II
Now Olive was not inclined to object to anything that Miss Torrance might say or do. Her memory for office details was not remarkable, but her memory of her friend’s thousand queer little kindnesses was unalterable, ineffaceable.
When she had been left an orphan by the death of her father, the very first person to arrive at the house was Miss Torrance, her mother’s cousin; and as soon as Miss Torrance entered the door, she had taken charge of the bewildered and heartbroken girl. She had brought Olive home with her, got her into bed, brought up dinner to her herself, and looked after her in a brisk, matter-of-fact way for a long, weary fortnight.
There remained, for Olive to remember forever and ever, a Miss Torrance who got up half a dozen times on bitter winter nights to mix medicines and heat broth and milk, or even to talk pleasantly to an invalid who sometimes wept for sorrow and weariness; a Miss Torrance who rose earlier in the morning to attend to Olive’s breakfast, who rushed back from the office at lunch time with little delicacies, who hurried home at five o’clock as brisk, as competent, as unfailingly kind as ever. Her salary was not a large one, yet she was ready, was glad and willing, to feed, clothe, and shelter Olive for the rest of her days. She loved the girl. From the very first moment that Olive had wept on her shoulder she had loved her in a fierce, generous, tyrannical way of her own.
She had never loved any one before, and sometimes she couldn’t quite understand why she was so very, very fond of Olive; for the girl had none of the qualities which[Pg 185] Miss Torrance herself possessed, and which she admired in others. Olive was a slender, quiet young girl, pretty enough in her gentle way, but not of the type Miss Torrance was wont to praise. Her brown eyes had a wistful sort of eagerness, and her mouth was oversensitive. Altogether, there was something dreamy and unpractical about her.
At the end of the fortnight she had told Miss Torrance that she wanted to set about earning her own living. The older woman was torn between her wish to shelter and protect this gentle young creature and her conviction that every human being should work. Conviction conquered, and she found a place for Olive in the office of the Far Afield magazine, of which she was fiction editor. With a severe sort of patience, she labored over Olive until she had made a pretty fair worker out of her, but she had no illusions as to the girl’s lack of business ability. She had begun now to train her for the career of a writer, and she saw more hope in that.
They were not friends in the office. Miss Torrance would not permit it. Directly they entered the building, all intimacy was put aside until five o’clock. They did not even lunch together, because Miss Torrance considered it a bad precedent. Yet, the morning after the meeting with that Mr. Martin, Miss Torrance, to save her life, could not help looking very often through the half open door of her office toward the end of the outer room where Olive sat.
“Nonsense!” she said impatiently to herself. “She’ll forget him in a week. She doesn’t know him—doesn’t know anything about him. He wasn’t at all the type to suit her. A very ordinary, commonplace young man! I’m glad I discouraged him. He was inclined to be troublesome.”
Olive was quietly working away, as usual.
“If she were—interested in him,” thought Miss Torrance uneasily, “she’d look different.”
The telephone on her desk rang.
“Miss Torrance speaking!” she said briskly.
“This is Sam Martin,” came the answer. “I wanted to ask you and—and—I don’t know her last name, but I think I heard you call her Olive—I wanted to ask you both to lunch.”
A sort of panic seized Miss Torrance. Was she never to be rid of this young man, never to have Olive all to herself again?
“Olive cannot come,” she answered, in a voice that trembled with anger.
“Then won’t you?” said he. “I’d like very much to talk to you.” She consented to that, and at twelve o’clock she put on her jaunty little hat and hurried out of the office, giving Olive a very strained smile as she passed her.
How much she regretted having consented to see Mr. Martin! She had meant to crush him utterly, to point out to him how ungentlemanly, how disgraceful, it was for him to persecute two defenseless women with his unwelcome attentions; but instead of being offended or ashamed, all he did was to entreat her for a chance.
“Just give me a fair chance!” he begged. “If you find you don’t like me, why, there’ll be no harm done. Let me come to see you, or write!”
“No!” said Miss Torrance. “It’s ridiculous. It can’t possibly matter to you.”
“It does,” he declared.
For a moment they were both silent, sitting at the table in the very good restaurant, and not eating the very good lunch the young man had ordered.
“Look here, Miss Torrance!” he went on. “I’ve got to tell you. I’d been in to stay overnight with Robertson, and in the morning I saw—her—going out. The moment I saw her, I—look here, Miss Torrance, you’ll have to believe me—the moment I saw her—she’s so—I—I can’t tell you; but she’s so—sweet!”
Miss Torrance could not endure this. She could not endure the sound of his earnest, entreating voice, his pathetically inadequate words, or the sight of his unhappy, honest young face. She did not know whether she was contemptuous and angry, or even more unhappy than he was; but she did know very positively that she wanted to get away, wanted to end this.
“You don’t know Olive,” she said coldly; “and I do. I tell you frankly, Mr. Martin, that I shall do all I can to protect her from—” She stopped. “She’s all I have in the world!” her heart cried. “I won’t let her go. I won’t let her see you! Because, if she does see you—you confident, good-looking, detestable creature!—how can she help loving you and forgetting me, and how shall I live without her?”
“But I’m—I give you my word I’m—respectable!” said he, in despair. “I’ll tell you all about myself. I’ll get people to write you letters about me. I[Pg 186]—”
“I don’t doubt you, Mr. Martin,” said Miss Torrance, with a chilly smile; “but that’s not the point. You’ll pardon me, but I see no advantage to Olive in making the acquaintance of a man whom she might never see again. A sailor’s life—”
“Oh, but look here! If she would marry me—”
“Marry you?” cried Miss Torrance. “What preposterous nonsense is this, when you haven’t spoken half a dozen words to each other?”
“I can’t help it,” said he, terribly downcast, but resolute. “That’s the way it is with me; and if she even seemed to—to be beginning to like me, I’d give up the sea.”
Miss Torrance smiled—not a trustful smile.
“I mean it!” said he. “I have to make this trip, but when I come back, I’ll stay. I promised, long ago, that if ever I met a girl I wanted to marry, I’d swallow the anchor.”
“Indeed!” said Miss Torrance.
Like all innocent persons who wish to be convincing, Mr. Martin added details.
“The best friend I ever had made me promise that,” he went on. “He’d had a hard lesson when he tried to mix the two—falling in love and going to sea, I mean. He lost his ticket and his girl both.”
“Indeed!” said Miss Torrance again. “Very interesting, I’m sure!” The poor young man believed that she meant that.
“Yes,” he said, “it is an interesting story. This chap—I’ll call him Smith, if you don’t mind, because naturally he wouldn’t like to be named. It happened some time ago—eighteen or twenty years ago, and this chap was third officer on a cargo steamer running between London and Antwerp. Well, one trip he met a girl in London, and he—well, you know, he liked her, and she seemed to like him. He told her when he’d be likely to dock again, and she said that that was her birthday, and that she wanted him to come to a little dance she was having. Well, of course, he got her a present. He pretty well broke himself to get her something he thought she’d like, and I suppose he thought about her a good deal. A fellow would, you know, at night, on watch, you know, and so on. Well, they got in the morning of the very day he’d said—docked at Tilbury—and then the old man told him he needn’t expect to get ashore this trip. The first was married and lived in London, and the second was signing off, so Smith would have to stay on board. Of course he couldn’t say anything, but it hit him pretty hard. Look here, Miss Torrance, does this bore you?”
“No,” said Miss Torrance, who was interested in spite of herself.
“Well, then, as soon as the others had cleared out, Smith stepped ashore and telephoned to her. She began to tell him how glad she was, and how she’d been hoping he’d be able to come to her dance, and he had to tell her he couldn’t come. She asked him”—Martin grinned—“she asked him if he couldn’t tell the captain it was her birthday, and then she asked him if he couldn’t get some one to do his work for him. You know, girls never understand responsibility; but they’re—there’s something sweet about—”
“Oh, nonsense!” said Miss Torrance sharply.
“Anyhow, this girl didn’t—or wouldn’t—understand. She said if he didn’t come that night, he needn’t ever come. She told him he was no better than a slave—had no spirit, and so on. Well, there he was! It was a rainy day, and—ever seen Tilbury Docks on a rainy day? I wish I knew how to give you the—the effect. It’s the most dismal, desolate place you’d ever want to see. The Alberta was coaling, too, and you know what that means.
“Except for a steward and some of the crew, there was no one on board but Smith and the second engineer, and they didn’t hit it off very well. The cargo was all out of her, and the new lot not coming in till the next morning. The coaling was nearly done, and there was a train up to London about four o’clock. Well, if you were making a story out of this, you’d put in a lot here about a moral struggle. He must have had one, you know—love and duty,” said Mr. Martin, obviously pleased with his phrase. “That’s it—a struggle between love and duty, and love conquered. He must have been very fond of that girl! He went to town on the four o’clock train. He saw his girl, and she must have been a remarkably pig-headed, unreasonable young person. She said she’d marry him if he would give up the sea, but he would have to make up his mind then and there, or she’d know he didn’t really care for her. So he said he’d let her know before he sailed.
“The dance broke up pretty late, so Smith went to spend the night with a friend[Pg 187] of his in London, and took the first train back to Tilbury in the morning. Hadn’t been able to sleep all night, trying to make up his mind whether he’d give up the sea or the girl. Well, he got back, and on the dock he meets the marine superintendent of the line—a terrible old fellow, Captain Leavitt. Poor Smith felt pretty sick when he saw the captain. Anyhow, he says ‘Good morning, sir,’ and goes on to explain that he’d just stepped ashore for a bit of breakfast at the hotel.
“‘Ship’s breakfast not good enough for you, eh?’ says old Leavitt.
“‘Oh, yes, sir,’ says Smith. ‘It wasn’t that—’
“‘If you’ve any complaints to make,’ says old Leavitt, with a queer sort of grin, ‘now’s the time to make ’em, Mr. Smith!’
“Smith said he had none.
“‘Satisfied with the Alberta, eh?’ asks old Leavitt. ‘Everything all right on board when you stepped ashore for a little breakfast, Mr. Smith?’
“By this time Smith felt pretty sure that Captain Leavitt knew how long he’d been away, but he thought he’d better try to see it through. So he says yes, everything was all right.
“‘Humph!’ says old Leavitt, staring hard at him. ‘Well! So you’re quite sure everything’s all right on board this morning, eh?’
“‘Oh, yes, sir!’ says Smith.
At that Leavitt takes his arm, and, without another word, stumps along beside him to the Alberta’s berth. The Alberta wasn’t there!
“‘Sure everything’s all right on board, eh?’ says Captain Leavitt. ‘My eyes aren’t as good as they were.’
“Poor Smith just stared and stared at the empty slip. He couldn’t say one word.
“‘She’s gone to the bottom!’ shouts Captain Leavitt. ‘And too bad you didn’t go there with her, you young liar and blackguard!’”
“Do you find that humorous?” demanded Miss Torrance, with a severe glance at his laughing face.
“Well, I can’t help it!” said Martin. “No one was hurt, you know. The trimmers had loaded her down too much on one side, and she simply rolled over and sank. And when you think of old Leavitt asking him if everything was all right on board, when he knew all the time, I can’t help thinking it’s funny!”
Martin stopped, quite overcome with laughter.
“This friend of yours—this Smith—did he consider it funny?”
“Oh, Lord, no! But he’s a serious, high-minded sort of fellow. He thought it was a disgrace, you know, and he went off and told the girl that he was disgraced and ruined, and she threw him over. He never got over it, and that’s why he got me to promise that if ever I—well, you know, if I got seriously interested in a girl, I’d swallow the anchor. I think he’s right. It’s not fair to a girl—”
Miss Torrance rose.
“I think, Mr. Martin,” said she, with a frigid little smile, “that if I were you, I shouldn’t renounce my trade.”
“Profession,” Mr. Martin suggested.
“Occupation,” Miss Torrance compromised. “It is one thing for you to be seriously interested in a girl, and quite another thing for her to be seriously interested in you.”
And with that she walked off, leaving her unfortunate young host standing beside the table, on which remained the last course of that excellent lunch.