CANDON with his bundle under his arm walked from the stage where George had landed him to the ferry wharf. He did not intend staying at Tiburon, he wanted to lose himself, put himself beyond possible reach of Hank and George. He was waiting for the San Francisco ferry.
He felt uplifted, light-headed, full and satisfied with the knowledge that George Du Cane and the others would be reading his letter by now. He had revenged himself on himself, on society, and on his companions. Right from his first joining in with Hank and George, under everything had lain the fact that he was an outlaw, coupled with the fact that he had joined the Wear Jack through subterfuge. His confession at San Nicolas had seemingly cleared the slate, yet the fact remained; you cannot confess a fact away. He had been forgiven by Hank and Bud, and Tommie had declared her opinion that he would be all right with the Almighty when he’d prayed himself out of the hole he was in by hard work and the restoration of the jewels. Just so. Yet the fact remained that he had run crooked.
It had been like a grit in the eye. Sometimes he did not feel it, other times he did, but it had been there all the time.
It was his sense of inferiority always fretting his pride, his pride always fretful that had, perhaps, brought about the end of everything.
A lesser man or a greater man might have defended himself, explained or tried to explain.
He took his place in the ferry boat, crammed with the usual crowd. At it drew off from the wharf, he saw the Heart of Ireland as she lay at anchor. There was a figure on deck, it was Jake, the others were evidently down below. What were they saying, what were they doing? He watched the old schooner as she dimmed away into the distance across the breezy water, then he turned and looked at San Francisco standing before him in a blaze of light, the Palace Hotel, the hills veined with streets, the docks and shipping, all so vast, so indifferent, brilliant, self-possessed and cruel.
Nature in her worst moods has made nothing more daunting than a city. Candon had never felt this as he felt it now. The Wear Jack had been a home and he and his companions almost a family. In all the city he had not a friend. That is the worst of a sailor’s life; unless he rises to the command of a ship and keeps it, the end of each voyage often means a break-up and separation from the men he sails with and the best friends part never to meet again. The sailor has no time ashore to make friends and the friends he makes at sea he loses.
Candon landed at the wharf and made for Essex Street where he had put up before. No. 12 was the house, an humble enough place, but clean and respectable, kept by a widow whose husband had been captain of one of the Oakland ferry boats.
He obtained a room, left his bundle and started out making up town. He had no object in view. In the old days he would most likely have drifted into a tavern, met companions and maybe friends under the freemasonry of drink; but those days are done with. Drink he could have got, poison, swallowed in a corner at five or ten times the price of the old stuff, but, though several touts spoke to him, recognising a man from the sea, he turned them down. Passing from street to street without caring where he went, the fact of his own isolation was borne in on him by every sight and sound. All these people had businesses, friends, acquaintances. He had none. If he were to drop dead not a soul would care.
He found himself amongst the sharp-faced hustling crowd of Market Street and drifted with it, scarcely seeing it, looking in at shop windows but scarcely noticing the goods. He was not walking alone now; the wraiths of Hank and George and Tommie were with him, walking on either side of him, and now in some extraordinary way his anger and enmity against them, against himself and against circumstances had faded. It was as though they were dead.