ON THE BOAT.
The Naumkeag was standing at the wharf waiting for the passengers who
had come on the Western train. There was a great crowd, all hurrying,
with bags and umbrellas, towards the boat with as much speed as if their
lives depended upon getting there first and securing the best seats.
Elithe lingered, anxiously watching the baggage as it was taken from the
car. She was hot and dusty and tired and worn with the long journey. Her
straw hat, with its faded ribbons, was crushed and bent, her flannel
gown was soiled and wrinkled, and her gloves were worn at the fingers
tips. “A dowdy little thing,” some might have called her, as she stood
waiting the appearance of her trunk, which had caused her a great deal
of anxiety. Whenever the train stopped long enough and it was possible
for her to do so, she had managed to assure herself that it was there
with her, and she always scanned closely any trunks standing in a
station they were leaving, fearing lest by some mistake hers might have
been taken out with others. If it were in New Bedford it was safe, and
she stood in the broiling sun faint and dizzy, but resolute, until she
caught sight of it and saw a train hand put it upon a truck not far from
where she was standing.
“This is the kind of trunk to have,” the man said to a companion,
staggering under a huge Saratoga four times as large as Elithe’s poor
little box tied with a rope, with one of the hinges to the lid wrenched
nearly off and a great crack across the end where the card with her name
upon it was fastened.
It was rather dilapidated, but it was there, and Elithe followed it to
the boat and stayed below until she saw it placed by six immense
Saratogas with “Clarice Percy, Washington, D. C.” marked upon them.
Elithe had seen many handsome trunks during her journey, but the
difference between them and her own had never struck her as it did now
when Clarice Percy’s stared her in the face. How very insignificant hers
looked beside them, she thought, wondering who Clarice Percy was, and
why she had so much baggage. She had heard some one say they stopped
once before landing at Oak City, and she was tempted to stay below and
watch her property lest it be carried off. But it was too hot and close
down there, and, going up to the crowded deck, she tried to find a seat
sheltered from the sun, which was beating down upon the water with all
the fervor of a sultry afternoon. Her first feeling, as the boat moved
off, was one of relief. Her trunk was safe, and so was the little box
which held the diamond, and which had troubled her nearly as much as her
baggage. A dozen times a day her hand had gone into her pocket to see if
it were there, and it did so now, as she took the seat a young man had
just vacated and for which a woman made a rush. Elithe was before her,
feeling, as she sat down, that she had never been so tired and faint in
her life as she was now. Her head was throbbing with pain, and the lump
in her throat, which always came when she thought of home, was
increasing in size until she felt as if she were choking. The motion of
the boat as they got further from the shore and struck the swell made
her sick. There was a horrible nausea at her stomach and a blur before
her eyes, while the people around her kept the air from her.
“I wonder if I am going to faint or die. I wish some one would bring me
some water,” she thought, looking in the faces of those nearest to her
to see if she dared speak to them.
They were strange and new, with something different in their expression
from the home faces familiar to her. She could not appeal to them, and,
removing her hat and leaning her head back against a post, she shut her
eyes and sat as still and nearly as white as if she were dead. How long
she sat thus she did not know. There was a partial blank in her
consciousness. The hum of voices, the splash of the water and the thuds
of the engine all mingled together in one great roar, which made her
head ache harder. Then she must have slept for a few minutes, and when
she woke it was to find a young man standing beside her and scanning her
curiously.
“Oh-h!” she said, with a start, and reached for her hat, which had
fallen from her lap.
The young man picked it up and handed it to her, saying: “Aren’t you
Miss Elithe Hansford, from Samona?”
“Yes, sir,” Elithe answered, timidly.
“I thought so,” he continued, taking a seat beside her. “I’m Paul
Ralston. I guess you have never heard of me.”
Elithe did not reply, and he went on: “I know your aunt, Miss Phebe
Hansford,—have known her for years. We are great friends. She told me
you were coming about this time. We must have been on the same train
part of the way. I didn’t see you. Funny, too, as I went through all the
sleepers looking for some one I thought might be there.”
“I wasn’t in a sleeper. I came in a common car, and it was so hot!”
Elithe said.
“You don’t mean you came all the way from Montana in a common car!” Paul
exclaimed, and Elithe replied: “Yes, I do,” in a weary kind of way,
which struck Paul with an intense pity for her.
“Great Scott! What made you do that? I wonder you are alive. Why did
they let you?” he said, impulsively, his voice indicating that somebody
was to blame.
Elithe detected this and rejoined, quickly: “Nobody wanted me to. I did
it myself, because——.”
She stopped abruptly, for she could not explain that the money saved was
to buy Artie some long stockings, Thede some shoes, and her mother a
summer dress. Paul could not read her thoughts, but he was shrewd enough
to guess that economy was the reason why the common car was taken
instead of the sleeper, and he felt an increased pity for her, as he
frequently felt for people who had not all the money they wanted to
spend. Thinking to change the conversation, he said: “I was down below,
where the trunks are stored, and saw one with your name on it. I knew
then you must be on board and hunted till I found you.”
At the mention of her trunk Elithe flushed, feeling in a moment the wide
gulf between her trunk and herself and this elegant young man, so
different from any one she had ever seen before, unless it were Mr.
Pennington, of whom, in some respects, he reminded her. They probably
belonged to the same grade of society, with, however, this difference:
Paul Ralston had never fought blue demons in the mining camp of Deep
Gulch, and on his face there were no signs of the fast life which always
leaves its impress. That he was greatly her superior, she was sure, and
as his eyes wandered over her from her shabby boots to her shabbier hat,
she began to be painfully conscious of her personal appearance, and to
wonder what he thought of her. Evidently he was expecting her to speak,
and she said at last: “You saw my name on my trunk, but how did you know
me?”
He would not tell her that there was something about her which made him
think that she and the queer trunk belonged to each other, and he said
what was partly true, “Your aunt has your photograph, which I have seen,
and I recognized you by that, although you were so pale that I was not
quite sure until you opened your eyes; then I knew. There was no
mistaking your eyes.”
If he meant this for a compliment it was lost on Elithe. The motion of
the boat was affecting her seriously again, and she grew so white that
Paul began to feel alarmed, and to wonder what he should do in case she
fainted. There were some ladies of his acquaintance on the boat, but he
did not like to appeal to them, knowing how they would regard the
forlorn little girl with nothing about her to mark her as belonging to
their set. She was growing whiter every minute and bluer about her lips.
Something must be done.
“You are awfully seasick, arn’t you?” he said, fanning her with his hat.
“Let me help you below to the ladies’ cabin, where there are cushions
and rocking chairs and bowls and things; but no, I’ve heard mother say
it was frightfully close and smelly there. I have it. You stay here and
keep your eyes shut. Don’t look at the water. The old boat does bob
round like a cork. I never knew it to cut such capers before in the
summer. It’s the stiff breeze, I guess.”
Elithe scarcely heard him, or knew when he left her. She was trying to
keep down the nausea which was threatening to overmaster her and might
have done so but for Paul’s happy thought of lemonade. It always helped
him. It would help Elithe, and he brought her a glass of it, with
chopped ice and a straw, and made her take it and watched as the color
came back to her face, and he knew she was better.
“It was so good, and you are so kind. How much was it?” she asked,
giving him back the glass and beginning to open her purse, now nearly
empty.
“Nothing, nothing,” he answered, energetically, thinking of the
difference between this girl, the scantiness of whose means he
suspected, and the many young ladies he knew who would unhesitatingly
allow him or any other man to pay whatever he chose to pay for them. “By
George, there’s a vacant chair, and I mean to capture it before any one
seizes it!” he exclaimed, and, darting off, he soon returned with a
chair, in which Elithe was more comfortable than she had been on the
hard seat on the side of the boat.
“Lean your head back and shut your eyes; that’s right,” he said, and
Elithe lay back and closed her eyes.
Sitting down upon the seat she had vacated, he looked at her very
closely, deciding that she was not like Clarice and the other girls of
his world,—fashionable girls, delicately reared, with no wish
ungratified. Her dress was poor and old-fashioned, and her hands, from
which she had drawn her gloves, were brown with traces of hard work upon
them; nor did she, in her present state, with her eyes shut and the
haggard look in her tired face, impress him as very pretty. She was too
crumpled and jaded for that, but, as if a breath from the future were
wafted backward to the present, hinting vaguely of all that she was to
dare and suffer for him, he felt strangely drawn towards her. For a few
moments she seemed to sleep, and when the boat changed its course a
little and the sun shone upon her face he stood up and shielded her from
it, and brushed a fly from her head, and thought how soft and fluffy was
her golden brown hair, more golden than brown in the sunlight. A sudden
roll of the boat aroused her, and, starting up, she flashed upon him a
look and smile so bright that he changed his mind with regard to her
beauty.
“By Jove, she has handsome eyes, though, and a mouth which makes a
feller’s water when she smiles,” he thought, as he asked if she were
better.
They were not far from the Basin, where he told her they were to stop
and take on the passengers who came by train from Boston. Then he began
to talk of Oak City, which she was sure to like. “Not a great many swell
people of the fast sort go there,” he said. “They have a fancy that it
is too slow and religious, with two camp meetings there every year, but
I don’t think so. I like the camp meetings. The residents are fine
people, and its visitors are highly respectable,—some of the very best
old families, like,——” He was going to say “the Ralstons,” but checked
himself, and added instead, “Judges and Governors and professors. Fast
people don’t go there much, such as Jack Percy and his crowd.”
Elithe had never heard of Jack Percy. Neither he nor his crowd
interested her as much as the highly respectable set to which Paul
evidently belonged.
“Is my aunt a swell woman?” she asked.
Paul could scarcely repress a smile, as he thought of Miss Hansford, but
he answered, very gravely: “Not exactly a swell, but has oceans of blue
blood in her veins, dating back to the Mayflower, and Miles Standish and
Oliver Cromwell, and the Duke of Argyle, and the Lord knows who
else,—fairly swims in it.”
“Oh-h!” Elithe gasped, with a feeling as if she were drowning in all
this blue blood, some of which must belong to her, as she was a
Hansford.
“Tell me about her. I never saw her. Do you think she will like me?” she
said, and Paul replied: “Like you? Yes, of course, she will, and you
will like her. I do. We are great friends.”
Then he began to speak of his own family, who spent nearly every summer
at Oak City.
“We call our place the Ralston House,” he said, “and have owned it for
years and years. Built it, in fact, or my great-grandfather did, when
there wasn’t so much as a shanty on the island. He was a sea captain,
and folks wondered he didn’t live in Nantucket with the rest of the
captains, instead of pitching his tent in a lonely desert as it was
then. Some old gossips say, and, by Jove, with truth, I believe, that he
was a kind of smuggler, running his ship into Still Haven, a safe harbor
near Oak City, and then hiding his goods in the Ralston House till he
could dispose of them. Not the best kind of an ancestor to have, but
that’s a great many years ago, and I don’t in the least mind telling you
about the old chap whose ship went down in a storm off the Banks. He
went with it, and has been eaten by the fishes by this time. The house
he built is a queer old ark, or was before we fixed it over. It is large
and rambling, with great, square rooms and the biggest chimney you ever
saw. All round the chimney in the cellar is a room which I’d defy any
one to get into if he didn’t know how. Under the stairs in the front
entry is a closet, where father and mother hang their clothes. In a
corner of the closet are three matched boards, which fit together
perfectly, but come apart easily when you know how to manage them.
Behind this partition is the chimney and some rough steps leading down
to that room I told you about, and which tradition says was used for
smugglers’ goods. In the partition in the cellar there are two or three
more places of matched panels, which can be shoved aside to let in light
and air. It’s a grand place to hide in if a fellow had done something or
folks thought he had. Sherlock Holmes couldn’t find you! Funny that I
should dream so often of being hidden there. Innocent, you know, but
hiding, just as I used to play when a boy with Tom Drake, who lives with
us, and Jack Percy, who used to be here every summer from Washington.
Your aunt never liked him much. He was rather mischievous, but good
fun.”
This was the second time Paul had spoken of Jack Percy to Elithe, who
had listened with a good deal of interest to his description of the
Ralston House, and had experienced a kind of weird, uncanny feeling as
she thought of the smugglers’ room where one could hide from justice.
Paul never seemed to tire of talking of the house, which he said had
been made over with a tower and bow windows and balconies until the old
sea captain would never recognize it if he were to come sailing back
some day in his ship. The big chimney was left, he told her, and built
round it in the roof was a platform inclosed by a high balustrade, with
seats where one could sit and look out on the water, and where the
smuggler captain’s men used to watch for the first sight of the Vulture,
as it came slowly into the harbor at Still Haven, with the Union Jack
and the Stars and Stripes floating from the masthead if their services
were wanted that night, and only the Stars and Stripes if there was
nothing to conceal.
“You can see the top of our house with the look-out on the roof among
the trees as we get near Oak City. I’ll show it to you,” he said.
They were now moving slowly into the Basin, on the long pier of which a
group of people were waiting.
“Hello! There’s Clarice! I didn’t really believe she’d be here,” Paul
exclaimed. “Excuse me, please,” and he hurried away, leaving Elithe
alone.
Her first impulse was to go below and see that her trunk was not carried
on shore by mistake. Then, reflecting that she could watch from the boat
and give the alarm in time if necessary, she kept her seat and watched
the passengers as they came on board. There were several ladies and
among them a tall, queenly looking girl, waving first her red parasol
and then kissing her hand to some one on the boat. Everything about her
dress was in perfect taste and the latest style, especially the sleeves,
which were as large as the fashion would admit. At these Elithe looked
admiringly, thinking with a pang of her small ones which Miss Tibbs had
declared “big enough for anybody.” They were not half as big as those of
the young lady in the gray dress, Eton jacket and pretty shirt waist,
looking as fresh and cool as if no ray of the hot sun or particle of
dust had fallen upon her since she left Boston in her new toilet. Elithe
wondered who she was and if she wasn’t one of the few _swells_ who
frequented Oak City and if Paul Ralston knew her. If so she might
possibly know her in time. He had been so very kind and friendly that he
would surely come to see her and bring his acquaintances. A moment later
she heard his voice as he came out upon the deck, and with him the
_swell_ young lady to whom he was talking, with his face lighted up and
the smile upon it which she had thought so attractive.
Clarice Percy had been for some time with her mother in New York, where
Paul had joined her. Leaving her mother there with friends, she had come
with Paul as far as Worcester, where he stopped, as he had business.
Wishing to see an old school-mate in Boston, Clarice had gone on to that
city with the understanding that Paul was to look after her baggage,
which was checked for Oak City by way of New Bedford, and that she was
to join him at the Basin the following day. She was in the best of
spirits. The arrangements for her wedding were satisfactorily completed.
Her half brother Jack, who was sure to get drunk and disgrace her if he
came to her bridal, was out of the way in Denver, or somewhere West, and
she had nothing to dread from him. She had an elaborate trousseau in her
six trunks, and was very glad to see Paul, and very much flattered with
the attention she knew she was attracting as she stood talking to her
handsome lover. Elithe could see her face distinctly, and thought how
beautiful she was and how different from any one she had ever seen in
Samona, and how different from herself in her mussy blue flannel and
last year’s hat, with its crumpled ribbons and feathers. It was a very
proud face, and the girl carried herself erect and haughty, and glanced
occasionally at the people around her, with an expression which said
they were not of her world and class. Toward the corner where Elithe sat
she never glanced, nor did Paul. In his absorption with his betrothed he
had evidently forgotten Elithe, who, after watching him and his
companion for a while, half hoping he would speak to her again, turned
her attention to the shore and the many handsome houses dotting the
cliffs as the boat neared the landing at Oak City. High above the rest,
on a slight elevation, she could see the top of what she was sure was
the Ralston House, with its big chimney, its look-out on the roof and
the tower which had been added when the place was modernized.
“That’s the Ralston House,” she thought, wondering if she would ever go
there, and thinking with a kind of awe of the smuggler’s room in the
cellar, which Sherlock Holmes could not find and the hidden entrance to
it in the closet under the stairs.