The After House Part 22

You have skulked in the after house, behind women, when there was man's work to do. If I wash that deck, it will be with you as a mop."

He bl.u.s.tered something about speaking to Mr. Turner and seeing that I did the work I was brought on board to do, and, seeing Turner's eye on us, finished his speech with an ugly epithet. My nerves were strained to the utmost: lack of sleep and food had done their work. I was no longer in command of the Ella; I was a common sailor, ready to vent my spleen through my fists.

I knocked him down with my open hand.

It was a barbarous and a reckless thing to do. He picked himself up and limped away, muttering. Turner had watched the scene with his cold blue eyes, and the little doctor with his near-sighted ones.

"A dangerous man, that!" said the doctor.

"Dangerous and intelligent," replied Turner. "A bad combination!"

It was late that night when the Ella anch.o.r.ed in the river at Philadelphia. We were not allowed to land. The police took charge of ship, crew, and pa.s.sengers. The men slept heavily on deck, except Burns, who developed a slight fever from his injury, and moved about restlessly.

It seemed to me that the vigilance of the officers was exerted largely to prevent an escape from the vessel, and not sufficiently for the safety of those on board. I spoke of this, and a guard was placed at the companionway again. Thus I saw Elsa Lee for the last time until the trial.

She was dressed, as she had been in the afternoon, in a dark cloth suit of some sort, and I did not see her until I had spoken to the officer in charge. She turned, at my voice, and called me to join her where she stood.

"We are back again, Leslie."

"Yes, Miss Lee."

"Back to--what? To live the whole thing over again in a courtroom! If only we could go away, anywhere, and try to forget!"

She had not expected any answer, and I had none ready. I was thinking--Heaven help me--that there were things I would not forget if I could: the lift of her lashes as she looked, up at me; the few words we had had together, the day she had told me the deck was not clean; the night I had touched her hand with my lips.

"We are to be released, I believe," she said, "on our own--some legal term; I forget it."

"Recognizance, probably."

"Yes. You do not know law as well as medicine?"

"I am sorry--no; and I know very little medicine."

"But you sewed up a wound!"

"As a matter of fact," I admitted, "that was my initial performance, and it is badly done. It--it puckers."

She turned on me a trifle impatiently.

"Why do you make such a secret of your ident.i.ty?" she demanded. "Is it a pose? Or--have you a reason for concealing it?"

"It is not a pose; and I have nothing to be ashamed of, unless poverty--"

"Of course not. What do you mean by poverty?"

"The common garden variety sort. I have hardly a dollar in the world.

As to my ident.i.ty,--if it interests you at all, I graduated in medicine last June. I spent the last of the money that was to educate me in purchasing a dress suit to graduate in, and a supper by way of celebration. The dress suit helped me to my diploma. The supper gave me typhoid."

"So that was it!"

"Not jail, you see."

"And what are you going to do now?"

I glanced around to where a police officer stood behind us watchfully.

"Now? Why, now I go to jail in earnest."

"You have been very good to us," she said wistfully. "We have all been strained and nervous. Maybe you have not thought I noticed or--or appreciated what you were doing; but I have, always. You have given all of yourself for us. You have not slept or eaten. And now you are going to be imprisoned. It isn't just!"

I tried to speak lightly, to rea.s.sure her.

"Don't be unhappy about that," I said. "A nice, safe jail, where one may sleep and eat, and eat and sleep--oh, I shall be very comfortable!

And if you wish to make me exceedingly happy, you will see that they let me have a razor."

But, to my surprise, she buried her face in her arms. I could not believe at first that she was crying. The policeman had wandered across to the other rail, and stood looking out at the city lights, his back to us. I put my hand out to touch her soft hair, then drew it back. I could not take advantage of her sympathy, of the hysterical excitement of that last night on the Ella. I put my hands in my pockets, and held them there, clenched, lest, in spite of my will, I reach out to take her in my arms.

CHAPTER XIX

I TAKE THE STAND

And now I come, with some hesitation, to the trial. Hesitation, because I relied on McWhirter to keep a record. And McWhirter, from his notes, appears to have been carried away at times by excitement, and either jotted down rows of unintelligible words, or waited until evening and made up his notes, like a woman's expense account, from a memory never noticeable for accuracy.

At dawn, the morning after we anch.o.r.ed, Charlie Jones roused me, grinning.

"Friend of yours over the rail, Leslie," he said. "Wants to take you ash.o.r.e!"

I knew no one in Philadelphia except the chap who had taken me yachting once, and I felt pretty certain that he would not a.s.sociate Leslie the football player with Leslie the sailor on the Ella. I went reluctantly to the rail, and looked down. Below me, just visible in the river mist of the early morning, was a small boat from which two men were looking up. One was McWhirter!

"h.e.l.lo, old top," he cried. "Or is it you behind that beard?"

"It's I, all right, Mac," I said, somewhat huskily. What with seeing him again, his kindly face behind its gla.s.ses, the cheerful faith in me which was his contribution to our friendship,--even the way he shook his own hand in default of mine,--my throat tightened. Here, after all, was home and a friend.

He looked up at the rail, and motioned to a rope that hung there.

"Get your stuff and come with us for breakfast," he said. "You look as if you hadn't eaten since you left."

"I'm afraid I can't, Mac."

"They're not going to hold you, are they?"

"For a day or so, yes."

Mac's reply to this was a violent resume of the ancestry and present lost condition of the Philadelphia police, ending with a request that I jump over, and let them go to the place he had just designated as their abiding-place in eternity. On an officer lounging to the rail and looking down, however, he subsided into a low muttering.