I have been working for the firm for fourteen years.
We have educated the girls. Milly is married, and Kitty goes to the boarding-school, here.""Then you haven't been married yourself?"
"What time did I have to think of being married?
I had the family on my mind, and looking after them.""That was more fortunate for your family than it was for my sex,"said Nelson, gallantly. He accompanied the compliment by a glance of admiration, extinguished in an eye-flash, for the white radiance that had bathed the deck suddenly vanished.
"Now you will see a lovely sight," said the woman, deigning no reply to his tribute; "listen! That is the signal."The air was shaken with the boom of cannon. Once, twice, thrice.
Directly the boat-whistles took up the roar, making a hideous din.
The fleet had moved. Spouting rockets and Roman candles, which painted above it a kaleidoscopic archway of fire, welcomed by answering javelins of light and red and orange and blue and green flares from the shore;the fleet bombarded the bridge, escorted Neptune in his car, manoeuvred and massed and charged on the blazing city with a many-hued shower of flame.
After the boats, silently, softly, floated the battalions of lanterns, so close to the water that they seemed flaming water-lilies, while the dusky mirror repeated and inverted their splendor.
"They're shingles, you know," explained Nelson's companion, "with lanterns on them; but aren't they pretty?""Yes, they are! I wish you had not told me. It is like a fairy story!""Ain't it? But we aren't through; there's more to come.
Beautiful fireworks!"
The fireworks, however, were slow of coming. They could see the barge from which they were to be sent; they could watch the movements of the men in white oil-cloth who moved in a ghostly fashion about the barge; they could hear the tap of hammers;but nothing came of it all.
They sat in the darkness, waiting; and there came to Nelson a strange sensation of being alone and apart from all the breathing world with this woman. He did not perceive that Tim had quietly returned with a box which did very well for a seat, and was sitting with his knees against the chair-rungs. He seemed to be somehow outside of all the tumult and the spectacle. It was the vainglorying triumph of this world.
He was the soul outside, the soul that had missed its triumph.
In his perplexity and loneliness he felt an overwhelming longing for sympathy; neither did it strike Nelson, who believed in all sorts of occult influences, that his confidence in a stranger was unwarranted.
He would have told you that his "psychic instincts" never played him false, although really they were traitors from their astral cradles to their astral graves.
He said in a hesitating way: "You must excuse me being kinder dull;I've got some serious business on my mind and I can't help thinking of it.""Is that so? Well, I know how that is; I have often stayed awake nights worrying about things. Lest I shouldn't suit and all that--especially after mother took sick."
"I s'pose you had to give up and nurse her then?""That was what Ebenezer and Ralph were for having me do; but mother--my mother always had so much sense--mother says, 'No, Alma, you've got a good place and a chance in life, you sha'n't give it up.
We'll hire a girl. I ain't never lonesome except evenings, and then you will be home. I should jest want to die,'
she says, 'if I thought I kept you in a kind of prison like by my being sick--now, just when you are getting on so well.'
There never WAS a woman like my mother!" Her voice shook a little, and Nelson asked gently:
"Ain't your mother living now?"
"No, she died last year." She added, after a little silence, "I somehow can't get used to being lonesome.""It IS hard," said Nelson. "I lost my wife three years ago.""That's hard, too."
"My goodness! I guess it is. And it's hardest when trouble comes on a man and he can't go nowhere for advice.""Yes, that's so, too. But--have you any children?""Yes, ma'am; that is, they ain't my own children. Lizzie and Inever had any; but these two we took and they are most like my own.
The girl is eighteen and the boy rising of fourteen.""They must be a comfort to you; but they are considerable of a responsibility, too.""Yes, ma'am," he sighed softly to himself. "Sometimes I feel I haven't done the right way by them, though I've tried.
Not that they ain't good children, for they are--no better anywhere.
Tim, he will work from morning till night, and never need to urge him; and he never gives me a promise he don't keep it, no ma'am, never did since he was a little mite of a lad.
And he is a kind boy, too, always good to the beasts;and while he may speak up a little short to his sister, he saves her many a step. He doesn't take to his studies quite as I would like to have him, but he has a wonderful head for business.
There is splendid stuff in Tim if it could only be worked right."While Nelson spoke, Tim was hunching his shoulders forward in the darkness, listening with the whole of two sharp ears.
His face worked in spite of him, and he gave an inarticulate snort.
"Well," the woman said, "I think that speaks well for Tim.
Why should you be worried about him?"
"I am afraid he is getting to love money and worldly success too well, and that is what I fear for the girl, too. You see, she is so pretty, and the idols of the tribe and the market, as Bacon calls them, are strong with the young.""Yes, that's so," the woman assented vaguely, not at all sure what either Bacon or his idols might be. "Are the children relations of yours?""No, ma'am; it was like this: When I was up in Henry County there came a photographic artist to the village near us, and pitched his tent and took tintypes in his wagon.
