Her Sailor. Marshall Saunders
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three minutes.”
“ ’Steban, I can’t leave her—I oughtn’t to,” murmured the girl, miserably.
“All right—stay, then.”
“Mamma, mamma, I will stay with you,” and she ran and threw her arms around the weeping figure.
Captain Fordyce stared at them from under his black brows. An instantaneous and almost imperceptible change passed over the sorrowing woman. He knew it from the movement of her shoulder-blades.
Nina felt it, was confused, and looked around at him.
“Good-bye,” he said, calmly; “wire me if you change your mind before to-morrow noon. If not, I will run up and get you next trip.”
Mrs. Danvers’s sobs ceased. She had been crying at intervals all the morning. This was the climax, “Nina,” she said, in a muffled voice.
The girl put her ear to her lips. Captain Fordyce could not hear what was said, but he could make a shrewd guess. The duty of a wife was to leave father and mother, and cleave to her husband.
Mr. Danvers whirled his ponderous form around, and, winking more vigorously than ever, stepped to the doorway. This was final. Up to the last he had hoped that his wife’s grief would continue, that Captain Fordyce would relent and would leave them their child. They were to lose her. He must go home and face that empty chair.
Mrs. Danvers had straightened herself up, and was pulling down her veil. Captain Fordyce was whisking Nina out to the train bearing down upon Rubicon Meadows with a rush and a roar befitting a monster that would steal children from the very arms of their parents.
Mrs. Danvers had ceased crying now, but Nina had taken up the dismal performance, and was blindly waving farewells from the window of a parlour-car. Now they were gone; that chapter in life’s story was finished—a lively, eventful chapter—and now began one unblessed by youth, mischief, and beauty. Mr. Danvers was getting old, and, placing himself by the side of his wife, he plodded wearily homeward. Perhaps if he had married some other woman he might have had children of his own—but what diabolical thoughts were these crowding his head, and he a deacon in the church; with an inward and horrified shudder he offered his arm to his wife.
She accepted the unusual attention. Her livelier feminine imagination pictured to her a new quiet and a new restfulness and happiness—yes, happiness—that were about to settle on them. It was all for the best—she could say it through her tears—although how they should miss that little witch!
Captain Fordyce sat quietly beside the witch. Her parents had been snatched from her. She was turning her bereaved gaze to the town. The shops, the houses, the churches, sprang past. She had only the meadows left, the beautiful Rubicon meadows, with their languidly flowing river—the place where her little feet had roamed since childhood, and now it, too, was gone. She was out in the open country away from the scenes of her childhood. She was fairly launched on the journey of life. Was it to be a happy one? Where would it end? When would she come back? Perhaps never.
She must be torn to pieces with nervous terror, such terror as probably agitated trembling brides for the first few hours after leaving the parental roof, and in deep and intense sympathy her husband gently touched the tiny gloved hand lying on her lap.
He wished to see her whole face, not a section of pink cheek.
She moved her head abruptly, and presented to him not tears and dejection, but a pouting mouth and a frowning brow. Her agitation was gone. She was worrying over some other matter.
“What’s wrong with you?” he asked, wonderingly.
She favoured him with one of her indignant stares.
“That woman is not my mother, why don’t you tell me who she is?”
Captain Fordyce was aghast. Then he looked over his shoulder. He was afraid the man behind had heard her low, wrathful tones. Where in the name of all that was wonderful had she picked up this information? He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it feebly; he must have time to think over this statement, and make up his mind what to answer her; so with an incoherent excuse he left her, and hurried in the direction of the smoking-car.
Before they reached Boston he was again beside her; but he made no effort at conversation, and as if she had forgotten her remark to him, she occupied herself by an animated observation of everything about her. She was intensely interested, intensely pleased, and watched his every movement like a delighted little cat.
“Are we going to stop, already?” she exclaimed, when their carriage, after lumbering through street after street, pulled up in front of a hotel.
He drew out his watch. “I can give you two hours before the Merrimac claims me, but you had better have something to eat first.”
“Can’t I have it here in this carriage?”
“No, you cannot,” he said, decidedly. “I am not going to drive through the streets with a lunching young lady.”
“Then let us make haste,” she said, meekly descending to the pavement.
An hour later, while they were driving to and fro, and he was pointing out objects of special historic interest in the prim old Puritan city, he interposed a question, “How does it all impress you?”
She shook her fluffy head. “Oh, delicious confusion, and noise, plenty of noise! Everything is mixed up to me. I can’t seem to separate things. You show me one house, and I look at it, but it melts at once into others. Everything is so close. How can city people think with all these things to look at? Just see that funny cart! Why, there are real reindeer, like those I once saw in a circus.”
In the utmost satisfaction he contemplated her gleeful, laughing face. “Now,” he said, regretfully, “I must take you back to the hotel. You will not be lonely without me?”
“I shall not be lonely without you,” she said, with determination; but when they stood a little later in the middle of a huge mirror-lined reception-room, she looked askance at the big plush chairs holding out inviting arms to her, and faltered, “You will not be very long?”
He smiled in immense gratification, and to his further surprise received a voluntary caress and a pat on the shoulder, while she lisped, “ ’Steban, don’t let any of those things run over you.”
He stood waiting for an instant, a slight stealthy colour creeping to his face. But there were no further endearments for him. She was staring out the window with her round, childish eyes; and muttering, “Half a loaf is better than no bread,” he swung himself down-stairs and on to a street-car.
He did not see her again until the next morning. She was tired and had gone to bed was the message he received when he returned to the hotel.
Something in her appearance amused him as she came gliding down the long corridor, and he smiled a smile so broad that it threatened to degenerate into a grin. However, he controlled himself when she approached him, and said, politely, “Good morning, did you sleep well? You didn’t sleep at all!” he exclaimed, bringing her to a standstill, and putting an anxious finger on the dark semicircles under her eyes. “You were frightened to death in that great room.”
“I was not frightened. I didn’t sleep because I wanted to think,” she replied; “also I was very angry with a young boy.”
“What young boy?” he asked, cajolingly, as he drew her into a near writing-room to avoid a bevy of ladies on their way to the dining-room.
“A boy that came when I rang the bell.”
“A bell-boy. What did he do?”
“He called me ‘ma’am,’ and when I asked him what he meant he said, ‘Beg pardon, Mrs. Fordyce!’ How could you—how dare you?”
Captain Fordyce suppressed his amusement. “Well, are you not Mrs. Fordyce?”
“No; you must not write me down your wife. I want to be Miss Danvers.”
“Have