Just Sixteen.
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I am afraid that the peacocks were rather neglected for the few days preceding the Queen's visit, for everybody at the Seigneurie was very busy. Mr. Le Breton, as a general thing, lived simply enough. His wife had died when Otillie was only six years old. Miss Niffin the governess, Marie the cook, two housemaids, and an old butler who had served the family for a quarter of a century made up the establishment indoors. Otillie had her basin of porridge and cream and her slice of bread at eight o'clock every morning, and bread and milk and "kettle-tea" for supper, with now and then a taste of jam by way of a treat. The servants lived chiefly on "Jersey soup," a thick broth of oatmeal, vegetables, and fish, with a trifle of bacon or salt-beef to give it a relish. Mr. Le Breton had his morning coffee in his study, and the early dinner, which he shared with Otillie and Miss Niffin, was not an elaborate one.
These being the customs of the Seigneurie, it can easily be imagined that it taxed every resource of the establishment to provide suitably for the Queen's entertainment. All the island knew of the important event and longed to advise and help. The farmers sent their thickest cream and freshest strawberries and lettuces, desirous to prove their loyalty not to their sovereign only, but also to their landlord. Marie, the cook, spent the days in reading over her most difficult recipes, and could not sleep at night. A friend of hers, once second cook to the Earl of Dunraven, but now retired on her laurels into private life, offered to come for a few days to assist, and to fabricate a certain famous game pasty, of which it was asserted the English aristocracy are inordinately fond. Peter the butler crossed over to Guernsey twice during the week with a long list of indispensables to be filled up at the shops there, hampers of wine came from London, and hot-house grapes and nectarines from friends in Jersey; the whole house was in a bustle, and nothing was spoken of but the Queen and the Queen's visit, what she would wear and say and do, whom she would bring with her, and what sort of weather she would have for her coming.
This last point was the one on which Otillie was most solicitous. A true child of Sark, she knew all about its tides and currents, the dangers of the island channels, and the differences which a little more or less wind and sea made in the navigation of them. She could recollect one stormy winter, when a Guernsey doctor who had come over to set a broken arm was detained for three weeks on the island, in plain sight all the time of his own home in St. Peterport, but as unable to get to it as if it had been a thousand miles away!
"It would be dreadful if the Queen came and then could not get away again for three weeks!" she said to herself. "It would be awfully interesting to have her here, of course – but I don't quite know what we should do – or what she would do!" She tried to make a picture of it in her mind, but soon gave up the attempt. Provisions are scarce sometimes on Sark when the wind blows and the boats cannot get in. There would always be milk and vegetables and fruit if it were summer, and perhaps chickens enough could be collected to hold out; but there was something terrible in the idea of a queen without butcher's meat! Otillie's imagination refused to compass it!
Her very first thought when the important day dawned was the weather.
She waked with the first sunbeam and ran at once to the window. When she saw a clear sky and the sun rising out of a still sea, she gave a scream of delight.
"What is the matter?" asked Miss Niffin sleepily from the next room.
"It's good weather," replied Otillie. "We've got the most beautiful day for the Queen to come in."
Miss Niffin's only answer was a little groan. She was a small, shy person, and the idea of confronting royalty made her dreadfully nervous. "Oh, if the day were only over!" she said to herself; and she longed to plead a headache and stay in bed, but she dared not. Besides, she felt that it would be cowardly to desert her post on such an important occasion and leave Otillie alone; so she braced her mind to face the awful necessity and began to dress.
Mr. Le Breton, awakening about the same time, gave a groan a good deal like Miss Niffin's. He was a loyal subject, and felt the honor that was done him by the Queen's inviting herself to luncheon; but, all the same, invalids do not like to be put out of their way, and he, too, wished the day well done.
"Ten to one I shall be laid up for the next month to pay for it," he reflected. Then he too braced himself to the necessity and rang for hot water, determined to do his duty as a man and a Seigneur.
Otillie was perhaps the only person in the house who was really glad to have the day come. The servants were tired and fretted with a sense of responsibility. Marie had passed a dreadful night, full of dreams of failure and spoiled dishes.
"Now just as sure as guns my rolls will have failed to rise this day of all the days of the year," was her first waking thought. But no, the rolls were light as a feather, and the sponge and almond cakes came out of the oven delicately browned and quite perfect in taste and appearance. Nothing went wrong; and when Mr. Le Breton, just before starting for the Creux harbor to meet the royal party, took a look into the dining-room to make sure that all was right, he said to himself that he had never seen a prettier or more complete little "spread."
The table was ornamented with hot-house fruit and flowers, beautifully arranged by Miss Niffin and Otillie. All the fine old Le Breton plate had been brought out and polished, the napery shone like iced snow, there were some quaint pieces of old Venetian glass, jugs, dishes, and flagons, and a profusion of pretty confections, jellies, blanc-manges, crystallized fruits, and bonbons, to give sparkle and color. The light streamed in at the windows which opened on the terrace, from under the vines the flash of the waves could be seen, the curtains waved in the wind, which was blowing inland. Nothing could be prettier; the only discord was the noisy scream of the peacocks on the lawn, who seemed as much upset and disturbed by the great event as the rest of the household.
"Can't something be done to stop those creatures?" said Mr. Le Breton. "Tie them up somewhere, can't you, Otillie, or send a boy to drive them down to the farm."
"It's only because they are hungry," replied Otillie rather absently. "I haven't given them their breakfast yet."
She was sticking long stems of fronded Osmundas into a jar as a decoration for the fireplace, and scarcely noticed what her father said. It was some minutes after the carriage drove away before she finished; then, with a sigh of relief, she brushed up the leaves she had scattered on the carpet, and ran upstairs to change her dress. It would never do to be caught by the Queen in a holland frock, with her hair blown about her eyes, and green finger-tips!
The clock struck one as she fastened her white dress and patted smooth the bows of her wide pink sash. One was the hour fixed for the Queen to land, so there was no time to lose. Otillie only waited for a glance in at the door of the spare room, where the Queen, if so minded, was to take off her things. She glanced at the bed with a sort of awe as the possible repository of a royal bonnet, altered the position of a bowl of roses on the mantelpiece, and then hurried down to join Miss Niffin, who, attired in her best black silk and a pair of lace mitts, was seated decorously in the hall doing nothing. Otillie sat down beside her. It was rather a nervous waiting, and a long one; for half an hour passed, three quarters, and finally the clock struck two, before wheels were heard on the gravel, and during all that time the two watchers spoke scarcely a word. Only once Otillie cried as a gust of wind blew the curtains straight out into the room, "O dear! I hope it isn't rough. O dear! wouldn't it be dreadful if the Queen were to be sick? She would never like Sark again!"
"I think her Majesty must be used to the sea, she sails so much," replied Miss Niffin. The gust died away and did not blow the curtains any more, and again they sat in silence, waiting and listening.
"At last!" cried Otillie as the distinct roll of wheels was heard on the drive. Her heart beat fast, but she got up bravely, straightened her slender little figure as became a Le Breton, and walked out on to the porch. Her eyes seemed strangely dazzled by the sun – for she could see no one in the carriage but her father.
It rolled up to the door, and Otillie felt a great throb of disappointment rise like a wave in her heart, and spread and swell! Mr. Le Breton had come back alone!
"Papa," she cried, as soon as she could speak, "what has happened? Where is the Queen?"
"I hope nothing has gone amiss with her Gracious Majesty," put in Miss Niffin from behind.
Mr. Le Breton got out of the carriage before he replied. He looked tired and annoyed.
"You can drive to the stable, Thomas," he said; "the carriage will not be wanted." Then he turned to Miss Niffin.
"Her Gracious Majesty has decided not to land," he went on. "The wind has sprung up and made rather a sea outside the breakwater; nothing to signify by the Sark standard, but enough to deter inexperienced persons. I waited at the Creux for nearly an hour, and every man, woman, and child on the island waited with me, with the exception of you and Otillie and the servants, and then the captain of the royal yacht signalled that he could not risk putting the Queen ashore in a small boat in such rough water. So the thing is given up."
There was a certain latent relief in Mr. Le Breton's tone.
"Oh!" cried Otillie, stamping her foot. "How hateful of the wind to spring up! It could have waited as well as not! It has all the rest of the time to blow in, and now all the nice preparations are thrown away, and all our pleasant time spoiled, and just as likely as not the Queen will never come to Sark at all." Her voice died away into a storm of sobs.
"I wish I could be assured of that," remarked her father in a tone of weary resignation. "What I am afraid of is that she will come, or try to come, another day, and then there will be all this to do over again."
He indicated by a gesture the door of the dining-room, from which queer muffled sounds were heard just then.
"Peter seems as much afflicted by this disappointment as you are, Otillie," he added. "Come, my child, don't cry over the matter. It can't be helped. Wind and waves oblige nobody, not even kings and queens."
"There are compensations for all our troubles," said Miss Niffin in her primmest tone. "We must bear up, and try to feel that all is for the best." Miss Niffin seemed to find it quite easy to be morally consoled for her share of loss in the giving up of the Queen's visit.
"How can you talk in that way!" cried Otillie, who was not in the least in awe of Miss Niffin. "If I had broken my comb, you would have said exactly the same, I know you would! There isn't any compensation at all for this trouble, and it's no use my trying to feel that it's for the best, – it isn't."
"We never know," replied Miss Niffin piously.
"Come," said Mr. Le Breton, desiring to put an end to the altercation, "I don't know why we should go hungry because her Majesty won't come and eat our luncheon. Take my arm, Miss Niffin, and let us have something to eat. Marie will break her heart if all her trouble and pains are not appreciated by somebody."
He gave his arm to Miss Niffin as he spoke, and moved forward to the dining-room. Otillie followed, wiping her eyes with her handkerchief, and feeling that the dainties would stick in her throat if she tried to swallow them, she was so very, very, dreadfully disappointed.
But when Mr. Le Breton reached the dining-room door he stopped suddenly as if shot, and gave a sort of shout! No one could speak for a moment. There was the feast, so prettily and tastefully arranged only an hour before, a mass of ruins! The flowers were upset, the fruit, tumbled and mashed, stained the cloth and the floor. Wine and lemonade dripped from the table's edge. The pink and yellow jellies, the forms of Charlotte Russe and blanc-mange and the frosted cakes and tarts were reduced to smears and crumbs. Where the gigantic pasty had stood remained only an empty dish, and above the remains, rearing, pecking, clawing, gobbling, appeared six long blue-green necks, which dipped and rose and dipped again!
The peacocks, tired of waiting for their morning meal, and finding the windows open, had entered and helped themselves! There was Lorenzo the Magnificent with a sponge-cake in his beak, and Peri gobbling down a lump of blanc-mange, and the Grand Panjandrum with both claws embedded in a pyramid of macaroons. Their splendid tails were draggled with cream and crumbs, and sticky with jelly; altogether they presented a most greedy and disreputable appearance! The strangest part of the whole was that while they stuffed themselves they preserved a dead silence, and did not express their enjoyment by one of their usual noisy screams. It was evident that they felt that the one great opportunity of their lives was going on, and that they must make the most of it.
At the sound of Mr. Le Breton's shout the peacocks started guiltily. Then they gathered up their tails as best they might, and, half flying, half running, scuttled out of the windows and far across the lawn, screaming triumphantly as they went, while Otillie tumbled into a chair and laughed till she cried.
"Oh! didn't they look funny?" she gasped, holding her sides.
"Rather expensive fun," replied the Seigneur ruefully. "But it is one comfort that we have it to ourselves." Then the humor of the situation seized on him also, and he sat down and laughed almost as hard as Otillie.
"Dear me! what a mercy that her Majesty didn't come!" remarked Miss Niffin in an awe-struck tone.
"Good gracious," cried Otillie with sudden horror at the thought, "suppose she had! Suppose we had all walked in at that door and found the peacocks here! And of course we should! Of course they would have done it just the same if there had been fifty queens to see them! How dreadful it would have been! Oh, there are compensations, Miss Niffin; I see it now."
So Otillie was reconciled to her great disappointment, though the Queen never has tried to land at Sark again, and perhaps never will. For, as Otillie sensibly says, "It is a great deal better that we should be disappointed than that the Queen should be; for if she had been very hungry, and most likely she would have been after sailing and all, she would not have thought the Grand Panjandrum with his feet in the macaroons half so funny as we did, and would have been truly and really vexed."
So it was all for the best, as Miss Niffin said.
THE SHIPWRECKED COLOGNE-BOTTLE
IT seemed the middle of the night, though it was really only three o'clock in the morning, when little Davy Crocker was wakened by a sudden stamping of feet on the stoop below his window, and by a voice calling out that a ship was ashore off the Point, and that Captain Si, Davy's uncle, must turn out and help with the life-boat.
Davy was a "landlubber," as his cousin Sam Coffin was wont to assert whenever he wanted to tease him. He had lived all his short life at Townsend Harbor, up among the New Hampshire hills, and until this visit to his aunt at Nantucket, had never seen the sea. All the more the sea had for him a great interest and fascination, as it has for everybody to whom it has not from long familiarity become a matter of course.
Conversation in Nantucket is apt to possess a nautical and, so to speak, salty flavor. Davy, since his arrival, had heard so much about ships which had foundered, or gone to pieces on rocks, or burned up, or sprung leaks and had to be pumped out, that his mind was full of images of disaster, and he quite longed to realize some of them. To see a shipwreck had become his great ambition. He was not particular as to whether the ship should burn or founder or go ashore, any of these would do, only he wanted all the sailors to be saved.
Once he had gone with his cousins to the South Shore on the little puffing railroad which connects Nantucket town with Siasconsett, and of which all the people of the island are so justly proud; and there on the beach, amid the surf-rollers which look so soft and white and are so cruelly strong, he had seen a great piece of a ship. Nearly the whole of the bow end it appeared to be. It was much higher than Davy's head, and seemed to him immense and formidable; yet this enormous thing the sea had taken into its grasp and tossed to and fro like a plaything and at last flung upon the sand as if it were a toy of which it had grown weary. It gave Davy an idea of the great power of the water, and it was after seeing this that he began to long to witness a shipwreck. And now there was one, and the very sound of the word was enough to make him rub open his sleepy eyes and jump out of bed in a hurry!
But when he had groped his way to the window and pulled up the rattling paper shade, behold! there was nothing to be seen! The morning was intensely dark. A wild wind was blowing great dashes of rain on the glass, and the house shook and trembled as the blasts struck it.
Davy heard his uncle on the stairs, and hurried to the door. "Mayn't I go to the shipwreck with you, Uncle Si?" he called out.
"Go to what? Go back to bed, my boy, that's the place for you. There'll be shipwreck enough in the morning to satisfy all of us, I reckon."
Davy dared not disobey. He stumbled back to bed, making up his mind to lie awake and listen to the wind till it was light, and then go to see the shipwreck "anyhow." But it is hard to keep such resolutions when you are only ten years old. The next thing he knew he was rousing in amazement to find the room full of brilliant sunlight. The rain was over, though the wind still thundered furiously, and through the noise it made, the sea could be heard thundering louder still.
Davy jumped out of bed, dressed as fast as he could, and hurried downstairs. The house seemed strangely empty; Aunt Patty was not in the kitchen, nor was cousin Myra in the pantry skimming milk, as was usual at this hour of the day. Davy searched for them in woodshed, garden, and barn. At last he spied them on the "walk" at the top of the house, and ran upstairs to join them.
Do any of you know what a "walk" is? I suppose not, unless you have happened to live in a whaling-town. Many houses in Nantucket have them. They are railed platforms, built on the peak of the roof between the chimneys, and are used as observatories from which to watch what is going on at sea. There the wives and sweethearts of the whalers used to go in the old days, and stand and sweep the ocean with spy-glasses, in hopes of seeing the ships coming in from their long cruises each with the signals set which told if the voyage had been lucky or no, and how many barrels of oil and blubber she was bringing home. Then they used to watch the "camels," great hulls used as floats to lighten the vessels, go out and help the heavy-laden ship over the bar. And when that was done and every rope and spar conned and studied by the experienced eyes on the roofs, it was time to hurry down, hang on the welcoming pot, trim the fire and don the best gown, so as to make a bright home-coming for the long-absent husband or son.
Aunt Patty had a spy-glass at her eyes when Davy gained the roof. She was looking at the wrecked ship, which was plainly in view, beyond the little sandy down which separated the house from the sea. There she lay, a poor broken thing, stuck fast on one of the long reaches of sandy shoal which stretch about the island and make the navigation of its narrow and uncertain channels so difficult and sometimes so dangerous. The heavy seas dashed over the half-sunken vessel every minute; between her and the shore two lifeboats were coming in under closely-reefed sails.
"Oh, do let me look through the glass!" urged Davy. When he was permitted to do so he uttered an exclamation of surprise, so wonderfully near did it make everything seem to be.
"Why, I can see their faces!" he cried. "There's Uncle Si! There's Sam! And there's a very wet man! I guess he's one of the shipwrecked sailors! Hurrah!" and Davy capered up and down.
"You unfeeling boy!" cried Myra, "give me the glass – you'll let it fall. He's right, mother, father and Sam are coming ashore as fast as they can sail, and they'll be wanting their breakfasts, of course. I'd better go down and mix the corn bread." She took one more look through the glass, announced that the other boat had some more of the shipwrecked men on board, she guessed, and that Abner Folger was steering; then she ran down the ladder, followed by her mother, and Davy was left to watch the boats in.
When he too went down, the kitchen was full of good smells of boiling coffee and frying eggs, and his uncle and Sam and the "very wet man" were just entering the door together. The wet man, it appeared, was the captain of the wrecked vessel; the rest of the crew had been taken home by other people.
The captain was a long, brown, sinewy Maine man. He was soaked with sea-water and looked haggard and worn, as a man well might who had just spent such a terrible night; but he had kind, melancholy eyes, and a nice face, Davy thought. The first thing to be done was to get him into dry clothes, and Uncle Si carried him up to Davy's room for this purpose. Davy followed them. He felt as if he could never see enough of this, his first shipwrecked sailor.
When the captain had been made comfortable in Uncle Silas's flannel shirt and spare pea-jacket and a pair of Sam's trousers, he hung his own clothes up to dry, and they all went down to breakfast. Aunt Patty had done her best. She was very sorry for the poor man who had lost his ship, and she even brought out a tumbler of her best grape jelly by way of a further treat; but the captain, though he ate ravenously, as was natural to a man who had fasted so long, did not seem to notice what he was eating, and thus disappointed kind Aunt Patty. She comforted herself by thinking what she could get for dinner which he would like. Uncle Si and Sam were almost as hungry as the Maine captain, so not much was said till breakfast was over, and then they all jumped up and hurried out, for there was a deal to be done.
Davy felt very dull after they had gone. He had never heard of such a thing as "reaction," but that was what he was suffering from. The excitement of the morning had died out like a fire which has no more fuel to feed it, and he could not think of anything that he wanted to do. He hung listlessly round, watching Aunt Patty's brisk operations about the kitchen, and at last he thought he would go upstairs and see if the captain's clothes were beginning to dry. Wet as they were, they seemed on the whole the most interesting things in the house.
The clothes were not nearly dry, but on the floor, just below where the rough pea-jacket hung, lay a little shining object. It attracted Davy's attention, and he stooped and picked it up.
It was a tiny bottle full of some sort of perfume, and set in a socket of plated filagree shaped like a caster, with a filagree handle. The bottle had a piece of white kid tied over its cork with a bit of blue ribbon. It was not a thing to tempt a boy's fancy, but Davy saw that it was pretty, and the idea came into his head that he should like to carry it home, to his little sister Bella. Bella was fond of perfumes, and the bottle had cologne in it, as Davy could smell without taking out the cork. He was sure that Bella would like it.
Davy had been brought up to be honest. I am sure that he did not mean to steal the cologne-bottle. The idea of stealing never entered his mind, and it would have shocked him had it done so. He was an imaginative little fellow, and the tiny waif seemed to him like a shell or a pebble, something coming out of the sea, which any one was at liberty to pick up and keep. He did not say to himself that it probably belonged to the captain, who might have a value for it, he did not think about the captain at all, he only thought of Bella. So after looking at the pretty toy for a while, he put it carefully away in the drawer where he kept his things, pushing it far back, and drawing a pair of stockings in front of it, so that it might be hidden. He did not want anybody to meddle with the bottle; it was his now, or rather it was Bella's. Then he went up to the walk once more, and was so interested in watching the wreck and the boats, which, as the wind moderated, came and went between her and the shore, picking up the barrels and casks which were floated out of her hold, that he soon forgot all about the matter.