Americans -- Europe -- Fiction; Cape Cod (Mass.) -- Fiction
“I thought I saw Doctor Herbert Bayliss goin' up those stairs to the
steamboat. It looked like him enough to be his twin brother, if he had
one.”
I did not answer. I looked about as we stepped aboard the boat, but
if young Bayliss was there he was not in sight. Hephzy rattled on
excitedly.
“You can't tell much by seein' folks's backs,” she declared. “I remember
one time your cousin Hezekiah Knowles--You don't remember him, Hosy; he
died when you was little--One time Cousin Hezzy was up to Boston with
his wife and they was shoppin' in one of the big stores. That is, Martha
Ann--the wife--was shoppin' and he was taggin' along and complainin',
same as men generally do. He was kind of nearsighted, Hezzy was, and
when Martha was fightin' to get a place in front of a bargain counter he
stayed astern and kept his eyes fixed on a hat she was wearin'. 'Twas a
new hat with blue and yellow flowers on it. Hezzy always said, when he
told the yarn afterward, that he never once figured that there could
be another hat like that one. I saw it myself and, if I'd been in his
place, I'd have HOPED there wasn't anyway. Well, he followed that hat
from one counter to another and, at last, he stepped up and said, 'Look
here, dearie,' he says--They hadn't been married very long, not long
enough to get out of the mushy stage--'Look here, dearie,' he says,
'hadn't we better be gettin' on home? You'll tire those little feet of
yours all out trottin' around this way.' And when the hat turned around
there was a face under it as black as a crow. He'd been followin' a
darkey woman for ten minutes. She thought he was makin' fun of her feet
and was awful mad, and when Martha came along and found who he'd taken
for her she was madder still. Hezzy said, 'I couldn't help it, Martha.
Nobody could. I never saw two craft look more alike from twenty foot
astern. And she wears that hat just the way you do.' That didn't help
matters any, of course, and--Why, Hosy, where are you goin'? Why don't
you say somethin'? Hadn't we better sit down? All the good seats will be
gone if we don't.”
I had been struggling through the crowd, trying my best to get a glimpse
of the man she had thought to be Herbert Bayliss. If it was he then my
suspicions were confirmed. Heathcroft's story of the girl who sang in
Paris had impressed him as it had me and he was on his way to see for
himself. But the man, whoever he might be, had disappeared.
“How the wind does blow,” said Hephzy. “What are the people doin' with
those black tarpaulins?”
Sailors in uniform were passing among the seated passengers distributing
large squares of black waterproof canvas. I watched the use to which the
tarpaulins were put and I understood. I beckoned to the nearest sailor
and rented two of the canvases for use during the voyage.
“How much?” I asked.
“One franc each,” said the man, curtly.
I had visited the money-changers near the Charing Cross station and was
prepared. Hephzy's eyes opened.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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