Love and shawl-straps

Front matter

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Contents

CHAPTER

I — THE TOUR PROPOSED

II — EMBARKED ....

Chapter First. The Tour Proposed

I N the winter of 1889 Doctor Thomas Bruce had forty-nine patients with th z grippe. Some died and some got well. He was wondering if there was to be a fiftieth case, when he became it — that is in so far as he was his own patient. His sister, Mrs. Kate Thorne, was the better doctor about that time. She nursed him through the weakness that followed his illness, so that he was on his feet again toward spring. Doctor Tom was a bachelor, in good and regular standing, “ fair to middling” in his profession, and as his obituary may put it hereafter, beloved by many and respected by all. He realized that his widowed sister Kate had twice his wit and wisdom. She was his silent partner ; silent when it was his place to speak, having always previously said her say. She it was who gave him in private the impetus that

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impelled him on certain occasions when the public called him “ a go-ahead fellow.’’

One day in February Mrs. Kate seated herself in Tom’s office fora consultation not professional. She was a tall, trim lady, thirty-five years old, wore nice gloves and a tailor-made gown ; had been teacher of literature in a young ladies’ seminary.

“Tom,” she said, “you ought to go abroad; a man is not half educated who has never crossed the ocean. Go this summer.”

“ I can’t afford it ; don’t know enough to get around alone, and no tourist parties for me.”

“ I want to go again.”

“You — why you have been to Europe twice.”

“ That is just why I could go so easily a third time. I have a plan by which we might both go cheaply and pleasantly.”

“ Speak for state-rooms at once.”

“ There is a great deal to be done first, Tom, but I am equal to it. I like girls. I know all about them. We will take with us five or six young ladies whose parents cannot go with them, or delicate ladies (friends of yours) who would go if they need have no care or worry and could be in the charge of a doctor.”

“ A sort of combination of private boarding-school and floating hospital,” put in Tom, looking doubtful.

“ Not at all; only a little party of lovely young

THE TOUR PROPOSED.

people and refined women travelling together. I will make out an itinerary.”

“ A what ? ”

“ The plan of our tour and places to see.”

“ Oh, I thought you were going to rope in a Methodist minister for chaplain, may be. — No other man but me ? ”

“ Certainly not — any other would be a nuisance — if not improper. I will calculate expenses and then have printed a little paper for private circulation among our acquaintances. By managing the party 1 can get a reduction at hotels on account of our numbers. It will cost each only what she would pay if she went alone, and she will have delightful companionship — (mine, in short) — and some one to tell her just what she ought to see ”

(“ You this time,” put in Tom.)

“ By making any arrangements you like with patients in your care, we can save something on our own expenses.”

Tom’s face grew r cloudier yet. “ Fancy me keeper in general of half a dozen cranky, hysterical invalids — a travelling bear garden would be a saints’ rest in comparison.”

“ That is not my idea at all,” expostulated his sister. “ We will not take one really sickly person, only timid ones who fear to cross the ocean.”

“ Do I agree before sailing to save every one of them and your boarding school besides in case “ the

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complicated machinery of one of our magnificent ocean steamers busts up on the way ? ”

“You are to do as I say, and enjoy the result of my ideas.”

“ It suggests St. Paul and his perils by land and perils by sea, and I bet before it is over I will remember fighting with beasts at ”

“ Be still, you irreverent creature,” said Kate, going to a bookcase and taking from an upper shelf half a dozen red-covered Baedekers and a big atlas. With these she retired to her own part of the house, merely adding: “We will probably sail about the middle of May.”

Tom grinned as he returned to his medical journal.

It was three weeks before Kate again spoke at length of the trip. Tom knew that in the meantime she had caused to be printed a concise and elegant leaflet, telling the how, where, and when of the projected tour, with terms and conditions. She had asked of him the names of any of his patients who happened to be either intelligent spinsters of means, or agreeable widows without children and able to travel. Tom worked over his address book one whole rainy afternoon, and then gave her a list like the catalogue of a flourishing seminary. To his surprise, out of these seventy or eighty maids and “ widows indeed,” Kate, after much laughing, eyebrow lifting, delicate sniffing, and open derision, chose six or eight to whom she sent notes and leaflets. She had already

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attended to her own invitations, which were given to “nice girls ” of her acquaintance.

“ Of course, I have invited a good many more than I want, because probably only a few that are asked can go,” she explained to Tom one night when she was ready to talk things over.

“Then why did you not send papers to all my list?” asked Tom, turning around in his office chair.

“ Because any of mine would surely be all right, but yours. — Oh, Kilkenny cats, Tom ! Little you know about women ! ”

“ Who knows more of them than a doctor ? ”

“After he is fifty, he knows some things. You are thirty-six and unmarried ; you understand lungs and livers, but tempers and consciences — divil a bit — if they are feminine,” retorted Kate, who let herself go a little when alone with Tom, by way of relaxation after long public propriety.

“Well, what have you done up to date?” asked the Doctor, amicably.

“ A vast amount of letter writing and letter reading. If, according to Doctor Holmes, a child’s education should begin a hundred years before it is born, the proper tourist should also be trained long before he begins to tour. Mine must know what to see, and how to behave while seeing it. I have had endless letters, all more or less characteristic. My answers are equal to a course of parlor lectures, but there must be a perfect understanding at the outset.”

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“ About what, for instance ? ”

“ About the sort of girl I will take. I do not want any who load their fingers with rings, or who wear soiled party gloves, or, worse still, pull off travelsoiled gloves for the sake of showing diamonds — no girls capable of hiding behind smoke-pipes to flirt with chance acquaintances, when it is ten bells, or whatever bells means bedtime on shipboard.”

“ My gracious, Kate ! How can you tell beforehand about flirts and smoke-pipes? ”

“ I can not, invariably. It will be your duty to hunt behind the pipes before we turn in. You see, there are many things involved in taking care of the young and innocent, but you will learn in good time, Tom.”

The Doctor sucked the top of his penholder, and looked as contemplative as a statue of Buddha, but not as serene.

“Girls’ letters are amusing,” said Kate. “ Every identical girl says it ‘ has been the dream of her life ’ to go abroad.”

“ Humph !” muttered Tom; “like that one who yearned to get on the Grand Canal, and ‘ drink it all in.’ ”

“ Exactly — each one speaks of the Rialto, the Bridge of Sighs, and hopes to practise ‘ my French. It may not be very fluent, but the Prof, says my accent is quite perfect.’ All of them ask to have a few days in Paris just for shopping, you know.”

“ But they can’t bring any great amount of finery

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through the custom-house, especially as you allow them so little luggage,” remarked Tom.

“ Oh, a really conscientious girl with one little trunk will do wonders. She will declare two eightycent souvenir spoons, and all the sleeves of her gowns will be full of the laces and the gloves that she knows the law would allow her, only she does not want them mussed over by handling.”

Tom appeared to be reflecting on some new phase of the subject, for he presently said : “ It would be

only fair to take some young men and a few old bachelors to balance things. All this feminine atmospheric pressure on my poor square inches, and you free as a bird.”

“ Oh, your heart is of the guttapercha order, Tom. It is not hard, it will yield perhaps to pressure ; but it will be good as new when pressure is removed.”

“ But guttapercha can melt, Kate. I have carefully kept out of emotionally hot spots.”

“And so you shall, old fellow, or I will cool you down when you need it ; besides, you just now intimated that you were used to womankind.”

“ Of course, as a doctor I am. When dangers threaten I order them to the seaside, send in a very big bill, or, if worst comes to worst, I say lots of my ancestors were insane, and I shall never marry. But this tour is different — is what what-’s-his-name declared was ‘ what you may call it.’ ”

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Kate stared at the lucid quotation, and then translated it.

“ Oh, you mean propinquity producing matrimony ; but you are safe enough, being bald, and getting on in years. You will be nothing to them compared with the sight of something interesting and new every day.” And with this sisterly cruelty she ended, saying, “ Get your note-book, and I will tell you some things you are to see to at once.”

They were dictated, copied, and Tom went to bed with what in polite literature are called mingled emotions, a little sweet, a little sour, on the whole like mixed pickles, stimulating and not unpleasant. He realized that he was going abroad.

Chapter Second. Embarked

A CERTAIN Tuesday in May was very fatiguing for Mrs. Thorne, and very trying for her brother. It was a warm, rainy, sticky day. Doctor Tom longed to drink lemonade and to lie on the back-parlor sofa pretending that his rest had been broken up by patients the previous night. He could not indulge in any commonplace idleness. He had to pack his valise, to run on errands, to write on cardboard tags “ Wanted in State-room No. — .” Most bewildering of all, he was often called to the parlor. Here Kate would want to introduce him to some of the ladies who were to be later in their care. Each one had with her several relatives and friends variously sympathetic or enthusiastic about the tour. He constantly assured the ones who were to stay home that they were not likely to be sea-sick, or said they looked as if the voyage would do them good. He received a vague impression that one girl was to be exposed to the sea breezes in the hope of having blown away from her the melancholy vapors of an

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unhappy love affair. At least he gathered as much from the tearful mother’s whisper and the mysterious father’s wink when the girl’s back was turned — if she was the girl meant. He gave another gentleman reason to believe that he would go with his daughter to Marchbunk Skipwig on the Grange or Skipmarch Bunkwig in the Moors (anyway the place was in England) to hunt up an estate belonging to the gentleman’s ancestors. It would naturally revert to him if the records, deeds, etc., were found by Tom and properly proved. He explained to each family group why, under European conditions then existing, war was impossible, and cholera not to be thought of. He agreed to go to a great many cities Kate had no intention of visiting. He left a great many apt things unsaid which she said for him. He finally began to say a great many more that he ought not to have said, but some of these he flattened out as thin as possible after she got a chance to look him a look that he understood. This was good in him, for what he longed to say was : “ How in thunder can

I tell which of the gang is going with us ? ” and yet all he said when the last one departed was : “ I am

afraid I will not know them again when I see them on the steamer.”

“ You will after the first day,” replied Kate, blithely. “ Now have you painted our names in plain sight on each portmanteau ? There is no check system over there, you know, and you will

EMBARKED.

II have to keep your eyes open to know if porters collect them all at the stations.”

“ About how many will there be ? ”

“ I have allowed each person two, because two bags cost less and are easier managed than one trunk. Then, besides these, every one has a valise or steamer trunk, to leave in England to store things in or to fill with purchases. Let me see ! Eight of us in all makes ”

“ Twenty-four pieces of luggage for one man’s eyes ! Why, Kate Bruce Thorne, if I were a whole paper of hooks and eyes, I could not keep that number fastened together. I tell you this contract is going to be too big for us.”

“ Go get your dinner, Tom ; take a strong cup of coffee. You will know more, and so feel more sure of yourself, after a week of travel.”

About seven that night the Doctor and his sister took a carriage to the pier. The steamer did not sail until eight the next morning, but passengers were allowed to stay on board overnight. As they neared the pier it seemed as if half the people in the city were to embark on the vessel, whose huge bulk loomed up against the ferry-house, dark and indistinct, except for the brilliant port-holes. Many lines of street cars were disgorging, from the fast-arriving cars, scores of elbowing, perspiring passengers. Trucks, top-heavy with luggage, were blocking the way for cabs and coaches covered with new folding-

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chairs, steamer-trunks, and rolls of wraps. From the carriage windows were looking people in smart travelling attire. If the progress of vehicles was slow, that of pedestrians was not much faster. Jews, Germans, Irish, and Italians were everywhere under foot, with dogs, babies, tin boxes, stew-pans, pillows, feather-beds, and the very fuzzy carpet-bags, and hidecovered, brass-nailed trunks that lived long ago in our grandmother’s garret. Vociferous police officers, baggage agents, and sailors were everywhere, except where certain excited women were looking for them — the women whose bonnets are never firmly anchored, and who have always lost their one treasure, be it husband, baby, or trunk.

A sort of “will I be thus when I am dead” feeling came over Tom as he heard a baggage-man bawl, “Folks as can’t see to trunks must expect to lose ’em ! ” But once up the gangway, over moist, shadowy decks odorous of new paint, tar, fish, salt sea waves, and machinery oil, past civil stewards in blue coats with brass buttons, they found their way — Tom and Kate — to the electric splendor of the saloons and dining-room. There the chintz covers were all off the blue satin and red velvet upholstery. The long tables were parterres of magnificent flowers, so uniquely made up it seemed as if a florist’s stock in trade must have married into a milliner’s department and issued innumerable cards. Every bud and blossom had a ribbon streamer or a

EMBARKED.

satin bow. The fast-coming people were moving up and down the aisles, reading the cards. Some young ladies (Tom shunned them) discovering floral offerings for themselves, called : “ Oh, Pa ! ” “ Oh, Ma ! ” or “ Just see, Charlie ! ”

Others, after a careful scrutiny unrewarded, became scoffers, and grumbled about “ having to eat with pyramids of roses decaying under our noses.” In general, however, all the passengers or friends who came to see the boat were in good spirits.

Tom lost Kate the first thing, but, knowing they had come to stay a week at least, he gave himself up to watching the crowd. Half-grown boys and girls were careering about, hunting up state-rooms and squabbling about who should sleep on the top shelf. Full-grown girls and boys were slipping into alcoves, and certain bits of dialogue recalled possible “ smoke-pipe ” duties to the Doctor’s mind. (“ This is the photograph — it is horrid, but if you will

have it,” etc., etc. “ You have the address ; Brown

& Shipley, bankers, forward the letters.” “ Non-

sense, Jim! *Sk! somebody will hear!” or “I could n’t help his sending those roses, you need n’t be so cross ! ”) Mothers began to ingratiate themselves with the stewardess. P'athers interviewed the head steward to make sure of good seats at the first table ; — that bland fellow who gave everybody a clear title, well knowing half would never put in a claim.

The Doctor finally remembered that Kate had

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told him that “ their six ” were not coming on board until morning, so he was relieved from the fear of passing them without a recognition. Kate at the same time had explained to Tom that he was never to use the word party , but was always to say “ our six” or “we eight.” She said party suggested vulgar “ conducted tours,” or erratic folk of assorted styles and sizes, with note-books and linen dusters, always doing cities in a day by ceaselessly climbing in and out of band wagons — wagons driven by fat men in scarlet, blowing tally-ho horns. Tom, with masculine density, failed to see that the use of what seemed to him a nice convenient word would photograph on anybody’s mind this sort of a picture of Kate, himself, and six ladies, but he promised not to say “ our party.”

No one slept much that night. There was an incessant banging, pounding, rushing back and forth, putting in of freight and blowing off of steam. Both Kate and Tom were wide-awake until daylight, when they dozed off into confused dreams. She was trying to rescue her damsels from a mediaeval baron who had them in a tower on the Rhine, while Tom was laboriously crossing the Alps on a threshing machine. Neither awoke until the ship was moving from the pier. Kate hastened to dress, fearing to be late to breakfast the first morning, and hoping Tom had been on deck to greet new-comers. He had not, for they met at the dining-room door.

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“ Oh, Tom, did you not see any of the relatives ? ”

“ Nary a one ! They had all wiped their weeping eyes and been ordered off the gang-plank before I got up. Now, how will our par — our six find us? ”

“ The head steward will send them all to Alcove A, where we have a table to ourselves. You sit at one end and I at the other, with three on each side.”

It was a cheerful place, and animated with arriving groups of lively talking people. American sunshine (soon to be left behind) was streaming in at port-holes and sifting down through the gorgeous sky-light. Flowers and fruit made gay the tables resplendent with bright silver, crystal, and snowy linen.

“ Speak their names out loud as they come so I shall know which is which,” hoarsely whispered Tom, crowding between the sofa-seat and the table.

Down the aisle with a rapid little strut advanced a lady that made him think of a full-breasted bantam. She bustled up to the steward, who was more than busy, then espying Mrs. Thorne, she sped toward her and secured the seat at her right hand. Kate greeted her cordially as Mrs. Bushby. She had a stylish top-knot of greyish-sandy hair, twinkling grey eyes, dimples and a double chin ; also a shrewd expression and a breezy manner. Her neat travelling dress was so very snug around her plump figure that she needs must puff a trifle when she talked. Tom fixed her fast in his mind. She was the widow of a general in the United States Army. Mrs. Bushby had but seated herself when Miss Harriet Dwight moved serenely into place. She bowed to the Doctor, bade them all good-morning, and began to read the menu quite as if she had ordered her oatmeal in that spot since her earliest years.

“ Dwight ? Dwight ? ” thought Tom. “ Oh, I know now — a Smith College graduate, home in Boston, very superior girl, friend of Kate’s Boston relatives. He noticed that she had a clear-cut face, very fine complexion, calm grey eyes, black hair simply arranged, and a beautiful mouth. Tom decided “ she was all there,” whatever he meant by that judgment.

The head steward presently escorted two more ladies to the alcove, and Mrs. Thorne greeted them as Mrs. Pollock and Mrs. Florida Pollock.

“ Mother and her daughter-in-law,” was Tom’s silent comment. “ ‘ Widdies all two of them,’ as the French say ; rich, I believe Kate said.”

The older Mrs. Pollock would suggest at once to a frivolous-minded person what a fine ghost she would be for private theatricals. She was very tall, thin, and ashy white, with deep-set eyes and a nervously hesitant manner. She tried to speak to both ends of the table at once, while greatly perplexing the attendant steward, who, attempting to fit her into one chair, found her halting by another.

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The daughter glided instantly to the place by Doctor Bruce, when, to the surprise of the steward, the mother again escaped him and seated herself by “ Flori,” as she called her.

Mrs. Pollock, Jr., was a sort of animated anachronism. Computing dates by her attire and voice she was twenty ; by her jet-black eyes and glittering teeth she was thirty ; by her complexion — that is, examining a delicate embroidery of drawn-work artistically executed by Time at the corners of her eyelids and her lips — she was — well, older. She beamed on everybody graciously, while, in an off-hand way, she selected a big orange for her mother and a bigger for herself. She shot a keen glance at Miss Dwight, and seemed not disquieted at the result; then arrived the last two young ladies, and the seats were full.

Of course, there was a polite interchange of commonplace remarks between the coming and going of waiters with omelettes, steaks, fried potatoes, and coffee ; but every one was watching all the rest, and especially the last to come. Miss Dorothy Coxe was barely out of her teens. When you gazed at her you fancied just how she looked when she was five years old, and she had not gotten over that look yet. She was angelically sweet. Such velvety pink cheeks, such a puckered rosebud of a mouth ! Hair silky brown with moist little rings curling every which way, and eyes so very blue. Now, after childhood.

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such big, wide-open, sky-blue eyes are almost never known, except in the chromo-girls given away with pounds of tea. But eyes can’t be “ made up ” like other manageable human features, and this blueness was as wonderful as it was genuine. Kate called her “ Dolly ” in a most affectionate way. She had been a former pupil. Dolly wore a white blouse, also a diamond and turquoise ring on her pretty plump hand. She had a silvery laugh with such a tinkle of wickedness in it the awful thought occurred to Tom that he might some day (fancying she was one of his little pet patients) take her up and hug her. Not that the sin per se> as theologians say, seemed awful to him, but its consequences in a par — considering the six he meant. After Miss Cox came Miss Bilton, a brunette with a pleasant face and nothing at once noticeable either in person or manner. She was the niece of a friend of Kate’s, received on the strength of that relationship. “Nice, inoffensive girl,” Tom decided.

After breakfast everybody who never had crossed before was on deck admiring the bay, declaring no other bay equalled it ; old travellers grinned but assented. Fathers, brothers, and lovers were busy getting best places for chairs. Ladies with crisp new veils, new gloves, new novels, and new steamer rugs, were being tucked into these new chairs from whose depth they smiled serenely on sky and sea, on Brooklyn Bridge, and bronze Liberty. They were

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pathetically oblivious of certain new sensations awaiting them, when liberty like life and the pursuit of happiness would seem a birthright inalienable only on land.

Mrs. Bushby, who declared she never could be “ swaddled up in that way,” engaged Kate in a lively conversation. The Pollocks retired below, to emerge later in grey ulsters and knitted woollen head coverings. The ghostly one carried a bag, with salts, six handkerchiefs, lemon drops, and two pairs of blue spectacles. Florida only carried her head higher than at breakfast. She had reflected that they probably had more money than Mrs. Bushby, but that possibly she herself had made a blunder in bringing so many old clothes to wear out on the tour. Homestayers had advised the plan as sensible ; she had considered it to be economical.

Tom was soon making the circuit of the deck with Dolly Coxe. He had not asked her to walk, neither had she invited him. It seemed to do itself as children say. Acts of what a specialist might call unconscious cerebration often accomplished themselves when Dolly was at hand.

Harriet Dwight passed them, smiling brightly.

“ She has taken lessons in physical culture,” said Dolly, craning her neck to look back at Harriet. “ Don’t you see she walks Delsarte fashion ? ”

“She walks remarkably well,” said Tom, bluntly, “ so many women nip or waddle or totter.”

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“ So they do unless they are young and good dancers — though some Delsarte walkers stride ridiculously. It makes a petite girl look as if she were playing grenadier. Oh, my prophetic soul! You are a doctor are n’t you ? You will be forever diagnosing us ‘ with a critic’s eye,’ the whole trip around. I don’t care ; I never was ill in my life, and I am just as much of a society girl as I can manage to be. It agrees with me ; almost everything does agree with me.

“ And almost everybody, no doubt,” suggested Doctor Tom.

“ Well, yes, sooner or later. Here is Miss Dwight again. I know what she is doing, making hay while the sun shines. She is the sort of girl who makes no fuss, asks few questions, but before night she will know all about six bells, ship logs, taking the sun, and all the other nautical performances. To-morrow she will get down to the engines, and the day after the Captain will invite her on the bridge. There is a little note-book in her pocket. I have one in mine. Before we land I will have the addresses of a

few howling sw ” (She bit off the last words so

that Tom heard only the amendment) “ Holborn tailor-made suit shops ; and Miss Dwight will have facts in hers that will interest her astronomical professor when she marries him years hence. Oh ! that must be the steerage deck at this end of the boat ; let us go look down there ! ”

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Miss Dwight met Miss Bertha Bilton dawdling about the door, and fancying that she might be lonely she spoke cheerily to her. Miss Bilton replied with effusion. The sea breeze flushed her cheeks and brightened her eyes. She looked rather pretty. She was shorter and stouter than Miss Dwight ; though her mouth was large, her lips were very red, her teeth white, and she had dark, luxuriant hair. Kate, in speaking of her to Tom, said she had a heavy face and was the kind of a brunette to turn olive green if she were sea sick. She added that Miss Bilton was amiable and pious.

“ I do not care to walk, Miss Dwight, until I get used to the motion. Don’t you want to sit down here awhile ? ”

They were near one of the fixed benches which many preferred to chairs. Miss Dwight seated herself to watch with interest whatever went on about them. Miss Bilton looking her companion full in the face fluently poured out her emotions at leaving home, her present reflections and vivid anticipations. She invited her hearer’s confidence in return, but at the end of twenty minutes Miss Bilton knew that Miss Dwight came into New York the day before on the Fall River boat, while Miss Dwight had learned that Bertha’s mother (she begged to be called Bertha) idolized her — that she “ had been engaged but that was all over now,” that she “ loved society,” and “ revelled in the best literature,” admiring na-