lived a life in a few hours--that I did not seem like the same person
as I looked into my thoughts. Captain Mayo, that is true. It is more
apparent to me now when I have had time to search my soul. Oh, I am not
the Alma Marston who has been spoiled and indulged--a fool leaping here
and there with every impulse--watching a girl in my set do a silly thing
and then doing a sillier thing in order to astonish her. That has been
our life in the city. I never knew what it meant to be a mere human
being, near death. You know you saved me from that death!”
“I only did what a man ought to do, Miss Marston.”
“Perhaps. But you did it, that's the point. There are other men--” She
hesitated. “I have had a talk with Mr. Bradish,” she told him. “It was a
mistake. You saved me from that mistake. You did it in the cabin of the
schooner. He has told me. It was better for me than saving my life.”
“But because a man isn't a sailor--isn't used to danger--” he
expostulated.
“That is not it. I say I have just had a talk with Mr. Bradish! I have
found out exactly what he is. I did not find it out when I danced with
him. But now that I have come near to dying with him I have found him
out.” The red banners in her cheeks signaled both shame and indignation.
“A coward will show all his nature before he gets himself in hand again,
and Mr. Bradish has shown me that he is willing to ruin and disgrace
me in order to make profit for himself. And there is no more to be said
about him!” She paused.
“Captain Mayo, I know what idea you must have of me--of a girl who would
do what I have done! But you don't have half the scorn for me I have for
myself--for the girl I was. But I have my self-respect now! I respect
the woman that I am at this moment after that experience! Perhaps you
don't understand. I do! I'm glad I have that self-respect. I shall face
what is ahead of me. I shall do right from now on.” She spoke quickly
and passionately, and he wanted to say something, but his sailor tongue
halted. “I am not going to bring up a certain matter--not now! It's too
sacred. I am too miserably ashamed! Again, Captain Mayo, I say that I
want to stand with you as man to man! I want to render service for what
you have done for me. You have lost everything out of your life that you
value. I want you to have it back. Will you listen to me now?”
“Yes, Miss Marston.”
“You go to my father with a letter from me. I do not believe he knows
what kind of methods have been practised by his understrappers, but he
can find out. You tell him that he must find out--that he must make
them confess. You tell him that this is a man's fight, and that you are
fighting back with all the strength that you can command. You tell him
that you have me hidden, and that I cannot get away--as my own letter
will tell him. You tell him that he must make a fair exchange with
you--give you back what is yours before he can have what is his.”
Mayo walked backward limply, feeling for the wall with his hands behind
him, and leaned against it.
“You are single-handed--it's a big game they play up in the city when
they are after money--and you must take what cards are offered,” she
insisted, displaying the shrewdness of the Marston nature.
“You mean to say that I'm going to your father as if I were holding you
for ransom?” he gasped.
“Something like that,” she returned, eagerly. “The only way you'll get
what you want--and get it quickly--is by a good bluff. I have had some
good samples of your courage, Captain Mayo. You can do it beautifully.”
“But I'm not going to do it!”
“I say you are!”
“Not by a--” His feelings were carrying him away. He was forgetting that
these dealings were with an impulsive girl. His anger was mounting. She
was putting him on the plane of a blackleg.
“Go ahead and talk as strongly as you like, Captain Mayo. It will make
it seem like man's business between us.”
“Those tricks may be all right in Wall Street, but they don't do for me.
And you've got a pretty poor opinion of me if you think I'll do it.”
“Don't be quixotic,” she protested, impatiently. “We are living in
up-to-date times, Captain Mayo. Some of those underlings have played a
nasty trick on you. They must be exposed.”
“This is a girl's crazy notion!”
“Captain Mayo, is this the way you help me pay my debt?”
“You don't owe me anything.”
“And now you pay me an insult! Are my honor as a girl and my life worth
nothing? You have saved both.”
“I don't know how to talk to you. I haven't had any experience in
talking with women. I simply say that I'm not going to your father in
any such manner. Certainly not!”
“Don't you realize what I have offered you?” she pleaded. “You are
throwing my sacrifice in my face. As the case stands now, I can hurry
off to the home of some girl friend and make up a little story of a
foolish lark, and my father will never know what has been happening. He
expects me to do a lot of silly things.”
“That's your business--and his,” he returned, dryly.
“Captain Mayo, I have been trying to show you that I am fit to be
considered something besides a silly girl. I wanted you to know that
I have a sense of obligation. The plan may seem like a girl's romantic
notion. But it isn't. It's bold, and your case heeds boldness. I was
trying to show you that I'm not a coward. I was going to confess to my
father what I have done and start on the level with him. You throw it
all in my face--you insult my plan by calling it crazy.”
“It is,” he insisted, doggedly. “And I'm in bad enough as it is!”
“Oh, you're afraid, then?”
He frowned. Her sneer seemed gratuitous injury.
He did not understand that variety of feminine guile which seeks to goad
to action one who refuses to be led.
“I admire boldness in a man when his case is desperate and he is trying
to save himself. I have lived among men who are bold in going after what
they want.”
“I have had a little experience with that kind of land pirates, and I
don't like the system.”
“I shall not make any unnecessary sacrifices,” she de-clared, tartly,
but there were tears in her eyes. “I did what I could to help you when
you were trying to save me. Why are you so ungenerous as to refuse to
help me now?”
“It's taking advantage of you--of your position.”
“But I offer it--I beg of you to do it.”
“I will not do it.”
“You absolutely refuse?”
“Yes, Miss Marston.”
“Then I shall leave you to your own fate, Captain Mayo. You don't expect
me to go to my father with the story, do you?”
“Certainly not'.”
“I shall go ahead now and protect myself the best I can. I am sure that
Captain Downs will keep my secret. I shall forget that I ever sailed on
that schooner. I suppose you will black yourself up and run away again!”
“I am going to New York.”
“To be put in jail?”
“Probably.”
“You make me very angry. After you have shown that you can fight, just
when you ought to fight the hardest you slink bade to be whipped.”
“Yes, Miss Marston, if you care to put it that way.”
“Then, good-by!”
“Good-by!”
Perhaps each expected that the other would break the wall of reserve at
this moment of parting. He hesitated a moment--an awkward instant--then
he bowed and left the room.
Captain Downs walked with Mayo for a distance across the sand-dunes when
the latter started to make his way to the nearest railroad station. The
captain intended to remain at the inlet tmtil a representative of the
_Alden's_ owners arrived.
They left Bradish still huddled behind the stove in the kitchen.
“Unless my eyes have gone back on me, Captain Mayo, my notion is
that the dude is wasting his time hanging around that girl any more,”
suggested Captain Downs. “She has had him out on the marine railway of
love, has made proper survey, and has decided that she would hate to
sail the sea of matrimony with him. Don't you think that's so?”
“I think you're a good judge of what you see, Captain Downs.”
“I reckon that you and I as gents and master mariners are going to keep
mum about her being aboard the _Alden?_”
“Certainly, sir.”
“The coast-guard crew don't know who she is, and they can't find out.
So she can go home and mind her business from this time out. 'Most every
woman does one infernal fool thing in her life--and then is all right
ever after. But now a word on some subject that's sensible! What are you
going to do?”
“Stick my head into the noose. It's about the only thing I can do.”
“But you'll talk up to 'em, of course?”
“I'll play what few cards I hold as best I know, sir. The most I can
hope for is to make 'em drop that manslaughter case. Perhaps I can say
enough so that they'll be afraid to bring me to trial. As to getting my
papers back, I'm afraid that's out of the question. I'll have to start
life over in something else.”
“Mayo, why don't you go to the captain's office?” He promptly answered
the young man's glance of inquiry. “Julius Marston himself is the
supreme boss of that steamship-consolidation business. Bradish gave all
that part away, telling about those checks; though, of course, we all
knew about Marston before. It is probably likely that Marston gives true
courses to his understrappers. If they take fisherman's cuts between
buoys in order to get there quick, I'll bet he doesn't know about it. Go
to him and tell him, man to man, what has happened to you.”
“There are two reasons why I shall probably never see Mr. Marston,”
returned Mayo, grimly. “First, I'll be arrested before I can get across
New York to his office; second, I'll never get farther than the outer
office. He's guarded like the Czar of Russia, so they tell me.”
“Does his girl know anything about your case?”
“I blabbed it to her--like a fool--when we were in the boat. Why is it
that when a man is drunk or excited or in trouble, he'll blow the whole
story of his life to a woman?” growled Mayo.
“I've thought that over some, myself,” admitted Captain Downs.
“Especially on occasions when I've come to and realized what I've let
out. I suppose it's this--more or less: A man don't tell his troubles to
another man, for he knows that the other man is usually in'ardly glad
of it because any friend is in trouble. But a woman's sympathy is like a
flaxseed poultice--it soothes the ache and draws at the same time.”
Mayo trudged on in silence, kicking the sand.
“Seems to me the smallest thing that girl could have done was to offer
to get you a hearing with her old man. It was some chore you did for
her, mate!”
“I had to save myself. A few more in the party didn't matter.”
“These society girls think of themselves first, of course! I don't
suppose you give a hoot for my advice, Captain Mayo, but I'm talking to
you in the best spirit in the world.”
“I know you are, Captain Downs,” declared the young man, his sullenness
departing. “I didn't mean to show bristles to you! I'll try to see
Marston. It 'll be a hard stunt. But I'm in the mood to try anything. By
gad! if they lug me to jail, I'll go kicking!”
“That's the spirit, boy. And if you can get in a few kicks where Julius
Marston can see 'em they may count. He's the boss! I don't think I'll go
any farther with you. This is too hard footing for an old waddler like
me. Good luck!”
They shook hands and turned their backs on each other with sailor
repression in the matter of the emotions.
The young man went on his way, wondering in numbed despair how he could
have left Alma Marston with merely a curt word of farewell.
Mayo lurked that evening in the purlieus of Jersey City, and entered the
metropolis after midnight on a ferryboat which had few passengers and
afforded him a dark corner where he was alone. He found lodgings in
humble quarters on the East Side.
In the morning he nerved himself to the ordeal of appearing in the
streets. His belief in his own innocence made his suffering greater as
he waited for the clap of a heavy hand on his shoulder and the summons
of an officer's voice. He knew that the eyes of Uncle Sam are sharp and
his reach a long one. He had firm belief in the almost uncanny vigilance
of government officers. He was rather surprised to find himself at last
in the outer office of Marston & Waller.
He sat down on a bench and waited for a time in order to regain
his self-possession. He wanted to control features and voice before
accosting one of the guardians of the magnate. But the espionage of the
attendants did not permit loiterers to remain long in that place without
explanation. A man tiptoed to him and asked his name and his business.
“My name doesn't matter,” said Mayo. “But I have important business
with Mr. Marston. If you will tell him that the business is most
important--that it is something he ought to know, and that--”
“You haven't any appointment, then?”
“No.”
“Do you think for one moment that you can get in to see Mr. Marston
without giving your name and explaining beforehand the nature of your
business?”
“I hoped so, for it is important.”
“What is it?”
“It's private--it's something for Mr. Marston.”
“Impossible!” was the man's curt rejoinder. He went back to his post. In
a few moments he returned to Mayo. “You mustn't remain here. You cannot
see Mr. Marston.”
“Won't you take in a message from me? I'll explain--”
“Explain to me. That's what I'm here for.”
Telling that cold-blooded person that this visitor was the broken master
of the _Montana_ was out of the question. To mention the case of the
_Montana_ to this watchdog was dangerous. But Mayo dreaded to go back to
the street again.
“I'll stay here a little while and perhaps I can--” he began.
“If you stay here without explaining your business I'll have you
escorted down to the street by an officer, my friend.”
Mayo rose and hurried out.
“An officer!” Even in his despairing and innocent quest of a hearing
he was threatened with arrest! He sneaked back to his lodgings and hid
himself in the squalid apartment and nursed the misery of his soul.
That night Mayo sat till late, toiling over a letter addressed to Julius
Marston.
He despatched it by messenger at an early hour, and mustered his courage
in the middle of the forenoon and followed in person. He assumed a
boldness he did not feel in his quaking heart when he approached the
guardian of the outer office.
“Will you ask Mr. Marston if he will see the man who sent him a letter
by messenger this morning?” “What letter? Signed by what name?” “He will
understand what letter I refer to.” “He will, will he?” The attendant
gave this applicant sharp scrutiny. The coast-guard captain's liberty
garments were not impressive, nor did they fit very well. Mayo displayed
the embarrassment of the man who knew he was hunted. “Do you think Mr.
Marston receives only one letter by messenger in a morning? Look here,
my man, you were in here yesterday, and I look on you as a suspicious
character. You cannot see Mr. Marston on any such excuse. Get out of
that door inside of one minute or I'll send in a police call!”
And once more Mayo fled from the danger which threatened him. He bought
a stock of newspapers at a sidewalk news-stand; his hours of loneliness
in his little room the day before had tortured him mentally. He sat
himself down and read them. The news that the Vose line had gone into
the steamship combination was interesting and significant. Evidently the
_Montana's_ lay-up had discouraged the mass of stockholders. He had
time to kill and thoughts to stifle; he went on reading scrupulously,
lingering over matters in which he had no interest, striving to occupy
his mind and drive the bitter memories and his fears away from
him. Never in his life before had he read the society tattle in the
newspapers. However, dragging along the columns, he found a paragraph
on which he dwelt for a long time. It stated that Miss Marston of
Fifth Avenue had returned by motor from a house-party in the Catskills,
accompanied by Miss Lana Vanadistine, who would be a house guest of Miss
Marston's for a few days.
That bit of news was significant. She had established her alibi; she had
reinstated herself and had turned a smooth front to the world.
Mayo was certain in his soul that he knew her kind. His illusions were
departing. Now that her tragic experience was behind her, now that she
was back among her own, now that the fervor of romance was cool, she was
thanking God, so he told himself, that she had not sacrificed herself
for anybody. He was honestly glad that she was at home, glad of the hint
which the paragraph gave--that her secret was still her own, so far as
family and the social world were concerned.
That night Mayo took further counsel with himself. In the morning his
final decision was made. He would endeavor once more to see Julius
Maxston. He determined that he would march into the outer office, boldly
announce his name, assert that he was there to expose a crime, and tell
them that if Mr. Marston refused to hear him he should tell what he knew
to the public through the newspapers; then he would ask them to send for
the police, if the door of Marston's office remained closed to him. He
would call attention to himself and to his case by all the uproar
he could make. When he went to jail he would go with plenty of folks
looking on. Let Marston and his fellow-financiers see how they liked
that!
It was a desperate and a crude plan, but Mayo was not a diplomat--he was
a sailor.
He marched forth on his errand with his chin up and resolve flaming
within him.
Other men, prosperous-looking and rotund men, rode up in the elevator
with him and went into Marston & Waller's office ahead of him, for he
had modestly stepped to one side to allow them to pass.
He heard some talk of a “board meeting.” It was plain that Mr. Marston
was to be occupied for a time. This was not a favorable moment in which
to project himself upon the attention of the financier; he needed a
clear field. Therefore he tramped up and down the corridor of the
office building, watching the elevator door, waiting to see the rotund
gentlemen go on their way. And with attention thus focused he saw Miss
Alma Marston arrive.
She waited until the elevator had passed on, and then she came directly
to him. Her expression did not reveal her mood except to hint that she
was self-possessed.
“I am not especially surprised to find you here,” she told him. “I
believe you said to Captain Downs--so he informed me--that you were
going to try to see my father. And men who try to see my father, without
proper introduction, usually kick their heels outside his office for
some days.”
There was a bit of hauteur in her voice. She preserved much of the
acerbity which had marked her demeanor when they had said good-by to
each other. He would not acknowledge to himself that he hoped she would
meet him on another plane; he meekly accepted her attitude as the proper
one. He was a sailor, and she was the daughter of Julius Marston.
“Do you blame me for being suspicious in regard to what you intend to
say to my father?” she demanded. “I tell you frankly that I came here
looking for you. We must settle our affair.”
“I am trying to get word with him about my own business--simply my own
business, Miss Marston.”
“But as to me! What are you going to say to him about me? You remember
I told you that I intended to protect myself,” she declared, with some
insolence.
“I thought you had a better opinion of me,” he protested. “Miss Marston,
as far as I am concerned, you never were on that schooner. I know
nothing about you. I do not even know you. Do you understand?”
He started away hastily. “Don't stay here. Don't speak to me. Somebody
may see you.”
“'Come back here!”
He stopped.
“I demand an explicit promise from you that if you are able to talk with
my father you will never mention my name to him or try to take advantage
of the dreadful mistake I made.”
“I promise, on my honor,” he said, straightening.
“Thank you, sir.”
“And now that I have promised,” he added, red in his tanned cheeks,
“I want to say to you, Miss Marston, that you have insulted me
gratuitously. I suppose I'm not much in the way of a gentleman as you
meet them in society. I'm only a sailor. But I'm neither a tattler nor
a blackmailer. I know the square thing to do where a woman is concerned,
and I would have done it without being put under a pledge.” He bowed and
walked away.
She gazed after him, a queer sparkle in her eyes. “We'll see about you,
you big child!” she murmured.
She entered the waiting-room of the Marston & Waller suite, and was
informed that her father was busy with a board meeting.
“But it's merely a bit of routine business. It will soon be over, Miss
Marston--if you will be so good as to wait.”
After a time the gentlemen filed out, but she waited on.
“Tell my father that I'm here and will be in presently,” she commanded
the guardian.
Before the messenger returned Mayo came in, rather apprehensively. He
tried to avoid her, but she met him face to face and accosted him with
spirit.
“Now that I have put you on your honor, I'm not afraid to have you talk
your business over with my father. Come with me. I will take you to him.
Then we will call accounts square between us.”
“Very well,” he consented. “After what I have been through here, I feel
that one service matches the other.” Mayo followed her and came into The
Presence.
Julius Marston was alone, intrenched behind his desk, on his throne of
business; the dark back of the chair, towering over his head, set off
in contrast his gray garb and his cold face; to Mayo, who halted
respectfully just inside the door, he appeared a sort of bas-relief
against that background--something insensate, without ears to listen or
heart to bestow compassion.
The girl, hurrying to him, engaged his attention until she had seated
herself on the arm of his chair. Then he saw Mayo, recognized him, and
tried to rise, but she pushed him back, urging him with eager appeal.
“You must listen to me, father! It is serious! It is important!”
He groped for the row of desk buttons, but she held his hand from them.
Captain Mayo strode forward, determined to speak for himself, rendered
bold by the courageous sacrifice the girl was making.
“Not a word! Not a word! The supreme impudence of it!” Marston repeated
the last phrase several times with increasing violence. He pushed his
daughter off the arm of the chair and struggled up. Only heroic measures
could save that situation--and the girl knew her father! She forced
herself between him and his desk.
“You'd better listen!” she warned him, hysterically. “A few days ago I
ran away to be married!”
He stood there, stricken motionless, and she put her hands against his
breast and pressed him back into his chair.
“But this is not the man, father!”
Marston had been gathering his voice for wild invective, but that last
statement took away all his power of speech.
“I warned you that you'd better listen!”
In that moment she dominated the situation as completely as if she stood
between the two men with a lighted bomb in her hand.
Mayo was overwhelmed even more completely than the financier. He
realized that her extortion of a pledge from him had been subterfuge;
her triumphant eyes flashed complete information on that point. Both
anger and bewilderment made him incapable of any sane attempt to press
his case with Marston at that time. He turned and started for the door.
“Stop that man, father. You'll be sorry if you do not! He must stay!”
“Come back here!” shouted Marston.
Mayo looked behind.
The magnate stood with finger on the push-button. “Come back, I say!”
“I protest. This is none of my business. I am here for something else
than to listen to your daughter's private affairs.”
“You come back!” commanded the father in low tones of menace, “or I'll
have you held for the United States marshals the minute you step foot
outside that door.”
Raging within himself at the tactics of this incomprehensible girl,
Captain Mayo walked slowly to the desk; it occurred to him that it was
as hard to get out of Julius Marston's office as it was to get in.
“I would never have come in here if I had dreamed that your daughter
would tell you what she has. I am in a false position. I insist that you
allow me to leave.”
“You'll leave when I get to the bottom of this thing! Now, Alma, what
new craziness is all this?”
“I am not resenting the word you apply to it,” she replied, facing him
resolutely. “I did it--and I don't know why I did it!”
“Did what?”
“I ran away. I did it because the girls dared me to do it. I promised a
man I would marry him.”
“This man, eh?”
“No. I have told you this is not the man.”
“Well, who, then?” Incredulity was mingled with her father's wrath.
“One of your trusted young gentlemen. Mr. Ralph Bradish.”
“Where did you meet him?”
“At the dances.”
“Not at our house?”
“I do not know how you are so sure of that, father,” she returned, a
touch of rather wistful reproach in her tones. “You have left me
alone in that house ever since mother went away. But it was not at our
house--it was in the public ball-rooms.”
“Hell set to music!” he rasped. “I ought to have realized that you are
still an infant!”