THE MERRY ANNE
By Samuel Merwin
Illustrated by Thomas Fogarty
The Macmillan Company
1904
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THE MERRY ANNE
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Dear H. K. TV.:
This tale dedicates itself to you as a matter of right. For we grew up
together on the bank of Lake Michigan; and you have not forgotten, over
there in Paris, the real house on stilts, nor the miles we have tramped
along the beach, nor, I am sure, the grim old life-saver on the near
Ludington, and his sturdy scorn for our student life-savers at Evanston.
And the endless night on Black Lake, with Klondike Andrews at the tiller
and never a breath of wind, we shall not forget that. Once we differed:
I failed to tempt you into a paddle in the Oki, one fresh spring day
three years ago; but then, your instinct of self-preservation always
worked better than mine, as the adventure in the Swampscott dory will
recall to you.
But, after all, these doings do not make up the reason why the story
is partly yours; nor do the changes in the text that sprang from your
friendly comment. I will tell you the real reason.
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Early, very early, one summer morning, you and I stood on the
wheel-house of the P'ere Marquette Steamer No. 4--or was it the No. 3--a
few hours from Milwaukee. The Lake was still, the thick mist was faintly
illuminated by the hidden sun. Of a sudden, while the steamer was
throbbing through the silence, a motionless schooner, painted blue, with
a man in a red shirt at the wheel, loomed through the mist, stood out
for one vivid moment, then faded away.
That schooner was the Merry Anne; and the man at the wheel was Dick
Smiley. What if he should some day chance upon this tale and declare it
untrue? know better, for we saw it there.
S. M.
CHAPTER I--DICK AND HIS MERRY ANNE
THE _Merry Anne_ was the one lumber schooner on Lake Michigan
that always appeared freshly painted; it was Dick Smiley's wildest
extravagance to keep her so. Sky blue she was (Annie's favorite color),
with a broad white line below the rail; and to see her running down on
the north wind, her sails white in the sun, her bow laying the waves
aside in gentle rolls to port and starboard, her captain balancing
easily at the wheel, in red shirt, red and blue neckerchief, and slouch
hat, was to feel stirring in one the old spirit of the Lakes.
It was a lowering day off Manistee. Out on the horizon, now and then
dipping below it, a tug was struggling to hold two barges up into the
wind. Within the harbor, at the wharf of the lumber company, lay the
_Merry Anne_. Two of her crew were below, sleeping off an overdose
of Manistee whiskey. The third, a boy of seventeen, got up in slavish
imitation of his captain,--red shirt, slouch hat, and all,--was at work
lashing down the deck load. Roche, the mate, stood on the wharf, the
centre of a little group of stevedores and rivermen. “Hi there, Pink,”
he shouted at the red shirt, “what you doin' there?”
The boy threw a sweeping glance lake-ward before replying, “Makin'
fast.”
“That 'll do for you. There won't be no start _this_ afternoon.”
“But Cap' Smiley said--”
“None o' your lip, or I 'll Cap' Smiley you.
“Pretty ugly, out there, all right enough,” observed a riverman.
“Cornin' up worse, too. Give you a stiff time with all that stuff
aboard.”
“I ain't so sure about that,” said Roche, with a swagger. “If _I_ was
cap'n o' this schooner, she'd start on the minute, but Smiley's one o'
your fair-weather sort.”
“Sure he is. He done a heap o' talkin' about that time he brung the
_William Jones_ into Black Lake before the wind, the day the _John T.
Eversley_ was lost; but Billy Underdown was sailin' with him then, and
he told me hisself that he had the wheel all the way--Smiley never done
a thing but hang on to the companionway and holler at him to look out
for the north set o' the surf outside the piers; and there's my little
Andy that ain't nine year old till the sixth o' September, could ha'
told him the surf sets south off Black Lake, with a northwest wind. If
it hadn't been for Billy, the Lord only knows where Dick Smiley'd be
to-day.”
A tug hand had joined the group, and now he addressed himself to Roche.
“Cap'n Peters wants to know if you're a-goin' to try to make it, Mr.
Roche.”
“Not by a dam' sight.”
“Well--I guess he won't be sorry to wait till mornin'. What time do you
think you 'll want us?”
“Six o'clock sharp.”
“Them's Cap'n Smiley's orders, is they?”
“Them's _my_ orders, and they're good enough for you.”
“Oh, that's all right, of course, only Cap'n Peters, he said if 'twas
anybody else, he'd just tie up and wait, but there ain't never any
tellin', he says, what Dick Smiley 'll take it into his head to do.”
“You tell your cap'n that Mr. Roche said to come at six in the mornin'.”
“All right. I 'll tell him. Say--Cap'n Smiley ain't anywhere around, is
he?”
“_No, Cap'n Smiley ain t anywheres around!_” mimicked Roche, angrily.
“If you want to know whereabouts Cap'n Smiley is, he's uptown
skylarkin', that's where _he_ is.”
The river hands laughed at this.
“I reckon he's somethin' of a hand for the ladies, Dick Smiley is, with
them blue eyes o' his'n,” said one. “I ain't a-tellin', you understand,
but there's boys in town here that could let you know a thing or two if
they was minded.”
As a matter of fact, Dick was at that moment in an up-town jewellery
shop, fingering a necklace of coral.
“I want a longer one,” he was saying, “with something pretty hanging on
the end of it--there, that's the boy--the one with big rough beads and
the red rose carved on the end.”
“Must be somebody's birthday, Captain,” observed the jeweller, with a
wink.
And Dick, who could never resist a wink, replied: “That's what. Day
after to-morrow, too, and I haven't any too much time to make it in.”
“Here's a nice piece--if she likes the real red.”
Dick took it in his hands and nodded over it. “I think that would please
her. She likes bright colors.” He drew a wallet from a hip pocket and
disclosed a thick bundle of bills.
“I shouldn't think you'd like to carry so much money on you, Captain, in
your line of work.”
“It isn't so much. They are most all ones.” But the jeweller, seeing a
double X on the top, only smiled and remarked that it was a dark day.
“Yes, too dark. I don't like it. Makes me think of the cyclone three
years ago April, when the _Kate Howard_ went down off Lakeville. I spent
three hours roosting on the topmast that day. It was black then, like
this. If it keeps up, you 'll have to turn on your lights in here.”
“Guess I will. It wouldn't hurt now. Well, good-by, Captain. Drop in
again next time you run in here.”
“All right. But there's no telling when that will be. I have to go where
Captain Stenzenberger sends me, you know.”
“You don't own your schooner yet, then?”
“No; only a quarter of it. Well, good-by.” And he left the shop with the
corals, securely wrapped, stowed in an inside pocket.
The first big drops of rain were falling when he reached the schooner.
The deck was deserted, but he found Roche and his wharf acquaintances
settled comfortably in the cabin. Their talk stopped abruptly at the
sight of his boots coming down the companionway.
“Why isn't the load lashed down, Pete?” he asked, addressing Roche.
“Why--oh, it was lookin' so bad, I thought we'd better wait till you
come.”
“Where's the tug? Don't Peters know we want him?”
The loungers were silent. All looked at Roche.
“Why, yes--sure. He ain't showed up yet, though.”
“You ain't goin' to try to make it, are you, Cap'n?” asked a riverman.
“Going to try? We _are_ going to make it, if that's what you mean.”
One of the men rose. “I'm going up the wharf, Cap'n. If you like, I 'll
speak to Peters.”
“All right. I wish you would. And say, Pete, you take Pink and see that
everything is down solid. I don't care to distribute those two-by-fours
all down the east coast.”
Roche went out, and the others got up one by one and took shelter in the
lee of a lumber pile on the wharf. A little later, when he saw the tug
steaming up the river, Roche shook the rain from his eyes and looked
long at the black cloud billows that were rolling up from the northwest,
then he slipped below and took a strong pull at his flask. The tug came
alongside, and then Roche sought Dick.
“Cap'n, what's the use?” he said in an agitated voice. “Don't you
see we're runnin' our nose right into it? Why, if we was a
three-hundred-footer, we'd have our hands full out there. I don't like
to say nothin', but--”
Smiley, his hat jammed on the back of his head, his shirt, now dripping
wet, clinging to his trunk and outlining bunches of muscle on his
shoulders and back, his light hair stringing down over his forehead,
merely looked at him curiously.
“You see how it is, Cap'n, I--”
“What are you talking about? All right, Pink, make fast there! Who's
running this schooner, you or me?”
“Oh, I don't mean nothin', Cap'n; but seein' there ain't no particular
hurry--”
“No hurry! Why, man, I've got to lay alongside the Lakeville pier by
Wednesday night, or break something. What's the matter with you, anyhow?
Lost your nerve?”
“No, I ain't lost my nerve. And you ain't got no call to talk that way
to me, Dick Smiley.”
“Here, here, Pete, none of that. We're going to pull out in just about
two minutes. If you aren't good for it, I 'll wait long enough to tumble
your slops ashore. Put your mind on it now--are you coming or not?”
“Oh, I'm cornin', Cap'n, of course, but--”
“Shut up, then.”
The idlers on the wharf had not heard what was said, but they saw Roche
change color and duck below for another pull at his flask.
The tug swung out into the stream; the _Merry Anne_ fell slowly away
from the wharf.
“Call up those loafers, Pete,” shouted Smiley, as he rested his hands
on the wheel. The two sailors, roused by a shake and an oath, scrambled
drowsily upon the deck with red eyes and unsettled nerves, and were
set to work raising the jib and double-reefing foresail and mainsail.
Captain Peters sounded three blasts for the first bridge, and headed
down-stream.
Passing on through the narrow draws of the bridges and between the
buildings that lined the river, the _Merry Anne_ drew near to the long
piers that formed the entrance to the channel. And Roche, standing with
flushed face by the foremast, looked out over the piers at the angry
lake, now a lead-gray color, here streaked with foam, there half
obscured by the driving squalls. His eyes followed the track of one
squall after another as they tore their way at right angles to the surf.
Already the _Anne_ had begun to stagger. At the end of the towing hawser
the tug was nosing into the half-spent rollers that got in between the
piers, and was tossing the spray up into the wind.
One of the life-saving crew, in shining oilskins, was walking the pier;
he paused and looked at them--even called out some words that the wind
took from his lips and mockingly swept away. Roche looked at him with
dull eyes; saw his lips moving behind his hollowed hands; looked out
again at the muddy streaks and the whirling mist, out beyond at the two
barges laboring on the horizon, gazed at the white and yellow surf. Then
his eye lighted a little, and he made his way back to the wheel.
“Don't be a fool, Dick,” he shouted. “Just look a' that and tell me
you can make it. I know better. I'm an old friend, Dick, and I like you
better'n anybody, but you mustn't be a dam' fool. Ain't no use bein' a
dam' fool.”
“Who are you talking to?”
“Lemme blow the horn, Dick.'Taint too late to stop 'em. We can get back
all right--start in the mornin'. Don't you see, Dick--”
Smiley's eyes were fixed keenly on him for a moment; then they swept
to the windward pier. He snatched the horn from Roche's hand and blew a
blast.
The sailors up forward heard it, and shouted and waved their arms. A tug
hand, seeing the commotion, though he heard nothing, finally was made
to understand, and Captain Peters slowed his engines. Smiley, meanwhile,
was steering up close to the windward pier.
“Tumble off there, Pete,” he ordered. “Quick, now.”
“What you going to do to me? Ain't goin' to put me off there, are you?”
“Get a move on, or I 'll throw you off. There's no room for you here.”
“Hold on there, Dick; I ain't got no clothes or nothin'. And you owe me
my pay--”
“You 'll have to go to Cap'n Stenzenberger about that. Here, Pink, heave
him off. Quick, now!”
“Don't you lay your hand on me, Pink Harper--”
But the words were lost. The young sailor in the red shirt fairly
pitched him over the rail. The life saver, running alongside, gave him
a hand. Captain Peters was leaning out impatiently from his wheel-house
door, and now at the signal he dove back and hurriedly rang for full
steam ahead; it was no place to run chances. And as the schooner passed
out into the open lake, leaving the lighthouse behind her, and soon
afterward casting off the tug, there was no time to look back at the
raging figure on the pier. Though once, to be sure, Dick had turned with
a laugh and shouted out a few lines of a wild parody on the song of the
day, “Baby Mine.”
The song proved so amusing that, when they were free of the tug and
were careening gayly off to the southwest with all fast on board and
a boiling sea around them, he took it up again. And braced at a sharp
angle with the deck, one eye on the sails, another cast to windward, his
brown hands knotted around the spokes of the wheel, he sang away at the
top of his lungs:--
“He is coming down the Rhine.
With a bellyful of wine,”
Young Harper worked his way aft along the upper rail. His eye fell on
the figure of his captain, and he laughed and nodded.
“Lively goin', Cap'n.”
Lively it certainly was.
“Guess there ain't no doubt about _our_ makin' it!”
“Doubt your uncle!” roared the Captain. And he winked at his young
admirer.
“Guess Mr. Roche didn't like the looks of it.”
“Guess not.”
Harper crept forward again. And Smiley, with a laugh in his eye, squared
his chest to the storm, and thought of the necklace stowed away in the
cabin; and then he thought of her who was to be its owner day after
to-morrow, and “I wonder if we will make it,” thought he; “I wonder!”
And make it they did. Sliding gayly up into a humming southwest wind,
with every rag up and the sheets hauled home, with the bluest of skies
above them and the bluest of water beneath (for the Lakes play at April
weather all around the calendar), Wednesday afternoon found them turning
Grosse Pointe.
The bright new paint was prematurely old now, the small boat was missing
from the stern davits, the cabin windows had been crushed in, and
one sailor carried his arm in a sling, but they had made it. Harper,
hollow-eyed, but merry, had the wheel; Smiley was below, snatching his
first nap in forty-eight hours, with the red corals under his head.
“Ole,” called Harper, “wake up the Cap'n, will you? I can't leave the
wheel. He said we was to call him off Grosse Pointe.”
So Ole called him, and was soon followed back on deck by another
hollow-eyed figure.
“Guess it's just as well Mr. Roche didn't come along,” observed the
boy, as he relinquished the wheel. “_He'd_'a' had all he wanted, and no
mistake.”
“He had enough to start with. There wasn't any room for drunks this
trip.”
As he spoke, Smiley was running his eye over the familiar yellow bluffs,
glancing at the lighthouse tower, at the stack of the water works
farther down the coast, at the green billows of foliage with here and
there a spire rising above them, and, last and longest, at the two piers
that reached far out into the Lake,--one black with coal sheds, the
other and nearer, yellow with new lumber.
Between these piers, built in the curve of the beach and nestling under
the bluff, was a curious patchwork of a house. Built of odds and ends of
lumber, even, in the rear, of driftwood, perched up on piles so that the
higher waves might run up under the kitchen floor, small wonder that the
youngsters of the shore had dubbed it “the house on stilts.”
Old Captain Fargo (and who was not a “Captain” in those days!) had built
it with his own hands, just as he had built every one of the sailboats
and rowboats that strewed the beach, and had woven every one of the nets
that were wound on reels up there under the bluff.
A surprisingly spacious old house it was, too, with a room for Annie
upstairs on the Lake side, looking out on a porch that was just large
enough to hold her pots and boxes of geraniums and nasturtiums and
forget-me-nots.
Smiley could not see the house yet; it was hidden by the lumber piles on
the pier. But his eyes knew where to look, and they lingered there,
all the while that his sailor's sixth sense was watching the set of the
sails and the scudding ripples that marked the wind puffs. He wore a
clean red shirt to-day and a neckerchief that lay in even folds around
his neck. Redolent of soap he was, his face and hands scrubbed until
they shone. And still his eyes tried to look through fifty feet of
lumber to the little flowering porch, until a sail came in sight around
the end of the pier. Then he straightened up, and shifted his grip on
the spokes.
The small boat was also blue with a white stripe. At the stern sat a
single figure. But though they were still too far apart to distinguish
features, Dick knew that the figure was that of a girl--a girl of a
fine, healthy carriage, her face tanned an even brown, and a laugh in
her black eyes. He knew, even before he brought his glass to bear
on her, that she was dressed in a blue sailor suit, with a rolling
blue-and-white collar cut V-shape and giving a glimpse of her round
brown neck. He knew that her black hair was gathered simply with a
ribbon and left to hang about her shoulders, that her arms were bared to
the elbow. He could see that she was carrying a few yards more sail than
was safe for a catboat in that breeze, and there was a laugh in his own
eyes as he shook his head over her recklessness. He knew that it would
do no good to speak to her about it; and her father and mother had never
been able to look upon her with any but fond, foolish eyes.
Steadily the _Merry Anne_ drew in toward the pier; rapidly the
_Captain_--so Annie called her boat--came bobbing and skimming out to
meet her. A few moments more and Dick could wave his hat and shout,
“Ahoy, there!” And he heard in reply, as he had known that he should, a
merry “Ahoy, there! I 'll beat you in!” And then they raced for it, Annie
gaining, as she generally could, while the schooner was laboriously
coming about, and working in slowly under reduced sail. She ran in close
to the pier, came up into the wind, and waited there while the crew were
making the schooner fast.
At length the stevedores started unloading the lumber and Dick was free.
He leaned on the rail and looked down at Annie who had by this time
come alongside; and he saw that she had a bunch of blue-and-white
forget-me-nots in her hair.
“Well,” she said, looking up, and driving all power of consecutive
thought out of Dick's head, as she always did when she rested her black
eyes full on his, “well, I beat you.”
“Take me aboard, Annie. I've got something for you.”
“All right, come down. You can take the sheet.”
Dick pushed off from the schooner's side and the _Captain_ filled away
toward the shore.
“Hold on, Annie, come about. I don't have to go in yet.”
“Where do you want to go?”
“I don't care--run out a little way.”
Annie brought her about and Dick watched her with admiring eyes. “Well,
now,” he began, as they settled down for a run off the wind, “I didn't
know whether I was going to get here to-day or not.”
“It _was_ pretty bad.”
“You were thinking of me, weren't you, Annie?”
She smiled and gave her attention to the boat.
“Roche was drunk, and I had to leave him at Manistee.”
“You didn't come down shorthanded, did you, Dick,--in that storm?”
He nodded.
“But how? You couldn't have got much sleep.”
“I didn't get any till this noon.”
“Now, that's just like you, Dick, always running risks when you don't
have to.”
“But I did have to.”
“I don't see why.”
“What day's to-day?”
A mischievous light came into her eyes, but her face was demure.
“Wednesday,” she replied.
“Yes, I knew that.”
“Why did you ask me, then?”
“Oh, Annie, Annie! When are you going to stop talking that way?”
Again the boat claimed all her attention. He leaned forward and dropped
his voice.
“Don't you think I've waited most long enough, Annie?”
“Now, Dick, be sensible.”
“But haven't I been sensible? Not a word have I said for two months. And
I told you then I would speak on your birthday.”
“So you really remembered my birthday?”
“Remembered it, Annie! What a girl you are! Do you know how long I've
been waiting? And all the boys laughing? It's two years this month. It
was on your birthday that I saw you first, you know. And it wasn't a
month after that that I spoke to you. How could I help it? Who could
have waited longer? And you, with your way of making me think you were
really going to say yes, and then just laughing at me.”
“Now, Dick--if you don't stop and be sensible, I 'll take you straight
inshore.”
“Oh, you wouldn't do that, Annie?”
“Yes, I would. I will now. Ready about!” The _Captain_ came rapidly up
into the wind, but stopped there with sail flapping; for Dick held the
sheet, and his hand had imprisoned hers on the tiller.
“Now, Dick--Dick--”
“Wait a minute. Don't be angry with me when I've risked the schooner
and everybody aboard her just so's to get down here on your birthday.
Promise me you 'll hold her in the wind while I get you your present.”
She hesitated, and looked out toward the horizon.
“Promise me that, Annie, and I 'll let go your hand.”
“You--you've forgotten--what you promised--”
“I know, I said I'd never take hold of your hand again until you put it
in mine--didn't I?”
She nodded, still looking away.
“And I've broken the promise. Do you know why, Annie? It's because when
you look at me the way you do sometimes, I could break every promise
I've ever made--and every law of Congress if I thought it would just
keep you looking at me.”
Not a word from Annie.
“Promise me, Annie, that you 'll hold her here?”
Still no word.
“Won't you just nod, then?”
She hesitated a moment longer, then gave one uncertain little nod. He
released her hand, held the sheet between his knees, drew the package
from his pocket, and displayed the corals. She was trying bravely not to
look around, but her glance wavered, and finally she turned and looked
at it with eager eyes. “Oh, Dick, did you bring that for me?”
“I surely did.” He held it up, and when she bent her head forward, he
slipped it over and around her neck. Her eyes shone as she ran the red
beads through her fingers and looked at the carved pendant. Dick leaned
back and watched her contentedly. Finally she let her eyes steal upward
and meet his, with a smile that was half roguish. “I never really
laughed at you, did I, Dick?”
He moved forward with sudden eagerness. “Don't you think now is a good
time to say yes, Annie,--now, on your birthday? I own a quarter of the
schooner now, you know; and I'm ready to make another payment to-morrow.
And don't you see, when we're married you can help me to save, and
before we know it we can have a home and a business of our own.” She was
bending over the corals. “You didn't really think you could save more
with--with me, than you could alone, did you, Dick?”
“Yes, I'm sure of it. It will give me something to work for, don't you
see?”
“But--but--” very shyly, this--“Haven't you anything to work for now?”
“Oh, Annie, do you mean that--are you telling me you 'll give me the
right to work for you? That's all I want to know.”
“Now, Dick--please let go my hand--you promised, you know--”
“What is a promise now! If you knew how you torture me when you lead me
on till I'm half wild and then change around till I don't know what I've
said or what you've said or hardly who I am--”
“No, Dick, you mustn't--I mean it. We must go in. See, there's father on
the beach. It must be supper-time.”
“Wait a minute--I haven't half told you--”
But she was merciless. The _Captain_ came about and headed shoreward.
“Did you meet the revenue cutter anywhere up the Lake--the _Foote?_ She
was here yesterday.”
“There you are again, all changed around! What do I care about the
_Foote_--when I'm just waiting to hear you say the only word that can
make my life worth living. Now, Annie--”
“You mustn't, Dick. I've let you say too much now. If you go on, you 'll
make me feel that I can't even thank you for your present.”
“Was that all? Were you only thanking me?”
She nodded, and Dick's face fell into gloom. But when the _Captain_ was
beached, and Annie had leaped lightly over the rail, she turned and gave
him one merry blushing look that completely reversed the effect of her
reproof. And as she hurried up to the house, he could only gaze after
her helplessly.