The closed door — Context and Discussion

ers back and forth on the Pacific. He had had his chance and lost it.”

“When he lost Kitty Melrose.”

“When he married the McTodd girl,” Gorham corrected me softly. Then he went on: “His history was that of hundreds of other seafaring men from that time on; dogged, hard work, scanty savings and intervals when he had to tramp the streets in search of a berth. But he managed pretty well. He saved money. He treated Sheila in an exemplary manner. But he avoided all contact with the old crowd; he was almost ferocious, at times, when one caught him on the street and spoke of former times. Yet all the while he was working steadily upward. Then he happened on that salvage job of the _Mary Foster_, and dumped fifteen thousand dollars into Sheila’s bank account. I met him in Liverpool six months later. He was embarrassed, as if he had no business away from the Pacific. It appeared he had a very good command. But he was going back to San Francisco, just the same----”

“Gave up his second chance in a big line,” I interrupted.

“He couldn’t stand it, you see. Kitty was in California. He suffered the agonies of the damned that night in a little hotel near the landing stage--for Harry Owen wanted to talk, to sit there in that infinitely dingy room in that ill-smelling hostel in Liverpool and tell me the truth, the enormous and insurmountable fact of his existence, that he loved Kitty Melrose; and he dared not. But it showed on his face, white and haggard under the tan; in his hard-bitten lips and tense hands. He tossed up his command and took a miserable old tramp back to the Golden Gate. From that time on, he stayed in the coastwise trade.

“Imagine to yourself,” Gorham went on, “the manner of life the man led; instead of getting drunk, he got himself married, and so forever debarred from seeing the one woman the world held for him. He was constantly coming into San Francisco and snatching at the papers to see whether Kitty was engaged, or married; he was constantly leaving the city, knowing that he could never be anything in her splendid life.”

“Ah,” I said, “he talked at last, did he?”

Gorham ignored my thrust.

“There was always Sheila, too. And when I speak of her, of Harry Owen’s wife, I am on firmer ground. She made a confidant of me; she used to visit my office on some excuse or other and conclude by saying abruptly and bitterly, ‘I suppose you won’t tell----’

“That was her complaint about life; none of us who had been part of Harry’s old, youthful days could carry over, so to speak. She was forced to recognize that, when he married her, he had closed a door which she could not pry open.”

Gorham tapped the hot ashes out of his pipe thoughtfully.

“I don’t profess to understand women, but Sheila was angered by the indisputable fact of Harry Owen’s faithfulness to his marriage vows. She knew, as women do know those things, that he was living up to some one else’s standard. And try as she might, she could never ascertain even so much as the name of any woman with whom her husband had been in love. She knew he did not love her, nor ever had. You see? He lived irreproachably--and not for her. So, after she had cunningly questioned me about Harry’s youth, she would say in her thin, plaintive voice: ‘I suppose you won’t tell----’ I used to look at her in amazement. She was so deplorably”--he sought for the word hesitatingly, bashfully--“ immodest about it. I shudder when I think how some women lay bare and open to a passer-by the secrets, the petty obscurities, of their lives.

“At last, Owen got the _Shearwater_.”

“You got it for him,” I remarked.

“I helped,” Gorham confessed. “I couldn’t bear to see our old chum handling steam schooners and colliers in and out of the harbor where we had had our joyous and happy youth, while the rest of us went ahead and kept up the old associations and friendships and got a taste of happiness. So I put in a word for him with the owners and he took over the old packet. She carried passengers, as you know, and he sat each evening at the head of his table in the saloon and chatted with people who admired his trim figure and address. Yet you must understand that all this time he never gave me a hint of the truth. I never knew or suspected that Kitty Melrose had refused to marry him, never dreamed that he loved her. Sheila herself had put the puzzle in concrete form for me.”

“You mean she told you Harry was in love with another woman?” I demanded.

“Of course not--not in so many words,” he returned. “But she had made it clear enough that she thought about it constantly. Naturally enough, I felt there might be grounds--in the event it proved she was right. But here we come to the miracle of the whole affair.”

Gorham stirred uneasily, lighted another pipe, and stared at me intently.

“You are to keep in mind that, from now on, I am telling you precisely what passed under my own eyes, I am not sitting in judgment. I am expressing no opinion and drawing no inferences. As I told you, I left the _Shearwater_ in the last boat.”

“Go on,” I said. “I know nothing about it--except that Owen went mad. _That_ is certain.”

The man opposite me cast his eyes down.

“It was so reported,” he acknowledged. “I beg of you to do as I am doing--express no opinion.” He lifted his eyes to mine. “I am not a sentimentalist. But when a fact is cast up at my feet like a bottle on the beach, I accept it. Listen:

“The _Shearwater_ was to sail from San Francisco for San Pedro on a Friday afternoon in January. In the morning I found I had to go South and, because the steamer would land me in time for business on Monday morning, I telephoned down for passage. A few minutes before sailing time I arrived at the pier and found Sheila there, too; she was complaining bitterly about something. I pulled up and would have gone away, but she made a point of my staying, wiped her eyes, and said in a constrained way, ‘I’m going South this trip with Harry.’

“He seemed struck dumb; she went on to say she had arranged it with the port captain, and then began to fuss about the cabin. She took something from Owen’s desk and put it in a rack. It was perfectly apparent that she had never been in the cabin before. She said as much.

“Of course, Harry had to go on the bridge immediately. We sailed on the dot. When we had passed Angel Island he asked me to join him.

“‘It will be a dirty trip,’ he said to me composedly. ‘The barometer is jumping and the _Shearwater_ is heavily laden. I wish----’

“He did not finish the sentence; but I understood that he resented Sheila’s presence on his ship, in his cabin. We passed on to other topics and so carried on our conversation till we were well abreast of Pigeon Point. It was already blowing very heavily, in squalls, and the sea was making fast. Just at dark Harry suddenly interrupted his talk to say, ‘Will you please find Sheila and see that she has her dinner? I must stay on the bridge all night.’

“So I went below and found Mrs. Owen in the cabin, seated in a big chair. She was seasick, she told me quietly, when I had given her her husband’s message. I went down and dined by myself. After dinner I rejoined Harry on the bridge. It was a very nasty night indeed, and the old _Shearwater_ was making heavy weather of it. I stayed an hour, and during that time the _Western Pacific_, also southbound, overhauled us and was swallowed up in the darkness. She would reach San Pedro twelve hours ahead of us.

“At last I turned in, only to be aroused a few hours later by a quartermaster with a summons to the bridge. Harry Owen was there, sheathed in oilskins, his sou’wester pulled down over his eyes, his whole form streaming with brine.

“‘Look!’ he bawled in my ear, and I looked.

Far away and to leeward rockets were going up, throwing a dim refulgence against the overcast sky.

“‘It’s the _Western Pacific_,’ he told me quietly. ‘She tried to cut corners and, I suppose, broke her propeller shafts.’”

Gorham glanced at me.

“As a matter of fact that was what had happened. But Owen seemed rather at a loss.

“‘I’ve got to go in and stand by,’ he said. ‘That goes without saying. But she’s within six miles of the rocks and the _Shearwater_ can’t tow her out against this gale, and the notion of transferring passengers is hopeless.’

“‘What kind of line have you--the best?’ I demanded.

“The chief mate answered that question. The _Shearwater_ had a new, nice, sweet, ten-inch manila. It might do.

“‘We’ll run in and have a look-see, anyway,’ said Harry in something of his old manner.

“So we ran in and a ticklish job it was. But presently we were within a quarter of a mile of the disabled steamship and the wireless got busy. The _Western Pacific_ wanted to be towed out of danger--a matter of forty miles. Transferring anybody was out of the question, for the sea was terrific. No boat could live in it. Both captains were pretty anxious. Finally Owen ran the _Shearwater_ right up under the lee of the _Western Pacific_ and threw his searchlight on her. She was all right, sea anchor out and riding fairly easily. But when Harry Owen laid down his binoculars he was a different man. I know now what he saw. He made no further demur about attempting a tow and we spent an hour passing our new line, fixing chafing gear and so on.

“It was none of my business, you understand.

“We picked up our tow and started out. Within fifteen minutes I comprehended, though not a word was said, that we had tried an impossibility. The _Shearwater_ was too old; she wasn’t up to towing a six-thousand tonner against sea and gale. Her wooden topsides were rotten. We could barely steer her. Then word came to the bridge that the hawser was pulling the after deck to bits. Harry Owen listened and then stared out over the sea, running with a brisk, ugly weight before the wind. He went aft and I joined him. The _Shearwater_ was so built that the only place to take the line to was a small windlass directly in front of the steering gear, consequently the great straining hawser was slowly, but surely, tearing out the entire structure that held the leaping rudderhead and the quadrants.

“‘You’ve got to let her go, sir,’ said the mate, showing an anxious face. I shall never forget the queer pallor of his countenance under the dim light of the lantern on the deckhouse wall.

“Owen looked at him fixedly a moment. Then he said, just as I am speaking now, ‘Take the hawser around the after deckhouse, mister.’

“The mate gaped at him. But Owen’s eyes never wavered. The order was obeyed, though it took an hour, during which sea after sea came aboard the old _Shearwater_ and the _Western Pacific_ began frantic speech by wireless. However, the job was done.

“From now on the _Shearwater_ was, you understand, almost helpless. It was cruel work and, at last, Harry himself took the wheel. Ten-inch lines, no matter how good they are, can’t stand up under such a strain as was inevitably put on ours. But Owen deliberately sacrificed his own vessel to save the _Western Pacific_.”

“I heard he went mad,” I murmured. Gorham lighted another pipe.

“Get this into your head: the big liner was on a lee shore, no help in sight; she would have gone on the rock in an hour had it not been for the _Shearwater_. But twenty miles south she would have been safe. Tugs were coming to her assistance. It was that twenty miles Owen was trying to make.”

“He was mad to try it,” I said. “No seaman with freight and passengers is justified in wrecking his own ship that way. And you tell me----”

“The chief officer and the engineer came to me about it,” Gorham went on. “That was their idea--that Harry Owen was mad. The _Shearwater_ was being picked apart by the seas, as a boy pulls a toy to bits. In fact, when they finally appealed to me--after a deadly scene on the bridge--it looked very much as though we would be lucky to get to port ourselves without assistance. I recall that as we talked, down in the engineer’s cabin in full sight of the trampling engines, our voices were mournfully muffled. I was Harry Owen’s oldest friend, they told me, while the combers boomed and crashed overhead. It was my business to bring him to his senses.”

“Did they really think he was mad?” I demanded.

Gorham puffed at his pipe slowly. Then he rose and went to his portmanteau and fumbled around a little and came back with a bit of soiled, flimsy paper.

“They had this,” he explained. “The wireless man had brought it to the chief and it put them all in a blue funk.” He spread the paper out on his great knee and read it thoughtfully. “Harry sent it as a message while we were making a fresh hitch for the hawser.”

Gorham handed it to me with a gesture, as if to say: “You see what we were confronted with.”

I read that little sheet, written in Harry Owen’s bold script. It was brief. Then I laid it on the table.

“And what did Sheila have to say?” I asked.

“She knew nothing about that message,” he responded. “Nor did she know much about what was going on. I went in to see her several times. She sat in a big chair fastened to the deck in Harry’s cabin and stared at me out of her cold, shallow eyes.”

“Did nobody else go to her?” I inquired. “I’d have thought the chief officer--”

“The chief officer had had enough in the wheelhouse,” Gorham replied. “He came out like a man in a daze; but he did his duty like a man. No idle hands on the _Shearwater_ that night!”

“But what did they make out of that message?” I insisted. “You tell me they went to you as a final resort, to ask you to bring Harry Owen to his proper senses. What did they make out of that wireless he sent?”

“What would _you_ make out of it?”

I thought this over. Now that the story was plain in my mind, I could easily interpret that short, strange message. But what would I have made of it, seated on a lounge in sight of swiftly moving engines, with the boom of a tempest roaring overhead and only this faintest of glimmers to light up the darkness in the soul of a man who was ruthlessly carrying me to destruction? I shook my head.

Gorham went on composedly:

“At dawn we still had six miles to drag the _Western Pacific_. The line still held, because of Owen’s extraordinary seamanship. That was his hold on his crew. I am convinced that no other man afloat could have kept his men at work as Harry did. And what work!

“The gale had piled up a sea that ran irresistibly from horizon to horizon, which lifted the _Shearwater_ up to dizzy heights, flung her savagely to one side, dropped her into vast hollows that resounded like caverns. And as the vessel disintegrated under our feet, we patched her up. I tell you we labored like men possessed to keep that wretched old packet alive, to keep her going--to keep the steady pull on the hawser that meant safety for those hundreds on the liner. Yet no help came. The carpenter reported three feet of water in the hold, seams opening up in the wooden topsides, beams buckling below under the terrific strain.

“The gale died slowly. At noon it was a breeze; then it shifted to a brisk offshore wind and the _Western Pacific_, as jaunty as ever, signaled she was all right. The wireless reported that within a couple of hours all kinds of assistance would arrive. And before the final cheering message had come our engines suddenly stopped. The _Shearwater_ was sinking, and sinking fast. The pumps were choked; every sea that broached over us poured its tons down into the holds through the shattered decks.

“Harry Owens turned the wheel over to a hand and came out, to see his crew crowding the decks. He gave a brusque order to cast off the hawser and listened quietly to the chief officer and the engineer.

“‘A bad run of sea yet,’ was all he said, and went into his own cabin. I followed him, leaving the officers to get the boats ready for launching. Sheila was still crouched in that great chair, her fingers set into its leather arms. Harry looked at her and remarked very simply, ‘The ship is sinking. We shall have to take to the boats. There is time yet. You’ll find yourself quite comfy on the _Western Pacific_.

“She rose with a single movement. ‘This ship is going down?’ she cried. Then flared up wildly. ‘The only decent ship you ever had, and you let her sink!’

“Harry met her eyes calmly. ‘Poor Sheila!’ he said in a tuneless voice. Then he lighted a cigar and left for the deck, where the crew were sweating about the boats and life rafts. He went to a little group of passengers and told them briefly that he was sending them off to the liner, now riding easily and rather pompously a mile away to the drag of the hawser we had let go. Then he drew me aside.

“‘I shall send you in charge of one of the boats,’ he told me. ‘You will take Sheila with you.’ He twisted his lips into a wry smile. ‘Poor Sheila!’ he croaked.

“I was dumfounded. I scrutinized the man carefully. He was as sober and as collected as we are now. His eyes were steady. A blob of sea broke over the shattered bulwarks and flooded to our knees. He did not notice it.

“‘You saved the _Western Pacific_,’ I said, ‘and you have ruined yourself. Man, man!’

“I was terribly angry with him. Yet he stood in the midst of that tragedy like one who had succeeded, not failed. He dominated us all, a kind of heroic and pitiable figure.

“So we got into the boats--the sea was going down rapidly, and the _Western Pacific_ sent over four boats to help out. Into the last boat we put Sheila, dry eyed, cold, almost, one might say, frozen in her expression. Harry handed her over the broken rail with a kind of gentle compassion. He did not say anything to her. It happened that it was one of the liner’s boats and the mate in charge stared up at Owen expectantly. The _Shearwater_ was almost awash. Still Harry made no movement to get into the boat. Instead, he thrust me in and I found myself seated with Sheila.

“‘Hurry up, sir!’ cried the mate in our boat.

“But Harry shook his head with a firm and determined movement.

“‘Shove off!’ he ordered, and the men obeyed like children. But their officer bawled out, again and again, vainly. Harry Owen stared at us all, rising and falling on the spumy seas, and then turned away and went into his own cabin. As he closed the door the _Shearwater_ dipped her battered bows deeply. A surge overran her. She lurched to starboard, righted herself and slowly went down. She seemed to stop when the water was halfway up the deckhouse and floated a moment, half submerged. I think we all stared at Harry Owen’s door.

“As I told you, Sheila did not utter a cry; but her fingers were set in my flesh so I had the impression of some one screaming. A moment later the _Shearwater_ vanished.