“Did he sleep here?” said Mrs. Cheyne, sitting on a yellow locker and surveying the disorderly bunks.
“No. He berthed forward, madam, an’ only fer him an’ my boy hookin’ fried pies an muggin’ up when they ought to ha’ been asleep, I dunno as I’ve any special fault to find with him.”
“There weren’t nothin’ wrong with Harve,” said Uncle Salters, descending the steps. “He hung my boots on the main-truck, and he ain’t over an’ above respectful to such as knows more’n he do, specially about farmin’; but he were mostly misled by Dan.”
Dan in the meantime, profiting by dark hints from Harvey early that morning, was executing a war-dance on deck. “Tom, Tom!” he whispered down the hatch. “His folks has come, an’ Dad hain’t caught on yet, an’ they’re pow-wowin’ in the cabin. She’s a daisy, an’ he’s all Harve claimed he was, by the looks of him.”
“Howly Smoke!” said Long Jack, climbing out covered with salt and fish-skin. “D’ye belave his tale av the kid an’ the little four-horse rig was thrue?”
“I knew it all along,” said Dan. “Come an’ see Dad mistook in his judgments.”
They came delightedly, just in time to hear Cheyne say: “I’m glad he has a good character, because — he’s my son.”
Disko’s jaw fell, — Long Jack always vowed that he heard the click of it, — and he stared alternately at the man and the woman.
“I got his telegram in San Diego four days ago, and we came over.”
“In a private car?” said Dan. “He said ye might.”
“In a private car, of course.”
Dan looked at his father with a hurricane of irreverent winks.
“There was a tale he told us av drivin’ four little ponies in a rig av his own,” said Long Jack. “Was that thrue now?”
“Very likely,” said Cheyne. “Was it, Mama?”
“He had a little drag when we were in Toledo, I think,” said the mother.
Long Jack whistled. “Oh, Disko!” said he, and that was all.
“I wuz — I am mistook in my jedgments — worse’n the men o’ Marblehead,” said Disko, as though the words were being windlassed out of him. “I don’t mind ownin’ to you, Mr. Cheyne, as I mistrusted the boy to be crazy. He talked kinder odd about money.”
“So he told me.”
“Did he tell ye anything else? ‘Cause I pounded him once.” This with a somewhat anxious glance at Mrs. Cheyne.
“Oh, yes,” Cheyne replied. “I should say it probably did him more good than anything else in the world.”
“I jedged ‘twuz necessary, er I wouldn’t ha’ done it. I don’t want you to think we abuse our boys any on this packet.”
“I don’t think you do, Mr. Troop.”
Mrs. Cheyne had been looking at the faces — Disko’s ivory-yellow, hairless, iron countenance; Uncle Salters’s, with its rim of agricultural hair; Penn’s bewildered simplicity; Manuel’s quiet smile; Long Jack’s grin of delight, and Tom Platt’s scar. Rough, by her standards, they certainly were; but she had a mother’s wits in her eyes, and she rose with out-stretched hands.
“Oh, tell me, which is who?” said she, half sobbing. “I want to thank you and bless you — all of you.”
“Faith, that pays me a hunder time,” said Long Jack.
Disko introduced them all in due form. The captain of an old-time Chinaman could have done no better, and Mrs. Cheyne babbled incoherently. She nearly threw herself into Manuel’s arms when she understood that he had first found Harvey.
“But how shall I leave him dreeft?” said poor Manuel. “What do you yourself if you find him so? Eh, wha-at? We are in one good boy, and I am ever so pleased he come to be your son.”
“And he told me Dan was his partner!” she cried. Dan was already sufficiently pink, but he turned a rich crimson when Mrs. Cheyne kissed him on both cheeks before the assembly. Then they led her forward to show her the foc’sle, at which she wept again, and must needs go down to see Harvey’s identical bunk, and there she found the nigger cook cleaning up the stove, and he nodded as though she were some one he had expected to meet for years. They tried, two at a time, to explain the boat’s daily life to her, and she sat by the pawl-post, her gloved hands on the greasy table, laughing with trembling lips and crying with dancing eyes.
“And who’s ever to use the We’re Here after this?” said Long Jack to Tom Platt. “I feel as if she’d made a cathedral av ut all.”
“Cathedral!” sneered Tom Platt. “Oh, if it had bin even the Fish C’mmission boat instid of this bally-hoo o’ blazes. If we only hed some decency an’ order an’ side-boys when she goes over! She’ll have to climb that ladder like a hen, an’ we — we ought to be mannin’ the yards!”
“Then Harvey was not mad,” said Penn, slowly, to Cheyne.
“No, indeed — thank God,” the big millionaire replied, stooping down tenderly.
“It must be terrible to be mad. Except to lose your child, I do not know anything more terrible. But your child has come back? Let us thank God for that.”
“Hello!” cried Harvey, looking down upon them benignly from the wharf.
“I wuz mistook, Harve. I wuz mistook,” said Disko, swiftly, holding up a hand. “I wuz mistook in my jedgments. Ye needn’t rub in any more.”
“Guess I’ll take care o’ that,” said Dan, under his breath.
“You’ll be goin’ off naow, won’t ye?”
“Well, not without the balance of my wages, ‘less you want to have the We’re Here attached.”
“Thet’s so; I’d clean forgot”; and he counted out the remaining dollars. “You done all you contracted to do, Harve; and you done it ‘baout’s well as if you’d been brought up — ” Here Disko brought himself up. He did not quite see where the sentence was going to end.
“Outside of a private car?” suggested Dan, wickedly.
“Come on, and I’ll show her to you,” said Harvey.
Cheyne stayed to talk with Disko, but the others made a procession to the depot, with Mrs. Cheyne at the head. The French maid shrieked at the invasion; and Harvey laid the glories of the “Constance” before them without a word. They took them in in equal silence — stamped leather, silver door-handles and rails, cut velvet, plate-glass, nickel, bronze, hammered iron, and the rare woods of the continent inlaid.
“I told you,” said Harvey; “I told you.” This was his crowning revenge, and a most ample one.
Mrs. Cheyne decreed a meal, and that nothing might be lacking to the tale Long Jack told afterwards in his boarding-house, she waited on them herself. Men who are accustomed to eat at tiny tables in howling gales have curiously neat and finished manners; but Mrs. Cheyne, who did not know this, was surprised. She longed to have Manuel for a butler; so silently and easily did he comport himself among the frail glassware and dainty silver. Tom Platt remembered the great days on the Ohio and the manners of foreign potentates who dined with the officers; and Long Jack, being Irish, supplied the small talk till all were at their ease.
In the We’re Here’s cabin the fathers took stock of each other behind their cigars. Cheyne knew well enough when he dealt with a man to whom he could not offer money; equally well he knew that no money could pay for what Disko had done. He kept his own counsel and waited for an opening.
“I hevn’t done anything to your boy or fer your boy excep’ make him work a piece an’ learn him how to handle the hog-yoke,” said Disko. “He has twice my boy’s head for figgers.”
“By the way,” Cheyne answered casually, “what d’you calculate to make of your boy?”
Disko removed his cigar and waved it comprehensively round the cabin. “Dan’s jest plain boy, an’ he don’t allow me to do any of his thinkin’. He’ll hev this able little packet when I’m laid by. He ain’t noways anxious to quit the business. I know that.”
“Mmm! ‘Ever been West, Mr. Troop?”
“‘Bin’s fer ez Noo York once in a boat. I’ve no use for railroads. No more hez Dan. Salt water
’s good enough fer the Troops. I’ve been ‘most everywhere — in the nat’ral way, o’ course.”
“I can give him all the salt water he’s likely to need — till he’s a skipper.”
“Haow’s that? I thought you wuz a kinder railroad king. Harve told me so when — I was mistook in my jedgments.”
“We’re all apt to be mistaken. I fancied perhaps you might know I own a line of tea-clippers — San Francisco to Yokohama — six of ‘em — iron-built, about seventeen hundred and eighty tons apiece.
“Blame that boy! He never told. I’d ha’ listened to that, instid o’ his truck abaout railroads an’ pony-carriages.”
“He didn’t know.”
“‘Little thing like that slipped his mind, I guess.”
“No, I only capt — took hold of the ‘Blue M.’ freighters — Morgan and McQuade’s old line — this summer.” Disko collapsed where he sat, beside the stove.
“Great Caesar Almighty! I mistrust I’ve been fooled from one end to the other. Why, Phil Airheart he went from this very town six year back — no, seven — an’ he’s mate on the San Jose — now — twenty-six days was her time out. His sister she’s livin’ here yet, an’ she reads his letters to my woman. An’ you own the ‘Blue M.’ freighters?”
Cheyne nodded.
“If I’d known that I’d ha’ jerked the We’re Here back to port all standin’, on the word.”
“Perhaps that wouldn’t have been so good for Harvey.”
“If I’d only known! If he’d only said about the cussed Line, I’d ha’ understood! I’ll never stand on my own jedgments again — never. They’re well-found packets. Phil Airheart he says so.”
“I’m glad to have a recommend from that quarter. Airheart’s skipper of the San Jose now. What I was getting at is to know whether you’d lend me Dan for a year or two, and we’ll see if we can’t make a mate of him. Would you trust him to Airheart?”
“It’s a resk taking a raw boy — ”
“I know a man who did more for me.”
“That’s diff’runt. Look at here naow, I ain’t recommendin’ Dan special because he’s my own flesh an’ blood. I know Bank ways ain’t clipper ways, but he hain’t much to learn. Steer he can — no boy better, if I say it — an’ the rest’s in our blood an’ get; but I could wish he warn’t so cussed weak on navigation.”
“Airheart will attend to that. He’ll ship as boy for a voyage or two, and then we can put him in the way of doing better. Suppose you take him in hand this winter, and I’ll send for him early in the spring. I know the Pacific’s a long ways off — ”
“Pshaw! We Troops, livin’ an’ dead, are all around the earth an’ the seas thereof.”
“But I want you to understand — and I mean this — any time you think you’d like to see him, tell me, and I’ll attend to the transportation. ‘Twon’t cost you a cent.”
“If you’ll walk a piece with me, we’ll go to my house an’ talk this to my woman. I’ve bin so crazy mistook in all my jedgments, it don’t seem to me this was like to be real.”
They went blue-trimmed of nasturtiums over to Troop’s eighteen-hundred-dollar, white house, with a retired dory full in the front yard and a shuttered parlour which was a museum of oversea plunder. There sat a large woman, silent and grave, with the dim eyes of those who look long to sea for the return of their beloved. Cheyne addressed himself to her, and she gave consent wearily.
“We lose one hundred a year from Gloucester only, Mr. Cheyne,” she said — ”one hundred boys an’ men; and I’ve come so’s to hate the sea as if ‘twuz alive an’ listenin’. God never made it fer humans to anchor on. These packets o’ yours they go straight out, I take it’ and straight home again?”
“As straight as the winds let ‘em, and I give a bonus for record passages. Tea don’t improve by being at sea.”
“When he wuz little he used to play at keeping store, an’ I had hopes he might follow that up. But soon’s he could paddle a dory I knew that were goin’ to be denied me.”
“They’re square-riggers, Mother; iron-built an’ well found. Remember what Phil’s sister reads you when she gits his letters.”
“I’ve never known as Phil told lies, but he’s too venturesome (like most of ‘em that use the sea). If Dan sees fit, Mr. Cheyne, he can go — fer all o’ me.”
“She jest despises the ocean,” Disko explained, “an’ I — I dunno haow to act polite, I guess, er I’d thank you better.”
“My father — my own eldest brother — two nephews — an’ my second sister’s man,” she said, dropping her head on her hand. “Would you care fer any one that took all those?”
Cheyne was relieved when Dan turned up and accepted with more delight than he was able to put into words. Indeed, the offer meant a plain and sure road to all desirable things; but Dan thought most of commanding watch on broad decks, and looking into far-away harbours.
Mrs. Cheyne had spoken privately to the unaccountable Manuel in the matter of Harvey’s rescue. He seemed to have no desire for money. Pressed hard, he said that he would take five dollars, because he wanted to buy something for a girl. Otherwise — ”How shall I take money when I make so easy my eats and smokes? You will giva some if I like or no? Eh, wha-at? Then you shall giva me money, but not that way. You shall giva all you can think.” He introduced her to a snuffy Portuguese priest with a list of semi-destitute widows as long as his cassock. As a strict Unitarian, Mrs. Cheyne could not sympathize with the creed, but she ended by respecting the brown, voluble little man.
Manuel, faithful son of the Church, appropriated all the blessings showered on her for her charity. “That letta me out,” said he. “I have now ver’ good absolutions for six months”; and he strolled forth to get a handkerchief for the girl of the hour and to break the hearts of all the others.
Salters went West for a season with Penn, and left no address behind. He had a dread that these millionary people, with wasteful private cars, might take undue interest in his companion. It was better to visit inland relatives till the coast was clear. “Never you be adopted by rich folk, Penn,” he said in the cars, “or I’ll take ‘n’ break this checker-board over your head. Ef you forgit your name agin — which is Pratt — you remember you belong with Salters Troop, an’ set down right where you are till I come fer you. Don’t go taggin’ araound after them whose eyes bung out with fatness, accordin’ to Scripcher.”
CHAPTER X
But it was otherwise with the We’re Here’s silent cook, for he came up, his kit in a handkerchief, and boarded the “Constance.” Pay was no particular object, and he did not in the least care where he slept. His business, as revealed to him in dreams, was to follow Harvey for the rest of his days. They tried argument and, at last, persuasion; but there is a difference between one Cape Breton and two Alabama negroes, and the matter was referred to Cheyne by the cook and porter. The millionaire only laughed. He presumed Harvey might need a body-servant some day or other, and was sure that one volunteer was worth five hirelings. Let the man stay, therefore; even though he called himself MacDonald and swore in Gaelic. The car could go back to Boston, where, if he were still of the same mind, they would take him West.
With the “Constance,” which in his heart of hearts he loathed, departed the last remnant of Cheyne’s millionairedom, and he gave himself up to an energetic idleness. This Gloucester was a new town in a new land, and he purposed to “take it in,” as of old he had taken in all the cities from Snohomish to San Diego of that world whence he hailed. They made money along the crooked street which was half wharf and half ship’s store: as a leading professional he wished to learn how the noble game was played. Men said that four out of every five fish-balls served at New England’s Sunday breakfast came from Gloucester, and overwhelmed him with figures in proof — statistics of boats, gear, wharf-frontage, capital invested, salting, packing, factories, insurance, wages, repairs, and profits. He talked with the owners of the large fleets whose skippers were little m
ore than hired men, and whose crews were almost all Swedes or Portuguese. Then he conferred with Disko, one of the few who owned their craft, and compared notes in his vast head. He coiled himself away on chain-cables in marine junk-shops, asking questions with cheerful, unslaked Western curiosity, till all the water-front wanted to know “what in thunder that man was after, anyhow.” He prowled into the Mutual Insurance rooms, and demanded explanations of the mysterious remarks chalked up on the blackboard day by day; and that brought down upon him secretaries of every Fisherman’s Widow and Orphan Aid Society within the city limits. They begged shamelessly, each man anxious to beat the other institution’s record, and Cheyne tugged at his beard and handed them all over to Mrs. Cheyne.
She was resting in a boarding-house near Eastern Point — a strange establishment, managed, apparently, by the boarders, where the table-cloths were red-and-white-checkered and the population, who seemed to have known one another intimately for years, rose up at midnight to make Welsh rarebits if it felt hungry. On the second morning of her stay Mrs. Cheyne put away her diamond solitaires before she came down to breakfast.
“They’re most delightful people,” she confided to her husband; “so friendly and simple, too, though they are all Boston, nearly.”
“That isn’t simpleness, Mama,” he said, looking across the boulders behind the apple-trees where the hammocks were slung. “It’s the other thing, that what I haven’t got.”
“It can’t be,” said Mrs. Cheyne quietly. “There isn’t a woman here owns a dress that cost a hundred dollars. Why, we — ”
“I know it, dear. We have — of course we have. I guess it’s only the style they wear East. Are you having a good time?”
“I don’t see very much of Harvey; he’s always with you; but I ain’t near as nervous as I was.”
“I haven’t had such a good time since Willie died. I never rightly understood that I had a son before this. Harve’s got to be a great boy. ‘Anything I can fetch you, dear? ‘Cushion under your head? Well, we’ll go down to the wharf again and look around.”
Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) Page 62