A Bookful of Girls

CHAPTER I

THE CROW’S NEST

“You never told me how you happened to name her Blythe.”

The two old friends, Mr. John DeWitt and Mrs. Halliday, were reclining side by side in their steamer-chairs, lulled into a quiescent mood by the gentle, scarcely perceptible, motion of the vessel. It was an exertion to speak, and Mrs. Halliday replied evasively, “Do you like the name?”

“For Blythe, – yes. But I don’t know another girl who could carry it off so well. Tell me how it happened.”

Then Blythe’s mother reluctantly gathered herself together for a serious effort, and said: “It was the old Scotch nurse who did it. She called her ‘a blythe lassie’ before she was three days old. We had been hesitating between Lucretia for Charles’s mother and Hannah for mine, and we compromised on Blythe!”

Upon which the speaker, allowing her eyes to close definitively, took on the appearance of gentle inanition which characterised nine-tenths of her fellow-voyagers, ranged side by side in their steamer-chairs along the deck.

They had passed the Azores, that lovely May morning, and were headed for Cape St. Vincent, – the good old Lorelei lounging along at her easiest gait, the which is also her rapidest. For there is nothing more deceptive than a steamer’s behaviour on a calm day when the sea offers no perceptible resistance to the keel.

Here and there an insatiable novel-reader held a paper-covered volume before his nose, but more often the book had slid to the deck, to be picked up by Gustav, the prince of deck-stewards, and carefully tucked in among the wraps of the unconscious owner.

Just now, however, Gustav was enjoying a moment of unaccustomed respite from activity, for his most exacting beneficiaries were not sufficiently awake to demand a service of him. He had administered bouillon and lemonade and cracked ice by the gallon; he had scattered sandwiches and ginger cookies broadcast among them; he had tenderly inquired of the invalids, “’Ow you feel?” and had cheerfully pronounced them, one and all, to be “mush besser”; and now he himself was, for a fleeting moment, the centre of interest in the one tiny eddy of animation on the whole length of the deck.

Just aft of the awning, in the full sunshine, he was engaged in “posing,” with the sheepish air of a person having his photograph taken, while a fresh, comely girl of sixteen stood, kodak in hand, waiting for his attitude to relax. Half a dozen spectators, elderly men and small boys, stood about making facetious remarks, but Gustav and his youthful “operator” were too much in earnest to pay them much heed.

Blythe Halliday was usually very much in earnest; by which is not to be inferred that she was of an alarmingly serious cast of mind. Her earnestness took the form of intense satisfaction in the matter in hand, whatever that might be, and she had found life a succession of delightful experiences, of which this one of an ocean voyage was perhaps the most delectable of all.

In one particular Blythe totally disagreed with her mother; for Mrs. Halliday had declared, on one of the first universally unbecoming days of the voyage, that it was a mystery how all the agreeable people got to Europe, since so few of them were ever to be discovered on an ocean steamer! Whereas Blythe, for her part, had never dreamed that there were so many interesting persons in the world as were to be discovered among their fellow-voyagers.

Was not the big, bluff Captain himself, with his unfathomable sea-craft and his autocratic power, a regular old Viking such as you might read of in your history books, but would hardly expect to meet with in the flesh? And was there not a real Italian Count, elderly but impressive, who had dealings with no one but his valet, the latter being a nimble personage with a wicked eye who seemed to possess the faculty of starting up through the deck as if summoned by a species of wireless telegraphy? Best of all, was not Blythe’s opposite neighbour at the Captain’s table a shaggy, keen-eyed Englishman, figuring on the passenger-list as “Mr. Grey,” but who was generally believed to be no less a personage than Hugh Dalton, the famous poet, travelling incognito?

This latter gentleman was more approachable than the Count, and had taken occasion to tell Blythe some very wonderful tales, besides still further endearing himself to her by listening with flattering attention to such narratives as she was pleased to relate for his benefit. Indeed, they were rapidly becoming fast friends and she was seriously contemplating a snap-shot at his expense.

Mr. Grey, meanwhile, had joined the group in the sunshine, where he stood, pipe in mouth, with his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his reefer, regarding Gustav’s awkwardness with kindly amusement.

“There they go, those energetic young persons!” Mr. De Witt observed, a few minutes later, as Blythe and the Englishman walked past, in search of the Captain, whom Mr. Grey had suggested as the next subject for photographic prowess. “Do you suppose that really is Dalton?”

Mr. De Witt spoke with entire disregard of the fact that Mrs. Halliday appeared to be slumbering tranquilly. And indeed an interrupted nap is so easily made good on shipboard that Blythe used sometimes to beg her mother to try and “fall awake” for a minute!

On this occasion, as she walked past with the alleged poet, she remarked: “Even Mr. De Witt can’t keep Mamma awake on shipboard, and she isn’t a bit of a sleepy person on dry land.”

By way of response, Mr. Grey turned to contemplate the line of steamer-chairs, billowy with voluminous wraps, saying: “Doesn’t the deck look like a sea becalmed? See! Those are the waves, too lazy to break!”

“How funny the ocean would look if the waves forgot to turn over!” Blythe exclaimed, glancing across the gently undulating surface of the sea. “I don’t suppose they’ve kept still one single instant in millions of years!”

“Not since the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters,” her companion returned, with quiet emphasis; and Blythe felt surer than ever that he really was the great poet whom people believed him to be.

A moment later they had stormed the bridge, where they two, of all the ship’s company, were pretty sure of a welcome. They found the Captain standing, with his sextant at his eye, the four gold stripes on his sleeve gleaming gaily in the sunshine. Evidently things were going right, for the visitors and their daring proposal were most graciously received.

The fine old sea-dog stood like a man to be shot at; and as Blythe faced him, kodak in hand, the breeze playing pranks with her hair and blowing her golf-cape straight back from her shoulders, it was all so exhilarating that before she knew it she had turned her little camera upon the supposed Hugh Dalton himself, who made an absurd grimace and told her to “let her go!”

It was always a delightful experience for Blythe to stand on the bridge and watch the ship’s officers at their wonderful work of guiding the great sea-monster across the pathless deep. Here was the brain of the ship, as Mr. Grey had once pointed out, and to-day, when a sailor suddenly appeared above the gangway and, touching his hat, received a curt order, – “That is one of the nerves of the vessel,” her companion said. “It carries the message of the brain to the furthest parts of the body.”

“And I suppose the eyes are up there,” Blythe returned, glancing at the “crow’s nest,” half-way up the great forward mast, where the two lookouts were keeping their steady watch.

“Yes,” he rejoined, “that must be why they always have a pair of them, – so as to get a proper focus. Nicht wahr, Herr Capitän?”

And the little fiction was explained to the Captain, who grew more genial than ever under the stimulus of such agreeable conversation.

“Ja wohl!” he agreed, heartily; “Ja wohl!” – which was really quite an outburst of eloquence for Captain Seemann.

“If I couldn’t be captain,” Blythe announced, “I think I should choose to be lookout.”

“How is dat?” the Captain inquired.

“It must be the best place of all, away up above everything and everybody.”

“And you would like to go up dare?”

“Of course I should!”

“And you would not be afraid?”

“Not I!”

Upon which the Captain, in high good-humour, declared, “I belief you!”

After that he fell to speaking German with Mr. Grey, and Blythe moved to the end of the bridge, and stood looking down upon the steerage passengers, where they were disporting themselves in the sun on the lower deck.

They were a motley crew, and she never tired of watching them, as they sat about in picturesque groups, singing or playing games, or lay stretched on the deck, fast asleep.

Somewhat apart from the others was a woman with a little girl whom Blythe had not before observed. The child lay on a bright shawl, her head against the woman’s knee, her dark Italian eyes gazing straight up into the luminous blue of the sky. There was a curiously high-bred look in the pale features, young and unformed as they were, and Blythe wondered how such a child as that came to belong to the stout, middle-aged woman who did not herself seem altogether out of place in the rough steerage.

At this point in her meditations, a quiet, matter-of-fact voice struck her ear, and, turning, she found that Mr. Grey had come up behind her.

“The Captain says he will have the ‘crow’s nest’ lowered and let you go up in it if you like,” was the startling announcement which roused her from her revery.

“Oh, you are making fun!” she protested.

“I don’t wonder you think so, but he seems quite in earnest, and I can tell you it’s the chance of a lifetime!”

“I should think it was!” she gasped. “Oh, tell him he’s an angel with wings! And please, please don’t let him change his mind while I run and ask Mamma!” With which Blythe vanished down the gangway, her golf-cape rising straight up around her head as the draught took it.

We may well believe that such a prospect as that drove from her mind all speculations as to the steerage passengers, and that even the thought of the little girl with the wonderful eyes did not again visit her in the few hours intervening.

Yet when, that afternoon at eight-bells, she passed with Mr. Grey down the steep gangway to the steerage deck, which they were obliged to traverse on their way to the forecastle, and they came upon the little creature lying, with upturned face, against the woman’s knee, Blythe felt a sharp pang of compunction and pity. The child looked even more pathetic than when seen from above, and the young girl involuntarily stooped in passing, and touched the wan little cheek. Whereupon one of those ineffable smiles which are the birthright of Italians lighted the little face, and the small hand was lifted with so captivating a gesture that Blythe, clasping it in her own, dropped on her knees beside the child.

“Is it your little girl?” she asked, looking up into the face of the woman, whose marked unlikeness to the child was answer enough.

“No, no, Signorina,” the woman protested. “She is my little Signorina.”

“And you are taking her to Italy?”

“Si, Signorina; alla bella Italia!”

Then the lips of the little girl parted with a still more radiant smile, and she murmured, “Alla bella Italia!”

A moment later, Blythe and her companion had passed on and up to the forward deck where, climbing a short ladder to the railing of the “crow’s nest,” they dropped lightly down into this most novel of elevators. There was a shrill whistle from the boatswain, the waving of white handkerchiefs where Mrs. Halliday and Mr. DeWitt stood, forward of the wheel-house, to watch the start; then the big windlass began to turn, the rope was “paid out,” and the slow, rather creaky journey up the mast had begun.

It was a perfect day for the adventure. The ship was not rolling at all, the little motion to be felt being a gentle tilt from stem to stern which manifested itself at long intervals in the slightest imaginable dip of the prow. And presently the ascent was accomplished, and the “crow’s nest” once more clung in its accustomed place against the mast, – forty feet up in the air, according to Mr. Grey’s reckoning.

As they looked across the great sea the horizon seemed to have receded to an incalculable distance, and the airs that came to them across that broad expanse, unsullied by the faintest trace of man or his works, were purer than are often vouchsafed to mortals. Blythe felt her heart grow big with the sense of space and purity, and this wonderful swift passage through the upper air. Involuntarily she took off her hat to get the full sweep of the breeze upon her forehead.

Suddenly, a new sound reached her ear, – a small, remote, confidential kind of voice, that seemed to arrive from nowhere in particular.

“It’s the Captain, hailing us through his megaphone,” her companion remarked; and, glancing down, far down, in the direction of the bridge, Blythe beheld the Captain, looking curiously attenuated in the unusual perspective, standing with a gigantic object resembling a cornucopia raised to his lips.

“You like it vare you are?” quoth the uncanny voice, not loud, but startlingly near.

And Blythe nodded her head and waved her hat in vigorous assent.

The great ship stretched long and narrow astern, the main deck shut in with awnings through which the huge smokestacks rose, and the wide-mouthed ventilators crooked their necks. Along either outer edge of the awnings a line of lifeboats showed, tied fast in their high-springing davits, while from the mouth of the yellow ship’s-funnels black masses of smoke floated slowly and heavily astern. The Lorelei swam the water like a wonderful white aquatic bird, leaving upon the quiet sea a long snowy track of foam.

On a line with their lofty perch a sailor swung spider-like among the network of sheets and halyards that clung about the mainmast, its meshes clearly defined against the pure blue of the sky, while below there, on the bridge, the big brass nautical instruments gleamed, and the caps of the Captain and his lieutenants showed white in the sun. As Blythe glanced down and away from this stirring outlook, she could just distinguish among the dark figures of the steerage the small white face of the child upturned toward the sky; and again a sharp pang took her, a feeling that the little creature did not belong among those rough men and women. No wonder that the beautiful Italian eyes always sought the sky; it was their only refuge from sordid sights.

“I suppose the woman meant that the child was her little mistress; did she not?” Blythe asked abruptly.

“That was what I understood.”

“It’s probably a romance; don’t you think so?” and Blythe felt that she was applying to a high authority for information on such a head.

“Looks like it,” the great authority opined. “I think we shall have to investigate the case.”

“Oh, will you? And you speak Italian so beautifully!”

“How do you know that?”

“Oh, I’m sure of it! It sounds so exactly like the hand-organ men!”

“Look here, Miss Blythe,” the poet protested, “you must not flatter a modest man like that. My daughter would say you were turning my head.”

“Oh, I rather think your daughter knows that it’s not the kind of head to be turned,” Blythe answered easily. She was beginning to feel as if she had known this famous personage all her life.

“I shall tell her that,” said he.

Presently one-bell sounded a faint tinkle far below, and the big megaphone inquired whether they wanted to come down, and was assured that they did not. And all the while during their voyage through the air, which was prolonged for another half-hour, the two good comrades were weaving romances about the little girl; and with a curious confidence, as if, forsooth, they could conjure up what fortunes they would out of that vast horizon toward which the good ship was bearing them on.

At last the time came for them to go below, and they reluctantly signalled to the sailors, grouped about the deck in patient expectation. Upon which the windlass was set going, and slowly and creakingly the “crow’s nest” was lowered from its airy height.

The two aëronauts found the steerage still populous with queer figures, and the atmosphere seemed more unsavoury than ever after their sojourn among the upper airs. To their disappointment, however, the woman and her Signorina were nowhere to be seen. Blythe and Mr. Grey looked for them in every corner of the deck, but no trace of them was to be found, and Blythe mounted the gangway to their own deck with much of the reluctance which she often felt in submitting to an interruption in a serial story.

They found Mrs. Halliday amusing herself with a glass of cracked ice, giving casual attention the while to a very long story told by a garrulous fellow-passenger in a wadded hood.

“Oh, Mamma,” Blythe cried, perching upon the extension foot of her mother’s chair, “why didn’t you and Mr. DeWitt stay longer? And how did it happen that nobody else got wind of it? I don’t believe a single person knows what we’ve been about! And oh! we have had such a glorious time! It was like being a bird! Only that little girl in the steerage oughtn’t to be there, and Mr. Grey and I are going to see what can be done about it, and–”

The wadded hood had fallen silent, and now its wearer rose, with an air of resignation, and carried her tale to another listener, while Mr. Grey also moved away, leaving Blythe to tell her own story.

They were great friends, Mrs. Halliday and this only child of hers, and well they might be; for, as Blythe had informed Mr. Grey early in their acquaintance; “Mamma and I are all there are of us.”

As she sat beside this best of friends, – having dropped into the chair left vacant by the wadded hood, – Blythe lived over again every experience and sensation of that eventful afternoon, and with the delightful sense of sharing it with somebody who understood. And, since the most abiding impression of all had been her solicitude for the little steerage passenger, she found no difficulty in arousing her mother to an almost equal interest in the child’s fate.

And presently, when the cornet player passed them, with the air of short-lived importance which comes to a ship’s cornet three times a day, and, stationing himself well aft, played the cheerful little tune which heralds the approaching dinner-hour, Blythe slipped her hand into her mother’s and said:

“We’ll do something about that little girl; won’t us, Mumsey?”

Upon which Mrs. Halliday, rising, and patting the rosy cheek which she used to call the “apple of her eye,” said:

“I shouldn’t wonder if us did, Blythe.”

CHAPTER II

THE LITTLE SIGNORINA

Blythe lay awake a long time that night, thinking, not of the bridge nor of the “crow’s nest,” not of the Captain nor of the supposed Hugh Dalton, but of the child in the steerage. How stifling it must be down there to-night! It was hot and airless enough here, where Blythe had a stateroom to herself, – separated from her mother’s by a narrow passageway, and where the port-holes had been open all day. Now, to be sure, they were closed; for the sea was rising, and already the spray dashed against the thick glass. Oh, how must it be in the steerage! And how did it happen that that nice woman had been obliged to take her little Signorina in such squalid fashion to la bella Italia?

Blythe fell asleep with the sound of creaking timbers in her ears, as the good ship strained against the rising sea, and when the clear note of the cornet, playing the morning hymn, roused her from her dreams, the roaring of wind and waves sent her thoughts with a shock of pity to the little steerage passenger shut up below. For with such a sea as this the waves must be sweeping the lower deck, and there could be no release for the poor little prisoner.

“Vhy you not report that veather from the lookout?” the Captain asked with mock severity as Blythe appeared at the breakfast table.

The racks were on, and the knives and forks had begun their time-honoured minuet within their funny little fences. The amateur “lookout” glanced across the table at her friend and ally the poet, who nodded encouragingly as she answered:

“Oh, we knew the Captain knew all about it!”

“You think de Capitän know pretty much eferything, wie es scheint!” was the reply, uttered in so deep a guttural that Blythe knew the old Viking did not take very seriously the “bit of weather” that seemed to her so violent. In fact, he owned as much before he had finished his second cup of coffee.

Yet when she came up the companionway after breakfast, she found a stout rope stretched across the deck from stanchion to stanchion to hold on by, the steamer chairs all tied fast to the rail that runs around the deckhouse, and every preparation made for rough weather.

It was not what a sailor would have called a storm, but the sea was changed enough from the smiling calm of yesterday. Not many passengers were on deck, half a dozen, only, reclining in their chairs in the lee of the deckhouse, close reefed in their heavy wraps; while here and there a pair of indefatigable promenaders lurched and slid along the heaving deck arm in arm, or clung to any chance support in a desperate effort to keep their footing.

Blythe had to buffet her way lustily as she turned a corner to windward. Holding her golf-cape close about her and jamming her felt hat well down on her head, she made her way to the narrow passageway forward of the wheel-house where one looks down into the steerage. The waves were dashing across the deck, which was deserted excepting for one or two dark-browed men crouched under shelter of the forecastle.

There was a light, drizzling rain, and now and then the spray struck against her face. Blythe looked up at the “crow’s nest,” which was describing strange geometrical figures against the sky. The lookouts in their oil-coats did not seem in the least to mind their erratic passage through space. She wished it were eight-bells and time for them to change watch; it was always such fun to see them running up the ladder, hand over hand, their quick, monkey-like figures silhouetted against the sky.

How nobly the great ship forged ahead against an angry sea, climbing now to the crest of a big wave, and giving a long, shuddering shake of determination before plunging down into a black, swirling hollow! And how the wind and the waters bellowed together!

The Captain was on the bridge in his rubber coat and sou’-wester. He had said this would not last long, and he had stopped for a second cup of coffee before leaving the table. All the same, Blythe would not have ventured to accost him now, even if he had passed her way.

Presently she returned under shelter of the awning and let Gustav tuck her up in her chair to dry off. And Mr. DeWitt came and sat down beside her and instructed her in the delectable game of “Buried Cities,” in which she became speedily so proficient that, taking her cue from the lettering on one of the lifeboats, she discovered the city of Bremen lying “buried” in “the sombre menace of the sea!”

After a while, Gustav appeared before them, bearing a huge tray of bouillon and sandwiches, with which he was striking the most eccentric angles; and Blythe discovered that she was preposterously hungry. And while her nose was still buried in her cup, she espied over its rim a pair of legs planted well apart, in the cause of equilibrium, and the big, pleasant voice of Mr. Grey made itself heard above wind and sea, saying, “Guess where I’ve been.”

“In the smoking-room,” was the prompt reply.

“Guess again.”

“On the bridge, – only you wouldn’t dare!”

“Once more.”

“Oh, I know,” Blythe cried, setting her thick cup down on the deck, and tumbling off her chair in a snarl of steamer-rugs; “You’ve been down in the steerage finding out about the little Signorina!”

“Who told you?”

“You did! You looked so pleased with yourself! Oh, do tell me all about her!”

“Well, I’ve had a long talk with the woman. Shall we walk up and down?”

And off they went, with that absence of ceremony which characterises life on shipboard, leaving Mr. DeWitt to bury his cities all unaided and unapplauded. Then, as the two walked up and down, – literally up and down, for the ship was pitching a bit, and sometimes they were labouring up-hill, and sometimes they were running down a steep incline, – as they walked up and down Mr. Grey told his story.