CHAPTER VIOFF FOR EUROPE
TheSilver Gate City party left New York the next Saturday on the French steamerLa Bretagne, bound for Havre. They took with them Jane Leonard, a girl of eighteen, who was to have the care of Donald.
They went on board an hour before sailing, and Molly and Pauline immediately ran below deck to put in order the stateroom which they were to share with Weezy. It was a cosy, outside room near the middle of the boat, with two berths, and opposite these a cardinal velvet sofa on which Weezy was to sleep.
“It’s lucky your brush-and-comb case has a loop to hang it up by, Molly,” said Pauline,as they unpacked their toilet articles. “You’d better pin it to your curtain where you can reach it from your berth without raising your head.”
“What for?” asked Molly, a little impatiently. She sometimes thought her friend rather too fond of dictating.
“You’ll find out what for when we get into rough water and things go pitching about the vessel,” responded Pauline in a significant tone. “And please, please don’t put that cologne bottle in the rack. If you do ’twill rattle and dance and thump till it breaks—or you wish it would.”
Molly meekly dropped the perfumery back into her hand-bag, and hung the bag upon a large hook beside the plate-glass mirror.
“You scare me to death, Polly,” she said, with a shiver. “I almost wish I weren’t going to sea.”
“Oh, nonsense, you’ll like the ocean whenyou get used to its tricks,” returned Pauline, with the assurance of an old sailor. “How big your eyes have grown, Miss Scared-to-death! And they are just the color of purple heliotrope.”
“The washed-out kind you mean, I suppose, Polly?”
“No, I don’t, I mean the washed-in kind that doesn’t fade,” said Pauline, giving Molly’s auburn hair a vicious little pull. “You know your eyes are perfectly lovely.”
“Come, girls.” Mrs. Rowe appeared in their doorway from her stateroom across the passage. “Let us go on deck; the air above will be fresher.”
“So it will, mamma. Besides, we want to see the land every minute we can,” sighed Molly.
As they mounted the stairs of the companion-way side by side, she grasped her mother’s hand and held it fast. Now that the longed-for hour of sailing had actuallyarrived, she felt an unexpected reluctance to leaving the solid earth behind her and trusting herself upon the heaving waters. But she said nothing more about this to Pauline. Pauline would not have understood her dread. Neither for that matter would fearless Kirke have understood it.
“I don’t see your father and the others, Molly,” said Mrs. Rowe rather anxiously when she and the girls stood on the crowded deck. “I hope they won’t lose sight of Donald.”
Pauline sprang upon a neighboring settee, where she could look down on the heads of the people.
“Jane Leonard has him over there by the rail,” she cried presently. “Mr. Rowe and papa are close by them.”
“Then if the child is safe, we may as well stay where we are,” returned Mrs. Rowe, disposing herself upon the settee on which Molly and Pauline were now leaning.
Her words were lost in the general bustle and confusion. Soon came the cry, “All aboard!”
Visitors upon the boat rushed ashore, passengers upon the shore rushed aboard. The last to cross the gang-plank being the captain of the vessel.
Then shouts of good-by arose from the wharf, and answering shouts from the steamer; the ropes were thrown off; and with hats and handkerchiefs waving from her deck,La Bretagneslipped from her moorings and glided out into the harbor.
“Isn’t she a beauty, Molly?” cried Pauline, tapping the back of the settee in her enthusiasm.
“Who is a beauty?”
Molly glanced over her shoulder and saw a graceful young lady seated upon a camp-stool and sorrowfully gazing at the shore.
“Oh, are you speaking of that young ladyin mourning, Polly? She’s pretty, but don’t you think she’s too pale?”
“I was speaking of the steamboat, you dear little innocent,” answered Pauline, laughing. “I hadn’t noticed the other lady before. How white she is, isn’t she? All the color she has is in her eyelids.”
“Poor thing, she must have cried herself about blind, Polly.”
At this point Captain Bradstreet came with the deck-steward to arrange the steamer-chairs of the party. Paul and Kirke followed with the shawls and travelling-rugs. Then those who wished to do so extended themselves at their ease and chatted or dozed till the dinner-bell sounded. The sea was as smooth as glass, and the only motion of the vessel was that caused by the throbbing engines.
“I’m not a bit seasick, boys,” boasted Molly, as all went down to dinner; “I expected to be, but I’m not.”
“I hope you’ll not be sick during the passage,” replied Paul, but his face wore a peculiar smile. It was not the first time he had heard people boast in this way before they were fairly out to sea.
On entering the dining-room, Molly saw three tables stretching from one end of it to the other, and on either side of these tables were rows of cardinal velvet chairs. Instead of being supported by four legs, each chair swung upon a pivot in a central standard screwed to the floor.
“Our seats are at the middle table,” said Paul. “There are your father and mother just sitting down.”
Weezy was with them and whispered to Molly as she paused beside her,—
“I tell you how to get into your chair, Molly. You squeeze in sideways and then jiggle it ’round.”
“Yes, yes, Weezy, I know.”
Molly wished her little sister would not make them both so conspicuous when the young lady in mourning sat next Pauline on the opposite side of the table and could hear every word.
Molly’s place was between Kirke and Weezy and over against Captain Bradstreet.
“You’re Number Fifteen, Molly,” said Kirke, reading the black letters on his ivory napkin-ring. “You’re Number Fifteen and I’m Number Fourteen.”
“And I’m Number Sixteen,” added Weezy, after squinting hard at her own ring.
“Yes, they treat us as if we were convicts in a state’s prison,” Molly turned to Kirke with a shrug. “You know they make convicts drop their own names and answer to numbers.”
“I should have made a good convict, if I had worn those overalls and”—
But here Kirke was interrupted by a waiter bringing him a plate of soup.
They were a long time at dinner, which consisted of several courses and ended with harlequin ice-cream,—red, green, and white.
Donald’s nurse had given her charge an early supper in the children’s cabin, and when the party returned to the deck he was already in bed.
“My little brother can’t stay awake after dark ’cause it makes him cross,” Weezy frankly explained to the pale young lady in black with whom she had become friendly during dinner.
“Can’t he? That’s unfortunate,” replied the young lady, smiling.
“Oh, I don’t care. Not so very cross.”
Weezy was eying keenly a bag of black alligator skin dangling from her companion’s belt. It was rather larger than an ordinary reticule, and furnished with a steel clasp and chain. The young lady played absently with the chain while talking.
Oh! I’m ever so sorry“‘Oh! I’m ever so sorry,’ said Weezy”Page87
“‘Oh! I’m ever so sorry,’ said Weezy”Page87
“‘Oh! I’m ever so sorry,’ said Weezy”
Page87
“She pets her pretty bag like a kitten. I wonder what’s in it?” thought Weezy, wishing it would not be rude to inquire. She suspected that it contained something very, very precious.
“Didn’t anybody come with you, lady?” she questioned shyly, being exceedingly desirous to know. “Are you allsolealone?”
“Yes, dear; all sole alone.” The speaker’s voice trembled. “My father had intended to cross the ocean with me; but he was taken suddenly ill last month, and—he has died.”
“Oh, I’m ever so sorry,” replied Weezy, with tears in her eyes, thinking how she should feel if it were her own papa. “Haven’t you any mamma?”
The young lady shook her head, not trusting herself to speak.
Weezy’s hand stole quietly into that of her new friend.
“That’s dreadful—not to have any papaand mamma! Don’t you want to seemymamma? Please come over to the other side of the boat, and I’llinduceyou to her.”
“Thank you, darling; but I’d rather not go.”
“My mamma’s very nice,” pleaded Weezy. “Her name is Mrs. Rowe. My name is Louise Rowe, only ’most all the time it’s Weezy.”
“I’m sure your mother must be very nice, Miss Louise. She has a lovely expression; yet, all the same, I can’t intrude upon her.”
“I wish you could,” said Weezy, wondering what was meant by “intrude.” “If you could, you wouldn’t be lonesome, ’cause we have ten peoples—only Donald is abed.”
“With ten in your party, Miss Louise, I’m sure you have enoughpeopleswithout me,” responded the young lady in crape, unconsciously cheered by the child’s artless sympathy. “Look, your mamma is beckoning you.”
Mrs. Rowe had feared lest her sociable little daughter might annoy the stranger; but after hearing Weezy’s story about her, changed her mind.
“The poor girl looks very sad and lonely,” she said, watching the sweet, sensitive face, which she had observed at dinner. “I’ll go back with you, Weezy, and speak to her.”
And having crossed the deck, she gracefully introduced herself to the desolate young lady in mourning, who in return gave her own name as Miss Evans.
“Cannot I prevail upon you, Miss Evans, to make my little daughter and the rest of us happy, by joining us?” said Mrs. Rowe cordially. “We have a vacant seat to offer you.”
There was no resisting the rare charm of the lady’s manner, and the desolate stranger gladly accepted the invitation, though on being presented to the other members of the party she betrayed great shyness.
“Evidently unaccustomed to society,” thought Mrs. Rowe; “yet so cultivated and refined! I can’t quite understand it.”
After they had become better acquainted, Miss Evans told her that her father and herself had always lived together a retired life, seeing more of books than of people. He was a scientist, and had devoted many years to preparing a learned work on biology.
“As soon as his book was finished, papa meant to take a vacation with me, Mrs. Rowe,” she said tremulously. “We were to visit my uncle in Paris. But the very day after our passage on the steamer had been engaged, papa had a fatal stroke of paralysis. And so,” added Miss Evans, with touching pathos, “and so I came alone.”
“Alone in one sense, my dear Miss Evans; yes, sadly alone,” replied Mrs. Rowe with feeling. “But please consider yourself oneof our large party. Please look upon us all as your friends.”
She pressed the young mourner’s hand warmly as she spoke, and resolved to do all in her power to enliven her voyage.
Molly and Pauline bestowed stealthy glances upon the diffident newcomer shrouded in black in Donald’s chair. In the splendor of the moonlight her pale face assumed an unearthly radiance, and Kirke remarked confidentially to Paul that she was “a regular stunner.”
“Solemn as a tombstone, though,” responded Paul. “And see her hang on to that bag at her belt! Anybody’d think it was a life-preserver.”
“I suppose it was once, when the skin was on the alligator’s back,” laughed Kirke. “Hark, Paul, your father is beginning a story!”
Captain Bradstreet’s stories were alwaysworth hearing, and the evening being warm and still, the little company was beguiled into remaining up until a late hour to listen to some of his thrilling experiences at sea.
“What delightful people these are!” thought the lonely Miss Evans. “It is such a solace to be with them. And I had not expected to speak with a soul on board.”