The Lady of the Aroostook by W. D. Howells

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"What did I tell you, Lyddy?" asked her grandfather, with simple joy
in the splendors about them. "Solid mahogany trimmin's everywhere."
There was also a great deal of milk-white paint, with some modest
touches of gilding here and there. The cabin was pleasantly lit by the
long low windows which its roof rose just high enough to lift above
the deck, and the fresh air entered with the slanting sun. Made fast
to the floor was a heavy table, over which hung from the ceiling a
swinging shelf. Around the little saloon ran lockers cushioned with
red plush. At either end were four or five narrow doors, which gave
into as many tiny state-rooms. The boy came with Lydia's things, and
set them inside one of these doors; and when he came out again the
captain pushed it open, and called them in. "Here!" said he. "Here's
where my girls made themselves at home the last voyage, and I expect
you'll find it pretty comfortable. They say you don't feel the motion
so much,--_I_ don't know anything about the motion,--and in
smooth weather you can have that window open sometimes, and change the
air. It's light and it's large. Well, I had it fitted up for my wife;
but she's got kind of on now, you know, and she don't feel much like
going any more; and so I always give it to my nicest passenger." This
was an unmistakable compliment, and Lydia blushed to the captain's
entire content. "That's a rug she hooked," he continued, touching with
his toe the carpet, rich in its artless domestic dyes as some Persian
fabric, that lay before the berth. "These gimcracks belong to my
girls; they left 'em." He pointed to various slight structures of
card-board worked with crewel, which were tacked to the walls.
"Pretty snug, eh?"

"Yes," said Lydia, "it's nicer than I thought it could be, even after
what grandfather said."

"Well, that's right!" exclaimed the captain. "I like your way of
speaking up. I wish you could know my girls. How old are you now?"

"I'm nineteen," said Lydia.

"Why, you're just between my girls!" cried the captain. "Sally is
twenty-one, and Persis is eighteen. Well, now, Miss Blood," he said,
as they returned to the cabin, "you can't begin to make yourself at
home too soon for me. I used to sail to Cadiz and Malaga a good deal;
and when I went to see any of them Spaniards he'd say, 'This house
is yours.' Well, that's what I say: This ship is yours as long as you
stay in her. And I _mean_ it, and that's more than _they_
did!" Captain Jenness laughed mightily, took some of Lydia's fingers
in his left hand and squeezed them, and clapped her grandfather on the
shoulder with his right. Then he slipped his hand down the old man's
bony arm to the elbow, and held it, while he dropped his head towards
Lydia, and said, "We shall be glad to have him stay to supper, and as
much longer as he likes, heh?"

"Oh, no!" said Lydia; "grandfather must go back on the six o'clock
train. My aunt expects him." Her voice fell, and her face suddenly
clouded.

"Good!" cried the captain. Then he pulled out his watch, and held it
as far away as the chain would stretch, frowning at it with his head
aslant. "Well!" he burst out. "He hasn't got any too much time on his
hands." The old man gave a nervous start, and the girl trembled. "Hold
on! Yes; there's time. It's only fifteen minutes after five."

"Oh, but we were more than half an hour getting down here," said
Lydia, anxiously. "And grandfather doesn't know the way back. He'll
be sure to get lost. I _wish_ we'd come in a carriage."

"Couldn't 'a' kept the carriage waitin' on expense, Lyddy," retorted
her grandfather, "But I tell you," he added, with something like
resolution, "if I could find a carriage anywheres near that wharf, I'd
take it, just as _sure_! I wouldn't miss that train for more'n
half a dollar. It would cost more than that at a hotel to-night, let
alone how your aunt Maria'd feel."

"Why, look here!" said Captain Jenness, naturally appealing to the
girl. "Let _me_ get your grandfather back. I've got to go up town
again, any way, for some last things, with an express wagon, and we
can ride right to the depot in that. Which depot is it?"

"Fitchburg," said the old man eagerly.

"That's right!" commented the captain. "Get you there in plenty of
time, if we don't lose any now. And I'll tell you what, my little
girl," he added, turning to Lydia: "if it'll be a comfort to you
to ride up with us, and see your grandfather off, why come along!
_My_ girls went with me the last time on an express wagon."

"No," answered Lydia. "I want to. But it wouldn't be any comfort.
I thought that out before I left home, and I'm going to say good-by
to grandfather here."

"First-rate!" said Captain Jenness, bustling towards the gangway so
as to leave them alone. A sharp cry from the old man arrested him.

"Lyddy! Where's your trunks?"

"Why!" said the girl, catching her breath in dismay, "where _can_
they be? I forgot all about them."

"I got the checks fast enough," said the old man, "and I shan't give
'em up without I get the trunks. They'd ought to had 'em down here
long ago; and now if I've got to pester round after 'em I'm sure to
miss the train."

"What shall we do?" asked Lydia.

"Let's see your checks," said the captain, with an evident ease of
mind that reassured her. When her grandfather had brought them with
difficulty from the pocket visited last in the order of his search,
and laid them in the captain's waiting palm, the latter endeavored to
get them in focus. "What does it say on 'em?" he asked, handing them
to Lydia. "My eyes never _did_ amount to anything on shore."
She read aloud the name of the express stamped on them. The captain
gathered them back into his hand, and slipped them into his pocket,
with a nod and wink full of comfort. "I'll see to it," he said. "At
any rate, this ship ain't a-going to sail without them, if she waits
a week. Now, then, Mr. Latham!"

The old man, who waited, when not directly addressed or concerned,
in a sort of blank patience, suddenly started out of his daze, and
following the captain too alertly up the gangway stairs drove his hat
against the hatch--with a force that sent him back into Lydia's arms.

"Oh, grandfather, are you hurt?" she piteously asked, trying to pull
up the hat that was jammed down over his forehead.

"Not a bit! But I guess my hat's about done for,--without I can get it
pressed over; and I d'know as this kind of straw _doos_ press."

"First-rate!" called the captain from above. "Never mind the hat."
But the girl continued fondly trying to reshape it, while the old man
fidgeted anxiously, and protested that he would be sure to be left.
It was like a half-shut accordion when she took it from his head;
when she put it back it was like an accordion pulled out.

"All ready!" shouted Captain Jenness from the gap in the bulwark,
where he stood waiting to descend into the small boat. The old man
ran towards him in his senile haste, and stooped to get over the side
into the boat below.

"Why, grandfather!" cried the girl in a breaking voice, full of keen,
yet tender reproach.

"I declare for't," he said, scrambling back to the deck. "I 'most
forgot. I be'n so put about." He took Lydia's hand loosely into his
own, and bent forward to kiss her. She threw her arms round him, and
while he remained looking over her shoulder, with a face of grotesque
perplexity, and saying, "Don't cry, Lyddy, don't cry!" she pressed her
face tighter into his withered neck, and tried to muffle her homesick
sobs. The sympathies as well as the sensibilities often seem dulled by
age. They have both perhaps been wrought upon too much in the course
of the years, and can no longer respond to the appeal or distress
which they can only dimly realize; even the heart grows old. "Don't
you, don't you, Lyddy!" repeated the old man. "You mustn't. The
captain's waitin'; and the cars--well, every minute I lose makes it
riskier and riskier; and your aunt Maria, she's always so uneasy,
you know!"

The girl was not hurt by his anxiety about himself; she was more
anxious about him than about anything else. She quickly lifted her
head, and drying her eyes, kissed him, forcing her lips into the
smile that is more heart-breaking to see than weeping. She looked
over the side, as her grandfather was handed carefully down to a seat
by the two sailors in the boat, and the captain noted her resolute
counterfeit of cheerfulness. "That's right!" he shouted up to her.
"Just like my girls when their mother left 'em. But bless you, they
soon got over it, and so'll you. Give way, men," he said, in a lower
voice, and the boat shot from the ship's side toward the wharf. He
turned and waved his handkerchief to Lydia, and, stimulated apparently
by this, her grandfather felt in his pockets for his handkerchief; he
ended after a vain search by taking off his hat and waving that.

When he put it on again, it relapsed into that likeness of a half-shut
accordion from which Lydia had rescued it; but she only saw the face
under it.

As the boat reached the wharf an express wagon drove down, and Lydia
saw the sarcastic parley which she could not hear between the captain
and the driver about the belated baggage which the latter put off.
Then she saw the captain help her grandfather to the seat between
himself and the driver, and the wagon rattled swiftly out of sight.
One of the sailors lifted Lydia's baggage over the side of the wharf
to the other in the boat, and they pulled off to the ship with it.

III.

Lydia went back to the cabin, and presently the boy who had taken
charge of her lighter luggage came dragging her trunk and bag down the
gangway stairs. Neither was very large, and even a boy of fourteen who
was small for his age might easily manage them.

"You can stow away what's in 'em in the drawers," said the boy.
"I suppose you didn't notice the drawers," he added, at her look
of inquiry. He went into her room, and pushing aside the valance of
the lower berth showed four deep drawers below the bed; the charming
snugness of the arrangement brought a light of housewifely joy to
the girl's face.

"Why, it's as good as a bureau. They will hold everything."

"Yes," exulted the boy; "they're for two persons' things. The
captain's daughters, they both had this room. Pretty good sized too;
a good deal the captain's build. You won't find a better stateroom
than this on a steamer. I've been on 'em." The boy climbed up on
the edge of the upper drawer, and pulled open the window at the top
of the wall. "Give you a little air, I guess. If you want I should,
the captain said I was to bear a hand helping you to stow away what
was in your trunks."

"No," said Lydia, quickly. "I'd just as soon do it alone."

"All right," said the boy. "If I was you, I'd do it now. I don't know
just when the captain means to sail; but after we get outside, it
might be rough, and it's better to have everything pretty snug by
that time. I'll haul away the trunks when you've got 'em empty. If I
shouldn't happen to be here, you can just call me at the top of the
gangway, and I'll come. My name's Thomas," he said. He regarded Lydia
inquiringly a moment before he added: "If you'd just as lives, I
rather you'd call me Thomas, and not _steward_. They said you'd
call me steward," he explained, in a blushing, deprecating confidence;
"and as long as I've not got my growth, it kind of makes them laugh,
you know,--especially the second officer."

"I will call you Thomas," said Lydia.

"Thank you." The boy glanced up at the round clock screwed to the
cabin wall. "I guess you won't have to call me anything unless you
hurry. I shall be down here, laying the table for supper, before
you're done. The captain said I was to lay it for you and him, and
if he didn't get back in time you was to go to eating, any way. Guess
you won't think Captain Jenness is going to starve anybody."

"Have you been many voyages with Captain Jenness before this?" asked
Lydia, as she set open her trunk, and began to lay her dresses out
on the locker. Homesickness, like all grief, attacks in paroxysms.
One gust of passionate regret had swept over the girl; before another
came, she could occupy herself almost cheerfully with the details of
unpacking.

"Only one before," said the boy. "The last one, when his daughters
went out. I guess it was their coaxing got mother to let me go.
_My_ father was killed in the war."

"Was he?" asked Lydia, sympathetically.

"Yes. I didn't know much about it at the time; so little. Both your
parents living?"

"No," said Lydia. "They're both dead. They died a long while ago.
I've always lived with my aunt and grandfather."

"I thought there must be something the matter,--your coming with your
grandfather," said the boy. "I don't see why you don't let me carry
in some of those dresses for you. I'm used to helping about."

"Well, you may," answered Lydia, "if you want." A native tranquil
kindness showed itself in her voice and manner, but something of the
habitual authority of a school-mistress mingled with it. "You must
be careful not to rumple them if I let you."

"I guess not. I've got older sisters at home. They hated to have me
leave. But I looked at it this way: If I was ever going to sea--and
I _was_--I couldn't get such another captain as Captain Jenness,
nor such another crew; all the men from down our way; and I don't mind
the second mate's jokes much. He doesn't mean anything by them; likes
to plague, that's all. He's a first-rate sailor."

Lydia was kneeling before one of the trunks, and the boy was stooping
over it, with a hand on either knee. She had drawn out her only black
silk dress, and was finding it rather crumpled. "I shouldn't have
thought it would have got so much jammed, coming fifty miles," she
soliloquized. "But they seemed to take a pleasure in seeing how much
they could bang the trunks." She rose to her feet and shook out the
dress, and drew the skirt several times over her left arm.

The boy's eyes glistened. "Goodness!" he said. "Just new, ain't it?
Going to wear it any on board?"

"Sundays, perhaps," answered Lydia thoughtfully, still smoothing and
shaping the dress, which she regarded at arm's-length, from time to
time, with her head aslant.

"I suppose it's the latest style?" pursued the boy.

"Yes, it is," said Lydia. "We sent to Boston for the pattern. I hate
to pack it into one of those drawers," she mused.

"You needn't," replied Thomas. "There's a whole row of hooks."

"I want to know!" cried Lydia. She followed Thomas into her state-
room. "Well, well! They do seem to have thought of everything!"

"I should say so," exulted the boy. "Look here!" He showed her a
little niche near the head of the berth strongly framed with glass,
in which a lamp was made fast. "Light up, you know, when you want
to read, or feel kind of lonesome." Lydia clasped her hands in
pleasure and amaze. "Oh, I tell you Captain Jenness meant to have
things about right. The other state-rooms don't begin to come up to
this." He dashed out in his zeal, and opened their doors, that she
might triumph in the superiority of her accommodations without delay.
These rooms were cramped together on one side; Lydia's was in a
comparatively ample corner by itself.

She went on unpacking her trunk, and the boy again took his place near
her, in the same attitude as before. "I tell you," he said, "I shall
like to see you with that silk on. Have you got any other nice ones?"

"No; only this I'm wearing," answered Lydia, half amused and half
honest in her sympathy with his ardor about her finery. "They said not
to bring many clothes; they would be cheaper over there." She had now
reached the bottom of her trunk. She knew by the clock that her
grandfather could hardly have left the city on his journey home, but
the interval of time since she had parted with him seemed vast. It was
as if she had started to Boston in a former life; the history of the
choosing and cutting and making of these clothes was like a dream of
preëxistence. She had never had so many things new at once, and it had
been a great outlay, but her aunt Maria had made the money go as far
as possible, and had spent it with that native taste, that genius for
dress, which sometimes strikes the summer boarder in the sempstresses
of the New England hills. Miss Latham's gift was quaintly unrelated to
herself. In dress, as in person and manner, she was uncompromisingly
plain and stiff. All the more lavishly, therefore, had it been
devoted to the grace and beauty of her sister's child, who, ever
since she came to find a home in her grandfather's house, had been
more stylishly dressed than any other girl in the village. The summer
boarders, whom the keen eye of Miss Latham studied with unerring sense
of the best new effects in costume, wondered at Lydia's elegance, as
she sat beside her aunt in the family pew, a triumph of that grim
artist's skill. Lydia knew that she was well dressed, but she knew
that after all she was only the expression of her aunt's inspirations.
Her own gift was of another sort. Her father was a music-teacher,
whose failing health had obliged him to give up his profession, and
who had taken the traveling agency of a parlor organ manufactory for
the sake of the out-door life. His business had brought him to South
Bradfield, where he sold an organ to Deacon Latham's church, and fell
in love with his younger daughter. He died a few years after his
marriage, of an ancestral consumption, his sole heritage from the good
New England stock of which he came. His skill as a pianist, which was
considerable, had not descended to his daughter, but her mother had
bequeathed her a peculiarly rich and flexible voice, with a joy in
singing which was as yet a passion little affected by culture. It was
this voice which, when Lydia rose to join in the terrible hymning of
the congregation at South Bradfield, took the thoughts of people off
her style and beauty; and it was this which enchanted her father's
sister when, the summer before the date of which we write, that lady
had come to America on a brief visit, and heard Lydia sing at her
parlor organ in the old homestead.

Mrs. Erwin had lived many years abroad, chiefly in Italy, for the
sake of the climate. She was of delicate health, and constantly
threatened by the hereditary disease that had left her the last of her
generation, and she had the fastidiousness of an invalid. She was full
of generous impulses which she mistook for virtues; but the presence
of some object at once charming and worthy was necessary to rouse
these impulses. She had been prosperously married when very young, and
as a pretty American widow she had wedded in second marriage at Naples
one of those Englishmen who have money enough to live at ease in Latin
countries; he was very fond of her, and petted her. Having no children
she might long before have thought definitely of poor Henry's little
girl, as she called Lydia, but she had lived very comfortably
indefinite in regard to her ever since the father's death. Now and
then she had sent the child a handsome present or a sum of money.
She had it on her conscience not to let her be wholly a burden to her
grandfather; but often her conscience drowsed. When she came to South
Bradfield, she won the hearts of the simple family, which had been
rather hardened against her, and she professed an enthusiasm for
Lydia. She called her pretty names in Italian, which she did not
pronounce well; she babbled a great deal about what ought to be done
for her, and went away without doing anything; so that when a letter
finally came, directing Lydia to be sent out to her in Venice, they
were all surprised, in the disappointment to which they had resigned
themselves.

Mrs. Erwin wrote an epistolary style exasperatingly vacuous and
diffuse, and, like many women of that sort, she used pencil instead of
ink, always apologizing for it as due now to her weak eyes, and now to
her weak wrist, and again to her not being able to find the ink. Her
hand was full of foolish curves and dashes, and there were no spaces
between the words at times. Under these conditions it was no light
labor to get at her meaning; but the sum of her letter was that she
wished Lydia to come out to her at once, and she suggested that, as
they could have few opportunities or none to send her with people
going to Europe, they had better let her come the whole way by sea.
Mrs. Erwin remembered--in the space of a page and a half--that nothing
had ever done _her_ so much good as a long sea voyage, and it
would be excellent for Lydia, who, though she looked so strong,
probably needed all the bracing up she could get. She had made
inquiries,--or, what was the same thing, Mr. Erwin had, for her,--and
she found that vessels from American ports seldom came to Venice; but
they often came to Trieste, which was only a few hours away; and if
Mr. Latham would get Lydia a ship for Trieste at Boston, she could
come very safely and comfortably in a few weeks. She gave the name of
a Boston house engaged in the Mediterranean trade to which Mr. Latham
could apply for passage; if they were not sending any ship themselves,
they could probably recommend one to him.

This was what happened when Deacon Latham called at their office a few
days after Mrs. Erwin's letter came. They directed him to the firm
dispatching the Aroostook, and Captain Jenness was at their place when
the deacon appeared there. The captain took cordial possession of the
old man at once, and carried him down to the wharf to look at the ship
and her accommodations. The matter was quickly settled between them.
At that time Captain Jenness did not know but he might have other
passengers out; at any rate he would look after the little girl (as
Deacon Latham always said in speaking of Lydia) the same as if she
were his own child.

Lydia knelt before her trunk, thinking of the remote events, the
extinct associations of a few minutes and hours and days ago; she held
some cuffs and collars in her hand, and something that her aunt Maria
had said recurred to her. She looked up into the intensely interested
face of the boy, and then laughed, bowing her forehead on the back
of the hand that held these bits of linen.

The boy blushed. "What are you laughing at?" he asked, half piteously,
half indignantly, like a boy used to being badgered.

"Oh, nothing," said Lydia. "My aunt told me if any of these things
should happen to want doing up, I had better get the stewardess to
help me." She looked at the boy in a dreadfully teasing way, softly
biting her lip.

"Oh, if you're going to begin _that_ way!" he cried in affliction.

"I'm not," she answered, promptly. "I like boys. I've taught school
two winters, and I like boys first-rate."

Thomas was impersonally interested again. "Time! _You_ taught
school?"

"Why not?"

"You look pretty young for a school-teacher!"

"Now you're making fun of me," said Lydia, astutely.

The boy thought he must have been, and was consoled. "Well, you
began it," he said.

"I oughtn't to have done so," she replied with humility; "and I won't
any more. There!" she said, "I'm not going to open my bag now. You
can take away the trunk when you want, Thomas."

"Yes, ma'am," said the boy. The idea of a school-mistress was perhaps
beginning to awe him a little. "Put your bag in your state-room
first." He did this, and when he came back from carrying away her
trunk he began to set the table. It was a pretty table, when set, and
made the little cabin much cosier. When the boy brought the dishes
from the cook's galley, it was a barbarously abundant table. There was
cold boiled ham, ham and eggs, fried fish, baked potatoes, buttered
toast, tea, cake, pickles, and watermelon; nothing was wanting. "I
tell you," said Thomas, noticing Lydia's admiration, "the captain
lives well lay-days."

"Lay-days?" echoed Lydia.

"The days we're in port," the boy explained.

"Well, I should think as much!" She ate with the hunger that
tranquillity bestows upon youth after the swift succession of strange
events, and the conflict of many emotions. The captain had not
returned in time, and she ate alone.

After a while she ventured to the top of the gangway stairs, and
stood there, looking at the novel sights of the harbor, in the red
sunset light, which rose slowly from the hulls and lower spars of
the shipping, and kindled the tips of the high-shooting masts with
a quickly fading splendor. A delicate flush responded in the east,
and rose to meet the denser crimson of the west; a few clouds,
incomparably light and diaphanous, bathed themselves in the glow. It
was a summer sunset, portending for the land a morrow of great heat.
But cool airs crept along the water, and the ferry-boats, thrust
shuttlewise back and forth between either shore, made a refreshing
sound as they crushed a broad course to foam with their paddles.
People were pulling about in small boats; from some the gay cries and
laughter of young girls struck sharply along the tide. The noise of
the quiescent city came off in a sort of dull moan. The lamps began
to twinkle in the windows and the streets on shore; the lanterns of
the ships at anchor in the stream showed redder and redder as the
twilight fell. The homesickness began to mount from Lydia's heart in
a choking lump to her throat; for one must be very happy to endure
the sights and sounds of the summer evening anywhere. She had to
shield her eyes from the brilliancy of the kerosene when she went
below into the cabin.

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