AN EXCITING FATHER
A tall man, who was very good looking indeed, stood beside the library
table. A man of perhaps forty, with a fair skin, bronzed by much
exposure to the sun, abundant light hair that grew in a pleasing way and
fine blue eyes. He was gazing expectantly toward the door.
Henrietta, after one look at the visitor, was across the room with her
arms about his neck.
“Daddy! Why, _Dad_!”
Marjory, wisely concluding that no chaperon was needed, slipped unheeded
from the room and fled away through twisting hallways and long corridors
to the West wing where she found that Sallie had already spread the
news.
“Henrietta’s father,” breathed Bettie, “isn’t that great! And only two
hours ago Henrietta was weeping on her bed because her grandmother’s
letter was so discouraging.”
“Does he look like Henrietta?” asked Jean. “You know we’ve never seen
him.”
“Not a bit,” said Marjory, “he’s fair—a regular blond. And oh, so good
looking. She’s like the pictures of her dark mother, you know.”
“He looks just like an earl or a duke or something like that,” said
Sallie. “When the Seniors see him they’re going to be glad that they
were polite to Henrietta. He’s the best looking father that ever came to
this school and I ought to know, because I’ve been making a study of
fathers for a long, long time. Of course, most _any_ kind of a father
looks mighty good to _me_. I don’t envy Henrietta her good clothes, her
pretty looks or her pretty ways; but I _would_ like to wake up suddenly
and find myself down in that library shaking hands with a _father_.”
In the meantime, Henrietta, who had been almost speechless at first, was
making up for lost time. There were traces of tears on her cheeks but
her eyes were joyful.
“So you went right straight to Lakeville from San Francisco and as soon
as Grandmother told you where I was you came right here?”
“And I didn’t bring you a single thing. My luggage is still in Shanghai,
I suppose. I believe I picked up some odds and ends in Canton. I was
there for a very short time and foolishly neglected to cable Henshaw.
When they rescued me from that coral reef, absolutely the only thing I
owned was half a pair of trousers. I had to borrow clothes from the
captain of the ship before I could land in San Francisco and I had to
telegraph to London for money with which to travel east. Your
Grandmother tells me that Henshaw has sent out a relief
expedition—perhaps he’ll rescue my luggage. It seems to me I bought a
mandarin’s coat and some beads—”
“I wouldn’t have cared if you hadn’t bought me a single thing. It was
just you I wanted, Daddy. Don’t _ever_ get lost again. It’s too hard on
the family.”
“Do you know, it hadn’t occurred to me that you were grown up enough to
worry; but, since you are, I suppose I’ll have to mend my ways. I _have_
been careless a great deal of the time. I haven’t always written when I
_could_; and of course, sometimes, I couldn’t. Now, couldn’t we go
outside, some place? It seems dark and stuffy in here to a man who has
lived on a coral reef for months.”
“Why,” cried Henrietta, “I do believe it’s clearing up.”
Henrietta was right. The rain had ceased, the sun was making up for lost
time and in more ways than one it was now a pleasant day. On the veranda
the happy little girl introduced her father to such of her special
friends as were there and sent little Jane Pool flying after all the
others. The entire West Corridor rushed down and out, as Maude said
afterwards. Mr. Bedford bowed and smiled in a charming way and murmured:
“Delighted, I’m suah.” He was not a talkative man, for which the girls
were sorry because his speech was so delightfully English that the
thoroughly American children were greatly impressed. They loved to hear
him say “Cawn’t” and “Just fawncy,” and “Chuesday”—for Tuesday. And they
were overjoyed when he asked Henrietta if she hadn’t better put on her
“goloshes” before she walked on the wet grass.
Henrietta took her father for a walk to the village. It is to be
suspected that she led him straight to the best candy store in the
village because she returned later with an enormous box of chocolates.
The girls were even gladder to see that her cheeks were glowing with
some of their former bright color. Her father was placed in the company
seat at Doctor Rhodes’s own table at dinner time that night; Henrietta
sat demurely beside him; but occasionally she turned her head long
enough to make an impish face at the girls at her own table.
“She’d rather be here,” said Jean, sagely.
“I wish she were,” said Maude. “I love to hear her father talk.”
It was bedtime before the West Corridor girls had a chance to hear all
about it. They had flocked into Henrietta’s room and most of them
undressed in there while listening to what she had to say.
“I’m going to do something wonderful,” said Henrietta. “First, I’m to
spend tomorrow in Chicago with Father, and then he’s going right to
England. Grandmother is going to meet us in Chicago, and what do you
think! You couldn’t guess in a thousand years. We are both going right
over to England with him so we can have a good long visit on the way.
We’re going to stay just long enough for Grandmother to count her
relatives over there—Father says it won’t be more than three weeks
altogether—and then we’re coming back. I’m going to bring something to
every one of you. I may even get to Paris for just about a minute—Father
says he has to go there to tell something to the French Government about
something he dug up somewhere.”
“How lovely!” cried Jean.
“How splendid,” cried Bettie.
“How grand!” cried Marjory.
“How perfectly sweet,” cried Cora.
“How darling,” cried little Jane Pool.
“But, Henrietta,” demanded Mabel. “You haven’t told us where your father
has been all this time. Why didn’t he write?”
“Why, so I haven’t,” said Henrietta, “And this is my last chance—I’m
going early in the morning, with just a few duds in a suitcase. Well,
here’s the story, all I could dig out of him. I’ll sit on the dresser so
you can all hear. It’s really quite a tale.
“Well, first he went to Shanghai because he’d heard of a temple that was
different from most temples; but it was way up the Yengtze river—in
China, you know—so he rushed right up there to look for it. It was on
the estate of an old Chinaman who didn’t want any Englishmen or other
foreigners poking round his old temple even outside—and it was said to
be certain death to go _inside_. But father _did_ manage to get inside
and was copying some of the inscriptions as well as he could—it was too
dark to use his camera and he didn’t dare make a flashlight—when
something hit him on the head. He doesn’t know _yet_ what it was.
“The next thing he knew, he was in kind of a dungeon, all stone and
metal bars, under some building—that temple, perhaps, or possibly under
a warehouse near the river. He says he doesn’t know why they didn’t kill
him at once; but for some reason they didn’t. Just kept him there and
gave him very little food once a day for weeks and weeks and weeks—he
does not know exactly how long.
“Then, one night, when he had just about given up all hope of _ever_
getting out of that place, four big, ugly-looking Chinamen came and tied
a bag over his head and bound his hands and feet and loaded him into a
boat and poled it down a river for hours and hours. They chattered a lot
in Chinese but Father couldn’t understand them—his interpreter wasn’t
with him when he went into the temple, and he doesn’t know _what_ became
of _him_. After a long, long time, Father heard sounds like men
clambering aboard a vessel; but he thinks that the small boat he was in
was towed for a long time behind some larger boat. He slept for part of
the time, he says, and of course with that bag tied over his head he
couldn’t see anything or even hear a great deal.
“The next thing he was really sure of was that his hands were free. By
the time he got the bag off his head, there was an old Chinese
junk—that’s a kind of a ship—way off in the distance, sailing away from
him. He was alone in the boat but in one end of it he found a jar of
water and some food. Also a long pole and a paddle. Of course he
couldn’t reach bottom with the pole because he was out of the river by
that time and quite far out at sea—in the Yellow Sea or possibly the
Eastern Sea. You know how they run together along there; and he showed
me what he thought _might_ be the place, on the atlas in the library.
“Well, Father thought other boats might come along that way so he stayed
right there for about six hours; but none did; so then he fastened the
long pole up like a mast and ripped open that bag that had been over his
head and used it for a sail. He found some bits of rope and string and
some old fishing tackle stuffed into the bow of the boat and used them
to tie his sail to the pole.
“He sailed wherever the wind took him and after awhile he was picked up
by another Chinese junk. He thinks that the men aboard this one were
smugglers or pirates or something. He tried to get them to take him to
Shanghai or Hong Kong or some other Chinese port; but he was so ragged
and dirty that probably they didn’t believe he’d be able to pay them
what he promised—even if they understood him—and all he could get out of
what _they_ said was something about ‘Philippines.’
“But they never got to the Philippine Islands, if that’s where they were
bound for. There was a typhoon—a sudden, terrible storm—and they were
wrecked. My father and one very strong young Chinese sailor were thrown
by the waves inside a coral reef that stuck up like kind of a fence, in
a big half-circle. It made sort of a front yard to a small coral island
and the water was smoother inside so they managed to swim ashore. But
they were quite battered up at first and just crawled ashore on their
hands and knees and fell asleep on the first dry spot.
“Their island was only a little one, just about big enough for two
persons to live on. Fortunately there was a small spring of fresh water
but it ran very slowly so that it took a long time to catch enough for a
satisfying drink; and the young Chinaman was smart about catching fish
and snaring sea birds and finding turtles’ eggs. There were lots of
shell fish, too; and a box of rice washed ashore about the time they did
and they saved some of that, so of course they didn’t starve.
“But they had to stay there for months and months and months; until
another ship got blown out of her course and was almost wrecked on that
coral fence outside their little island. As soon as that storm calmed
down, the ship sent a boat ashore to explore the island. There were
English sailors aboard her but the ship was going to Calcutta. Father
says she was a rotten old tub but he and the Chinaman were glad to be
rescued by _anything_. He _wanted_ to go to England and he didn’t want
to go to Calcutta; but after a day or two he had a good chance to be
transferred to a much faster and safer ship bound for San Francisco so
he took it. The Captain had to give him some clothes—he lost just about
all he had left when he was swimming to the island. He sent a wireless
to my grandmother from the American ship but for some reason she didn’t
get it. And he didn’t telegraph her from San Francisco because he
supposed she _had_ received the wireless.”
“Tell us all the _awful_ part of it,” pleaded Mabel. “Cannibals and
tigers and things like that.”
“That’s one trouble with Father’s adventures,” complained Henrietta. “He
doesn’t _tell_ the ghastly details. He just gives the main facts. He
must have been almost dead in that dungeon, he must have hated that
nasty bag over his head, and he must have been almost drowned swimming
ashore and almost scared to death in that typhoon; but he doesn’t _say_
so. He did mention a shark in the lagoon—the Chinaman killed that with
his knife. Of course I’ll be able to dig more out of him when there’s
more time; but he won’t tell me the _worst_ things; he never does.”
“_I_ think,” said Jean, “you managed to get considerable.”
“Yes,” agreed Maude, “you certainly own an exciting father.”
“I’m so glad I still _own_ him,” breathed Henrietta.
And then the girls slipped away to their own beds to dream of Chinese
temples, junks, dark dungeons, yellow pirates, sunny reefs and sunburned
fathers. And of course they were all glad to have their Henrietta again
happy and free from care; for they had all suffered with her.