Mrs. Hallam's companion; and The Spring Farm, and other tales

by Mary Jane Holmes

Just then Louie began to shiver, and moaned that she was cold.

“Wait a minute, darling,” Bertha said, “and I will bring you a blanket from our state-room, if I can get there.”

This was no easy task, for the ship was plunging fearfully, and always at an angle which made walking difficult. Twice Bertha fell upon her knees, and once struck her head against the side of the passage, but she reached the room at last, and, securing the blanket, was turning to retrace her steps, when a wave heavier than any which had preceded it struck the vessel, which reeled with what one of the sailors called a double X, pitching and rolling sidewise and endwise and cornerwise all at once. To stand was impossible, and with a cry Bertha fell forward into the arms of Rex Hallam.

“Rex!” she said, involuntarily, and “Bertha!” he replied, showering kisses upon her face, down which the tears were running like rain.

She had been gone so long that he had become alarmed at her absence, and with great difficulty had made his way to the state-room, which he reached in time to save her from a heavy fall. Both were thrown upon the lounge under the window, where they sat for a moment, breathless and forgetful of their danger, Bertha was the first to speak, saying she must go to Louie, but Rex held her fast, and, steadying himself as best he could, drew her face close to his, and said, “This is not a time for love-making, but I may never have another chance, and, if we must die, death will be robbed of half its terrors if you are with me, my darling, my queen, whom I believe I have loved ever since I saw your photograph and thought it was poor Rose Arabella Jefferson.”

He could not repress a smile at the remembrance of that scion of the Jeffersons, but Bertha did not see it. Her head was lying upon his breast, and he was holding to the side of the door to keep from being thrown upon the floor as he urged his suit and then waited for her answer. Against the windows and the dead-lights the waves were dashing furiously, while overhead was a roar like heavy cannonading, mingled with the hoarse shouts of voices calling through the storm. But Rex heard Bertha’s answer, and at the peril of his limbs folded her in his arms and said, “Now we live or die together; and I think that we shall live.”

Naturally they forgot the blanket and everything else as they groped their way back to the door of the salon, where Rex stopped suddenly at the sound of a voice heard distinctly enough for him to know that some one was praying loudly and earnestly, and to know, too, who it was whose clear, nasal tones could be heard above the din without.

“Phineas Jones!” he exclaimed. “Great Cæsar! how came he here?” And he struggled in with Bertha to get nearer to him.

Phineas had been very ill in Liverpool, and when the Germanic left he was still in bed, and was obliged to wait two weeks longer, when he took passage on the same ship with Mrs. Hallam. Even then he was so weak that he did not make up his mind to go until an hour before the ship sailed. As there were few passengers, he had no difficulty in securing a berth, where during the first days of the voyage he lay horribly sea-sick and did not know who were on board. He had been too late for his name to be included in the passenger-list, and it was not until the day of the storm that he learned that Mrs. Hallam and Rex and Bertha were on the ship. To find them at once was his first impulse, but when the cyclone struck the boat it struck him, too, with a fresh attack of sea-sickness, from which he did not rally until night, when he would not be longer restrained. Something told him, he said, that Lucy Ann needed him,—in fact, that they all needed him in the cabin, and he was going there. And he went, nearly breaking his neck. Entering the salon on his hands and knees, he made his way to the end of the table on which Louie lay, and near which Mrs. Hallam was clinging desperately to a chair as she crouched upon the floor. It was at this moment that the double X which had sent Bertha into Rex’s arms struck the ship, eliciting shrieks of terror from the passengers, who felt that the end had come. Steadying himself against a corner of the table, Phineas called out, in a loud, penetrating voice:

“Silence! This is no time to scream and cry. It is action you want. Pray to be delivered, as Jonah did. The captain and crew are doing their level best on deck. Let us do ours here, and don’t you worry. We shall be heard. The Master who stilled the storm on Galilee is in this boat, and not asleep, either, in the hindermost part. If He was, no human could get to Him, with the ship nearly bottom side up. He is in our midst. I know it, I feel it; and you who are too scart to pray, and you who don’t know how, listen to me. Let us pray.”