CHAPTER XX.
LOVE’S YOUNG DREAM IN BARBADOES.
OLD Silas beamed all over as he and Kit tucked the robes around Mr. Silburn in the Huntington stage, once more on runners. It seemed to the young supercargo that the very horses had a pleased look.
“Well, sir, I didn’t expect to see this again!” Silas declared. “Many a time I’ve took Kit up to Hunt’n’ton, this last year or two. Why, Mr. Silburn, the first time he went up with me he didn’t have no overcoat to put on, an’ I had to wrap him in the hoss blanket. But next time he come home, bless you, his clo’es was good as anybody’s. I says to myself, says I, ‘That there boy’s a makin’ his way, he is.’ An’ then he comes with gold braid on his cap; an’ look at him now, will you! But I swan to goodness, I didn’t expect to see him ridin’ up alongside of his father any more. We’d all give you up, Mr. Silburn.”
“No, not quite all!” Mr. Silburn laughed. “Here’s one fellow didn’t give me up, or I wouldn’t be taking a ride with you to-day, Silas. If he hadn’t stuck to me through thick and thin” (and he gave Kit a clap on the shoulder), “I’d still be out in New Zealand eating stewed mutton in that hospital.”
“I wasn’t the only one who didn’t give him up,” Kit protested. “We always kept his chair and slippers ready for him.”
“And you ain’t brought no baggage, Mr. Silburn?” Silas asked.
“Baggage?” Mr. Silburn repeated; “this little satchel here, that Kit got me. The rest of my baggage is pretty well scattered, Silas. Let me see; I have a chest of clothes somewhere off Hatteras, but they’ve been on the bottom of the ocean for two years, so I’m afraid they must be damp. Then there’s a quarter interest in a flag pole on some island in the Pacific, but I had to leave that behind. And there’s a suit of gray clothes in the Wellington hospital. I never want to see them again, whatever happens, though they were very kind to me out there.
“That’s a pretty good team you have there, Silas,” he went on; “look as if they could take these Fairfield County hills without losing their wind. Suppose you let them out once, and show us what they can do.”
“Ah, you’re in a hurry to see the folks!” Silas declared. “An’ no wonder, Mr. Silburn. I’ll git you out to Hunt’n’ton jist as quick as ever the trip was made, if nothin’ don’t give ’way.”
Kit had a nice little plan arranged to introduce his father as “Mr. John Doe, of New Zealand,” when they reached the gate; but it fell through most ingloriously. The truth is there was very little said at first when they reached the house. Mrs. Silburn and Vieve had hold of the wanderer before he was out of the sleigh, and in the excitement his satchel would have been carried away if Silas had not come running in with it.
There was not only the joy of seeing him sitting in his own chair again by the fire, but of seeing him almost as well as ever, only a little older and grayer. Kit had had no chance to write them from the steamer of his father’s steady improvement, so it was a fresh pleasure to find that his memory was fully restored, except that he never could quite realize that he had been months, instead of days, in the Wellington hospital.
They wanted him all to themselves that day, but that was impossible. The news soon flew through Huntington that Mr. Silburn had returned, and the neighbors began to pour in at such a rate that Vieve and Kit had to fly around and start a fire in the parlor stove, to give their mother a chance to set her grandest dinner table in the sitting-room. And every visitor had so much to say about Kit that he began to wish himself a cabin boy on the North Cape again.
“I’ll have to look out for myself here,” Mr. Silburn laughed, “or I’ll be of no account in my own house. Everything’s ‘Kit,’ ‘Kit,’ ‘Kit.’ Well, I must say there ain’t many boys—”
“Oh, look here, father!” Kit cried; “are you going to begin on that too! Look at Vieve; nobody stuck to you tighter than Vieve. You don’t know how she used to encourage us when we were inclined to give you up.” And he told for the first time how Vieve had sent him one of her two dollars when he went to New York, and how he had been robbed of the stamps.
“Genevieve, come here to your father!” Mr. Silburn said, in a tone of mock severity. And he put his arm around her to lift her to his knee as he used to do, but found that was a task that required both hands. Fathers are so slow to see it when their daughters grow into young women; it takes the sons of other fathers to make that discovery.
“Why!” he exclaimed, “you’re as heavy as a kedge anchor, and bigger than your mother. And you sent one of your dollars to Kit, did you? Now if I was half a father, I’d have handfuls of gold to shower over you on coming back from the sea, wouldn’t I? And the fact is I haven’t a cent but a little money that Kit made me put in my clothes—the clothes that he bought me, too. He—”
“Oh, Vieve has turned miser since you went away,” Kit interrupted, fearing that his father might go back to the old subject. “She wouldn’t spend a cent for fear we might not have enough money to get you home. She wants a rich husband, too. She has her eye on a cardinal that I met over in—”
Of course Vieve would not let him finish the sentence; and in the midst of the playful quarrel she was called to help her mother with dinner; and if any one should ask just how the reunited family spent that first day, not one of them could give anything like an exact account.
After a few days Vieve declared that the family reminded her of three kittens, so pleased with everything that they sat around the fire purring.
“You’d better enjoy it while you can,” her father answered. “Kit will soon have to be going back to his ship; and for my part, I’m not going to sit here the rest of my life doing nothing. You needn’t think it. It’s just the time for a man to go to sea again, after being shipwrecked; lightning don’t strike twice in the same place, you know.”
“Oh, Christopher!” Mrs. Silburn exclaimed. “You wouldn’t think of going to sea again, would you?”
“I’ve got to do something,” he answered, “and navigation don’t go very well on shore. But no more long voyages, likely. Maybe you’ve forgotten what I told you before I went away about a firm in Bridgeport that wanted me to take charge of a schooner line between there and New York? You see my memory works all smooth now, don’t it? Well, if they’re still of the same mind, I may do some business with them. You’re not going to lay me away on the shelf yet awhile, anyhow.”
“Oh, then I’d have a chance to go to New York with you some time!” Vieve cried. “You know I’ve never been there yet.”
“That’s just where I shall have to go to-morrow,” Kit announced. “I see by the paper that the Trinidad is due this afternoon, and it’s not fair to stay away too long. I’ll be back again for a few days, you know, but I must be on hand for the next voyage.”
It was purely by accident that he mentioned it just as Vieve showed how anxious she was to see the metropolis; but the coincidence set him to thinking. Here he had been half over the world, and Vieve had never been further than Bridgeport. Why shouldn’t he give her a trip to New York?
“How would you like to go along with me, Vieve?” he asked. “I’ll show you my ship, and bring you back in two or three days.”
“Oh, Kit!” his mother exclaimed; “that’s just like a boy. How can the child go to New York without any clothes fit to wear?”
“Bother the clothes,” Kit retorted, still just like a boy. “She’s not going to set the fashions, is she? I’ll lend her one of my blue suits.”
It was so quickly settled that Vieve was to go, that Mr. Silburn was led to exclaim:—
“There’s no parental discipline at all in this family, is there?”
“Well, there’s none needed, that’s one thing,” Mrs. Silburn answered; and she sat up half the night getting Vieve ready. She was relieved to find that they would not have to go to a hotel, for there would be any number of vacant staterooms on the Trinidad.
That trip to New York with Vieve was one of the greatest pleasures that Kit had ever enjoyed, next to finding his father. Everything was so new to her. She had never even been in a railway train before. And Mr. Clark was so kind to her, and took her all over the ship, and she was so delighted with everything. And in the evening he had a talk with the purser in their office that must have been very satisfactory, for next morning he said to Vieve:—
“Vieve, do they have tailor shops for girls? I mean places where a girl can buy things all ready to put on, the way a man can?”
“Oh, do they!” Vieve answered. “To think that anybody shouldn’t know that! Why, dozens of them.”
“Well,” he went on, “I heard a great piece of news last night, and feel like celebrating a little to-day. We’ll get the stewardess directly and go out and see whether you can find anything to fit you. You can buy the whole business, can you? Hat, coat, dress, shoes, and all?”
“Yes, when you have money enough,” Vieve laughed. “But what is it, Kit? What is this great piece of news? Ah, now, Kit, you ought to tell me; I always tell you everything.”
“Not till we get home, Miss Curiosity,” he answered. “When we get home I’ll tell you all about it.”
Kit wisely declined to go further than the door of any of the big bazaars that the stewardess led them to. But Vieve’s first experiment in “shopping” must have been successful, for when Kit took her over the Brooklyn Bridge toward evening to see Captain Griffith and the North Cape, her appearance was so changed that her mother would hardly have known her.
And to tell the good news about his father to Captain Griffith was almost equal to telling it at home, the Captain took such an interest. He had to go over the whole story of his voyage to Melbourne and then across to Wellington, and describe his first meeting with his father, and everything that happened afterwards.
“Well, Miss Silburn,” the Captain said, when Kit concluded—“or I think I’ll have to call you Miss Vieve,—I’m almost one of the family, you know, and one of the first things I did when I got hold of Christopher was to read a letter you wrote him—”
“Oh, yes, sir, I hope you’ll call me Vieve,” Vieve interrupted; “I shouldn’t know who you meant if you called me Miss Silburn.”
“Well, I was going to say,” the Captain went on, “that I took an interest in you all from the time Christopher read me those letters from home on the first evening I knew him. And when I heard about the dollar’s worth of stamps you sent him, and the way he was robbed of them, I came very near handing him a greenback to send in his letter to you. But I was afraid it might spoil him. Boys are very easily spoiled; specially cabin boys. I don’t suppose he’s ever told you about how I had to train him in, in the first voyage or two.”
“Don’t you believe it, Vieve!” Kit laughed; “the Captain wouldn’t hurt a cat.”
“I gave him plenty of work to do, at any rate,” the Captain went on. “I don’t want to make him conceited by saying he did it well; but he seems to have turned out pretty well, like most of my boys. The great point about your brother was that he made up his mind to do his work well, and push his way ahead. Boys who start with that idea generally succeed, even when they have no great brains to begin with.”
“Ahem!” Kit interrupted. “Can’t we find something more interesting to talk about than me? Where do you go next time, Captain?”
“To Barbadoes again,” the Captain answered. “We went there last voyage. You fellows in the big mail steamers mustn’t think you are the only ones to go to the West Indies. And I saw a friend of yours there, too. Do you remember any one named Outerbridge, in Barbadoes?”
Kit began to blush so hard that the Captain immediately added:—
“Oh, not the young lady. It was her father that I saw. He wanted to be remembered to you, and hoped to see you next time you visited the island.”
“Ah!” Vieve exclaimed, “he never told us anything about a young lady in Barbadoes, Captain. You’re getting so you don’t tell me anything, any more, Kit. Do you know, Captain, he heard some great piece of news last night, and he won’t tell me what it was.”
“No, I won’t tell even Captain Griffith what it was, not at present,” Kit retorted. “And he will say that I’m right not to tell the business affairs of the company I work for.”
“It would be very unlike you to do it, I’ll say that,” the Captain assented; “and very improper besides. But you are going right back to the Trinidad, of course? and I may expect to see you while we are lying at Barbadoes?”
“I’m off in her next Saturday, sir,” Kit answered. “That’s the reason I have to start for home to-morrow morning, and can’t make you a longer visit. But my sister was anxious to come over and see Harry Leonard, and—”
“Why, Kit!” Vieve cried, with a blush that made her look prettier than ever; “I never mentioned his name, or thought of him.”
“Of course you both want to see Henry,” the Captain laughed; and in answer to his bell Harry soon appeared, and Kit had to retell his latest adventures in brief. But it was growing late, and they could not prolong their stay, and they crossed the East River on a Fulton ferryboat to give Vieve a view of the big bridge by night.
Such a trip was like delving into an Arabian Nights palace for the young Huntington girl, and for weeks afterward she could talk of little but the wonderful things she had seen. And from what Kit heard while he was home, he imagined that the most wonderful things of all, the most beautiful, most lovely and enchanting, were not the busy streets or tall buildings, not the big ships, the great bridge, or the crowds, but the fascinating things she saw in the big bazaars, which she described with more technical terms than he thought she had ever heard of.
But Kit’s great news had to be told before they could let him go. He intended to tell it in the home circle, but he would have been more than human if he had not let Vieve tease him a little for it just after seeing how anxious she was.
“It is not to be mentioned outside of the family,” he said, “because I mustn’t be telling office secrets; but Mr. Clark told me I could tell it at home. You must know, then, that—ahem—ahem—”
“Oh, Kit, do go on!” Vieve burst out. “I’ll tell all about that Barbadoes girl if you don’t.”
“You can’t,” Kit retorted; “you don’t know anything about her. But to come back to business, the company is building a fine new steamer, larger and better than any of the others, to be called the Maida. She is under way now, and when she is finished, Captain Fraser is to command her, because he is the senior captain of the line; and Mr. Clark is to be her purser, because he is the senior purser. That, as you can see, will leave the Trinidad without a purser; or would, rather. But if the present arrangements are carried out, the new purser of the Trinidad will be—”
“Oh, Kit!” Mrs. Silburn cried.
“I see you’ve guessed it, mother,” he went on. “His name is Kit Silburn. But I only said if present arrangements are carried out, mind you. There’s many a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip. The company may change its mind, or—or lots of other things may happen meanwhile. A purser gets exactly fifty per cent more pay than an assistant purser, and that part I should be very well satisfied with. But the Trinidad would seem strange without Captain Fraser or Mr. Clark.”
“Lots of other things,” as Kit predicted, did happen in the ten or eleven months that passed before the new Maida was ready for sea. The Silburn residence, for one thing, grew from a little story and a half cottage into a pretty two-story house, one of the best in Huntington. The new line of schooners between Bridgeport and New York, of which Mr. Silburn was manager and one of the stockholders, proved a profitable venture. Harry Leonard became a supercargo himself, and felt six inches taller from that minute. And it happened in the strangest way that the dinner-parties given at Sea View plantation, in Barbadoes, always fell upon the days when the Trinidad was in port.
Kit did not hesitate to speak at home about Miss Blanche Outerbridge, and for a time Vieve was inclined to be jealous of “that Barbadoes girl,” as she insisted upon calling her. But after a while Mr. Outerbridge brought his family to America for a visit, and upon becoming well acquainted with her, she had to say that Barbadoes produced some very pretty and companionable young ladies.
It was not till long after Kit became purser of the Trinidad, however,—not till the day came when there was neither need nor excuse for his spending any more of his earnings in Huntington,—that in one of his confidential talks with Vieve he told her how good the prospect was that she might in course of time be suitably provided with a sister-in-law.