Chapter 17

LADY MOREHAM SPEAKS.

Tegeloo brought Texas, with the ulsters, and told how he had found the bird cowering in its battered cage, which had been tossed headlong into the middle of the cabin, where it, fortunately, lodged between the bedsteads, being wedged in so closely as to escape further harm. The poor parrot looked sick enough, and was so subdued he came at once to Hope's wrist, with none of his usual feints and caprices, nestling up to her in a satisfied manner, as he plaintively muttered, "Poor Texas! Poor little Texas!" in response to her caresses.

Then, after a little, came a new phrase his mistress had long been trying to teach him, but which, with the obstinacy of his kind, he would never repeat. It came very softly now, as he tilted about on her white wrist, and cocked his head around with a sidelong, upward glance, "_Dear_ Hope!"

"Oh, hear!" she cried delighted. "Isn't that sweet of him? Dear Texas! Hope's pretty Texas! Was he nearly frightened to death in the storm?"

She forgot terror and surrounding discomforts for one minute, the next her heart stood still, as two sailors entered with a quantity of life-preservers, and amid rising clamor and confusion, the passengers began their preparations for departure by the boats. The storm's fury seemed to have spent itself, and the fiercer noises outside were no longer audible, only that steady chopping--chopping, that no one really understood. Perhaps this only intensified the heart-broken sobbings of the women and children, and the occasional groanings of strong men, who could no longer control their sense of helpless misery. Hope, sprang to her feet, her nerves giving way at last. "Oh, this is awful!" she muttered, turning her head wildly to left and right, like a creature suddenly caged. "I begin to feel the fire, Faith--don't you? It is stifling me!"

She was on the point of breaking into a hysterical shriek when a hand was laid upon her arm, and Lady Moreham said quickly,

"No, my child! It is only the closeness after a storm; not the fire. That is far away, and still smothered between walls in the hold. It may never break out, if they can get at it before it burns through to the air. They are working manfully, and will do everything to save us, and your brave father is at their head."

"Oh, if I could see papa! If I could be sure he is safe! He never thinks of himself where there is danger."

She was trembling all over, and Faith, catching her excitement, pressed closer, wide-eyed and shivering. Lady Moreham saw that, though they had been brave as mature women, so far, they were breaking down under the strain, unsupported by any older and stronger relative. The atmosphere was enervating here, and emotion is contagious. Glancing quickly around, she formed her resolution, and throwing an arm around each, said gently,

"Come! I have often heard you speak of the library. We can go there and be more quiet, and it will give us a better lookout on the forward deck. Won't you invite me to go there with you?"

"But papa--if he should look for us here?"

"I will send him a message. Ah, here's Mr. Allyne--have you come to tell us something?" for there was a desperate look in the young man's' face that startled her.

"No, only--good-by! They need more help below, and I am going down. You have these young ladies in charge, Madam?"

"Yes. And tell their father he will find the three of us in his own cabin when he needs us." Her eyes, sharp and imperative, questioned him--"Is there great danger?" But she did not speak.

He bowed gravely, and said, as if in response to her request. "I will tell him." Then, as Hope followed the lady, he gently intercepted her. "Please shake hands once more," he said, and with out a word she laid her icy palm to his.

He bowed over it respectfully.

"God bless you for the good, pure girl you are! Good-by."

He hurried out and Hope, dazed and dumb, followed the others. They found the little room, where they had passed so many homelike hours, sadly demoralized. One of the great windows was shivered to splinters, and through it projected a heavy spar, now safely wedged from further harm, and as they gazed out through the other great panes, it was upon a scene of intense desolation. The deck was quite empty, all the crew being busy below, but it was one mass of broken timbers, fallen sails, and all the debris of a half-wrecked vessel. But as the fresh air met their faces, it braced them to new courage, and each looked curiously about.

Above, the sky was already clearing and the ragged-edged clouds were rolling northwards, leaving clear spaces which rapidly enlarged. The sea, black and turbulent, still rolled heavily, but with diminishing motion, and its spray made everything damp about them. Turning on the lights, Lady Moreham said briskly, "We must have a blanket, or something, to shut out the storm. Where will I find one?"

"Right in our room--I'll get it," said Faith, feeling safer and better already in the home-like place, and soon the open window was well covered, the chairs wiped out and drawn close together, and Hope sank into one, Texas still clutching her wrist, with a long sigh of satisfaction.

"It _seems_ safer here, anyhow!" she murmured. "If papa could only be with us!"

The lady smiled.

"And I was just thinking how glad I was that he is not here, but that I could be so certain he was just where he ought to be to insure the safety of us all. How proud you must be of him, tonight! He is a true, brave man, and I am proud to call him my friend. Did you know we were schoolmates together?"

Hope looked up quickly, interested in spite of herself.

"That is it, then? I felt sure there was something, but he always avoided our questions. Was it when you were a young lady."

"No, a little girl. We lived in the same neighborhood."

"You did? Why--but papa lived in America, near Boston."

"So did I."

"Then you _are_ American!" cried the girl, triumphantly.

The lady laughed a little.

"Have you guessed it? Yes, I was born on a small hill farm in Massachusetts, and when a wee child used to trudge, barefooted, across our pasture-lot to a little unpainted schoolhouse, on the cross-roads."

"_You_, Lady Moreham?" breathed Faith in amazement.

"Ah, yes, it was I," sighed the lady. "So memory tells me, at least, but I can scarcely believe that the happy, care-free little creature, who chased butterflies, and gathered the trailing arbutus in Spring, and waded through the gorgeous October leaves in Fall, was my weary self."

"And you really liked being--being--"

My lady laughed out at Hope's embarrassment in framing her question.

"Oh! Didn't I like it? I had two sisters and a brother. One sister was a baby, and when the rest of us had done our 'stints' for the day, we used to take her out with us in her little four-wheeled wagon father had made her, and play by the hour--oh, so happily! I used to play at being queen, I remember, and make crowns out of burdock burs, stuck together, setting them on very softly over my curls in the coronation scene, because they pricked me so. But in spite of the hurt I would persist in wearing them. I sometimes wonder, is all that we do in childhood but a foreshadowing of what is to follow? My crowns have always cut me cruelly, but pride has kept me wearing them."

She drew herself up quickly, as if she had been thinking aloud, and added,

"Your grandfather's farm adjoined ours, and your father and I were playmates, and great friends. We were seldom separated till later, when I was a strong, rosy-cheeked girl of sixteen and he a strapping young lad, with a hankering for the sea. Well, we went our ways--he to sail as cabin-boy in a merchantman, I to journey up to Boston and seek service with some nice family."

"Service!" murmured Hope, involuntarily.

"It sounds queer, doesn't it? Yes, that was what I expected to do, and I was proud to be able to help at home, for the little farm was not productive, and the 'lien' on it was heavy. But I did not 'work out,' after all--in that way--my sister, who was now married and living in Lynn, found a place for me in the factory there. Like Hannah, I often was seen sitting at the window binding shoes."

"Oh! In Lynn. No wonder you were so interested when we talked about it."

"You noticed, did you, Brighteyes? Well, there I worked for two years, and there I--married."

She stopped as if done with the subject, and the girls, half-forgetful of their peril, looked at her in blank disappointment. It is a long step from a dingy shoe-factory in a New England town to a lordly country-seat in Old England, and both had fondly hoped to have it bridged while this communicative mood was on. But the lips had closed sternly, and Lady Moreham, seemingly quite forgetful of her young auditors, was gazing far away. Faith ventured, at length, to jog her consciousness.

"You asked me, once, a good deal about Brookline--were you there too?"

The lady nodded, then turned and looked at her with a quizzical glance.

"Ah, child, never be so curious to hear a sad story! Every one has griefs enough to bear without appropriating other people's. Yes, we did live in Brookline for several happy years--my husband and I. Our home was the porter's lodge of one of those fine places you used to admire. We were both young, hopeful, and strong. He was well educated, but could not endure clerkly confinement, and thought himself fortunate to be so well housed and have such healthy work. He was born in England, and we used to laugh together because, in some vague way, which we scarcely cared to fully understand, my husband was distantly related to the nobility. That was the phrase--'related to the nobility'--how we used to make fun of it, and pretend to trace out the connection! Once, at Christmas, I presented him with a family tree, and a peerage-book. The latter was something I had written up myself, and _such_ nonsense, but it made us fun for many weeks. We could laugh at anything in those days. Duncan really had no more idea of inheriting a title and estate at that time than I, a farm-bred girl, had myself. He was a thorough American, who loved his country, and because his parents had died and left him alone in the world, he was all the more helpful and self-reliant. How his eyes used to twinkle when we sat on our little porch, at evening, as he would say with a flourish, 'Yes, this is all well enough, Anna, but wait till you see our ancestral halls across the sea!' and then his laugh would ring out like the boy he was. But it is the unexpected that always happens. If we had counted on any such thing--"

"And after all it came true?" broke in Hope eagerly.

"Yes, it came true." Lady Moreham's voice sank to a sorrowful strain. "I shall never forget the day the news came! We had eaten our little supper--just the two of us, for we had no children,--and Duncan, after his custom, unfolded his newspaper to read, while I took the dishes from the table and washed them at the little white sink near by. I used to hear if there was any news worth the telling, and when he broke out excitedly, 'Why, Anna, listen to this!' I only turned silently, expecting to hear of some wonderful new invention, for that was a few years ago when the marvels of electricity were developing so rapidly, and Duncan was deeply interested in them. Instead, he read an advertisement, inserted by a London law firm, where his own name appeared with the usual promise that he would hear of something to his advantage, if he would write to their address.

"I went over to him and sat on the arm of his chair, as we discussed it, full of wonder and conjectures, and more in earnest over the fun of it than any possible advantage it might bring--for God knows, we were happy enough! We only wanted to be let alone."

She spoke with extreme bitterness, and the girls looked at her, astonished. It was difficult to believe any one could prefer plain comfort in a porter's lodge to a title and estates.

"But you wrote?" questioned Faith, eager to hear the whole.

"Of course. We were as foolish as all the rest of the world! We thought happiness and gold and honor the three Graces, instead of Faith, Hope, and Charity," smiling into the girls' excited faces.

"And isn't happiness?"--began Hope, but she shook her head.

"Not worldly happiness--no. It is too brief, too treacherous. If one learns to depend upon that, one is doomed to perpetual disappointment. I have long understood that contentment is better than what we call happiness--much better. Yes, we wrote, laughing together over the possibility that our ancestral home might be seeking us, but believing nothing of the kind. How we did joke over our united efforts at composing it! He was the scholar, but I suggested all sorts of long-stilted sentences to him, which he modified to suit himself. He used to think me bright in those days. When it was signed, addressed, and sealed, we looked into each other's eyes.

"'I wonder if we'll ever regret this?' said Duncan, serious for the first time. He was always more grave than I, and used often to curb my high spirits--who would think it now?

"'Fiddle-faddle! Regret a pot of money, or a Queen's commission as Field-marshal?' I asked flippantly.

"'Yet the pot of money might not make us really better off, and the Queen's commission might take me away from you,' he said, and stooped to kiss me.

"I don't know what came over me, then. A sudden fear seemed to contract my heart. I caught him about the neck, declaring we could not be happier than we were.

"'Throw the letter into the fire, Duncan!' I cried. 'It may separate us, and I'd rather have you than all the world besides!' He held me close a minute, then laughed a little.

"What geese we are! How could anything separate us, if we don't let it? You know very well any advantage would cease to be one the minute it came between us. We will send the letter, but we will use our own judgment about whatever it brings us.'

"So it was sent, and--what is that? Tegeloo, what is it? are we to take to the boats, after all? Why are they shouting so?"

She rose, and the girls after her. Tegeloo, seemingly deprived of speech, was motioning wildly at the door leading to the saloon. They dashed past him into the roomful of people cheering, shouting, crying, praying, and kissing, in a perfect frenzy of relief.

Some one, with a face far blacker than the Hindu boy's, caught each girl by the hand.

"Girlies," cried a well-known voice. "We are safe--the fire is out!" Then turning quickly, "Friends, let's sing 'Old Hundred,'--hearty now!"

The words were scarcely out of his mouth, when, as with one impulse, all broke into the grand old measure. Nobody pitched the tune, nor started it--it started itself! Mrs. Campbell sang it on her knees, with streaming eyes and hair, the captain and his daughters sang it locked in each other's arms, and the Traveler, seeing Lady Moreham left momently alone, clasped her hand in brotherly fashion, and joined his fine bass to her uncultivated treble, never thinking of discords. So may the Redeemed some day sing the Doxology in Heavenly courts, safe not only from death, but better still, safe from the life we know of here!

When the "Amen," had died into silence the captain said, happily,

"Now, good people, get yourselves to bed as quick as you can. The storm is over, the fire is out, and though the poor old girl is so battered up she's lost her beauty, her heart's still in the right place--her engines are working all right, in spite of the cyclone! Now hustle, every one of you--breakfast won't be served till ten o'clock--and Heaven bless and keep us all!"