"I guess all city girls aren"t alike after all," he said with a short laugh. Then he looked at her keenly again. "Do you know what sort of an errand brought me up into the city from T-Wharf to-day?"
"What errand? I cannot imagine."
"There are two old people down on the Cape that I am much interested in. They live near my home."
He told her quietly, yet with earnestness, about Cap"n Ira and Prudence. He described their home and their need of some young person to live with them, somebody who would not only help them, but who would love to help them. Then he related, perhaps rather tartly, his experience with Ida May Bostwick.
"What a foolish girl!" she breathed. "And she would not accept a chance like that?"
"Lucky for Cap"n Ira and for Aunt Prue that she won"t take up with their offer," he said grimly. "But I dread taking back word to them about her. It will be hard to make them understand. And then, they need the help a good girl could give them."
"Captain Latham, if I only had a chance like that!" she exclaimed.
"I"d work my fingers to the bone for a home like that, for shelter, and kindness, and--and--oh, well, some girls have all the best of it, I guess!"
She sighed. It was half a sob. He saw her hands clasp tightly before her in the dusk. The gesture was like a prayer. He knew that her pale face was flushed with earnestness. He cleared his throat.
"You have the chance, if you want it, Miss Macklin," he said.
CHAPTER X
THE PLOT
There was a long minute of utter silence following Tunis Latham"s last words. Then the girl"s whisper, tense, yet shaking like a frightened child"s:
"You do not know what you are saying."
"I know exactly what I am saying," he replied.
"They--they would not have me."
"They will welcome you--gladly."
"Never! I am a stranger. They must be told all about me. They could never welcome Sheila Macklin."
He knew that. He knew it only too well. She was just the sort of girl to make Cap"n Ira Ball and Prudence happy, to bring to their latter years the comfort and joy the old couple should have. But the Puritanism which, after all, ingrained their characters would never allow the b.a.l.l.s to welcome a girl with the stain Sheila Macklin bore upon her name. Tunis remembered clearly how scornfully Cap"n Ira had spoken of the possibility of their taking in a girl from the poor farm. Pride of family and of name is inbred in their cla.s.s of New Englanders.
The old people wanted a girl whom they could love and look upon as their own. They would welcome n.o.body else. They had set their minds and hearts upon Ida May Bostwick. The fact that Ida May failed to come up to their expectations, that she was perfectly worthless and inconsequential, did not open the way for another girl to be subst.i.tuted for Ida May. Possibly Tunis might be successful in an attempt to interest the b.a.l.l.s in Sheila Macklin"s case. But the girl did not want charity, not charity as the word is used in its general and harsher sense.
Should she carry with her wherever she went this name which had been so smirched--the ident.i.ty of Sheila Macklin, the ghost of whose past misfortune might rise to shame her at any time--the girl could never be happy. Did Tunis Latham succeed in getting the b.a.l.l.s to take Sheila in and give her a home, this story that so bowed her down would continually threaten its revelation, like a pirate ship hovering in the offing!
And there was, too, a deeper reason why he could not introduce Sheila Macklin to Big Wreck Cove folk. It was no reason he could give the girl at this time. In some ways the captain of the _Seamew_ was wise enough. He felt that this was no time to put forward his personal and particular desires. Enough that she had admitted him to her friendship and had given him her confidence.
She had accepted him in all good faith in a brotherly sense. He dared not spoil his influence with her by revealing a deeper interest.
"We may as well look at this thing calmly and sensibly," Tunis said, answering her statement of what was indubitably a fact. "It is quite true my old neighbors would not accept you as Sheila Macklin. But they need you; no other kind of a girl would so suit their need. And you could not help loving them; nor they you, once they learned to know you."
"I am sure I should love them," breathed Sheila.
"Then, as you are just the person they want and their home is just the place you need for shelter, I am going to take you back with me."
"Oh, Captain Latham! We--we can"t do it. My name--somebody will some time be sure to hear about me, and the dreadful secret will come out."
"No, it won"t," said Tunis doggedly. "There will be no secret, not such as you mean, to come out."
She gazed upon him in open-eyed surprise, her lips parted, her face aglow.
"You mean--"
"We"ll leave Sheila Macklin sitting on this bench, if you will agree. She need never be traced from this point. Let her drop out of the ken of the whole world that knew her. The name can only bring you harm; it has brought you harm. Through it you are threatened with trouble, with disaster. Your whole future is menaced through that name and the stain upon it."
She looked at him still, scarcely breathing. Latham did not realize the power he held over this girl at the moment. He was to her a living embodiment of the All Good. Almost any suggestion, no matter how reckless, he might have made, would have found an echo in her heart and the will to do it.
To few is vouchsafed that knowledge which makes all clear before the mental vision. Tunis Latham"s perspicacity did not compa.s.s this thing. He did not grasp the psychological moment, as we moderns call it, and consummate there and then the only reasonable and righteous plan that it was given him to complete.
The captain of the _Seamew_ was a young man very much in love. He did not question this fact at all. But in his wildest imaginings he could never have believed that the girl beside him on this bench returned his pa.s.sion, that she would even listen to his protestations of affection. Not for a long time, at least.
Nor had he ever considered marriage as possible in any case when there was not love on both sides. Although he commiserated Sheila Macklin"s situation most deeply, he could not dream of those depths of despair into which the girl"s heart had sunk before he came upon the scene of action. He did not understand that she was at that bitterly desperate point where she would grasp at any means of rescue which promised respectability.
He almost feared to put before her the proposition he did have in his mind. In the dusk, even, those violet eyes seemed to look to the very bottom of his soul. Fortunate for him that its clarity was visible to the girl at that moment.
He bent closer. His lips almost brushed her ear. He whispered several swift sentences into it. She listened. Some of that glow of exaltation drained out of her countenance, but it registered no disagreement. They sat for some time thereafter, talking, planning, this desperate young girl and the captain of the _Seamew_.
"What do you know about this?" Orion Latham growled. "The mate bunkin" in with cooky and the skipper slingin" a hammock in the fo"c"s"le while the whole cabin"s to be given up to a girl. A woman aboard! Never knew no good to come of that on any craft. What is this schooner, a pa.s.senger packet?"
"You was sayin" she was already hoodooed," chuckled Horace Newbegin.
"I cal"late a gal sailing one trip won"t materially harm the _Seamew_ nor her crew."
"Who is she? That"s what I want to know," said the supercargo, who seemed to consider the matter a personal affront.
"Skipper says she"s going to live with Cap"n Ira Ball. She"s some kin of his wife"s. And they need somebody with "em, up there in that lonesome place," said the ancient seaman reflectively. "That"s what the skipper was doin" all day yesterday, lookin" this gal up and making arrangements for her going back to the _Seamew_. He"s gone up town to get her now. We"ll get away come the turn of the tide, if he"s back in time."
The taxicab with Tunis and the girl arrived in season for the tide.
It was quite dark on the dock to which the _Seamew_ was still moored. The Captain hailed, and two of the hands were sent up for the trunk. Tunis carried the girl"s hand bag.
Every member of the crew was loitering on deck, even Johnny Lark and Tony, the boy, to get a glimpse of the mysterious pa.s.senger. They saw only a slender, graceful, quick-stepping figure, her face veiled, her hands neatly gloved. Just how she was dressed and what she really looked like only daylight would reveal.
Tunis went below with her and remained until the men brought down the trunk. It was a small trunk and brand-new, as was the bag. Had one observed, the hat she wore, and even her simple frock, were likewise just out of the shop. At least the girl who was going with the _Seamew_ to Big Wreck Cove seemed to have made certain preparations for a new life.
The captain came out on deck and closed the slide. The commercial tug was puffing in toward the _Seamew"s_ berth.
"Come alive, boys!" said Captain Latham, taking instant command of the deck. "Cast off those lines! Get that tug hawser inboard, Horry.
Mr. Chapin, will you see that those lines are coiled down properly?
Keep the deck shipshape. Make less work for your watch when we get under canvas.