When my ship comes in

Front matter

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

II

CERTAIN things in McKay Hedden's character were sincere and worth while. He loved art and he loved the sea. Gone upon a summer vacation, he shed many of those affectations which made him so notable and eccentric a figure on Broadway. He carried with him nothing indeed of his professional life save certain schemes for fall productions and a bright eye for histrionic talent in the embryo.

To swim, to sail a boat, to fish, and to converse with old men of the sea were his favorite relaxations. He kept his boat, a thirty-foot yawl, at New Bedford, and whenever he could spare the time went for cruises upon her. All the waters to the south of Cape Cod were an open and agreeable book to him.

His crew was a man named Jeremiah Crum, a little bullet-shaped man, who was almost deaf and not in the least dumb. He was supposed to have lost his hearing through standing too near the mouth. of a cannon to see if he c»uld

II see the cannon-ball come out. Even this experience, however, had not cured his adventurous and inquiring disposition. He was ready to try anything once. And he could handle a boat as an international polo-player handles a pony. He could handle a boat, and he could keep a boat clean and her brass shining, and he was a capital cook.

For a day or two Hedden took no part in the management of the Buskin. He lay for the most part upon his back, his eyes shaded, his hands crossed. He had finished the winter and the long spring with unimpaired nervous energy, but physically exhausted. And he now turned himself over bodily to the sun, the southwest wind, and the delicious ocean nights.

On the third day he wore his bathing suit for a while, and went overboard once or twice. As his white skin browned and thickened he wore his bathing suit more and more, and at the end of ten days was the color of old mahogany.

Then he began to take a more active interest in life, and to let himself be seen by the amphibious population of Buzzard's Bay and Vineyard Haven Sound. He seldom failed of an effect. The youthful, well-made body, the arms and legs and face burned almost black, the head crowned with its great thicket of upstanding hair aroused a buzz of comment wherever seen.

And the fact that he was McKay Hedden, the famous manager, discoverer of NeUie Michehn and other great and mighty stars, was pretty sure to leak out sooner or later, and add to the interest which his unusual appearance excited.

Gradually, but without making acquaintances and always pursuing a sort of tragic isolation, he mixed more and more with the various summer colonies; swimming from populous beaches, looking through windows and doorways at hotel hops, and now and then exchanging words with persons of well-known importance.

Then he and the Buskin would vanish for days at a time — to Gay Head — to No-Man's Land — nobody knew where: to return, to vanish again, and to make a general mystery of themselves.

One day Jeremiah Crum came aft without being invited, and said: "Say, it's makin' up for an easterly storm."

Hedden had to shout to make himself heard. He had a beautiful voice, and enjoyed exercising it. That was one reason why he employed Crum.

"I know it," he shouted. "What of it ?"

"Didn't know as you'd want to get cot out in it."

"Well, I do want to get cot in it. So go forward and mind your business."

Crum pulled a long face and went forward, muttering to himself. When a sufficient time had elapsed, Hedden summoned him aft.

"I said I didn't want to get cot in it."

"Thot you said you did."

"Didn't — didn't. So lay a course for Hanleytown and be quick about it."

They drifted into Hanleytown harbor stern first with the tide. There was a dead oily calm. The sky was a bleak unbroken gray.

"You stay by the ship, Crum. I'm going to weather this storm ashore. What's the best hotel?"

"They ain't no hotel, only boarding-houses and folks as takes boarders."

McKay Hedden packed a couple of valises and had himself rowed ashore.

It was discouraging to find that quiet old Hanleytown had taken a sudden leap into popularity as a summer resort. The boarding-houses were brim full, and signs of rooms to let were as rare as dodos.

Hedden left his luggage at the steamship wharf and wandered at random through the picturesque town, at once troubled because he could find no

H lodging, and artistically pleased by the continual discovery of some charming old doorway or group of gables, or some other touch of the rich old whaling days.

The gray sky gave just the proper touch of color. It must have been on just such days that mothers and wives thought most tenderly and anxiously of sons and husbands, ploughing far-off and dangerous oceans.

It occurred to him that the quiet and beautiful town lying so prettily and patiently by its landlocked harbor, waiting for the whalers to come home, would be a perfect play-setting for his new play. The play that he was going to paraphrase from "The Greater Love," which he had rejected so firmly and returned to its author.

It would not be the first play that Hedden had stolen; but it would be the best.

Of course he did not steal things bodily. He merely snatched other people's toil to serve his needs, disguising their inventions and creations so that they could barely recognize them themselves.

He was a most adroit and conscientious thief, a most cautious and plausible thief. If the action of his original was laid among mountains, he laid the action of his stealings among valleys. Of his when My Ship Comes Iti

original he used neither names nor lines, nor stage directions. He altered, changed, rearranged, and so cleverly and carefully that at least three of his productions, or rather reproductions, had stood the test of the courts and been pronounced the original work of his own brain.

He laughed aloud to think how easy it would be to transfer "The Greater Love" into a whaling key. The piece would be genuinely strengthened. And all at once his acute perceptions began to drink in color and to create color.

Why are all the water-front houses of Hanleytown set at an angle to the street ? So that from the upper windows those living in expectation may look directly toward the great light on Cape Hope around which the topsails of homing whalers are first to be seen. He put that away in his memory for instance.

Displayed in a shop-window he saw a collection of whaling irons — harpoons, lances, and spades — and instantly he had chosen the dreadful weapon with which the murder should be done — ^the old-fashioned two-edged harpoon, the blade of which is shaped precisely like the human heart. How should he make the audience realize that the blade was so shaped ? He began to give his attention to that problem. And while

i6 he was solving it, the name of the new piece was gratuitously presented to him by those fairies which watch over the concentrated mind. "The Greater Love" was a wretched, banal, nondescript name, but it fitted the plot like a glove. Well, "When My Ship Comes In" fitted better than a glove, like the skin itself, and furthermore in the lines themselves it could be lightly or tragically played upon, and its meanings doubled almost ad infinitum.

A sudden gust of wind smote him in the face; and all the ancient windows in that part of the town rattled. He made a mental note of that. Then from the roses above an old lovely doorway pink petals began to fall, and he pictured Her standing below them, talking for the last time to Him, and then again so standing, looking out toward Cape Hope, waiting for her ship to come in. . . . And he saw the villain creeping up through the shadows, enraged by drink, the heartshaped harpoon in his hand. . . . The Whaler has rounded Cape Hope, her flag at half-mast. . . . What misfortune has befallen ? . . . What woman among that gentle, patient, heart-torn crowd has lost a husband, a son — or a lover ?

Smoke from a chimney blew downward into the street in a sudden eddy and made him cough.

... He had never seen just that effect in a stage storm. And he made a mental note of it.

Rounding a corner he came face to face with a little fat man who was hurrying. Hedden's grave, preoccupied face broke into an instant smile.

"For God's sake," he said, "it's Carlotti!"

The fat man came to a dead halt, turned the color of ashes, and struck out with his hands as if swimming.

"I'm not the man to forget a face," said Hedden. "And what are you doing here — hiding?"

"You're McKay Hedden." The fat man had recovered his equilibrium, though not his color, and he still trembled. "I've followed your career in the papers. What are you doing here ?"

"Oh, loafing. Inviting my soul. But you. Carlo — I gave you up for dead a dozen years ago — but not even the too sordid flesh has melted. What are you afraid of?"

"I've had eighteen years of peace — only to be recognized at last. But you'll not say you've seen me. We were good friends once, Mac. You'll not give me away. That wouldn't be like you."

"Why should I give you away ? My dear fellow, I was always heartily glad you weren't caught. But — do you live here ? "

The fat man nodded.

i8

"I'm Captain Eugene Sands," he said.

"Captain?"

Captain Sands blushed.

"It's just come about from pretending that I'd followed the sea. It doesn't mean any more than colonel in the South. . . . Yes, it does too, because I do know something about ships, and they don't know anything about armies. I mean the fake ones don't."

"Are you married ?"

"I've got a daughter sixteen years old."

"Don't tell me you married Rose."

"Of course."

"I can't bear it! Rose!"

"Why not?"

"Oh, it's so right. It's too good to be true. And you two have hidden here all these years."

"But you haven't told me what you're doing here ?"

"I came in my boat," and I'm ashore looking for lodgings till this northeaster blows over. But the town is full as a tick."

"Don't say a word," cried Captain Sands, "not one word. Old friends. Happy reunion. Rose delighted. But where is your luggage ?"

"You can put me up ?"

"Oh, language," cried Captain Sands, "howin- 19 adequate thou art to express the simplest meaning ! But Mac — one favor — not a word out of the past. Silver doesn't know that we was ever connected with the profession. And we don't want her ever to know."

"Silver?"

"My daughter."

"But Silver — is that her name?"

"We tried for Silvia," said Captain Sands, "but the minister was deaf, and we had to be content with Silver. And we are."

"I should think you would be," said Hedden. "Silver — Silver Sands. It's a beautiful name, and perhaps" — his face brightened — "I shall beg, borrow or steal the use of it some day — ^when my ship comes in."

Ill

MOTHER," said Captain Sands, "an old friend."

Mrs. Sands shook hands limply, and looked the newcomer in the eye without a sign of recognition.

"She doesn't know me from Adam," said Hedden sadly. "Rose doesn't know me."

"Now hold on," said Mrs. Sands, "give me time. Your voice is familiar. Your — Heavens, it isn't ! It can't be ! But you had red hair !"

"Many winters of discontent," said Hedden.

"Well, I'll be jiggered," exclaimed Mrs. Sands. "It is McKay Hedden."

"I haven't even changed my name — like some people," he said. "But don't worry. Why should I split on a couple of old pals ? Rose, I'm glad to see you again. The past wasn't all pleasant. But some of the friendships were."

"But come in," cried the hospitable Captain Sands. "Don't stand palavering in the hall. This house has a parlor and a sideboard."

"And I hope," said Hedden, "that the spare bedroom is really — ^to spare. Rose, you'll not let me put you to any inconvenience ?"

They drew him affectionately into the parlor. It was an honest square room with four windows, two of whith looked on the harbor, and two of which looked on a plot of sunburned grass, surrounded by hollyhocks.

To Hedden's quick eyes the room was a whole palette of whaling colors — from she-walrus teeth on the mantel, scrimshawed with Samoan dancing girls in high-heeled French slippers, to the working model of a whaler under glass; from the ivory swift on Mrs. Sands's sewing-table to the whalebone, now doing duty as a paper-knife, on the table devoted to magazines and current literature. On the walls were rude seascapes : a lighthouse, a ship in a storm, a whale-boat being bitten in two by a Grecian-nosed sperm-whale.

There was a harpoon in one comer, a boat spade in another, both highly polished and showing every evidence of being appreciated.

"I see nothing," said Hedden, "to remind me of the old Hfe."

"We've got some of our things locked away in the attic," said Mrs. Sands. "Sometimes when Silver's away visiting we get them out, and talk over old times. But we've thought best to keep the child in ignorance of our past."

"If she knew that she was of theatrical descent," said Captain Sands solemnly, "it would be the last straw."

"Why so?"

"She'd take as naturally to the stage," said Mrs. Sands, "as a mermaid takes to the water. It's in her blood."

"But Rose," objected Hedden, "you and Carlo weren't exactly on the stage."

"Between the wings or under canvas," she said, "it's all one. There's all kinds of dramatic instincts. It's all dress yourself up and show yourself off and get the hands, whether you're Cardinal Richelieu showing up at the palace after you're supposed to be dead, or whether you're Rose Lisbon dressed in pink tights, getting shot out of a cannon, and catching to a swinging trapeze by your teeth."

"You're right. Rose," said Hedden. "I've played a good many parts in my time. But I worked harder to get the lugs and flourishes of a first-class ringmaster than I'd work at Antony's address to the Romans."

"It may not be high art," said Captain Sands, "to play tunes on sleigh-bells and beer-bottles, and then come out as a red Indian and scalp an emigrant train, and change inside of thirty seconds to a high-salaried clown, and nobody know you was the same man playing all the parts. ... It may not be high art, but mark me it keeps you going some."

" Don't forget that for six months you exhibited a troupe of trained seals," Mrs. Sands reminded him affectionately.

"Yes," said Captain Sands, "I was a jack of all trades in those days. I am still. You'll tell me by and by if the plumbing in this house is a first-class job or not. Rose and me, we installed the whole shooting-match. Why, we had the first bath in Hanleytown "

McKay Hedden put back his aristocratic head and laughed joyously.

"I mean we had the first set tub," his host explained. "And not only that, but I've installed systems for other people, and made a good thing out of it."

"You were by way of being well fixed in the old days. And prosperity doesn't seem to have abandoned the ship."

"I'm well off," said Captain Sands simply, "for my station in life. Silver will be quite a catch for these parts."

"But I want to see Miss Silver," exclaimed Hedden. "I love her name. I feel that we shall have a great deal in common."

"You'll be careful, Mac, won't you? We wouldn't have her know for anything. Her mind runs plenty enough to the stage as it is."

"Trust me to be careful," said Hedden. "But I hope you're not going to let me go with my curiosity unsatisfied. What became of you afterward ? Right afterward ? Or mustn't I ask ? Is the memory too painful ?"

"All that's painful about it," said Captain Sands, "is the fear of being found out. When you recognized me and called me by the old name, I nearly dropped dead in my tracks. At first I used to see his fat, nasty, oily face in my dreams "

Mrs. Sands rose.

"I must see about supper," she said.

When she had gone Captain Sands smiled cynically.

"No matter how bad a man is," he said, "no woman likes to think of his being dead, if he was ever sweet on her. Oh, I'm not jealous. She hated him, hates him yet. But she'd like to think that he was alive somewhere far off, thinking about her, and envying me, and unable to get at us."

"We all knew there was going to be trouble," said Hedden. "What was the immediate cause ?"

"Never mind what it was exactly, Mac. Use your dramatic instinct. Anyhow I got there in the nick of time. I'd been repairing one of my bell-straps — ^you know, a sort of heavy leather belt with the bells sewed the length of it. I had it in my hand. But, good God, I didn't expect to kill him. I wanted to kill him. But I didn't think you could kill a man, a man of his build and vitality, with a thing like that. What a noise those bells made every time I struck him!"

"Exit to music," murmured Hedden.

**I must have struck him twenty times," said Captain Sands. "Wherever I could reach him. Suddenly the strap kind of wrapped round his neck and jaw — and he just went limp all over and fell on his back. / didn't think he was dead. I just thought I'd got his goat, and he was playing possum to escape more punishment. When I made my getaway I thought it was from a 'saultand-battery suit — nothing more. But when I got the morning papers saying he was dead, and the police of the whole continent was on the lookout for me, I had the horrors all right. Somehow they missed me — all but one feller — a plainclothes man. ^ He ... I just showed him a photograph of Rose, and told him the whole story. . . . He said she looked something like his girl out in Milwaukee, and he turned his back and bent over to tie his shoe, and when he looked up I was gone. I had a friend outside of Greenwich, Connecticut — an old farmer. He hid me for a while. Then Rose joined me, and the old man being a justice of the peace married us. And we lit on this place, Hanleytown, more by good luck than good management, and Silver was born here, and it's our home now, and we're part of it."

"After Baring's death," said Hedden tactfully, "the show went down-hill. I quit it early the next year, and got a job on Broadway more, as you say, by good luck than good management. And that's been my home ever since. Rose is looking well."

"She looks just the same to me," said Captain Sands. "She says she's fat, but I don't notice it."

Hedden smiled behind his hand.

"Rose," he said judicially, "at sixteen — ^the year she joined us — ^was the prettiest girl I've seen, with perhaps one exception."

"I shouldn't wonder," said Captain Sands, "if you'd make another exception in favor of Silver. Of course just now she's all burnt up with sun and wind — she's a great one to sail and swim — but take her around Christmas time "

"I like 'em brown," said Hedden. "God meant women to be brown "

"Halloo there, captain!"

Hedden evidently had not come into the focus of her eyes, and she thought herself alone with her father. She wore a black bathing suit, dripping wet; her arms, face, and neck were the color of bright bronze. Her eyes, ocean blue, shone with health and exhilaration.

"We spilled every drop of wind," she explained. "So we anchored and swam home. Where's mum ?"

"Mr. Hedden," said Captain Sands, "my daughter Silver."

"I can't shake hands," she said, "because I'm not allowed on the parlor carpet with wet feet."

"You go right up-stairs," said Captain Sands, "and change into something ladylike. Mr. Hedden is visiting us for a few days; you don't have to stand here looking for all the world like Niobe and talking to him now."

She nodded to them and vanished. They could hear her stockinged feet making swift boyish work of the stairs.

"What color is Miss Silver's hair?" said Hedden.

"Some call it brown — some red," said Captain Sands.

"It was too wet to tell," said Hedden. "But if it's the color I think it is, why I shall have to make that other exception we were talking about."

His face broke into a sudden and very attractive smile. "I make it anyway," he said. "She is the prettiest girl I ever saw."

Captain Sands began to swell with pride, for all the world like a complacent, easy-going, and well-to-do toad.

IV

THOUGH Hedden had promised to make no reference to those old days when his hosts had figured as entertainers of the public, he saw no reason for not talking about his own business as a producer of plays, Broadway, and the drama in general and particular.

Since landing in Hanleytown his mind had been full of the new play which he was to evolve from the ashes of "The Greater Love," and Silver's sudden appearance in the parlor door, dripping wet, had supplied him with an "entrance" that had been defying his powers of invention. Having no other star in the least available he had been mentally casting Nellie .Michelin for the leading part in "When My Ship Comes In," but the thought of her efforts to appear casual in a dripping bathing suit was too much for his sense of humor. No "fine woman" masquerading as sweet sixteen could be anything but ridiculous in that naive and tragic drama of youth and aspiration and the sea.

If he looked more often at Rose and the captain, Silver, sitting across from him at the suppertable, received from time to time a glance, which, casual and natural as it seemed, was still full of the closest attention and scrutiny.

All in white, her rich brown coloring paled a little by the soft candle-light, her face full of humor and expression, her eyes so dark and steady as almost to seem tragic, she seemed to him more an ideal of his mind's creation than a girl of flesh and blood. In short he could find no fault with her. And he enjoyed some such feelings as may be attributed to a miner who has stumbled by pure accident upon a rich pocket of gold.

She had the least tendency in the world to say "bot" instead of "bought," "cot" instead of "caught," but to Hedden this seemed less a lapse from the king's best accent than a delicate and delicious smear of local color. Just so, he thought, should the heroine speak in "When My Ship Comes In." For the rest, her voice, neither high nor low, had a fine carrying quality and was strongly personal to her, boyish, daring, and sweettempered.

His experience and success had taught him to regard the women of the stage with cynicism, not altogether with respect to their morals but rather with regard to their mental development and their attitude toward life, toward society, and toward themselves. In complimenting a woman upon a given performance he made a habit of referring to the physical rather than to the mental aspect of it. For instance, he would not say, "You were capital in the church scene," but rather, "You looked beautiful in the blue brocade." And the longer a woman had been upon the stage, in fact the older she was, the better she enjoyed his discrimination.

But he had noticed that the beginners often clung to the mental side of play-acting, and so now, in speaking of the stage, he spoke with reverence, laying more stress upon character than upon beauty or even success. They asked him about Mrs. Michelin, so suddenly become famous under his management, and he told them her story, as it pleased him to improvise upon it for the occasion.

"Of course," he said, "I was in a position to teach her a great deal. And although she had all sorts of wonderful emotional possibilities it was hard for her to bring them out. I don't mean that she was stupid — far, far from it, only that she had greater physical and especially vocal difficulties than seemed just or right. A man might be the cleverest man in the world, and yet require years of hard work to be cured of stuttering. She had a lovely natural voice, but at first, and for weary months and even years, she could not seem to make it carry beyond the footlights. . . . Now your voice. Miss Silver, has what we call the carrying quality; without raising it, or straining it, without training, just using it naturally, as you speak to me across the table, your voice would carry clearly and easily to the gallery of a large theatre. Do you see what I mean ?"

And he turned to Rose and the captain. They nodded. "Well, by dint of incessant practise, she got that quality. How ? I should have to recall too many hours of bitter discouragement. Do you. Miss Silver, remember when you couldn't swim r

"No," she said, "but I remember when I couldn't keep my eyes open under water."

"You ride a bicycle?"

"Yes."

"Do you remember when you couldn't?"

She nodded.

"And all of a sudden you could, and it seemed very simple, indeed ? It was like that with Mrs. Michelin's voice. Without effort now, without really knowing how she does it, she reaches the remotest galleryan and gives him thrills and shudders. All character. Miss Silver. No work was too hard for her, and now she is so trained, so experienced, so sensitive to dramatic possibilities, that the least hint to her is sufficient."

He smiled inwardly, recalling how, by prodding her with a pin, he had at last induced her to accent a desired word.

"And now," he went on, "she is revered, not as an actor, but as a woman, as the embodiment of success achieved against great obstacles by sheer force of character. It is no longer necessary for her to be beautiful — her art is now the transcendent part of her. And incidentally" — he broke into a boyish laugh — " she is making so much money she doesn't know what to do with it. I tell you" — he looked directly at Silver — "it must be a splendid feeUng — to feel that you can have automobiles, houses, private cars, all because you had the strength of character to attack a line of great resistance and force yourself through. . . . And she's by no means the only woman on Broadway to whom I take off my hat, in the spirit, whenever I think of her."

Silver's eyes were shining brightly. He caught the look, and he thought: "I could land you with a turn of the wrist, Silver Sands, and I believe I could make something of you." Aloud he said: "Lots of young women come to me and beg for a chance. I used to encourage them, but I don't any more. When all's said and done it's a cruel life — if you fail. And to succeed requires either natural genius for histrionics, a quality quite alien to the Anglo-Saxon race, or such courage, patience, and character as a man has no right to expect from a woman."

"Just what I'm always saying," said Captain Sands. "And if Mr. Hedden doesn't know what he's talking about, nobody knows."

And both he and his wife were pleased with Hedden for his phrases of discouragement. But to Silver, and just so the subtle man had meant them, they were not a discouragement but a challenge.

She had thought of going on the stage, never seriously, but as so many have, in a vague, enchanted way. She had never encountered even a remote opportunity till now. If she seriously wished to make a beginning, if her parents could be made to consent (which she doubted to extremes), surely her father's old friend could not refuse to take her under his wing, and she thought in her heart: "I'd Uke to do it, not because I want to go on the stage, but just to show him that more than one girl has got courage and patience and character."

Hedden looked at her with that sudden boyish smile which made you forget his unnaturally black hair in favor of his white teeth.

"A penny for your thoughts!" he said.

And Silver, who had only just left the awkward age, and was still delightfully easy to tease, blushed to her eyes and looked charmingly sullen and defiant.