his cap on his head. "You don't want to be a fool, now. I reckon we
can shake hands, anyhow."
He felt himself loath to leave the old man in anger; he had for him
both liking and respect. But Noble did not answer only continued for
some moments to look him in the face, unsoftened, stern and grieved,
then bent again above his sewing.
Goodwin withdrew the hand he had held out.
"Have it your own way," he said, and went forth from the forecastle,
leaving the old man, with the lamplight silvering his sparse hair, at
work upon the patched overalls. And, in that moment, not even the
vision of the girl and his hope of the future could save him from a
pang of sadness. It was as if he had, by his going, darkened a home.
Outside upon the deck he stayed to cast a glance about him. The big
ship, beautiful as a work of art in her lines and proportions, showed
vacant of life. A light glimmered from the galley door, where the
decrepit watchman slumbered at his ease. There was nothing to detain
him. The great yards, upon which he had fought down the sodden and
frozen canvas in gales off the Horn, spread over him. She was fine,
she was potent, with a claim upon a man's heart; and she was
notorious for a floating, hell upon the seas. It was her character;
she was famous for brutality to seamen, so that they deserted at the
first opportunity and forfeited their wages. And Noble would have him
loyal to her!
He swore at her shortly, and forced himself to cross the deck and
climb over the rail to the wharf. The conduct of Noble was sore in
his mind. But, as the earth of the shore gritted under his boots,
that trouble departed from him. The world, after all, was wider than
the decks of the Etna; and in it, an item in its wonder and
complexity, there lived and smiled the girl.
Miss James, who smiled so indescribably and asked so many questions
about seafaring in the way of civil conversation, would probably have
shown small interest in the adventures of a seaman in search of a
lodging ashore. She would have smiled, of course, with her own little
lift and fall of shy eyes, and been as intangible and desirable as
ever; but one could never tell her of carrying a small bundle of
underclothes from one obdurate door to another, unable to show money
in any convincing amount because one's capital was in a belt under
one's shirt. Othello told Desdemona of "antres vast and deserts
idle," not of skeptical landladies. Goodwin felt all this intensely
when, in the evening of the following day, having finally established
himself in a room, he beheld her again in the mission. He beheld her
first, indeed, as she entered the hall, he watching from the opposite
side of the street. He had no intention of going in if she were not
present. As it was, a swoop across the street and a little brisk
maneuvering secured him a place next to her.
He had been a little at a loss all day; it was years since he had
lived altogether apart from sailors and he had found himself lonely
and depressed; but the sight of her sufficed to restore him. She gave
him the welcome of a look, and a slow flush mounted on her face. The
missioner was already preparing to open the service, and conversation
was impossible. Nevertheless, as she turned over the pages of her
hymn-book, Goodwin bent toward her.
"Didn't I say I'd be along?" he whispered, and saw her cheek move
with her smile.
To be close to her, knowing her to be conscious of him, was in itself
a gladness; but Goodwin was impatient for the end of the service. It
was not his way to stand off and on before a thing he meant to do,
and he wanted more talk with her, to get within her guard, to touch
the girl who was screened behind the smile and dim sweetness and the
polite questions of Miss James. He sat frowning through the latter
part of the service, till the missioner, standing upright with
tight-shut eyes, gave the closing benediction. Then, compellingly, he
turned upon the girl.
"Say," he said, "let's get out o' this. I'd like to walk along with
you and talk. Come on!"
Miss James looked at him with startled eyes. He was insistent.
"Aw, come on," he pressed. "That preacher'll be here in a minute if
you don't, and we've had enough of him for one time. I tell you, I
want to talk to you."
He rose, and by sheer force of urgency made her rise likewise. He got
her as far as the door. "But" she began, hesitating there.
"Steady as ye go," bade Goodwin, and took her down the shallow steps
to the sidewalk. "Now, which way is it to be?" he demanded suddenly.
She did not reply for a couple of moments. The light that issued from
the hall showed her face as she stood and considered him doubtfully,
a little uncertain of what was happening. Even in that half-obscurity
of the long street, where she was seen as an attitude, a shape, she
made her effect of a quiet, tender beauty. Then, at last, she smiled
and turned and began to walk. Goodwin fell into step beside her, and
the confusion of voices within the hall died down behind them.
"I had to make you come," said Goodwin presently. "I just had to. An'
you don't want to be scared."
She glanced sideways at him, but said nothing.
"You ain't scared, are ye?" he asked.
"No," she replied.
The answer even the brevity of it fulfilled his understanding of her.
He nodded to himself.
"I said I wanted to talk to ye," he went on; "an' I do. I want to
talk to you a whole lot. But there ain't much I got to say. 'Ceptin',
maybe, one thing. I'd like to know what your first name is. Oh, I
ain't goin' to get fresh an' call you by it I reckon you know that.
But thinkin' of you all day an' half the night, like I do, 'Miss
James' don't come handy, ye see."
"Oh!" murmured the girl. It was plain that he had startled her a
little.
"My first name is Mary," she answered.
"Ah!" said Goodwin, and repeated it again and again under his breath.
"I might 'most ha' guessed it," he said. "It's well, it's a name that
fits ye like a coat o' paint, Miss James, A clean, straight name,
that is. Mary b'gosh, it was my mother's name."
"I'm glad you like it," said the girl, in her deep-toned, pleasant
voice. "You know, Mr. Goodwin, it was a bit queer the way you made me
come away from the hall."
"Ah, but that's not troublin' you," replied Goodwin quickly. "I
reckon you know what's wrong wi' me, Miss James. I'm not askin' you
for much yet; only to let me see you, when you go to that
mission-joint, and talk to ye sometimes."
They were at an intersection of streets, where a few shops yet shone
and surface-cars went by like blazing ships. There was a movement of
folk about them; yet, by reason of what had passed between them, it
seemed that they stood in a solitude of queer, strained feeling. The
girl halted in the light of a shop-window.
"I get my car here," she said.
Goodwin stopped, facing her. She looked up at the tense seriousness
of his young, set face, hard and strong, with the wind-tan coloring
it. She was kindly, eager to handle him tactfully, and possibly a
little warmed by his sincerity and admiration. To him she seemed the
sum of all that was desirable, pathetic, and stirring in womanhood.
"No," she said; "that's not much to ask. I'll be glad to meet you at
the mission, Mr. Goodwin, and maybe we can talk, too, sometimes. And
when you go away again, when your ship sails."
"Eh?" Goodwin's exclamation interrupted her. "Goin' away? Why, Miss
James, I ain't goin' away. That was all fixed up last night. I've
quit goin' to sea."
She stared at him, with parted lips.
"You don't understand," said Goodwin gently. "I knew, just as soon as
I seen you, that I wasn't going away no more. I went down an' fetched
my dunnage ashore right off."
She continued to stare. "Not going away?" she repeated.
Goodwin shook his head, smiling. He did not in the least understand
the embarrassment of a young woman who finds herself unexpectedly the
object of a romantic and undesired sacrifice.
A street-car jarred to a halt beside them. The girl made a queer
little gesture, as if in fear.
"My car!" she flustered indistinctly, and, turning suddenly, ran from
him towards it, taking refuge in its ordinariness against Goodwin and
all the strangeness with which he seemed to assail her.
He, smiling fatuously on the curb, saw it carry her off, swaying and
grinding. "Mary," he repeated. "Mary!"
Following his purpose, within the next few days he found himself
employment as one of a gang of riggers at work on a great German
four-masted barque which had been dismasted in a squall off Fire
Island. In the daytime he dealt with spars and gear, such stuff as he
knew familiarly, in the company of men like himself. Each evening
found him, washed and appareled, at the mission, furnishing a
decorous bass undertone to the hymns, looked on with approval by the
missioner and his helpers. Commonly he got himself a seat next to
Miss James; but he could not again contrive a walk with her along the
still street to the lighted corner where she ran to catch her car.
There seemed always to be a pair of voluminous elderly matrons in
attendance upon her, to daunt and chill him. She herself was
unchanged; her soft, beneficent radiance, her elusive, coy charm, all
her maddening quality of delicacy and shrinking beauty, uplifted him
still.
"Say," he always whispered, as he let himself down beside her, "are
we goin' to have a talk tonight?"
And she would shake her averted head hurriedly, and afterwards the
iron-clad matrons would close in on her and make her inaccessible.
And, in the end, he would go off to get a drink in a saloon before
going back to his room, baffled and discontented.
There were three evenings running on which she did not come to the
mission at all. On the fourth Goodwin was there before her. He looked
at her steadily as she came to her place.
"I want to talk to you to-night," he said, varying his formula, as
she sat down.
She gave him a swift, uncertain glance.
"Got to," he added gravely. "It's a case, an' I just got to."
"What about?" she asked, with a touch of resentment that was new in
her.
"I guess you know," he answered quietly, and hitched nearer to her
along the bench to make room for a new-comer who was thrusting in
beside him. He turned perfunctorily to see who it might be. It was
old Noble.
"Friends!" grated the voice of the missioner. "Let us begin by
singing hymn number seventy-nine: 'Pull for the shore, sailor; pull
for the shore!'"
The noise of the harmonium drowned the rustling of hymn-book pages.
Noble's elbow drove against Goodwin's.
"Found ye!" rumbled the old man. "Say, come on out where I can talk
to ye. We're sailin' in the mornin'."
"Hush!" whispered Goodwin. "I can't come out. What d'you want?"
The little congregation rose to its feet for the singing of the hymn.
Old Noble, rising with them, leaned forward and peered past Goodwin
at the girl. His keen old face inspected her inscrutably for a while.
"That's her, I reckon," he said to Goodwin in a windy whisper. "Well,
I'm not sayin' nothin'. Come on out."
"I can't, I tell ye," breathed Goodwin. "Don't you go startin'
anything here, now! Say what ye got to say, an' be done with it."
Old Noble scowled. About him the simple hymn rose and fell in its
measured cadences. Among the honest folk who sang it there was none
more venerable and seemly than he. His head was white with the sober
snow of years; by contrast with his elderly gravity, the young
vividness and force of Goodwin seemed violent and crude.
"I won't start nothin'," whispered Noble harshly. "Don't be afeared.
I bin lookin' for ye, Dan; I want ye to have a chanst. We're sailin'
in the mornin', an', Dan, we're short-handed three hands short, we
are!"
His words came and went under cover of the hymn.
"Men won't ship aboard of her; she's got a bad name," the whisper
continued. "She's full o' Dutchmen an' Dagoes again. It's goin' to be
the hell of a passage an' the Horn in August, too. Come on an' stand
yer share of it, Dan."
Goodwin glared down indignantly at the old rusty-red face beside him.
"You're crazy," he said shortly.
"Ye ain't comin'?"
For answer Goodwin only shrugged. It sufficed. With no further word
Noble turned away and walked forth on heavy feet from the hall. There
followed him to the street, as if in derision, the refrain of that
landsman's hymn: "Leave the poor old stranded wreck, and pull for the
shore!"
"Now!" said Goodwin, when at last the missioner had closed the
service with his blessing.
The girl was nervous; plainly, she would have been glad to refuse.
But Goodwin was in earnest, and, unwillingly enough, she surrendered
to the compulsion of his will and went out with him. Outside upon the
sidewalk she spoke angrily.
"I don't like the way you act," she said, and her voice had tears in
it. "You think a person's got."
Goodwin interrupted. "I don't think nothin'," he said. "I got to find
out. An' I can't find out while we're hustlin' to the corner. Come
down towards the docks. You're all right with me; an' I got to find
out."
He did not even touch her arm, but she went with him.
"Find out what?" she asked uncertainly, as they crossed the street.
"Come on," he answered. "We'll talk by an' by."
He took her down a dark side way which led them to the water-front.
Wharves where work was going on roared and shone. The masts and spars
of ships rose stark against the sky. Beyond, the river was dotted
with lights against the luminous horizon of Manhattan. He slackened
his pace. At his side the silent girl trembled and sulked.
"Kid," said Goodwin, "there's one of us two that hasn't made good.
Which is it?"
A jib-boom slanted across a wall over their heads. They were alone
among sleeping ships.
"I don't know what you mean," answered the girl. "You say you've got
to talk to me, and you act--." She stopped.
"You don't know what I mean?" repeated Goodwin. "I'll have to tell
you, then."
They had come to a pause under the jib-boom of the silent ship. She
waited for him to go on, servile to the still mastery of his mien.
"That night the night I come to the mission for the first time," went
on Goodwin, "when you loaned me the book, I quit my ship to keep
close to you. That ain't nothin'; the ship was a terror, anyway. But
I seen you, and, girl, I couldn't get you out o' my head. You was all
right the next night, when I went along with you to your car; it
wasn't just because the missionary feller set you at me, neither.
What's gone wrong with me since?"
He asked the question mildly, with a tone of gentle and reasonable
inquiry.
"I haven't said anything was wrong with you," Answered the girl
sullenly. "I don't have to answer your questions, anyway."
"I reckon you do these questions," said Goodwin. "What is it, now? Am
I different to what you reckoned I was, or what? I never set up to be
anythin' but just plain man. Tell me what I'm shy of. Are you scared
you'll have to to marry me?"
"Oh!" The girl shrank away from him.
"That's it, is it? Well, you don't need to be." His voice was bitter.
"I'd never ha' dared to ask you before, an' now I wouldn't, anyway.
See? But I know, all the same, if I wasn't just a blasted sailor if I
was a storekeeper or a rich man I c'd have ye. Why, damme, I c'd have
ye anyway!"
She had backed before him; and now she was against the wall, uttering
a small moan of protest.
"I could," he repeated. "You know it. I'd only to go chasin' you, an'
in the end you'd give in. You're pretty; you got a shine on you that
fools a man. But you're a quitter a quitter! See? An' now you can
come away from that wall an' I'll see you back on the street."
He was very lofty and erect in the meager light, rather a superb
figure, if the girl had had eyes for it. But she, to all seeming, was
dazed. He went in silence at her side till they reached the street
and saw that the open door of the mission still showed lights.
"There ye are," said Goodwin, halting.
The girl hesitated, looking back and forth. It was wonderful how her
suggestion of soft beauty persisted. She was abashed, stricken,
humiliated upon the dark street; and still she was lovely. She moved
away and paused.
"Good night!" said her faintly ringing voice, and she passed towards
the mission.
"Yes, it's me!" said Goodwin, answering the dumb surprise of old
Noble as he entered the fo'c'sle of the Etna. "An' you want to shut
your head. See?"
VI
THE BREADWINNER
The noonday bivouac was in a shady place nigh-hand the road, where a
group of solemn trees made a shadow on the dusty grass. It was a day
of robust heat; the sky arched cloudless over Sussex, and the road
was soft with white dust that rose like smoke under the feet. Trotter
no sooner saw the place than he called a halt and dropped his bundle.
The Signor smiled lividly and followed suit; Bill, the dog, lay down
forthwith and panted.
"Look at 'im!" said Trotter. "Just look at 'im, will yer! 'E ain't
carried no bundle; 'e ain't got to unpack no grub. And there 'e lies,
for us to wait on 'im."
"Where ees da beer?" demanded the Signor, who had the immediate mind.
The word drew Trotter from his wrongs, and together the men untied
the shabby bundles and set forth their food.
They made a queer picture in that quiet place of English green.
Trotter still wore tights, with hobnailed boots to walk in and a
rusty billycock hat for shelter to his head. He somewhat clung to
this garb, though his tumbling days were over. One had only to look
at his bloated, pouchy face to see how drink and sloth had fouled his
joints and slacked his muscles. Never again could he spread the
drugget in a rustic village street and strut about it on his hands
for the edification of a rustic audience. But the uniform he still
wore; he seemed to think it gave him some claim to indulgent notice.
The Signor, in his own way, was not less in contrast with his
background. His lean, predatory face and capacious smile went fitly
with the shabby frock coat and slouched hat he affected. He carried a
fiddle under his arm, but the most he could do was strum on it with
his thumb. Together, they made a couple that anyone would look twice
at, and no one care to meet in a lonely place.
Bill, the dog, shared none of their picturesque quality. An uglier
dog never went footsore. A dozen breeds cropped out here and there on
his hardy body; his coat was distantly suggestive of a collie; his
tail of a terrier. But something of width between the patient eyes
and bluntness in the scarred muzzle spoke to a tough and hardy
ancestor in his discreditable pedigree, as though a lady of his house
had once gone away with a bulldog. His part in the company was to do
tricks outside beerhouses. When the Signor's strumming had gathered a
little crowd, Trotter would introduce Bill.
"Lydies and gents all," he would say, "with yore kind permission, I
will now introduce to yer the world-famous wolf 'ound Boris, late of
the Barnum menagerie in New York. 'E will commence 'is exhibition of
animal intelligence by waltzin' to the strines of Yankee Doodle on
the vi'lin."
Then the Signor would strum on two strings of the fiddle, smiling the
while a smile that no woman should see, and Bill would waltz
laboriously on his hind legs. After that he would walk on his front
legs, throw somersaults, find a hidden handkerchief, and so on. And
between each piece of clowning, he would go round with Trotter's hat
to collect coppers. Bill was an honest dog, and a fairly big one as
well, and when a man tried to ignore the hat, he had a way of drawing
back his lips from his splendid teeth which by itself was frequently
worth as much to the treasury as all his other tricks put together.
But the truth of it was, it was a feeble show, a scanty, pitiful
show; and only the gross truculence of Trotter and the venomous
litheness of the Signor withheld the average yokel from saying so
flatly.
But it gave them enough to live on and drink on. At any rate, Trotter
grew fat and the Signor grew thinner. Bill depended on what they had
left when they were satisfied; it was little enough. He begged at
cottages on his own account, sometimes; sitting up in the attitude of
mendicancy till something was thrown to him. Occasionally, too, he
stole fowls or raided a butcher's shop. Then Trotter and the Signor
would disown him vociferously to the bereaved one, and hasten on to
come up with him before he had eaten it all. He preferred being
beaten to going hungry, so they never caught him till he had fed
full. But what troubled him most was the tramping, the long dusty
stages afoot in country where the unsociable villages lay remote from
each other, and the roads were hot and long. A man can outwalk any
other animal. After thirty miles, a horse is nowhere and the man is
still going, but even fifteen miles leaves the ordinary dog limp and
sorry. And then, when every bone in him was aching, a wretched
village might poke up at an elbow of the way, and there would be
dancing to do and his whole fatuous repertoire to accomplish, while
his legs were soft under him with weariness.
Trotter took his heavy boots off; he threw one at Bill.
It was a pleasant spot. Where they sat, in a bay of shade, they could
see a far reach of rich land, bright in the sunshine and dotted with
wood, stretching back to where the high shoulder of the downs shut
out the sea.
The two men ate in much contentment, passing the bottle to and fro.
Bill waited for them to have done and fling him his share. In common
with all Bohemians, he liked regular meals.
"That dog's goin' silly," said Trotter, looking at him where he lay.
"Oh, him!" said the Signor.
"He's bin loafin' a furlong be'ind all the mornin'," said Trotter.
"Yer know if he was to get lazy, it 'ud be a poor lookout for us.
He's bin spoilt, that dog 'as spoilt with indulgence. Soon as we stop
for a spell oh, he plops down on 'is belly and 'angs on for us to
chuck 'im a bit of grub. Might be a man by the ways of 'im, 'stead of
a dog. Now I don't 'old with spoilin' dogs."
"Pass da beer," requested the Signor.
Bill looked up with concern, for Trotter was filling his pipe; the
meal was at an end.
"Yus, yer can look," snarled Trotter. "You'll wait, you will."
He began to pack up the bread and meat again in the towel where it
belonged.
"Think you've got yer rights, don't yer?" he growled, as he swept the
fragments together. "No dog comes them games on me. Hey, get out, ye
brute!"
Bill had walked over and was now helping himself to the food that lay
between Trotter's very hands.
Trotter clenched a bulging red fist and hauled off to knock him away.
But Bill had some remainder of the skill, as well as the ferocity, of
the fighting dog in him. He snapped sideways in a purposeful silence,
met the swinging fist adroitly, and sank his fine teeth cruelly in
the fat wrist.
"Hey! Signor, Signor!" howled Trotter. "Kick 'im orf, can't yer! Ow,
o-o-ow!"
Bill let him go as the Signor approached, but the kick that was meant
for him spent itself in the air. Again he snapped, with that sideways
striking action of the big bony head, and the Signor shrieked like a
woman and sprang away.
Bill watched the pair of them for half a minute, as they took refuge
among the trees, and both saw the glint of his strong teeth as he
stared after them. Then he finished the food at his ease, while they
cursed and whimpered from a distance.
"'E's mad," moaned Trotter. "'Es 'ad a stroke. An' we'll get
hydrophobia from 'im as like as not."
He nursed his bitten wrist tenderly.
"Look at my laig!" babbled the Signor. "It is a sacred bite, an'
all-a da trouser tore. What da hell you fool wid da dog for, you big
fool?"
"'E was pinchin' the grub," growled Trotter. "E's mad. Look at 'im,
lyin' down on my coat. 'Ere, Bill! Goo' dog, then. Good ole feller!"
Bill took no notice of the blandishments of Trotter, but presently he
rose and strolled off to where a little pond stood in the corner of a
field.
"'E's drinkin'," reported Trotter, who had stolen from cover to make
observations. "So 'e can't be mad. Mad dogs won't look at water. Go
into fits if they sees it. 'Ere, Signor, let's make a grab for those
bundles before 'e gets back."
Bill rejoined them while they were yet stuffing their shabby
possessions together.
The Signor moved behind Trotter and Trotter picked up a boot. But
Bill was calm and peaceful again. He lay down in the grass and wagged
his tail cheerfully.
"Bill, ole feller," said Trotter, in tones of conciliation, and Bill
wagged again.
"'Ell, I can't make nothing of it," confessed Trotter blankly. "Must
have gone sort o' temp'ry insane, like the sooicides. But well, we'll
be even with 'im before all's over."
And the lean Signor's sidelong look at the dog was full of menace.