Shining Ferry Part 40

"Hurt?" she echoed half defiantly, stooping and raking at the cinders.

"Why, of course, you hurt," he insisted. "'Tis so queer to me you can't see it. Just reckon up all the harm this Rosewarne have a-done and is doing: Mother Butson's school closed, and the poor soul bedridden with rheumatics, all through being forced to seek field-work, at her time o'

life and in this autumn's weather! My old mother driven into a charity-house. Nicky Vro dead in Bodmin gaol. Where was the fair play?

Master Clem, I hear, parted from his sister and packed off this very day to a home in London--lucky if 'tis better'n a gaol--"

"Do you accuse _me_ of all these wrongs?"

"No, I don't. But in most of 'em you've been mixed up, and in all of 'em you might have used power over the man. Where have you put in an oar except to make matters worse?"

It was on her lips to tell him that she had resigned the teachers.h.i.+p; but she forbore.

"Do you know," she answered quietly, "that half-truths may be worse than lies, and a charge which is half-true the most cruelly unjust? We will agree that I have done more harm here than good. But do you accuse me of doing it wilfully, selfishly?"

"That's where I can't make you out," he said. "I can't even make out your doing wrong at all. Thinks I sometimes, ''Tis all a mistake. Go, look at her face, all made for goodness if ever a face was; try her once more, an'

you'll be sorry for thinkin' ill of her.' That's the way of it. But then I come and find you mixed up in this miserable business, and all that's kind in you seems to harden, and all that's straight to run crooked.

There's times I think you couldn't do wrong if you weren't so sure of doing right; and there's times, when I hear of your being kind to the school-children, I think it must be some curst ill-luck of my own that brings us always ath'art-hawse."

Beneath the lamplight his eyes searched hers appealingly, as a child's might; yet Hester wondered rather at the note of manliness in his voice--a new note to her, but an a.s.sured one. Whatever the cause, Tom Trevarthen was a lad no longer.

"Why should you suppose," she asked, "that I have power over Mr.

Rosewarne?"

"Haven't you?"

The simple question confounded her, and she blushed again, as one detected in an untruth. It was as Tom said; some perverse fate impelled her at every turn to show at her worst before him.

"Good Lord!" he said slowly, watching her face. "You don't tell me you're going to marry him!"

She should have obeyed her first impulse and said 'No' hotly. The word was on her lips when a second wave of indignation swelled within her and swept over the first, drowning it, and, with it, her speech. What right had he to question her, or what concern with her affairs? She threw back her head proudly, to look him in the face and ask him this. But he had turned from her.

His disgust angered her, and once more she changed her impulse for the worse.

"It seems," said she contemptuously, "that you reserve the right of making terms with Mr. Rosewarne."

He turned at the door of the inner office and regarded her for a moment with a dark frown.

"What do you mean by that?" His voice betrayed the strain on his self-command.

"Mr. Rosewarne owns the _One-and-All_, does he not? If, after what has happened, you accept his wages, you might well be a little less censorious of other folk's conduct."

If the shaft hit, he made no sign for the moment. "I reckon," he answered, with queer deliberateness, "your knowledge of s.h.i.+ps and s.h.i.+powners don't amount to much, else you wouldn't talk of Rosewarne's doing me a favour." He paused and laughed, not aloud but grimly.

"The _One-and-All's_ insured, Miss Marvin, and pretty heavily over her value. I'd take it as a kindness if you found someone fool enough to insure _me_ for a trip in her."

"I don't understand."

"No, I reckon you don't. They finished loading her last night, and we moored her out in the channel, ready for the tug this morning.

Before midnight she was leaking there like a basket, and by seven this morning she was leaking worse than a five-barred gate. The tug had just time to pluck us alongside here, or she'd have sunk at her moorings; and when we'd warped her steady and the tide left her, the water poured out of a hole I could shove my hand through--not the seams, mark you, though they leaked bad enough--but a hole where the china-stone had fairly knocked her open; and the timber all round it as rotten as cheese. All day, between tides, they've been sheathing it over, and packing the worst places in her seams; and to-night the crew, being all Troy men, are taking one more sleep ash.o.r.e than they bargained for. They want it, too, after their spell at the pumps."

"Then why are you left on board?"

"Mainly because I've no home to go to; and somebody must act night-watchman. The skipper himself has bustled ash.o.r.e with the rest.

I reckon this morning's work scared him a bit, hand-in-glove though he is with Rosewarne; but he must be recovering, because just before stepping off he warned me against putting up the riding-light. There's no chance of anyone fouling us where we lie, and we can save two-penn'orth of oil."

"But you don't tell me Mr. Rosewarne sends his s.h.i.+ps to sea, knowing them to be rotten?"

He hunched his shoulders. "Maybe he does; maybe he don't. It don't matter to me, the man's going to h.e.l.l or not. But you seem to think I take his wages as a favour."

"Then why do you take them at all, at such a risk?"

"Because," he burst out, "you've come here and driven my mother to an almshouse, and I must earn money to get her out of it. If I'd a-known you was coming here with your education, I'd have picked up some of it and been prepared for you. A mate's certificate doesn't mean much in these days. Men like Rosewarne want a skipper who'll earn insurance-money and save oil. Still, I could have tried. But, like a fool, I was young and in a good berth, and let my chances slip; and then you came along and spoilt all."

"Did you seek me out to-night to tell me this?" she steadied herself to ask.

He lowered his eyes. "I want you to write a letter for me," he said, and added, after a pause. "That's what comes of wanting education."

Another and a very awkward pause followed. This discovery of his illiteracy shocked and hurt her inexpressibly. She could not even say why. Good sense warned her even in the instant of disappointment that a man might not know how to read or write and yet be none the less a good man and trustworthy. And even though the prejudice of her calling made her treat the defect too seriously, why in Tom Trevarthen should that shock her which in other seamen she took as a matter of course?

Yet in her shame for him she could lift her eyes; and he still kept his lowered upon the floor.

"To whom do you want me to write?" she asked.

"It's to a girl," he answered doggedly; and the words seemed to call up a dark flush in his face, which a moment before had been unwontedly pale-- though this she did not perceive.

"A girl?"

"That's so; a girl, miss, if you don't mind--a girl as it happens I'm fond of."

"A love-letter? Is that what you mean?"

"If you don't mind, Miss Marvin?"

"Why on earth should I mind?" she asked, with a heat unintelligible to herself as to him.

A suspicion crossed her mind that the young woman might not be over-respectable; but she dismissed it. If the message were such as she could indite, she had no warrant to inquire further; and yet, "Is it quite fair to her?" she added.

The question plainly confused him. "Fair, miss?"

"You told me a minute ago that you found it hard to earn money for your mother; and now it seems you think of marrying."

"No, miss," said he simply; "I can't think of it at all. And that's partly what I want to tell her."

Hester frowned. "It's queer you should come to me, whom you accuse of interfering to your harm. If I am guilty on other counts, I am guilty too of coming between you and this young woman."

He smiled faintly. "And that's true in a way," he allowed; "but you'll see I don't bear malice. The letter'll prove that, if so be you'll kindly write it for me."

He said it appealingly, with his hand on the doorhandle. She bent her head in consent. Flinging the door open, he stood aside to let her pa.s.s.