The Harbor Part 3

But as time wore on we grew more indulgent, we included them more and more. And this was largely due to me. For I took a vague curious interest in the one who lived around the corner.

Her name was Eleanore Dillon and her age was eight, and she had attractions that slowly grew. To begin with, as I became gradually aware, she was much the prettiest of the three. She had light curly hair tied up in red ribbons, always _fresh_ red ribbons. Everything about her was always fresh and clean. She had the most serious blue eyes, which at times would grow intent on what a tall chap of twelve like myself condescended to tell her, and at other times wondrously confiding.

Eleanore first attracted me by making me a hero. It was a warm May afternoon and she was sitting on the gra.s.s with her doll and her two companions. Sue had stolen some matches and was using them as Jackstraws. Suddenly I heard a scream, then I saw Sue racing like mad toward the garden hose, and I saw that the white skirt of Eleanore's dress had caught fire. As yet there was only a little flame. She was sitting still motionless on the gra.s.s, hugging her doll, with scared round eyes. I got to her first and with my cap I beat out the flame. I was suddenly panting, my hands were cold. But a few moments later, when Sue and two of the boys came tugging the hose, it as suddenly flashed upon me that I had done a heroic thing.

"Get out!" I shouted scornfully, as they started to play the hose on her. "Can't you see the whole fire is out?"

And then while the plump freckled girl came screeching out of the kitchen with half the servants behind her, and presently these servants all called me "a little heero"--the one whom I had rescued looked up at me very gratefully and said,

"Thank you, Boy, for not letting them squirt water on my dolly's clean dress."

"Aw, what do I care for a doll?" I retorted ungraciously.

But I liked her from that day. She was not at all like Sue. She was quiet and knew her place. She knew that she was only a girl, how thoroughly well she knew it. And yet, although so feminine, so deliberate and sedate, she had "a pile of ginger" deep down inside of her. In our games, whenever allowed to play, with a dogged resolution she would come pegging along in the rear, she was a sticker, she never gave up. In winter when they flooded the yard she was the poorest skater of all, but patiently plodding along on the ice, each time she fell down she would pick herself up with such determination that at last with a jerk at her arm I said,

"Here, Chip, come on and I'll teach you."

She came on. I can still feel her soft determined clutch on my elbow.

When I said, "That's enough," she said, "Thank you, Boy," and went quietly on alone.

After that I taught her many times. One afternoon when there was a thaw, I said,

"Gee, but this ice is rotten." And then Eleanore asked me placidly,

"Do you like my pretty new shoes?"

"What's that got to do with it?" I demanded indignantly.

"Nothing, I guess," she said meekly.

This girl was full of mysteries. One great point in her favor was that she had a mother "at death's door." This appealed to me tremendously.

It was so unusual.

"How's your mother?" I would ask her often, just for the pleasure of hearing her answer softly,

"She's at death's door, thank you."

She soon learned to skate much better, and I remember quite vividly still the January afternoon when as the darkness deepened a silvery moon appeared overhead. I had not skated with her for a week, but now we'd been skating for nearly an hour. One by one the others went home, and the plump girl turned at the kitchen door to call back to Eleanore tauntingly,

"You'll catch it, going home so late!"

"Never mind," said a gentle voice at my side, and round and round we skated. The moon grew steadily brighter. Still that soft steady clutch on my arm.

"Now you'd better go home," I said gruffly at last.

"What time is it?" she asked me. I looked at my watch.

"Gee! It's nearly seven o'clock!"

"What a pretty watch that is," she said in a pleased, quiet voice, but I was not to be diverted.

"Go on home, I tell you. Sit down and I'll take off your skates." She sighed regretfully but obeyed.

"What'll they do to you?" I asked her when we stopped in front of her house.

"They'll try to punish me," she answered. I looked down at her anxiously.

"Hard?" I inquired. She smiled at me.

"What time is it now?" she asked.

"Ten minutes after seven."

"Then they won't punish me," she said. "My father always comes home at seven." And she went placidly into the house.

"A mighty smart Chip," I said to myself.

I had told her a little about the docks, and one day she asked me to take her there. I promptly refused, but patiently from time to time she repeated her request. She wanted me to take her "just for a little walk" down there, or she would run if I preferred. She wanted to come out after supper into her garden, which was only the third from ours, and then she would sing and I would whistle. Then I would come around by the street and she would meet me at her front gate. I don't know how she ever persuaded me, but she did, and the plan worked splendidly. At the gate without a word I took her hand and ran down the street. Soon we were flying. Down to the open s.p.a.ce we came, and around across the railroad tracks. In and out among grimy freight cars we sped. I would not stop.

"Christ!" I thought in terror. "Suppose Sam and the gang come around this way!" I had not seen them now for years. What might not they do to her?

But she made me stop by my father's dock. She was gasping and her face was red, but with her hand like a little vise on mine she stood there staring at the s.h.i.+p.

"Where are the heathen?" she asked at last, in a queer choking voice.

"There." I pointed to a small brown man with a white skull-cap on his head. "There's one. See him? Now come home!"

"Wait a minute, please," she begged very softly. A moment longer she stared at him. "All right, now we'll go," she said.

When I got her safe inside my gate I was in a cold sweat. This adventure, to my surprise, had been one of the most thrilling of all.

And who'd have thought _her_ an adventurer?

Her mother died that summer while we were up in the mountains, and when we came back we found the house empty. Her father had taken her out West.

I remember being distinctly relieved when I heard that she had gone away. For now there was something uncanny about her. It was one thing to have a mother "at death's door." That had been quite exciting. But to have one dead! There was something too awful about it. I would not have known what to say to the girl. And, besides, the thought suddenly entered my mind--suppose my own mother were to die!

We had been splendid chums, my mother and I, that long delightful summer up in the White Mountains. The mountains, we had decided together, were our favorite place to live in. "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills," was the part of the Bible which she liked best. She loved these hills for their quiet, I loved them for the exciting adventures I had with Sue and "Stouty," the son of the farmer with whom we stayed. But these adventures were of a kind that my mother warmly approved of for me. They were not like those on the harbor.

An adventure to climb with Stouty and Sue up through the resinous branches of an enormous pine on the mountainside to the hawk's nest in the bare top branches, s.n.a.t.c.h the eggs and smash them, while Stouty with a big thick stick would beat off the mother hawk. An adventure to clamber half the day up a bouldery path through firs and birches, looking into black caves, peeping over steep cliffs, and at last reaching the wind-swept summit to look off through miles of emptiness.

An adventure, coming home from a picnic as evening was falling, to sit snug in that creaking capacious wagon which belonged to Stouty's father, and to watch the lights and shadows that darted in and out of the pines as the lantern swung beneath our wheels.

But even up here in the mountains the harbor reached with its cold embrace. For at night it was an adventure hurriedly to undress and bury myself in the covers in time to hear the first low rumble of "the night freight" that went by some five miles distant. It made me think of the trains on the docks, whose voices I had heard at night, and of the things I had done with Sam. I would hear the mountain engine come panting impatiently up the grade. As it reached the top I would rise from my bed and soar off into s.p.a.ce, in one swift rus.h.i.+ng flight through the darkness I would be there in the nick of time, I would swing on to a freight car in the way Sam had shown me, climb to the top and crouching there I would watch the dark roadway open ahead through the silent forest. Lower would sink the voice of the engine until it became a faint confused mutter. And the rest was dreamland.

This was one of those secret games I never told my mother about--until, to my own surprise, in one of those long talks at night when she seemed drawing me to her right out through my eyes, I blurted this out. My mother wanted to know all about it. Did my hands get cold? Yes, colder and colder, as listening here in bed I heard the first muttering of the train and knew that in a few moments more I would take that five-mile flight, right through the window and over the trees to the distant track, to be there just ahead of the on-puffing engine. My voice quivered excitedly as I spoke.

"I see--I see," she said soothingly. "And when you are riding on top of a car--aren't you ever frightened?"