Part 13 (1/2)
”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 s.h.i.+p 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 friends.h.i.+p 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.”