WHATEVER his private sorrows may be, a multimillionaire, like any other workingman, should keep abreast of his business. Harvey Cheyne, senior, had gone East late in June to meet a woman broken down, half mad, who dreamed day and night of her son drowning in the grey seas. He had surrounded her with doctors, trained nurses, massage-women, and even faith-cure companions, but they were useless. Mrs. Cheyne lay still and moaned, or talked of her boy by the hour together to any one who would listen. Hope she had none, and who could offer it? All she needed was assurance that drowning did not hurt; and her husband watched to guard lest she should make the experiment. Of his own sorrow he spoke little—hardly realised the depth of it till he caught himself asking the calendar on his writing-desk, “What’s the use of going on?”
There had always lain a pleasant notion at the back of his head that, some day, when he had rounded off everything and the boy had left college, he would take his son to his heart and lead him into his possessions. Then that boy, he argued, as busy fathers do, would instantly become his companion, partner, and ally, and there would follow splendid years of great works carried out together—the old head backing the young fire. Now his boy was dead—lost at sea, as it might have been a Swede sailor from one of Cheyne’s big tea-ships; the wife was dying, or worse; he himself was trodden down by platoons of women and doctors and maids and attendants; worried almost beyond endurance by the shift and change of her poor restless whims; hopeless, with no heart to meet his many enemies.
He had taken the wife to his raw new palace in San Diego, where she and her people occupied a wing of great price, and Cheyne, in a verandah-room, between a secretary and a typewriter, who was also a telegraphist, toiled along wearily from day to day. There was a war of rates among four Western railroads in which he was supposed to be interested; a devastating strike had developed in his lumber-camps in Oregon, and the legislature of the State of California, which has no love for its makers, was preparing open war against him.
Ordinarily he would have accepted battle ere it was offered, and have waged a pleasant and unscrupulous campaign. But now he sat limply, his soft black hat pushed forward on to his nose, his big body shrunk inside his loose clothes, staring at his boots or the Chinese junks in the bay, and assenting absently to the secretary’s questions as he opened the Saturday mail.
Cheyne was wondering how much it would cost to drop everything and pull out. He carried huge insurances, could buy himself royal annuities, and between one of his places in Colorado and a little society (that would do the wife good), say in Washington and the South Carolina islands, a man might forget plans that had come to nothing. On the other hand...
The click of the typewriter stopped; the girl was looking at the secretary, who had turned white.
He passed Cheyne a telegram repeated from San Francisco:
| Picked up by fishing schooner “We’re Here” having fallen off boat great times on Banks fishing all well waiting Gloucester Mass care Disko Troop for money or orders wire what shall do and how is mama
Harvey N. Cheyne. |
The father let it fall, laid his head down on the roller-top of the shut desk, and breathed heavily. The secretary ran for Mrs. Cheyne’s doctor, who found Cheyne pacing to and fro.
“What-what d’you think of it? Is it possible? Is there any meaning to it? I can’t quite make it out,” he cried.
“I can,” said the doctor. “I lose seven thousand a year—that’s all.” He thought of the struggling New York practice he had dropped at Cheyne’s imperious bidding, and returned the telegram with a sigh.
“You mean you’d tell her? ’Maybe a fraud?”
“What’s the motive?” said the doctor, coolly. “Detection’s too certain. It’s the boy sure enough.”
Enter a French maid, impudently, as an indispensable one who is kept on only by large wages.
“Mrs. Cheyne she say you must come at once. She think you are seek.”
The master of thirty millions bowed his head meekly and followed Suzanne; and a thin, high voice on the upper landing of the great white-wood square staircase cried: “What is it? what has happened?”
No doors could keep out the shriek that rang through the echoing house a moment later, when her husband blurted out the news.
“And that’s all right,” said the doctor, serenely, to the typewriter. “About the only medical statement in novels with any truth to it is that joy don’t kill, Miss Kinzey.”
“I know it; but we’ve a heap to do first.” Miss Kinzey was from Milwaukee, somewhat direct of speech; and as her fancy leaned towards the secretary, she divined there was work in hand. He was looking earnestly at the vast roller-map of America on the wall.
“Milsom, we’re going right across. Private car straight through—Boston. Fix the connections,” shouted Cheyne down the staircase.—“I thought so.”
The secretary turned to the typewriter, and their eyes met (out of that was born a story—nothing to do with this story). She looked inquiringly, doubtful of his resources. He signed to her to move to the Morse as a general brings brigades into action. Then he swept his hand. musician-wise through his hair, regarded the ceiling, and set to work, while Miss Kinzey’s white fingers called up the Continent of America.
“K. H. Wade, Los Angeles—The ‘Constance’ is at Los Angeles, isn’t she, Miss Kinzey?”
“Yep.” Miss Kinzey nodded between clicks as the secretary looked at his watch.
“Ready? Send ‘Constance,’ private car, here, and arrange for special to leave here Sunday in time to connect with New York Limited at Sixteenth Street, Chicago, Tuesday next.”
Click—click—click! “Couldn’t you better that’?”
“Not on those grades. That gives ’em sixty hours from here to Chicago. They won’t gain anything by taking a special east of that. Ready? Also arrange with Lake Shore and Michigan Southern to take ‘Constance’ on New York Central and Hudson River Buffalo to Albany, and B. and A. the same Albany to Boston. Indispensable I should reach Boston Wednesday evening. Be sure nothing prevents. Have also wired Canniff, Toucey, and Barnes.—Sign, Cheyne.”
Miss Kinzey nodded, and the secretary went on.
“Now then. Canniff, Toucey, and Barnes, of course. Ready? Canniff Chicago. Please take my private car ‘Constance’ from Santa Fe at Sixteenth Street next Tuesday p.m. on N.Y. Limited through to Buffalo and deliver N.Y.C. for Albany.—Ever bin to N’ York, Miss Kinzey? We’ll go some day. Ready? Take car Buffalo to Albany on Limited Tuesday p.m. That’s for Toucey.”—“Haven’t bin to Noo York, but I know that!” with a toss of the head.
“Beg pardon. Now, Boston and Albany, Barnes, same instructions from Albany through to Boston. Leave three-five p.m. (you needn’t wire that); arrive nine-five p.m. Wednesday. That covers everything Wade will do, but it pays to shake up the managers.”
“It’s great,” said Miss Kinzey, with a look of admiration. This was the kind of man she understood and appreciated.
“’Tisn’t bad,” said Milsom, modestly. “Now, any one but me would have lost thirty hours and spent a week working out the run, instead of handing him over to the Santa Fe straight through to Chicago.”
“But see here, about that Noo York Limited. Chauncey Depew himself couldn’t hitch his car to her,” Miss Kinzey suggested, recovering herself.
“Yes, but this isn’t Chauncey. It’s Cheyne-lightning. It goes.”
“Even so. Guess we’d better wire the boy. You’ve forgotten that, anyhow.”
When he returned with the father’s message bidding Harvey meet them in Boston at an appointed hour, he found Miss Kinzey laughing over the keys. Then Milsom laughed too, for the frantic clicks from Los Angeles ran: “We want to know why—why—why? General uneasiness developed and spreading.”
Ten minutes later Chicago appealed to Miss Kinzey in these words: “If crime of century is maturing please warn friends in time. We are all getting to cover here.”
This was capped by a message from Topeka (and wherein Topeka was concerned even Milsom could not guess): “Don’t shoot, Colonel. We’ll come down.”
Cheyne smiled grimly at the consternation of his enemies when the telegrams were laid before him. “They think we’re on the war-path. Tell ’em we don’t feel like fighting just now, Milsom. Tell ’em what we’re going for. I guess you and Miss Kinzey had better come along, though it isn’t likely I shall do any business on the road. Tell ’em the truth—for once.”
So the truth was told. Miss Kinzey clicked in the sentiment while the secretary added the memorable quotation, “Let us have peace,” and in board-rooms two thousand miles away the representatives of sixty-three million dollars’ worth of variously manipulated railroad interests breathed more freely. Cheyne was flying to meet the only son, so miraculously restored to him. The bear was seeking his cub, not the bulls. Hard men who had their knives drawn to fight for their financial lives put away the weapons and wished him God-speed, while half a dozen panic-smitten tin-pot roads perked up their heads and spoke of the wonderful things they would have done had not Cheyne buried the hatchet.
It was a busy week-end among the wires; for, now that their anxiety was removed, men and cities hastened to accommodate. Los Angeles called to San Diego and Barstow that the Southern California engineers might know and be ready in their lonely round-houses; Barstow passed the word to the Atlantic and Pacific; the Albuquerque flung it the whole length of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe management, even into Chicago. An engine, combination-car with crew, and the great and gilded “Constance” private car were to be “expedited” over those two thousand three hundred and fifty miles. The train would take precedence of one hundred and seventy-seven others meeting and passing; despatches and crews of every one of those said trains must be notified. Sixteen locomotives, sixteen engineers, and sixteen firemen would be needed—each and every one the best available. Two and one half minutes would be allowed for changing engines, three for watering, and two for coaling. “Warn the men, and arrange tanks and chutes accordingly; for Harvey Cheyne is in a hurry, a hurry—a hurry,” sang the wires. “Forty miles an hour will be expected, and division superintendents will accompany this special over their respective divisions. From San Diego to Sixteenth Street, Chicago, let the magic carpet be laid down. Hurry! oh, hurry!”
“It will be hot,” said Cheyne, as they rolled out of San Diego in the dawn of Sunday. “We’re going to hurry, mama, just as fast as ever we can; but I really don’t think there’s any good of your putting on your bonnet and gloves yet. You’d much better lie down and take your medicine. I’d play you a game o’ dominoes, but it’s Sunday.”
“I’ll be good. Oh, I will be good. Only—taking off my bonnet makes me feel as if we’d never get there.”
“Try to sleep a little, mama, and we’ll be in Chicago before you know.”
“But it’s Boston, father. Tell them to hurry.”
The six-foot drivers were hammering their way to San Bernardino and the Mohave wastes, but this was no grade for speed. That would come later. The heat of the desert followed the heat of the hills as they turned east to the Needles and the Colorado River. The car cracked in the utter drought and glare, and they put crushed ice to Mrs. Cheyne’s neck, and toiled up the long, long grades, past Ash Fork, towards Flagstaff, where the forests and quarries are, under the dry, remote skies. The needle of the speed-indicator flicked and wagged to and fro; the cinders rattled on the roof, and a whirl of dust sucked after the whirling wheels, The crew of the combination sat on their bunks, panting in their shirt-sleeves, and Cheyne found himself among them shouting old, old stories of the railroad that every trainman knows, above the roar of the car. He told them about his son, and how the sea had given up its dead, and they nodded and spat and rejoiced with him; asked after “her, back there,” and whether she could stand it if the engineer “let her out a piece,” and Cheyne thought she could. Accordingly, the great fire-horse was “let out” from Flagstaff to Winslow, till a division superintendent protested.
But Mrs. Cheyne, in the boudoir state-room, where the French maid, sallow-white with fear, clung to the silver door-handle, only moaned a little and begged her husband to bid them “hurry.” And so they dropped the dry sands and moon-struck rocks of Arizona behind them, and grilled on till the crash of the couplings and the wheeze of the brake-hose told them they were at Coolidge by the Continental Divide. Three bold and experienced men—cool, confident, and dry when they began; white, quivering, and wet when they finished their trick at those terrible wheels—swung her over the great lift from Albuquerque to Glorietta and beyond Springer, up and up to the Raton Tunnel on the State line, whence they dropped rocking into La Junta, had sight of the Arkansaw, and tore down the long slope to Dodge City, where Cheyne took comfort once again from setting his watch an hour ahead.
There was very little talk in the car. The secretary and typewriter sat together on the stamped Spanish-leather cushions by the plate-glass observation-window at the rear end, watching the surge and ripple of the ties crowded back behind them, and, it is believed, making notes of the scenery. Cheyne moved nervously between his own extravagant gorgeousness and the naked necessity of the combination, an unlit cigar in his teeth, till the pitying crews forgot that he was their tribal enemy, and did their best to entertain him.
At night the bunched electrics lit up that distressful palace of all the luxuries, and they fared sumptuously, swinging on through the emptiness of abject desolation. Now they heard the swish of a water-tank, and the guttural voice of a China-man, the clink-clink of hammers that tested the Krupp steel wheels, and the oath of a tramp chased off the rear platform; now the solid crash of coal shot into the tender; and now a beating back of noises as they flew past a waiting train. Now they looked out into great abysses, a trestle purring beneath their tread, or up to rocks that barred out half the stars. Now scaur and ravine changed and rolled back to jagged mountains on the horizon’s edge, and now broke into hills lower and lower, till at last came the true plains.
At Dodge City an unknown hand threw in a copy of a Kansas paper containing some sort of an interview with Harvey, who had evidently fallen in with an enterprising reporter, telegraphed on from Boston. The joyful journalese revealed that it was beyond question their boy, and it soothed Mrs. Cheyne for a while. Her one word “hurry” was conveyed by the crews to the engineers at Nickerson, Topeka, and Marceline, where the grades are easy, and they brushed the Continent behind them. Towns and villages were close together now, and a man could feel here that he moved among people.
“I can’t see the dial, and my eyes ache so. What are we doing?”
“The very best we can, mama. There’s no sense in getting in before the Limited. We’d only have to wait.”
“I don’t care. I want to feel we’re moving. Sit down and tell me the miles.”
Cheyne sat down and read the dial for her (there were some miles which stand for records to this day), but the seventy-foot car never changed its long, steamer-like roll, moving through the heat with the hum of a giant bee. Yet the speed was not enough for Mrs. Cheyne; and the heat, the remorseless August heat, was making her giddy; the clock-hands would not move, and when, oh, when would they be in Chicago?
It is not true that, as they changed engines at Fort Madison, Cheyne passed over to the Amalgamated Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers an endowment sufficient to enable them to fight him and his fellows on equal terms for evermore. He paid his obligations to engineers and firemen as he believed they deserved, and only his bank knows what he gave the crews who had sympathised with him. It is on record that the last crew took entire charge of switching operations at Sixteenth Street, because “she” was in a doze at last, and Heaven was to help any one who bumped her.
Now the highly paid specialist who conveys the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Limited from Chicago to Elkhart is something of an autocrat, and he does not approve of being told how to back up to a car. None the less he handled the “Constance” as if she might have been a load of dynamite, and when the crew rebuked him, they did it in whispers and dumb show.
“Pshaw!” said the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe men, discussing life later, “we weren’t runnin’ for a record. Harvey Cheyne’s wife, she were sick back, an’ we didn’t want to jounce her. ’Come to think of it, our runnin’ time from San Diego to Chicago was 57.54. You can tell that to them Eastern way-trains. When we’re tryin’ for a record, we’ll let you know.”
To the Western man (though this would not please either city) Chicago and Boston are cheek by jowl, and some railroads encourage the delusion. The Limited whirled the “Constance” into Buffalo and the arms of the New York Central and Hudson River (illustrious magnates with white whiskers and gold charms on their watch-chains boarded her here to talk a little business to Cheyne), who slid her gracefully into Albany, where the Boston and Albany completed the run from tide-water to tide-water—total time, eighty-seven hours and thirty-five minutes, or three days, fifteen hours and one half. Harvey was waiting for them.
After violent emotion most people and all boys demand food. They feasted the returned prodigal behind drawn curtains, cut off in their great happiness, while the trains roared in and out around them. Harvey ate, drank, and enlarged on his adventures all in one breath, and when he had a hand free his mother fondled it. His voice was thickened with living in the open, salt air; his palms were rough and hard, his wrists dotted with the marks of gurry- sores; and a fine full flavour of cod-fish hung round rubber boots and blue jersey.
The father, well used to judging men, looked at him keenly. He did not know what enduring harm the boy might have taken. Indeed, he caught himself thinking that he knew very little whatever of his son; but he distinctly remembered an unsatisfied, dough-faced youth who took delight in “calling down the old man” and reducing his mother to tears—such a person as adds to the gaiety of public rooms and hotel piazzas, where the ingenuous young of the wealthy play with or revile the bell-boys. But this well set-up fisher-youth did not wriggle, looked at him with eyes steady, clear, and unflinching, and spoke in a tone distinctly, even startlingly, respectful. There was that in his voice, too, which seemed to promise that the change might be permanent, and that the new Harvey had come to stay.
“Some one’s been coercing him,” thought Cheyne. “Now Constance would never have allowed that. Don’t see as Europe could have done it any better.”
“But why didn’t you tell this man, Troop, who you were?” the mother repeated, when Harvey had expanded his story at least twice.
“Disko Troop, dear. The best man that ever walked a deck. I don’t care who the next is.”
“Why didn’t you tell him to put you ashore? You know papa would have made it up to him ten times over.”
“I know it; but he thought I was crazy. I’m afraid I called him a thief because I couldn’t find the bills in my pocket.”
“A sailor found them by the flagstaff that—that night,” sobbed Mrs. Cheyne.
“That explains it, then. I don’t blame Troop any. I just said I wouldn’t work—on a Banker, too—and of course he hit me on the nose, and oh! I bled like a stuck hog.”
“My poor darling! They must have abused you horribly.”
“Dunno quite. Well, after that, I saw a light.”
Cheyne slapped his leg and chuckled. This was going to be a boy after his own hungry heart. He had never seen precisely that twinkle in Harvey’s eye before.
“And the old man gave me ten and a half a month; he’s paid me half now; and I took hold with Dan and pitched right in. I can’t do a man’s work yet. But I can handle a dory ’most as well as Dan, and I don’t get rattled in a fog—much; and I can take my trick in light winds—that’s steering, dear—and I can ’most bait up a trawl, and I know my ropes, of course; and I can pitch fish till the cows come home, and I’m great on old Josephus, and I’ll show you how I can clear coffee with a piece of fish-skin, and—I think I’ll have another cup, please. Say, you’ve no notion what a heap of work there is in ten and a half a month!”
“I began with eight and a half, my son,” said Cheyne.
“’That so? You never told me, sir.”
“You never asked, Harve. I’ll tell you about it some day. if you care to listen. Try a stuffed olive.”
“Troop says the most interesting thing in the world is to find out how the next man gets his vittles. It’s great to have a trimmed-up meal again. We were well fed, though. Best mug on the Banks. Disko fed us first-class. He’s a great man. And Dan—that’s his son—Dan’s my partner. And there’s Uncle Salters and his manures, an’ he reads Josephus. He’s sure I’m crazy yet. And there’s poor little Penn, and he is crazy. You mustn’t talk to him about Johnstown, because—And, oh, you must know Tom Platt and Long Jack and Manuel. Manuel saved my life. I’m sorry he’s a Portugee. He can’t talk much, but he’s an everlasting musician. He found me struck adrift and drifting, and hauled me in.”
“I wonder your nervous system isn’t completely wrecked,” said Mrs. Cheyne.
“What for, mama? I worked like a horse and I ate like a hog and I slept like a dead man.”
That was too much for Mrs. Cheyne, who began to think of her visions of a corpse rocking on the salty seas. She went to her state-room, and Harvey curled up beside his father, explaining his indebtedness.
“You can depend upon me to do everything I can for the crowd, Harve. They seem to be good men on your showing.”
“Best in the Fleet, sir. Ask at Gloucester,” said Harvey. “But Disko believes still he’s cured me of being crazy. Dan’s the only one I’ve let on to about you, and our private cars and all the rest of it, and I’m not quite sure Dan believes. I want to paralyse ’em to-morrow. Say, can’t they run the ‘Constance’ over to Gloucester? Mama don’t look fit to be moved, anyway, and we’re bound to finish cleaning out by to-morrow. Wouverman takes our fish. You see, we’re first off the Banks this season, and it’s four twenty-five a quintal. We held out till he paid it. They want it quick.”
“You mean you’ll have to work to-morrow, then?”
“I told Troop I would. I’m on the scales. I’ve brought the tallies with me.” He looked at the greasy notebook with an air of importance that made his father choke. “There isn’t but three—no—two ninety-four or five quintal more by my reckoning.”
“Hire a substitute,” suggested Cheyne, to see what Harvey would say.
“Can’t, sir. I’m tally-man for the schooner. Troop says I’ve a better head for figures than Dan. Troop’s a mighty just man.”
“Well, suppose I don’t move the ‘Constance’ to-night, how’ll you fix it?”
Harvey looked at the clock, which marked twenty past eleven.
“Then I’ll sleep here till three and catch the four o’clock freight. They let us men from the Fleet ride free, as a rule.”
“That’s a notion. But I think we can get the ‘Constance’ around about as soon as your men’s freight. Better go to bed now.”
Harvey spread himself on the sofa, kicked off his boots, and was asleep before his father could shade the electrics. Cheyne sat watching the young face under the shadow of the arm thrown over the forehead, and among many things that occurred to him was the notion that he might perhaps have been neglectful as a father.
“One never knows when one’s taking one’s biggest risks,” he said. “It might have been worse than drowning; but I don’t think it has—I don’t think it has. If it hasn’t, I haven’t enough to pay Troop, that’s all; and I don’t think it has.”
Morning brought a fresh sea breeze through the windows, the “Constance” was side-tracked among freight-cars at Gloucester, and Harvey had gone to his business.
“Then he’ll fall overboard again and be drowned,” the mother said bitterly.
“We’ll go and look, ready to throw him a rope in case. You’ve never seen him working for his bread,” said the father.
“What nonsense! As if any one expected—”
“Well, the man that hired him did. He’s about right, too.”
They went down between the stores full of fishermen’s oilskins to Wouverman’s wharf, where the “We’re Here” rode high, her Bank flag still flying, all hands busy as beavers in the glorious morning light. Disko stood by the main hatch superintending Manuel, Penn, and Uncle Salters at the tackle. Dan was swinging the loaded baskets inboard as Long Jack and Tom Platt filled them, and Harvey, with a notebook, represented the skipper’s interests before the clerk of the scales on the salt-sprinkled wharf-edge.
“Ready!” cried the voices below. “Haul!” cried Disko. “Hi!” said Manuel. “Here!” said Dan, swinging the basket. Then they heard Harvey’s voice, clear and fresh, checking the weights.
The last of the fish had been whipped out, and Harvey leaped from the string-piece six feet to a ratline, as the shortest way to hand Disko the tally, shouting, “Two ninety-seven, and an empty hold!”
“What’s total, Harve?” said Disko.
“Eight sixty-five. Three thousand six hundred and seventy-six dollars and a quarter. ’Wish I’d share as well as wage.”
“Well, I won’t go so far as to say you hevn’t deserved it, Harve. Don’t you want to slip up to Wouverman’s office and take him our tallies?”
“Who’s that boy?” said Cheyne to Dan, well used to all manner of questions from those idle imbeciles called summer boarders.
“Well, he’s a kind o’ supercargo,” was the answer. “We picked him up struck adrift on the Banks. Fell overboard from a liner, he sez. He was a passenger. He’s by way o’ bein’ a fisherman now.”
“Ye-ep. Dad, this man wants to know ef Harve’s worth his keep. Say, would you like to go aboard? We’ll fix a ladder for her.”
“I should very much, indeed. ’Twon’t hurt you, mama, and you’ll be able to see for yourself.”
The woman who could not lift her head a week ago scrambled down the ladder, and stood aghast amid the mess and tangle aft.
“Be you anyways interested in Harve?” said Disko.
“He’s a good boy, an’ ketches right hold jest as he’s bid. You’ve heard haow we found him? He was sufferin’ from nervous prostration, I guess, ’r else his head had hit somethin’, when we hauled him aboard. He’s all over that naow. Yes, this is the cabin. ’Tain’t anyways in order, but you’re quite welcome to look around. Those are his figures on the stove-pipe, where we keep the reckonin’ mostly.”
“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, especially 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 tould 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, Mister Cheyne, as I mistrusted the boy to be crazy. He talked kinder odd about money.”
“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 outstretched 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 fo’c’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 it as if she’d made a cathedral av ut all.”
“Cathedral!” sneered Tom Platt. “Oh, ef it had bin even the Fish C’mmission boat instid o’ this bally-hoo o’ blazes. Ef 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!” said 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 it 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 ef 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 to 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 table-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 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.”
“’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 bin 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 José 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?”
“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.”
“Ef I’d only known! Ef 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 José 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, ef 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 a 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.”
“Ef 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 over to Troop’s eighteen-hundred-dollar, blue-trimmed white house, with a retired dory full of nasturtiums in the front yard and a shuttered parlor 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). Ef 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 sympathise 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.”
