By Shore and Sedge - Bret Harte (recommended ebook reader .txt) 📗

to the ship and the seclusion of his loft. Mr. Nott paused before the door, under the pretence of throwing the light before him into the shadows of the forecastle; all was silent within. He was turning back when he was impressed by the regular recurrence of a peculiar rustling sound which he had at first referred to the rubbing of the wires of the swinging lantern against his clothing. He set down the light and listened; the sound was evidently on the other side of the partition; the sound of some prolonged, rustling, scraping movement, with regular intervals. Was it due to another of Mr. Nott’s unprofitable tenants—the rats? No. A bright idea flashed upon Mr. Nott’s troubled mind. It was de Ferrieres snoring! He smiled grimly. “Wonder if Rosey’d call him a gentleman if she heard that,” he chuckled to himself as he slowly made his way back to the cabin and the small stateroom opposite to his daughter’s. During the rest of the night he dreamed of being compelled to give Rosey in marriage to his strange lodger, who added insult to the outrage by snoring audibly through the marriage service.

Meantime, in her cradle-like nest in her nautical bower, Miss Rosey slumbered as lightly. Waking from a vivid dream of Venice—a child’s Venice—seen from the swelling deck of the proudly-riding Pontiac, she was so impressed as to rise and cross on tiptoe to the little slanting porthole. Morning was already dawning over the flat, straggling city, but from every counting-house and magazine the votive tapers of the feverish worshipers of trade and mammon were still flaring fiercely.

II

The day following “steamer night” was usually stale and flat at San Francisco. The reaction from the feverish exaltation of the previous twenty-four hours was seen in the listless faces and lounging feet of promenaders, and was notable in the deserted offices and warehouses still redolent of last night’s gas, and strewn with the dead ashes of last night’s fires.

There was a brief pause before the busy life which ran its course from “steamer day” to steamer day was once more taken up. In that interval a few anxious speculators and investors breathed freely, some critical situation was relieved, or some impending catastrophe momentarily averted. In particular, a singular stroke of good fortune that morning befell Mr. Nott. He not only secured a new tenant, but, as he sagaciously believed, introduced into the Pontiac a counteracting influence to the subtle fascinations of de Ferrieres.

The new tenant apparently possessed a combination of business shrewdness and brusque frankness that strongly impressed his landlord. “You see, Rosey,” said Nott, complacently describing the interview to his daughter, “when I sorter intimated in a keerless kind o’ way that sugar kettles and hair dye was about played out ez securities, he just planked down the money for two months in advance. ‘There,’ sez he, ‘that’s YOUR SECURITY—now where’s MINE?’ ‘I reckon I don’t hitch on, pardner,’ sez I; ‘security what for?’ ”Spose you sell the ship?’ sez he, ‘afore the two months is up. I’ve heard that old Sleight wants to buy her.’ ‘Then you gets back your money,’ sez I. ‘And lose my room,’ sez he; ‘not much, old man. You sign a paper that whoever buys the ship inside o’ two months hez to buy ME ez a tenant with it; that’s on the square.’ So I sign the paper. It was mighty cute in the young feller, wasn’t it?” he said, scanning his daughter’s pretty puzzled face a little anxiously; “and don’t you see ez I ain’t goin’ to sell the Pontiac, it’s just about ez cute in me, eh? He’s a contractor somewhere around yer, and wants to be near his work. So he takes the room next to the Frenchman, that that ship captain quit for the mines, and succeeds naterally to his chest and things. He’s might peart-lookin, that young feller, Rosey—long black moustaches, all his own color, Rosey—and he’s a regular high-stepper, you bet. I reckon he’s not only been a gentleman, but ez NOW. Some o’ them contractors are very high-toned!”

“I don’t think we have any right to give him the captain’s chest, father,” said Rosey; “there may be some private things in it. There were some letters and photographs in the hair-dye man’s trunk that you gave the photographer.”

“That’s just it, Rosey,” returned Abner Nott with sublime unconsciousness, “photographs and love letters you can’t sell for cash, and I don’t mind givin’ ‘em away, if they kin make a feller creature happy.”

“But, father, have we the RIGHT to give ‘em away?”

“They’re collateral security, Rosey,” said her father grimly. “Co-la-te-ral,” he continued, emphasizing each syllable by tapping the fist of one hand in the open palm of the other. “Co-la-te-ral is the word the big business sharps yer about call ‘em. You can’t get round that.” He paused a moment, and then, as a new idea seemed to be painfully borne in his round eyes, continued cautiously: “Was that the reason why you woudn’t touch any of them dresses from the trunks of that opery gal ez skedaddled for Sacramento? And yet them trunks I regularly bought at auction—Rosey—at auction, on spec—and they didn’t realize the cost of drayage.”

A slight color mounted to Rosey’s face. “No,” she said, hastily, “not that.” Hesitating a moment she then drew softly to his side, and, placing her arms around his neck, turned his broad, foolish face towards her own. “Father,” she began, “when mother died, would YOU have liked anybody to take her trunks and paw around her things and wear them?”

“When your mother died, just this side o’ Sweetwater, Rosey,” said Mr. Nott, with beaming unconsciousness, “she hadn’t any trunks. I reckon she hadn’t even an extra gown hanging up in the wagin, ‘cept the petticoat ez she had wrapped around yer. It was about ez much ez we could do to skirmish round with Injins, alkali, and cold, and we sorter forgot to dress for dinner. She never thought, Rosey, that you and me would live to be inhabitin’ a paliss of a real ship. Ef she had she would have died a proud woman.”

He turned his small, loving, boar-like eyes upon her as a preternaturally innocent and trusting companion of Ulysses might have regarded the transforming Circe. Rosey turned away with the faintest sigh. The habitual look of abstraction returned to her eyes as if she had once more taken refuge in her own ideal world. Unfortunately the change did not escape either the sensitive observation or the fatuous misconception of the sagacious parent. “Ye’ll be mountin’ a few furbelows and fixins, Rosey, I reckon, ez only natural. Mabbee ye’ll have to prink up a little now that we’ve got a gentleman contractor in the ship. I’ll see what I kin pick up in Montgomery Street.” And indeed he succeeded a few hours later in accomplishing with equal infelicity his generous design. When she returned from her household tasks she found on her berth a purple velvet bonnet of extraordinary make, and a pair of white satin slippers. “They’ll do for a start off, Rosey,” he explained, “and I got ‘em at my figgers.”

“But I go out so seldom, father, and a bonnet—”

“That’s so,” interrupted Mr. Nott, complacently, “it might be jest ez well for a young gal like yer to appear ez if she DID go out, or would go out if she wanted to. So you kin be wearin’ that ar headstall kinder like this evening when the contractor’s here, ez if you’d jest come in from a pasear.”

Miss Rosey did not however immediately avail herself of her father’s purchase, but contented herself with the usual scarlet ribbon that like a snood confined her brown hair, when she returned to her tasks. The space between the galley and the bulwarks had been her favorite resort in summer when not actually engaged in household work. It was now lightly roofed over with boards and tarpaulin against the winter rain, but still afforded her a veranda-like space before the gallery door, where she could read or sew, looking over the bow of the Pontiac to the tossing bay or the further range of the Contra Costa hills.

Hither Miss Rosey brought the purple prodigy, partly to please her father, partly with a view of subjecting it to violent radical changes. But after trying it on before the tiny mirror in the galley once or twice, her thoughts wandered away, and she fell into one of her habitual reveries seated on a little stool before the galley door.

She was roused from it by the slight shaking and rattling of the doors of a small hatch on the deck, not a dozen yards from where she sat. It had been evidently fastened from below during the wet weather, but as she gazed, the fastenings were removed, the doors were suddenly lifted, and the head and shoulders of a young man emerged from the deck. Partly from her father’s description, and partly from the impossibility of its being anybody else, she at once conceived it to be the new lodger. She had time to note that he was young and good-looking, graver perhaps than became his sudden pantomimic appearance, but before she could observe him closely, he had turned, closed the hatch with a certain familiar dexterity, and walked slowly towards the bows. Even in her slight bewilderment, she observed that his step upon the deck seemed different to her father’s or the photographer’s, and that he laid his hand on various objects with a half-caressing ease and habit. Presently he paused and turned back, and glancing at the galley door for the first time encountered her wondering eyes.

It seemed so evident that she had been a curious spectator of his abrupt entrance on deck that he was at first disconcerted and confused. But after a second glance at her he appeared to resume his composure, and advanced a little defiantly towards the galley.

“I suppose I frightened you, popping up the fore hatch just now?”

“The what?” asked Rosey.

“The fore hatch,” he repeated impatiently, indicating it with a gesture.

“And that’s the fore hatch?” she said abstractedly. “You seem to know ships.”

“Yes—a little,” he said quietly. “I was below, and unfastened the hatch to come up the quickest way and take a look round. I’ve just hired a room here,” he added explanatorily.

“I thought so,” said Rosey simply; “you’re the contractor?”

“The contractor!—oh, yes! You seem to know it all.”

“Father’s told me.”

“Oh, he’s your father—Nott? Certainly. I see now,” he continued, looking at her with a half repressed smile. “Certainly, Miss Nott, good morning,” he half added and walked towards the companion way. Something in the direction of his eyes as he turned away made Rosey lift her hands to her head. She had forgotten to remove her father’s baleful gift.

She snatched it off and ran quickly to the companion way.

“Sir!” she called.

The young man turned half way down the steps and looked up. There was a faint color in her cheeks, and her pretty brown hair was slightly disheveled from the hasty removal of the bonnet.

“Father’s very particular about strangers being on this deck,” she said a little sharply.

“Oh—ah—I’m sorry I intruded.”

“I—I—thought I’d tell you,” said Rosey, frightened by her boldness into a feeble anti-climax.

“Thank you.”

She came back slowly to the galley and picked up the unfortunate bonnet with a slight sense of remorse. Why should she feel angry with her poor father’s unhappy offering? And what business had this strange young man to use the ship so familiarly? Yet she was vaguely conscious that she and her father, with all their love and their domestic experience of it, lacked a certain instinctive ease in its possession that the half indifferent stranger had shown on first treading its