Geoffrey Hamstead Part 37

"Treadwell--Treadwell--no--that's not the name." Then aloud. "It's provoking when one can not remember a name, madame."

He then fell to muttering other similar sounding names, and Nina could not refrain from smiling at his stupid, mild way of bothering himself about what was clearly no use to him.

"Ah! I have it! What a relief it is to succeed in a little thing like that! Cresswell. That's the name!"

The air of triumph on the mild-eyed man was amusing, and Nina laughed softly to herself.

He turned from gazing over the water and saw her laughing. Then he smiled, too, as if he wished to join in, if there was anything to laugh at.

"You are amused, madame. Perhaps you know this gentleman quite well--and are laughing at my stupidity?"

"I ought to," said Nina, unable to resist the temptation to paralyze this well-behaved person of the middle cla.s.ses. "I am his wife." And she laughed heartily at her little joke.

If ever a man did get a surprise it was detective Dearborn. For a bare instant, it threw him off his guard. He saw too much all at once. Here was the woman who perhaps had all the $50,000 on her person. He tried to show polite surprise and pleasure at the intelligence; but it was too late. For an instant he had looked keen. Comparatively, Nina was brighter nowadays. Danger and deception had sharpened her faculties. She was thoughtless enough, certainly, to mention who she was; but she did not see any reason why she should not. She might as well call herself Mrs. Cresswell now as when she got to Oswego, where she would have to do so. Mr. Dearborn had gone almost as far in self-betrayal. He longed for a warrant to arrest her, and get the money from her, but he said in his subdued, abstracted sort of way:

"How strange that is! No wonder you laugh! However, I said nothing against him--quite the contrary--and that is always a comfort when we feel we have been putting our foot in it. I was wondering, Mrs.

Cresswell, who you were. It seemed to me I had seen you on the street in Toronto."

He spoke very politely. No one could take any exception to this tone.

Even when he made the following remark it did not seem very much more than the ordinary growth of a chance conversation among travelers. He added:

"Let me see--a? Your maiden name was--a?" He raised his eyebrows with would-be polite inquiry; but it did not work. He had looked keen for the tenth part of a second, and now he might as well go in and rest himself for the remainder of the night.

Nina drooped her eyelids coldly.

"I do not know that that is a matter of any consequence."

She gave a little movement, as if she drew herself to herself, and she leisurely returned the gla.s.ses to their case.

Mr. Dearborn saw he had got his _conge_, and he wanted to kill himself.

He felt rather awkward, and could not think of the right thing to say.

The writer of Happy Thoughts has not provided mankind with the best reply to a snub that comes "straight from the shoulder." Even a Chesterfield may be unequal to the occasion.

"I hope you will not think me inquisitive?" he said lamely.

"Not at all," said Nina quickly. She slightly inclined her head, without looking at him, as she moved away to her chair--not wis.h.i.+ng to appear too abrupt.

She sat there wondering who this man was, and thinking she had been foolish to say anything about herself. The evening came on chill, windy, and foggy, and she grew strangely lonely. She had got the idea that this man was watching her. It made her very nervous and wretched. She longed for some strong friend to be with her--some one on whom she could rely.

Everything had conspired to depress her in the past few weeks. She had now left her home and a kind father--never to return. She was out in the world, with no one to look to but Jack. This would be a long night for her, she thought. She was too nervous to go to sleep. She felt so tired of all the unrest of her life. What would she not give to have all her former chances back before her again! How she longed for the mental peace she had known until lately. Oh, the fool she had been! the wickedness of it all! How she had been forced from one thing to another by the consequences of her fault! She was terribly wretched, poor girl, as the evening wore on. She went to her cabin and undressed for bed. She said her prayers kneeling on the damp carpet. She prayed for Jack's safety and for her own, and for the man who a.s.sisted her to all her misery. Still her despair and forlornness weighed upon her more and more. The sense of being entirely alone, without any protection from a nameless fear, which the idea of being watched all day by an unknown man greatly increased; the terrible doubt about everything in the future--all this culminated in an absolute terror. She lay in bed and tried to pray again, and then an idea she acquired when a child came to her, that prayers were unavailing unless said while kneeling on the hard floor. In all her terror, the conviction of wickedness almost made her faint, and to make things worse, she got those awful words into her head, "the wages of sin is death," and she could not get them out.

Yielding to the idea that her prayers would be better if said kneeling, she climbed out panic-stricken to the cold floor, which chilled her to the bone, and terrified by the words ringing in her head she almost shrieked aloud:

"O G.o.d, take those words away from me! O G.o.d, thou knowest I have suffered! O G.o.d, I am terrified! I am alone. O G.o.d, protect me! Forgive me all things, for I do repent."

Here she felt that if she prayed any more she would be hysterical and beyond her own control. She crept back into bed; but all she could think of until she dropped to sleep, exhausted, was, "The wages of sin is death--The wages of sin--is _Death_."

CHAPTER XXV.

BRUTUS: O that a man might know The end of this day's business ere it come!

But it sufficeth that the day will end, And then the end is known.

_Julius Caesar._

When Jack got on board the North Star he found that, although he had s.h.i.+pped as working pa.s.senger, the wily mate had taken him as one of the crew, with the intention, doubtless, of pocketing the wages which otherwise would have gone to the sailor who would have been employed.

Several of the sailors were rather intoxicated, and the rest were just getting over a spree. They came down into the forecastle just before leaving, and seeing Jack there, whom they did not know, were very silent. One of them at last said:

"Is every man here a Union man?"

Jack knew he was not, and that, being ignorant of secret signs, he would perhaps be found out. He answered, "I don't belong to the Union."

The man who spoke first then, said sulkily: "That settles it; I'm going ash.o.r.e. The rules says that no member shall sail on a vessel if there is any scab on board."

Jack understood from this, after a moment's thought, that this expression must refer to one who did not avail himself of the healthy privileges of the Sailors' Union.

He explained that he was only going as a pa.s.senger, and was not under pay.

This seemed to make the matter satisfactory, and after the malcontent quieted down they all got to work peacefully. It took them a long time to get all the canvas set while the tug towed the vessel out of and beyond the harbor.

Jack found he was no match for these men in the toil of making heavy canvas. He felt like a child among them. The halyards were so large and coa.r.s.e to the touch, and after being exposed to the weather, their fiber was like fine wire and ate into his hands painfully, although the latter were well enough seasoned for yachting work. His hands almost refused to hold the ropes when they had got thoroughly scalded in the work, and by the time all the canvas was set he was ready to drop on the deck with exhaustion.

He was on the mate's watch. This man saw that, although Jack was physically inferior, his knowledge seemed all right. This puzzled the sailors. He was dressed in clothes which had looked rough and plebeian on the Ideal, but here he was far too well dressed. If there were tears in his clothes and in his hat, there were no patches anywhere, and this seemed to be, _prima facie_, a suspicious circ.u.mstance. He regretted that his clothes were not down to the standard. After being reviled on the yachts because they were so disreputable, he now felt that they were so particularly aristocratic that he longed for the garments of a tramp.

He saw that if the sailors suspected that he was not one of themselves by profession they would send him to Coventry for the rest of the trip.

This would be unpleasant, for as the men got sober they proved good-humored fellows in their way, although full of cranks and queer ideas.

At eight bells, on the first night, Jack came on deck in a long ulster, which, although used for duck-shooting and sailing for five years since it last saw King Street, was still painfully whole. The vessel was lying over pretty well and thras.h.i.+ng through the waves in creditable style.

The watch just going off duty had "put it up" with the mate that Jack should be sent aloft to stow the fore-gafftopsail.

They could not make Jack out. And when he went up the weather-rigging, after slipping out of the ulster, every man on board except the captain was covertly watching him--wondering how he would get through the task.

The topsail had been "clewed up" at the masthead--and was banging about in the strong wind like a suspended Chinese lantern.

Suppose a person were to tie together the four corners of a new drawing-room carpet, and were then to hoist it in this shape to the top of a tall pine tree bending in the wind to an angle of thirty degrees.

Let him now climb up, and with a single long line master the banging ma.s.s by winding the line tightly around it from the top down to the bottom, and afterward secure the long bundle to the side of the tree. If this be done, by way of experiment, while the seeker after knowledge holds himself on as best he can by his legs, and performs the operation on a black night entirely by the sense of touch he will understand part of what our lake sailors have to do.

Jack, to say truly, had all he wanted. The sail was a new one. The canvas and the bolt-ropes were so stiff as to almost defy his strength.

But he got it done and descended, tired enough. All hands were satisfied that he knew a good deal, and yet they said they were sure he was "not quite the clean wheat." The ulster had been very damaging.

The evening of the second day saw them still working down the lake, and having had some favorable slants of wind they had got well on their way.

As Jack's watch went below at midnight, a fog had settled over the sea, and he was glad to get down out of the cold, and have a comfortable smoke before turning into his old camping blankets for the rest of his four hours off.

By the light of a bad-smelling tin lamp nailed against the Samson-post, and sitting on a locker beside one of the swinging anchor chains that came down through the hawse pipe from the deck above into the fore-peak under the man's feet, one of the sailors fell to telling one of his many adventures on the lakes. There was no attempt at humor in this story. It was a simple, artless tale of deadly peril, cold, exhaustion, and privation on our inland sea. It was told with a terrible earnestness, born of a realization of the awful anxiety that had stamped upon his perfect memory every little detail that occurred.

This was an experience when, in the month of December, the schooner he was then sailing on had been sent on a last trip from Oswego to Toronto.