This was the second time Paul had spoken of Jack Percy to Elithe, who had listened with a good deal of interest to his description of the Ralston House, and had experienced a kind of weird, uncanny feeling as she thought of the smugglers’ room where one could hide from justice. Paul never seemed to tire of talking of the house, which he said had been made over with a tower and bow windows and balconies until the old sea captain would never recognize it if he were to come sailing back some day in his ship. The big chimney was left, he told her, and built round it in the roof was a platform inclosed by a high balustrade, with seats where one could sit and look out on the water, and where the smuggler captain’s men used to watch for the first sight of the Vulture, as it came slowly into the harbor at Still Haven, with the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes floating from the masthead if their services were wanted that night, and only the Stars and Stripes if there was nothing to conceal.
“You can see the top of our house with the look-out on the roof among the trees as we get near Oak City. I’ll show it to you,” he said.
They were now moving slowly into the Basin, on the long pier of which a group of people were waiting.
“Hello! There’s Clarice! I didn’t really believe she’d be here,” Paul exclaimed. “Excuse me, please,” and he hurried away, leaving Elithe alone.
Her first impulse was to go below and see that her trunk was not carried on shore by mistake. Then, reflecting that she could watch from the boat and give the alarm in time if necessary, she kept her seat and watched the passengers as they came on board. There were several ladies and among them a tall, queenly looking girl, waving first her red parasol and then kissing her hand to some one on the boat. Everything about her dress was in perfect taste and the latest style, especially the sleeves, which were as large as the fashion would admit. At these Elithe looked admiringly, thinking with a pang of her small ones which Miss Tibbs had declared “big enough for anybody.” They were not half as big as those of the young lady in the gray dress, Eton jacket and pretty shirt waist, looking as fresh and cool as if no ray of the hot sun or particle of dust had fallen upon her since she left Boston in her new toilet. Elithe wondered who she was and if she wasn’t one of the few swells who frequented Oak City and if Paul Ralston knew her. If so she might possibly know her in time. He had been so very kind and friendly that he would surely come to see her and bring his acquaintances. A moment later she heard his voice as he came out upon the deck, and with him the swell young lady to whom he was talking, with his face lighted up and the smile upon it which she had thought so attractive.
Clarice Percy had been for some time with her mother in New York, where Paul had joined her. Leaving her mother there with friends, she had come with Paul as far as Worcester, where he stopped, as he had business. Wishing to see an old school-mate in Boston, Clarice had gone on to that city with the understanding that Paul was to look after her baggage, which was checked for Oak City by way of New Bedford, and that she was to join him at the Basin the following day. She was in the best of spirits. The arrangements for her wedding were satisfactorily completed. Her half brother Jack, who was sure to get drunk and disgrace her if he came to her bridal, was out of the way in Denver, or somewhere West, and she had nothing to dread from him. She had an elaborate trousseau in her six trunks, and was very glad to see Paul, and very much flattered with the attention she knew she was attracting as she stood talking to her handsome lover. Elithe could see her face distinctly, and thought how beautiful she was and how different from any one she had ever seen in Samona, and how different from herself in her mussy blue flannel and last year’s hat, with its crumpled ribbons and feathers. It was a very proud face, and the girl carried herself erect and haughty, and glanced occasionally at the people around her, with an expression which said they were not of her world and class. Toward the corner where Elithe sat she never glanced, nor did Paul. In his absorption with his betrothed he had evidently forgotten Elithe, who, after watching him and his companion for a while, half hoping he would speak to her again, turned her attention to the shore and the many handsome houses dotting the cliffs as the boat neared the landing at Oak City. High above the rest, on a slight elevation, she could see the top of what she was sure was the Ralston House, with its big chimney, its look-out on the roof and the tower which had been added when the place was modernized.
“That’s the Ralston House,” she thought, wondering if she would ever go there, and thinking with a kind of awe of the smuggler’s room in the cellar, which Sherlock Holmes could not find and the hidden entrance to it in the closet under the stairs.
CHAPTER XIV.
IN OAK CITY.
The boat was beginning to stop, and the passengers were hurrying from the deck, which Elithe was almost the last to leave. On the wharf crowds of people were gathered,—hundreds it seemed to her,—and by the time she was in their midst, pushed and jostled and deafened by the hackmen’s cries for the different hotels, she lost her head completely and wondered how she was ever to get through it, and if her aunt were there and how she was to know her, and what had become of her trunk. She found it at last on top of a Saratoga, with both hinges broken now and the lid kept in place by the rope, but still pushed up enough to show a bit of her second best dress through the aperture. It did look strange perched on top of the handsome Saratoga, but she did not realize how strange till she heard some one near her say very impatiently, “My gracious, how came this rubbish here! I hope you don’t think it belongs to me. Can’t you read the name, Elithe Hansford, on it? Take it away.”
Turning, she saw Clarice Percy ordering a porter to remove the obnoxious baggage, which he did with a bang. Close behind her was Paul Ralston, who, the moment he saw her, called out cheerily, “Oh, here you are. I’ve looked everywhere for you, thinking you might get dazed in this infernal jam, the biggest, I do believe, I’ve ever seen here. Everybody in town has come to meet somebody, and the rest to look on. Clarice, this is Miss Elithe Hansford from Montana. You remember, I told you she was on the boat. Miss Hansford, Miss Percy.”