CHAPTER XIII
“THE MERRY HEARTS” ABROAD
Never was there such a bustling, confused, hurried, but withal happy departure from Harding as “The Merry Hearts” made on the last day of the long winter term. The stay-at-homes—Rachel, Katherine, Nita and little Dora Carlson—were all at the station to see them off and wish them a successful journey. They left at ten o’clock in the morning, and their boat sailed the same afternoon at five. There would not be time in New York, therefore, for anything but to get themselves and their baggage across the city and safely on shipboard. Madeline and Mary, the experienced travelers of the party, were “elected” to attend to the trunks, for Miss Hale was suffering with a bad headache.
“Anyway,” as Mary told her, "we don’t want you to bother with anything like that. You are just to tell us what to do and what not to do, and then to sit still and see that we do it.”
And Miss Hale had laughingly responded that she should not forget for a minute that she was mistress of nine willing slaves; and she had submitted without a protest to being tucked up comfortably in a corner of her seat, with Betty’s suit case for a foot-rest and Madeline’s steamer-rug for a pillow.
Meanwhile the matter that was agitating “The Merry Hearts” was the whereabouts of Dr. Eaton. Was he going to Florida by rail after all? Or had he missed the train? Perhaps he was ill; he almost always came to chapel, and everybody was positive that he had not been there that morning. Finally an off-campus senior, who took her meals at the same house where he did, was appealed to for information, and she quickly solved the difficulty. Dr. Eaton had gone away the night before. “The Merry Hearts” breathed a sigh of relief. They were becoming vastly interested in Mary’s match-making scheme. Indeed Betty Wales was a little worried lest their well-meant enthusiasm should carry some of them too far.
“You needn’t be one bit afraid,” Mary reassured her. “We’re awfully sensible, you know, when we try to be. Besides, I don’t suppose we shall have to do anything but just watch proceedings. Judging by all the stories you read, I should say that you almost have to fall in love on shipboard, because there’s nothing else to do.”
“‘The time and the place,’” quoted Madeline. “Then how about the rest of us, Mary? Do you expect us all to fall in love too?”
Mary surveyed the group scornfully. “I don’t forget,” she said, “that you are children, far too young even to think of such things. As for me, I shall have the responsibility of you all on my shoulders.” Mary sighed deeply. “Let me see; is it you, Betty, or Roberta, whose trunk is to go in the hold?”
“Mine,” said Roberta, shivering forlornly. “Isn’t this car cold, girls? I know I shall never want all those thin dresses that I put in.”
The train reached New York on time and the transit across the city was made without mishap. Eleanor’s aunt was at the boat to see her off, and she had brought a carriage full of flowers, fruit, and candy for Eleanor and her friends, so that the state-rooms looked very festive indeed, and Mary declared that she felt as if she was starting on a wedding trip to Europe at the very least.
Miss Hale, who had warned “The Merry Hearts” that she was always seasick, went to her state-room as soon as the boat swung off, and the girls, most of whom hadn’t had experience enough to know whether they should be seasick or not, arranged their belongings as comfortably as possible for the voyage, and then, all but Roberta, who had already begun to feel very miserable indeed, made ready to answer the call of the supper-gong. The boat was not at all crowded, for the season of southern travel was nearly over; but that made the girls all the more anxious to get a look at their fellow-voyagers, and particularly to see if Dr. Eaton was among them.
“For,” said Mary Brooks sententiously, “it makes all the difference in the world. Either this is going to be a novel with a hero, or a novel without a hero, and it takes a regular genius to write that kind, so I guess we’d better not attempt it.”
But Mary was just marshalling her little flock in the passage when Dr. Eaton opened the door of a state-room across the way, and came toward them with a smile.
“What’s this?” he demanded, nodding to Betty and the B’s. “Is this an expedition of ‘The Merry Hearts’ that I haven’t been told of?”
Betty explained that it wasn’t exactly that—that it only happened that most of the travelers were also members of the club; and then she introduced Dr. Eaton to every one that he did not know.
“And now you must let me escort you down to supper,” said Dr. Eaton, falling in beside Betty. “You say you’re going to Nassau to meet your father and mother?”
“Yes,” explained Betty, “but we have a chaperon besides. It’s Miss Hale. You know her, don’t you?”
Dr. Eaton glanced hastily over the little company. “Do I?” he said. “Which one is she?”
“Oh, she’s not here,” explained Betty again. “She’s seasick,—or at least she’s expecting to be.”
“Not Miss Ethel Hale?” asked Dr. Eaton, in a tone that was unmistakably eager. Betty nodded.
“How—how—very pleasant,” stammered Dr. Eaton. “I—I do know her, but I didn’t know she was going to take this trip. May I ask, Miss Wales, if she knows that I am on board?”
“No,” answered Betty hastily, wondering why he should be so dreadfully embarrassed, and hoping that she was not nipping Mary’s romance in the bud. “Or at least I don’t think that she does.”
“Thank you,” said Dr. Eaton soberly.
The next minute he had stepped ahead of Mary and was asking the steward for places for a party of eleven.
“You see,” he said, when they were all seated, “I insist upon being counted in with the rest of the club, even if I did get here by accident.”
Perhaps it was because Dr. Eaton talked so entertainingly all through the meal, or perhaps the big bunch of roses that Eleanor had put in the middle of the table had something to do with it. At any rate “The Merry Hearts” forgot their fear of seasickness, and ate a good dinner; and no one but Roberta was ill for a minute of the trip. Mary insisted that even Roberta was not really seasick—that she was just shamming, so that she could lie in bed all day, and be waited on, and have Dr. Eaton and Miss Hale send her sympathetic messages.
Dr. Eaton did not send any sympathetic messages to Miss Hale. He did not even inquire for her, but when on the second afternoon, she surprised the girls by coming up on deck, he was the first one to see her and to spring to take her rug and her book, and put her steamer chair in a sheltered corner, out of the way of the saucy little breeze that was blowing the blue sea into the tiniest of ripples.
There was a party of Harvard men on board, several of whom Mary knew, and after they had been duly presented to Miss Hale, it was the most natural thing in the world for the young people to drift back to the ship’s railing, leaving Dr. Eaton to sit down in the chair next Ethel’s.
HE WAS THE FIRST ONE TO SEE HER
Betty and Mary Brooks, however, were not too engrossed in the sail-hunting match that Bob had proposed, to notice the manner of the two in the steamer chairs. At first Ethel looked troubled, and Betty was sure, though she never told Mary so, that she was almost ready to cry. But after a few minutes’ earnest talk between them she smiled and nodded an emphatic assent to something Dr. Eaton had said, and presently they were promenading the little deck together in the most sociable fashion, stopping occasionally to hear how the sail-hunting match was going on.
“What did I tell you!” said Mary triumphantly, recounting it all to Roberta later. “They’ve made a splendid beginning already, and the Merry Match-makers haven’t lifted a finger.”
The only trouble was that the splendid beginning stubbornly refused to develop. During the rest of the voyage Miss Hale and Dr. Eaton were apparently on an easy, friendly footing, as two people who have taught in the same college for a year, and met at chapel and faculty meetings and at various social functions, might be expected to be. But after their first talk, they seemed to avoid being alone together. Without making any apparent effort, Ethel always happened to be attended by some of her nine slaves, and there was nothing for Dr. Eaton to do but talk cheerfully to the rest of the nine. Whether or not he wished to talk to Miss Hale instead, was a question on which “The Merry Hearts” were divided.
Meanwhile the girls were enjoying to the full what was for most of them their first taste of ocean travel. Every day the sea and the sky grew bluer, and the little breeze softer and more languorous. There was one last dreadful night when the ship tossed up and down on the rolling swells of the Gulf Stream. But toward morning the tossing ceased, things stopped tumbling about the state-rooms, and when the girls awoke the sun was shining on a sea as calm as a mill-pond, and the ship was anchored just outside the low, gray reef that blocks the entrance to Nassau harbor.
“Why, I’m going to see my father and mother to-day,” cried Betty Wales, jumping up in great excitement. She was the first one of the party to be dressed and on deck, and there to her delight were Mr. and Mrs. Wales in a little launch, waiting to meet the party and take them in to the wharf. Betty waved them a frantic greeting, then flew back to tell the rest to hurry, and presently they were one by one making the precarious descent down the ship’s side. Betty went first, because it was her father and mother, and Roberta last because she was so dreadfully frightened and only consented to go at all after the captain had promised to rescue her himself if she fell overboard, and Mr. Wales had assured her that there was yellow fever in Havana, whither the ship was bound. Roberta had just decided that drowning was preferable to fever, and had reached the shelter of the launch in safety, when Dr. Eaton appeared on deck, and waved a friendly good-bye to “The Merry Hearts.”
“Who’s that?” asked Mr. Wales. Betty explained. “Then tell him to come to shore with us,” said her father. “There’s plenty of room for one more, and I need a man to defend me against all these ladies.”
So Betty called back the invitation, and Dr. Eaton ran down the ladder and dropped into the boat with an easy indifference that made Roberta sigh with envy.
The excitement of disembarking over, the girls had time to look around them, and there were “Ohs!” and “Ahs!” of surprise and pleasure from everybody. The launch slipped through the narrow entrance to the harbor, and skirted the long, low island that sheltered it and shut it in from the open sea. The shores of this island were covered with a luxuriant growth of bushes, not distinctively tropical in appearance; but the island across the way—Mr. Wales explained that it was called New Providence, and that Nassau was the name of its town, which was also the capital of the Bahama group of islands—New Providence was dotted with groups of tall palms, a queer old fort crowned the hill, and the houses that lined the water-front and straggled up the steep streets toward the fort, had an unmistakably foreign air.
“You’d know in a minute that you were out of the United States,” said Betty.
“‘The States,’ you must call them down here,” corrected Mr. Wales.
But it was the harbor, more than the town, that had made “The Merry Hearts” wonder and exclaim. Its opalescent waters sparkled and shimmered in the sunlight, showing every conceivable shade and tint of blue, green and purple. Patches of green so pale as to be almost white lay close to pools stained a rich, deep purple. Why was it? It could not be the effect of cloud shadows, for there was not a cloud in the sky.
Mr. Wales, being appealed to, explained that the iridescence was due to the remarkable clearness of the water. Sand, white coral rock, reefs coated with sponges or with dark sea-weeds,—each showed its color through the perfectly transparent water of the harbor.
The launch was steered by a bright-looking mulatto boy, who had listened intently to the conversation. When Mr. Wales had finished his explanation, he smiled broadly and joined in the talk.
“They do tell an awful funny story ’bout that water, mass’r,” he began. “Onct a woman come down here from the States. She buy shells and sponges to tek home, but she lak the water bes’ of all. So she get some little bottles, and she hire a black boy to fill ’em with all the diff’rent kinds, and she label ’em and tek ’em home. An’ when she pour ’em out to show her fren’s, they all come white—all jus’ the same. An’ the lady she awful sorry.”
Everybody laughed and Mrs. Wales said she hoped the poor woman hadn’t had to pay duty on her water.
Just as she had finished speaking, there was a loud splash in front of the boat, and the girls looked around to see three black men swimming toward them.
“Throw a penny, mass’r! Throw a penny, please!” they shouted.
“What is it? What are they doing?” demanded the girls.
“Watch!” answered Mr. Wales, and taking a big copper coin from his pocket he threw it toward the men. Before it hit the surface of the water all three were after it. One caught it as it fell, but another knocked it out of his hand, and then all three dived for it. The girls crowded to the side of the boat to watch proceedings, and sure enough, though the boatman said the water was twenty feet deep, it was so clear that they could see distinctly when one of the men, feeling along the bottom, reached the coin and, sputtering and coughing, came up to the surface with it. Instead of going back to his boat to rest, he calmly put the coin in his mouth, and paddled lazily about, joining in the shouts of his companions for more pennies.
The girls began searching for small change, and Roberta, who wanted to take a picture of the divers, was recklessly holding out a quarter, when Mr. Wales discovered her predicament and gave her an English half-penny instead.
“I brought a stock of them along,” he explained, “for I thought the divers would amuse you girls.”
But the men had seen the glint of Roberta’s quarter, and they swam close up to the launch, crying, “Throw us siller for ’sperience, lady,” until Roberta gave it to them after all, declaring that she had more than her money’s worth of fun out of watching their frantic efforts to capture the big prize.
The men followed the boat till it reached the wharf, and immediately the picturesque sights on shore engrossed the girls’ attention. “Look at that,” cried Betty, pointing to a funny little gray donkey harnessed to a dilapidated dump-cart on which was perched a tall, lank negro boy. His clothes were very ragged, and the harness looked as if it might have been mended with the loose bits of them. Odds and ends of string and strips of parti-colored cloth entirely covered up the leather, if there had ever been any.
“Oh, do you suppose he would stand for his picture?” asked Eleanor, who, like Roberta, was a camera fiend.
“He certainly will, if you give him a half-penny for doing it,” said Mr. Wales, producing his last copper.
“See that horse!” cried Bob, as a diminutive pony, harnessed much like the donkey, dashed madly down the street and deliberately ran full tilt into a lamp-post.
“That’s a native horse,” explained Mr. Wales. “See, he’s blindfolded. Most of them are only half-broken and are driven that way. Be careful that you don’t any of you get run over while you’re here.”
“They don’t go up on the sidewalks, do they?” inquired Babbie, anxiously.
Mr. Wales laughed. “I guess not often, but most of the streets haven’t any sidewalks. You have to walk in the road most of the time here. And remember that you must pass to the left instead of to the right.”
“How lovely!” exclaimed Babbie. “Need we ride up to the hotel, Mr. Wales? I think we ought to get some practice right away in passing to the left.”
Everybody preferred to walk, and the party set out forthwith. Mr. Wales had already told the girls that the main hotel down on the water-front had filled up unexpectedly, and that in order to give them all rooms near together the manager had offered to open the “annex” up on the hill. This was really another hotel that the owners of the Colonial had recently bought. “The Merry Hearts” would have it and its beautiful grounds practically to themselves, and would be driven down to the main hotel three times a day for their meals.
“The annex is really much prettier and cooler than the Colonial,” explained Mrs. Wales. “We wanted to move up there with you, but we decided that it would be foolish for so short a time. Besides, all the sail-boats leave from our wharf, and our piazzas overlook the bay. So it’s really pleasanter to have some of us in one place, where there’s more breeze, and some in the other, where the water is.”
“Isn’t the sun hot, though?” sighed Babe, as they climbed one of the steep streets that lead up to the crest of the hill.
“Oh, you’ll soon get used to that,” said Mr. Wales cheerfully.
“I’m not so sure,” laughed Mrs. Wales. “It takes more than a week or two to get used to tropical sunshine, I think. But there’s one comfort; you don’t need to do anything while you’re here but sit on a shady piazza and look at the bay and the flowers.”
“Nonsense, mother,” laughed Mr. Wales. “Do you think these girls have come down here to sit still and twirl their thumbs? There’s a cricket match this afternoon, girls, up at the golf-club. Want to go?”
“Of course we do!” chorused “The Merry Hearts” eagerly.
“Then get unpacked, and come to lunch with your thinnest dresses on,” said Mr. Wales. “Here we are at your hotel.”
Again there was a chorus of delighted exclamations, as “The Merry Hearts” climbed the terrace and found themselves in a park of tropical loveliness. Great silk-cotton trees, with their strangely gnarled roots and wide-spreading branches, and feathery-leaved tamarinds shut out the glare of the sunlight. Banana-trees waved their great leaves, torn into shreds by the winds. Hibiscus bushes, starred with scarlet blossoms, bordered the paths. Yellow jasmine climbed the trellises of an arbor. At their feet beds of violets and sweet alyssum perfumed the air, and overhead myriads of gaily colored birds chirped and warbled among the green branches.
“Why, it’s like fairy-land!” cried Roberta.
But the great white hotel, with its wide, vine-sheltered verandas, bespoke more substantial comforts than fairies would need. The girls hurried in to unpack, for it was almost time for lunch and the cricket match.
“And by the way,” announced Mr. Wales, as he bid the party good-bye on the veranda, “I’ll ask Eaton to go with us this afternoon. He’s stopping at the Colonial, he tells me. He seems like a fine fellow, and besides, I’ve got to have somebody to help me keep all you girls straight.”
Mary gave Betty a significant pinch, as they followed the turbaned black woman, who was in charge of the annex, up-stairs to their rooms. But unfortunately her hopes were speedily dashed. Ethel had seen plenty of cricket in England, and she had arranged to spend the afternoon in the shade with Mrs. Wales.
This disappointment did not in the least prevent “The Merry Hearts” from having a delightful time. The cricket match was on the golf grounds, and the golf grounds proved to be the fields around an old Spanish fort—not the little boat-shaped one that the girls had seen from the harbor in the morning, and noticed again just behind and above their hotel, but another one much larger and a great deal more interesting, for most of it was underground.
The cricket match was over early, so that there was plenty of time before dark for a visit to the fort. An English soldier was supposed to be in charge, but Friday afternoon was a half holiday, the soldier was merry-making like the rest of the Nassau people, and his small son, who was black as the ace of spades and who said that his name was Philip Charles Augustus Smith was acting as guard and guide in his father’s stead. First he took the party up in the lookout tower, which commanded a fine view of the town, the island, and the harbor, and then, getting a light-wood torch, he showed them through the great range of underground chambers, cut in years gone by by convict labor out of the solid coral rock, which cuts almost as easily as putty when it is first exposed to the air. There was the governor’s chamber with its one grated window, the prisoners’ quarters with no air at all, save what could come through a long winding shaft, barrack rooms for several thousand soldiers, a vault for storing powder, and, most interesting of all, a well to supply the garrison with water. Philip Charles Augustus Smith felt in his pockets and produced several pebbles, which he threw down this well; and the visitors were amazed at the interval that elapsed between the tossing of the stone and its splash in the water far below.
Finally they mounted a dizzying spiral stairway into the upper air, and went home in the cool of the afternoon to tell Mrs. Wales and Miss Hale all about their adventures.
“Well!” said Mrs. Wales, when they had finished, “I’m very glad you’ve come. Mr. Wales has rested so long that he is boiling over with energy. Don’t let him tire you out.”
“I tire out a crowd of Harding College girls!” repeated Mr. Wales scornfully. “I guess there’s no danger of that.”
“We are pretty active, I’m afraid,” admitted Babe.
“And there’s so much to see,” added Babbie sweetly.
“Even if Katherine Kittredge did try to steal all our thunder,” concluded Bob. “I guess we shall need our extra week all right if we’re going to take in everything.”
“Betty,” said Eleanor that evening, as the girls sat in Betty’s rooms in the dark, indulging in good-night confidences, “I never saw such a thoughtful man as your father is. He doesn’t leave a thing undone for any one’s pleasure. Have you seen Miss Hale’s orange-blossoms?”
“No,” said Betty. “Did father send them to her?”
“Why, I suppose so,” answered Eleanor, “because certainly none of us did, and when I went in just now to see if her ice-water had come up all right, there was a great bunch of them on the table.”
“Probably he did send them then,” assented Betty carelessly. “He and mother are both awfully fond of Ethel, and of course they feel ever so much indebted to her for coming down here with us.”
But the next morning when Betty went in to escort Miss Hale to breakfast, the orange-blossoms had disappeared.
“Oh, I threw them away,” Ethel explained, when Betty ventured to inquire for them. “I can’t bear the fragrance of them in a room.”
“Father didn’t send them at all,” Betty decided swiftly. “It was Dr. Eaton, and Ethel wouldn’t keep them on that account. I do wonder why she dislikes him so.”
But for reasons of her own Betty did not confide her theory about the donor of the flowers to her match-making friends. She had a feeling that, since she knew Ethel so much better than the rest did, she was pledged, so to speak, to stand between her and the absurd schemes of the match-makers. For Ethel was tired and unhappy—so she and Madeline had discovered—and when people are unhappy they don’t always appreciate fun and jokes. To be sure, Ethel had seemed to appreciate all the fun they had had so far on the trip.
“But I can’t help thinking,” Betty reflected, “that she wouldn’t like this. Dr. Eaton must have offended her in some way that he doesn’t know about—though it isn’t like Ethel to harbor a grudge. He evidently doesn’t suspect how she feels—or yes—maybe that was why he was so embarrassed when he found that she was with us. Oh, dear! it’s all awfully complicated. But it’s a great deal too hot down here to argue about it with Mary Brooks, so I shall just let them get all the fun they can out of thinking the other way—as long as they don’t bother Ethel.”
“A penny for your thoughts, little sister,” said Ethel, wondering at her companion’s unaccustomed silence.
Betty came out of her brown study with a guilty start. “You haven’t a penny,” she retorted gaily. “You gave all yours to Roberta, so that she could take as many pictures as she wanted without using dimes to pay the children.”