Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories Part 12

Some hours later when the crowd went below to dress for dinner, Reynolds dropped behind to ask the Second Officer about the man who had been rescued.

"He is still pretty full of salt water," said the Officer, "but he is being bailed out."

"How did it happen?" asked Reynolds.

"Give it up. He hasn't spoken yet. It looks as if he were getting ready to do some outside cleaning, for he had on a life-preserver. Funny thing about it, though, that's not his work. He's not even on duty during the starboard watch. The man in the lookout saw him climb out on the bow, shout something up to him, then fall backward into the water. I'll be hanged if I can make it out. Tsang Foo is one of the steadiest sailors on board."

"Tsang Foo!" shouted Reynolds. "You don't mean that man was Tsang?"

With headlong haste he seized the bewildered officer and made him pilot him below decks. Stumbling down the ladders and through dark pa.s.sages, he at last reached the bunk where Tsang Foo lay with the s.h.i.+p's surgeon and a steward in attendance.

The Chinaman's lips were drawn tightly back over his prominent teeth, and his breath came in irregular gasps. Across the pillow in a straight black line lay his dripping queque. As his eyelids fluttered feebly, the doctor straightened his own tired back.

"He'll come round now, all right," he said to the steward. "Give him those drops and don't talk to him. He's had a close call. I'll be back in ten minutes."

Reynolds crowded into the narrow apace the doctor had left. The fact that he was saved from disgrace was utterly blotted out by the bigger fact that this ignorant, uncouth, foreign sailor had fearlessly risked his life to save him from facing a merited punishment. Reynolds's very soul seemed to grow bigger to accommodate the thought.

"Tsang!" he whispered, seizing the yellow hand, "You are a brick! Number one good man. But my no can take money,--I--"

The steward in attendance, who had stepped aside, made a warning gesture and laid his finger on his lips.

For five minutes the man in the bunk and the one beside it looked silently into each other's eyes, then the drawn lips moved, and Reynolds, bending his head to listen, heard the broken question:

"You--no--blake--bargain?"

Reynolds's mind dashed at two conclusions and recoiled from each. Should be follow his impulse to explain the whole affair, serious consequences would result for Tsang, while the other alternative of accepting the situation made him a party, albeit an innocent one, to a most reprehensible proceeding. It was to his credit, that of the two courses the latter was infinitely the more intolerable. He got up nervously, then sat down again.

"No--blake--bargain!" repeated Tsang anxiously.

Still Reynolds waited for some prompting from a conscience unaccustomed to being rusty. Any course that would involve the loyal little Chinaman, who had played the game according to the rules as he knew them, was out of the question. The money must be paid back, of course, but how, and when? If he cleared himself at the office it might be years before he could settle this new debt, but he could do it in time, he must do it.

Then at last, light came to him. He would accept Tsang's sacrifice but it should stand for more than the mere material good it had purchased.

It should pledge him to a fresh start, a clean life. He would justify the present by the future. He drew a deep breath of relief and leaned forward:

"Tsang," he said, and his voice trembled with the earnestness of his resolve, "I no break bargain. From now on my behave all same proper. It wasn't right, old fellow, you oughtn't--" then he gave it up and smiled helplessly, "you belong my good friend Tsang, what thing you wantchee?"

A slow smile broke the bra.s.s-like stillness of Tsang Foo's face:

"Pipe," he gasped softly, "opium velly good,--make land and sea--all same--by an' by!"

THE WILD OATS OF A SPINSTER

Judging from appearances Miss Lucinda Perkins was justifying her reason for being by conforming absolutely to her environment. She apparently fitted as perfectly into her little niche in the Locustwood Seminary for young ladies as Miss Joe Hill fitted into hers. The only difference was that Miss Joe Hill did not confine herself to a niche; she filled the seminary, as a plump hand does a tight glove.

It was the year after Miss Lucinda had come to the seminary to teach elocution that Miss Joe Hill discovered in her an affinity. As princ.i.p.al, Miss Joe Hill's word was never questioned, and Miss Lucinda, with pleased obedience, accepted the honor that was thrust upon her, and meekly moved her few belongings into Miss Joe Hill's apartment.

For four years they had lived in the rarified atmosphere of celestial friends.h.i.+p. They clothed their bodies in the same raiment, and their minds in the same thoughts, and when one was cold the other s.h.i.+vered.

If Miss Lucinda, in those early days found it difficult to live up to Miss Joe Hill's transcendental code she gave no sign of it. She laid aside her mildly adorned garments and enveloped her small angular person in a garb of sombre severity. Even the modest bird that adorned her hat was replaced by an uncompromising band. She foreswore meat and became a vegetarian. She stopped reading novels and devoted her spare time to essays and biography. In fact she and Miss Joe Hill became one and that one was Miss Joe Hill.

It was not until Floss Sp.e.c.k.e.rt entered the senior cla.s.s at Locustwood Seminary that this sublimated friends.h.i.+p suffered a jar.

Floss's father lived in Chicago, and it was due to his unerring discernment in the buying and selling of live stock that Floss was being "finished" in all branches without regard to the cost.

"Learn her all you want to," he said magnanimously to Miss Lucinda, who negotiated the arrangement. "I ain't got but two children, her and Tom.

He's just like me--don't know a blame thing but business; but Floss--"

his bosom swelled under his checked vest--"she's on to it all. I pay for everything you get into her head. Dancin', singin', French--all them extries goes."

Miss Lucinda had consequently undertaken the management of Floss Sp.e.c.k.e.rt, and the result had been far-reaching in its consequences.

Floss was a person whose thoughts did not dwell upon the highest development of the spiritual life. Her mind was given over to the pursuit of worldly amus.e.m.e.nts, her only serious thought being a burning ambition to win histrionic honors. The road to this led naturally through the elocution cla.s.ses, and Floss accepted Miss Lucinda as the only means toward the desired end.

A drop of water in a bottle of ink produces no visible result, but a drop of ink in a gla.s.s of water contaminates it at once. Miss Lucinda took increasing interest in her frivolous young pupil; she listened with half-suppressed eagerness to unlimited gossip about stage-land, and even sank to the regular perusal of certain bold theatrical papers. She was unmistakably becoming contaminated.

Meanwhile Miss Joe Hill, quite blind to the situation, condoned the friends.h.i.+p. "You are developing your own character," she told Miss Lucinda. "You are exercising self-control and forbearance in dealing with that crude, undisciplined girl. Florence is the natural outcome of common stock and newly acquired riches. It is your n.o.ble aspiration to take this vulgar clay and mold it into something higher. Your motive is laudable, Lucinda; your self-sacrifice in giving up our evening hour together is heroic. I read you like an open book, dear."

And Miss Lucinda listened and trembled. They were standing together before the window of their rigid little sitting room, the chastened severity of which banished all ideas of comfort. "What purpose do you serve?" Miss Joe Hill demanded of every article that went into her apartment, and many of the comforts of life failed to pa.s.s the examination.

After Miss Joe Hill had gone out, Miss Lucinda remained at the window and restlessly tapped her knuckles against the sill. The insidious spring suns.h.i.+ne, the laughter of the girls in the court below, the foolish happy birds telling their secrets under the new, green leaves, all worked together to disturb her peace of mind.

She resolutely turned her back to the window and took breathing exercises. That was one of Miss Joe Hill's sternest requirements--fifteen minutes three times a day and two pints of water between meals. Then she sat down in a straight-back chair and tried to read "The Power Through Poise." Her body was doing its duty, but it did not deceive her mind. She knew that she was living a life of black deception; evidences of her guilt were on every hand. Behind the books on her little shelf was a paper of chocolate creams; in the music rack, back to back with Grieg and Brahms, was an impertinent sheet of ragtime which Floss had persuaded her to learn as an accompaniment. And deeper and darker and falser than all was a plan which had been fermenting in her mind for days.

In a fortnight the school term would be over. Following the usual custom, Miss Lucinda was to go to her brother in the country and Miss Joe Hill to her sister for a week. This obligation to their respective families being discharged, they would repair to the seclusion of a Catskill farmhouse, there to hang upon each other's souls for the rest of the summer.

Miss Lucinda's visits to her brother were reminiscent of a multiplicity of children and a scarcity of room. To her the Inferno presented no more disquieting prospect than the necessity of sharing her bedroom. She always returned from these sojourns in the country with impaired digestion, and shattered nerves. She looked forward to them with dread and looked back on them with horror. Was it any wonder that when a brilliant alternative presented itself she was eager to accept it?

Floss Sp.e.c.k.e.rt had gained her father's consent to spend her first week out of school in New York provided she could find a suitable chaperon.

She had fallen upon the first and most harmless person in sight and besieged her with entreaties.

Miss Lucinda would have flared to the project had not a forbidding presence loomed between her and the alluring invitation. She knew only too well that Miss Joe Hill would never countenance the proposition.

As she sat trying vainly to concentrate on her "Power Through Poise,"

she was startled by a noise at the window, followed immediately by a dishevelled figure that scrambled laughingly over the sill.

"I came down the fire escape!" whispered the invader breathlessly, "Miss Joe Hill caught us making fudge in the linen closet, and I gave her the slip."

"But Florence!" Miss Lucinda began reproachfully, but Floss interrupted her:

"Don't 'Florence' me, Miss Lucy! You're just pretending to be mad anyhow. You are a perfect darling and Miss Joe Hill is an old bear!"

Miss Lucinda was aghast at this irreverence but her halting protests had no effect on the torrent of Floss's eloquence.

"I am going to take you to New York," the girl declared "and I am going to give you the time of your life! Dad's got to put us up in style--a room and a bath apiece and maybe a sitting room. He likes me to splurge around a bit, says he'd hate to have a daughter that acted like she wasn't used to money."

Miss Lucinda glanced apprehensively at the door and then back at the sparkling face before her.