AN ILL WIND
While the storm held, Peter Rolls went several times each dreadful day
to the room of the mirrors and dosed his dryads with Balm of Gilead.
The medicine--or something else--sustained them marvellously. And it
occurred to Peter that they would make a magnificent advertisement, if
there were any way of using them--the kind of advertisement his father
loved.
It was well that Peter senior was not on board, or he would certainly
propose a new feature for the balm department: scene, richly furnished
salon on a yacht; five fair effects in ball dresses sipping Balm of
Gilead; the whole arrangement on a rocking platform, with mechanism
hidden by realistically painted waves. But the dryads were previously
engaged by the prostrate Nadine--all except one.
When they were sufficiently restored to take an interest, Peter
smuggled grapefruit, chocolates, and novels into the nursery. The
novels his sister had brought with her to kill time during the voyage;
but as it happened, she was killing it with Lord Raygan instead and
never missed the books.
Nadine had been obliged to take first-class tickets for her models;
otherwise the rules of the ship would not have allowed them past the
barrier, even in the pursuit of business. But they sardined in one
cabin, near the bow, on the deepest down deck allotted to
first-classhood, and their private lives were scarcely more enjoyable
than the professional. They were, to be sure, theoretically able to
take exercise at certain hours, weather permitting; but weather did
not permit, and four of the dryads, when free, sought distraction in
lying down rather than walking. It was only the fifth who would not
take the weather's "no" for an answer.
She had a mackintosh, and with her head looking very small and neat,
wound in a brown veil the colour of her hair, she joined the brigade
of the strong men and women who defied the winds by night. From eight
to ten she staggered and slid up and down the wet length of the
least-frequented deck, or flopped and gasped joyously for a few
minutes in an unclaimed chair.
Being "not a bit like the rest" of her sister dryads, she refrained
from mentioning this habit to Mr. Rolls, whose prowling place was on
higher decks. Not that she was still what he would have called
"standoffish" with him. That would have been silly and Victorian after
the grapefruit and chocolates and novels, to say nothing of balm by
the bottleful. The last dress she had worn on the first day of their
acquaintance, the "Yielding Heart," had to a certain extent prophesied
her attitude with the one man who knocked at the dryad door. Miss
Child not only thought Mr. Rolls "might be rather nice," but was
almost sure he was. She was nice to him, too, in dryad land, when he
paid his visits to the sisterhood, but she did not "belong on his
deck."
By and by, however, he discovered her in the mackintosh and veil. It
was one night when a young playwright who had seized on him as prey
wished to find a quiet place to be eloquent about the plot.
"There's a deck two below," said the aspirant for fame, "where nobody
prowls except a young female panther tied up in a veil."
Five minutes later Peter Rolls took off his cap to the female panther.
The playwright noticed this, but was too much interested in himself
and the hope of securing a capitalist to care. In sketching out his
comedy he was blind to any other possibilities of drama, and so did
not see Peter's eagerness to get rid of him. He was even pleased when,
after a few compliments, Rolls junior said: "Look here, you'd better
leave me to think over what you've told me. I fix things in my memory
that way. And maybe when I've got it straight in my head
I'll--er--mention it to a man I know."
As the playwright was shivering, he obeyed with alacrity; and in the
warmth of the smoking-room revelled in the picture of his tame
capitalist pacing a cold deck, lost to the sea's welter in thoughts of
that marvellous last act.
But it was a first act which was engaging Peter Rolls's attention, and
he, though the only male character in it (by choice), had to learn his
part as he went on.
The play began by his joining the leading lady. (This has been done
before, but seldom with such a lurch and on such sloping boards.)
It would have been a mockery to say "good evening" on a night so vile,
and Mr. Rolls began by asking Miss Child if he might walk with her.
"Or tango," said she. "This deck is teaching me some wonderful new
steps."
"I wish you'd teach them to me," said Peter.
"I can't, but the ship can."
"Did you ever dance the tango?" he wanted to know.
"Yes. In another state of existence."
This silenced him for an instant. Then he skipped at least two
speeches ahead, whither his thoughts had flown. "Say, Miss Child, I
wish you'd tell me something about yourself."
"There isn't anything interesting to tell, thank you, Mr. Rolls."
"If that's your only reason, I think you might let me judge. Honestly,
I don't want to intrude or be curious. But you're so different from
the others."
"I know I'm not pretty. That's why I have to be so painfully sweet. I
got the engagement only by a few extra inches. Luckily it isn't the
face matters so much," she chattered on. "I thought it was. But it's
legs; their being long; Mme. Nadine engages on that and your figure
being right for the dresses of the year. So many pretty girls come in
short or odd lengths, you find, when they have to be measured by the
yard, at bargain price."
Peter laughed.
"You're not meant to laugh there," she said. "It's a solemn fact."
"But _you_ always laugh."
"That's because I'm what you'd call 'up against' life. It gives me
such a funny point of view."
"That's part of what I want to talk about. Please don't keep trying to
turn the subject. Unless you think I have no business seizing the
first chance when I find you alone, to---"
"It isn't that," said Win. "I think you're very kind to take the
slightest interest. But really there _is_ nothing to tell. Just the
usual sort of thing."
"It doesn't seem exactly usual to me for a girl about nineteen years
old--"
"Twenty!"
"--to be leaving home alone and starting for a new country."
"Not alone. Mme. Nadine might be furious if she were spoken of as my
chaperon; but she is, all the same. Not that an emigrant needs a
chaperon."
"You an emigrant!"
"Well, what else am I?"
"I've been thinking of you as a dryad."
"A poor, drenched dryad, thousands of miles from her native woods. Do
you know, my veil is _soaked_?"
"I'll get you a sou'wester hat to-morrow."
"Does the barber keep them as well as Balm of Gilead?"
"No, but my sister does. She keeps one. And she doesn't want it. I
shall annex it."
"Oh! I couldn't take it!"
"If you don't, I'll throw it overboard."
"Were the chocolates hers?"
"Yes."
"And the books?"
"Some were mine. But not the ones Miss Devereux says are pretty. Look
here, Miss Child, another thing she says is that you are not with
Nadine as a permanence. What does that mean, if you don't much mind my
asking?"
"Not what you think. I'm not going to be discharged. I was engaged
only for the voyage, to take the place of a prettier girl with still
longer legs who fell through at the last moment--literally. She
stepped into one of those gas-hole places in the street. And I stepped
into her shoes--lucky shoes!--sort of seven-league ones, bringing me
across the sea, all the way to New York free, for nothing. No! I hope
not for nothing. I hope it is to make my fortune."
"I hope so, too," said Peter gravely. "Got any friends there besides
me?"
"Thanks for putting it so, Mr. Balm of Gilead. Why, I've heard that
everybody in America is ready to be a friend to lonely strangers!"
"I guess your informant was almost too much of an optimist. Couldn't
you be serious for just a minute? You know, I feel quite well
acquainted with you--and the others, of course. But they _are_
different. And they _are_ 'permanences' with Nadine. That's the kind
of thing they're fit for. I don't worry about them, and I shan't worry
about you, either, if you tell me you have friends or know what you
are going to do when you land."
"I can't tell you that," Win answered in a changed tone, as if
suddenly she were weary of trying to "frivol." "But I have hopes; and
I have two letters of introduction and a respectable, recommended
boarding-house and a little money left, so I really believe I shall be
all right, thank you. My people thought my wanting to come showed 'my
wild spirit,' so I'm anxious to prove as soon as I can--not to them
any more, but to myself--that I can live my own life in a new world
without coming to grief."
"Why not prove to them any more?"
"Oh--because no one is going to care much. As I said, my native woods
are far behind, and most of the trees are cut down. Not a dryad of the
true dryad family left, and this one is practically forgotten already.
Her niche was all grown over with new bark long ago, so it was more
than time she ceased to haunt the place."
"I'm afraid you've had a great sorrow," said Peter.
"It was hardly big enough for that word--this thing that's sent me
seeking my fortune--though it began with a sorrow long ago."
"Some one you loved died?" Peter had a simple, direct way of asking
questions that led you on.
"My mother. When I was fourteen--not old enough to be of much use to
my father and the baby brother. So my father had to get some one to be
a kind of housekeeper and superior nurse. He's a clergyman. I don't
look like a clergyman's daughter, perhaps--and he thought I didn't
behave like one, especially after the housekeeper came. She's the kind
who calls herself 'a lady housekeeper.' I don't know if you have them
in America. She and I had rows--and that upset father. He didn't want
to get rid of her because she managed things splendidly--him and the
baby and the vicarage--and influential old ladies said she 'filled a
difficult position satisfactorily.' So it was simpler to get rid of
me. I went to boarding-school."
"Did you like that?"
"I loved it. After the first year I didn't go home even for the
holidays. Often I visited--girls were nice to me. But I didn't make
the most of my time--I'm furious with myself for that now. I learned
nothing--nothing, really, except the things I wanted to learn. And
those are always the ones that are least useful."
"I found that, too," said Peter, "at Yale."
"It didn't matter for you. You have the Balm of Gilead."
"That's my father's."
"What's his is yours, I suppose."
"He says so. But--we all have our own trouble. Mine's not living up to
my principles, or even knowing exactly what they are--being all in a
turmoil. But it's yours I want to talk about."
"I've forbidden myself the word 'trouble.' It builds a wall. And I've
just broken through my wall. I could have done it sooner and better if
I'd learned more difficult things, that's all. When I wanted to do
something for myself--why, I couldn't do a _thing_ that was any good
in a busy world. I'd had no training except for my voice."
"There! I thought you sounded as if you had a voice!"
"_I_ thought so, too. But that was another of my mistakes."
"I bet it wasn't."
"You'd lose your money, Mr. Rolls. I spent most of mine before I found
out. You see, my mother left a little. It wasn't to come to me till I
was twenty-one, but all sorts of things happened. My father kept me at
school till a year and a half ago because he didn't know what to do
with me. Then my little brother died. I ought to have cared more, but
I hardly knew him. His coming killed my mother; and he loved _that
woman_. I don't see how he could!
"When he was gone, people might have gossiped about her and father
perhaps. I believe she suggested it to him and said she must go away,
to make him think of marrying her; but all he did was to send for me.
I stood it for six months. It was horrid for all three. I dare say I
was to blame. I had a scene with father, and told him I'd made up my
mind to go to London for singing lessons so I could support myself: I
couldn't live at home. That forced the situation! Before any
one--except the 'lady housekeeper'--knew quite what was happening,
father had asked her to be his wife--or she'd asked him. I went before
the wedding. I'd worshipped my mother! And--but that's all the story."
"I call it only the preface. What about London?"
"Oh, father gave me my money ahead of time, for the lessons. He didn't
approve, on principle, but he would have had no peace with me at home,
and he likes peace better than anything. I had to promise I wouldn't
go into musical comedy. That makes me laugh now! But I thought then
I'd only to ask and to have. I took lessons of a man who'd been a
celebrated tenor. He must have known that my voice was nothing,
really, but he buoyed me up. I suppose they're all like that. It's
business.
"When the money was two thirds spent I dared not go on, and I asked
him to find me something to do. He'd often said he would when the
right time came. Apparently it hadn't come. He made the excuse that I
ought to have stayed with him longer. It would hurt his reputation to
launch a pupil too soon. So I had to try to launch myself. And it
didn't work. One manager of opera companies on whom I forced myself
tested my voice and said it wasn't strong enough--only a twilight
voice for a drawing-room, he called it. I was broken up--just at
first."
"Poor child!" Peter muttered, but the girl's quick ears caught the
words over the roar of that "ill wind" which had brought them
together.
"Child is my surname, and it's not polite to call me by it." She
brought him to his bearings by suddenly "frivolling" again. "They call
militant suffragettes and housemaids sent to prison for stealing their
kind mistresses' jewels by their surnames. I'm not a militant; and
I've not been a housemaid yet, though I may be, if New York isn't
kinder to me than London."
"I hope it will be--kind in just the right way!"
"My friend who gave me the two letters of introduction says it will:
that Americans _love_ English girls, if they have the courage to come
over. She says there are heaps more chances as well as heaps more room
for us in that country than there are at home."
"That's true, but---"
"Please don't discourage me!"
"Not on your life! Only---"
"'Only' is as bad a word as 'but.' I've got a letter of introduction
to the editor of a New York paper, _To-day and To-morrow_, and one to
the organist of a Higher Thought church. Maud Ellis says they're both
splendid men and interested in women's progress. Something good ought
to come from one or the other. Getting this chance of my passage free
seems a happy omen, as if I were _meant_ to take this great adventure.
I'm not one bit afraid. I feel boiling with courage--except when the
ship pitches and rolls at the same time."
"That's right. You're bound to make good, of course. I wouldn't
discourage you for the world. All I meant to say was that I'd like you
to think of me as a friend. I don't want to lose sight of you when we
land. I might be able to help in some way or other or--my family
might. Before we get off the ship I'll introduce you and my sister to
each other."
"Oh, thank you! You're very kind," the banished dryad said for the
third or fourth time. "But I should be sorry to trouble Miss Rolls.
She wouldn't---"
"Yes, she would," insisted Peter. "She'll be awfully interested when I
tell her about you, Miss Child, and very pleased to know you."
Win was silenced, though not convinced. It is not safe for a brother
to judge his sister by himself.