"Yes, sir."
""S there a letter here for me?"
"I don"t know," she smiled. "Won"t you come in?"
The man came inside.
"Now," she said, "I"ll see. What is your name?"
"Ben--" he hesitated. "Oh--that don"t matter. Won"t be addressed to my name. Addressed like that."
He drew from his pocket a closely-folded, dirt-begrimed envelope.
Marian"s heart stopped beating. The envelope was blue--yes, the very shade of blue of that other in the pigeon-hole. And it was addressed: Phi Beta Ki, Nome, Alaska.
"Is there a letter here like that?" the man demanded, squinting at her through blood-shot eyes.
It was a tense moment. What should she say? She loathed the man; feared him, as well. Yet he had asked for the letter and had offered better proof than the mysterious college boy had. What should she say?
"Yes," she said, and then hesitated. Her heart beat violently. His searching eyes were upon her. "Yes, there was one. It came two months ago. A young man called for it and took it away."
"You--you gave it to him!"
The man lifted a hand as if to strike Marian. She did not flinch.
There came a growl from the door. Looking quickly, Marian caught the questioning gleam in the old leader"s eye.
The man"s arm fell.
"Yes," she said stoutly, "I gave it to him. Why should I not? He offered no real proof that he was the right person, it is true--"
"Then why--"
"But neither have you," Marian hurried on. "You might have picked that envelope up in the street, or taken it from a wastepaper basket. How do I know?"
"What--what sort of a boy was it?" the man asked more steadily.
"A good-looking, strapping young fellow, with blue eyes and an honest face."
"That"s him! That"s him!" the man almost raved. "Honest-lookin", yes, honest-lookin". They ain"t all honest that looks that way."
Again came the growl from the door.
Marian"s eyes glanced uneasily toward the pigeon-hole where the latest blue envelope rested. She caught an easy breath. A large white legal envelope quite hid the blue one.
"Well, if another one comes, remember it"s mine! Mine!" growled the man, as he went stamping out of the room.
"Old Rover," Marian said, taking the dog"s head between her hands.
"I"m glad you"re here. When there are such men as that about, we need you."
And yet, as she spoke her heart was full of misgivings. What if this man"s looks belied his nature? What if he were honest? And what if her good-looking college boy was a rascal? There in the pigeon-hole was the blue envelope. What was her duty?
Pulling on her calico parka, she went for a stroll on the beach. The cool, damp air of Arctic twilight by the sea was balm to her troubled brain. She came back to the cabin with a deep-seated conviction that she was right.
She was not given many days to decide whether she should take the letter with her or leave it. A sudden gale from the south sent the ice-floes rushing through the Straits. They hastened away to seas unknown, not to return for months. The little mail steamer came hooting its way around the Point. It brought a letter of the utmost importance to Marian.
While in Nome the summer before she had made some hasty sketches of the Chukches, natives of the Arctic coast of Siberia, while they camped on the beach there on a trading voyage in a thirty-foot skin-boat. These sketches had come to the notice of the ethnological society. They now wrote to her, asking that she spend a summer on the Arctic coast of Siberia, making sketches of these natives, who so like the Eskimos are yet so unlike them in many ways. The pay, they a.s.sured her, would be ample; in fact, the figures fairly staggered her. Should she complete this task in safety and to the satisfaction of the society, she would then be prepared to pay her way through a three years" course in the best art school of America. This had long been a cherished dream.
Marian"s eyes shone with happiness.
When she had read the letter through, she went for a five-mile walk down the beach.
Upon returning she burst in on her companion.
"Lucile," she exclaimed, "how would you like to spend the summer in Siberia?"
"Fine! Salt mine, I suppose," laughed Lucile. "But I thought all political prisoners had been released by the new Russian government?"
"I"m not joking," said Marian.
"Explain then."
Marian did explain. At the end of her explanation Lucile agreed to go as Marian"s traveling companion and tent-keeper. In two weeks her school work would be finished. It would be a strange, a delightful summer. Their enthusiasm grew as they talked about it. Long after they should have been asleep they were still making plans for this, their most wonderful adventure.
"But how"ll we go over?" exclaimed Lucile suddenly.
"Gasoline schooner, I suppose."
"I"d hate to trust any men I know who run those crafts," said Marian thoughtfully.
Lucile considered a moment.
"Native skin-boat, then."
"That would be rather thrilling--to cross from the new world into the old in a skin-boat."
"And safe enough too," said Marian. "Did you ever hear of a native boat being lost at sea?"
"One. But that one turned up at King"s Island, a hundred and fifty miles off its course."
"I guess we could risk it."
"All right, let"s go."
Marian sprang to her feet, threw back the blankets to her couch, and fifteen minutes later was dreaming of a tossing skin-boat on a wild sea of walrus monsters and huge white bears.
Her wild dreams did not come true. When the time came to cross the thirty-five miles of water which separates the Old World from the New, they sailed and paddled over a sea as placid as a mill-pond. Here a brown seal bobbed his head out of the water; here a spectacled eiderduck rode up and down on the tiny waves, and here a great ma.s.s of tubular seaweed drifted by to remind them that they were really on the bosom of the briny ocean.
Only one incident of the voyage caused them a feeling of vague unrest.