LOOKING FOR IDA MAY
The _Seamew_ was put in commission in a very few days. Tunis Latham
had many friends in and about Big Wreck Cove, and he had little
difficulty in picking up a cargo, which was loaded right at the
port.
As for the schooner's crew, Tunis could have filled every billet
four times over had he so desired. But he had already picked his
crew with some care. Mason Chapin was mate, a perfectly capable
navigator who might have used his ticket to get a berth on a much
larger craft than the _Seamew_. But he had an invalid wife and
wished only to leave home on brief voyages. Johnny Lark was shipped
as cook, with a Portygee boy, Tony, to help him.
Forward, Horace Newbegin served as boatswain and Orion Latham was a
sort of supercargo and general handy man. He was Tunis' cousin,
several times removed. There were four Portygees to make up the
company, a full crew for a sailing vessel of the tonnage of the
_Seamew_. Yet every man was needed in handling her lofty canvas and
in loading and unloading freight.
With a well-stowed cargo below deck the schooner sailed even better
than she had in ballast. She slipped out of the cove through the
rather tortuous channel like an eel through the meshes of a broken
trap. In the dawn, and with a fresh outside breeze just ruffling the
sea into whitecaps, they broke out her upper sails and caught the
very last breath of the gale the canvas would draw.
Cap'n Ira, and even Prudence, had got up before daybreak to see the
schooner pass. They watched her, turn and turn about at the
spyglass, till she was blotted out by the distant fog bank.
"I swan," said the old man, "when she heaves into view again I hope
she'll have Ida May Bostwick aboard! That is what _I_ hope."
"The dear girl!" breathed Prudence.
It never crossed their simple minds that Ida May Bostwick might see
this chance they offered her in a different light from that in which
they looked at it. The old couple made their innocent plans for the
welcoming of the "grandniece," positive that a happy future was in
store for both Ida May and themselves.
In Tunis Latham's mind there was more uncertainty regarding the
mysterious Ida May Bostwick than there was in the minds of Cap'n
Ira and Prudence. Whenever he considered his "errand of mercy" the
captain of the _Seamew_ had a flash of that girl with the violet
eyes who worked in the restaurant on Scollay Square. The Balls did
not know where Ida May worked. Prudence only had obtained the
lodging-house address of her young relative from Annabell Coffin,
"she who was a Cuttle."
Of course, it was merely a faint and tenuous possibility that Ida
May was a waitress. Still fainter was the chance that she would
prove to be the girl with the violet eyes that Tunis Latham
remembered so distinctly. The Balls knew that she worked in a store,
and all stores were the same to them. There might be a few hundred
thousand other girls in Boston besides that particular girl whom he
had saved from falling on the square.
Nevertheless, when the _Seamew_ had unloaded and been warped to a
berth in an outer tier of small craft to await her turn to load
barrels and box shooks for a concern at Paulmouth, Captain Tunis
started up into the city. He knew his way about Boston as well as
any one not a native, and his first objective point was that
restaurant on Scollay Square.
It was the dogwatch when Tunis Latham entered the eating place, but
the dogwatch here was not at the same time of day as aboard ship.
The captain's first startled glance about the room assured him that
there was not a girl employee in sight, not even at the cashier's
desk, and very few customers.
He ordered a late but hearty breakfast of the unshaven waiter in
half-spoiled apron and coat who lounged over his table.
"I thought they used to have girl waiters in this place?" the
captain said when the man brought the tableware and glass of water.
"On from 'leven till eight. You're too early if you got a jane in
your eye, bo," was the ribald reply. "The boss is a good guy." He
sneered in the direction of the black-haired, coarse-looking man in
the cashier's cage. "He hires them girls for five dollars less a
week than he'd have to pay union waiters, and he asks no questions."
He closed his recital with a wink so full of meaning that Tunis'
palm itched to slap him.
But the guest's wind-bitten face betrayed no confusion nor further
interest. The waiter judged he had mistaken his man, after all, and
sheered off until the ordered viands were ready at the slide.
He hesitated to question that coarse man, even to mention Ida May
Bostwick's name to him. The waiter had misinterpreted his first
remark about the waitresses. The proprietor might hold any question
he asked regarding Ida May against the record of the violet-eyed
girl, if by any wild possibility that should be her name. There was
time still, he thought, to find her at her lodgings before she
started for the restaurant, if she worked here.
So Tunis paid his check and strode forth. The lodging of Ida May
Bostwick was not in this neighborhood, of course, not even in the
West End. In fact, it was in the South End, in one of those streets
running more or less parallel to lower Shawmut Avenue. He took a car
in the subway and got off near the address Prudence Ball had given
him.
To the mind of the Cape man, used as he was to the open spaces of
both sea and land, these dingy blocks of brick houses, three and
four stories in height, all quite alike in smoke and squalor and
even in the pattern of the net curtains at their parlor windows,
made as dreary a picture as he had ever imagined. He thought of that
pale, slender, violet-eyed girl coming back to this ugly block at
night, after long hours at the restaurant, having to look forward to
nothing more beautiful, in all probability, inside the house where
she lodged. Who would not be glad, overjoyed, indeed, to get away
from such an environment?
He found the number. The house was no worse and no better than its
neighbors. By stains on the blistered bricks beside the door frame
he gathered that scraps of paper advertising empty rooms had often
been pasted there. He rang the bell at the top of the rail-guarded
steps. After a time he rang again.
He could hear the bell jangle somewhere in a distant part of the
house. Nobody came in answer to his summons, not even after his
third ring. At length the creaking, iron-barred gate in the area
warned him that the main door at which he rang was not in use at
that hour of the day. A woman in a house dress as ugly as the street
itself, and with untidy gray hair and a bar of smut on her cheek,
craned her neck from this opening to look up at him.
"There's no use your ringing. I ain't got an empty room, young man,"
she announced.
He descended spryly into the area before she could close the gate.
Her near-sighted scowl misjudged him again, for she added:
"Nor I don't want to buy anything."
"One moment, ma'am," he cried. "I have nothing for sale. I'd like to
see somebody who lodges here."
"Who?" asked the woman, peering at him curiously.
"Miss Bostwick."
"You'll have to come this evening."
"Oh! She has--has gone to work already?"
"My stars! Do you know what time it is, young man?" demanded the
lodging-house keeper. "It's after ten o'clock."
Already Tunis Latham's hopes began to sink.
"Then--then she goes to work early?"
"Lemme tell you, them that works for Hoskin & Marl have to show up
by eight or they lose their jobs."
"And she will not be in until evening?" he repeated.
"'Bout seven. She gets her supper before she comes home. I don't
give meals."
"Where is this place she works at?" asked the captain of the
_Seamew_, with a suppressed sigh.
"Guess you are a stranger in town, aren't you?" said the curious
landlady. "I thought everybody knew Hoskin & Marl's. It's on Tremont
Street. The big department store."
"Oh! Miss Bostwick works there?"
"In the laces. You can't know her very well, young man."
"I come from her folks down on the Cape," he thought it his duty to
explain. "I've a message for her."
"On the Cape? My stars! I never knowed she had any country
relatives. Are they rich? They ain't died and left her a fortune,
have they?" were the eager questions.
"The ones I speak of are still alive," Tunis said gravely, backing
up the steps to the sidewalk. "Thank you, ma'am. I'll go to that
store and speak to her there. Thank you."
Before she could evolve another question, Tunis had escaped. He
walked smartly away, not only to outdistance the lodging-house
keeper's voice, but because he was confused and disappointed. Ida
May Bostwick could not work in a department store and in an eating
house as well. Of course not! And now that this point was an
established fact in his mind, he admitted that he had been utterly
foolish to imagine for a moment that he had already met her, that
she was the violet-eyed girl in whom he had taken an interest.
Right at the start he had known that a girl working in an eating
house like that was not the sort of person he could introduce to
Aunt Lucretia. And so why had he imagined that she would prove to be
the great-niece of Prudence Ball? It was ridiculous!
Of course, this Ida May came of good Cape stock. At least, on one
side of her family. The Honeys were as good as the Lathams or the
Balls.
Thus condemning his foolish fancies he strode downtown again. He
knew where Hoskin & Marl's was. He had been in the place. When he
reached the department store he marched straight in, meaning to have
an immediate interview with the girl at the lace counter.