The Fortune of the Indies/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV
MARITIME RELICS
FEBRUARY melted into March—melted, truly—and Chesley Street ran rivers, and the wide cornice of the Ingram house dripped rain upon the waiting daffodil-beds beneath. What was left of the winter's scant snow and ice vanished in swiftly-shrinking gray patches here and there about tree roots, and the earth reasserted itself, thinly skimmed with mud above its frozen layers. Tall winds from the sea rose and grew mighty, roaring about the roofs and buffeting the elms till they strewed Chesley Street with wet, crooked twigs. Now and again in the midst of this would come a day unbelievable, when no wind stirred, and the haze across the harbor lay still and blue, and you almost expected crocuses to leap out jubilantly from the borders. But these days were not many and held the false promise of a seaport March. For the most part, cold rain locked the harbor in a gray solitude and kept Resthaven dwellers in an isolation of inactivity quite as colorless.
Then, in the town across the bridge, the Historical Society announced a "Loan Exhibition of Maritime Relics." The three young Ingrams, of course, walked to it over the bridge beneath one umbrella—the edges of all of them got rather wet. The permanent collection of the Historical Society was always interesting in itself—queer old cradles and carding-wheels and samplers and pewter—but the "maritime relics" delighted the hearts of the Ingrams beyond measure. For there were walking-sticks made out of whales' bones, elaborately carved on long cruises, and ivory pastry-wheels hooped with Mexican silver and cut with the name of wife or true-love ashore; and there were curious birds made of over-lapping shells, and savage drums, and harpoon barbs, and toggle-irons, and whales' teeth, and cutlasses, and old guns. There were several log-books, open, beneath glass; there were tiny ships inclosed—apparently by some miracle—in small-necked bottles; there was a brass speaking-trumpet, such as the one Great-grandfather Mark had used to shout his clear, quick orders from the quarter-deck. From the walls above, stiff, ruddy portraits of sea-captains and ship-owners looked down gravely upon these relics of their calling,—a keen-eyed, firm-lipped set of men, sedate in their dark clothes and well-tied stocks.
It was while Mark and Alan were engaged in a lively dispute over the ships in bottles that Jane saw in a corner two or three ship models—a square-set whaler, a dashing brig, and a full-rigged clipper ship with every sail set, even to her lofty moonsail. ". . . Inclusive of the moonsail, that which the Gloria has not." Jane drew nearer to peer at the lovely thing from every angle. She screwed herself into the corner and stooped to look at the careful fashioning of the taffrail at the stern. And there, on a dimly golden scroll, was the vessel's name—Fortune of the Indies, Resthaven.
Jane's shout brought not only Mark and Alan from the inspection of cutlasses, but also the curator from his musty office and the visitors from two or three rooms. These last stared very hard, rather disappointed, perhaps, to see only a smallish girl in a boy's reefer leaping before a ship model. Mark and Alan clutched their foreheads melodramatically, crying, "Hallelujah!" and the curator said, "What's this; what's this? What is this?" looking over his glasses and thrusting a pen behind either ear.
"It's our ship!" Mark explained, not at all clearly.
"Where did it come from?" Alan asked.
"Whose is it supposed to be?" Jane demanded.
"I don't know what all this is," the curator protested, "but I can look in the record. It's a loan, you see—a Boston gentleman—a loan—I can look in the record."
"Do, please!" Jane entreated him, almost pushing him into the office.
He consulted a large and rather ancient day-book which looked as though it might itself have been one of the exhibits.
"Here it is," he announced at last, a good deal flurried by peering Ingrams at his shoulder. "Model, clipper ship. Fortune of the Indies. Loaned by Mr. Henry B. Bolliver, Brimmer Street, Boston, Mass."
"Thank you," said the Ingrams, and then felt rather blank. There really seemed to be nothing more they could do. They could scarcely demand that Mr. Henry B. Bolliver surrender to them something for which he had paid eight hundred dollars, and buy it they certainly could not, even supposing he should wish to part with it.
"Anyway," said Jane, "we can come and look and look at it all the time it's here."
Which she did, practically every day, until Alan suggested that she bring a cot and camp-stool and set up housekeeping in the wing of the Historical Society building.
The aunts came, too, and shook their heads gravely and reminded one another of how proudly the model had sailed above the Ingram mantel when the golden scroll was bright and the miniature company flag, with its blue "I" on a white field, was whole and new.
In the seclusion of the office—the most fitting place for the dark deed, for such she considered it—Jane did a daring thing. With a sheet of paper spread resolutely on the old secretary, she wrote a longish letter to Mr. Henry Bolliver. It was, she considered, a very 
In the seclusion of the office Jane did a daring thing
Jane put her letter into an envelope and, after some consideration, sealed it with the carnelian seal on which was graved "M. I." and the sailing ship. This, she decided, would establish her identity beyond doubt and convince Mr. Bolliver that at least she was no impostor. She stole out hatless at the garden-door, posted her letter before she had time to reconsider, and spent the waking moments of that night in the pleasantly uneasy frame of mind of one who has launched a secret venture.
Leisurely days went past, and Mrs. Titcomb visited the Historical Society's exhibition and came away reminiscent and admiring. Jane went about with a piercing stare for every postman and an occasionally tripping heart buttoned under her reefer. The letter did come at last, however, and Jane bore it breathlessly to her sanctum, the office. This envelope also boasted a seal — a square blue one with a flying-fish on it — and it was addressed in a courtly but difficult hand. As it was a rather important letter in many ways, it had best be given here in full.
Brimmer Street,
Boston, Massachusetts.
March Twentieth.
Miss Jane Ingram,
Ingram Mansion,
["Now how did he know that?" thought Jane.]
My Dear Jane Ingram: It is not very often in an old man's life that a very pleasant and wholly surprising event comes to rouse him from a chronic nap. Your letter, however, did exactly that to your most faithful servant, who may, perhaps, be able to equally surprise you.
For you shall know that I sailed to China with your grandfather Mark, in the Gloria—her last voyage to Eastern seas (she never spread canvas again after that cruise). Your grandfather was then a man of thirty-odd, and I was a young chap going out to take a clerkship in the tea business. I lived in China for a great many years. But I stopped for a night at Ingram Mansion—the night before the Gloria sailed—and I remember well that most gallant old house and two very charming young ladies—sisters of your grandfather—who entertained me with the most winning hospitality. There was a wealth of wisteria in bloom above the fine doorway, and I can quite easily see the young ladies standing, framed by it, on the portico as they waved their hands in farewell to their brother and your faithful servant.[Jane at this point covertly peeped at the last page to see if there was any mention of the ship model, but, seeing nothing of it, hastily turned back.]
Your humble servant,
Henry Bartholomew Bolliver.
"And not a word, not one word, about the Fortune of the Indies!" Jane said aloud.
Miss Lucia happened to be passing the office-door at that moment, and came in to find out why her grand-niece was soliloquizing. So Jane gave a hasty explanation and thrust the letter at her aunt.
"My dear! To write to a stranger!" protested Miss Lucia, adjusting her spectacles.
"But he isn't a stranger," Jane countered, inspired. "Just read it and see!"
Aunt Lucia did read it, and called Aunt Ellen, and they grew quite pink-cheeked and laughed with small thin chirps of amazed pleasure. They remembered the young man very well, it seemed, and had quite forgotten his name, except that he was called "Bart" in those days.
"You had on a lavender silk frock—do you remember, Ellen?—and he said you looked like a wisteria blossom come to life."
"O Lucia!" Miss Ellen protested; "and he kissed your hand, and Mark dipped the pennant for us. It was the Gloria's last voyage. 'Miss Nelly and Miss Lucy'! Oh, how odd it seems, my dear!"
Jane, standing beside the secretary, felt suddenly extremely young and as though the letter were no longer her letter at all. She was trying to picture gently-faded little Aunt Ellen in a lavender silk frock laughing among the wisteria flowers on their very same doorstep. And then, queerly enough, she felt immensely old and somehow very sorry, and flung her arms suddenly around both the old ladies.
"O Aunties!" she cried. "Oh, I wish it were then!" and came more near to crying then she usually did.
But all this, though quite fascinating as a discovery, threw no more light than ever on the Fortune of the Indies, and the exhibition was to close in a week.
"Then it'll go back to Boston, and we'll never never see it again," Jane mourned to her brothers. "If he'd only said that his heirs and assigns forever would see that it was sold to nobody but an Ingram, at least!"
"Well, he didn't," Alan said. "You ought to be jolly glad you've seen as much of it as you have, and that such a nice old chap has it, instead of some bloated lubber of a profiteer."
With which sage counsel Jane strove to console herself.