Horace Chase Part 21

"I can't. I have promised to see to the chowder," answered Mrs.

Franklin. "Sailing and sea-beans and poetry are all very well. But I have noticed that every one grows gloomy when the chowder is bad!"

Etheridge, Ruth, and Walter Willoughby, therefore, recrossed the island and embarked. The commodore took the helm.

"What boat is that ahead of us?" asked Walter. "Some of our people? Has any one else deserted the sea-beans?"

"I dare say," replied Etheridge, carelessly.

The commodore could manage a boat extremely well; the _Owl and the p.u.s.s.ycat_ flew after that sail ahead, in a line as straight as a plummet.

"Why, it's Mrs. Kip," said Ruth, as they drew nearer. She had recognized the gypsy hat in the other boat.

"Yes, with Albert Tillotson," added Walter.

"What, that donkey?" inquired Etheridge, with well-feigned surprise (and an anger that required no feigning). "He can no more manage a boat than I can manage a comet! Poor Mrs. Kip is in actual danger of her life. The idea of that Tom Noddy of a Tillotson daring to take her out! I must run this boat up alongside, Mr. Willoughby, and get on board immediately.

Common humanity requires it."

"The commodore's common humanity is uncommonly like jealousy," said Walter to Ruth when the _Owl_ had dropped behind again after this manoeuvre had been successfully executed. "He is a clever old fellow!

Of course he knew she was out, and he came with us on purpose. We'll keep near them, Mrs. Chase, and watch their faces; it will be as good as a play."

To his surprise, Ruth, who was generally so ready to laugh, did not pay heed to this. "I am glad he has gone," she said; "for now we need not talk--just sail and sail! Let us go over so far--straight down towards the south." Her eyes had a dreamy expression which was new to him.

"What next!" thought her companion. He glanced furtively at his watch.

"I can keep on for half an hour more, I suppose."

But when, at the end of that time, he put about, Ruth, who had scarcely spoken, straightened herself (she had been lying back indolently, with one hand behind her head), and watched the turning prow with regret.

"_Must_ we go back so soon? Why?"

"To look for sea-beans," answered Walter. "Are you aware, Mrs. Chase, of the awful significance of that New England phrase of condemnation, 'You don't know beans'? It will be said that _I_ don't know if I take you any farther. For the tide will soon turn, and the wind is already against us."

But his tasks were not yet at an end; another idea soon took possession of his companion's imagination.

"How wild Anastasia looks from here! I have never landed at this point.

Can't we land now, just for a few moments? It would be such fun."

"Won't it be more than fun, Mrs. Horace? A wild-goose--? Forgive the pun."

On Anastasia there are ancient trails running north and south. Ruth, discovering one of these paths, followed it inland. "I wish we could meet something, I wish we could have an adventure!" she said. "There are bears over here; and there are alligators too at the pools. Perhaps this trail leads to a pool?" The surmise was correct; the path soon brought them within sight of a dark-looking pond, partly covered with lily leaves. Ruth, who was first (for the old Indian trail was so narrow that they could not walk side by side), turned back suddenly. "There really _is_ an alligator," she whispered. "He is half in and half out of the water. I am going to run round through the thicket, so as to have a nearer view of him." And hurrying with noiseless steps along the trail, she turned into the forest.

He followed. "Don't be foolhardy," he urged. For she seemed to him so fearless that there was no telling what she might do.

But when they reached the opposite side of the pool no alligator was visible, and Ruth, seating herself in the loop of a vine, which formed a natural swing, laughed her merriest.

"You are an excellent actress," he said. "I really believed that you had seen the creature."

"And if I had? They don't attack people; they are great cowards."

"I have an admirable air of being more timid than she is!" he thought, annoyed.

They returned towards the sh.o.r.e along a low ridge. On their way he saw something cross this ridge about thirty feet ahead of them--a slender dark line. He ran forward and looked down (for the ridge was four feet high).

"Come quickly!" he called back to Ruth. "Your alligator was a base invention. But here is something real. He is hardly more than an infant," he continued, his eyes still fixed on the lower slope. "But he is of the blood royal, I can tell by the shape of his neck. I'll get a long branch, Mrs. Chase, and then, as you like adventures, you can see him strike." Where they stood, they were safe, for the snake (it was a young rattlesnake) would not come up the ascent; when he moved, he would glide the other way into the thicket. Hastily cutting a long wand from a bush, he gave it to her. "Touch him," he directed; "on the body, not on the head. Then you will see him coil!" He himself kept his eyes meanwhile on the snake; he did not look at her. But the wand did not descend. "Make haste," he urged, "or he will be off!"

The wand came down slowly, paused, and then touched the reptile, who instantly coiled himself, reared his flat head, and struck at it with his fangs exposed. Walter, excited and interested, waited to see him strike again. But there was no opportunity, for the wand itself was dropping. He turned. Ruth, her face covered with her hands, was shuddering convulsively.

"The snake has gone," he said, rea.s.suringly; "he went off like a shot into the thicket, he is a quarter of a mile away by this time." For he was alarmed by the violence of the tremor that had taken possession of her.

In spite of her tremor, she began to run; she hurried like a wild creature along the ridge until she came to a broad open s.p.a.ce of white sand, over which no dark object could approach unseen; here she sank down, sobbing aloud.

He was at his wits' end. Why should a girl, who apparently had no fear of bears or alligators, be frightened out of her senses by one small snake?

"Supposing she should faint--that Dolly is always fainting! What on earth could I do?" he thought.

Ruth, however, did not faint. But she sobbed and sobbed as if she could not stop.

"It's just like her laughing," thought Walter, in despair. "Dear Mrs.

Chase," he said aloud, "I am distracted to see how I have made you suffer. These Florida snakes do very little harm, unless one happens to step on them unawares. I did not imagine, I did not dream, that the mere sight--But that makes no difference; I shall never forgive myself; never!"

Ruth looked up, catching her breath. "It was so dreadful!" she murmured, brokenly. "Did you see its--its mouth?" She was so white that even her lips were colorless; her blue eyes were dilated strangely.

He grew more and more alarmed. Apparently she saw it, for she tried to control herself; and, after two or three minutes, she succeeded. "You must not mind if I happen to look rather pale," she said, timidly. "I am sometimes very pale for a moment or two. And then I get dreadfully red in the same way. Dolly often speaks of it. But it doesn't mean anything.

I can go now," she added, still timidly.

"She thinks I am vexed," he said to himself, surprised. He was not vexed; on the contrary, in her pallor and this new shyness she was more interesting to him than she had ever been before. As he knew that they ought to be on their way back, he accepted her offer to start, in spite of her white cheeks. But her steps were so weak, and she still trembled so convulsively, that he drew her hand through his arm and held it.

Giving her in this way all the help he could, he took her towards the sh.o.r.e, choosing a route through open s.p.a.ces, so that there should be no vision of any gliding thing in the underbrush near by. When they were off again, crossing the Matanzas on a long tack, she was still very pallid. "I haven't been clever," he thought. "At present she is unnerved by fright. But by to-morrow it will be anger, and she will say that it was my fault." While thinking of this, he talked on various subjects.

But it was a monologue; for a long time Ruth made no answer. Then suddenly the color came rushing back to her cheeks. "_Please_ don't tell--don't tell any one how dreadfully frightened I was," she pleaded.

"I never tell anything; I have no talent for narrative," he answered, much relieved to see the returning red. "But I am dreadfully cut up and wretched about that fright I was stupid enough to give you. I wish I could make you forget it, Mrs. Chase; forget it forever."

"On the contrary, I am afraid I shall remember it forever," Ruth answered. Then she added, still timidly, "But you were so kind--It won't be _all_ unpleasant."

"What a school-girl it is!" thought Walter. "And above all things, what a creature of extremes! She must lead Horace Chase a life! However, she is certainly seductively lovely."

CHAPTER XI

At the end of this week Horace Chase returned. And the next morning he paid a visit to his mother-in-law. He still used his "ma'am" when talking to her; she still called him "Mr. Chase." In mentioning him to others, she sometimes succeeded in bringing out a "Horace." But when the tall, grave-looking business man was before her in person, she never got beyond the more formal t.i.tle.

"My trip to Savannah, ma'am, was connected with business," Chase began, after he had gone through his usual elaborate inquiries about her health and "the health of Miss Dolly." "One of my friends, David Patterson by name, and myself, have been engaged for some time in arranging a new enterprise in which we are about to embark in California. Matters are now sufficiently advanced for me to mention that about May next we shall need a confidential man in New York to attend to the Eastern part of it.

It is highly important to me, ma'am, to have for that position some one I know, some one I can trust. Mr. Patterson will go himself to California, and remain there, probably, a year or more. Meanwhile I, at the East, shall need just the right man under me; for _I_ have other things to see to; I cannot give all my time to this new concern. Do you think, ma'am, that Mr. Franklin could be induced to take this place?

Under the circ.u.mstances, I should esteem it a favor." And here he made Jared's mother a little bow.

"You are very kind," answered Mrs. Franklin. Having refused to know anything of the correspondence between Ruth and Genevieve, she had had until now no knowledge of the proposed New York place. "Jared's present position is certainly most wretched drudgery," she went on; "far beneath his abilities--which are really great."

"Just so. And what should you recommend, ma'am, as the best way to open the subject? Shall I take a run up to Raleigh? Or shall I drop him a line? Perhaps you yourself would like to write?"