk during his
absence, and tried to fix his mind upon them. He was dimly aware that
somebody had entered the store door, had spoken to Winters, and that
the junior clerk had shown the visitor into Grimshaw's private office.
But Allen Drew's thoughts were too far afield to be caught by this
incident, or to become easily concentrated upon humdrum business
affairs. He laid down the papers, and sighed.
He began to day-dream again. In the whole category of feminine names
was there ever one so pretty as Ruth? And surely never did a girl, in
both form and feature, so fit the name.
Suddenly he realized that the door of the private office was open and
that Grimshaw's head was thrust out.
"Hey! Come here a minute, Allen," he called.
There was a note of trouble in the old man's voice, and Tyke's face
expressed some strong emotion. Alert on the instant, Drew rose to obey
his employer's summons.