IN WHICH JASPER BEGG MAKES UP HIS MIND WHAT TO DO
Now, she was sitting in the garden, in a kind of arbour built of leaves, and near by her was her relative, the rats'-tailed old lady we used to call Aunt Rachel. The pair didn't see me as I passed in, but a Chinese servant gave "Good-day" to the yellow man we'd picked up coming down; and, at that, Miss Ruth—for so I call her, not being able to get Mme. Czerny into my head—Miss Ruth, I say, stood up, and, the colour tumbling into her cheeks like the tide into an empty pool, she stood for all the world as though she were struck dumb and unable to say a word to any man. I, meanwhile, fingered my hat and looked foolish; for it was an odd kind of job to have come twelve thousand miles upon, and what to say to her with the hulking seaman at my elbow, the Lord forgive me if I knew.
"Miss Ruth," says I at last, "I'm here according to orders, and the ship's here, and we're waiting for you to go aboard———"
Well, she seemed to hear me like one who did not catch the meaning of it. I saw her put her hand to her throat as though something were choking her, and the old lady, the one we called Aunt Rachel, cried, "God bless me," two or three times together. But the yellow man was the next to speak, and he crossed right over to our Miss Ruth's side, and talked in her ear in a voice you could have heard up at the hills.
"You'll not be going aboard to-day, lady. Why, what would the master have to say, he coming home from foreign parts and you not ashore to meet him? You didn't say nothing about any ship, not as I can remember, and mighty pleased the guv'nor will be when he knows about it. Shall I tell this party he'd better be getting aboard again, eh, ma'am? Don't you think as he'd better be getting aboard again?"
He shouted this out for all the world like a man hailing from one ship to another. I don't know what put it into my head, but I knew from that moment that my mistress was afraid, aye, deadly afraid, as it is given few to fear in this life. Not that she spoke of it, or showed it by any sign a stranger might have understood; but there was a look in her eyes which was clear to me; "and by my last word," said I to myself, "I'll know the truth this day, though there be one or a hundred yellow boys!" None the less, I held my tongue as a wise man should, and what I said was spoken to the party with the beard.
"You've a nice soft voice for a nightingale, that you have," says I; "if you'd let yourself out for a fog-horn to the Scilly Isles, you'd go near to make your fortune! Is the young lady deaf that you want to bawl like a harbour-master? Easy, my man," says I, "you'll hurt your beautiful throat."
Well, he turned round savage enough, but my mistress, who had stood all the while like a statue, spoke now for the first time, and holding out both her hands to me, she cried:
"Oh, Captain Begg, Captain Begg, is it you at last, to walk right here like this? I can't believe it," she said; "I really can't believe it!"
"Why, that's so," said I, catching her American accent, which was the prettiest thing you ever heard; "I'm on the way to 'Frisco, and I put in here according to my promise. My ship's out yonder, Miss Ruth, and there's some aboard that knows you—Peter Bligh and Mister Jacob; and this one, this is little Dolly Venn," said I, presenting him, "though he'll grow bigger by-and-bye."