CHAPTER XIII.ON THE BOAT.
The Naumkeag was standing at the wharf waiting for the passengers who had come on the Western train. There was a great crowd, all hurrying, with bags and umbrellas, towards the boat with as much speed as if their lives depended upon getting there first and securing the best seats. Elithe lingered, anxiously watching the baggage as it was taken from the car. She was hot and dusty and tired and worn with the long journey. Her straw hat, with its faded ribbons, was crushed and bent, her flannel gown was soiled and wrinkled, and her gloves were worn at the fingers tips. “A dowdy little thing,” some might have called her, as she stood waiting the appearance of her trunk, which had caused her a great deal of anxiety. Whenever the train stopped long enough and it was possible for her to do so, she had managed to assure herself that it was there with her, and she always scanned closely any trunks standing in a station they were leaving, fearing lest by some mistake hers might have been taken out with others. If it were in New Bedford it was safe, and she stood in the broiling sunfaint and dizzy, but resolute, until she caught sight of it and saw a train hand put it upon a truck not far from where she was standing.
“This is the kind of trunk to have,” the man said to a companion, staggering under a huge Saratoga four times as large as Elithe’s poor little box tied with a rope, with one of the hinges to the lid wrenched nearly off and a great crack across the end where the card with her name upon it was fastened.
It was rather dilapidated, but it was there, and Elithe followed it to the boat and stayed below until she saw it placed by six immense Saratogas with “Clarice Percy, Washington, D. C.” marked upon them. Elithe had seen many handsome trunks during her journey, but the difference between them and her own had never struck her as it did now when Clarice Percy’s stared her in the face. How very insignificant hers looked beside them, she thought, wondering who Clarice Percy was, and why she had so much baggage. She had heard some one say they stopped once before landing at Oak City, and she was tempted to stay below and watch her property lest it be carried off. But it was too hot and close down there, and, going up to the crowded deck, she tried to find a seat sheltered from the sun, which was beating down upon the water with all the fervor of a sultry afternoon. Her first feeling, as the boat moved off, was one of relief. Her trunk was safe, and so was the little box which held the diamond, and which had troubled her nearly as much as her baggage. A dozen times a day her hand had gone into her pocket to see if it were there, and it did so now, as she took the seat a young man had just vacated and for which a woman made a rush. Elithe was before her, feeling, as she sat down, that she had never been so tired and faint in her life as she was now.Her head was throbbing with pain, and the lump in her throat, which always came when she thought of home, was increasing in size until she felt as if she were choking. The motion of the boat as they got further from the shore and struck the swell made her sick. There was a horrible nausea at her stomach and a blur before her eyes, while the people around her kept the air from her.
“I wonder if I am going to faint or die. I wish some one would bring me some water,” she thought, looking in the faces of those nearest to her to see if she dared speak to them.
They were strange and new, with something different in their expression from the home faces familiar to her. She could not appeal to them, and, removing her hat and leaning her head back against a post, she shut her eyes and sat as still and nearly as white as if she were dead. How long she sat thus she did not know. There was a partial blank in her consciousness. The hum of voices, the splash of the water and the thuds of the engine all mingled together in one great roar, which made her head ache harder. Then she must have slept for a few minutes, and when she woke it was to find a young man standing beside her and scanning her curiously.
“Oh-h!” she said, with a start, and reached for her hat, which had fallen from her lap.
The young man picked it up and handed it to her, saying: “Aren’t you Miss Elithe Hansford, from Samona?”
“Yes, sir,” Elithe answered, timidly.
“I thought so,” he continued, taking a seat beside her. “I’m Paul Ralston. I guess you have never heard of me.”
Elithe did not reply, and he went on: “I know your aunt, Miss Phebe Hansford,—have known her for years. We are great friends. She told me you were coming aboutthis time. We must have been on the same train part of the way. I didn’t see you. Funny, too, as I went through all the sleepers looking for some one I thought might be there.”
“I wasn’t in a sleeper. I came in a common car, and it was so hot!” Elithe said.
“You don’t mean you came all the way from Montana in a common car!” Paul exclaimed, and Elithe replied: “Yes, I do,” in a weary kind of way, which struck Paul with an intense pity for her.
“Great Scott! What made you do that? I wonder you are alive. Why did they let you?” he said, impulsively, his voice indicating that somebody was to blame.
Elithe detected this and rejoined, quickly: “Nobody wanted me to. I did it myself, because——.”
She stopped abruptly, for she could not explain that the money saved was to buy Artie some long stockings, Thede some shoes, and her mother a summer dress. Paul could not read her thoughts, but he was shrewd enough to guess that economy was the reason why the common car was taken instead of the sleeper, and he felt an increased pity for her, as he frequently felt for people who had not all the money they wanted to spend. Thinking to change the conversation, he said: “I was down below, where the trunks are stored, and saw one with your name on it. I knew then you must be on board and hunted till I found you.”
At the mention of her trunk Elithe flushed, feeling in a moment the wide gulf between her trunk and herself and this elegant young man, so different from any one she had ever seen before, unless it were Mr. Pennington, of whom, in some respects, he reminded her. They probably belonged to the same grade of society, with, however, thisdifference: Paul Ralston had never fought blue demons in the mining camp of Deep Gulch, and on his face there were no signs of the fast life which always leaves its impress. That he was greatly her superior, she was sure, and as his eyes wandered over her from her shabby boots to her shabbier hat, she began to be painfully conscious of her personal appearance, and to wonder what he thought of her. Evidently he was expecting her to speak, and she said at last: “You saw my name on my trunk, but how did you know me?”
He would not tell her that there was something about her which made him think that she and the queer trunk belonged to each other, and he said what was partly true, “Your aunt has your photograph, which I have seen, and I recognized you by that, although you were so pale that I was not quite sure until you opened your eyes; then I knew. There was no mistaking your eyes.”
If he meant this for a compliment it was lost on Elithe. The motion of the boat was affecting her seriously again, and she grew so white that Paul began to feel alarmed, and to wonder what he should do in case she fainted. There were some ladies of his acquaintance on the boat, but he did not like to appeal to them, knowing how they would regard the forlorn little girl with nothing about her to mark her as belonging to their set. She was growing whiter every minute and bluer about her lips. Something must be done.
“You are awfully seasick, arn’t you?” he said, fanning her with his hat. “Let me help you below to the ladies’ cabin, where there are cushions and rocking chairs and bowls and things; but no, I’ve heard mother say it was frightfully close and smelly there. I have it. You stay here and keep your eyes shut. Don’t look at the water.The old boat does bob round like a cork. I never knew it to cut such capers before in the summer. It’s the stiff breeze, I guess.”
Elithe scarcely heard him, or knew when he left her. She was trying to keep down the nausea which was threatening to overmaster her and might have done so but for Paul’s happy thought of lemonade. It always helped him. It would help Elithe, and he brought her a glass of it, with chopped ice and a straw, and made her take it and watched as the color came back to her face, and he knew she was better.
“It was so good, and you are so kind. How much was it?” she asked, giving him back the glass and beginning to open her purse, now nearly empty.
“Nothing, nothing,” he answered, energetically, thinking of the difference between this girl, the scantiness of whose means he suspected, and the many young ladies he knew who would unhesitatingly allow him or any other man to pay whatever he chose to pay for them. “By George, there’s a vacant chair, and I mean to capture it before any one seizes it!” he exclaimed, and, darting off, he soon returned with a chair, in which Elithe was more comfortable than she had been on the hard seat on the side of the boat.
“Lean your head back and shut your eyes; that’s right,” he said, and Elithe lay back and closed her eyes.
Sitting down upon the seat she had vacated, he looked at her very closely, deciding that she was not like Clarice and the other girls of his world,—fashionable girls, delicately reared, with no wish ungratified. Her dress was poor and old-fashioned, and her hands, from which she had drawn her gloves, were brown with traces of hard work upon them; nor did she, in her present state, with her eyesshut and the haggard look in her tired face, impress him as very pretty. She was too crumpled and jaded for that, but, as if a breath from the future were wafted backward to the present, hinting vaguely of all that she was to dare and suffer for him, he felt strangely drawn towards her. For a few moments she seemed to sleep, and when the boat changed its course a little and the sun shone upon her face he stood up and shielded her from it, and brushed a fly from her head, and thought how soft and fluffy was her golden brown hair, more golden than brown in the sunlight. A sudden roll of the boat aroused her, and, starting up, she flashed upon him a look and smile so bright that he changed his mind with regard to her beauty.
“By Jove, she has handsome eyes, though, and a mouth which makes a feller’s water when she smiles,” he thought, as he asked if she were better.
They were not far from the Basin, where he told her they were to stop and take on the passengers who came by train from Boston. Then he began to talk of Oak City, which she was sure to like. “Not a great many swell people of the fast sort go there,” he said. “They have a fancy that it is too slow and religious, with two camp meetings there every year, but I don’t think so. I like the camp meetings. The residents are fine people, and its visitors are highly respectable,—some of the very best old families, like,——” He was going to say “the Ralstons,” but checked himself, and added instead, “Judges and Governors and professors. Fast people don’t go there much, such as Jack Percy and his crowd.”
Elithe had never heard of Jack Percy. Neither he nor his crowd interested her as much as the highly respectable set to which Paul evidently belonged.
“Is my aunt a swell woman?” she asked.
Paul could scarcely repress a smile, as he thought of Miss Hansford, but he answered, very gravely: “Not exactly a swell, but has oceans of blue blood in her veins, dating back to the Mayflower, and Miles Standish and Oliver Cromwell, and the Duke of Argyle, and the Lord knows who else,—fairly swims in it.”
“Oh-h!” Elithe gasped, with a feeling as if she were drowning in all this blue blood, some of which must belong to her, as she was a Hansford.
“Tell me about her. I never saw her. Do you think she will like me?” she said, and Paul replied: “Like you? Yes, of course, she will, and you will like her. I do. We are great friends.”
Then he began to speak of his own family, who spent nearly every summer at Oak City.
“We call our place the Ralston House,” he said, “and have owned it for years and years. Built it, in fact, or my great-grandfather did, when there wasn’t so much as a shanty on the island. He was a sea captain, and folks wondered he didn’t live in Nantucket with the rest of the captains, instead of pitching his tent in a lonely desert as it was then. Some old gossips say, and, by Jove, with truth, I believe, that he was a kind of smuggler, running his ship into Still Haven, a safe harbor near Oak City, and then hiding his goods in the Ralston House till he could dispose of them. Not the best kind of an ancestor to have, but that’s a great many years ago, and I don’t in the least mind telling you about the old chap whose ship went down in a storm off the Banks. He went with it, and has been eaten by the fishes by this time. The house he built is a queer old ark, or was before we fixed it over. It is large and rambling, with great, square rooms and the biggest chimney you ever saw. All round the chimney in the cellaris a room which I’d defy any one to get into if he didn’t know how. Under the stairs in the front entry is a closet, where father and mother hang their clothes. In a corner of the closet are three matched boards, which fit together perfectly, but come apart easily when you know how to manage them. Behind this partition is the chimney and some rough steps leading down to that room I told you about, and which tradition says was used for smugglers’ goods. In the partition in the cellar there are two or three more places of matched panels, which can be shoved aside to let in light and air. It’s a grand place to hide in if a fellow had done something or folks thought he had. Sherlock Holmes couldn’t find you! Funny that I should dream so often of being hidden there. Innocent, you know, but hiding, just as I used to play when a boy with Tom Drake, who lives with us, and Jack Percy, who used to be here every summer from Washington. Your aunt never liked him much. He was rather mischievous, but good fun.”
This was the second time Paul had spoken of Jack Percy to Elithe, who had listened with a good deal of interest to his description of the Ralston House, and had experienced a kind of weird, uncanny feeling as she thought of the smugglers’ room where one could hide from justice. Paul never seemed to tire of talking of the house, which he said had been made over with a tower and bow windows and balconies until the old sea captain would never recognize it if he were to come sailing back some day in his ship. The big chimney was left, he told her, and built round it in the roof was a platform inclosed by a high balustrade, with seats where one could sit and look out on the water, and where the smuggler captain’s men used to watch for the first sight of the Vulture, as it came slowly into the harbor at Still Haven, with the Union Jack and the Stars andStripes floating from the masthead if their services were wanted that night, and only the Stars and Stripes if there was nothing to conceal.
“You can see the top of our house with the look-out on the roof among the trees as we get near Oak City. I’ll show it to you,” he said.
They were now moving slowly into the Basin, on the long pier of which a group of people were waiting.
“Hello! There’s Clarice! I didn’t really believe she’d be here,” Paul exclaimed. “Excuse me, please,” and he hurried away, leaving Elithe alone.
Her first impulse was to go below and see that her trunk was not carried on shore by mistake. Then, reflecting that she could watch from the boat and give the alarm in time if necessary, she kept her seat and watched the passengers as they came on board. There were several ladies and among them a tall, queenly looking girl, waving first her red parasol and then kissing her hand to some one on the boat. Everything about her dress was in perfect taste and the latest style, especially the sleeves, which were as large as the fashion would admit. At these Elithe looked admiringly, thinking with a pang of her small ones which Miss Tibbs had declared “big enough for anybody.” They were not half as big as those of the young lady in the gray dress, Eton jacket and pretty shirt waist, looking as fresh and cool as if no ray of the hot sun or particle of dust had fallen upon her since she left Boston in her new toilet. Elithe wondered who she was and if she wasn’t one of the fewswellswho frequented Oak City and if Paul Ralston knew her. If so she might possibly know her in time. He had been so very kind and friendly that he would surely come to see her and bring his acquaintances. A moment later she heard his voice as he came out upon the deck,and with him theswellyoung lady to whom he was talking, with his face lighted up and the smile upon it which she had thought so attractive.
Clarice Percy had been for some time with her mother in New York, where Paul had joined her. Leaving her mother there with friends, she had come with Paul as far as Worcester, where he stopped, as he had business. Wishing to see an old school-mate in Boston, Clarice had gone on to that city with the understanding that Paul was to look after her baggage, which was checked for Oak City by way of New Bedford, and that she was to join him at the Basin the following day. She was in the best of spirits. The arrangements for her wedding were satisfactorily completed. Her half brother Jack, who was sure to get drunk and disgrace her if he came to her bridal, was out of the way in Denver, or somewhere West, and she had nothing to dread from him. She had an elaborate trousseau in her six trunks, and was very glad to see Paul, and very much flattered with the attention she knew she was attracting as she stood talking to her handsome lover. Elithe could see her face distinctly, and thought how beautiful she was and how different from any one she had ever seen in Samona, and how different from herself in her mussy blue flannel and last year’s hat, with its crumpled ribbons and feathers. It was a very proud face, and the girl carried herself erect and haughty, and glanced occasionally at the people around her, with an expression which said they were not of her world and class. Toward the corner where Elithe sat she never glanced, nor did Paul. In his absorption with his betrothed he had evidently forgotten Elithe, who, after watching him and his companion for a while, half hoping he would speak to her again, turned her attention to the shore and the many handsome houses dottingthe cliffs as the boat neared the landing at Oak City. High above the rest, on a slight elevation, she could see the top of what she was sure was the Ralston House, with its big chimney, its look-out on the roof and the tower which had been added when the place was modernized.
“That’s the Ralston House,” she thought, wondering if she would ever go there, and thinking with a kind of awe of the smuggler’s room in the cellar, which Sherlock Holmes could not find and the hidden entrance to it in the closet under the stairs.