Her Sailor. Marshall Saunders
Читать онлайн книгу.
with captains.”
“Yes, they can,” he said, soothingly, “but I prefer you to take the name that belongs to you. You are always crying honesty. What about sailing under false colours?”
“I think we had better have some breakfast,” she said, haughtily.
“Yes, Nina, but first go take off that red toggery.”
“My morning jacket,” she said, with annoyance, “my new morning jacket with the pinked edges. Mamma said it would be just the thing for breakfast.”
“For Rubicon Meadows, not for a city hotel.”
“I refuse to take it off. Mamma spent hours in making it.”
“Then I refuse to take breakfast with you, little green, country apple.”
“Whose fault is it that I am green?” she said, irritably. “Who has kept me mewed up in the country?”
“The best place for you, duckie. Go take off that jacket.”
“Oh, I am so disappointed in you. I am so sorry I left home. I thought men were nice and amiable when they were married. I thought they would let their wives do anything; and you said you lov—loved me!”
“So I do, sweetheart,” he said, soothingly; “but I don’t want to have people goggling at you. You are sensitive and nervous from yesterday, and your lack of sleep last night. You could not stand observation. Come back and show me what you have in the way of clothes. Your esteemed mother may know more about books than I do, but I bet you she doesn’t know so much about the fashions.”
With a proud and dignified air the girl led the way to her room. “There,” she said, throwing back her trunk lid, “you may see all I have. They’re mostly things you sent me, anyway.”
He rapidly tossed over every article of clothing submitted to him. “All very well for a maiden lady, not quite enough for a married one.”
“Will you stop?” she said, warningly. “I am not married.”
“Certainly, darling. Here—what’s the matter with this? This is what I call a blue silk blouse with a dash of gold for trimming. Natty, slightly nautical, and in good taste. Take off your red flannel jacket, and I will help you on with it.”
“You will do nothing of the sort,” she said, opening the door. “Go out into the hall.”
He stuffed his handkerchief in his mouth so that she would not hear him laughing, and, having attained to sobriety when she issued from the room a few minutes later, went soberly down the hall by the side of his disturbed young princess.
She thawed when they reached the big dining-room. “Shy, with all her bravado,” he muttered, watching her as she crept along in his wake. “Treats me like a dog when we are alone, and like a lord before strangers. It would pay to keep her in a crowd.”
She took but little breakfast, and once or twice volunteered remarks to him in a gentle and touchingly confidential tone. Her lips quivered several times, and his face darkened at the sight; for he knew she was thinking of her home and her uncertain parentage.
“Confusion to the brute that forced me to snatch her from that quiet place,” he reflected, with inward anger. “I wish I could see him squirm;” and his gaze went to those windows of the dining-room nearest the shores of distant England. Then he addressed Nina under his breath: “Darling, will you do some shopping with me before we go on board the Merrimac?”
“If you word that sentence properly, I will,” she returned, quietly.
“Miss Danvers, will you be kind enough to bestow the light of your countenance on me while I make a tour of the principal Boston stores?”
“Yes,” she replied, tranquilly, “I will.”
For several hours they went from store to store. He was hard to suit; and Nina was obliged to allow herself to be pinched, pulled, and fitted by obsequious dressmakers and their attendants, until at last her husband and guardian was satisfied. He put her in a hack; and the bewildered, interested, and slightly homesick girl found herself being rapidly driven through a noisy, dirty, and mysterious part of the city that at last, however, opened on a stretch of narrow blue water.
She uttered an exclamation of delight, and hung out the carriage window. They had rolled into an enormously long and vaulted shed in which bales of merchandise were piled as high as the roof. Some of these bales were flying wildly through the air, all, however, swinging in the direction of several black, open mouths in the hull of a huge steamer lying against the wharf outside. A number of light yellow boxes were also tumbling to and fro, these propelled by shouting men. The mad haste prevailing among animate and inanimate objects made Nina fall a prey to complete bewilderment, and she frantically clung to the strong arm that was to guide her through this sea of apparent confusion.
When they reached the gangway, a kind of paralysis seized her, and she was conscious of being lifted bodily and set down on a floor as clean as that of the scrubbed kitchens in Rubicon Meadows.
She was on the deck of ’Steban’s beloved Merrimac; and, gazing hurriedly about her, she took in the noble lines of a staunch and beautiful oceangoing steamer. But ’Steban had disappeared after a brief, “Show this lady to ninety-three;” and some one was waiting to conduct her down into the heart of this wonderful and mysterious thing. She meekly followed her guide, who was a smart boy in buttons, and presently she found herself alone and standing in front of a narrow red couch. She dropped on it, passed her hand over her eyes, and sat for a few minutes in blank contentment.
Then she began to reflect. She was quite alone in a tiny room not a quarter as large as her bedroom in Rubicon Meadows. She was very, very young. She had left her darling home and two people who adored her. She was going to sea with a monster whom she hated and could never, never live with. The passengers on the steamer would probably be fine city people who would despise her as a green country girl; but she did not care. She would wear her red jacket to breakfast every morning if she wished. They would probably all be shipwrecked and go down to the fishes. What did anything matter, anyway?
From blank despair she proceeded to a more active display of her emotions, and was soon violently weeping. She would cry now until she died. She was a poor, unfortunate lily, uprooted from her native soil. She was withering cruelly in this atmosphere of neglect. ’Steban might have spent at least five minutes with her on her arrival in this new and strange place, and she redoubled her “tear falling pity.”
However, at eighteen one cannot weep for ever, and after an hour had elapsed she sat up and began to review her situation. After all, it was not so very heartrending. How many girls in Rubicon Meadows would give their worldly all to be in her position—Captain Fordyce and all her other woes included? And if she were too desperately unhappy on this dreaded voyage, and if she were to escape shipwreck, her home was always open to her—her beloved home; and flinging herself excitedly from the couch she began to pace up and down the tiny room.
How well planned it was: two white berths, one red couch, a wash-stand and rack for glasses and brushes, and a big open port-hole encased by a shining brass rim. Oh, and a glass! and, hurrying to it, she examined with interest her tear-stained face. White skin, pink cheeks, fluffy auburn hair, hazel eyes, nose passable, and one row of white teeth. Further than that the liliputian mirror refused to go, and, with a smile at its absurdity in not taking in her chin and lower row of teeth, she resolved to have it more conveniently hung, and turned to her window.
There was a great rattling of ropes overhead and creaking of chains, a running to and fro, and a succession of whistles; and, surely now they were moving, actually moving. She would like to go on deck, but she would not venture alone. Well, she could see a section of the long wharf from here. It was gliding slowly from them. Surely it was moving, and the Merrimac was stationary. Some of the boxes and bales were left behind; the rearing, plunging horses were being driven away; the workmen were scattering; but here on the end of the wharf was a crowd of men and women, the air about them alive with waving handkerchiefs, hats describing eccentric