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Little Miss Grouch, a fiction by Samuel Hopkins Adams |
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Land Ho! |
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_ Land Ho! A fool for luck went I have sailed out of the And so, Journey's End SMITH'S LOG.
"What do you think of it?" asked Lord Guenn. The eyes of Alexander Forsyth Smith rested for a moment on a toy lighthouse and passed to the trim shore, where a plaything locomotive was pulling a train of midget box-cars with the minimum of noise and effort. "It's like Fairyland," he said, in a voice unconsciously modulated to the peace of the scene. "So tiny and neatly beautiful." "Yes; it hasn't the overwhelming magnificence of New York Harbor. But it's England." "And you're gladder to get back to it than you'd confess, for shame of sentimentalizing," said the other shrewdly, having marked the note of deep content in that "it's England." "One doesn't climb the rail and sing 'Rule, Britannia.'" "It's a matter of temperament and training. Inside, I suppose, every decent man feels the same about his own country, allowing for racial differences. I don't suppose, though, you'd have quite the same sensation if you were an American returning home after a long absence." "Good Lord, no!" was the unguarded reply. The Tyro laughed outright. "For once I've pierced the disguise of your extremely courteous cosmopolitanism, and behold! there's John Bull underneath, rampantly sure that nobody can be a really justified patriot except an Englishman." "Confound you and your traps!" retorted the young peer, ruefully. "Ah, I say, Cecily!" he cried as Little Miss Grouch appeared, looking, in her long soft traveling-coat, rather lovelier (so the Tyro considered within himself) than any human being has any right to look. She came over to the rail, giving the Tyro the briefest flutter of a glance to accompany her "Good-morning, Mr. Smith." "I appeal to you," continued Lord Guenn. "You're a cosmopolitan--" "Indeed, I'm not! I'm an American," said the young lady with vigor. "Heaven preserve us! You Yankees are all alike. You may be as mild and deprecatory as you please at home; one sniff of foreign air, and up goes the Stars and Stripes. Very well, I withdraw the appeal. To change the subject, when are you coming to us? Laura will be on the tender and she'll want to know." "Dad will also be on the tender," observed Little Miss Grouch, "and he'll want to know, oh, heaps of things!" "True enough! We'll keep out of the way of your affecting reunion. Lady Guenn's got a stateroom, Smith, in case it might rain. Come around and meet her. Unless I'm mistaken, the tender's putting out now." "Oh!" cried Little Miss Grouch. "That adorable kiddie! I nearly forgot him. Don't forget, please," she added to the Tyro, "you promised to look after them and see that they got on the right train." "Steerage passengers come in later," said Lord Guenn. "Hullo! There's your pater, on the upper deck of the tender. Doesn't look particularly stern and unforgiving, does he? Perhaps you'll get off with your life, after all." Little Miss Grouch turned rather white, and shot an appealing look at the Tyro, correctly interpreting which, he wandered away. When he next saw her, she was in the arms of a square-faced grizzled man, and manifestly quite content to be there. The tender was swaying alongside in a strong tide-rip and the Tyro himself was making the passage between the two craft carefully but jerkily, in the wake of Alderson and Enderby. Once on the small boat he separated himself from his companions, found a secluded spot at the rail, well aft, and tactfully turned his back upon the Grouch group. Evolutionists assert that we all possess some characteristic, however vague, of all the forms into which the life-stock has differentiated. Upon this theory the Tyro must have had in his make-up a disproportionate share of the common house-fly, which, we are taught, rejoices in eyes all around its head. For, though he sedulously averted his face from the pair in whom his interest centered, he was perfectly aware of what they were doing. First Little Miss Grouch glanced at him and said something. Then her father glared at him and said something. Then she turned toward him again and made another remark. Then the disgruntled parent glowered more fiercely and said a worse thing than he had said before. Then both of them regarded him until his ears flushed and swelled to their farthest tips. All of which was a triumph of the visual imagination. As a matter of fact they weren't talking about him at all. Little Miss Grouch was afraid to. And her stern parent didn't even know who he was. The subject of their conversation was, largely, the Battery Place house. Still continuing to imagine a vain thing, the Tyro felt the gentlest little pressure on his arm. "Such a deep-brown, brown study!" said Little Miss Grouch's gay little voice, at his elbow. The Tyro turned with a sigh, quickly succeeded by a smile. It was very hard not to smile, just for pure joy of the eye, when Little Miss Grouch was in the foreground. "Why the musing melancholy?" she pursued. "I'm coming out of Fairyland into the Realm of Realities," he explained. "And I don't believe in realities any more." "I'm a reality," she averred. "No." He shook his head. "You're a figment. I made you up, myself, in a burst of creative genius." "Just like that? Right out of your head?" "Out of my heart," he corrected. "Then why not have moulded me nearer to the heart's desire?" she queried cunningly. "Do you still think I'm homely?" He shut his eyes firmly. "I do." "And cross?" "A regular virago." "And ugly, and messy and an idiot--" "Hold on! You're double-crossing the indictment. I'm the offended idiot," declared the Tyro, opening his eyes upon her. She took advantage of his indiscretion. "_Am_ I red-nosed?" "You are. At least, you will be when you cry again." "I'll cry straight off this minute, if you don't promise to take it all back." "I'll promise--the instant we touch shore." There was a gravity in his tone that banished her mischief. "Perhaps I don't really want you to take it back," she said wistfully. "Ah, but with firm earth under our feet once more, and realities all around us--" "There's Guenn Oaks. That's on the very borders of Elfland. Don't you think Bertie looks like a Pixie?" "I'm not going to Guenn Oaks." "Not if I say my very prettiest 'please'?" From those pleading lips and eyes the Tyro turned away. Instantly there was a piercing squeak of greeting from across the narrow strip of water. "It's the Beatific Baby!" cried Little Miss Grouch. "How did he ever get there? Oh! Oh!! Get him, some one!" Near an opening at the rail of the ship some of the third-class luggage had been left. Upon this the Pride of the Steerage had clambered and was there perilously balancing, while he waved his hands at his departing friends. There was a deeper-toned answering cry to Little Miss Grouch's appeal, as the mother, leaping to the rail, ran swiftly along it, seized and hurled her child back, and, with the effort, plunged overboard herself. By the time she had touched the water, the Tyro's overcoat and coat were on the deck and his hands on the rail. "Take that life-preserver," he said, with swift quietness to Little Miss Grouch. "As soon as you see me get her, throw it as far beyond us as you can. You understand? Beyond. There she is. _Damn!!_" For Little Miss Grouch's arms had closed desperately around his shoulders. With his wrestler's knowledge, he could have broken that hold in a second's fraction, but that would have been to fling her against the rail, possibly over it. He twisted until his face almost touched hers. "Let me go!" In all her pampered life Miss Cecily Wayne had never before been addressed in that tone or anything remotely resembling it, by man, woman, or child. Her grip relaxed. She shrank back, appalled. For perhaps a second she had checked him, and in that second the huddle of blue had drifted almost abreast. It was an easy leap from where the Tyro stood. One foot was on the rail, when he staggered aside from an impact very different from the feminine assault. Mr. Henry Clay Wayne had turned from an absorbing conversation with Mrs. Denyse in time to see his daughter in hand-to-hand combat with a man. Observing the man now about to precipitate himself into the sea, he formulated the theory of an attempted robbery and escape, and acted with the promptitude which had made him famous in Wall Street. As he was a decidedly husky one hundred-and-seventy-pounds' worth, his arrival notably interfered with the Tyro's projects. Now the Tyro's naturally equable temper had been disturbed by the other encounter, and this one loosed its bonds. Here was no softening consideration of sex. Who the interferer was, the Tyro knew not, nor cared. He drove an elbow straight into the midsection of the enemy, lashed out with a heel which landed square on the most sensitive portion of the shin, broke the relaxed hold with one effort, and charged like a bull through the crowd now lining the rail at the stern curve,--and stopped dead, as a general shout, part cheers, part laughter, arose. The woman was ploughing through the water with great overhand strokes. In a few seconds she stood on the tender's deck, while the crowd congratulated and questioned. "I'm a feesh," she explained, pointing to a crudely embroidered dolphin on her sleeve, which, as Dr. Alderson explained, meant that she had undergone the famous swimming test in her own German town of Dessau on the Mulde. Meantime two dukes, a ship's pilot, a negro pugilist, a goddess of grand opera, a noted aviator, and some scores of lesser people looked on in amazement at the third richest man in America hopping on one foot like an inebriated and agonized crane, with his other shin clasped in his hands, and making faces which an amateur photographer hastened to snap, subsequently suppressing them for reasons of humanity and art. Several people, including Mrs. Charlton Denyse with two red spots on her cheeks besides what she had put there herself, endeavored to explain to the Tyro just what species of high treason he had committed by his assault, but he was in no mood for gratuitous information, and removed himself determinedly from their vicinity. Presently Judge Enderby appeared upon his horizon. "His leg isn't broken," he announced. "Whose leg?" "That of the gentleman you so brutally assaulted. He wants to see you." "Tell him to go to the devil." "Oh, I wouldn't do that," soothed the legal veteran, his face twinkling. "All right. Bring him here and I'll tell him." "Even though he is Little Miss Grouch's father?" "What!" "Precisely. Now, will you go to him?" "No." "When you employ one of the highest-priced counsel in America," observed the old man plaintively, "while it isn't essential that you should receive his advice with any degree of courtesy--" "I really beg your pardon, Judge Enderby. The fact is, my temper has been a little ruffled--" "Calm it down until you need it again and come with me." The judge tucked an arm under the Tyro's, who presently found himself being studied by a handsomely grim face, somewhat humanized by an occasional twinge of pain. The owner of the face acknowledged Judge Enderby's introduction and waited. The Tyro likewise acknowledged Judge Enderby's introduction and waited. Mr. Wayne was waiting for the Tyro to apologize. The Tyro hadn't the faintest notion of apologizing, and, had he known that it was expected, would have been more exasperated than before, since he considered himself the aggrieved party. Finding silence unproductive, the magnate presently broke it. "You were going in after that woman?" "Yes." "Did you know her?" "Yes." "Where?" "On shipboard." "Oh! She was the one you and my daughter used to pamper, in the steerage. Mrs. Denyse told me. So you thought you'd be a Young Hero, eh?" The Tyro caught Judge Enderby's eye, and, reading therein an admonition, preserved his temper and his silence. "Well, I rather spoiled your little game. And you pretty near ruined my digestion with your infernal elbow." The Tyro smiled an amiable smile. "Did you know who I was when you kicked me?" "No," answered the Tyro in such a tone that the elder man grinned. "Nor care either, eh?" "No. I'd have punched you in the eye if I'd had time." "Don't apologize. You did your best. Now that you do know who I am--" "I don't. Except that you're the father of Little Miss Grouch." "Of who--um!" demanded the other, rescuing his grammar from his surprise barely in time to save its fair repute. The Tyro had the grace to blush. "It's just a foolish nickname," he said. "Particularly inappropriate, I should say. By the way, your own name seems to be a matter of some doubt. What do you call yourself?" "Smith." "By what right?" "Birthright. If it comes to rights, where is your license to practice cross-examination?" "Mrs. Charlton Denyse says that your real name is Daddleskink." "Well, it won't seriously handicap her popularity with me to have her think so." "Mrs. Charlton Denyse says that your attentions to my daughter have been so marked as to compromise her." "Mrs. Charlton Denyse is a--well, she's a woman." "Otherwise you'd punch _her_ in the eye?" "I'd scratch all the new paint off her," said the Tyro virulently. "My clerk had an awful time with that name of yours. He thought it was code. What's your occupation, Mr. Smith?" "Answering questions. Have you got many more to ask?" "I have. Are you a haberdasher?" "Don't answer," advised Judge Enderby, in his profoundest tones, "if it tends to incriminate or degrade you." "Hullo!" cried Mr. Wayne. "Where do you come in?" "I am Mr. Smith's counsel." "The devil you are!" "Therefore my presence is strictly professional." Now, Mr. Henry Clay Wayne was a tolerably shrewd judge of humankind. To be sure, the Tyro was of a species new to him. Hence he had gone cautiously, testing him for temper and poise. At this point he determined upon what he would have described as "rough-neck work." "How much will he take, Enderby?" "For what?" "To quit." With admirable agility for one of his age, Judge Enderby jumped in front of the Tyro. He had seen, underneath the rebellious side-curl which came down across the youth's temple, a small vein swell suddenly and purply. "Wayne," said he over his shoulder, "you'd better apologize." "What for?" "To save your life. I think my client is about to drop you over the rail, and I can't conscientiously advise him not to." "No, I'm not," said the Tyro, with an effort. "But I want to hear that again." "What?" inquired Mr. Wayne. "That--that offer of a bribe." "No bribe at all. A straightforward business proposition." "So that's your notion of business," said the Tyro slowly. "Well, why not?" Bland innocence overspread the magnate's features as if in a layer. "I ask you to name your price for quitting your pretended claim--" "I don't pretend any claim!" "--to a house, which--" "A house?" "Certainly. On Battery Place." "That isn't what you meant," bluntly accused the lawyer. "Of course it isn't." There was an abrupt and complete change of voice and expression. "My boy, I suppose you think you're in love with my daughter." The Tyro found this man suddenly a very likable person. "Think!" he exclaimed. "Well, if you think so hard enough, you are. And I suppose you want to marry her?" "I'd give the heart out of my body for her." "Do you know anything about the kind of girl she is? The life she leads? The things and people that make life for her? The sort of world she lives in?" "Not very much." "I suppose not. Well, son, I make up my mind quickly about people. You strike me as something of a man. But I'm afraid you haven't got the backing to carry out this contract." "We are prepared to show a reasonable income," declared Judge Enderby, "with a juster prospect of permanence than--well, for example, than Wall Street affords, at present." "Possibly. Of course I could find our young friend here an ornamental and useless position in my office--" "No, thank you," said the Tyro. "No. I'd supposed not. Well, Mr. Smith, to keep that amiable young lady running at the rate of speed which she considers legal, trims fifty thousand a year down so fine that I could put the remainder in the plate on New Year's Sunday without a pang." "Fifty thousand!" gasped the Tyro. "Oh, the modern American girl is a high-priced luxury. Are you worth a million dollars?" "No." "See any prospect of getting a million?" "Not the slightest." "Well, do you think it would be fair to a girl like Cecily, with an upbringing which--" "Which imbecility and snobbery have combined to make the worst imaginable," cut in Judge Enderby. "I don't say you're wrong. But it's what she's had. That kind of life is no longer a luxury to her. It's a necessity." "Twaddle!" observed the judge. "Have it your own way," allowed the father patiently. "But there's the situation," he added to the Tyro. "What are you going to do with it?" The Tyro looked him between the eyes. "The best I can," said he, and walked away. "Now, Enderby," said the great financier, following him with his glance, "it's up to the boy and the girl." "You've killed him off." "Not if I know Cecily. She's got a good deal of her mother in her. I've always known it would be once and forever with her. And I'm afraid this boy is the once." "It might be worse," suggested the lawyer dryly. "Yes. I've made inquiries. But what can a man know about things?" The great man's regard drifted out into the gray distance of the open sea. "Ah, if I had her mother back again!" "The boy is fine and honorable and manful, Wayne," said the old lawyer. "To be sure, you'll never make a Wall Street dollar-hound out of him--" "Heaven knows I don't want to." "But he'll play his part in the world and play it well. I've come to think a good deal of that boy. I wish I were as sure of the girl." "Cecily? Don't you worry about her." The father chuckled pridefully. "She's got stuff in her. I'd trust her to start the world with as I did with her mother." What of Little Miss Grouch, while all these momentous happenings were in progress? Events had piled up on her sturdy little nerves rather too fast even for their youthful strength. The emotional turmoil of which the Tyro was the cause, the tension of meeting her father again, and, on top of these, the startling occurrences on the deck of the tender had stretched her endurance a little beyond its limit, and it was with a sense of grateful refuge that she had betaken herself to the hospitality of Lady Guenn's cabin. What transpired between the two women is no matter for the pen of a masculine chronicler. Suffice it to note that Lord Guenn, surcharged with instructions to be casual, set out to find the Tyro, and, having found him, blurted out:-- "I say, Smith, Cecily's in our cabin. If I were you I'd lose no time getting there. It's the only one on the port side aft." No time was lost by the Tyro. He found Cecily alone. At sight of her face, his heart gave one painful thump, and shriveled up. "You've been crying," he said. "I haven't!" she denied. "And if I have, there's enough to make me cry." "What was it?" was his sufficiently lame rejoinder. "I imagine if you'd seen your father beaten and kicked as I saw mine--" "I didn't know who it was." "But if you had been shaken and cursed, yourself--" "Cursed? Who cursed you?" "You did." "I!" "You said, 'D-d-damn you, let me go!'" "I did _not_. I simply told you to let me go." "Well you might as well have said 'Damn you!' You meant it," whimpered Little Miss Grouch. "She might have been drowned," said the Tyro. "So might you. I saved your life by not letting you go in after her. And you haven't a spark of gratitude." "Well," began the Tyro, astounded at this sudden turn of strategy, "I _am_--" "Go on and curse some more," she advised. "I suppose you'd have kicked _me_ if I hadn't let go." He stared at her, speechless. "Now you've made me cu-cu-cry again. And my nose is all red. _Isn't_ my nose all red? Say 'Yes.'" "Yes," said the bewildered young man, obediently. "And I'm hoarse as a crow. _Am_ I? Say it!" "Y-y-yes," he stammered. "And I'm homely and frowsy, and dowdy and horrid and a perfect mess. Am I a mess? Say--" "_No!_" The rebel in the Tyro broke bonds. "You're the loveliest and most adorable and sweetest thing on this earth, and I love you." "I--I think you might have said it before," said Little Miss Grouch in a very wee voice. "I'd no business to say it at all. But I simply couldn't go without--" "Go?" she cried, startled. "Where?" "Away. It doesn't matter where." "Away from me?" "Yes." She faced him with leveled eyes, tearless now, and infinitely pleading. "You couldn't do that," she said. "I must." "After--after last night, on deck? And--and now--what you've just said?" "I can't help it, dear," he said miserably. "I've been talking with your father." "Is it--is it our money?" "Yes." "Are you a coward?" she flashed. "Afraid of what people would say?" "Afraid of what you yourself would feel when you found yourself missing the things you've been used to so long." "What do I care for those things? It's just a sort of snobbery in you. Oh, I'd have married you when I thought your name was Daddleskink!" she cried, with flaming face. "And now because we're different from what you thought, you--you--" "You're not making it very easy for me, dear," he said piteously. There came into her face, like an inspiration, a radiance of the tenderest fun. She put her hands one on each of his shoulders, and with a little soft catch in her voice, sang:--
"_You_ grunt!" she bade him. He strove to turn his face away. "Grunt," she besought. "Grunt, Pig; Perfect Pig! Grunt now or forever hold your peace." Then the clinging hands slipped forward, the soft arms closed about his neck, and she was sobbing with her cheek pressed close to his cheek. "I won't _let_ you go. I won't! Never, never, never!" "But I don't know what I'm to say to your father, darling," he said, as the grinding of the tender against the wharf brought them back to realities. "Leave him to me," she bade him. "I'm going to send for him and Judge Enderby now." The two appeared promptly. "Dad," she said, "you remember what you said about the house on Battery Place?" "I think I do." "That you'd get it for me if you had to buy off the option for a million?" "Correct." "And you're still Wayne of his Word?" "Try me." "Give your check to Mr. Smith. Our price is just a million. Then," she added with an entrancing blush, "you can give us the house as a wedding present." "So that's the bargain, is it?" queried the financier. "No. It isn't the bargain at all," replied the Tyro, with quiet firmness. "The option isn't for sale." "Not at a million?" "Certainly not at a million. It isn't worth anything like that." "A thing's worth what you can get for it." "For value received. Not for charity, with however glossy a sugar-coating. If Miss Wayne--Cecily--" "Little Miss Grouch," corrected the girl with the smile of a particularly pleased angel. "If Little Miss Grouch marries me, she will have to marry me on what I'm honestly worth." "I'm content," said Little Miss Grouch. "So am I," said Mr. Wayne heartily. "You've come through, my boy." He set a friendly hand on the Tyro's shoulder. "As for Remsen Van Dam," he added, scratching his head ruefully, "I might have known that Cecily's pick would be better than mine. Look here, children," he added briskly, "let's get this thing over and done with away from the American papers. Enderby, how do Americans get married in England?" "Give me five dol--I mean five hundred dollars," responded the Judge promptly. "What for?" "Advice." "Done," said Mr. Wayne. "And leave it to me. Let me see." He totaled up on his fingers. "Five and five is ten, and five is fifteen, and five hundred is five fifteen; a very fair profit on the voyage. It'll buy a wedding present for--" "For the House of Smith on Battery Place," said Little Miss Grouch demurely. [THE END] _ |
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