Chapter 19

OLD TIES AND NEW.

The next two days were glowing, as to weather, and filled with intensest life. There were trunks to pack, loaned articles to hunt up, or return, neglected stitches to take, and a vast amount of friendly visiting to be crowded in.

On shipboard one fully appreciates the old adage that "Blessings brighten as they take their flight." Even the tiresome become interesting when we feel we may never see them again, while the hobbies, or crankiness of the singular become entirely bearable, when they are about to be lost sight of forever. As death brings out the virtues, and veils the defects, of our friends, so does the nearness of, possibly, eternal separation produce the same effect, on shipboard. We love those who have become dear to us with an almost clinging tenderness, and we grow tolerant to affectionateness even of those not specially agreeable.

Faith forgot that Dwight had sometimes been rude and Bess contrary; both girls now thoroughly realized that beneath her coolness and seeming superiority Lady Moreham carried a crushed and tender heart, and Hope knew that she should miss even Mrs. Windemere's pathetic, patient little voice.

As they finally steamed by the lighthouse, and fixed eager eyes upon the city of their destination, many of these were dimmed with regret and sadness. Even Mrs. Campbell, who had been very quiet of late, looked sober as she leaned against the bulwark, handsomer than ever in her plain traveling suit of tan, and Carnegie, between Lady Moreham and Faith, felt his heart fail him as he thought of the lonely, busy life before him for the next two years. And then? He turned to the girl with a smile that concealed only partially the quiver of his lips.

"Do you know, it is just thirty days since I first saw you, and it is difficult to believe that I have not known you always. I remember, you and Miss Hope were standing together, on deck, and I thought how marvelously alike you were, but I have never once mistaken one for the other--never!"

She glanced up, half timidly.

"I remember you said you should know us apart, but when I told Hope, she thought she could deceive you at any time."

"Well, she knows better now!" he returned meaningly.

"Why? Did she ever try it?"

"Yes, once." He laughed enjoyably.

"She did. And she never told me!"

"Certainly not, for she failed entirely. I thought she would want to keep it to herself, so I never betrayed her."

"That was nice of you, Mr. Carnegie!"

"Only commonly decent, it seems to me. And, you see, I have told now."

"Told what?" asked Hope, approaching, with something very like a scowl on her bright face. "I do wish, Faith, that you'd look better after that Andy of yours! I happened to drop my best veil within his reach, and before I could stop him he had torn it to shreds. Texas doesn't act that way."

"You shall have mine," said Faith, promptly. "Poor Andy! I can't help liking him all the more, because everybody is down on him. My veil is just like yours, dear, so take it, and I'll go without. I don't care much for veils, anyhow, and we can be different in so little a thing as that, I'm sure."

Hope gave her an odd look.

"If that was the only thing we are different in!" she said instantly. "I'll never be so good as you, no matter how hard I try. And it's no matter about the veil at all! Do you know, it is exactly a month since we left home? It seems years when I think of Debby and the old school-days, yet the hours have seemed to fly sometimes, too."

"That's the odd thing about voyaging," observed the Traveler, as he joined them. "It sends our past out of our minds with its novelties, making it seem far away, yet there are few lagging hours, and Time never stands still."

"Is that always true?" asked Lady Moreham, turning quickly. "I have not found it so."

He looked at her with a kindly smile. It had become subtly understood among a few that this aristocratic lady had a past, and not a happy past.

"I think it as true as any general statement," he responded. "But I can also understand that insistent memories could never take such a strong hold of one as during the enforced leisure of long trips by land, or water. It would be a severe punishment for the remorseful, to condemn them to a voyage around the Horn in an old-fashioned sailing vessel. I think they would be ready for confession and hanging by the time they landed! But there's compensation in every situation, and the unhappy traveler, while remembering too much, perhaps, will also learn to readjust himself, and so make the future easier. Reflection is a good thing only when it lights up the future as well as the past."

The lady smiled, with more lightness than was her wont, and let a hand drop gently upon the shoulder of the girl beside her. "With Faith to guide?" she asked; then, looking at the other sister, "And Hope to cheer?" Then, more seriously, "It is a good thought, but one that has only come to me lately."

A rattle of boyish feet, and Dwight was among them.

"Most there, aren't we?" he cried with boyish eagerness. Then, growing sober, "But what's the reason nice things always have a bad side, too? It's just horrid to have to leave you all! Why, I felt like crying even to say good-by to Quint, Huri, and Tegeloo."

"But you're not to start the good-byes up here yet," put in Carnegie, hurriedly. "We shall not really separate for a day or two, and there's no use in prolonging the agony."

He spoke with feeling, and a glance passed between the elders.

A moment later, as the young people strolled onwards together, at the call of Bess, to watch the state barge of some native prince as it sailed slowly by, its dusky crew shouting greetings. Lady Moreham, looking after them, said, slowly,

"How lovely youth is when it is lovely!"

"True, my lady, and there we see it at its best. Those girls are charming, and it need surprise no one if these fine young fellows seek them out, and hate to be separated. Carnegie seems of fine grain, and little Miss Faith is as modest as a violet. She is your favorite, I imagine?"

"Oh, I would not say that! I find myself very much attracted to both, but there is something about Faith--a sympathy and tenderness, perhaps,--that is soothing when one's heart is sore. Hope is wonderfully entertaining, and brightens you up, but Faith seems to understand without telling, and somehow makes you feel happier--more at peace with yourself. I wish they were both my own!"

He let his mild gaze rest upon her.

"Lady Moreham, I am not an inquisitive man, but several times I have been on the point of asking you a question." He could see that she shrank, but continued obliviously, "Have you any kinsman by the name of Duncan Glendower Moreham, from Kent, England?"

She turned with a gasp, white to the lips.

"Why?" she whispered with an effort, "Why?"

"Because," he returned, not looking at her, "I traveled and hunted with him one whole season, two years ago. I sometimes exchange letters with him, and have his address now. He seemed to me a restless, wretched man, trying to drown some mental suffering in physical activity. He gave no title with his name, and, like the rest of us, lived in the most absolute simplicity, but I noticed the crest on his linen, and in some books. I knew him to be an English peer."

With a visible effort the woman controlled herself.

"Yes," she said in a voice strange in her own ears, "Yes, I know him. Would--would you give me his address?"

He took out a card from his vest pocket, wrote a line or two, and handed it to her in silence. As she read it her face grew almost radiant with surprised delight.

"_Here_?" she murmured. "So near?"

She seemed incapable of further speech, and, seeing it, the gentleman said quickly,

"You will pardon my officiousness. He is here in India, not many miles out from Bombay, and I shall see him very soon. Am I to mention you? I might--" he hesitated for the right words--"I could only say the pleasantest things of you, and the most general, but I am his friend, whom he claims to like and respect. If I am meddling with what is none of my business--"

"No, no, you are all that is helpful and kind! Let me think--no, I won't think--I have thought too much, and sometimes first impulses are best. I will trust you fully. You have tact, you know the world. I feel that you have guessed out a great deal of what it is hard to bring myself to talk about. But this much I will say--the man you mention was--no, is--my husband! For the rest, go to my good friend, the captain; he will tell you all. Good-by, and thank you from my heart!"

They clasped hands silently--the two strangers whose life-threads had been permitted to cross, just now, for some divine purpose, then the woman, stirred to the depths, went to her stateroom, and the man stood still for a time, looking out to sea. "Life is a wonder," he mused, "a succession of surprises. When Duncan brought his men to the relief of a stranger, set upon and nearly overwhelmed by an angry Chinese mob, that day in Muen Yan's district, he did not imagine what might come of it to his own advantage. I felt, from the minute I heard Lady Moreham's name, that I had gotten hold of the other end of Duncan's mystery, and I have not watched her so closely for nothing, all this voyage. My misguided friend and his over-proud wife will meet more happily than they parted, or I am much mistaken. I must wire him the minute I touch land."

Just down the deck the girls were laughing merrily, as Hope, teased into it by her sister, who was curious to know why she had failed in personating herself, told the story with keen enjoyment of her own discomfiture.

"It was away back," she began, "as much as three weeks ago, and Faith had been real mean and shut herself up with a book. In fact, nobody seemed real nice and ready for fun, and I couldn't find Dwight to plan things, so I sat moping on deck when I saw Mr. Carnegie coming along, looking almost as glum as I, and the thought crossed my mind that we might mutually cheer each other--and then, like a flash, I determined to pretend to be Faith. I looked up in a sweet, meek way with a smile--"

"Like this--" interpolated Carnegie, with a smirk that sent them all into convulsions.

"I couldn't look like that if I tried!" indignantly. "And you mustn't interrupt."

"I was only illustrating. Picture stories always take better with children. But beg pardon! Go on."

"Humph! Well, he took my bait with alacrity," giving the young man a defiant look, "so I began to talk to him as soon as he had got settled in his chair. I asked him whether he preferred Longfellow, or Tennyson," with a laughing glance at her discomfited sister, who had a little weakness for displaying her knowledge of poetry. "I didn't dare go into any of those other fellows, like--oh, Keats, say, or--or--well any of 'em--but I knew about the 'Building of the Ship,' and there's lots of guessing about Browning anyhow, so I thought I might steer clear of snags, if I managed well. Mr. Carnegie seemed ready enough to talk about them both, but oh! what a dance he did lead me! He called me Miss Faith, right enough, but when he asked me to repeat again, in that charming manner I knew so well, those fine lines from Jean Ingelow that I had given him yesterday, I began to tremble. He seemed astonished when I asked vaguely--'What lines?' and remarked that he had never supposed me forgetful before. Then he began talking about Ibsen, and I gave up. 'Oh! for goodness' sake, stop!' I cried, 'I'm not Faith at all.' 'I knew it,' he said calmly, 'and thought I could soon make you own up. Now, aren't you ashamed of yourself?' And I was!"

"And yet tried the same game on me!" commented Allyne in a low tone, but with reproachful emphasis.

She turned a laughing face upon him.

"Oh, no, that was different. You deceived yourself. Would you have me go about setting everybody straight?"

"Not at all. All I ask is that you will set me straight."

"Indeed!" cried Hope, "but that is asking a good deal."