ON THE OTHER SIDE
The voyage was a short one, but to Louie it seemed an eternity. The
weather was very rough, and almost with the first beat of the engine as
the ship left the wharf Mrs. Grey succumbed to sea-sickness and never
left her state-room during the voyage. A part of the time she was
delirious, and raved of her dead husband and her home in Merivale,
begging Louie to take her back there to die, or stop the ship, whose
rolling and pitching was killing her. Nearly all the second-class
passengers were ill except Louie, who, with a mighty will, withstood the
sickness and ministered to her mother night and day until her strength
gave way, and the young doctor whom Herbert knew found her lying
insensible on the floor when he came to see her mother. It made no
difference to him whether his patients were first or second-class; and
if it had, Louie’s face and helplessness would have enlisted his
sympathy. He knew nothing of her acquaintance with Herbert, although he
had exchanged a few words with that young man as he left the vessel. She
was a stranger in trouble, and he cared for her till she was able to
resume her post at her mother’s side. As the voyage neared its end, and
the sea became smoother, Louie hoped her mother would improve. But she
seemed to have no life left and was as helpless as a child.
“Oh, what shall I do when we get there?” Louie often asked herself; and
when at last the tug from the great ship was sailing slowly into port,
there was not on board so forlorn and hopeless a creature as the young
girl who stood looking wistfully at the shore and the people upon it,
some waiting for expected friends, and some of them the custom-house
officers, waiting to pounce upon their prey the moment they landed.
It was these Louie dreaded, not knowing what she had to expect or how to
cope with them. She had nothing dutiable, but she knew there must be a
delay before she could get her baggage. And what, meantime, should she
do with her mother, who could scarcely hold up her head, and was taking
little heed of what was passing around her?
“God help me,” she whispered as she went to her mother and said,
“Mother, we are at the landing. Can you walk?”
“No,” came faintly from the sick woman. “You go and leave me here to
die.”
At this point an officer, who chanced to be near, said to Louie:
“Go on shore and get some one to bring a chair. She is too ill to walk.”
“Oh, thank you! And will you stay by her?” Louie said.
It was a great deal to ask an officer of a British steamer to do, but
something in Louie’s face and eyes pleaded for her, and the man answered
with a smile:
“I will see that she is not left alone; and, stay, there is a deck
steward now, just off the boat. Hurry and speak to him. Say I sent you.”
Louie needed no further bidding, but made her way on shore as quickly as
she could for the crowd jostling each other, and each intent upon his or
her own business. The deck steward had disappeared, and, turn which way
she would, Louie could see no one on whom she dared call for help. The
crowd was pushing her farther from the boat. Friends were greeting
friends; there were calls for hands to help with the baggage, and to
Louie it seemed as if pandemonium reigned, and she felt her strength
giving way, when suddenly heaven opened before her as Fred Lansing put
both his hands upon her shoulders, and said, not “Louie,” as Herbert had
done, but “Miss Grey, you are here. What can I do for you?”
She did not stop to ask why he was there, or how he knew she was there,
but answered:
“I am trying to find some one to help mother. She is sick on the boat.”
He asked no more questions, but seemed to know exactly what to do.
Passing his arm around Louie, who, he saw, was near fainting, he said:
“Take me to your mother, and don’t be afraid. I will see to it.”
Louie could never remember exactly what he did, or how it was done. She
only knew that in a short time her mother was on shore, in a carriage
nearly as luxurious and easy as their own had been. Then Mr. Lansing
said to her:
“Come with me, please, and show me your baggage.”
She went with him and felt herself growing stronger as she saw how cool
and masterful he was, and how every one listened to him. Returning with
her to the carriage, he said:
“Give me your keys, please. Those custom-house officers will ask for
them. I will send you to the hotel, and join you there later.”
He spoke a few words to the driver, touched his hat to the ladies, and
walked rapidly back to where bags and boxes were being opened, and
brandy and tobacco and dynamite looked for by the officers.
Mrs. Grey was wholly bewildered and half unconscious when the carriage
reached the hotel, from which a lackey came out, and was joined by one
or two more when Louie gave the names, “Mrs. and Miss Grey.” The former
was taken carefully into the house and up to the second floor to a
large, airy room with which a smaller room communicated. A highly
respectable-looking woman, who called herself Mrs. Brown, came in, and
offered her services in getting Mrs. Grey into bed, where she dropped
asleep at once.
Turning to Louie, the woman said: “If Miss will allow me, I will suggest
that she, too, go to bed in the next room. You look wholly, utterly
exhausted. I will sit with your mother till the gentleman comes.”
Louie shook her head, thinking she must wait till Mr. Lansing came, to
know what it all meant. These handsome rooms she had not ordered, and
this woman, whose attentions were almost obsequious was a puzzle to her.
Was there a mistake and had she and her mother been taken for some
distinguished and expected guests, and what would the people say, if
they knew they were only the widow and daughter of a bankrupt?
“I must stay with mother,” she said, “and I don’t believe these rooms
were meant for us.”
“Yes, they were,” the woman replied, “if you are Mrs. and Miss Grey,
from America. The young gentleman was very particular about them. Your
cousin, perhaps?”
Louie did not answer. Her head was in a whirl, and she felt so dizzy and
faint and tired that she made no remonstrance when Mrs. Brown suggested
again that she lie down in the next room.
“I’ll take the lounge, so as to be ready to get up the moment mother
wants me, or Mr. Lansing comes,” she said.
She took the lounge, which was so wide and comfortable, and the cushions
were so soft, and she was so tired, that she fell into a heavy sleep,
from which she did not waken until it was dark, and she heard voices in
the next room. Fred Lansing and a stranger were talking together, and
the latter, who she guessed was a physician, said:
“I hope it is nothing more serious than nervous prostration and extreme
exhaustion, caused by severe sea-sickness. After a few days’ rest you
can safely take her to London. I will send a good nurse, if you wish
it.”
They were talking of her mother, she knew, and in a moment she was in
the room, looking at Fred Lansing with her great brown eyes full of
inquiry and entreaty.
“I think this young lady needs some attention,” Fred said, and Louie
felt her wrist grasped in a strong hand which held her a moment, while
the doctor counted her pulse and studied her face.
Then, releasing her, he said, with a laugh:
“Needs a good dinner more than anything, and then a good night’s rest.
She has youth and health.”
He would have liked to have added “beauty,” for Louie’s face stirred
even his sixty-year-old heart a little.
“She shall have the dinner at once,” Mr. Lansing said, bowing him out,
and returning to Louie, who felt that she did not know exactly where she
was or why she was there.
One fact stood distinctly before her. They could not afford all this
luxury. Perhaps Mr. Lansing did not know what had happened, and how poor
they were, and she must tell him.
“Mr. Lansing,” she began, when he said to her, “We will go to dinner as
soon as Brown comes up to stay with your mother.”
“Mr. Lansing, I don’t know how you happened to come to meet us. But am
so glad you did. I think I was nearly crazy with fright when I met you,
and you have been so kind since, but I must tell you. Don’t these rooms
cost a great deal of money?”
“Why, no; not so very much,” he answered, and she continued:
“This is the Northwestern, isn’t it? We expected to go to some cheap
place, if I could find it. Maybe you don’t know how poor we are, and
father is dead—failed, and couldn’t pay, do you know?”
Her face was crimson with shame as she talked, and when she was through
she covered it with her hands and cried like a child.
Fred would like to have taken her hands from her face and kissed her
tears away, so fast had his love grown for this little girl since he
last saw her in Merivale. He could not forget her, and the bit of worn
linen he had purloined was kept sacred for her sake, because it was all
he had as a souvenir of her except the memory of her bright face and
beautiful eyes, which had always brightened when he came and been
downcast when he looked at her.
“If my cousin were not in the field before me, I believe I could win
her,” he had often said to himself, wondering how it fared with the
young people, and if the secret were still kept from the public.
He had heard from Herbert several times after leaving Merivale, and in
his letters there was always a mention of Louie. It was Herbert, too,
who had first written him news of the failure, saying very little of Mr.
Grey’s delinquencies, and nothing of Louie, except that she was keeping
up bravely. He had said that Mr. Blake was assignee, and Nancy Sharp
preferred creditor, and Fred had laughed immoderately as he recalled the
red-armed woman with her twenty hard silver dollars which had been the
rounds so many times, and hoped she had received them intact. From
Boston and Worcester papers he learned a good deal which Herbert had not
told him, but it was from Mr. Blake that he received full particulars in
response to a letter sent to the assignee. He knew of the sale of the
piano and wheel and diamonds and horses, and Louie’s wish to sell the
house, and it was at his instigation that Mr. Blake bought it in his own
name, to blind the people, and then resold it to Fred, whose injunction
was “Keep me out of sight at all hazards.”
“Perhaps I am rash,” he said to Miss Percy and his mother, “but I cannot
begin to spend my income, and a few thousands may as well be sunk in
Merivale as anywhere.”
When Mr. Grey died it was Mr. Blake who wrote the particulars to Fred,
and in his letter no mention was made of Herbert, nor had there been in
any of the correspondence. Evidently the engagement was still a secret,
if, indeed, it were not broken. Fred thought the latter contingency
possible, knowing Herbert’s nature and his fear of his father.
It was Fred who encouraged Miss Percy to insist upon Louie’s coming
abroad as soon as possible, and then went to meet the ship in which she
was to sail. He had not expected to find Mrs. Grey so ill, and at first
all his care was given to her. Now, however, as she was sleeping
quietly, he had a little time for Louie, and when she told him of her
poverty, and asked if he knew of her father’s failure and death, he said
to her:
“Yes, I think I know everything. Mr. Blake has kept us posted. I know
what you did to save your father, and what you have done to pay his
debts. You have been a brave girl, and I want to help you, and that is
why I came to meet you, knowing as I did how forlorn it would be for you
to land alone in a foreign country and encounter those sharks at the
Custom House. Miss Percy thought of coming with me, but that was not
necessary. This is the Northwestern, and these rooms are perhaps a
trifle more expensive than you would have chosen. But for the present
you are my guests. We are old acquaintances, and Herbert will be glad to
know you are comfortable. You and he are good friends still?”
Fred had not hinted a word of the engagement, but he felt that he must
know something from which to draw a conclusion, and said what he did to
Louie, who, without thinking what his question implied, answered at
once:
“Oh, yes, good friends still and always will be. We agreed to that. He
came to the boat to see us off, which was very kind of him. Do you hear
from him often?”
Fred could scarcely answer for the gladness beating in his heart. Surely
Louie’s words meant that whatever had been between herself and Herbert
was over now, and they were only good friends. Still, he would go slowly
and bide his time. She was young and he was not very old. She had that
idea of paying her father’s debts in her mind, and until that was given
up he must watch over and help her without her knowing it. She told him
of the stranger who had bought their house for ten thousand dollars,
which had gone far toward paying the smaller debts.
“We had to keep some to live on. Mr. Blake said we could as it was ours
to do with as we pleased, but I shall pay it back. It was very kind in
the stranger to let us stay in the house and I shall pay him the rent.
Mr. Blake would not tell his name, nor where he lived, but I wrote to
him just before I left home, and I hope he will answer me.”
“You wrote to him?” Fred asked, with a glad light in his eyes. “I am
sure he will be pleased to get your letter. Perhaps he had heard what a
heroic little girl you were and wanted to help you; but here comes
Brown, and now for that dinner—your first on English soil. I hope you
will like it.”
She could not help liking it, and felt her strength and life coming back
to her, while Fred saw the change in her face and eyes, and thought how
fair she was, and thought, too, of a time in the future when she would
be fairer still, because of the great love with which he would encircle
her, taking every care away and making her life all a holiday.
They had hoped Mrs. Grey would rally the next day sufficiently to sit up
a little, but she didn’t; nor did she seem to realize where she was, but
talked of Merivale and her old home and her husband, who seemed to be
with her. Still the physician said there was no danger in moving her
after a little, they were so near the train, and she would have every
possible comfort in the special car in which the journey to London was
finally accomplished, easily and quickly.
Once when they stopped at a station, a dispatch was handed to Fred, who,
after reading it, seemed very happy and almost gay, until London was
reached.
It was a cold, raw day, and a fog was settling in the streets through
which they drove very slowly in the large, roomy carriage in which Mrs.
Grey half sat, half lay among cushions and shawls, and attended by the
nurse who accompanied them from Liverpool.
Very anxiously Louie peered out into the darkness and fog, seeing
nothing distinctly until they drew up suddenly before a brilliantly
lighted hotel, where many hands were extended to carry Mrs. Grey to
rooms far more luxuriously furnished than those in Liverpool. There was
a salon and two sleeping-rooms and bath attached, and into one of the
sleeping-rooms Mrs. Grey was taken and laid upon the bed, saying as she
felt the warmth of the soft pillow and blankets around her:
“This is like home in the best room. Let’s stay here awhile. I’m so
tired, and the ship rolled so terribly.”
Nothing surprised her, nor mattered, so long as Louie was with her; nor
did she open her eyes when a voice different from Louie’s or Fred’s or
the nurse’s said to her:
“How are you feeling, Mrs. Grey? Don’t you remember me?”
Louie, who was in the other bedroom, heard and recognized the voice, and
hurrying into her mother’s room was met and embraced by Miss Percy.