“Mebbe so. She said it was splendid, but it looked like somebody else's house. She says the queerest things sometimes. I told Mr. Benson that I thought it would be a good thing to go away from home a little while and travel round. I've never been away much except in New York, where Mr. Benson has business a good deal. We've been in Washington this winter.”
“Are you going farther south?”
“Yes; we calculate to go down to the New Orleans Centennial. Pa wants to see the Exposition, and Irene wants to see what the South looks like, and so do I. I suppose it's perfectly safe now, so long after the war?”
“Oh, I should say so.”
“That's what Mr. Benson says. He says it's all nonsense the talk about what the South 'll do now the Democrats are in. He says the South wants to make money, and wants the country prosperous as much as anybody. Yes, we are going to take a regular tour all summer round to the different places where people go. Irene calls it a pilgrimage to the holy places of America. Pa thinks we'll get enough of it, and he's determined we shall have enough of it for once. I suppose we shall. I like to travel, but I haven't seen any place better than Cyrusville yet.”
As Irene did not make her appearance, Mr. King tore himself away from this interesting conversation and strolled about the parlors, made engagements to take early coffee at the fort, to go to church with Mrs. Cortlandt and her friends, and afterwards to drive over to Hampton and see the copper and other colored schools, talked a little politics over a late cigar, and then went to bed, rather curious to see if the eyes that Mrs. Cortlandt regarded as so dangerous would appear to him in the darkness.
When he awoke, his first faint impressions were that the Hygeia had drifted out to sea, and then that a dense fog had drifted in and enveloped it. But this illusion was speedily dispelled. The window-ledge was piled high with snow. Snow filled the air, whirled about by a gale that was banging the window-shutters and raging exactly like a Northern tempest.
It swirled the snow about in waves and dark masses interspersed with rifts of light, dark here and luminous there. The Rip-Raps were lost to view. Out at sea black clouds hung in the horizon, heavy reinforcements for the attacking storm. The ground was heaped with the still fast-falling snow—ten inches deep he heard it said when he descended. The Baltimore boat had not arrived, and could not get in. The waves at the wharf rolled in, black and heavy, with a sullen beat, and the sky shut down close to the water, except when a sudden stronger gust of wind cleared a luminous space for an instant. Stormbound: that is what the Hygeia was—a winter resort without any doubt.
