“How did you come by your hurt?” she asks in her low voice.
“Board the old Walleroo going out. You mind the old ship? We had a fire in the hold, and the skipper he would go down alone to locate it before we cut a hole in the deck and shipped the hose in. The old man did not come up again. Ye mind him. Old Rutherford of Jarrow. And I went down and looked for him. It was a hell of smoke and fire, and something in the cargo stinking like—like hell fire as it burnt. I got a hold of the old man, and was fetching him out on my hands and knees, when something busts up and sends us all through the deck. I had three months in Valparaiso hospital; but I saved old Jack Rutherford of Jarrow. And when I got up and looked at my face I saw that it was not in the nature of things that I could ever ask a lass to have me. So I just stayed away and made believe that—that I had changed my mind.”
The man pauses. He is not glib of speech, though quick enough at sea. As he takes up the little teapot and shakes it roundwise, after the manner of the galley, his great brown hand shakes too.
“I would not have come back here,” he goes on after a silence; “but the Mallard was ordered to the Tyne. And a chap must do his duty by his shipmates and his owners. And I thought it would be safe—after eleven years. When I saw the old place and smelt the smell of the old woman's frying-pan, I could not get past the door. But I hung around, looking to make sure there were no bairns playing on the floor. I have only come in, lass, to pass the time of day and to tell you ye're a free woman.”
He is not looking at her. He seems to find that difficult. So he does not see the queer little smile—rather sadder, in itself, than tears.
“And you stayed away eleven years—because o' THAT?” says the woman, slowly.
“Ay, you know, lass, I'm no great hand at the preaching and Bibles and the like; but it seems pretty clear that them who's working things did not think it fit that we should marry. And so it was sent. I got to think it so in time—least, I think it's that sometimes. And no woman would like to say, 'That's my man—him with only half a face.' So I just stayed away.”
“All for that?” asks the woman, her face, which is still, pretty and round and rosy, working convulsively.
“Ay, lass.”
“Then, honey,” she cries softly, “you dinna understand us women!”