SHEILA
The captain of the _Seamew_ held the two struggling, cursing men as
though they were small boys. His eyes flamed a question at the girl.
She understood and nodded, if ever so faintly.
"I ought to send both of you to the hospital," said Tunis in a grim
voice. "But I'm satisfied if you beg her pardon and let her go."
This to the restaurant proprietor.
The man opened his lips to emit something besides an apology,
although the smaller man was already quelled. But the look in Tunis
Latham's face made the black-haired man pause.
"Well, she can't cause a disturbance here. But I meant no offense."
The smaller man hastened to add:
"So help me! I was that mad I didn't know what I said. I didn't mean
nothing."
Tunis nodded solemnly.
"Get your coat and hat, miss," he said. "I guess it won't be a
pleasant place for you to work in after this."
She slipped away. Tunis let the men go. They both stepped away from
him, panting, relaxing their shoulders, eyeing the young captain
with as much curiosity as apprehension.
Suddenly there was an added commotion at the front door. Tunis saw a
policeman enter. The coarse-featured proprietor of the restaurant
instantly recovered all his courage.
"This way, officer! This way!" he cried. "Here's the man."
At that moment Tunis felt a tug at his coat. He flashed a glance
over his shoulder. It was the girl. She wore a little hat pulled
down over all that black hair, and she was buttoning a shabby
jacket. There was a way out by the alley; he well knew it. Nor was
he anxious of appearing before either a police lieutenant or a
magistrate for creating a disturbance in the place.
"Run along. I'll be right behind you," he whispered.
The policeman was some distance, and several tables away. Tunis
looked to see if all was clear. The girl was just passing through
the swinging door into the kitchen. Tunis stepped back, turned
suddenly, while the restaurant proprietor was making ready to
address the policeman, and leaped for the rear exit.
"There he goes!" squealed the patron who had been the cause of the
trouble.
But nobody stopped Tunis Latham. At a flash, when he got into the
kitchen, he saw the girl opening the outer door. The way was clear.
He crossed the room in several quick strides and caught up with her.
The startled chef and his assistants merely stared.
The alley was empty, but they walked swiftly away from the square.
The arc lamp on the corner which they approached sputtered
continuously, like soda water bubbling out of a bottle. He looked
down at her curiously in the flickering illumination from this lamp
and found the girl looking up at him just as curiously.
"That was an unwise thing to do. You might have been arrested," she
said, ever so gently. Then she added: "And it has cost me my job."
"That is the only thing that worries me," he rejoined promptly.
"You need not mind, sir. I really am not sorry. I could not have
stood it much longer. And Mr. Sellers paid yesterday."
"So they don't owe you much on account, then," Tunis said soberly.
"I came away without paying for my dinner. I'll pay the worth of my
check to you; that'll help some."
For the first time she laughed. Once he had sat all afternoon in a
gully back of Big Wreck Cove in the pine woods and listened to the
cheerful gurgle of a spring bubbling from under a stone. That
silvery chuckle was repeated in this girl's laugh With all her
timidity and shyness, she was naturally a cheerful body. That laugh
was quite involuntary.
"I think I may be able to get along," she said, with that quiet tone
of finality which Tunis felt would keep the boldest man at a
distance. "It is difficult, however, to get a position without
references."
"I'll go back and wring one out of him--when the cop has gone,"
grinned Tunis.
"I don't think a reference from Mr. Sellers would do me much good,"
she sighed. "But at the time I took the place I was quite
desperate."
The captain of the _Seamew_ made no comment. They were walking up
the hill through a quiet street. Of course, there was no pursuit.
But the young man began to feel that he might have done the girl
more harm than good by espousing her cause in the restaurant.
Perhaps he had been too impulsive.
"You--you can find other and more pleasant work, I am sure," he said
with hesitation. "I hope you will forgive me for thrusting myself
into your concerns, but I really could not stand for that man
backing up your customer instead of you. He did order meringue pie.
I heard him."
She smiled, and he caught the faint flicker of it as it curved her
lips and made her eyes shine for an instant. Minute following
minute, she was becoming more attractive. His voice trembled when he
spoke again:
"I--I hope you will forgive me."
"You did just what I should have expected my brother to do, if I had
a brother," she replied frankly. "But few girls who work at Sellers'
have brothers."
"No?" Something in her voice, rather than in the words, startled
Tunis.
"Let me put it differently," she said, still with that gentle
cadence which ameliorated the bitterness of her tone. "Girls who
have brothers seldom fall into Sellers' clutches. You see, he is a
last resort. He does not demand references, and he poses as a
philanthropist."
Tunis felt confused, in a maze. He could not imagine where the girl
was tacking. He was keenly aware, however, that there was a mystery
about her being employed at all in Sellers' restaurant.
They came out at last upon the brow of the hill overlooking the
Common. The lamps glimmered along Tremont Street through an
opalescent haze which was stealing over the city from the bay.
Without question they went down the steps side by side. There was a
bench in a shadow and, without touching her, Tunis steered the
girl's steps toward it.
She sat down with an involuntary sigh of weariness. She had been on
her feet most of the time since eleven o'clock. She relaxed in
contact with the back of the bench, and he could see the contour of
her throat and chin thrown up in relief against the background of
shadow. The whole relaxed attitude of her slim body betrayed
exhaustion.
"I hope you will not blame me too severely," Tunis stammered.
"I don't blame you."
"I fear you will after you have taken time to think it over.
But--but perhaps there may be some way in which I can repair the
damage I have done."
She looked at him levelly, curiously.
"You are a seaman, are you not?"
"I'm Tunis Latham. I own the schooner _Seamew_, and command her. We
are going to run back and forth from Boston to the Cape--Cape Cod."
"Oh! I could scarcely fill a position on your schooner, Captain
Latham."
She smiled again. It was a weary smile, however, not like the former
flash of amusement she had shown. Her head drooped as her mind sank
into unhappy retrospection. Tunis looked aside at her with a great
hunger in his heart to take all her trouble--no matter what it
was--upon his own mind and give her the freedom she needed. What or
who the girl was did not matter. Even what she had done, or what
she had not done meant little to Tunis Latham.
She was the one girl in all this world who had ever interested him
beyond a passing moment, and he was convinced that she alone would
ever interest him. The cheap environment of their meeting meant
nothing. If she was free, her own mistress, and he could get her, he
meant to make this girl his wife.
"You didn't tell me your name," he said directly. "Won't you? I have
been frank with you."
"Why, so you have," said the girl. There might have been a strata of
laughter underlying the words; yet her face was sober enough. "If
you really wish to know, Captain Latham, my name is Macklin."
"_Miss_ Macklin?" he asked, a positive tremor in his voice.
"Certainly. Sheila Macklin, spinster."
Tunis drew a long breath. That was enough! He would take his chance
in the game with any other man as long as she was not promised. But
there was no use in spoiling everything by being too precipitate.
The captain of the _Seamew_ might be simple, but he was not the man
to ruin a thing through impulsiveness. That exhibition in the
restaurant was hooked up with wrath.
There had been an undercurrent of thought in his mind ever since he
had met this girl for the second time, and it was quite a natural
thought, comparing her with Ida May Bostwick. If Sheila Macklin had
only been Ida May, after all! It was a ridiculous idea. Not a
feature or betrayed trait of character was like any that the
disappointing great-niece of Prudence Ball possessed. This girl
sitting beside Tunis on the bench and Ida May Bostwick were as
little alike as though they were inhabitants of two different
worlds.
He had begun to imagine, too, how well this girl beside him would
fit into the needs of the old couple living there alone on Wreckers'
Head. It was an idle thought, of course. He had no plan, or scheme,
or definite suggestion in his mind. It was only a wish, a keen
longing for an impossible conjunction of circumstances which would
have enabled him to present Sheila Macklin to Cap'n Ira and Prudence
and say:
"This is the girl you sent me for."
"Just what will you do now that you have lost that job, Miss
Macklin?" Tunis asked abruptly.
"Oh, after I am rested, I will go home!"
He had a sudden flash of the memory of that stark lodging house
where Ida May Bostwick lived, and he felt assured this girl's home
could be no better. But he did not mention this thought.
"I did not mean it just that way," he told her, smiling. "First you
and I will go and get supper somewhere. I did not half finish mine,
and you have had none at all."
"I don't know about that," she interposed. "It is generous of you.
But ought I to accept?"
"You need not question that. We are going to be friends, Miss
Macklin. Is it necessary for me to bring you references?"
"It may be necessary for me to obtain a sponsor," she said, quite
seriously. "You do not know a thing about me, Captain Latham."
"You know nothing about me, except what I have told you." And he
laughed.
"And what I read in your countenance," she said soberly.
He grinned at her, but rather ruefully.
"I never knew my thoughts were advertised in my face."
"Oh, no! Not that! But your character is. Otherwise I would not be
sitting here with you."
"I guess that's all right then," he declared with satisfaction.
"Well, let's call it a draw. If you take me at face value, I'll take
you at the same rating. Anyhow, we can risk going to supper
together."
"Well, somewhere to a quiet place. Don't take me where you are
known, Captain Latham."
"No?" He was puzzled again. "But, then, I am not known anywhere in
Boston."
"All the better. I ought not to lend myself in any way to making you
possible future trouble."
"I do not understand you, Miss Macklin."
He sat up suddenly on the bench to look at her more sharply. There
was an underlying, but important, meaning to her speech.
"I know you do not understand," she rejoined gently. She sighed. "I
must make you clearly see just who I am and the risk you run in
associating with me."
"The risk I run!"
He uttered the words in both amazement and ridicule.
"You do not quite understand, Captain Latham," she repeated in the
same gentle tone.
There was no raillery in her voice now. She was altogether serious.
Her eyes, luminous, yet darkly unfathomable, were held full upon his
face. He felt rather than saw that she was under a mental strain.
The revelation she was about to make throbbed in her voice when she
spoke again.
"You do not quite understand. Sellers gives girls work in his
restaurant who could by no possibility offer proper references,
girls from the Protectory, from homes, as they are called; some,
even, who have served jail sentences. I had been two years in the
St. Andrew's School for Girls when I went to work for Sellers."