Читать книгу Her Sailor - Marshall Saunders - Страница 7

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With a face as pale as the handkerchief pressed against it, Nina stood gazing into a corner of the waiting-room in the diminutive railway station of Rubicon Meadows.

Mrs. Danvers had broken down. She was in a pitiable state of confusion, and Mr. Danvers, with his round face in a snarl, was trying to comfort her.

“What hash these women are made of!” grumbled Captain Fordyce to himself. “She wanted Nina to go, she wants her to stay, she will break her heart in earnest if I leave her, and break it in appearance if I take her. Come, Nina, let us go out to the platform, the train will be here in three minutes.”

“ ’Steban, I can’t leave her—I oughtn’t to,” murmured the girl, miserably.

“All right—stay, then.”

“Mamma, mamma, I will stay with you,” and she ran and threw her arms around the weeping figure.

Captain Fordyce stared at them from under his black brows. An instantaneous and almost imperceptible change passed over the sorrowing woman. He knew it from the movement of her shoulder-blades.

Nina felt it, was confused, and looked around at him.

“Good-bye,” he said, calmly; “wire me if you change your mind before to-morrow noon. If not, I will run up and get you next trip.”

Mrs. Danvers’s sobs ceased. She had been crying at intervals all the morning. This was the climax, “Nina,” she said, in a muffled voice.

The girl put her ear to her lips. Captain Fordyce could not hear what was said, but he could make a shrewd guess. The duty of a wife was to leave father and mother, and cleave to her husband.

Mr. Danvers whirled his ponderous form around, and, winking more vigorously than ever, stepped to the doorway. This was final. Up to the last he had hoped that his wife’s grief would continue, that Captain Fordyce would relent and would leave them their child. They were to lose her. He must go home and face that empty chair.

Mrs. Danvers had straightened herself up, and was pulling down her veil. Captain Fordyce was whisking Nina out to the train bearing down upon Rubicon Meadows with a rush and a roar befitting a monster that would steal children from the very arms of their parents.

Mrs. Danvers had ceased crying now, but Nina had taken up the dismal performance, and was blindly waving farewells from the window of a parlour-car. Now they were gone; that chapter in life’s story was finished—a lively, eventful chapter—and now began one unblessed by youth, mischief, and beauty. Mr. Danvers was getting old, and, placing himself by the side of his wife, he plodded wearily homeward. Perhaps if he had married some other woman he might have had children of his own—but what diabolical thoughts were these crowding his head, and he a deacon in the church; with an inward and horrified shudder he offered his arm to his wife.

She accepted the unusual attention. Her livelier feminine imagination pictured to her a new quiet and a new restfulness and happiness—yes, happiness—that were about to settle on them. It was all for the best—she could say it through her tears—although how they should miss that little witch!

Captain Fordyce sat quietly beside the witch. Her parents had been snatched from her. She was turning her bereaved gaze to the town. The shops, the houses, the churches, sprang past. She had only the meadows left, the beautiful Rubicon meadows, with their languidly flowing river—the place where her little feet had roamed since childhood, and now it, too, was gone. She was out in the open country away from the scenes of her childhood. She was fairly launched on the journey of life. Was it to be a happy one? Where would it end? When would she come back? Perhaps never.

She must be torn to pieces with nervous terror, such terror as probably agitated trembling brides for the first few hours after leaving the parental roof, and in deep and intense sympathy her husband gently touched the tiny gloved hand lying on her lap.

He wished to see her whole face, not a section of pink cheek.

She moved her head abruptly, and presented to him not tears and dejection, but a pouting mouth and a frowning brow. Her agitation was gone. She was worrying over some other matter.

“What’s wrong with you?” he asked, wonderingly.

She favoured him with one of her indignant stares.

“That woman is not my mother, why don’t you tell me who she is?”

Captain Fordyce was aghast. Then he looked over his shoulder. He was afraid the man behind had heard her low, wrathful tones. Where in the name of all that was wonderful had she picked up this information? He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it feebly; he must have time to think over this statement, and make up his mind what to answer her; so with an incoherent excuse he left her, and hurried in the direction of the smoking-car.

Before they reached Boston he was again beside her; but he made no effort at conversation, and as if she had forgotten her remark to him, she occupied herself by an animated observation of everything about her. She was intensely interested, intensely pleased, and watched his every movement like a delighted little cat.

“Are we going to stop, already?” she exclaimed, when their carriage, after lumbering through street after street, pulled up in front of a hotel.

He drew out his watch. “I can give you two hours before the Merrimac claims me, but you had better have something to eat first.”

“Can’t I have it here in this carriage?”

“No, you cannot,” he said, decidedly. “I am not going to drive through the streets with a lunching young lady.”

“Then let us make haste,” she said, meekly descending to the pavement.

An hour later, while they were driving to and fro, and he was pointing out objects of special historic interest in the prim old Puritan city, he interposed a question, “How does it all impress you?”

She shook her fluffy head. “Oh, delicious confusion, and noise, plenty of noise! Everything is mixed up to me. I can’t seem to separate things. You show me one house, and I look at it, but it melts at once into others. Everything is so close. How can city people think with all these things to look at? Just see that funny cart! Why, there are real reindeer, like those I once saw in a circus.”

In the utmost satisfaction he contemplated her gleeful, laughing face. “Now,” he said, regretfully, “I must take you back to the hotel. You will not be lonely without me?”

“I shall not be lonely without you,” she said, with determination; but when they stood a little later in the middle of a huge mirror-lined reception-room, she looked askance at the big plush chairs holding out inviting arms to her, and faltered, “You will not be very long?”

He smiled in immense gratification, and to his further surprise received a voluntary caress and a pat on the shoulder, while she lisped, “ ’Steban, don’t let any of those things run over you.”

He stood waiting for an instant, a slight stealthy colour creeping to his face. But there were no further endearments for him. She was staring out the window with her round, childish eyes; and muttering, “Half a loaf is better than no bread,” he swung himself down-stairs and on to a street-car.

He did not see her again until the next morning. She was tired and had gone to bed was the message he received when he returned to the hotel.

Something in her appearance amused him as she came gliding down the long corridor, and he smiled a smile so broad that it threatened to degenerate into a grin. However, he controlled himself when she approached him, and said, politely, “Good morning, did you sleep well? You didn’t sleep at all!” he exclaimed, bringing her to a standstill, and putting an anxious finger on the dark semicircles under her eyes. “You were frightened to death in that great room.”

“I was not frightened. I didn’t sleep because I wanted to think,” she replied; “also I was very angry with a young boy.”

“What young boy?” he asked, cajolingly, as he drew her into a near writing-room to avoid a bevy of ladies on their way to the dining-room.

“A boy that came when I rang the bell.”

“A bell-boy. What did he do?”

“He called me ‘ma’am,’ and when I asked him what he meant he said, ‘Beg pardon, Mrs. Fordyce!’ How could you—how dare you?”

Captain Fordyce suppressed his amusement. “Well, are you not Mrs. Fordyce?”

“No; you must not write me down your wife. I want to be Miss Danvers.”

“Have you no regard for my reputation, pussy-cat?”

“You said young ladies could travel with captains.”

“Yes, they can,” he said, soothingly, “but I prefer you to take the name that belongs to you. You are always crying honesty. What about sailing under false colours?”

“I think we had better have some breakfast,” she said, haughtily.

“Yes, Nina, but first go take off that red toggery.”

“My morning jacket,” she said, with annoyance, “my new morning jacket with the pinked edges. Mamma said it would be just the thing for breakfast.”

“For Rubicon Meadows, not for a city hotel.”

“I refuse to take it off. Mamma spent hours in making it.”

“Then I refuse to take breakfast with you, little green, country apple.”

“Whose fault is it that I am green?” she said, irritably. “Who has kept me mewed up in the country?”

“The best place for you, duckie. Go take off that jacket.”

“Oh, I am so disappointed in you. I am so sorry I left home. I thought men were nice and amiable when they were married. I thought they would let their wives do anything; and you said you lov—loved me!”

“So I do, sweetheart,” he said, soothingly; “but I don’t want to have people goggling at you. You are sensitive and nervous from yesterday, and your lack of sleep last night. You could not stand observation. Come back and show me what you have in the way of clothes. Your esteemed mother may know more about books than I do, but I bet you she doesn’t know so much about the fashions.”

With a proud and dignified air the girl led the way to her room. “There,” she said, throwing back her trunk lid, “you may see all I have. They’re mostly things you sent me, anyway.”

He rapidly tossed over every article of clothing submitted to him. “All very well for a maiden lady, not quite enough for a married one.”

“Will you stop?” she said, warningly. “I am not married.”

“Certainly, darling. Here—what’s the matter with this? This is what I call a blue silk blouse with a dash of gold for trimming. Natty, slightly nautical, and in good taste. Take off your red flannel jacket, and I will help you on with it.”

“You will do nothing of the sort,” she said, opening the door. “Go out into the hall.”

He stuffed his handkerchief in his mouth so that she would not hear him laughing, and, having attained to sobriety when she issued from the room a few minutes later, went soberly down the hall by the side of his disturbed young princess.

She thawed when they reached the big dining-room. “Shy, with all her bravado,” he muttered, watching her as she crept along in his wake. “Treats me like a dog when we are alone, and like a lord before strangers. It would pay to keep her in a crowd.”

She took but little breakfast, and once or twice volunteered remarks to him in a gentle and touchingly confidential tone. Her lips quivered several times, and his face darkened at the sight; for he knew she was thinking of her home and her uncertain parentage.

“Confusion to the brute that forced me to snatch her from that quiet place,” he reflected, with inward anger. “I wish I could see him squirm;” and his gaze went to those windows of the dining-room nearest the shores of distant England. Then he addressed Nina under his breath: “Darling, will you do some shopping with me before we go on board the Merrimac?”

“If you word that sentence properly, I will,” she returned, quietly.

“Miss Danvers, will you be kind enough to bestow the light of your countenance on me while I make a tour of the principal Boston stores?”

“Yes,” she replied, tranquilly, “I will.”

For several hours they went from store to store. He was hard to suit; and Nina was obliged to allow herself to be pinched, pulled, and fitted by obsequious dressmakers and their attendants, until at last her husband and guardian was satisfied. He put her in a hack; and the bewildered, interested, and slightly homesick girl found herself being rapidly driven through a noisy, dirty, and mysterious part of the city that at last, however, opened on a stretch of narrow blue water.

She uttered an exclamation of delight, and hung out the carriage window. They had rolled into an enormously long and vaulted shed in which bales of merchandise were piled as high as the roof. Some of these bales were flying wildly through the air, all, however, swinging in the direction of several black, open mouths in the hull of a huge steamer lying against the wharf outside. A number of light yellow boxes were also tumbling to and fro, these propelled by shouting men. The mad haste prevailing among animate and inanimate objects made Nina fall a prey to complete bewilderment, and she frantically clung to the strong arm that was to guide her through this sea of apparent confusion.

When they reached the gangway, a kind of paralysis seized her, and she was conscious of being lifted bodily and set down on a floor as clean as that of the scrubbed kitchens in Rubicon Meadows.

She was on the deck of ’Steban’s beloved Merrimac; and, gazing hurriedly about her, she took in the noble lines of a staunch and beautiful oceangoing steamer. But ’Steban had disappeared after a brief, “Show this lady to ninety-three;” and some one was waiting to conduct her down into the heart of this wonderful and mysterious thing. She meekly followed her guide, who was a smart boy in buttons, and presently she found herself alone and standing in front of a narrow red couch. She dropped on it, passed her hand over her eyes, and sat for a few minutes in blank contentment.

Then she began to reflect. She was quite alone in a tiny room not a quarter as large as her bedroom in Rubicon Meadows. She was very, very young. She had left her darling home and two people who adored her. She was going to sea with a monster whom she hated and could never, never live with. The passengers on the steamer would probably be fine city people who would despise her as a green country girl; but she did not care. She would wear her red jacket to breakfast every morning if she wished. They would probably all be shipwrecked and go down to the fishes. What did anything matter, anyway?

From blank despair she proceeded to a more active display of her emotions, and was soon violently weeping. She would cry now until she died. She was a poor, unfortunate lily, uprooted from her native soil. She was withering cruelly in this atmosphere of neglect. ’Steban might have spent at least five minutes with her on her arrival in this new and strange place, and she redoubled her “tear falling pity.”

However, at eighteen one cannot weep for ever, and after an hour had elapsed she sat up and began to review her situation. After all, it was not so very heartrending. How many girls in Rubicon Meadows would give their worldly all to be in her position—Captain Fordyce and all her other woes included? And if she were too desperately unhappy on this dreaded voyage, and if she were to escape shipwreck, her home was always open to her—her beloved home; and flinging herself excitedly from the couch she began to pace up and down the tiny room.

How well planned it was: two white berths, one red couch, a wash-stand and rack for glasses and brushes, and a big open port-hole encased by a shining brass rim. Oh, and a glass! and, hurrying to it, she examined with interest her tear-stained face. White skin, pink cheeks, fluffy auburn hair, hazel eyes, nose passable, and one row of white teeth. Further than that the liliputian mirror refused to go, and, with a smile at its absurdity in not taking in her chin and lower row of teeth, she resolved to have it more conveniently hung, and turned to her window.

There was a great rattling of ropes overhead and creaking of chains, a running to and fro, and a succession of whistles; and, surely now they were moving, actually moving. She would like to go on deck, but she would not venture alone. Well, she could see a section of the long wharf from here. It was gliding slowly from them. Surely it was moving, and the Merrimac was stationary. Some of the boxes and bales were left behind; the rearing, plunging horses were being driven away; the workmen were scattering; but here on the end of the wharf was a crowd of men and women, the air about them alive with waving handkerchiefs, hats describing eccentric circles in the air, and shouted parting injunctions; among which the invariable “Write soon” gallantly held its own against numerous odds.

There was no one to see her off, no one who cared for her. She did not even belong to the Danvers. She was probably a lonely orphan, and she again flung herself down on the red couch and buried her face in her hands.