LADY MOREHAM SPEAKS.
Tegeloo brought Texas, with the ulsters, and told how he had found the
bird cowering in its battered cage, which had been tossed headlong into
the middle of the cabin, where it, fortunately, lodged between the
bedsteads, being wedged in so closely as to escape further harm. The
poor parrot looked sick enough, and was so subdued he came at once to
Hope's wrist, with none of his usual feints and caprices, nestling up
to her in a satisfied manner, as he plaintively muttered, "Poor Texas!
Poor little Texas!" in response to her caresses.
Then, after a little, came a new phrase his mistress had long been
trying to teach him, but which, with the obstinacy of his kind, he
would never repeat. It came very softly now, as he tilted about on her
white wrist, and cocked his head around with a sidelong, upward glance,
"_Dear_ Hope!"
"Oh, hear!" she cried delighted. "Isn't that sweet of him? Dear
Texas! Hope's pretty Texas! Was he nearly frightened to death in the
storm?"
She forgot terror and surrounding discomforts for one minute, the next
her heart stood still, as two sailors entered with a quantity of
life-preservers, and amid rising clamor and confusion, the passengers
began their preparations for departure by the boats. The storm's fury
seemed to have spent itself, and the fiercer noises outside were no
longer audible, only that steady chopping--chopping, that no one really
understood. Perhaps this only intensified the heart-broken sobbings of
the women and children, and the occasional groanings of strong men, who
could no longer control their sense of helpless misery. Hope, sprang
to her feet, her nerves giving way at last. "Oh, this is awful!" she
muttered, turning her head wildly to left and right, like a creature
suddenly caged. "I begin to feel the fire, Faith--don't you? It is
stifling me!"
She was on the point of breaking into a hysterical shriek when a hand
was laid upon her arm, and Lady Moreham said quickly,
"No, my child! It is only the closeness after a storm; not the fire.
That is far away, and still smothered between walls in the hold. It
may never break out, if they can get at it before it burns through to
the air. They are working manfully, and will do everything to save us,
and your brave father is at their head."
"Oh, if I could see papa! If I could be sure he is safe! He never
thinks of himself where there is danger."
She was trembling all over, and Faith, catching her excitement, pressed
closer, wide-eyed and shivering. Lady Moreham saw that, though they
had been brave as mature women, so far, they were breaking down under
the strain, unsupported by any older and stronger relative. The
atmosphere was enervating here, and emotion is contagious. Glancing
quickly around, she formed her resolution, and throwing an arm around
each, said gently,
"Come! I have often heard you speak of the library. We can go there
and be more quiet, and it will give us a better lookout on the forward
deck. Won't you invite me to go there with you?"
"But papa--if he should look for us here?"
"I will send him a message. Ah, here's Mr. Allyne--have you come to
tell us something?" for there was a desperate look in the young man's'
face that startled her.
"No, only--good-by! They need more help below, and I am going down.
You have these young ladies in charge, Madam?"
"Yes. And tell their father he will find the three of us in his own
cabin when he needs us." Her eyes, sharp and imperative, questioned
him--"Is there great danger?" But she did not speak.
He bowed gravely, and said, as if in response to her request. "I will
tell him." Then, as Hope followed the lady, he gently intercepted her.
"Please shake hands once more," he said, and with out a word she laid
her icy palm to his.
He bowed over it respectfully.
"God bless you for the good, pure girl you are! Good-by."
He hurried out and Hope, dazed and dumb, followed the others. They
found the little room, where they had passed so many homelike hours,
sadly demoralized. One of the great windows was shivered to splinters,
and through it projected a heavy spar, now safely wedged from further
harm, and as they gazed out through the other great panes, it was upon
a scene of intense desolation. The deck was quite empty, all the crew
being busy below, but it was one mass of broken timbers, fallen sails,
and all the debris of a half-wrecked vessel. But as the fresh air met
their faces, it braced them to new courage, and each looked curiously
about.
Above, the sky was already clearing and the ragged-edged clouds were
rolling northwards, leaving clear spaces which rapidly enlarged. The
sea, black and turbulent, still rolled heavily, but with diminishing
motion, and its spray made everything damp about them. Turning on the
lights, Lady Moreham said briskly, "We must have a blanket, or
something, to shut out the storm. Where will I find one?"
"Right in our room--I'll get it," said Faith, feeling safer and better
already in the home-like place, and soon the open window was well
covered, the chairs wiped out and drawn close together, and Hope sank
into one, Texas still clutching her wrist, with a long sigh of
satisfaction.
"It _seems_ safer here, anyhow!" she murmured. "If papa could only be
with us!"
The lady smiled.
"And I was just thinking how glad I was that he is not here, but that I
could be so certain he was just where he ought to be to insure the
safety of us all. How proud you must be of him, tonight! He is a
true, brave man, and I am proud to call him my friend. Did you know we
were schoolmates together?"
Hope looked up quickly, interested in spite of herself.
"That is it, then? I felt sure there was something, but he always
avoided our questions. Was it when you were a young lady."
"No, a little girl. We lived in the same neighborhood."
"You did? Why--but papa lived in America, near Boston."
"So did I."
"Then you _are_ American!" cried the girl, triumphantly.
The lady laughed a little.
"Have you guessed it? Yes, I was born on a small hill farm in
Massachusetts, and when a wee child used to trudge, barefooted, across
our pasture-lot to a little unpainted schoolhouse, on the cross-roads."
"_You_, Lady Moreham?" breathed Faith in amazement.
"Ah, yes, it was I," sighed the lady. "So memory tells me, at least,
but I can scarcely believe that the happy, care-free little creature,
who chased butterflies, and gathered the trailing arbutus in Spring,
and waded through the gorgeous October leaves in Fall, was my weary
self."
"And you really liked being--being--"
My lady laughed out at Hope's embarrassment in framing her question.
"Oh! Didn't I like it? I had two sisters and a brother. One sister
was a baby, and when the rest of us had done our 'stints' for the day,
we used to take her out with us in her little four-wheeled wagon father
had made her, and play by the hour--oh, so happily! I used to play at
being queen, I remember, and make crowns out of burdock burs, stuck
together, setting them on very softly over my curls in the coronation
scene, because they pricked me so. But in spite of the hurt I would
persist in wearing them. I sometimes wonder, is all that we do in
childhood but a foreshadowing of what is to follow? My crowns have
always cut me cruelly, but pride has kept me wearing them."
She drew herself up quickly, as if she had been thinking aloud, and
added,
"Your grandfather's farm adjoined ours, and your father and I were
playmates, and great friends. We were seldom separated till later,
when I was a strong, rosy-cheeked girl of sixteen and he a strapping
young lad, with a hankering for the sea. Well, we went our ways--he to
sail as cabin-boy in a merchantman, I to journey up to Boston and seek
service with some nice family."
"Service!" murmured Hope, involuntarily.
"It sounds queer, doesn't it? Yes, that was what I expected to do, and
I was proud to be able to help at home, for the little farm was not
productive, and the 'lien' on it was heavy. But I did not 'work out,'
after all--in that way--my sister, who was now married and living in
Lynn, found a place for me in the factory there. Like Hannah, I often
was seen sitting at the window binding shoes."
"Oh! In Lynn. No wonder you were so interested when we talked about
it."
"You noticed, did you, Brighteyes? Well, there I worked for two years,
and there I--married."
She stopped as if done with the subject, and the girls, half-forgetful
of their peril, looked at her in blank disappointment. It is a long
step from a dingy shoe-factory in a New England town to a lordly
country-seat in Old England, and both had fondly hoped to have it
bridged while this communicative mood was on. But the lips had closed
sternly, and Lady Moreham, seemingly quite forgetful of her young
auditors, was gazing far away. Faith ventured, at length, to jog her
consciousness.
"You asked me, once, a good deal about Brookline--were you there too?"
The lady nodded, then turned and looked at her with a quizzical glance.
"Ah, child, never be so curious to hear a sad story! Every one has
griefs enough to bear without appropriating other people's. Yes, we
did live in Brookline for several happy years--my husband and I. Our
home was the porter's lodge of one of those fine places you used to
admire. We were both young, hopeful, and strong. He was well
educated, but could not endure clerkly confinement, and thought himself
fortunate to be so well housed and have such healthy work. He was born
in England, and we used to laugh together because, in some vague way,
which we scarcely cared to fully understand, my husband was distantly
related to the nobility. That was the phrase--'related to the
nobility'--how we used to make fun of it, and pretend to trace out the
connection! Once, at Christmas, I presented him with a family tree,
and a peerage-book. The latter was something I had written up myself,
and _such_ nonsense, but it made us fun for many weeks. We could laugh
at anything in those days. Duncan really had no more idea of
inheriting a title and estate at that time than I, a farm-bred girl,
had myself. He was a thorough American, who loved his country, and
because his parents had died and left him alone in the world, he was
all the more helpful and self-reliant. How his eyes used to twinkle
when we sat on our little porch, at evening, as he would say with a
flourish, 'Yes, this is all well enough, Anna, but wait till you see
our ancestral halls across the sea!' and then his laugh would ring out
like the boy he was. But it is the unexpected that always happens. If
we had counted on any such thing--"
"And after all it came true?" broke in Hope eagerly.
"Yes, it came true." Lady Moreham's voice sank to a sorrowful strain.
"I shall never forget the day the news came! We had eaten our little
supper--just the two of us, for we had no children,--and Duncan, after
his custom, unfolded his newspaper to read, while I took the dishes
from the table and washed them at the little white sink near by. I
used to hear if there was any news worth the telling, and when he broke
out excitedly, 'Why, Anna, listen to this!' I only turned silently,
expecting to hear of some wonderful new invention, for that was a few
years ago when the marvels of electricity were developing so rapidly,
and Duncan was deeply interested in them. Instead, he read an
advertisement, inserted by a London law firm, where his own name
appeared with the usual promise that he would hear of something to his
advantage, if he would write to their address.
"I went over to him and sat on the arm of his chair, as we discussed
it, full of wonder and conjectures, and more in earnest over the fun of
it than any possible advantage it might bring--for God knows, we were
happy enough! We only wanted to be let alone."
She spoke with extreme bitterness, and the girls looked at her,
astonished. It was difficult to believe any one could prefer plain
comfort in a porter's lodge to a title and estates.
"But you wrote?" questioned Faith, eager to hear the whole.
"Of course. We were as foolish as all the rest of the world! We
thought happiness and gold and honor the three Graces, instead of
Faith, Hope, and Charity," smiling into the girls' excited faces.
"And isn't happiness?"--began Hope, but she shook her head.
"Not worldly happiness--no. It is too brief, too treacherous. If one
learns to depend upon that, one is doomed to perpetual disappointment.
I have long understood that contentment is better than what we call
happiness--much better. Yes, we wrote, laughing together over the
possibility that our ancestral home might be seeking us, but believing
nothing of the kind. How we did joke over our united efforts at
composing it! He was the scholar, but I suggested all sorts of
long-stilted sentences to him, which he modified to suit himself. He
used to think me bright in those days. When it was signed, addressed,
and sealed, we looked into each other's eyes.
"'I wonder if we'll ever regret this?' said Duncan, serious for the
first time. He was always more grave than I, and used often to curb my
high spirits--who would think it now?
"'Fiddle-faddle! Regret a pot of money, or a Queen's commission as
Field-marshal?' I asked flippantly.
"'Yet the pot of money might not make us really better off, and the
Queen's commission might take me away from you,' he said, and stooped
to kiss me.
"I don't know what came over me, then. A sudden fear seemed to
contract my heart. I caught him about the neck, declaring we could not
be happier than we were.
"'Throw the letter into the fire, Duncan!' I cried. 'It may separate
us, and I'd rather have you than all the world besides!' He held me
close a minute, then laughed a little.
"What geese we are! How could anything separate us, if we don't let
it? You know very well any advantage would cease to be one the minute
it came between us. We will send the letter, but we will use our own
judgment about whatever it brings us.'
"So it was sent, and--what is that? Tegeloo, what is it? are we to
take to the boats, after all? Why are they shouting so?"
She rose, and the girls after her. Tegeloo, seemingly deprived of
speech, was motioning wildly at the door leading to the saloon. They
dashed past him into the roomful of people cheering, shouting, crying,
praying, and kissing, in a perfect frenzy of relief.
Some one, with a face far blacker than the Hindu boy's, caught each
girl by the hand.
"Girlies," cried a well-known voice. "We are safe--the fire is out!"
Then turning quickly, "Friends, let's sing 'Old Hundred,'--hearty now!"
The words were scarcely out of his mouth, when, as with one impulse,
all broke into the grand old measure. Nobody pitched the tune, nor
started it--it started itself! Mrs. Campbell sang it on her knees,
with streaming eyes and hair, the captain and his daughters sang it
locked in each other's arms, and the Traveler, seeing Lady Moreham left
momently alone, clasped her hand in brotherly fashion, and joined his
fine bass to her uncultivated treble, never thinking of discords. So
may the Redeemed some day sing the Doxology in Heavenly courts, safe
not only from death, but better still, safe from the life we know of
here!
When the "Amen," had died into silence the captain said, happily,
"Now, good people, get yourselves to bed as quick as you can. The
storm is over, the fire is out, and though the poor old girl is so
battered up she's lost her beauty, her heart's still in the right
place--her engines are working all right, in spite of the cyclone! Now
hustle, every one of you--breakfast won't be served till ten
o'clock--and Heaven bless and keep us all!"