“I wonder if your hunchback is the mysterious passenger everyone is talking about,” Laura said thoughtfully, when she was convinced that Nan was not going to speak.
“I never thought of that!” This from Rhoda. “But it all fits together perfectly. They say he never appears at the table for his meals and that he has his own servants to take care of him.”
“Yes,” Bess contributed, “a steward told the stewardess and the stewardess told me that no one of the ship’s crew has been in that cabin since the boat left dock.”
“It must have been the same stewardess,” Laura picked up the story, “who told me that nothing has gone right in this end of the ship since he came in. She says there has been trouble, trouble all the while. She’s a superstitious old soul. She thinks he has cast a spell over everything around here.” Laura’s voice was a half whisper as she imparted her information.
“Well, you’d think so too, if you had seen him,” Grace whispered too. “I don’t see why in theworld they ever let him get a passport and get on the ship.”
“Oh, I heard somebody say today,” Amelia supplied, as Grace’s statement recalled the conversation to her mind, “that he came up the gang-plank in New York behind the queerest looking outfit he’d ever seen in all the times he has crossed the ocean.
“He said the man was all swathed up to the eyes in an overcoat and a heavy scarf of Scotch plaid. His collar was turned up and his cap pulled down so that none of his face was visible. He said nothing to anyone, refused to let a porter take a small black valise he was carrying, and went directly to his cabin.
“The man who was telling the story said his stateroom is close by, but that he has never once met him in the halls. However, he did say, that from time to time he has heard someone in that cabin speak in a strong Scotch burr, ordering a servant around in no uncertain terms.”
“Did the man that you heard,” she looked at Grace, “speak like that?”
“Amelia, I didn’t notice what kind of an accent he used!” Grace sounded almost impatient. “I was too frightened to notice anything like that. I only know what I’ve told you already.”
“Did the man who came looking for me thatfirst day we came on the boat speak like that?” Nan hardly dared to ask the question. She wanted information, but she didn’t want to give any.
For a moment the girls sat thinking. Then Laura spoke up. “You would think that we would have noticed that,” she said, “but I can’t honestly say I did. It was all such a surprise and we were so excited anyway that I only noticed what he looked like.”
“Well, he didn’t say very much,” Rhoda added. “Remember. He spent most of his time looking around the room and at us as though he wanted to be sure to remember us always. Ooh, I don’t like to think about it.”
“Nor I either,” Bess was most emphatic. “I haven’t seen him at all, and still I don’t like to think about it. It’s perfectly horrid to have him bothering us at all, and if he ever follows me, I’m going to scream so loud that everybody on this boat will come running. He has no business at all annoying us this way. We haven’t done anything to him.
“Nan didn’t want his old baggage. It wasn’t her fault that it was brought to our cabin. Why, I’ll bet he did it himself or ordered that servant of his to do it. What for, I don’t know, but if he’s queer, there is no accounting for what he does. I wish they would lock him up or dump himoverboard or something. We just get rid of Linda and then he comes here to annoy us. Why can’t people leave us alone?” Bess was thoroughly incensed. “We only have a couple of more days on boat—”
“Oh, come let’s forget it all,” Nan interrupted. She was more than anxious to put the problem aside for the time being. “Let’s talk of something else. Or even better than that, let’s go upstairs and see the pictures the ship’s photographer has been taking.”
“What photographer? What pictures?” Amelia looked puzzled.
“You mean to say you haven’t seen the photographer at all!” Bess was incredulous. “Why, he’s always around with that camera of his. It’s almost impossible to sit or stand any place on deck without his taking your picture!”
“Old Procrastination Boggs,” Laura teased, “has been so busy trying to figure out the time so as to keep her clocks straight that she hasn’t known what was going on around her. Have you decided yet,” she asked, “whether you set the clock ahead or back when you are traveling east?
“I went into Amelia’s cabin last night,” she explained to the others, “and there she was sitting on the floor with her clocks all around her. She looked just as she did the night we first saw her inher room at Lakeview. This time, however, she had a pencil and paper in her hand. At first, I thought she had lost her mind, for there were little marks like chicken scratches on the paper.”
“Oh, it didn’t look like that at all,” Amelia protested. “You just don’t recognize a good sketch when you see one. That round mark was the sun. The long straight one was the path it takes as it moves from the east to the west.”
“But the sun doesn’t move,” Rhoda interrupted. “The earth does.”
“Well, anyway,” Laura continued her teasing, “there she was on the floor with her clocks. Each one was set at a different time and Amelia was drawing pictures. I heard her muttering to herself, ‘Now, if the sun rises in the east and sets in the west and the ship travels east, then we lose no, we gain time. No, we lose time.’ She couldn’t make up her mind, so she began all over again, ‘if the sun rises in the west, I mean the east, and we travel west, no east’—Say, which way are we traveling?” Laura had confused herself.
“East.” Nan laughed. “And don’t go any further or you’ll have us all confused. Upstairs, near the Purser’s window, there’s a blackboard. On it, it says, ‘Ship’s passengers please note: set your watches ahead 40 minutes each night at 9, if you wish them to agree with ship’s time.’”
“I know that now,” Amelia laughed, ruefully. “I saw it the morning after I’d had such a time. And you needn’t act so superior,” she looked at Laura, “because you sat down on the floor with me and tried to figure it out too!”
The picture that this brought to mind caused all the girls to laugh.
“Let’s go up and see those photographs, right now,” Laura changed the subject.
“Yes, let’s,” Amelia agreed. So, walking and talking the six friends left the cabin and went to an upper deck.
“Bess Harley,” Nan exclaimed as they stood around the pictures. “How did you ever manage to get yours taken so many times?”
Bess blushed. She had contrived to have her picture taken more than anyone else. Now, as she thought of the number of times she had purposely posed, hoping that the photographer would see her, she felt guilty. There were pictures of her in the deck chair, posed against a life preserver, and standing at the rail. There was one of her in a bathing suit on the morning she had gone swimming, another of her in slacks when she was headed for the ship’s gymnasium, and another in leather jacket and skirt when the wind was blowing so hard that her hair was standing on end.
“Anyhow, they are all cute,” Nan comforted,“and I’m as jealous as anything, because there aren’t any of me.”
“Oh, yes, there is, Nan. Look!” Rhoda pointed her finger to a picture of Nan posted right in the center of the board. The photographer had caught her when she was totally unaware of the rest of the world. He had made a silhouette of her on the ship’s rail, in the place she called her balcony, looking out over the sea.
“Oh, how nice!” Nan herself was pleased. “I’ll have to send one home to Momsy.” Then a sad look flashed across her face. She was lonesome sometimes amid all the new strange things for her mother, her father, and the little cottage on Amity street. There were times when she wished most earnestly that she could consult with her father or have the bright hopefulness of her mother’s comfort to encourage her.
Her thoughts flashed back to her father’s warning and then to the letter she had received at Lakeview Hall, the letter she had concealed from Bess. Was this hunchback who seemed to be watching her connected in any way with either of the two? Was he the one her father was warning her against? Had he had anything to do with the letter? Nan resolved to get it from the purser with whom she had left her valuables, look at it again, and see whether it contained any undiscoveredclues.
“What’s the matter, Nan,” Bess brought her thoughts back to the present. “Your mind seems miles away. We’ve all ordered our pictures, and you haven’t had a word to say for the last ten minutes.”
Nan started guiltily, laughed with them at her own absent-mindedness, bought photographs of herself and her friends for her memory book, and then, with them, went into the ship’s store to buy souvenirs for friends back home.
So, in spite of Grace’s frightening experience, the morning was a gay one for the Lakeview Hall crowd and the afternoon brought a surprise that even Bess, in her wildest dreams of the nice things that might happen to them on the boat, had never imagined.
“Oh, Nan, I wonder if all the girls received them! I hope they did!” Bess was waving a small white envelope in her hand. “Look, it has the boat’s flag engraved on it and the United States flag too. Isn’t it just too perfect for words!
“Nan,” Bess hugged her friend, “I’m sure, as sure as I am of anything, that it’s because of your saving Linda the way you did, that we got them.”
Nan’s face was alight too. “Oh, Bess, it isn’t either,” she contradicted. “It’s because Dr. Beulah is the person she is. The Captain was going to invite her and he thought he had to invite us too, or we would get into trouble. He doesn’t trust us since the night of the storm.”
“You old silly,” Bess was not to be gainsaid. “You are just being modest. But go on. I don’t care what the Captain thinks anyway as long as he continues to do things in the grand manner. This cabin,” she looked around it proudly—already she had sent many letters home telling friends and relatives about every little detail of its luxuriousness, “and now these invitations. Why, we are practically the belles of the boat,even if Dr. Beulah,” she said dolefully, “does try to make us remember that we are still children.”
“Oh, Bess, she doesn’t either.” Nan sprang to the defense of their preceptor. “You know she doesn’t. You know she had been just as nice as she could possibly be on this trip. She couldn’t let you wear that dress you wanted to the other night. It wouldn’t have looked right. It was, just as she said, too formal for a young person to wear. It makes you look old. She was really very pleasant about it.”
“Of course she was,” Bess calmed Nan’s ruffled feelings. “I was only fooling. She was just as sweet as she could be. Now, come, let’s go up and see if the others have received cards, too.”
“Oh, we have, we have!” Grace exclaimed excitedly when Nan and Bess finally located the others. “We all have invitations to the Captain’s table for dinner tonight! Dr. Beulah says we are to go, that we may wear our very best dresses, and that we may stay up tonight for the costume ball. It’s to be the very nicest night on board ship, for tomorrow morning, early, we sight land and some of the passengers will be leaving.” Grace was breathless as she finished the end of the sentence.
“But where’s Laura?” Nan looked in vain for the red-headed girl.
“Yes, where is she?” Bess echoed, and then added, “Surely, she received one too. The Captain didn’t leave her out, did he?” Bess looked worried, for she remembered suddenly Laura’s unfortunate encounter with the commander of the boat.
“She received one all right,” Rhoda responded, “and she’s down in her cabin practically crying her eyes out.”
“Why?” Nan and Bess chorused.
“She says she can’t possibly go to that dinner and face him. She knows he will laugh at her. She says she has never been in such an embarrassing position before. She almost wishes she hadn’t come on this trip at all. You go, Nan, and see what you can do with her. The more I say, the harder she cries. I have never seen her in such a state.”
“All right. You people stay here and I’ll see if I can persuade her to come up.” Nan started off, but then changed her mind and came back for the rest of the girls. “Come, let’s all go down,” she suggested. “I think, after all, that that would be better.” So they went.
They found Laura lying across her bunk withher face buried in the pillow. Her shoulders were heaving and she was sobbing.
“Oh, Laura, don’t take it so seriously,” Nan stooped over the sobbing girl and gently pulled her around so that she faced her friends. Her eyes were red and swollen with crying, and her red hair was tousled. She put a wadded, tear-wet handkerchief up to her eyes and wiped them.
“I—I——I guess you would take it seriously too,” she wept, “if you couldn’t go to the Captain’s dinner, if you had to send regrets, saying you were ill.”
“Laura, you haven’t done that, have you?” The girls all gasped.
“N—N—Not yet!” Laura sobbed some more. “But it’s not because I didn’t try to write it. I’ve got to ask Dr. Beulah how to address it,” she sniffled. “I guess I’ll go up and ask her now.” She sat up on the bunk. “Then it will be all over with.”
“Laura,” Nan took her friend firmly by the shoulders. “Don’t you know that you can’t refuse. An invitation from the Captain is practically the same as a command.”
“Well, I guess I can’t go if I have scarlet fever.” Laura was still crying.
“Yes, but if you have scarlet fever, we can’t go either,” Bess was troubled. “I don’t care whatyou tell him, but you can’t tell him that.” A look from Nan silenced Bess.
“See here, Laura,” Nan shook her friend. “You’ve got to come to your senses. You simply have to go. You might just as well make up your mind to do it now, because you are going if we have to dress you and drag you there.” Nan tried to look very serious, but somehow she couldn’t suppress a twinkle that came to her eyes. Already the other girls were smiling. They knew that Laura would have to give in. The situation seemed amusing now.
“You wouldn’t go either,” Laura continued, “if you had said the things I did and he had heard you. The next time I’m going to keep my mouth shut.”
“Of course you will,” Nan sounded full of conviction. “And this time you’ll go, and he will shake your hand, and you’ll smile up at him, and then everything will be all right.”
“Do you really think so?” Laura was already more than half willing to be convinced.
“I haven’t a doubt in the world but what it will,” Nan sounded very positive.
“Then I’ll go,” Laura gave in at last, “if you’ll all promise on your word of honor to stick by me and come to my rescue if anything embarrassing happens.”
“We will, Laura, we will.” Grace was almost jumping up and down with joy. She grabbed Nan’s hand. Nan took Laura’s. Laura took Bess’s. Amelia and Rhoda were drawn into the circle and they all danced around the cabin until they fell breathless to the floor.
“Oh, such fun!” Bess wiped the tears of excitement out of her eyes, as they all proceeded to the business of deciding what to wear to the Captain’s dinner and how to dress for the costume ball.
That night was unforgettable.
Laura and the Captain were friends just as Nan had said they would be. Bess was a triumph in a pretty silk dress. Amelia and Rhoda were almost speechless when they were seated between two tall handsome army officers enroute to London to take part in the coronation, but they forgot themselves and had the time of their lives as the dinner progressed. Grace, in her place next to a foreign diplomat was equally well taken care of.
And Nan, well, as the reader has already guessed, the dinner invitation was in her honor. She was seated in the place of honor next to the Captain and never was a young girl more praised and honored in an evening than she.
It was all very grand and lovely. Bess had her moment of supreme rejoicing when she saw out ofthe corner of her eye that Linda had recovered and had been allowed to come down for dinner. There she was, across the dining room from the Captain’s table, watching with envious eyes her former schoolmates at Lakeview Hall. Bess might be forgiven, if, when paper caps and toy horns were passed out, she blew her horn extra loud—a blast of triumph in Linda’s direction.
The next morning all the cabins on the boat looked as though a cyclone had struck them. The cabins belonging to the girls from Lakeview Hall were no exception.
“Bess, if we go on collecting things at this rate,” Nan protested to her friend, “we’ll have to buy new luggage. Nothing short of a huge trunk will hold everything.”
“I know it,” Bess laughed. “And it’s so hard to throw anything away.” She was holding favors from the costume ball of the night before in her hand. “I simply can’t part with these.”
The two girls were packing. It was very early in the morning, but the boat was due to make its first stop shortly, and they wanted to be on deck when land was sighted. “I can’t part with these either,” Nan held up the limp bags of a half dozen balloons. “A handsome army officer got them for me last night, by climbing up on a chair and pulling them by their strings down from the ceiling.”
“Wasn’t the ballroom lovely, though?” Bess paused in her packing, while she remembered thelights and the palms and the balloons and the other decorations. Then she recalled all the people in fancy costume marching around, dancing and singing.
“The nicest thing of all,” Nan paused in her packing too, “was that glass promenade through which you could see the stars and the sky overhead. The moon was so big and full that no other lights were needed. I shall never forget it—nor that quartet of sailors that sang all those funny old sea ballads and then danced the hornpipe.”
The girls laughed together at the recollection, and then busied themselves in earnest. Nan kept the balloons for a couple of children back in Tillbury whose idol she was. Bess kept the favors, because she couldn’t bear to throw them away.
Again and again, the ship’s foghorn blasted the early morning quietness. “I’m sure we must be almost in sight of land.” Bess hurried faster.
“But the steward promised,” Nan protested, “that he would tell us so that we would be up on deck when land was sighted.”
“You don’t suppose he has forgotten?” Bess questioned.
“I don’t think so,” Nan was a little worried too. “But let’s hurry and get out of here. I wouldn’t miss seeing Maureen off for anything.”
“Oh, is she getting off here?” Bess took onelast look around the cabin to see whether she had all her belongings.
“Sure an’ she’s headed right for Dublin.” Nan tried to give an Irish turn to her sentence.
“You’ll never see her again?” Bess was wide-eyed as it suddenly dawned on her that they were saying good-by, perhaps forever, to their shipboard acquaintances.
“Never say that,” Nan unconsciously interpreted the lesson Hetty’s grandmother had taught so sweetly several days before. “You never know when or where you will meet these people again. Have you kept many addresses?”
“Oh, just dozens,” Bess answered. “If I ever hear from a third of them again, I’ll be happy.”
“I feel the same way,” Nan agreed. “Only Maureen, Hetty and Jeanie have all agreed to have tea with us in London. I knew you would all approve.” She looked up at Bess.
“Approve? Of course,” Bess agreed. “Tea in London with Maureen, Hetty, and Jeanie. Oh, I hope they won’t forget.”
“They won’t,” Nan said confidently, as she got up from her place on the floor by her bags. “There, I’m all packed and ready for the steward to come and put the tags on them. Are you?”
“Just a second—yes, I’m all ready, too, now.” Bess closed hers. “Let’s go up on deck.” So theywent up and out, and saw, for the first time while on the boat, the sunrise. The sky was full of promise for a bright day.
Even as they watched the light breaking brighter and brighter, the ship’s whistle gave three loud blasts. There were three more from shore, and Nan clutched Bess’s arm. “See, there it is—Ireland, the coast of Ireland. See the lights?”
“Sure an’ ’tis me home,” Maureen had come up behind them, “the grandest place in all the world.”
“What county is that?” Nan looked to Maureen for information.
“I’m not so certain,” Maureen replied, “but I’m after thinking that that’s the coast of Donegal, and a lovelier spot you’ll not find for many miles. Beyond lies Londonderry and after that you’ll be seeing Portrush and then at last Belfast! It’s beauty, beauty all the way.
“Your America, it’s fine and grand with all its tall buildings and great cities, but me heart is warm for Ireland. There me mother and father and little brothers and sisters will be waiting. Oh, it’s good to be back.” Maureen wiped tears from her eyes.
“Come, Maureen,” Nan and Bess were close to tears too, for her pang of homesickness had turned their own thoughts back to America.“Come, let’s go down into the dining room. Let’s see if we can find one big table so that we can all have this last breakfast together.” As she finished speaking, Nan tucked Maureen’s arm through hers and started.
It was a merry breakfast and a sad one in the weird light of the dining room, half daylight, half electricity. There were people glad to be home and people sad to be parting from newfound friends. Breakfast was eaten hastily, so that everyone was up on deck waving goodbyes, calling last minute messages, urging care, and trying to joke, all in one breath, as the great steamer settled to anchor and a small tender nestled up to it.
Maureen’s dad, a burly looking Irishman with eyes of the deepest blue and lashes long and heavy, came aboard and took her in his arms. “Sure and ’tis good to have me baby home agin,” he said. “And it’s mighty fine you’re looking in that perky new bonnet.” He pushed her straw hat up and looked into her eyes. “And it’s not changed a bit you are after all that long journey,” he added.
He turned to her friends, “And you’ll not be comin’ to Ireland this trip?” He sounded genuinely disappointed. “But you’ll be comin’ back.” He smiled kindly down upon them all. “And thenyou’ll be stoppin’ here and we’ll be meetin’ you and you’ll be off to Dublin Town with the likes of us.”
Nan liked Maureen’s father. So did her friends. As he and Maureen went across the gang-plank to the tender, they all hung over the rail and waved. “We’ll be seeing you in London,” Nan called.
“Don’t forget,” Bess followed suit, “it’s tea in London in coronation week.”
“Are your passports all stamped for landing? Is your baggage tagged for Glasgow? Are you sure you have everything?” Dr. Beulah smiled down at the excited brood of young girls under her charge. “Have each of you a supply of English pounds and shillings? In short, are you ready to leave this boat and step your foot on foreign soil?”
They were all standing together on the boat’s deck watching the maneuverings as the ship came to rest in its dock just outside Glasgow. There had been no end to the excitement since the girls waved Maureen off at Belfast and the ship steamed across the North Channel to the Firth of Clyde, passing countless fishing boats along the way.
Bess had turned from waving Maureen off and started back to the cabin. Midway, she had a strange presentiment that something was vitally wrong. She walked gingerly down the hallway, looking to the right and left at the narrow corridors between groups of staterooms. When she came to that from which Grace had said theScotch hunchback had come forth several mornings before, she walked very quietly and listened attentively. She neither heard nor saw anything. It was as if the cabin was empty.
That in itself was strange, for the doors of all the cabins along the way were open. In each, baggage awaited porters who were even now busy in front cabins labeling it and carting it to an upper deck. “Maybe the mystery has taken his baggage and walked out on us,” Bess thought as she continued down the corridor intent on making one more check of the stateroom to make certain that nothing was being forgotten.
The thought relieved her, and she was even humming a little tune when she turned into her own stateroom. She stopped short. There, kneeling in front of Nan’s baggage, was the red-headed hunchback!
He turned and looked at her. She would have screamed, but in a flash he was at her side and his hand was clamped over her mouth. He looked at her very intently with strange piercing eyes.
But his voice was almost gentle as he spoke. “’T would be weel, ver-r-ry weel,” he said in a strong Scotch burr, “if ye didna speak. These things ha’ no par-r-t of ye.” With this, he turned and left the room.
Bess sank into a chair, full of conflicting emotionsand was there thinking, when Nan came into the stateroom after her.
“Bess, why Bess,” Nan exclaimed, “what is the matter with you? You looked scared to death.”
Bess whimpered softly, “I am.” This sounded strange coming from Bess, and was strange in the face of her avowal of a few days before that if she ever came upon him alone she would scream so loud that everybody on the boat would come running. It was strange too, because Bess, generally, when upset at all, responded with a torrent of words. Now, she looked wilted as though every ounce of energy had been squeezed out of her.
Nan got her a glass of water and held it as she sipped slowly. Then she smiled wanly and sat silent, for a while, collecting her thoughts.
“Nan, it’s that red-headed hunchback again,” she said, finally. “You’ve got to tell me what you know about him. I came upon him just now in our cabin. He was over there,” her voice grew stronger as she spoke, but sounded sharp and nervous, “by your baggage.”
Nan went over and carefully examined her locked baggage. It hadn’t been tampered with. She felt this instinctively just as soon as she put her hands on it. What had the hunchback intended to do before Bess discovered him?
“What did he say to you?” She turned to Bess.
Bess considered before answering. Were the deformed little man’s words a warning? Had he meant that she shouldn’t repeat what he had said? Had he meant that she shouldn’t tell of his presence at all? Bess was startled as this latter thought came to her, startled and frightened.
“I—I——don’t remember what he said,” Bess began.
“Elizabeth Harley,” Nan looked down at her sternly, “You know very well that you remember what he said. Come, now, tell me. I have to know.”
“Youhave to know!” Bess was angry now. “Nan, I’d like to know, too, what all this is about. This man has been watching you ever since we boarded the steamer in New York. You know it, and I know it, too. Moreover, your father warned you, just before he left, to be careful. I thought at the time that it meant nothing more than the warning my mother gave me, to take care of my luggage and myself. Now I think differently. Somehow, his voice sounded more earnest than that of the rest of our parents. I think he meant more.
“Then there’s something else, some other clue that I can’t quite remember, that makes me certain things are all wrong. Nan, please explain what it’s all about,” Bess pleaded. But beforeNan had a chance to say anything, Bess went on untangling the confused jumble in her own mind.
“There’s this I can’t understand either,” she said, “Grace couldn’t remember whether he had a Scotch accent or not. I think it’s something you couldn’t possibly overlook.”
Nan made a mental note and kept quiet, hoping, that Bess would go on revealing what she had found out.
“Besides,” Bess continued, all unaware that she was doing just what Nan wanted her to do, “Grace was scared to death and kept talking about his piercing eyes that looked right through you and made you do what he wanted you to. The other girls spoke about them too, after he confronted them in the cabin that first morning. His eyes are strange, but when he spoke to me, his voice was as gentle as it could possibly be. Why, he all but patted me on the shoulder.” Bess herself was surprised that the thought didn’t bring any feeling of revolt.
Nan looked at her. “Why, I’d almost say you liked the mysterious old Scotchman,” she said in a surprised tone.
“No, not that,” Bess responded thoughtfully, “but I did feel almost sorry for him. He looked meek and gentle, but withal very frightened as he left this room.
“When he said, referring to the mysteries hereabouts, ‘that these things didna ha’ no part of me,’ he really sounded very kindly.”
“Did he say that?” The question was out before Nan thought. She had been worried for fear the plot that involved her would draw her friends into its net.
With Nan’s question, Bess suddenly realized that she had revealed all she knew without learning a thing. “Why, you double-dyed deceiver,” she said in a surprised tone, “I’ve told you everything I know, and you haven’t said a thing.”
Nan looked confused. “I couldn’t help it, Bess,” she confessed. “I had to know what had happened, and there seemed no other way of finding out. Now, let’s forget it all for the time being.”
“Just tell me one thing,” Bess begged, when she saw that Nan was not going to reveal all that she knew. “Do you know who the red-headed Scotchman is?”
Nan considered the question. “I’m not certain,” she said as though to herself.
“But you think—” Bess spoke quietly, hoping that Nan would finish her deliberations aloud. She was trying Nan’s own tactics now.
“That it is some distant member of my mother’s family,” Nan said slowly. “I saw the names and stateroom numbers, on a bulletin outside, ofthose who are disembarking at Glasgow. The man in cabin 846 is Robert Hugh Blake! ‘Hugh’ is an old family name on my mother’s side and ‘Blake’ is her maiden name.
“You remember the passenger list that was given us at the Captain’s dinner?”
Bess nodded her head. Hers was among the things she was saving for souvenirs.
“His name is on that, too. And it has his home listed as ‘Glasgow.’”
“You don’t know anything more about him. You’ve never heard your mother or anyone speak of him?” Bess followed up Nan’s revelation, hoping to hear more.
Nan ignored the first question. “Momsy never did speak very much of her people in Scotland,” she said in answer to the second. “She was very fond of her great uncle, Hugh Blake, the one whose estate she inherited, but I don’t think she ever saw him. She liked him, because her father did. She loved everything that he loved. Since this great uncle is the only one he ever talked much about, he is the only one I know of.
“Oh, she has mentioned others, vaguely, from time to time, but I don’t remember their names. However, I don’t think I’ve ever heard the name of this particular person.”
“Do you know at all why he should be campingon your doorstep?” Bess questioned further.
But Nan was not revealing any more now. Certain that her friend had recovered from her shock, she ignored the question, took one more look at her baggage, and called a steward. He came promptly, and before Nan and Bess left their stateroom again, all the baggage had been taken upstairs.
“There, I guess that fixes that,” Nan observed as they left the stateroom for the last time. “The steward will have charge of the baggage now until we land.”
“What I can’t understand,” Bess began as though there was only one question left in her mind, “is why Mr. Robert Hugh Blake is so determined to get into your baggage. What have you that’s so valuable?”
“Nothing, lassie, nothing,” Nan answered. “Only a lot of dresses that wouldn’t become him, even if he could get them on.”
Bess giggled at this. Nan took her by the arm. “Please,” she said earnestly and quickly, “don’t say anything to anyone about what has happened today. I’m sure it wouldn’t do any good.”
Bess remembered a similar promise, given at a time of other trouble in Florida, just as those readers who have read “Nan Sherwood at PalmBeach” will remember. “Of course I won’t,” she reassured her friend.
Nan looked her thanks. As the sound of the skirling of bagpipes reached them, they hastened their steps and joined Dr. Beulah Prescott and the rest of their Lakeview Hall friends on deck, and so were in the group when Dr. Prescott asked the question, “Are you ready to leave this boat and step your foot on foreign soil?”
Dr. Beulah’s question went unanswered. The clank of the chain as deckhands dropped the gang-plank from ship to shore attracted the attention of the girls even as she asked it. Now they moved forward slowly, with the rest of the passengers.
“We’re almost there! We’re almost there!” Bess could hardly contain herself. “Now we are getting nearer and nearer and nearer. One more step. Two more steps. We made it!” she exclaimed triumphantly as she stepped her foot on the gangplank and carefully walked its length. Nan was at her heels. Then one by one the others disentangled themselves from the crowded deck and joined those on shore, until they all stood together, “like a group of lost baffled children,” Dr. Prescott said, as she joined them and herded them through a door and into a long shed-like station.
There, everything seemed in confusion. “It’s like the Grand Central Station in New York and the dock where we boarded the ship all rolled into one,” Laura whispered into Nan’s ear.
“Yes, only you don’t see kilted highlandersand bagpipes and English officers in either of those places,” Nan returned, waving and smiling across the top of somebody’s bags to Hetty, who had attracted her attention from the distance.
“Welcome, lassies, to Scotland.” A voice from behind them caused them to turn and there was Jeanie. “Ha’ ye learned your way aboot yet?” she grinned at her American friends.
“We’re no so guid as that.” Nan recalled as best she could her own mother’s Scotch dialect, but let it go again as she called after Jeanie, “Remember, it’s tea in London during coronation week.”
“Aye, and I’ll not be forgettin’,” Jeanie flung over her shoulder before she was lost in the crowd of English, Irish and Scotch people.
“Porter, porter, porter.” “Taxi, taxi.” “Car for Royal Scott Hotel.” The calls were all around them in more variations of the English tongue than they ever knew existed.
“Here, girls, this way,” Dr. Prescott beckoned them to follow her. “Here’s the baggage.”
Bess turned and followed her. Rhoda, Amelia, Grace, and Laura were already at her side. Nan started too, but a small child, tears streaming down its face, halted her.
She stooped down, pulled its grimy fists out of its eyes, pushed its blond hair back, and comforted,“There, child, there. Don’t cry. What has happened?”
“I didna ken.” The child cried harder than ever.
“Are you lost?”
“I didna ken,” the answer was the same, but he grabbed hold of her coat and pulled her along after him.
She glanced back toward her friends, but could catch no one’s attention. She stopped. The small force below her tugged hard at her coat.
“Ye canna stop noo.” He was a persistent little Scotsman.
“No, I canna,” Nan thought to herself and followed, wondering what it was all about. He led her past the baggage, the train, and a small window where men were busy changing American dollars to English pounds. They passed lunch carts, magazine racks, and an information tower. Once Nan stopped, but the little urchin’s eyes filled so quickly with tears that she gave up completely and resolved to find out what was wrong.
Finally, they came to a high iron fence through the gates of which no one could go without a passport or permit. The small boy shied away from this public entrance, followed the fence around to its joining with the wall. There, stuffed between fence and concrete floor, was a bagpipealmost as big as the child himself. He stooped over and tugged at it. It wouldn’t budge.
Nan knelt down and tugged, too. Between the two of them, after much twisting and turning, pushing and pulling, the bagpipe was pulled through. The child swung a strap over his shoulder, looked up at her brightly now, and with a “thank ye, thank ye” ran along ahead of her playing “On the Bonnie Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond.”
She saw him once again before she left the station. It was just before the train pulled out. He stood beneath her compartment window and played the same tune again. This time tourists were throwing pennies and ha’pennies at his feet and he was smiling broadly.
He waved up at Nan and called, “Noo ane for ye.” She laughed and nodded, as he swung into the tune a third time. At the end, Nan tossed him a coin. He fingered it carefully, his Scotch thrift fighting with his feeling of gratitude, but finally the better man won and he threw it back up to her.
The sound of his playing was still in her ears as the train pulled out for Emberon. Though she could not have known it then, the single tune that he knew was to be a kind of theme song playing itself most unexpectedly through her Emberon experience.
The ride from Glasgow, Great Britain’s second largest city, to Emberon, a small village on the coast of one of Scotland’s many fjords took only a few hours.
“It was a short ride,” Nan wrote later to her mother, “from Glasgow to Emberon, but such fun! The trains were queer, like those you see sometimes in the movie with a corridor the whole length of each car. The passengers all sit in little compartments that have two seats facing one another. We all sat together, of course. Laura, Bess, and Dr. Beulah were on one side and Grace, Rhoda, Amelia, and myself on the other. When we ate, as we did soon after we were outside the city, the steward pulled a little table down between us so that we were really quite snug and cozy.
“It was nice, eating Scotch broth (and how good it was!) while a Scotch landscape unwound itself at your side. I say this now, but, really, we were so excited that we hardly knew at all what was happening. Oh, mother, we are seeing so many strange new things all the time that my tongue can hardly keep up with my eyes! When I get home I’m going to talk and talk and talk until you feel as though you had taken the trip yourself, but then you and Papa know all about it, because you were here not long ago.
“You’d be surprised how many people I meet who remember you. The old coachman who met us at the station, the people in the village, oh, everyone here, tells me what a nice mother and father I have, until sometimes I grow very lonesome to see you. I got your cable at Glasgow. I am being very careful, truly, and I will write you all about everything when I get to Edinburgh where I am hoping there will be some letters from you. Until then—My love,Nan.”
“Until then”—the words were simple, but how much was to happen “until then.”
Nan had been told what Emberon was like and had told her friends, but even then it came as a surprise. She had known that it was a gray and dreary looking place high up on a hill some distance from the village, but how dreary she never could have imagined.
It was dusk when they drove up the steep rough road that was the only entrance to the ancient estate. The high old-fashioned carriage that they had climbed up into at the station rocked precariously from side to side as the horses, almost as ancient as the carriage itself, pulled it along.
In the half light, the girls looked at one another and at Dr. Beulah. “It’s almost spooky,”Grace huddled closer to Laura as she spoke, “isn’t it?”
“These old estates,” Dr. Beulah explained, “were almost all fortresses at one time. They are built high up on hills so that they have a natural means of defense against the surrounding country. The original owners were lords who were almost kings in their own right. They fought, now against one another, now against England, holding princes and princesses, kings and queens as pawns. No man knew for sure who was his friend and who his enemy.
“The stakes were high in those days. Each man thought that Scotland was his for the fighting. So, when he got himself some land and built himself his castle, he went out to conquer the surrounding country. It was fight, fight, fight all the time, one Scottish clan against another.
“Then it was Scotland against England and the Scottish world was full of spies. That very song the lad back in the station played over and over again ‘On the Bonnie Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond,’ is the story of a Scotsman who was captured by the English. The lake itself is not very far from here.”
“I believe,” she went on, as she saw that she had the attention of all the girls, “that the hero of that song belonged to one of the Highlandclans and was captured by the English at the battle of Culloden. He was taken to Carlisle where he was tried for treason and condemned to be executed.
“But as a special favor,” she paused and waited while the carriage went around a sharp bend in the road, and then continued, “the night before his execution, he was allowed to receive a visit from his betrothed. In bidding her goodby—and she is supposed to have been a very beautiful Scotch girl—his heart turned homeward to the scenes of other, happy days. He told her that his spirit would be there before she arrived, that he would meet her at their former trysting place.”