The Ship of Shadows. H. Bedford-Jones
his mind to grief and disaster, as soon as might be. He had given up hope, given up all things. Had he been a coward, he would have fallen to the temptation of suicide.
He thought how quickly, how terribly, he had succumbed; and he poured himself another drink. With the liquor, his mood changed.
“Where to go?” he asked himself. “Where is there a place that will receive me?”
Framed in the window he saw a strip of blue sky, and laughed.
“Out under the blue sky—in the north woods, on the sea! And chiefly, away from here and everywhere I am known! I have a little money. Out to the West, and the lumber-camps, and the sea, and the blue sky—first of all, San Francisco!”
He had taken three drinks, and was nearly drunk. His-brain and body were in a ferment. Ahead of him he could see only the path to hell—that was the effect of the drug. His moral fibers were being destroyed as though by quicklime.
2. Garrity the Magnificent
CHAPTER II
Garrity the Magnificent
ERIC VENABLE came to a drowsy awakening through which he was chiefly conscious of a medley of odors. He found himself lying in a miserable room lighted by a sick-flamed jet of gas; the windows betrayed a gloomy day light, heavy with dark fog.
The odors were many, but were permeated by a general sweetishness which found vague recognition in the nostrils of Venable. Incense! Where, then, was he? A whisky-bottle stood on the table beside his unclean bed; beside the bottle was a small box. At this Venable clutched with eagerness, and was not disappointed.
A moment later he lay back and closed his eyes, all sense of his degradation gone, in the effort to place himself. He smiled inwardly at thought of his fruitless efforts to get the drug in San Francisco; it was not hard for everyone to get, of course, but it was hard for a man of his speech and mien to procure.
Then, somehow, had come a friend. He remembered this much, and no more. Struggling to pierce the veil, he opened his eyes and sat up. It must be morning, he reflected; there was a vile taste in his mouth; a cheap clock in the corner pointed to seven. Another bed, two chairs, and a suitcase, open and piled with a rumpled heap of clothes, completed the garniture of this choice abode, which was upstairs above a Japanese incense-factory.
Venable explored his pockets, found his old pipe and some loose tobacco, and began to smoke. He felt rather cheerful—be cause of the white powder working in his brain like optimistic maggots. He rose and glanced into a mirror; he must have been shaved the previous evening, for he looked fairly well. He had grown used to seeing his eyes like burning flames in black sockets, and the big-boned face of him like parchment stretched tight. As he turned from the glass, the door opened and a man entered.
“Ah! Good morning to ye, Parson!” exclaimed a rich and throaty voice, a voice compelling in its good humor yet vibrant with rough menace. “Looking like a fighting-cock, ye are!”
Disburdening himself of various bundles, which he set upon the table, the speaker held out a hand to Venable. He was a broad-beamed man, stockily built, wide of shoulder, with a coppery thatch of hair, a red mustache, and a broken-nosed, brick-hued face from which gleamed two blue eyes like stars.
Cloaking this ruddily resplendent figure was a suit of startling blue, a necktie of gay pink loosely knotted about a dirty collar, and chrome shoes. A gray derby was cocked jauntily over one large ear.
Venable, smiling hesitantly, gripped the proffered hand, as he was obviously expected to do.
“You must be my good Samaritan,” he said; “but I can’t remember—”
“Small blame to ye!” chuckled the other. “Garrity’s my name, Terence Garrity, and it’s glad I am to meet ye over again, Parson! ’Twas a wonderful night we had last night, and proud was I to have the company of such a man as yourself. We’ve money enough left for another of the same, praise be!”
Another of the same! Venable was unable to meet the suggestion, and so slurred the issue.
“This is your place?” he inquired.
“It is that, until I’m gone—which will be the Friday night. I’ve been out early the morn, as ye may see; here’s milk and some sandwiches and such, beside the fine clothes I got for ye last night.”
“Last night!” said Venable slowly, a flush rising to his brow. “Why, I must have been rather—er—”
“Ye were,” assented Garrity with a grin. Then a soberness fell upon him, and he laid one huge paw upon the shoulder of Venable.
“Parson, if I do say it meself, it’s lucky that ye fell into the hands o’ Terence Garrity! Because why, ye told me all about a number o’ things, Parson—all about ’em, ye did. Have no fear! I remember what happens in liquor, but I’ve a close tongue on me, and I’d have ye know that I think none the worse of ye, sir. What with your learning and all, you’re the wreck of a better man than ever Garrity was nor will be, and I love ye for it! So that’s done with, Parson; now, until I get off to sea again, what I have is yours. First, for our breakfast!”
VENABLE was humbled and speechless. The rags that clothed him were the remains of the old fishing-suit in which he had left home; from the parcels, Garrity disclosed a ready-made suit that fitted fairly and was sober in color. Yet Venable gave little heed to these outward things, or even to the excellent breakfast that soon lay outspread on the table.
Strong upon him was the sense of his position—he realized that for him the die had been cast beyond any withdrawal; he had gone down into the depths; he was bound there by the absolute misery of his existence; and for him life held only an aching emptiness. The thoughtless but true word used by Garrity—the word “wreck”—lingered bitterly with him. It ate into his brain like a corrosive acid.
How long a time had elapsed since he had left the gray house behind him, since he had set forth for San Francisco, he had no definite idea; a week, perhaps two weeks, he had lived entirely independent of time or calendar. The fact that he had fallen into the ways of vice and drink meant very little to him, after the first sting of shame drawn by Garrity’s words. He was no longer looking upward. But gradually, as he found that Garrity’s attitude was purely one of comradeship, he lost his sensitiveness. He regretted only that his brain was not yet numbed and deadened.
AS for Garrity himself, that genial soul lost no time in setting forth his position beyond mistake. He was a first-class engineer of some kind, Venable gathered vaguely—an engineer against whom there was a conspiracy of prohibition skippers, so that Garrity was forced to take any berth he could get. He was at present engaged with a small tramp steamer which would leave sometime Friday night for the China ports.
For the rest, Garrity put himself, his purse and his friends at the disposal of Eric Venable. He washed down his breakfast with a draft from the whisky bottle, and waxed eloquent.
“Twice I’ve been married,” he stated, “and neither time with any luck to speak of. The first was took with typhus a week after the weddin’, and the second was a slip of a Russian girl in Vladivostok, who was in trouble an’ needed to be an American citizeness, save the mark! So the consul married us, and I said good-by, and went my way—and the divil only knows what become of her, poor lass!”
Venable eyed him a long moment.
“Not every man would do a thing like that,” he said slowly. “Something fine about it—”
“Oh, I was drunk at the time!” Garrity laughed. Then his shrewd, twinkling eyes filled with gravity and a compassionate inquiry. “Tell me, now! Is it a parson ye are this blessed minute?”
“I