CHAPTER VII

Tommy returned with Captain Bartlet to Boston the following day. His going left a great gap in the family, that was made still more apparent by the cloud of anxiety on Lister’s behalf which hung over the two Folger households. But it was agreed, before he left, that his mother and Erica should go to Boston two days before he was to sail, and stay with a cousin of Mrs. Folger’s, so they could see the _Spray_ for themselves—this had been the captain’s kindly suggestion—and have another opportunity to say good-by to Tommy before his long voyage began.

Miss Charity promised to keep an eye on Milly and little Barbee for the short time the others should be gone, and the prospect of the trip, and the hurried preparations for it—the _Spray_ was to sail in a week—helped everybody through that first almost unbearable period of suspense while they waited for news from China, which could not possibly reach them before the arrival of the next tea clipper from the other side of the world.

The Nantucket Steamship Company, which ran boats between New Bedford and the island, had, the summer before, put on a new big boat, the _Massachusetts_, and it was arranged that Mrs. Folger and Erica should go by that to the mainland, and from New Bedford to Boston by train. The trip, counting the waits and changes, would occupy the best part of a day, and Erica, who had never been off the island since she had been brought there as a six-months-old baby to be placed in Miss Charity’s care, was faintly ashamed of the eager excitement with which she found herself contemplating this entrancing chance to see new worlds—even if they were no farther away and no stranger than New Bedford and Boston. She told herself severely that with this dreadful uncertainty about Lis making her heart ache, and her breath catch sharply in terror whenever she stopped to realize the news Captain Bartlet had brought, she oughtn’t to be able to feel happy and excited over anything, no matter how novel and alluring. How could one feel frightened and sad and thrilled and adventurous and sort of—_palpitating_—all at the same time?

She said something, shyly, about it to Aunt Charity once, and the latter proved unwontedly understanding.

“It’s the prospect of doing something, dearie, that’ll take your mind off our fears for a time,” her aunt said, gently, putting a tender hand on the girl’s shoulder. “And unconsciously, too, perhaps you have a hope that news—good news—will be waiting in Boston with some ship just back from China. And you’re young, Erica. Youth swings quickly from mood to mood. It doesn’t mean you’re any the less worried over poor Lis’s fate. Take this little trip and enjoy it all you can. Seeing you hopeful will be the best way to help Aunt Callie.”

The _Spray_ was to sail with the early morning tide on Saturday, so on Thursday Mrs. Folger and Erica embarked on the new _Massachusetts_, of which the islanders were so proud, and were borne over a blue and almost rippleless sea toward the far-away mainland which Erica, at least, had never seen before. For one cannot, as the girl pointed out very earnestly to the friendly, gray-bearded captain when he stopped beside their chairs on deck, to chat a moment—one cannot be said really to have seen a place one has only been carried through at the age of six months.

The gray captain twinkled at the eager young face with its shining eyes, and the bobbed red curls dancing alively against each smooth cheek flushed with the sharp little sea wind.

“Pity you ain’t a lad like Tommy, now, Miss Ricky, ‘stid o’ a pretty gal,” he murmured, gallantly. “Ye’d ha’ been a rare one to run away to sea adventures now, wouldn’t ye? I mind your father when he wasn’t no older than ye be, an’ he had the same hungry li’l’ imp o’ excitement in his eyes.”

He passed on with a chuckle, and Erica leaned her chin on the iron rail and stared dreamily at the slowly heaving, lazy blue water. Suppose she were really a boy—suppose she were sailing day after tomorrow with Tommy, on the _Spray_! They’d see China together—Canton, Foochow, Hangchow, Cochin-China—all those myriad names of pure romance that had sung in her listening ears ever since she first heard them in her sea-faring father’s tales of his voyages. They’d visit Sun Li, too, and there’d be splendid news of Lis waiting for them in her Chinese godfather’s gorgeous palace. Perhaps Lis himself would be there and they’d all three go sight-seeing, and—and——

She rubbed her eyes like a person just waking out of a deep sleep, at the sound of Aunt Callie’s gentle voice asking her a question. Erica sighed heavily as she turned to answer. What was the use of imagining impossibilities? One had always to wake again and remember one was only a stay-at-home girl. And there wasn’t any good news yet. Lis wasn’t waiting for them in Sun Li’s Cantonese palace. Perhaps—perhaps they’d never—no, no use imagining that way, either. She’d only end by crying, and making Aunt Callie cry with her.

They arrived at Cousin Kate Kingsley’s house on Mount Vernon Street in time for supper, and found Tommy there ahead of them, busily describing to Cousin Kate the many superior advantages of the _Spray_ above all other China-bound clippers.

Captain Bartlet had given him the evening ashore, but he had to report back on board by nine o’clock. Erica was as eager to hear as Tommy to tell, so supper was largely taken up with animated talk between the two young people. Now and then some mention of Lis, or China, brought a swift cloud to both the girl’s and boy’s faces; but, after all, they were at an age when hope is easier to believe in than despair; and since there was as yet no positive proof of harm having come to Lister, it was natural enough they should cling to an optimistic confidence in the eventual happy outcome of all their fears and troubles.

Meantime, here was adventure ahead for Tommy, and present new scenes and wonders for both in the mere fact of being off familiar Nantucket and in big, busy Boston, about which so much talk at home centered among the fisher folk.

Mrs. Folger, while not daring to let herself share their optimism, was faintly conscious of a little stirring of courage in her thoughts of the future. Perhaps, after all, there would be some explanation of her boy’s strange disappearance. Perhaps her brother-in-law’s ship, the _Sea Gull_, now supposed to be well on its homeward course, would bring good news. Or perhaps Tommy himself would find Lis, safe and sound, in Sun Li’s palace when the _Spray_ reached Canton.

Cousin Kate smiled on them all, and plied them hospitably with tempting dishes of her own concocting, to which Erica and Tommy, at least, did ample, and appreciative justice.

The following morning Tommy came ashore bright and early, and, with Cousin Kate to play guide, the three Folgers spent the time up to the midday dinner hour in seeing as much of Boston as the limits of time and space permitted.

In the afternoon Tommy personally conducted them all aboard the _Spray_, where Captain Bartlet was waiting, bluff and genial and anxious to please, to show them alow and aloft over his slim and graceful clipper now lying at anchor on the gently ruffled waters of the harbor.

She had finished taking her cargo on board, and had moved out to a roomier anchorage offshore where she could the more easily spread her white gulls’ wings with the next morning’s early tide, and slip away on the first tack of her voyage to the East.

Captain Bartlet had sent one of her boats in to the wharf to transfer his expected visitors to the ship, and they spent—for Erica, at all events—an enchanted three hours thereafter, exploring the marvelous intricacies and surprises which a ship of that size, and especially a sailing-ship, invariably possesses for the inexperienced landsman.

The last tearful good-bys to Tommy, which must be said on board, rather obscured the earlier happiness of the afternoon, though the boy kept saying, rather jerkily and with an over-emphatic cheerfulness: “It’s only for six months or so, mother. Why, Rick, you know you’d give your eyes to be going, too!” He did not materially deceive any of his feminine relatives, and was finally forced to desist, by a most unmanly and uncomfortable lump in his own throat.

But they got through the bad moment without actually breaking down, and were rowed back to the wharf, waving a whole sheaf of handkerchiefs with pretended gayety to a madly-waving, long-legged Tommy perched precariously on the _Spray’s_ port rail. However, as things turned out, they might have postponed the farewells until later, for, just as they were sitting down—rather silent, and inclined to avoid each other’s eyes—at Cousin Kate’s lavishly spread supper table that evening, the heavy knocker on the front door clanged and Tommy himself appeared in the dining-room door, in Cousin Kate’s wake. He announced that the captain had sent him ashore with a message to be delivered, and had added permission for a final visit to his family.

The _Spray_ carried a few cabin passengers, all of whom, but one, had come aboard with their possessions that afternoon. One, however, a widow traveling out to Canton to join a merchant brother engaged in the tea trade, had been detained by some unexpected emergency and could not go out to the ship until morning. Captain Bartlet had, therefore, sent Tommy ashore to tell her that the _Spray_ would sail by seven o’clock and that a boat would be waiting at the wharf for her promptly at six.

“I’ll have some supper, too, if I may, Cousin Kate,” he added, with his cheerful grin at sight of the array of food under which the table groaned. “Then I’ll go to see Mrs. Haven—she’s only a block or two from here—and give her the captain’s message.”

“Oh, Tommy, let me walk around with you!” Erica pleaded. “You can bring me back to the steps. We’ll walk fast to make up time.”

To this Tommy agreed, and when the meal was over and a second round of farewells said all over again, Erica followed him out to the hall. Here, out of sight of Mrs. Folger and Cousin Kate, Tommy produced an awkwardly wrapped bundle from a chair where it had been hidden from view by his heavy seacoat.

“Rick, I brought back that extra suit mother insisted on my taking,” he said, hurriedly. “It’s really too small for me now, and, anyhow, I haven’t room for a lot of shore clothes that I shan’t need. You saw for yourself what a little bit of a cubbyhole I have to sleep and keep my things in. I’ve got one good suit already for going ashore. Don’t show this to mother till I get off in the morning, and then just explain I don’t need it.”

“All right. I’ll take it upstairs to my room,” Erica assented. “I’ll only be a moment getting my bonnet and cape.”

It was scarcely more than a minute when she ran eagerly down the stairs again, wrapped in her woolly red cloak, and the cousins let themselves out the front door into the warm, late April dusk.

High up overhead a pale little evening star was winking at them cheerfully over the chimney pots of the houses across the way. The lamp-posts, too, had already sprung into cheerful winking pin-points of light down the street ahead of them, and a general air of peacefulness and hope seemed abroad on the soft evening air.

Erica, swinging along briskly at Tommy’s side, felt her courage—which had wilted a bit after supper, when faced by those second, final good-bys—revive sturdily. She slipped her fingers through his arm and spoke hesitantly.

“Tommy, somehow—I can’t tell you why, and maybe you’ll only say I’m silly—but I do feel that it’s going to be—all right with Lis, when you get to Canton.”

“Well, mostly I feel that way myself,” Tommy responded, gravely. “Seems as if there’s just _got_ to be good news when the _Spray_ arrives. Only——” he turned about suddenly, and Erica saw that the boy’s face was working in a piteous effort not to show his feelings. “Only—suppose there—there isn’t—_anything_?”

Erica’s optimism of a moment before died, in a flash, to a sick kind of fear such as, even when Captain Bartlet first told her Lis was missing, she had not known in quite such intensity.

To know that Tommy, gay, light-hearted, unimaginative Tommy, felt this way about his quest, on the very eve of his departure, knocked the carefully-built-up supports of Erica’s own belief from under it.

But she couldn’t send him away with any added doubts to trouble the several months’ voyage during which no news of any sort could reach him, and in which he would have no one from his old life to say a cheerful word.

“You mustn’t let your mind dwell on that possibility, Tom,” she said, earnestly. “Sun Li will have something good to tell you. I—I just _feel_ he will. You know how powerful a governor is, in China.” Neither she nor Tommy knew a thing about his powers, but it sounded likely, and she saw with satisfaction that the boy’s set face had relaxed a little at her words.

There was no time to say more then, for they were at the door of Mrs. Haven’s imposing red-brick house on the corner, and Erica bade Tommy leave her there at the steps while he went up to deliver his message. She was in no mood, just then, for meeting strangers.

Evidently the lady herself came to the door at his knock, for Erica, below in the shadows, heard a brisk duet of voices asking and answering questions—Tommy’s and a soft, rich, jolly sort of voice that must be that of the _Spray’s_ belated passenger. Then Tommy came running down again, and the jolly, chuckly voice called after him gayly:

“If I had only known there was to be a nice boy like you on board, I vow I’d have brought my nephew along for company. He fair pestered the life out of me last vacation to take him to Canton.”

“I suppose it’s too late now?” Tommy paused halfway down to suggest. The idea of another boy of his own age evidently appealed to him.

The lady said she was afraid it was too late, and went back into the house, calling out that she’d see him in the morning, only that six o’clock was a heathenish hour to expect anyone to be packed and down at the wharf ready for a journey.

“She seems a good-natured sort of person, but silly,” Tommy observed, sagely, to Erica, as they retraced their steps to Cousin Kate’s door. “She’s the kind that gushes over everything a body says, and squeaks ‘oh!’ and ‘la!’ and talks about the sea being romantic. Huh!”

Tommy, used to the New England control and measured speech of his mother and aunt, was divided between disgust and amusement over this very different type. “She’s a funny one,” he decided. “Rich and spoiled, I guess. Used to having her own way and carrying out any old whim that strikes her. There wasn’t a real reason in the world why she needed to have a special boat sent for her in the morning instead of coming on board tonight like the others.”

Afterward Erica always insisted that she went to sleep that night without a conscious thought, at least, of the impulsive, crazy plan she was to plunge into before sunrise the next morning. As far as she could trace it, it began with a singularly vivid dream.

She dreamed the romantic lady passenger with the jolly voice came to her, offering her a suit of boy’s clothing and saying, persuasively, “My nephew couldn’t go, after all. Can’t you wear these clothes of his and go in his place? Then Tommy won’t be so lonely.”

In addition, the lady had pointed at Erica’s red bob, and had asked, triumphantly: “Isn’t this really what you cut off your curls for? Remember that Captain Bartlet himself told you once you’d probably want to run away to sea in his ship one day?”

Erica found herself sitting bolt upright in bed, her heart pounding in her breast until it was almost a pain. A broad path of moonlight was shining in the windows and fell on an awkwardly wrapped bundle lying on the floor near the foot of her bed.

“Tommy will be unhappy without some one to keep him cheered up,” Erica said aloud, wildly, in a scarey little voice that didn’t sound a bit like her own. “And maybe Sun Li would do more for me, if I were there in Canton—than for Tommy or Captain Bartlet.”

She kept on staring at Tommy’s pathetic bundle as if it fascinated her. She tried to pull her eyes away, and couldn’t.

“If I—dressed up—in those clothes,” Erica whispered, slowly, her mouth dry, “and went to Mrs. Haven, pretending to be a boy who wanted to stow away and go to China, to—to my godfather who lives there—Tommy said she’s silly and—and romantic. I bet she’d think it exciting, and take me on board as her nephew. I wouldn’t tell a lie—anyhow not in words. I wouldn’t have to say I was a boy—and—and after the ship sailed, Captain Bartlet could only scold. He wouldn’t turn back.”