Part 124

“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.