"How will you find anything better?"
"Oh, I"ve a scheme. When it develops I may let you in, but not just at this stage." I wanted to tantalize him a bit. "You asked to see this stuff and I"ve obliged you."
Just at this moment Tom Barton came in, and Harvey threw a newspaper over the heap of letters, lest it should attract his attention and arouse his suspicions. It was quite needless, for Tom never suspected anything in his life. We talked over a few trifles for fifteen minutes and then, as Tom said he must be going, I walked out into the hall with him.
"I"m going home early," he remarked. "Statia hasn"t felt very well for the past day or two, and I am a little worried about her."
I was sincerely sorry to hear it. My chagrin over the things she said to me had modified a good deal and I entertained at that moment only the kindest feelings toward her.
"I wish you would come up to dinner to-night," said Tom, wistfully. "I think that would brighten her up if anything can. She"s not ill, but merely out of sorts. Come, that"s a good fellow."
I had as lief go there as anywhere and I consented without more demur.
There was something in the dog-like attachment of Tom for me that was touching, and in a few days more I would be gone from him for months. As for his sister, I was sure she couldn"t bother me more than I could her.
I had the two letters in my pocket. If she tried any of her games, I would read them to her.
Statia was unquestionably pale that evening when, after some delay, she came into the parlor to greet me. But she a.s.sumed a cheerful air and, when Tom went up stairs and left us alone, inquired if I had carried out my plan of advertising for a companion on my voyage.
"Not only have I advertised," I said, pointedly, "but I have received over a hundred answers. From that number I have picked out several, among which I have no doubt I shall find what I want. In fact, I have secured two staterooms on the Madiana, that sails for the Windward Islands on the 12th, so certain am I that I shall need them both."
There was not much color in her face before, but what little there was left it; which I attributed to her disappointment at the ill success of her predictions.
"Are you really going to carry out this senseless project?" she asked.
"I can hardly believe you such a reckless fellow."
"Why is it reckless?" I inquired, boldly. "I need a typewriter. Some young woman needs a situation. Dr. Chambers says it will not do for me to travel alone, and he believes a journey to the tropics the best thing for my health. I"d like to know what ideas you have in that head of yours. I don"t mind the reflections you cast upon me, but I object to your attacking the character of a young lady who is to become my employee."
She avoided the point and asked if I was willing to let her see the answers I had received. She added that sometimes a woman"s intuitions were better than a man"s judgment and that she might save me from getting entrapped.
I laughed at her ingenious stratagem, and drew the two letters that I had laid aside from my coat pocket.
"It is almost like ill faith," said I, "but as you will not even see the handwriting, and can never know the ident.i.ty of the writers, I am going to read two of these letters to you. They are the best of the lot, so far as I can judge, and I have no doubt one of them will be the lucky applicant."
She composed herself as well as she could, though the nervous fit was still on her, while I read slowly, pausing between the sentences, each of the letters given in full in the earlier part of this chapter.
"Which of them do you imagine it will be?" she inquired, when I had finished.
"I must at least see them before I can answer that. The first one (the one signed "Alice") is the brightest, and indicates a jolly nature that I would like to cultivate; but there is something in the other that I fancy, also. A sort of melody in a minor key. I shall not be content until I see the original."
Statia twisted the ta.s.sels on the arms of the chair she sat in.
"You are a hopeless scamp!" she said, reddening. "Why do you pretend to me that you have the least intention of doing any sensible work with the a.s.sistance of these women, or that you believe either what an honest girl should be?"
"Come, that"s going too far!" I replied.
"No, it"s not," she persisted, earnestly. "It is right that I should say these things to you. You are the most intimate friend of--my brother.
You have no mother, no sister, no one to advise you. This plan, which you are entering upon with such a gay heart, may result in dragging you down to the depths, and perhaps your companion, if she be not already in that category. Don, if you ever cared for Tom--for any of us--stop this thing now!"
I was so astounded at the plainness of her insinuation that I could not reply for some moments. She sat opposite to me, her head thrown forward, her lips parted, her eyes slowly filling with tears.
"You had your chance," I responded, not very politely, it must be admitted. "If you had answered in the affirmative the question I asked you last week this could never have happened. Since you throw me back on myself, you have no right to prevent me going my own way."
She dropped her face in her open hands, to recover her equanimity. When she looked up again she appeared much calmer.
"Don," she said, tenderly, "you must not be so impetuous. Give up this plan and perhaps--some day--I--"
"It is too late," I replied, understanding her very well. "I will never ask any woman a second time the question I asked you. Be decent, Statia.
You make too much of a little thing. If there had been anything very wicked in my mind, do you think I would have come here to tell you about it? Let us drop the subject, and be good friends for the short time that remains before I go. Why, there"s less than a fortnight left."
She nodded, attempted to smile, and finding that she made a poor show at it, left the room to prepare herself for dinner. When the meal was served, however, we missed her old joviality. She did not speak unless spoken to, and Tom, after trying in vain to engage her in conversation, declared that she must go to see Dr. Chambers the very next morning.
"You"ll get into the state that Don did last winter," he said, half jestingly, "if you keep on. He began with just a plain, ordinary attack of the blues, and see where it landed him. Yes, you certainly must go to see Chambers. I never knew you like this before, and there"s nothing on earth to cause it."
When I mentioned, soon after we rose from the table, that I had an engagement at my rooms--a fiction, by-the-by--Tom said if I was going to walk he would go part way with me. I was glad to breathe the pure cold air of December and listen to the chatter of the honest fellow, while at the same time escaping from that house, that had nearly sent me again into the doldrums.
CHAPTER V.
MEETING MISS MARJORIE.
The next morning was an awfully long one. I had decided to call on Miss May in the afternoon, "between the hours of two and four," as she had stipulated. Although I had never seen her and had no description of what she was like, I already hoped she would be the One to make my coming journey agreeable. I had the old impetuosity, you will see, that absence of calm deliberation that had sent me to a Sanitarium and nearly to my grave.
If I intended to take a train scheduled to start for any given point at ten I was always in the station without fail at half past nine, stamping my feet at the closed gate, with alternate glances at my watch. If I had an engagement of special interest for a Friday, the Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays dragged horribly.
It had been explained to me fully by Dr. Chambers that I must reform this by my own exertions and that drugs could but a.s.sist me in a slight degree. Still breaking away from the habits of years is not an easy thing, and in spite of all I could do I had the old nervousness that day.
At about eleven o"clock, having exhausted the charms of breakfast, the morning papers and several cigars, I thought of a plan to get rid of an hour or more, and taking my coat, hat and cane, I walked down to Cook"s office to see if anything new had transpired with regard to the trip of the "Madiana." There was a rumor in the Journal that yellow fever had broken out in Jamaica, one of the points where I wanted to touch, and although the source of the news did not particularly recommend it, I thought it well to inquire what the agent had heard in relation to the matter.
As I entered the office my attention was attracted by a quiet appearing man of about thirty, dressed in black and wearing a white tie, who was evidently contemplating the same journey as myself. Now a man wearing a white tie may be either a clergyman, a gambler or a confidence man, and I had no faith in my ability to decide which of those eminent professions this particular person was most likely to adorn. He glanced up from a prospectus which he was examining, as I entered, and made way for me at the counter.
For reasons which I could not explain I liked the man at first sight. If he was a rogue, I reasoned, it was no more true of him, probably, than of most men, and there was no reason to suppose that he had any design in going to the West Indies other than to recuperate his health, which appeared rather delicate. If, on the contrary, he was any sort of clergyman I would be delighted with his companionship.
When the agent introduced us to each other, as he did a few minutes later, I discovered that the white tie had no especial significance, being merely a fad or fancy; for Mr. Wesson informed me that he was a hardware merchant from Boston, with a slight tendency to bronchitis, and was going south to escape February and March, which are usually injurious to persons affected by that complaint in the Eastern States.
I learned from the agent that the "Madiana" was filling up rapidly, and that there were now no entire staterooms unoccupied, except two or three containing four berths. Mr. Wesson had no choice but to share the room of some one who was already on the list, and at the time I came in he was making natural inquiries as to the other pa.s.sengers, in the hope of selecting a congenial roommate. The agent told him what he could about those whom he had personally seen, but the information was necessarily meagre.
"It may not seem specially important," remarked Mr. Wesson, in an affable manner, to me, "who occupies the other berth, for a few weeks on a steamer, but I happened on one occasion to get a very disagreeable companion, and ever since I have tried to use caution. I should have entered my name earlier, and thus have secured an entire room, as you have done, but I waited a long time before deciding whether to come this way or another. Now, I am just a little too late to get a room by myself, unless I wish to pay three fares for one person, which candidly I do not feel like doing."
I suggested that unless the boat was very much crowded, which I did not antic.i.p.ate, an arrangement for a change of cabin could doubtless be made in case the first one proved unbearable. With the remark that this was true, Mr. Wesson decided to take the remaining berth in a room not far from mine, in the after part of the ship, which had the advantage of being removed from all the smells of the cook"s galley, as well as the dumping of ashes, which often annoys people quartered amidships at a very early hour in the morning.
I asked the agent for a list of the pa.s.sengers, so far as he was able to give them, desiring to see if there were any names of people who knew me, and devoutly hoping there were none. Mr. Wesson and I went over them together, and made a simultaneous announcement that the entire lot were strangers to us.
They had come from the West, the North, the South, hardly any from New York, and only one from Boston, a strange thing when every traveller knows that Bostonians rival Chicagoans in being found in all sorts of places.
"I often think," said Mr. Wesson, with a smile, "of the odd fate that brings fifty or hundred people together on a steamer, where neither sees a single familiar face except those he has brought with him; and before the voyage is ended the miniature world is like the larger one outside, with its strong likes and dislikes, its petty jealousies, its small talk, its gauging of character and capacity. Give me a month at sea with a man, and I think I can figure him up pretty well."