O Genteel Lady!/Chapter 2
My dear Papa,
I wish to assure you that I am settled most auspiciously in Boston and intend to stay here and study for a year at least. When I think I can endure Amherst I will come back and visit for a few days, but now I could not; Papa, if you were very angry with me you would not still be paying me my allowance, would you? I hope this means you forgive me. Amherst is no place for one who wishes to be an artist, as there is no one there any better than myself to teach me, and you must understand why I prefer not to be in Amherst where all the Old Hens, and what is worse, the Male Gossips like Mr. Goochey (I do not care if he is the minister), will talk of nothing else but the Bardeens for six months, I know you will not miss me, for you have always preferred the society of books to any human companionship. You may not believe me, but I am glad to leave Mr. Augustus Trainer forever. I do not think Heaven would have smiled upon our Union, and just as soon as he heard about Mamma he promised to protect me from any inherent sinfulness I might have inherited, and proposed postponing our nuptials for a year, so if I had any flightiness it might be manifest. Please tell Mr. Trainer that yes, I am flighty, and that I never in the world will marry him. I hope he is not languishing away, but if he is I think it would do him good. I have decided that Marriage is not an enviable state. I intend to offer myself heart and soul to Art. I have stopped curling my hair and now am working at Mrs. Dummer's studio. It is very inspiring and the instruction so good. Mrs. Dummer is considered the first lady artist in the city—perhaps in this country. She is painting a series of twenty-four scenes from the Old Testament. The canvases are six by four, and sublimely conceived as well as perfectly executed. She is now working on her 'Drunkenness of Noah.' It is immense. She has done some of the New Testament, but when she tried to paint the 'Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes' I had to show her how fish scales really fit on, as I do not think she has ever looked with great accuracy at fish. I went to the Market and had a basket filled with one of every kind. But Mrs. D did not like the smell. I did not mind, and painted fishes all that day, and at night divided them between a model and Willy, the Poggys' cat, who in spite of her name has just had a mess of kittens. Her (I mean Mrs. Dummer's) ideals are of the Highest. We both agree that there is enough wickedness and ugliness in the world without putting it in pictures or stories. It is the duty of Art to see only the Beautiful. And this noble theme she is able to carry out, even when treating nasty old Noah, who, on re-reading this particular part of the Good Book, strikes me as being a very worldly gentleman, unworthy of his place in Sacred Literature.
It is almost more interesting to work as Captain Poggy's amanuensis. This task commands half of my time, usually the afternoons. All are agreed that Art can be best served by judicious application and that both morning and afternoon at my easel would soon render me stale. So it is without detriment to my Chosen Muse that I help Captain Poggy on his witchcraft history. It is like spring already, although but the middle of March. Early in April Captain Poggy and I will spend several days in Salem, which city I would now rather see than any the New World has to offer.
Papa, if you are too lonely, write me and I will return to Amherst, much as I now hate it. I hope the horses are well, or have you sold them?
I am, dutifully, your daughter
Lanice Bardeen
When Captain Poggy tried to explain to Lanice the purport of the book and the duties expected of his amanuensis, Pauline would flit restlessly before his bookshelves, pulling down one volume after another and often replacing it wrong side up. All the time Lanice was conscious of her eager, sidelong glances. Finally Captain Poggy politely asked his daughter, as long as she had so kindly furnished him with this clever secretary, to leave them undisturbed. Pauline inexplicably burst into tears and left the room. Captain Poggy, a seraphic man with white hair as silvery as a gone-by dandelion, paid no heed to this outburst and calmly went on with the subject of his discourse. Land rights, church conflicts, jealousies—all these petty things one must understand thoroughly if one would understand Salem witchcraft. In his book he would show not only the courage but also the terrors of the early settlers confronted, as they believed, on all sides by the power of Beelzebub. They really thought the Red Men to be devils and the wolves were were-wolves. They themselves were from a little land of hedges, lanes, and small fields, but here was the unutterable weight of endless forest at their backs, and the dark sea beating at their feet. As Lanice wrote, the subject enchanted her. When Captain Poggy was done she could hardly bear to lay her pen down, although her fingers ached.
While engaged in her art lessons with Mrs. Dummer, she thought more often of the witches than of the Biblical scenes growing up about her. Once she painted a convent on Mount Tom, but this she replaced with a gallows. For the shepherds she substituted witch-fire. It would not have occurred to her to paint old Jabez, the actual shepherd of Amherst sheep, who smoked and did not play his pipe.
A month later Lanice received a roundabout response to her letter. Mrs. Andrews, the housekeeper, found her at work by the Chippendale table in the library. She glared at the pale young lady through her rectangular spectacles.
'If I may interrupt, there is a gentleman at the door asking for Miss Bardeen.'
The girl, absorbed in her work, sleeked her jet-black hair, frowned and shook her head. She knew no one in Boston.
'But, Miss...'
'I must finish this before Captain Poggy comes back. If any one really does want to see me, ask him to come back later.'
The gentleman left a large box. Evidently this box had come from afar. It was wrapped in Italian paper, and stuck with labels and customs seals. When Lanice saw the handwriting, she drew back. 'I'll open it later; I'll rest now.' Her silk skirts swished up the stairs. Mamma had addressed the label. Wicked, wicked Mamma had sent the box.
She lay in her small yellow room and composed herself. Perhaps it was a little statue that Mamma had sent her to Amherst and which some one had carried to her here. Perhaps it was a Swiss music box, or an alabaster Leaning Tower of Pisa, or a Roman vase. She wished it had never reached her. An uncomfortable tenderness towards Mamma stirred in her heart and hurt her. Mamma with her apple-blossom face...Surely Mamma was the happiest person in Lanice's world. Even now she was seeing the Wonders of the Old World, Switzerland and Italy...Italy! Italy! Roger Cuncliffe—the pretty boy with the light walk and feverish cheeks. The awfully sick boy who had been brought up in Europe. Lanice could instantly recall his narrow face, black curls, burning color, and cattish grace contrasting with the heavier virtues of the other students. Something symbolical...symbolical of what? Mamma was in Italy with this symbolical young man. Venice and the Grand Canal; Naples and Pompeii; Florence and the Arno; Rome and the Colosseum—and Roger Cuncliffe.
Mrs. Andrews rat-tatted on her door. The gentleman who had left the box had returned. Perhaps it was Papa!
Had the gentleman fine brown whiskers? Did he wear a green cape?
The gentleman had a very small flaxen Dundreary. The gentleman wore a plaid ulster and a small Highland shawl beneath.
Not Papa, who was prouder of the almost feminine beauty of his beard than of his great classical learning. Not Papa, but Augustus. 'Oh, God,' she prayed, 'guide me. Give me strength to send him away and forgive my disliking him.'
Strangely enough she stopped, before descending to see this hated young man, to lay off the ugly brown merino that she had much affected since life had grown so serious, and hooked herself into her black glacé silk. She adjusted her point d'esprit collars and cuffs. This slightly tragic dress she knew always had had a disturbing effect upon Mr. Augustus Trainer. Although she intended to 'part with him forever,' she was almost as anxious to appear handsome in his eyes as she had been two years earlier when she thought him a great mind. Then the girl ('vixen' Mr. Trainer would have called her if he had known all) hung black onyx and pearl ear-rings in her ears, moistened her palms from the bottle of Boudoir Liquid Hair Pomade and slicked her already glittering hair. Satisfied that Augustus should at least appreciate what he had lost, she stole darkly down two flights of stairs and saw Augustus standing beneath the hall chandelier, leaning on his cane.
'Ah...Lanice.'
'How courteous of you to seek me out, Mr. Trainer.'
'You left me most unceremoniously, Lanice. Could you not have trusted me with your plans?'
'No. I couldn't even trust myself...'
She had intended to send Augustus away without letting him sit down, but wishing privacy she motioned him into the more formal of the two drawing-rooms. She sank delicately into a red Chinese chair in front of the screen, massive as the gates of Paradise, curiously made of carved teak and fat jade. She wished to rid herself of him forever, but could not help looking up at him sadly with more meaning in her long black eyes than in her heart.
'Augustus,' she said, with the gentility of one of her own mawkish heroines, 'it is best for you, as well as for me, that we part. I am more definitely pledged to my Art than I ever could be to you.'
'No, no, Miss. It is not your art that has come between us, although I admit that you have talent. It is the chagrin you feel at your mother's ridiculous conduct.'
'Ridiculous?' The girl's heart was pounding and her neat ivory hands twisted the bracelets on her wrists. It was one thing to hate Mamma herself, and another for Augustus to sneer. 'Is it ridiculous to prefer the wonders of the Old World to—Amherst?'
'It is ridiculous to prefer the company of a scatterbrained boy to one's lawful spouse.'
'Ugh.'
'Why do you say "ugh" Lanice?'
'I do not like the word "spouse."'
'"Spouse?" It is one of the most hallowed words in the English language. Its associations...but to leave philology and return to ourselves. I have come to tell you that, in spite of what I once said, in my eyes you are as untainted as before your mother's fall. I spoke hastily, I fear. I suggested that the mischievous wantonness of your parent...Lanice...' The young man, for he was young in spite of his impeccable dignity, faltered slightly. 'There are certain barriers with which womanly modesties and delicacies guard themselves. I never have known you, even in moments of enthusiasm over our approaching nuptials, to transgress one of these barriers. I have never seen in you a suggestion of gross passion. Because I believe entirely in your own purity, I am willing to overlook your mother, and once again offer you my hand.' His forehead was dank with sweat. His earnest, grasping eyes stuck out from under the piggish-white lashes.
'Mr. Trainer, you do me honor, but I can see now that I have never really loved you.'
'How many a pure woman has said that! It is only with marriage the truly womanly woman comes to understand love.'
'That may be true, but, perhaps I am not womanly, for my poor Augustus, I think I could understand so much more, even before marriage, from some one else.'
The young man empurpled.
'Lanice! That does not sound like you. I am afraid I do not approve of studio life for a young female; such thoughts are unbecoming.'
'But please realize that I think them.' Then, as if to counteract any impression of wantonness, the girl cast down her black-fringed lids, crossed her slim feet and gentle hands.
'Lanice.' The young man was oppressed with the desire to crush the primly corseted female form. Some one else would teach the minx to love! She sat in her red lacquer chair and black glacé dress, her eyes veiled, but a provocative, mocking smile shadowing her mouth.
'Lanice.'
'You said that before.'
'I beg of you to consider my suit.' She innocently regarded his two thick layers of plaid.
'A new one, Mr. Trainer?'
'It pleases you to be frivolous.'
She raised her pointed chin and put out her hands with a direct, boyish grace. 'No, only silly. But it's no use. I'll never go back to Amherst and I'll never unite my fortunes with yours. Nor even have an understanding with you nor permit you to call upon me again. You'll fall just as much in love with some one else.'
She stood up, her hoops swaying delicately beneath her glossy skirts. It was a trick of hers, learned from Mamma. She could start this flower-like swaying by giving the skirt a secret little push in back.
'Augustus, let's unpack Mamma's present.' She swished past him into the hall and he suffered vaguely from the fascination of a half-realized scent of lavender and sweet rose-leaves, then lurched after her and humbly set about unpacking the box.
Inside the wrappings was a strange rosewood box. It was handsomely mounted with ebony, fitted with lenses. Obviously one was intended to squat before the mystery and peer in.
'Lanice, my dear, your mother has sent you one of these wonderful modern inventions—a stereoscope! See, here are the photographs to go in the machine and the directions in French.'
While Lanice rapturously gazed at the pinkish double photographs, mounted on yellow cards bearing names of foreign dealers, Augustus studied the directions and established the machine in the shallow bow window of the drawing-room. His mechanical enthusiasm was as touched as Lanice's artistic. The girl had never in her life seen so many fine photographs of foreign wonders. Her mind thrilled under the impact. Augustus demanded the photographs and skilfully inserted them within the box. Then, adjusting the light, he called upon Lanice to see. She had not even heard of the invention. Why were there two of every view, mounted side by side? Why must she look at them in the box? At the last moment Augustus decided that it was undignified for the young female to sit on the floor and begged her to let him rearrange the show upon a table. The girl uttered an emphatic 'no,' and, squatting before the box, applied her eyes to the lenses.
'Oh, Augustus!' she cried, and felt a spinal chill of delight, a rapturous shuddering such as love had never raced through her body. By magic the flat photographs had become rounded realities. A jutting rock overhung one corner of the scene. It was so real that she wanted to put out her hands lest it fall upon her, lest she slip into the Alpine chasm below. Whirling waterfalls and mist floating up. In the distance snow-capped mountains. Two travellers in capes, rucksacks, and beards leaned against the flimsy fence that guarded the footpath. The illusion was painful in its reality.
'Ready for the next?'
'Oh, not yet. See, even the buttons on their coats are round.'
Many views of 'La Suisse'—and then...Italy. The Alps stunned her; Italy pierced her through. Milan's lovely lacework, layer upon layer, like a valentine. Lake Como, with iron chairs in the garden for Lanice to sit upon. The Rialto, so firm she might set her eager feet upon it. Miles away Augustus was saying that President and Mrs. Duke in Amherst—despised Amherst—had a small machine of this type. 'You hold it in your left hand and adjust the pictures with the right. Amherst has some things, Miss, as soon as Boston!'
The Arno shooting through its five great bridges. Which was the one where the jewellers worked? Which sweet hill Fiesole? Saint Peter's, and the stone arms stretched out to enfold a world. The Tiber. The Campagna, stone pines and marching ruins of aqueducts. Augustus turned mechanically. He could not see the pictures himself but his voice wove mesmerizing passes about her. Out of oblivion Lanice occasionally recognized the word 'Amherst.'
'The advantages of such a town for a home...I am afraid that for some years a humble home...'
Pompeii and Capri and the Blue Grotto which was painted an intense blue and yawned at one like a dragon's gullet.
'The new board walks do much for our comfort in Amherst. They have been extended as far as the Dickinson house. On Pleasant Street...'
Out of the dark of the box flashed the gleaming body of a girl. The headless, almost armless, fragment twisted in a dance. Lanice's heart gathered itself together and stopped. For the first time in her life she was touched by the beauty of nudity. With unabashed interest she followed the flowing curves of the nymph's body, and regretted that she, herself, was so thin. Apollo Belvedere next, his vapid face turned away, his hair coquettishly knotted. She admired the lines of chest and abdomen, and the sleekness of his limbs. Next, out of the darkness to meet her came a brutal bronze boxer with gaping sockets where once enamel made him eyes. His coarse muscles and rather bestial masculinity embarrassed her, but she stared with fascination. Strange, he was not as beautiful as Apollo, but she felt the spinal chill which she associated with beauty. She wished Augustus would remember to turn the crank. One should not stare too long at this animal, yet she could neither drag her eyes away, nor tell Augustus to turn on.
'...Still an instructor, next year, and live with your father...a professor...eight hundred a year...little home...settle down...restless...tormenting yourself with art...Amherst. By and by in God's good time...'
Did men look like that? Threatening, bulging muscles, fleshless thighs, corded neck and arms? She was almost afraid the creature would follow her out of the box. How terrible would be a man of bronze! Stronger than twenty men of flesh.
'Are you ready, Lanice?'
'Oh, quite. Turn the crank.'
'My dear, you could not have been listening. Well...'
They moved on to the Throne Room of Versailles. Gold, crimson, polished floors, seemingly hundreds of candles actually burning in crystal chandeliers. Kings and Queens!!!
'I am a patient man by nature and I can, I will wait...I...'
They had come around once again to Switzerland.
'A home is not a thing to despise...and frankly, my dear, why should you think yourself a genius...few women have been that...a husband...and I will always love you Lanice, my dear.'
He straightened himself and looked hopelessly at the great hoopskirts collapsed in circles upon the floor, and at their owner gaping into the black box. He twisted at his stock and placed his palm upon the girl's waist. The girl unfolded at the touch. Her eyes, long focused on foreign wonders, blinked, and her mind, from far away, came back with difficulty.
'Thank you for bringing me this thing all the way from Amherst...and such a heavy box! But when you touch me suddenly you give me creeps. And, really, you must now excuse me, for I have my copying to do for Captain Poggy.'
'Lanice, when?'
'I must beg of you to believe me when I say that I can never be more than a sister to you, only a friend. And may I suggest that the way to be spared the burning is to avoid the flame? In other words, Mr. Trainer, it is best that we meet no more!'
She journeyed to Salem, the dirty steam packet approaching from the sea as had the first planters. At the decaying Derby Wharf where the packet docked they found a purple chaise with a wan yellow horse, and so drove in shabby state to Chestnut Street and the long dead Mrs. Poggy's sister's house, one of the most pretentious of all the houses that MacIntyre had designed for the greatness of a past generation. Here they stayed their week.
Lanice, knowing the wealth of the Poggy family and realizing that the great success of the present firm of Poggy, Banks & Poggy was based upon the fortunes of this old Salem family, was shocked to find 'Miss Myra's' mansion pitifully gone in decay. Captain Poggy, conscious of her amazement, availed himself of the first moment his sister-in-law left the room to explain that, although he yearly paid over a 'proper sum' to this eccentric lady, she always refused to more than tolerate it in her bank. She would not spend it because she believed it to be the 'blood money of Salem.'
Miss Myra, even in her own house, always wore a large green silk bonnet of a long past style, and black or yellow silk mitts upon her birdlike hands. She smelled faintly but unmistakably of the past. Lanice could not analyze it, but it was not unsimilar to ancient cookies.
To Lanice, who was but a distant and inland connection, she relaxed into courtesy if not kindness, but to the Captain she remained stolidly aloof, treating him with studied old-fashioned courtesy that was ruder than the insults of common man. Even his name she would not always deign to remember and called him 'Captain...er...' with a belittling gesture of her hand. Lanice, angry for his dignity, asked him why they must stay here in this mouldering house, the guests of this hateful old lady, but the Captain would reply that if they had stopped anywhere else it would have hurt Miss Myra's feelings. On the sixth day Miss Myra so far unbent as to take Lanice to her own room where the shutters made perpetual night, although outside the sun was bright. Miss Myra lighted a candle and with some rheumatic difficulties got to her knees beside a red Chinese trunk, bound with brass.
'I took to you because I have known your face for so many years...longer than you have lived, I imagine.'
'Do I resemble my mother's people?'
'No, no, no, no,' the old lady frowned irritably and laid aside the Eastern gauzes and embroideries heavy with musk and sandalwood. She took out a gold filigree case, and with some staggering, muttering, and ineffectual aid from Lanice, got to her feet. She looked baleful and evil, like a witch cat, and Lanice, thinking of the women hanged upon the hill, could imagine this bitter lady in a halter.
'Open it,' she commanded. 'No one has seen it for forty years, not since Sister Poggy deserted Salem to go with that worthless husband to Boston.'
Lanice found herself face to face with a beautiful Indian or Persian miniature painted upon ivory. The girl she faced had long jet eyes, black silk hair, pale shapely face, and locked red mouth. She was heavy with jewels, ear-rings, nose stud, bracelets, and necklaces. Her skin was so white as to seem opalescent, and her fingers were henna-dipped. Lanice could see the vague resemblance, but was amazed by the almost hypnotic, unearthly expression, a promise of intoxicating joys and subtle evils which no one had found in her, nor she in life.
'As soon as you came in, I recognized the resemblance. My uncle never married because of that face. He had the miniature in his hand when he died fifty years ago in Canton, and his partner sent it back to us.'
'Is it a picture of a real woman, some one whom he loved?'
'No. Never. No woman. Some idea...a dream vampire...' the old lady's voice sank...'ghoul.'
'But perhaps it was nothing so terrible. Just a girl of flesh and blood, like me. Your uncle...'
'My uncle was no fool. And the men of my family do not commit suicide for an actual woman. This thing drove him crazy.' She turned away from the strewn contents of the chest. 'Keep it, if you want it. I'm through.'
Speechless, Lanice tucked the miniature in her voluminous petticoat pocket, and at a peremptory gesture from the old lady, left the shuttered chamber and its antique, delicately cooky-scented occupant.
Captain Poggy laughed at the idea of suicide. Every one knew, he said, that this uncle had died of dysentery, but the ladies of his family had preferred a more romantic ending, and now Sister Myra actually believed these lies. Lanice surreptitiously showed him the miniature, which he pronounced the finest thing of its kind he had ever seen. If, in some subtle way, it did resemble Lanice, evidently the fact escaped his shrewd eyes. On other days she climbed the rock hill on which the gallows of the witches had been set, and saw the crevices where tradition believed their bodies had been buried, some with their hands exposed above ground for vile and simple headstones. She saw their gnarled old houses, far away in Danvers or Beverly. She saw the pins with which the afflicted girls had been tormented. But much of her time was spent in the new court-house where she deciphered and copied old records of court procedure.
At night, on returning to Miss Myra's, supposedly to sleep on the great sleigh bed, she would find that the words of the witches, the questioning of the judges, the outcries of the 'afflicted,' followed her from the lifeless leaves.
'Have you made no contracts with the Devil?'
'No.'
(Then the afflicted did cry out.)
'Why do you torment these children?'
'I do not. I scorn it.'
(She muttered and the children were struck speechless.)
'What do you mutter to yourself?'
'If I must tell, I will tell.'
'Tell us then.'
'It is the Commandments. I may say my Commandments, I hope.'
Lanice would turn and try to forget these long-dead tragic folk. But again their words, forcing themselves through the quiet of the night, came to disturb her sleep. The voice of the witch, 'I am a gospel woman and God will save me. I am a gospel woman and I hurt no man.'
'Why do you torture these children?'
'I do not. I scorn it, and God shall prove me innocent as an unborn babe.'
The accused told of red and yellow birds, hairy imps, pretty black men dressed in green leaves, and these too Lanice could see by shutting her eyes.
In odd moments she saw Salem. Where the East Indiamen and China clippers had been were now a few lumber schooners from Nova Scotia, or a shipment of hides from the South. The proud city that Captain Poggy had, in his radiant boyhood, adored as a lover, had fallen into senility. He told Lanice, as they walked the dull, echoing streets, how he had first come to Salem as a youngster without worldly goods beyond his 'Bowditch, his Testament, his quadrant, and his mother's blessing,' and how he had risen to be master at twenty, at twenty-three had married his employer's daughter, and by thirty was a shipowner. The rest of his career Lanice gathered, from the speed with which he dismissed it, was nothing. The rise of the great firm of Poggy, Banks & Poggy and all that he had accomplished since he was thirty—that any one might have done. But to be master at twenty!
He told her how, when he had come into control of the great shipping interests of Salem's most distinguished family, he decided Boston was the coming port and that Salem had had her glorious day, so abandoned the old love for a new. For this disloyalty he had been followed by the implacable hatred of the proud families that had accepted ruin with the failing port.
Sometimes they stopped to call upon dry and haughty old dames sitting in close parlors that smelt of sandalwood and camphor, drinking rare tea out of the cups their fathers had brought back from the East fifty years before. The paint peeled from the beautiful classical doorways and weeds grew between the bricks of the sidewalk.
Walking the streets of Salem the Captain liked to take Lanice's arm. This he called 'helping her,' and she graciously accepted it as such, although, because of his lameness, his 'help' sometimes dragged. She knew he was proud of his 'Cousin Laney,' as he called her, and liked the pretty white frilled muslin she wore and her scarlet straw bonnet. His cane tapped the sidewalk. Her skirts swished against the mouldering iron fences.
One day, enough work being done, the weather fine, they idled down Chestnut Street for the beginning of their stroll.
'I believe,' said the Captain, 'that there yonder down the street is a familiar back.'
'Not to me, Cousin Poggy.'
She looked with attention at the retreating back. It was of a tall, strongly built man making considerable speed away from them.
'It's a Ripley back' said Captain Poggy positively; 'if it's not Sears Ripley it's his half-brother Frank, or his cousin Asa. The Ripleys all have been built like that.'
'I don't see anything so particular about it.'
'Oh, that's a fine back.'
'Is that the Mr. Sears Ripley who lives in Concord and is so literary? And teaches at Harvard? I've heard of him; why should he be in Salem?'
'That Concord house of his was his mother's, a second wife, but all the rest of him is Salem and he ought to be thankful for it.' The Captain began to hurry.
'We can't possibly catch up with him.'
'He may turn round and see us.'
'What do you want of him? You see Mr. Sears Ripley every week in Boston, at your Literary Club.'
'I know, but it may be Asa.' The Captain was getting a little breathless, 'And Asa is still shipping out of Salem. I'd like a word or two with him. Do you know, Cousin Laney, I could still shout so as to make him hear? No, no, I'm not planning to do it.'
'What would you shout?'
'"Hoy, hoy, Ripley!"—only very loud.'
The man, unconscious of his pursuers, slackened his speed and seemed on the point of turning about.
'Ha! That vermin! And off again is he, faster than ever—with those long legs of his.'
'And that fine back.'
They both laughed. Lanice grew restless.
'Wait. I'll run ahead and stop him,' she offered, and lifting up her many muslin ruffles, she flew down the street after him, the scarlet clocks in her white silk stockings visible to all the watchers behind closed blinds. She overtook him, and called in a voice made loud and uncompromising by breathlessness, 'Mr. Ripley.'
He swung about in amazement.
'If you are Mr. Ripley,' she added.
'I am,' he began, 'and...' He wanted to know who this bright pursuer was and what he might do for her. When he turned and faced her, she saw that he was not as young as she had judged from his back. He had a short, slightly pointed dark beard, and his eyes were amusingly triangular in shape and very deeply set. His suit was cut square, a little like a seaman's, and made of blue serge. His complexion, either by nature or exposure, was dark. She decided that he must be Asa who 'shipped out' rather than his Concord cousin, the scholarly Sears.
'I beg your pardon for running after you.'
His little, odd eyes twinkled. 'I am flattered.'
'But if you are Mr. Asa Ripley...'
'Oh, but I'm not. If I were Asa I would be merely a ghost. He died two months ago.'
Lanice was conscience-stricken. She begged his pardon again. 'Captain Poggy cannot know that he is dead.'
'Nobody did until the brig, Laura Burn, came in day before yesterday. But is Captain Poggy about?' He looked down the street, saw him coming, and hastily and rather joyously went to meet him.
'And my young cousin, Miss Lanice Bardeen.'
The little eyes sparkled. 'Oh,' he said, 'you need not introduce us. We have already broken the ice splendidly.'
But later, evidently fearing that she was sensitive about her blunder, he said to her, in an aside, 'Asa and I always disliked each other—even as boys. You must not think you hurt my feelings.'
'But still I'm sorry,' said Lanice.
'You must not feel sorry,' said Sears Ripley.
They smiled and were friends.