“That I had heard.”
“But the romance is this: the little girl is now grown, and one of the richest girls in the world—are you listening?”
“Yes,” said King, whose gaze had returned to the two little faces. “You were saying she is rich—one of the world’s richest girls. I know that. A century though lies between her and the little ones yonder. She can never dream back to them. I was thinking of that.”
“Wait! No man ever knows all that’s in a girl’s heart. Early in life when she was just a little child as pictured yonder, she was the victim of a ferry boat collision off Cortlandt Street. My old lady friend—the one I live with—is her relative. I have seen Miss Vandilever many times, and have often read her story in some old newspapers. She was but eight years old when the accident occurred, and in the care of an old negro nurse on the boat. The family were on their way up from the South, and the little girl and her nurse had gone out of the cabin to the deck to see the lights. When the collision occurred, both were thrown into the river. In the confusion of the moment and noise of whistles and the screams, the minor accident was not noticed nor were the cries of the woman and child heard except by one person, a boy of sixteen or seventeen, who was also out to see the lights, and probably New York for the first time. This boy plunged into the river from the sinking boat and succeeded in reaching the little girl. Then—how, only the good God who was watching, knows—he got out of his coat and kicked off his shoes and would probably have swum to the wharves with her, but a tug, at full speed and blowing its whistle for other boats to come, ran over them. Shall I wait for the organ to stop?”
“No, your voice and that music were made for just such a story. The tug ran over them—”
“As it struck, the boy seized the dress of the child at the throat, with his teeth, covered her face with his hands, and went down with her. The boat passed, and they rose and whirled in the foam of its wake. The boy’s teeth held like a bulldog’s, though the barnacles on the tug had torn his side cruelly and something had broken his left arm. He could now only support the child by swimming on his back, her face drawn up to his breast, her hands clinging to his shoulders, and body floating free.”
“He knew how to save a drowning person, who wasn’t panic-stricken. It must have been a brave child to keep her head through it all.”
“As they drifted on with the tide, unseen, he comforted her, promising he would be sure to get her to the land and take her home. He stopped calling for help when he found his voice frightened her. And then he laughed to show her he was not afraid, and told her little stories of the South, where he came from, and sang the songs his black mammy sang to him when he was very little, so that the girl forgot her fears and put her faith in the wonderful boy, who knew so much, and had come to help her.
“Then, after a long while, he told her to try and sleep; to lay her head on his breast, but first to lift her face up toward the skies and pray God for her father and mother and the old black woman, who had ‘turned back because she couldn’t swim,’ and to bring the boy and herself to the land soon. And she did. And then, maybe, she went to sleep, for she could never afterwards remember any more. And maybe the boy went to sleep, too, for they found them both floating under the stars off the Liberty Light hours later, his one good arm slowly, oh! so slowly, striking the water, the other, broken and trailing under him, and his white face turned upward, and his teeth again clenched on the child’s dress, so hard they had to cut it to get her away from him.” Billee suddenly drew her hands away and covered her face.
“He was probably tired and asleep, too,” said King gently, “you can’t drown that kind of chap.”