Blow The Man Down: A Romance Of The Coast
“I don't intend to, sir. I'm going to believe that you don't know what
your understrappers have done to me. You only see results. But find out
what is being done in your name, Mr. Marston. Some day it will be bad
for you if you don't stop 'em.”
“Is that a threat?”
“It's only my appeal for justice. My God, sir--”
“There's justice waiting for you.”
“Then send out for your marshals. Let them drag me into court! Your man
Bradigh's mouth is closed now, but it has been open. I know what has
been done to me. Let them put me on the stand. You don't dare to have me
stand up in court and tell what I know.”
“Do you suppose I am running the Federal courts?”
“You'd better find out whether you have power or not. There are men in
this world who will believe an honest man's true story!”
“Good day!” said Mr. Marston, significantly.
Mayo hesitated, gazed into the impassive countenance of the magnate,
and then conviction of the uselessness of argument overwhelmed him. He
started for the door.
“Certain sensible things can be done,” Marston called after him. “You'd
better get out of New York. If you know of a place to hide you'd better
get into it.”
Mayo did not reply. He strode out through the offices, descended to the
street, and went on his way.
He did not notice that an automobile pursued him through the roaring
traffic of the streets, halting ahead of him when, he had turned into
one of the quieter thoroughfares.
The car was close to the curb, and Alma Marston put out her hand and
signaled to him. “He gave-you no hope-nothing?”
“Nothing!”
“I have waited. I thought of asking you to come for a talk with me.”
He shook his head.
“Perhaps it's better as it is! There isn't very much to be said-not
now!” She leaned over the side of the tonneau and the clatter of traffic
enabled her to talk without taking the eavesdropping chauffeur into
their confidence. “I am not worthy of your thoughts or your confidence
after this, Boyd. What I was yesterday I am not to-day; I have told you
that. No, do not say anything! I know, now, that I was only playing with
love. I cannot name what I feel for you now; I have insulted the word
'love' too much in the past. I'm not going to say anything about it. Was
it any excuse for me that you had sunk a ship, were going to prison for
killing men, so the papers hinted? No, it was not! But I allowed myself
to make it an excuse for folly.”
“You don't know what love is,” he declared. In the agony of his
degradation he had no relish for softer sentiments. But he did not dare
to look up at her.
“I _did_ not know! But perhaps some day I can show you that I do now
know,” she replied, humbly. “That will be the day when I can give you
the proofs against the men who have tried to ruin you. I am inside the
camp of your enemies, Boyd, and I'll give you those proofs--even against
my own father, if he is guilty. That's all! Let's wait. But while you
are working I hope it's going to give you a bit of courage to know that
I am working for you!” She patted his cheek. “Go on!” she called to her
driver. The car jerked forward and was hidden among the chariots roaring
down through the modern Babylon.
Without power for self-analysis, without being able to penetrate the
inner recesses of his own soul in that crisis, he trudged on.
A little later, almost unconscious of volition in the matter, he found
himself at a steamboat office buying a ticket. He was going back to the
obscurity of Maquoit. But he was fully conscious that he was not obeying
Julius Marston's injunction to go and hide. A deeper sentiment was
drawing him. He knew where there existed simple faith in him and
affection for him, and he craved that solace. There were humble folks in
Maquoit who would welcome him.
“I'll go back--I'll go home,” he said. Once he would have smiled at the
thought that he would ever call the Hue and Cry colony “home.”
XXVI ~ THE FANGS OF OLD RAZEE
A dollar a day is a Hoosier's pay,
Lowlands, lowlands, a-way, my John!
Yes, a dollar a day is a Hoosier's pay,
My dollar and a half a day.
--Old Pumping Song.
Before leaving New York Mayo made inquiries at offices of shipping
brokers and trailed Captain Zoradus Wass to his lair in the loafers'
room of a towboat office. Their conference was a gloomy one; neither had
any comfort for the other. Mayo was laconic in his recital of events: he
said that he had run away--and had come back. Of Marston and Marston's
daughter he made no mention.
“I have been to see that fat whelp of a Fogg,” stated the old master
mariner. “I ain't afraid of him. I had a good excuse; I said I wanted a
job. I didn't let on to him that I advised you to slip your cable, but
I might have curried favor with him by saying so. He seemed to be pretty
well satisfied because you had skipped.”
“Captain Wass, that's the main thing I've come to talk over with you.
Here's my ticket back home. But I feel that I ought to walk up to the
United States marshal's office and surrender myself. And I want to ask
you about the prospects of my getting bail. Can you help me?”
“I reckon if I saw you behind bars I'd do my best to get you out,
son. But you steer away from here on a straight tack and mind your own
business! When the United States wants you they'll come and get you--you
needn't worry!”
“But I do worry, sir! I am dodging about the streets. I expect to feel
a hand on my shoulder every moment. I can't endure the strain of the
thing! I don't want anybody to think I'm a sneak.”
“As near's I can find out by nosing around a little that indictment is
a secret one--even if it really was returned. And I'm half inclined to
think there wasn't any indictment! Perhaps those officers were only sent
out to get you and hold you as a witness. Fogg has been doing most of
the talking about there being an indictment. However it is, if they
don't want you just yet I wouldn't go up to a cell door, son, and holler
and pound and ask to be let in. Law has quite a way of giving a man what
he hollers for. You go away and let me do the peeking and listening for
you around these parts. I'm collecting a little line of stuff on this
water-front. Haven't much else to do, these days!”
“I reckon my first hunch was the right one, sir!' I'll go along home. If
you hear anybody with a badge on inquiring for me tell him I'm fishing
on the _Ethel and May_.”
“That's a mean job for you, son. But I guess I'd better not say anything
about it, seeing what I have shanghaied you into.”
“It has not been your fault or mine, what has happened, sir. I am not
whining!”
“By gad! I know you ain't! But get ready to growl when the right time
comes, and keep your teeth filed! When it's our turn to bite we'll
make a bulldog grip of it!” He emphasized the vigor of that grip in his
farewell handshake.
But Mayo did not reflect with much enthusiasm on Captain Wass's
metaphorical summons to combat.
Returning to Maquoit, the young man decided that he was more like a
beaten dog slinking back with canine anxiety to nurse his wounds in
secret.
His experiences had been too dreadful and too many in the last few days
to be separated and assimilated. He had been like a man stunned by
a fall--paralyzed by a blow. Now the agonizing tingle of memory and
despair made his thoughts an exquisite torture. He tried to put Alma
Marston out of those thoughts. He did not dare to try to find a place
for her in the economy of his affairs. However, she and he had been down
to the gates of death together, and he realized that the experience
had had its effect on her nature; he believed that it had developed her
character as well. Insistently the memory of her parting words was with
him, and he knew, in spite of his brutal and furious efforts to condemn
her, that love was not dead and that hope still lived.
He swung aboard the _Ethel and May_ one afternoon, after he had waited
patiently for her arrival with her fare.
“I have come back to fish with you, Captain Candage, until my troubles
are straightened out--if they ever are.”
Captain Candage was silent, controlling some visible emotions.
“I have come back to be with folks who won't talk too much about those
troubles,” he added, gloomily.
“Exactly,” agreed the skipper. “Nothing is ever gained by stirring up
trouble after it has been well cooked. Swing the pot back over the fire,
I say, and let it simmer till it cools off of itself. I thought you
would come back.”
“Why?”
“Well, I knew they had taken away your papers. Furthermore, Polly has
been saying that you would come back.”
“And why did she think so?” asked Mayo, in milder tones.
“She didn't say why,” admitted Captain Candage. “Maybe women see into
things deeper than men do.”
“It seems like coming home--coming home when a man is sick and tired of
everything in the world, sir.”
“Reckon my Polly had something like that in mind. She dropped a few
hints that she hoped you'd come and get rested up from your troubles.”
“And she has gone back to her work, I suppose?”
“No, she is still on her job at Maquoit, sir--calls it her real job. She
isn't a quitter, Polly isn't. She says they need her.”
“Like the song says, 'The flowers need the sunshine and the roses need
the dew,' that's how they need her,” averred Oakum Otie. “Though them
Hue and Cry women and children can't be said to be much like roses and
geraniums! But they're more like it than they ever was before, since
Miss Polly has taken hold of 'em. It's wonderful what a good girl can do
when she tries, Captain Mayo!”
Resuming his life on the fishing-schooner was like slipping on a pair of
old shoes, and Mayo was grateful for that New England stoicism which had
greeted him in such matter-of-fact fashion.
“What you want to tell me is all right and what you don't want to tell
me is still better,” stated Captain Candage. “Because when you ain't
talking about it you ain't stirring it!”
So, in that fashion, he came back into the humble life of Maquoit. There
had been no awkwardness in his meeting with Captain Candage; it had been
man to man, and they understood how to dispense with words. But Mayo
looked forward to his meeting with Polly Candage without feeling that
equanimity which the father had inspired.
He felt an almost overmastering desire to confide to her his troubles of
the heart. But he knew that he would not be able to do that. His little
temple had been so cruelly profaned. His humiliation was too great.
He was conscious that some other reason was operating to hold him back
from explaining to her; and because he did not understand just what it
was he was ill at ease when he did come face to face with her. He
was grateful for one circumstance--their first meeting was in the old
fish-house at Maquoit, under the hundred curious eyes of the colony. He
had rowed ashore in his dory and went to seek her in the midst of
her activities. She put out both her hands and greeted him with frank
pleasure and seemed to understand his constraint, to anticipate his own
thoughts, to respect his reticence.
“I'm glad you have come back to wait till all your troubles are settled.
The most consoling friends are those who know and who sympathize and who
keep still! Now come with me and listen to the children and see what
the women are doing. You will be proud and glad because you spoke up for
them that day when we went over to Hue and Cry.”
After that there was no constraint between them; they kept their own
affairs hidden from each other. The autumn passed and the long, chill
evenings came, and when the fishing-schooner was in port at Maquoit,
between trips, Mayo and the girl spent comfortable hours together,
playing at cards under the widow's red-shaded lamp and under the widow's
approving eyes.