Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “Lay-days?” echoed Lydia.

  “The days we’re in port,” the boy explained.

  “Well, I should think as much!” She ate with the hunger that tranquillity bestows upon youth after the swift succession of strange events, and the conflict of many emotions. The captain had not returned in time, and she ate alone.

  After a while she ventured to the top of the gangway stairs, and stood there, looking at the novel sights of the harbor, in the red sunset light, which rose slowly from the hulls and lower spars of the shipping, and kindled the tips of the high-shooting masts with a quickly fading splendor. A delicate flush responded in the east, and rose to meet the denser crimson of the west; a few clouds, incomparably light and diaphanous, bathed themselves in the glow. It was a summer sunset, portending for the land a morrow of great heat. But cool airs crept along the water, and the ferry-boats, thrust shuttlewise back and forth between either shore, made a refreshing sound as they crushed a broad course to foam with their paddles. People were pulling about in small boats; from some the gay cries and laughter of young girls struck sharply along the tide. The noise of the quiescent city came off in a sort of dull moan. The lamps began to twinkle in the windows and the streets on shore; the lanterns of the ships at anchor in the stream showed redder and redder as the twilight fell. The homesickness began to mount from Lydia’s heart in a choking lump to her throat; for one must be very happy to endure the sights and sounds of the summer evening anywhere. She had to shield her eyes from the brilliancy of the kerosene when she went below into the cabin.

  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.