ME

It was a cold, blizzardy day in the month of March when I left Quebec,

and my weeping, shivering relatives made an anxious, melancholy group

about my departing train. I myself cried a bit, with my face pressed

against the window; but I was seventeen, my heart was light, and I had

not been happy at home.

My father was an artist, and we were very poor. My mother had been

a tight-rope dancer in her early youth. She was an excitable,

temperamental creature from whose life all romance had been squeezed by

the torturing experience of bearing sixteen children. Moreover, she was

a native of a far-distant land, and I do not think she ever got over

the feeling of being a stranger in Canada.

Time was when my father, a young and ardent adventurer (an

English-Irishman) had wandered far and wide over the face of the earth.

The son of rich parents, he had sojourned in China and Japan and India

in the days when few white men ventured into the Orient. But that was

long ago.

This story is frankly of myself, and I mention these few facts merely

in the possibility of their proving of some psychological interest

later; also they may explain why it was possible for a parent to allow

a young girl of seventeen to leave her home with exactly ten dollars

in her purse (I do not think my father knew just how much money I did

have) to start upon a voyage to the West Indies!

In any event, the fact remains that I had overruled my father's weak

and absentminded objections and my mother's exclamatory ones, and I had

accepted a position in Jamaica, West Indies, to work for a little local

newspaper called _The Lantern_.

It all came about through my having written at the age of sixteen a

crude, but exciting, story which a kindly friend, the editor of a

Quebec weekly paper, actually accepted and published.

I had always secretly believed there were the strains of genius

somewhere hidden in me; I had always lived in a little dream world of

my own, wherein, beautiful and courted, I moved among the elect of the

earth. Now I had given vivid proof of some unusual power! I walked on

air. The world was rose-colored; nay, it was golden.

With my story in my hand, I went to the office of a family friend. I

had expected to be smiled upon and approved, but also lectured and

advised. My friend, however, regarded me speculatively.

"I wonder," said he, "whether _you_ couldn't take the place of a

girl out in Jamaica who is anxious to return to Canada, but is under

contract to remain there for three years."

The West Indies! I _had_ heard of the land somewhere, probably in my

school geography. I think it was associated in my mind in some way with

the fairy-stories I read. Nevertheless, with the alacrity and assurance

of youth I cried out that _of course_ I would go.

"It's a long way off," said my friend, dubiously, "and you are very

young."

I assured him earnestly that I should grow, and as for the distance, I

airily dismissed that objection as something too trivial to consider.

Was I not the daughter of a man who had been back and forth to China no

fewer than eighteen times, and that during the perilous period of the

Tai-ping Rebellion? Had not my father made journeys from the Orient in

the old-fashioned sailing-vessels, being at sea a hundred-odd days at a

time? What could not his daughter do?

Whatever impression I made upon this agent of the West Indian newspaper

must have been fairly good, for he said he would write immediately to

Mr. Campbell, the owner of _The Lantern_, who, by the way, was also a

Canadian, and recommend me.

I am not much of a hand at keeping secrets, but I did not tell my

parents. I had been studying shorthand for some time, and now I plunged

into that harder than ever, for the position was one in which I could

utilize stenography.

It was less than two weeks later when our friend came to the house to

report that the West Indian editor had cabled for me to be sent at once.

I was the fifth girl in our family to leave home. I suppose my father

and mother had become sadly accustomed to the departing of the older

children to try their fortunes in more promising cities than Quebec;

but I was the first to leave home for a land as distant as the West

Indies, though two of my sisters had gone to the United States. Still,

there remained a hungry, crushing brood of little ones younger than

I. With what fierce joy did I not now look forward to getting away at

last from that same noisy, tormenting brood, for whom it had been my

particular and detested task to care! So my father and mother put no

obstacle in the way of my going. I remember passionately threatening to

"run away" if they did.

My clothes were thick and woolen. I wore a red knitted toque, with a

tassel that wagged against my cheek. My coat was rough and hopelessly

Canadian. My dress a shapeless bag belted in at the waist. I was not

beautiful to look at, but I had a bright, eager face, black and shining

eyes, and black and shining hair. My cheeks were as red as a Canadian

apple. I was a little thing, and, like my mother, foreign-looking. I

think I had the most acute, inquiring, and eager mind of any girl of my

age in the world.

A man on the train who had promised my father to see me as far as

my boat did so. When we arrived in New York he took me there in a

carriage--the first carriage in which I had ever ridden in my life!

I had a letter to the captain, in whose special charge I was to be,

that my Jamaica employer had written. So I climbed on board the

_Atlas_. It was about six in the morning, and there were not many

people about--just a few sailors washing the decks. I saw, however, a

round-faced man in a white cap, who smiled at me broadly. I decided

that he was the captain. So I went up to him and presented my letter,

addressing him as "Captain Hollowell." He held his sides and laughed

at me, and another man--this one was young and blond and very

good-looking; at least so he seemed to the eyes of seventeen--came over

to inquire the cause of the merriment. Greatly to my mortification, I

learned from the new arrival that the man I had spoken to was not the

captain, but the cook. He himself was Mr. Marsden, the purser, and he

was prepared to take care of me until Captain Hollowell arrived.

The boat would not sail for two hours, so I told Mr. Marsden that I

guessed I'd take a walk in New York. He advised me strenuously not to,

saying that I might "get lost." I scorned his suggestion. What, _I_ get

lost? I laughed at the idea. So I went for my "walk in New York."

I kept to one street, the one at the end of which my boat lay. It was

an ugly, dirty, noisy street,--noisy even at that early hour,--for

horrible-looking trucks rattled over the cobblestoned road, and there

were scores of people hurrying in every direction. Of the streets of

New York I had heard strange, wonderful, and beautiful tales; but as

I trotted along, I confess I was deeply disappointed and astonished.

I think I was on Canal Street, or another of the streets of lower New

York.

I was not going to leave the United States, however, without dropping a

bit of my ten dollars behind me. So I found a store, in which I bought

some postcards, a lace collar, and some ribbon--pink. When I returned

to the boat I possessed, instead of ten dollars, just seven. However,

this seemed a considerable sum to me, and I assured myself that on the

boat itself, of course, one could not spend money.

I was standing by the rail watching the crowds on the wharf below.

Every one on board was saying good-by to some one else, and people were

waving and calling to one another. Everybody seemed happy and excited

and gay. I felt suddenly very little and forlorn. I alone had no one to

bid me good-by, to wave to me, and to bring me flowers. I deeply pitied

myself, and I suppose my eyes were full of tears when I turned away

from the rail as the boat pulled out.

The blond young purser was watching me, and now he came up cheerfully

and began to talk, pointing out things to me in the harbor as the boat

moved along. He had such nice blue eyes and shining white teeth, and

his smile was quite the most winning that I had ever seen. Moreover, he

wore a most attractive uniform. I forgot my temporary woes. He brought

me his "own special" deck chair,--at least he said it was his,--and

soon I was comfortably ensconced in it, my feet wrapped about with a

warm rug produced from somewhere--also his. I felt a sense of being

under his personal charge. A good part of the morning he managed to

remain near me, and when he did go off among the other passengers, he

took the trouble to explain to me that it was to attend to his duties.

I decided that he must have fallen in love with me. The thought

delightfully warmed me. True, nobody had ever been in love with

me before. I was the Ugly Duckling of an otherwise astonishingly

good-looking family. Still, I was sure I recognized the true signs of

love (had I not in dreams and fancies already been the heroine in a

hundred princely romances?), and I forthwith began to wonder what life

as the wife of a sailor might be like.

At dinner-time, however, he delivered me, with one of his charming

smiles, to a portly and important personage who proved to be the

real captain. My place at table was to be at his right side. He was

a red-faced, jovial, mighty-voiced Scotchman. He called me a "puir

little lassie" as soon as he looked at me. He explained that my West

Indian employer (also a Scotch-Canadian) was his particular friend,

and that he had promised to take personal care of me upon the voyage.

He hoped Marsden, in his place, had looked after me properly, as he had

been especially assigned by him to do. I, with a stifling lump of hurt

vanity and pride in my throat, admitted that he had.

Then he was _not_ in love with me, after all!

I felt cruelly unhappy as I stole out on deck after dinner. I disdained

to look for that special deck chair my sailor had said I could have all

for my own, and instead I sat down in the first one at hand.

Ugh! how miserable I felt! I suppose, said I to myself, that it was I

who was the one to fall in love, fool that I was! But I had no idea one

felt so wretched even when in love. Besides, with all my warm Canadian

clothes, I felt chilly and shivery.

A hateful, sharp-nosed little man came poking around me. He looked at

me with his eyes snapping, and coughed and rumbled in his throat as if

getting ready to say something disagreeable to me. I turned my back

toward him, pulled the rug about my feet, closed my eyes, and pretended

to go to sleep. Then he said:

"Say, excuse me, but you've got my chair and rug."

I sat up. I was about to retort that "first come, first served" should

be the rule, when out on deck came my friend Marsden. In a twinkling he

appeared to take in the situation, for he strode quickly over to me,

and, much to my indignation, took me by the arm and helped me to rise,

saying that my chair was "over here."

I was about to reply in as haughty and rebuking a tone as I could

command when I was suddenly seized with a most frightful surge of

nausea. With my good-looking blond sailor still holding me by the arm,

and murmuring something that sounded both laughing and soothing, I fled

over to the side of the boat.