The Lady of the Aroostook

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IV.

Lydia did not know when the captain came on board. Once, talking in
the cabin made itself felt through her dreams, but the dense sleep of
weary youth closed over her again, and she did not fairly wake till
morning. Then she thought she heard the crowing of a cock and the
cackle of hens, and fancied herself in her room at home; the illusion
passed with a pang. The ship was moving, with a tug at her side, the
violent respirations of which were mingled with the sound of the swift
rush of the vessels through the water, the noise of feet on the deck,
and of orders hoarsely shouted.

The girl came out into the cabin, where Thomas was already busy with
the breakfast table, and climbed to the deck. It was four o'clock of
the summer's morning; the sun had not yet reddened the east, but the
stars were extinct, or glimmered faint points immeasurably withdrawn
in the vast gray of the sky. At that hour there is a hovering dimness
over all, but the light on things near at hand is wonderfully keen and
clear, and the air has an intense yet delicate freshness that seems
to breathe from the remotest spaces of the universe,--a waft from
distances beyond the sun. On the land the leaves and grass are soaked
with dew; the densely interwoven songs of the birds are like a fabric
that you might see and touch. But here, save for the immediate noises
on the ship, which had already left her anchorage far behind, the
shouting of the tug's escape-pipes, and the huge, swirling gushes
from her powerful wheel, a sort of spectacular silence prevailed, and
the sounds were like a part of this silence. Here and there a small
fishing schooner came lagging slowly in, as if belated, with scarce
wind enough to fill her sails; now and then they met a steamboat,
towering white and high, a many-latticed bulk, with no one to be seen
on board but the pilot at his wheel, and a few sleepy passengers on
the forward promenade. The city, so beautiful and stately from the
bay, was dropping, and sinking away behind. They passed green islands,
some of which were fortified: the black guns looked out over the
neatly shaven glacis; the sentinel paced the rampart.

"Well, well!" shouted Captain Jenness, catching sight of Lydia where
she lingered at the cabin door. "You are an early bird. Glad to see
you up! Hope you rested well! Saw your grandfather off all right, and
kept him from taking the wrong train with my own hand. He's terribly
excitable. Well, I suppose I shall be just so, at his age. Here!" The
captain caught up a stool and set it near the bulwark for her. "There!
You make yourself comfortable wherever you like. You're at home, you
know." He was off again in a moment. Lydia cast her eye over at the
tug. On the deck, near the pilot-house, stood the young man who had
stopped the afternoon before, while she sat at the warehouse door,
and asked her grandfather if she were not ill. At his feet was a
substantial valise, and over his arm hung a shawl. He was smoking,
and seated near him, on another valise, was his companion of the day
before, also smoking. In the instant that Lydia caught sight of them,
she perceived that they both recognized her and exchanged, as it were,
a start of surprise. But they remained as before, except that he who
was seated drew out a fresh cigarette, and without looking up reached
to the other for a light. They were both men of good height, and they
looked fresh and strong, with something very alert in their slight
movements,--sudden turns of the head and brisk nods, which were
not nervously quick. Lydia wondered at their presence there in an
ignorance which could not even conjecture. She knew too little to know
that they could not have any destination on the tug, and that they
would not be making a pleasure-excursion at that hour in the morning.
Their having their valises with them deepened the mystery, which was
not solved till the tug's engines fell silent, and at an unnoticed
order a space in the bulwark not far from Lydia was opened and steps
were let down the side of the ship. Then the young men, who had
remained, to all appearance, perfectly unconcerned, caught up their
valises and climbed to the deck of the Aroostook. They did not give
her more than a glance out of the corners of their eyes, but the
surprise of their coming on board was so great a shock that she did
not observe that the tug, casting loose from the ship, was describing
a curt and foamy semicircle for her return to the city, and that the
Aroostook, with a cloud of snowy canvas filling overhead, was moving
over the level sea with the light ease of a bird that half swims, half
flies, along the water. A sudden dismay, which was somehow not fear
so much as an overpowering sense of isolation, fell upon the girl.
She caught at Thomas, going forward with some dishes in his hand,
with a pathetic appeal.

"Where are you going, Thomas?"

"I'm going to the cook's galley to help dish up the breakfast."

"What's the cook's galley?"

"Don't you know? The kitchen."

"Let me go with you. I should like to see the kitchen." She trembled
with eagerness. Arrived at the door of the narrow passage that ran
across the deck aft of the forecastle, she looked in and saw, amid
a haze of frying and broiling, the short, stocky figure of a negro,
bow-legged, and unnaturally erect from the waist up. At sight of
Lydia, he made a respectful duck forward with his uncouth body.
"Why, are you the cook?" she almost screamed in response to this
obeisance.

"Yes, miss," said the man, humbly, with a turn of the pleading black
eyes of the negro.

Lydia grew more peremptory: "Why--why--I thought the cook was
a woman!"

"Very sorry, miss," began the negro, with a deprecatory smile, in
a slow, mild voice.

Thomas burst into a boy's yelling laugh: "Well, if that ain't the best
joke on Gabriel! He'll never hear the last of it when I tell it to the
second officer!"

"Thomas!" cried Lydia, terribly, "you shall _not_!" She stamped
her foot. "Do you hear me?"

The boy checked his laugh abruptly. "Yes, ma'am," he said
submissively.

"Well, then!" returned Lydia. She stalked proudly back to the cabin
gangway, and descending shut herself into her state-room.

V.

A few hours later Deacon Latham came into the house with a milk-pan
full of pease. He set this down on one end of the kitchen table, with
his straw hat beside it, and then took a chair at the other end and
fell into the attitude of the day before, when he sat in the parlor
with Lydia and Miss Maria waiting for the stage; his mouth was
puckered to a whistle, and his fingers were held above the board in
act to drub it. Miss Maria turned the pease out on the table, and took
the pan into her lap. She shelled at the pease in silence, till the
sound of their pelting, as they were dropped on the tin, was lost in
their multitude; then she said, with a sharp, querulous, pathetic
impatience, "Well, father, I suppose you're thinkin' about Lyddy."

"Yes, Maria, I be," returned her father, with uncommon plumpness,
as if here now were something he had made up his mind to stand to.
"I been thinkin' that Lyddy's a woman grown, as you may say."

"Yes," admitted Miss Maria, "she's a woman, as far forth as that goes.
What put it into your head?"

"Well, I d'know as I know. But it's just like this: I got to thinkin'
whether she mightn't get to feelin' rather lonely on the voyage,
without any other woman to talk to."

"I guess," said Miss Maria, tranquilly, "she's goin' to feel lonely
enough at times, any way, poor thing! But I told her if she wanted
advice or help about anything just to go to the stewardess. That
Mrs. Bland that spent the summer at the Parkers' last year was always
tellin' how they went to the stewardess for most everything, and she
give her five dollars in gold when they got into Boston. I shouldn't
want Lyddy should give so much as that, but I should want she should
give something, as long's it's the custom."

"They don't have 'em on sailin' vessels, Captain Jenness said; they
only have 'em on steamers," said Deacon Latham.

"Have what?" asked Miss Maria, sharply.

"Stewardesses. They've got a cabin-boy."

Miss Maria desisted a moment from her work; then she answered, with
a gruff shortness peculiar to her, "Well, then, she can go to the
cook, I suppose. It wouldn't matter which she went to, I presume."

Deacon Latham looked up with the air of confessing to sin before the
whole congregation. "The cook's a man,--a black man," he said.

Miss Maria dropped a handful of pods into the pan, and sent a handful
of peas rattling across the table on to the floor. "Well, who in
Time"--the expression was strong, but she used it without hesitation,
and was never known to repent it "_will_ she go to, then?"

"I declare for't," said her father, "I don't know. I d'know as I
ever thought it out fairly before; but just now when I was pickin'
the pease for you, my mind got to dwellin' on Lyddy, and then it come
to me all at once: there she was, the only _one_ among a whole
shipful, and I--I didn't know but what she might think it rather of
a strange position for her."

"_Oh_!" exclaimed Miss Maria, petulantly. "I guess Lyddy'd know
how to conduct herself wherever she was; she's a born lady, if ever
there was one. But what I think is--" Miss Maria paused, and did not
say what she thought; but it was evidently not the social aspect of
the matter which was uppermost in her mind. In fact, she had never
been at all afraid of men, whom she regarded as a more inefficient
and feebler-minded kind of women.

"The only thing't makes me feel easier is what the captain said
about the young men," said Deacon Latham.

"What young men?" asked Miss Maria.

"Why, I told you about 'em!" retorted the old man, with some
exasperation.

"You told me about two young men that stopped on the wharf and
pitied Lyddy's worn-out looks."

"Didn't I tell you the rest? I declare for't, I don't believe I did;
I be'n so put about. Well, as we was drivin' up to the depot, we met
the same two young men, and the captain asked 'em, 'Are you goin' or
not a-goin'?'--just that way; and they said, 'We're goin'.' And he
said, 'When you comin' aboard?' and he told 'em he was goin' to haul
out this mornin' at three o'clock. And they asked what tug, and he
told 'em, and they fixed it up between 'em all then that they was to
come aboard from the tug, when she'd got the ship outside; and that's
what I suppose they did. The captain he said to me he hadn't mentioned
it before, because he wa'n't sure't they'd go till that minute. He
give 'em a first-rate of a character."

Miss Maria said nothing for a long while. The subject seemed one with
which she did not feel herself able to grapple. She looked all about
the kitchen for inspiration, and even cast a searching glance into
the wood-shed. Suddenly she jumped from her chair, and ran to the
open window: "Mr. Goodlow! Mr. Goodlow! I wish you'd come in here
a minute."

She hurried to meet the minister at the front door, her father lagging
after her with the infantile walk of an old man.

Mr. Goodlow took off his straw hat as he mounted the stone step to the
threshold, and said good-morning; they did not shake hands. He wore a
black alpaca coat, and waistcoat of farmer's satin; his hat was dark
straw, like Deacon Latham's, but it was low-crowned, and a line of
ornamental openwork ran round it near the top.

"Come into the settin'-room," said Miss Maria. "It's cooler, in
there." She lost no time in laying the case before the minister.
She ended by saying, "Father, he don't feel just right about it,
and I d'know as I'm quite clear in my own mind."

The minister considered a while in silence before he said, "I think
Lydia's influence upon those around her will be beneficial, whatever
her situation in life may be."

"There, father!" cried Miss Maria, in reproachful relief.

"You're right, Maria, you're right!" assented the old man, and they
both waited for the minister to continue.

"I rejoiced with you," he said, "when this opportunity for Lydia's
improvement offered, and I am not disposed to feel anxious as to the
ways and means. Lydia is no fool. I have observed in her a dignity,
a sort of authority, very remarkable in one of her years."

"I guess the boys at the school down to the Mill Village found out
she had authority enough," said Miss Maria, promptly materializing
the idea.

"Precisely," said Mr. Goodlow.

"That's what I told father, in the first place," said Miss Maria.
"I guess Lyddy'd know how to conduct herself wherever she was,--just
the words I used."

"I don't deny it, Maria, I don't deny it," shrilly piped the old man.
"I ain't afraid of any harm comin' to Lyddy any more'n what you be.
But what I said was, Wouldn't she feel kind of strange, sort of lost,
as you may say, among so many, and she the only _one_?"

"She will know how to adapt herself to circumstances," said Mr.
Goodlow. "I was conversing last summer with that Mrs. Bland who
boarded at Mr. Parker's, and she told me that girls in Europe are
brought up with no habits of self-reliance whatever, and that young
ladies are never seen on the streets alone in France and Italy."

"Don't you think," asked Miss Maria, hesitating to accept this
ridiculous statement, "that Mrs. Bland exaggerated some?"

"She _talked_ a great deal," admitted Mr. Goodlow. "I should be
sorry if Lydia ever lost anything of that native confidence of hers
in her own judgment, and her ability to take care of herself under
any circumstances, and I do not think she will. She never seemed
conceited to me, but she _was_ the most self-reliant girl I
ever saw."

"You've hit it there, Mr. Goodlow. Such a spirit as she always had!"
sighed Miss Maria. "It was just so from the first. It used to go to my
heart to see that little thing lookin' after herself, every way, and
not askin' anybody's help, but just as quiet and proud about it! She's
her mother, all over. And yest'day, when she set here waitin' for the
stage, and it did seem as if I should have to give up, hearin' her
sob, sob, sob,--why, Mr. Goodlow, she hadn't any more idea of backin'
out than--than--" Miss Maria relinquished the search for a comparison,
and went into another room for a handkerchief. "I don't believe she
cared over and above about goin', from the start," said Miss Maria,
returning, "but when once she'd made up her mind to it, there she
was. I d'know as she _took_ much of a fancy to her aunt, but you
couldn't told from anything that Lyddy said. Now, if I have anything
on my mind, I have to blat it right out, as you may say; I can't seem
to bear it a minute; but Lyddy's different. Well," concluded Miss
Maria, "I guess there ain't goin' to any harm come to her. But it did
give me a kind of start, first off, when father up and got to feelin'
sort of bad about it. I d'know as I should thought much about it, if
he hadn't seemed to. I d'know as I should ever thought about anything
except her not havin' any one to advise with about her clothes. It's
the only thing she ain't handy with: she won't know what to wear. I'm
afraid she'll spoil her silk. I d'know but what father's _been_
hasty in not lookin' into things carefuller first. He most always does
repent afterwards."

"Couldn't repent beforehand!" retorted Deacon Latham. "And I tell you,
Maria, I never saw a much finer man than Captain Jenness; and the
cabin's everything I said it was, and more. Lyddy reg'larly went off
over it; 'n' I guess, as Mr. Goodlow says, she'll influence 'em for
good. Don't you fret about her clothes any. You fitted her out in
apple-pie order, and she'll soon be there. 'T ain't but a little
ways to Try-East, any way, to what it is some of them India voyages,
Captain Jenness said. He had his own daughters out the last voyage;
'n' I guess he can tell Lyddy when it's weather to wear her silk.
I d'know as I'd better said anything about what I was thinkin'. I
don't want to be noways rash, and yet I thought I couldn't be too
partic'lar."

For a silent moment Miss Maria looked sourly uncertain as to the
usefulness of scruples that came so long after the fact. Then she
said abruptly to Mr. Goodlow, "Was it you or Mr. Baldwin, preached
Mirandy Holcomb's fune'l sermon?"

VI.

One of the advantages of the negative part assigned to women in life
is that they are seldom forced to commit themselves. They can, if they
choose, remain perfectly passive while a great many things take place
in regard to them; they need not account for what they do not do.
From time to time a man must show his hand, but save for one supreme
exigency a woman need never show hers. She moves in mystery as long
as she likes; and mere reticence in her, if she is young and fair,
interprets itself as good sense and good taste.

Lydia was, by convention as well as by instinct, mistress of the
situation when she came out to breakfast, and confronted the young men
again with collected nerves, and a reserve which was perhaps a little
too proud. The captain was there to introduce them, and presented
first Mr. Dunham, the gentleman who had spoken to her grandfather on
the wharf, and then Mr. Staniford, his friend and senior by some four
or five years. They were both of the fair New England complexion; but
Dunham's eyes were blue, and Staniford's dark gray. Their mustaches
were blonde, but Dunham's curled jauntily outward at the corners,
and his light hair waved over either temple from the parting in the
middle. Staniford's mustache was cut short; his hair was clipped tight
to his shapely head, and not parted at all; he had a slightly aquiline
nose, with sensitive nostrils, showing the cartilage; his face was
darkly freckled. They were both handsome fellows, and fittingly
dressed in rough blue, which they wore like men with the habit of
good clothes; they made Lydia such bows as she had never seen before.
Then the Captain introduced Mr. Watterson, the first officer, to all,
and sat down, saying to Thomas, with a sort of guilty and embarrassed
growl, "Ain't he out yet? Well, we won't wait," and with but little
change of tone asked a blessing; for Captain Jenness in his way was
a religious man.

There was a sixth plate laid, but the captain made no further mention
of the person who was not out yet till shortly after the coffee was
poured, when the absentee appeared, hastily closing his state-room
door behind him, and then waiting on foot, with a half-impudent,
half-intimidated air, while Captain Jenness, with a sort of elaborate
repressiveness, presented him as Mr. Hicks. He was a short and slight
young man, with a small sandy mustache curling tightly in over his
lip, floating reddish-blue eyes, and a deep dimple in his weak,
slightly retreating chin. He had an air at once amiable and baddish,
with an expression, curiously blended, of monkey-like humor and
spaniel-like apprehensiveness. He did not look well, and till he had
swallowed two cups of coffee his hand shook. The captain watched him
furtively from under his bushy eyebrows, and was evidently troubled
and preoccupied, addressing a word now and then to Mr. Watterson, who,
by virtue of what was apparently the ship's discipline, spoke only
when he was spoken to, and then answered with prompt acquiescence.
Dunham and Staniford exchanged not so much a glance as a consciousness
in regard to him, which seemed to recognize and class him. They talked
to each other, and sometimes to the captain. Once they spoke to Lydia.
Mr. Dunham, for example, said, "Miss--ah--Blood, don't you think we
are uncommonly fortunate in having such lovely weather for a
start-off?"

"I don't know," said Lydia.

Mr. Dunham arrested himself in the use of his fork. "I beg your
pardon?" he smiled.

It seemed to be a question, and after a moment's doubt Lydia answered,
"I didn't know it was strange to have fine weather at the start."

"Oh, but I can assure you it is," said Dunham, with a certain
lady-like sweetness of manner which he had. "According to precedent,
we ought to be all deathly seasick."

"Not at _this_ time of year," said Captain Jenness.

"Not at this time of _year_," repeated Mr. Watterson, as if
the remark were an order to the crew.

Dunham referred the matter with a look to his friend, who refused
to take part in it, and then he let it drop. But presently Staniford
himself attempted the civility of some conversation with Lydia. He
asked her gravely, and somewhat severely, if she had suffered much
from the heat of the day before.

"Yes," said Lydia, "it was very hot."

"I'm told it was the hottest day of the summer, so far," continued
Staniford, with the same severity.

"I want to know!" cried Lydia.

The young man did not say anything more.

As Dunham lit his cigar at Staniford's on deck, the former said
significantly, "What a very American thing!"

"What a bore!" answered the other.

Dunham had never been abroad, as one might imagine from his calling
Lydia's presence a very American thing, but he had always consorted
with people who had lived in Europe; he read the Revue des Deux Mondes
habitually, and the London weekly newspapers, and this gave him the
foreign stand-point from which he was fond of viewing his native
world. "It's incredible," he added. "Who in the world can she be?"

"Oh, _I_ don't know," returned Staniford, with a cold disgust.
"I should object to the society of such a young person for a month or
six weeks under the most favorable circumstances, and with frequent
respites; but to be imprisoned on the same ship with her, and to have
her on one's mind and in one's way the whole time, is more than I
bargained for. Captain Jenness should have told us; though I suppose
he thought that if _she_ could stand it, _we_ might. There's
that point of view. But it takes all ease and comfort out of the
prospect. Here comes that blackguard." Staniford turned his back
towards Mr. Hicks, who was approaching, but Dunham could not quite
do this, though he waited for the other to speak first.

"Will you--would you oblige me with a light?" Mr. Hicks asked,
taking a cigar from his case.

"Certainly," said Dunham, with the comradery of the smoker.

Mr. Hicks seemed to gather courage from his cigar. "You didn't expect
to find a lady passenger on board, did you?" His poor disagreeable
little face was lit up with unpleasant enjoyment of the anomaly.
Dunham hesitated for an answer.

"One never can know what one's fellow passengers are going to be,"
said Staniford, turning about, and looking not at Mr. Hicks's face,
but his feet, with an effect of being, upon the whole, disappointed
not to find them cloven. He added, to put the man down rather than
from an exact belief in his own suggestion, "She's probably some
relation of the captain's."

"Why, that's the joke of it," said Hicks, fluttered with his superior
knowledge. "I've been pumping the cabin-boy, and he says the captain
never saw her till yesterday. She's an up-country school-marm, and she
came down here with her grandfather yesterday. She's going out to meet
friends of hers in Venice." The little man pulled at his cigar, and
coughed and chuckled, and waited confidently for the impression.

"Dunham," said Staniford, "did I hand you that sketch-block of mine
to put in your bag, when we were packing last night?"

"Yes, I've got it."

"I'm glad of that. Did you see Murray yesterday?"

"No; he was at Cambridge."

"I thought he was to have met you at Parker's." The conversation no
longer included Mr. Hicks or the subject he had introduced; after a
moment's hesitation, he walked away to another part of the ship. As
soon as he was beyond ear-shot, Staniford again spoke: "Dunham, this
girl is plainly one of those cases of supernatural innocence, on the
part of herself and her friends, which, as you suggested, wouldn't
occur among any other people in the world but ours."

"You're a good fellow, Staniford!" cried Dunham.

"Not at all. I call myself simply a human being, with the elemental
instincts of a gentleman, as far as concerns this matter. The girl
has been placed in a position which could be made very painful to her.
It seems to me it's our part to prevent it from being so. I doubt if
she finds it at all anomalous, and if we choose she need never do so
till after we've parted with her. I fancy we can preserve her
unconsciousness intact."

"Staniford, this is like you," said his friend, with glistening eyes.
"I had some wild notion of the kind myself, but I'm so glad you spoke
of it first."

"Well, never mind," responded Staniford. "We must make her feel that
there is nothing irregular or uncommon in her being here as she is.
I don't know how the matter's to be managed, exactly; it must be a
negative benevolence for the most part; but it can be done. The first
thing is to cow that nuisance yonder. Pumping the cabin-boy! The
little sot! Look here, Dunham; it's such a satisfaction to me to think
of putting that fellow under foot that I'll leave you all the credit
of saving the young lady's feelings. I should like to begin stamping
on him at once."

"I think you have made a beginning already. I confess I wish you
hadn't such heavy nails in your boots!"

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