Harrigan

“Let me bandage your hands,” she said.  “I have some salve in my room.”

Her voice was a balm to the troubled heart of Harrigan.  His knotted forehead relaxed.

“Are you coming up?”

“Aye.”

He ran up the ladder and followed her to a cabin.  She rummaged through a suitcase and finally brought out a little tin box of salve and a roll of gauze.  As she stooped with her back to him, he saw that her hair was red—­not fiery red like his, but a deep dull bronze, with points of gold where the light struck it.  When she straightened and turned, her eyes went wide, looking up to him, for he bulked huge in the tiny cabin.

“What a big fellow you are!”

He did not answer for a moment; he was too busy watching her eyes, which were sea-green, and strangely pleasant and restful.

“Do you know me?” she asked with a slight frown.

“’Scuse me,” muttered Harrigan.  “I thought at first I did.”

He abased his glance while she took one of his hands and turned it palm up.

“Ugh!” she muttered.  “How did this happen?”

“Work.”

“Do you mean to say they make you work with your hands in this condition?”

“Sure.”

“Poor fellow!  That black captain!”

Her voice had changed from a peculiarly soft, low accent to a shrill tone that made Harrigan start.

“Poor fellow!” she repeated.  “Sit down.”

The campstool creaked under the burden of his weight.  She pulled up the chair in front of him and placed his left hand on her knees.

“This is peroxide.  Tell me if it hurts too much.”

She spilled some of the liquid across his palm; it frothed.

“Ouch!” grunted Harrigan involuntarily.

She caught his wrists with both hands.

“Why, your whole arm is trembling!  You must be in torture with this.  Have you made any complaint?”

“No.”

She studied him for a moment, scenting a mystery somewhere and guessing that he would not speak of it.  And she asked no questions.  She said not a word and merely bowed her head and started to apply the salve with delicate touches.  For the result, a confession of all his troubles tumbled up the big man’s throat to his tongue.  He had to set his teeth to keep it back.

She became aware of those cold, incurious eyes studying her face as she wrapped the gauze bandage deftly around the injured palms.

“Why do you watch me so closely?”

It disarmed him.  Those possibilities of tenderness came about his stiff-set lips, and the girl wondered.

“I was thinkin’ about my home town.”

“Where is it?”

He frowned and waved his hand in a sweep which included half the points on the compass.

“Back there.”

She waited, wrapping up the gauze bandage.

“When I was a kid, I used to go down to the harbor an’ watch the ships comin’ in an’ goin’ out,” he went on cautiously.

She nodded, and he resumed with more confidence:  “I’d sit on the pierhead an’ watch the ships.  I knew they was bringing the smell of far lands in their holds.”

There was a little pause; then his head tilted back and he burst into the soft, thick brogue:  “Ah-h, I was afther bein’ woild about the schooners blowin’ out to sea wid their sails shook out like clouds.  An’ then I’d look down to the wather around the pier, an’ it was green, deep green, ah-h, the deep sea-green av it!  An’ I would look into it an’ dream.  Whin I seen your eyes—­”

He stopped, grown cold as a man will when he feels that he has laid his inner self indecently bare to the eye of the world.  But she did not stir; she did not smile.

“I felt like a kid again,” said Harrigan, recovering from the brogue.  “Like a kid sittin’ on the pierhead an’ watchin’ the green water.  Your eyes are that green,” he finished.

Self-consciousness, the very thing which she had been trying to keep the big sailor from, turned her blood to fire.  She knew the quick color was running from throat to cheek; she knew the cold, incurious eye would note the change.  He was so far aware of the alteration that he rose and glanced at the door.

“Good-by,” she said, and then quite forgetting herself:  “I shall ask the captain to see that you are treated like a white man.”

“You will not!”

“I beg your pardon?” she said, but the hint of insulted dignity was lost on Harrigan.

“You will not,” he repeated.  “It’d simply make him worse.”

She was glad of the chance to be angry; it would explain her heightening color.

“The captain must be an utter brute.”

“I figger he’s nine tenths man, an’ the other tenth devil, but there ain’t no human bein’ can change any of them ten parts.  Good-by.  I’m thankin’ you.  My name’s Harrigan.”

She opened the door for him.

“If you wish to have that dressing changed, ask for Miss Malone.”

“Ah-h!” said Harrigan.  “Malone!”

She explained coldly:  “I’m Scotch, not Irish.”

“Scotch or Irish,” said Harrigan, and his head tilted back as it always did when he was excited.  “You’re afther bein’ a real shport, Miss Malone!”

“Miss Malone,” she repeated, closing the door after him, and vainly attempting to imitate the thrill which he gave to the word.  “What a man!”

She smiled for a moment into space and then pulled the cord for the cabin boy.