The Lady of the Aroostook. William Dean Howells

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ