Rudder Grange Read online

  CHAPTER III. TREATING OF A NOVEL STYLE OF GIRL.

  One afternoon, as I was hurrying down Broadway to catch the five o'clocktrain, I met Waterford. He is an old friend of mine, and I used to likehim pretty well.

  "Hello!" said he, "where are you going?"

  "Home," I answered.

  "Is that so?" said he. "I didn't know you had one."

  I was a little nettled at this, and so I said, somewhat brusquelyperhaps:

  "But you must have known I lived somewhere."

  "Oh, yes! But I thought you boarded," said he. "I had no idea that youhad a home."

  "But I have one, and a very pleasant home, too. You must excuse me fornot stopping longer, as I must catch my train."

  "Oh! I'll walk along with you," said Waterford, and so we went down thestreet together.

  "Where is your little house?" he asked.

  Why in the world he thought it was a little house I could not at thetime imagine, unless he supposed that two people would not requirea large one. But I know, now, that he lived in a very little househimself.

  But it was of no use getting angry with Waterford, especially as I sawhe intended walking all the way down to the ferry with me, so I told himI didn't live in any house at all.

  "Why, where DO you live?" he exclaimed, stopping short.

  "I live in a boat," said I.

  "A boat! A sort of 'Rob Roy' arrangement, I suppose. Well, I would nothave thought that of you. And your wife, I suppose, has gone home to herpeople?"

  "She has done nothing of the kind," I answered. "She lives with me, andshe likes it very much. We are extremely comfortable, and our boat isnot a canoe, or any such nonsensical affair. It is a large, commodiouscanal-boat."

  Waterford turned around and looked at me.

  "Are you a deck-hand?" he asked.

  "Deck-grandmother!" I exclaimed.

  "Well, you needn't get mad about it," he said. "I didn't mean tohurt your feelings; but I couldn't see what else you could be on acanal-boat. I don't suppose, for instance, that you're captain."

  "But I am," said I.

  "Look here!" said Waterford; "this is coming it rather strong, isn'tit?"

  As I saw he was getting angry, I told him all about it,--told him how wehad hired a stranded canal-boat and had fitted it up as a house, and howwe lived so cosily in it, and had called it "Rudder Grange," and how wehad taken a boarder.

  "Well!" said he, "this is certainly surprising. I'm coming out to seeyou some day. It will be better than going to Barnum's."

  I told him--it is the way of society--that we would be glad to see him,and we parted. Waterford never did come to see us, and I merely mentionthis incident to show how some of our friends talked about RudderGrange, when they first heard that we lived there.

  After dinner that evening, when I went up on deck with Euphemia to havemy smoke, we saw the boarder sitting on the bulwarks near the garden,with his legs dangling down outside.

  "Look here!" said he.

  I looked, but there was nothing unusual to see.

  "What is it?" I asked.

  He turned around and seeing Euphemia, said:

  "Nothing."

  It would be a very stupid person who could not take such a hint as that,and so, after a walk around the garden, Euphemia took occasion to gobelow to look at the kitchen fire.

  As soon as she had gone, the boarder turned to me and said:

  "I'll tell you what it is. She's working herself sick."

  "Sick?" said I. "Nonsense!"

  "No nonsense about it," he replied.

  The truth was, that the boarder was right and I was wrong. We had spentseveral months at Rudder Grange, and during this time Euphemia hadbeen working very hard, and she really did begin to look pale andthin. Indeed, it would be very wearying for any woman of culture andrefinement, unused to house-work, to cook and care for two men, and todo all the work of a canal-boat besides.

  But I saw Euphemia so constantly, and thought so much of her, and hadher image so continually in my heart, that I did not notice this untilour boarder now called my attention to it. I was sorry that he had to doit.

  "If I were in your place," said he, "I would get her a servant."

  "If you were in my place," I replied, somewhat cuttingly, "you wouldprobably suggest a lot of little things which would make everything veryeasy for her."

  "I'd try to," he answered, without getting in the least angry.

  Although I felt annoyed that he had suggested it, still I made up mymind that Euphemia must have a servant.

  She agreed quite readily when I proposed the plan, and she urged meto go and see the carpenter that very day, and get him to come andpartition off a little room for the girl.

  It was some time, of course, before the room was made (for who everheard of a carpenter coming at the very time he was wanted?) and, whenit was finished, Euphemia occupied all her spare moments in getting itin nice order for the servant when she should come. I thought she wastaking too much trouble, but she had her own ideas about such things.

  "If a girl is lodged like a pig, you must expect her to behave like apig, and I don't want that kind."

  So she put up pretty curtains at the girl's window, and with a box thatshe stood on end, and some old muslin and a lot of tacks, she made atoilet-table so neat and convenient that I thought she ought to take itinto our room and give the servant our wash-stand.

  But all this time we had no girl, and as I had made up my mind about thematter, I naturally grew impatient, and at last I determined to go andget a girl myself.

  So, one day at lunch-time, I went to an intelligence office in the city.There I found a large room on the second floor, and some ladies, and oneor two men, sitting about, and a small room, back of it, crowded withgirls from eighteen to sixty-eight years old. There were also girls uponthe stairs, and girls in the hall below, besides some girls standing onthe sidewalk before the door.

  When I made known my business and had paid my fee, one of the severalproprietors who were wandering about the front room went into theback apartment and soon returned with a tall Irishwoman with a bonyweather-beaten face and a large weather-beaten shawl. This woman wastold to take a chair by my side. Down sat the huge creature and staredat me. I did not feel very easy under her scrutinizing gaze, but I boreit as best I could, and immediately began to ask her all the appropriatequestions that I could think of. Some she answered satisfactorily, andsome she didn't answer at all; but as soon as I made a pause, she beganto put questions herself.

  "How many servants do you kape?" she asked.

  I answered that we intended to get along with one, and if she understoodher business, I thought she would find her work very easy, and the placea good one.

  She turned sharp upon me and said:

  "Have ye stationary wash-tubs?"

  I hesitated. I knew our wash-tubs were not stationary, for I had helpedto carry them about. But they might be screwed fast and made stationaryif that was an important object. But, before making this answer,I thought of the great conveniences for washing presented by ourresidence, surrounded as it was, at high tide, by water.

  "Why, we live in a stationary wash-tub," I said, smiling.

  The woman looked at me steadfastly for a minute, and then she roseto her feet. Then she called out, as if she were crying fish orstrawberries:

  "Mrs. Blaine!"

  The female keeper of the intelligence office, and the male keeper, anda thin clerk, and all the women in the back room, and all the patrons inthe front room, jumped up and gathered around us.

  Astonished and somewhat disconcerted, I rose to my feet and confrontedthe tall Irishwoman, and stood smiling in an uncertain sort of a way, asif it were all very funny; but I couldn't see the point. I think I musthave impressed the people with the idea that I wished I hadn't come.

  "He says," exclaimed the woman, as if some other huckster were cryingfish on the other side of the street--"he says he lives in a wash-toob."

  "He's crazy!" ejac
ulated Mrs. Blaine, with an air that indicated"policeman" as plainly as if she had put her thought into words.

  A low murmur ran through the crowd of women, while the thin clerk edgedtoward the door.

  I saw there was no time to lose. I stepped back a little from the tallsavage, who was breathing like a hot-air engine in front of me, and mademy explanations to the company. I told the tale of "Rudder Grange," andshowed them how it was like to a stationary wash-tub--at certain stagesof the tide.

  I was listened to with great attention. When I had finished, the tallwoman turned around and faced the assemblage.

  "An' he wants a cook to make soup! In a canal-boat!" said she, and offshe marched into the back-room, followed closely by all the other women.

  "I don't think we have any one here who would suit you," said Mrs.Blaine.

  I didn't think so either. What on earth would Euphemia have done withthat volcanic Irishwoman in her little kitchen! I took up my hat andbade Mrs. Blaine good morning.

  "Good morning," said she, with a distressing smile.

  She had one of those mouths that look exactly like a gash in the face.

  I went home without a girl. In a day or two Euphemia came to town andgot one. Apparently she got her without any trouble, but I am not sure.

  She went to a "Home"--Saint Somebody's Home--a place where they keeporphans to let, so to speak. Here Euphemia selected a light-haired,medium-sized orphan, and brought her home.

  The girl's name was Pomona. Whether or not her parents gave her thisname is doubtful. At any rate, she did not seem quite decided in hermind about it herself, for she had not been with us more than two weeksbefore she expressed a desire to be called Clare. This longing of herheart, however, was denied her. So Euphemia, who was always correct,called her Pomona. I did the same whenever I could think not to sayBologna--which seemed to come very pat for some reason or other.

  As for the boarder, he generally called her Altoona, connecting her insome way with the process of stopping for refreshments, in which she wasan adept.

  She was an earnest, hearty girl. She was always in a good humor, andwhen I asked her to do anything, she assented in a bright, cheerful way,and in a loud tone full of good-fellowship, as though she would say:

  "Certainly, my high old cock! To be sure I will. Don't worry aboutit--give your mind no more uneasiness on that subject. I'll bring thehot water."

  She did not know very much, but she was delighted to learn, and she wasvery strong. Whatever Euphemia told her to do, she did instantly with abang. What pleased her better than anything else was to run up anddown the gang-plank, carrying buckets of water to water the garden.She delighted in out-door work, and sometimes dug so vigorously inour garden that she brought up pieces of the deck-planking with everyshovelful.

  Our boarder took the greatest interest in her, and sometimes watched hermovements so intently that he let his pipe go out.

  "What a whacking girl that would be to tread out grapes in the vineyardsof Italy! She'd make wine cheap," he once remarked.

  "Then I'm glad she isn't there," said Euphemia, "for wine oughtn't to becheap."

  Euphemia was a thorough little temperance woman.

  The one thing about Pomona that troubled me more than anything else washer taste for literature. It was not literature to which I objected, buther very peculiar taste. She would read in the kitchen every night aftershe had washed the dishes, but if she had not read aloud, it would nothave made so much difference to me. But I am naturally very sensitive toexternal impressions, and I do not like the company of people who, likeour girl, cannot read without pronouncing in a measured and distinctvoice every word of what they are reading. And when the matter thus readappeals to one's every sentiment of aversion, and there is no way ofescaping it, the case is hard indeed.

  From the first, I felt inclined to order Pomona, if she could not attainthe power of silent perusal, to cease from reading altogether; butEuphemia would not hear to this.

  "Poor thing!" said she; "it would be cruel to take from her her onlyrecreation. And she says she can't read any other way. You needn'tlisten if you don't want to."

  That was all very well in an abstract point of view; but the fact was,that in practice, the more I didn't want to listen, the more I heard.

  As the evenings were often cool, we sat in our dining-room, and thepartition between this room and the kitchen seemed to have no influencewhatever in arresting sound. So that when I was trying to read or toreflect, it was by no means exhilarating to my mind to hear from thenext room that:

  "The la dy ce sel i a now si zed the weep on and all though the boor lyvil ly an re tain ed his vy gor ous hold she drew the blade through hisfin gers and hoorl ed it far be hind her dryp ping with jore."

  This sort of thing, kept up for an hour or so at a time, used to driveme nearly wild. But Euphemia did not mind it. I believe that she hadso delicate a sense of what was proper, that she did not hear Pomona'sprivate readings.

  On one occasion, even Euphemia's influence could scarcely restrain mefrom violent interference.

  It was our boarder's night out (when he was detained in town by hisbusiness), and Pomona was sitting up to let him in. This was necessary,for our front-door (or main-hatchway) had no night-latch, but wasfastened by means of a bolt. Euphemia and I used to sit up for him, butthat was earlier in the season, when it was pleasant to be out ondeck until quite a late hour. But Pomona never objected to sitting (orgetting) up late, and so we allowed this weekly duty to devolve on her.

  On this particular night I was very tired and sleepy, and soon after Igot into bed I dropped into a delightful slumber. But it was not longbefore I was awakened by the fact that:

  "Sa rah did not fl inch but gras ped the heat ed i ron in her un in jured hand and when the ra bid an i mal a proach ed she thr ust the lur idpo ker in his--"

  "My conscience!" said I to Euphemia, "can't that girl be stopped?"

  "You wouldn't have her sit there and do nothing, would you?" said she.

  "No; but she needn't read out that way."

  "She can't read any other way," said Euphemia, drowsily.

  "Yell af ter yell res oun ded as he wil dly spr rang--"

  "I can't stand that, and I won't," said I. "Why don't she go into thekitchen?--the dining-room's no place for her."

  "She must not sit there," said Euphemia. "There's a window-pane out.Can't you cover up your head?"

  "I shall not be able to breathe if I do; but I suppose that's nomatter," I replied.

  The reading continued.

  "Ha, ha! Lord Mar mont thun der ed thou too shalt suf fer all that thispoor--"

  I sprang out of bed.

  Euphemia thought I was going for my pistol, and she gave one bound andstuck her head out of the door.

  "Pomona, fly!" she cried.

  "Yes, sma'am," said Pomona; and she got up and flew--not very fast, Iimagine. Where she flew to I don't know, but she took the lamp with her,and I could hear distant syllables of agony and blood, until the boardercame home and Pomona went to bed.

  I think that this made an impression upon Euphemia, for, although shedid not speak to me upon the subject (or any other) that night, the nexttime I heard Pomona reading, the words ran somewhat thus:

  "The as ton ish ing che ap ness of land is ac count ed for by the wantof home mar kets, of good ro ads and che ap me ans of trans por ta ti onin ma ny sec ti ons of the State."