Sheila of Big Wreck Cove Part 12

Her eyes, luminous, yet darkly unfathomable, were held full upon his face. He felt rather than saw that she was under a mental strain.

The revelation she was about to make throbbed in her voice when she spoke again.

"You do not quite understand. Sellers gives girls work in his restaurant who could by no possibility offer proper references, girls from the Protectory, from homes, as they are called; some, even, who have served jail sentences. I had been two years in the St. Andrew's School for Girls when I went to work for Sellers."

CHAPTER IX

A GIRL'S STORY

There was a ringing in Tunis Latham's ears. As you make Paulmouth Harbor coming from seaward, on a thick day you hear the insistent tolling of the bell buoy over Bitter Reef. That was the distant, but incessant sound that the captain of the _Seamew_ seemed to hear as he sat on that bench on Boston Common beside this strange girl.

Without being a prig, Tunis Latham was undeniably a good man.

Whether he was altogether a wise man was perhaps a subject for argument. At least, his future conduct must settle that point.

But for the moment, when Sheila Macklin had made her last statement, it seemed that every atom of thought and all ability to consider matters logically were drained out of the man's mind. That mind was perfectly blank. What the girl had said seemed mere sound, sound without meaning. He could not grasp its significance.

And yet he knew it was tragic. It was something that had made the girl what she was. It explained all Tunis had been unable heretofore to understand about Sheila Macklin. That timidity, that whispering shyness, the shrinking from observation and from any attention, were all explained. She had suffered persecution and punishment, harsh and undeserved, that made her recoil from contact with other more fortunate people. She felt herself outcast, ostracized, and was unable to defend herself from malign fortune.

Gradually Tunis regained his usual self-control.

If Sheila had said anything following the bare statement that she had spent two years in the St. Andrew's Reformatory for Women, he had not comprehended it. Nor could he have told how long he sat silent on the bench getting control of his voice and of his tongue.

When he did speak he said quite casually:

"And what kind of a place is that--er--school, Miss Macklin?"

"You can imagine. It harbors the weak-minded, the vicious, and the unfortunate runaway girls, thieves' consorts, and women of the streets. It is, I think, a little like h.e.l.l, if there really is such a place, Captain Latham."

The poignancy of expression in her voice and words made the man tremble. And yet she did not speak bitterly nor angrily. Her feeling was beyond all pa.s.sion. It was the expression of a soul that had suffered everything and could no longer feel. That was just it, Tunis told himself. It explained her att.i.tude, even the tone of her voice. She had endured and seen so much misery and heartache that there seemed nothing left for her to experience.

"Can you bear to tell me what misfortune took you to that place?" he asked gently, yet fighting down all the time that desire to roar with rage.

"Why do you not say 'crime,' Captain Latham?" she asked in that same low, strained voice.

"Because I know that crime and you could not be a.s.sociated, Miss Macklin," he said hoa.r.s.ely.

At that she began suddenly to weep. Not aloud, but with her hands pressed over her eyes and her shoulders, shaking with long, shuddering sobs which betrayed how the horror of past thoughts and experiences controlled her when once she gave way. Tunis Latham could have behaved like a madman. That berserk rage that had seized him in the restaurant welled up in his heart now. He gripped the back of the bench till the slat cracked. But there was no opponent here upon whom he could vent his violence that he longed to express.

"Don't cry! For G.o.d's sake, don't cry!" he whispered hoa.r.s.ely. "I know it was all a mistake. It must have been a mistake. How could anybody have been so wicked, so utterly senseless, as to believe you guilty of--of--what did they accuse you of?"

"Stealing," whispered the girl.

"'Stealing?' What nonsense!"

He put a wealth of disdain into the words. She sat up straighter.

She dropped her hands from her face and looked at him. Dark as it was on the bench, he could see that her expression was one of wonder.

"Do--do you really feel that way about it, Captain Latham?"

"It is ridiculous!" he acclaimed heartily.

She sighed. Her momentary animation fell and she spoke again:

"It did not seem ridiculous to the police or to the magistrate. I worked in a store. A piece of sterling silverware disappeared. Other pieces had previously been stolen. The police traced the last missing piece to a p.a.w.nshop. The p.a.w.nbroker testified that a girl p.a.w.ned it. His identification of me was close enough to satisfy the judge."

"My G.o.d!"

"I was what they call a first offender. At least, I had no police record. Ordinarily I might have been let go under suspended sentence or been put on probation. But I had n.o.body to say a good word for me. I had been in Boston only a year, and I could not let people where I came from know about my trouble. Even if the judge had given me a jail sentence, I could have shortened it by good behavior. He did what he thought was best, I suppose. He considered me a hardened young criminal. He sent me to the St. Andrew's School until I was twenty-one--two years. Two long, long years.

"Six months ago I got out and Sellers gave me a job. Now, that is all, Captain Latham. You will readily see my position. I do not want to go anywhere with you to eat where your friends are likely to see you."

He uttered a sudden, stinging, harsh sound; then he removed his cap and bent toward her.

"But what you have said--Why, were they all crazy? Couldn't they see that such a thing would be impossible for you? Impossible!"

She put a hand gently on his arm to quiet his excitement, for others were pa.s.sing. Her eyes glowed up into his for an instant. Her lips parted in a happier smile than he had seen on them before.

"Then you will not get up from this bench, Captain Latham, and excuse yourself? I should not blame you if you did so."

"Do you think I'm that kind of a fellow?" he demanded bluntly.

"I--I told you I thought I had quite read your character in your face. But that is no reason why I should take advantage of your kindness to do you harm."

"Harm? How do you mean, 'harm?'"

"Sheila Macklin is a creature from a reformatory. She has been sentenced by a magistrate. She was arrested by the police. She was accused by her employers of theft, and the theft was proved. If any of your friends should see you with me, and I should be identified as the Sheila Macklin who was sentenced for stealing--"

"Cat's foot!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Tunis with a sudden reversion to his usual cheerful manner. "Are you going through the rest of your life feeling like that?"

"Why shouldn't I? I am always expecting somebody to see and recognize me. Even in Sellers' place. That man this evening, when he called me 'jailbird'--"

"I wish I had wrung his neck!" exclaimed the captain of the _Seamew_ heartily.

"I appreciate your kindness." Her eyes twinkled. For a moment he caught a glimpse of what Sheila Macklin must have been before tragedy had come into her life. "You are a good, kind man, Captain Latham."

"You just look on me as though I were your brother," he said st.u.r.dily. "You are not going to be alone any more, not really. If you had had friends before, when it happened, somebody to speak for you, I am sure nothing like what did happen to you could have happened."

"I come of respectable people," she said quietly. "But they are all dead. I was an orphan before I came to Boston. The friends I had in the little inland town I came from would not have understood. They did not approve of my coming to the city at all. Oh, I wish I had not come!"

"And now you ought not to stay here. Should you?"

"What can I do? I must support myself. I cannot go back. I could not explain those two years. Yet I am always expecting somebody to make inquiry for Sheila Macklin. And then I cannot conceal my story longer."

He nodded thoughtfully. It seemed that, once she had opened the dam of speech, she was glad to talk about herself and her trouble.

"I do hate the city. I have been so unhappy here. If I were only a man I would start right out into the country. I would tramp until I found a place to work. You don't know what it means to be a girl, Captain Latham, and be in trouble."