UP STAKES
That night, Kenelm could not sleep. He walked up and down his room in
the dark. His own head ached, and he could not think properly. The one
image which stood clearly out of the confusion was that of the
_Celestine_, raising gracious spars above the house-tops. The more he
thought of her, the more a plan grew in his tired mind. The crew of the
_Celestine_ must be paid quite well--he could send money home every week
from different ports--he could send gold and precious things from South
America. There would be one less person to feed at home; he would be
earning money instead of spending it.
He turned on his light, and quickly gathered together his hockey
sweater, his watch-cap, and an old pair of trousers. He made them into a
bundle with a few other things. Then he wrote a letter, containing many
good arguments, and pinned it on Felicia's door. He tiptoed downstairs
and out into the night. From the street he could see the faint green
light from his mother's room, where Miss McClough was sitting. He turned
and ran quickly, without stopping to think.
No one was abroad but an occasional policeman, twirling his night-stick.
On the wharves the daylight confusion was dispelled; there was no
clatter of teaming, no sound but the water fingering dank piles, and the
little noises aboard sleeping vessels. But the _Celestine_ was awake.
Lights gleamed aboard her, men were stirring, the great mass of her
canvas blotted half the stars. She was sailing, that night, for Rio de
Janeiro.
Ken slipped into the shadow of a pile-head, waiting his chance. His
heart beat suffocatingly; his hands were very cold. Quietly he stepped
under the gang-plank, swung a leg over it, drew himself aboard, and lay
flat on deck beside the rail of the _Celestine_ in a pool of shade. A
man tripped over him and stumbled back with an oath. The next instant
Ken was hauled up into the light of a lantern.
"Stowaway, eh?" growled a squat man in dungaree. "Chuck him overboard,
Sam, an' let him swim home to his mamma."
In that moment, Ken knew that he could never have sailed with the
_Celestine_, that he would have slipped back to the wharf before she
cast loose her hawsers. He looked around him as if he had just awakened
from sleep-walking and did not know where he found himself. He gazed up
at the gaunt mainmast, black against the green night sky, at the main
topsail, shaking still as the men hauled it taut.
"I'm not a stowaway," he said; "I'm going ashore now."
He walked down the gang-plank with all the dignity he could muster, and
never looked behind him as he left the wharf. He could hear the rattle
of the _Celestine's_ tackle, and the _boom, boom_ of the sails. Once
clear of the docks he ran, blindly.
"Fool!" he whispered. "Oh, what a fool! what a senseless idiot!"
The house was dark as he turned in at the gate. He stopped for an
instant to look at its black bulk, with Orion setting behind the
chimney-pots.
"I was going to leave them--all alone!" he whispered fiercely. "Good
Heavens!"
He removed the letter silently from Felicia's door,--he was reassured by
seeing its white square before he reached it,--and crept to his own
room. There a shadowy figure was curled up on the floor, and it was
crying.
"Kirk! What's up?" Ken lifted him and held him rather close.
"You weren't here," Kirk sniffed; "I got sort of rather l-lonely, so I
thought I'd come in with you--and the b-bed was perfectly empty, and I
couldn't find you. I t-thought you were teasing me."
"I was taking a little walk," Ken said. "Here, curl up in bed--you're
frozen. No, I'm not going away again--never any more, ducky. It was nice
in the garden," he added.
"The garden?" Kirk repeated, still clinging to him. "But you smell
of--of--oh, rope, and sawdust, and--and, Ken, your face is wet!"
* * * * *
Mrs. Sturgis protested bitterly against going away. She felt quite able
to stay at home. To be sure, she couldn't sleep at all, and her head
ached all the time, and she couldn't help crying over almost
everything--but it was impossible that she should leave the children.
In spite of her half-hysterical protests, the next week saw her ready to
depart for Hilltop with Miss McClough, who was to take the journey with
her.
"You needn't worry a scrap," laughed Felicia, quite convincingly, at the
taxi door. "We've seen Mr. Dodge, and there'll be money enough. You just
get well as quick as ever you can."
"Good-by, my darlings," faltered poor Mrs. Sturgis, quite ready to
collapse again. "Good-by, Kirk--my precious, precious baby! How can I!"
And the taxicab moved away, giving them just one glimpse of their mother
with her poor head on Miss McClough's capable shoulder.
"Well," Ken remarked, "here we are."
And there was really nothing more to be said on the subject.
Such a strange house! Maggie and Norah gone; Felicia cooking queer
meals--principally poached eggs--in the kitchen; Miss Bolton failing to
appear every morning at ten o'clock as she had done for the last three
years; Mother gone, and not even a letter from her--nothing but a
type-written report from the physician at Hilltop.
Gone also, as Kirk discovered, was the lowboy beside the library door.
It was a most satisfactory piece of furniture. From its left-hand corner
you could make a direct line to the window-seat. It also had smoothly
graceful brass handles, and a surface delicious to the touch. When Kirk,
stumbling in at the library door, failed to encounter it as usual, he
was as much startled as though he had found a serpent in its stead. He
tried for it several times, and when his hands came against the
bookshelves he stopped dead, very much puzzled and quite lost. Felicia
found him there, standing still and patiently waiting for the low-boy to
materialize in its accustomed place.
"Where is it!" he asked her.
"It's not there, honey," she said. "We're going to a different house,
and it's sent away."
"A different house! When? What _do_ you mean?"
"We've finished renting this one," said Felicia. "We thought it would be
nice to go to another one--in the country. Oh, you'll like it."
"How queer!" Kirk mused. "Perhaps I shall. But I don't know about this
corner; it used to be covered up. Please start me right."
She did so, and then ran off to attend to a peculiar pudding which was
boiling over on the stove. She had not told him that the low-boy was
sent away to be sold. When she and Ken had discovered the appalling sum
it would cost to move the furniture anywhere, they heartbrokenly
concluded that the low-boy and various other old friends must go to help
settle the accounts of Miss Bolton and the nurse.
"There are some things," Ken stoutly pronounced, however, "that we'll
take with us, if I have to go digging ditches to support 'em. And some
we'll leave with Mr. Dodge--I know he won't mind a few nice tables and
things."
For the "different house" was actually engaged. Mr. Dodge shook his head
when he heard that Ken had paid the first quarter's rent without having
even seen the place.
"Fine old farm-house," said the advertisement; "Peach and apple
orchards. Ten acres of land. Near the bay. Easy reach of city. Only
$15.00 per month."
There was also a much blurred photograph of the fine old farm-house,
from which it was difficult to deduce much except that it had a gambrel
roof.
"But it does sound quite wonderful," Felicia said to the attorney. "We
thought we wouldn't go to see it because of its costing so much to
travel there and back again. But don't you think it ought to be nice?
Peach and apple orchards,--and only fifteen dollars a month!"
"I dare say it is wonderful," said Mr. Dodge, smiling. "At any rate,
Asquam itself is a very pretty little bayside place--I've been there.
Fearfully hard to get your luggage, but charming once you're there.
Don't forget me! I'll always be here. And you'd better have a little
more cash for your traveling expenses."
"I hope it really came out of our money," Ken said, when he saw the
cash.
Nothing but a skeleton of a house, now. No landmarks at all were left
for Kirk, and he tumbled over boxes and crates, and lost himself in the
bare, rugless halls. The beds that were to be taken to Asquam were still
set up,--they would be crated next day,--but there was really nothing
else left in the rooms. Three excited people, two of them very tired,
ate supper on the corner of the kitchen table--which was not going to
the farm-house. That house flowered hopefully in its new tenants' minds.
Felicia saw it, tucked between its orchards, gray roof above gnarled
limbs, its wide stone door-step inviting one to sit down and look at the
view of the bay. And there would be no need of spending anything there
except that fifteen dollars a month--"and something for food," Felicia
thought, "which oughtn't to be much, there in the country with hens and
things."
It amused Kirk highly--going to bed in an empty room. He put his clothes
on the floor, because he could find no other place for them. Felicia
remonstrated and suggested the end of the bed.
"Everything else you own is packed, you know," said she. "You'd better
preserve those things carefully."
"Sing to me," he said, when he was finally tucked in. "It's the last
night--and--everything's so ugly. I want to pretend it's just the same.
Sing '_Do-do, petit frère_,' Phil."
Felicia sat on the edge of the bed and sang the little old French
lullaby. She had sung it to him often when she was quite a small girl,
and he a very little boy. She remembered just how he used to look--a
cuddly, sleepy three-year-old, with a tumble of dark hair and the same
grave, unlit eyes. He was often a little frightened, in those days, and
needed to hold a warm substantial hand to link him with the mysterious
world he could not see.
"_Do-do, p'tit frère, do-do_."
His hand groped down the blanket, now, for hers, and she took it and
sang on a bit unsteadily in the echoing bareness of the dismantled room.
A long time afterward, when Kenelm was standing beside his window
looking out into the starless dark, Felicia's special knock sounded
hollowly at his door.
She came over to him, and stood for a while silently. Then she turned
and said suddenly in a shy, low voice:
"Oh, Ken, I don't know how you feel about it, but--but, I think,
whatever awful is going to happen, we must try to keep things beautiful
for Kirk."
"I guess we must," Ken said, staring out. "I'd trust you to do it, old
Phil. Cut along now to bed," he added gruffly; "we'll have to be up like
larks to-morrow."