The Girl of the Golden Gate — Themes and Context

There were big tears in "Sweeney's" black eyes when "the honorable captain gentleman" said good-by to him. He would never forget him.

"Yes; you will forget, 'Sweeney,'" Whitridge said in Japanese, with a little laugh.

"Oh, yes," agreed Suki, "he will forget. Men forget, but women always remember."

"You know a lot about life, Suki," he answered and turned and went into the hotel office.

At Whitridge's appearance the boyish-looking clerk behind the desk flushed guiltily and hid something under a book. Whitridge handed him an odd silver cigarette case which the young fellow had often admired.

"Just a token for your kindness, my boy," he said.

"Gee, I--I'm sorry you're going away, Captain--Whitr--Whitridge," stammered the clerk and faltering peculiarly at the name. "I'll always keep this. What you've said has braced me up and--as soon as I get a little more money together I'm going home. Good-by and--and the best of luck to you."

"Good-by and good luck to you," said the departing guest, shaking the young fellow's hand heartily. "You'll come through all right."

The clerk's gaze followed Whitridge and Chang through the door and until they were clear of the grounds. Then he pulled out an old newspaper. It was what he had hidden at Whitridge's unexpected appearance. Chang had dropped it in packing Whitridge's things. For several minutes he studied the face which looked up at him from a mass of black headlines. It was a portrait of Whitridge beyond a doubt.

"He's Lavelle all right--but nobody'll ever get it out of me. He's square," he muttered to himself, and as he did so he tore the paper into small bits.

"You marther get him better you kom-men back?" asked Chang, breaking a long silence as Whitridge and he came to the _Cambodia's_ gangway.

Just then Miss Granville and her maid went by, but Whitridge did not catch her glance of recognition.

"You not--_you_ never kom-men back," said the Chinaman, shaking his head disconsolately and bringing Whitridge's gaze away from the splendid figure of womanhood moving up the gangway. The devotion that shone in the yellow giant's eyes pierced his heart.

"Maybe, Chang--maybe. I don't know," answered Whitridge. "Good-by, old man--good-by." He caught Chang's yellow hand and wrung it and coolies idling round wondered at the sight. "You're white all----" He wanted to tell him that he was white all through, but something closed his throat and he dared not trust himself further. He fled up the gangway.

When he reached the deck he looked back, intending to give Chang a farewell hand wave, but the Chinaman had disappeared. He searched the pier from end to end, but there was a dimness in his eyes and they made no discovery. He turned to go forward and collided with two men, one in the uniform of a United States naval lieutenant and the other in civilian garb.

"I beg your pardon," he said quickly and then his gaze met the officer's.

A challenging tenseness straightened Whitridge. The man in uniform started back a step as if he had been struck. Then, his good-looking, but weak face went pale, his lips parted loosely, and his features became as expressionless as so much putty, under the glance which Whitridge shot at him. It was a glance of but a second. It began in hostility and ended with a lash of contempt as he swung on forward.

The naval officer watched Whitridge until he disappeared through the saloon gangway.

"You look as you might--if you had seen a ghost, Campbell," said the civilian.

"I--I thought I did, Evans," stammered the officer and making an effort to recover control of himself. "I believed--I thought--that man was dead." His voice went to a whisper. "That--that's Lavelle of the _Yakutat_."

"It's he. I couldn't be mistaken. He was in the class at Annapolis with me."

"He's a rotter, if there ever was one," interrupted Evans bitterly. The other nodded dumbly. "Good thing he didn't land in the navy."

"Until he was shown up I was blamed for--for his being 'bilged,' you know. But really I wasn't to blame. Some of the fellows planted some beer and booze in our room; he stood mute, but I had to testify. They expelled him."

The officer spoke as if conscience-smitten, but his companion did not seem to be listening to him. He interrupted him.

"It's a mighty unpleasant thing to think of being in the same ship with a man like that," he said very solemnly. As he spoke a shudder passed over him.

The banging of a gong and a cry of "All ashore, who're going ashore!" cut short the conversation and hurried the officer over the side.

It was with his soul swept by the pain of all the bitterness of his life that Whitridge had turned away from the two men on deck. His memory of bitterness began with Porter Campbell. He had feared from the day, a week before, when the American cruiser squadron had put in to Yokohama that somebody would recognize him. Now at the last moment his apprehension had been fulfilled. He knew the nature of Campbell too well to dare to hope that he would conceal his identity from the civilian to whom he had been speaking.

Then, in a flash, he identified Campbell's companion. It was Evans, of the consulate at Hong Kong. He had read in a paper that morning that Evans was en route home by the _Cambodia_.

Just as he reached the window of the purser's office Whitridge recognized Emily Granville's maid standing there. The thought seized him that when this ship's company came to put him on the wheel of scorn that she, too, must be there to aid in the torture. He turned quickly as if to retreat. It was not too late; he could escape the agony and the humiliation that he was certain was in store for him.

Even as he turned he paused with a new sadness. The call in his mother's letter which yesterday's mail had brought to him, came to his mind. The words were burned in his brain:

"Just to hold you in these withered old arms again and press you to my breast as I used to do when you were a bonny baby boy--that is all I ask. I would go through The Gate happy--and with a smile."

He turned back toward the window and as he did so he felt the throb of the engines starting the _Cambodia_ down to the sea.

A slight woman in black, dark of skin and with her raven hair groomed slickly after the fashion of Oriental women, looked up at him with a surprised but happy gleam of recognition. Whitridge did not see her, although he appeared to be looking straight at her. She paused, where she followed a Chinese steward aft, and looked over her shoulder at him as he went forward.

"Who is that, Moore--the one in black?" asked Evans stepping up to the window. "Something familiar about her."

"Elsie of Shanghai," said the purser in an undertone. "Sold out and going home."

"Ah," murmured Evans with a lifting of his brows. "Knew her from her pictures. They're in every conceivable place."

"She has played 'the game' for all there was in it," answered the purser.

"Say, Moore," and Evans' voice was serious, "we've picked up a rotter here all right." The purser glanced up inquisitively. "Lavelle of the _Yakutat's_ aboard."

"Wrong, sir. Can't be. Why--that fellow's dead, Mr. Evans. Died out East here somewhere. Saw it in the home papers only a little while ago."

"He's not dead by a long shot. He's aboard here."

"There's no Lavelle on the passenger list."

"That means nothing," and Evans described Whitridge.

"Why, that man's name's Whitridge--an Englishman."

"Well, he's Lavelle."

The purser stopped suddenly, a startled look came into his eyes; his face flushed.

Evans, following his gaze in wonderment, turned and stepped quickly aside. Emily Granville was standing there, her maid beside her carrying a jewel case.

"I wish to deposit this with you, purser," she said.

There was a tremor in her voice. Every bit of color was gone from her face. It might have been a piece of Wedgwood. She paused only long enough to indicate that the maid would take the purser's receipt.

"Lord, but that woman's a dream," whispered Evans after the maid had passed out of hearing. The purser looked up at him strangely. "But say, old man, what's the matter with you?"

"I wonder if she heard you say that--that Lavelle is aboard here?"

"Why? What if she did?"

"That's Emily Granville, of San Francisco--old John Granville's daughter. Granville and his wife were lost with the _Yakutat_, you know. Lavelle beat them away from the side of his boat with an oar--drowned them."

"My God!" exclaimed Evans, and he looked at the purser blankly.

Emily Granville could not have helped hearing what was said at the purser's window. The shock of the revelation stunned her. It seemed impossible that fate could have placed her in the same ship with the man whose fiendishness had gloomed her whole life.

With her nerves overwrought and her senses reeling, she sought her berth. There she argued with herself that the man who had spoken to the purser must be mistaken. It was not true, she persisted in thinking. The man whom the steamship agency manager had told her was Captain Whitridge--the man who had given up his room to her--could not be Lavelle. His was not a face that could mask such a fiend. It was too fine and yet the sadness of it--the pain she had seen in his eyes--returned to startle her.

"I can't! I won't believe it!" she said to herself over and over again, fighting the sense of foreboding that grew in her heart.

But dinner time brought a brutal confirmation. A passenger at the captain's table where Emily Granville sat blurted out, before the skipper could stop him, how the _Cambodia's_ first officer had seen the man called Whitridge come aboard and had recognized him as Lavelle. He pointed him out, sitting with bent head, at a table across the saloon.

With white face and scared, staring eyes Emily Granville left her place. Somehow she got to her room. A little while later her maid found her senseless in her berth and revived her only to hear her cry and moan that furies--black furies--were tearing at her pillow. And she breathed heavily as one spent from swimming.

Before the _Cambodia_ had dropped Mera Head behind the horizon the loss of the Alaskan liner _Yakutat_ had been dragged out of its ten-year past and gossiped from one end of the ship to the other. What details proved elusive were blithely manufactured into the fabric of a sea disaster which had shocked the world and made a nation ashamed. Men shook their heads ominously and women shuddered as the fact passed from mouth to mouth that Lavelle, the _Yakutat's_ second officer, who had beaten drowning passengers with an oar, was among them. When it became known that Emily Granville, whose parents had been driven away from Lavelle's boat, was also in the _Cambodia_ and lying ill in her room from the shock of knowing that Lavelle was a fellow-passenger, a tenseness came upon things that made the nerves of the liner's officers raw.

Paul Lavelle did not enter the dining saloon after that first night. It became known that he took his meals in his room and left it only after darkness fell. Watch officers saw him from the bridge now and then--a shadow in the night.

"Wandering around like a pariah dog," one of them told a passenger. Often they saw "The Shadow" as late as dawn.

But this night--it was the fifth out of Yokohama--the deck saw "The Shadow" earlier than it was his wont to appear. The saloon was bright and gay with an entertainment and Lavelle was taking advantage of this. He met only one or two straying couples in the darkness and they soon went inside. It was not a night that invited one with moon or star. He could remember few nights like it. It was a dead black--shocking in its intensity. The _Cambodia_ might have been a ship without funnels or masts. Everything was cut off sheer by the blackness. There was a light breeze which seemed to dart out from every point of the compass at once. It whimpered as it went by his ears.

After a long, steady, hard walk "The Shadow" sought out his favorite vigil post against the pipe rail under the weather wing of the bridge. It was to port to-night, although it was hard to tell the weather side from the lee. He gleaned some comfort from the thought that the liner was rapidly slipping down to "the corner"--the intersection of the 180th meridian and the 30th parallel--through which ships great circle between Yokohama and the Hawaiian Islands. She was due to turn it the following afternoon and that meant half his passage in her done. He had determined to quit the ship at Honolulu.

Just after the lights went out in the saloon at one bell--a half-hour after midnight--and the silence of the dark hours had settled upon the ship, he sensed somebody stealing along the side of the deck house. He fixed a shape finally, but no sooner had he done so than it disappeared. He could not tell whether it was the form of a man or woman. Then, he heard a heavy breath at his feet and jumped back defensively. A hand touched him and he grabbed it.

"Master!" whispered a voice in Chinese. Chang rose beside him.

"Chang," was all he could say. He was overwhelmed by the loyalty of this yellow heart which could give and give and ask no return.

"I stow way. Make him work--shubbel coal like hell. No can kom-men here bee-fore. I go 'Flisco." Lavelle heard the sound of a heavy footfall approaching. Chang's ears caught it, too. "Good-by. To-mollah night I kom-men gain."

A lantern light cut the darkness and the ship's night watchman dashed round from the lee side of the deck house, with a club raised to strike. He lowered his arm as he discovered Lavelle.

"Seen anything of a big coolie stoker round here, sir?"

"No," answered Lavelle.

"Been tryin' to get aroun' up here the past three nights," and the watchman muttered off into the blackness.

"The Shadow" pondered a long time as to what he could do for Chang, but he could come to no decision. The thought that he was in the ship cheered him though as he went to his room. That hand in the darkness and the hand-clasp of a frail woman in black--one with her cage in the zoo of life like himself--were the only friendly touches which had come to him. Elsie of Shanghai was grateful, and had sought him out the night of sailing to tell him so, because he had kept her alive. She would never forget that he had sheltered her from death in the Shanghai riots. Chang would lay down his life to pay the debt he considered he owed him for saving his yellow carcass from the knives of a drunken mob of sailors. Everybody wanted to cling to life and he smiled grimly to himself in the darkness at the thought. He had removed his overcoat and coat and as he put out his hand to grope for the electric flash he muttered, "What a comedy! What a comedy!"

The next instant he was pitched headlong against the side of the vessel by a shock which rattled her like an empty basket. A sea slapped through the open port of the room and choked him with its brine.

Lavelle dragged himself to his feet with his breath gone from him. For a moment he thought he was paralyzed--limbs, heart, nor brain seemed to respond. The night was filled with a multisonous orgy of sound.

Then, his strength returned to him as quickly as it had gone. He leaped to the door and plunged into the alleyway outside. He knew full well what had happened as he ran aft and up through the gangway which led from the main to the promenade deck. Another vessel had piled into the _Cambodia_. There was no land--there were no rocks in the liner's track; nothing but two, three, and four mile deeps on every hand. Lights sprang up in the staterooms as he passed. Somebody flashed them on in the reception hall as he went through there. Thence he took the social hall gangway and came to the boat deck in a bound.

A quartermaster--barely more than a boy--catapulted into his arms. Fear was driving him.

"Let me go!" he cried like a thing in a trap.

"Let me go!" and he cursed. Lavelle held him firmly.

"Stand fast, son! You're all right!"

Lavelle spoke in almost a normal tone. Whether it was what he said or what he saw in Lavelle's face that stilled the panic in the youngster's heart no one will ever know. But when Lavelle let him go and beckoned to him to follow him the quartermaster went at his side.

"Everything's gone for'ard!" he yelled at Lavelle above the noise. "Windjammer--big lumberman--no lights--piled into us! Foremast came over--by the board! Bridge--Old Man--chart house--everybody--everything gone!"

Lavelle snatched these things visually out of the blackness even as the boy shouted.

The _Cambodia_ rolled back slowly to starboard, but one who knew what Lavelle knew could feel the life going out of her. Her engines had stopped.

The shape of a sailing vessel--a bark--drew away over on the starboard side and the grinding of metal against metal ceased only to have its place taken by the thunder of the _Cambodia_ beginning to exhaust. Lavelle could hear and feel the stranger ripping at the steamer as she went by. The _Cambodia_ gave a lurch like a drunken man getting out of a gutter.

"She's going!" he shouted in the boy's ear, snatching his head to his lips. "Engineers--all officers report here! Me! Find out what water's in her! Find out how long lights'll last! Tell 'em give us plenty of light. Be a man!"

The boy fled and Lavelle ran up to starboard and bawled against the night:

"Stand by if you're able! Stand by!" There was an answering cry, but all he caught was--"Hell!"

Groping he found an electric cluster on each side of the social hall house and flashed it on. He ran aft and flashed on similar clusters on the sides of the smoke-room house. These lights embraced the eight small boats davited along the _Cambodia's_ sides.

From below men began to come by twos and threes, some supporting women on their arms, some carrying them, some carrying children, some alone with fear tangling their feet and some half curiously. One came lighting a cigarette--a fair-faced young chap--and Lavelle grabbed him in the social hall gangway and told him to let only women and children pass.

"Right O!" was his answer and he took off his coat and threw it away, accepting his task.

The glow of a man who would be obeyed was on Lavelle's brow. Men knew he spoke with the voice of authority and heeded it. They saw the purser refuse to hold the gangway in the social hall beside the fair-faced man and they saw Lavelle smash him to the deck with a blow of his fist.

Looking up from the deck below Emily Granville saw this, too, and, terrified, fled from succoring hands. She saw only a fiend at work.

"Twenty minutes! No longer! Lights--ten minutes!" shouted the quartermaster struggling to his side.

"What about the steerage?"

"Gone like rats! Whole bow's gone!"

He pantomimed him to take charge of a boat forward on the starboard side. A grimy engineer came through the crowd and reported. Others came and accepted his mastership--men who needed but to be told what to do to find their bearings and run in them.

Like a flame he moved upon that deck. Who he might be few knew, but wheresoever he went disorder became order and the spirits of brave men grew stronger and smiled at death as upon a friend. Like another self--the shadow of the flame--there moved Chang whither he went, striking as he struck and lifting up as he lifted up.

Of a sudden Lavelle saw Emily Granville standing in the port gangway of the smoke-room house, alone, hesitant, terror-stricken. She saw him and as he ran to her with open arms she drew back and then, remembering that he had but turned away from a boat in which she had seen him put a little girl, who cried that God must be upon the sea, she paused in her flight.