The Old Flute-Player | Page 6

of the window, to make sure they did not change their minds and slip out and away without her knowledge before the train departed.
On the arrival in Southampton she waited in the railway carriage till she saw them started down the platform; then, again, she trailed them. Two minutes after the Herr Kreutzer had purchased steerage tickets on the Rochester for far America, M'riar had bought one for herself. When the German and his daughter reached the shore-end of the slightly-angled gang-plank leading to the steamer's steerage-deck (close it was beside the steeper one which led up to the higher and more costly portions of the ship) she was not far behind them, trailing, watchful, terrified by the ship's mighty warning whistle which reverberated in the dock-shed till her teeth were set a-chatter in an agony of fear of the mere noise.
At this point she nearly lost her self-control and let her quarries see her, for Herr Kreutzer, in his hurry and excitement, dropped one of his small hand-bags. Almost she sprang to pick it up for him, through mere working of her strong instinct to serve him. Indeed, she would have done so had it not been for a tall and handsome youth.
This young man's eyes, M'riar had been noting, had been closely fixed upon the lovely face of Anna, doubly lovely, flushed as it now was by the excitement of the start of a great journey. He sprang forward, picked up the handbag and presented it to the old German with a frank good-fellowship of courtesy which took not the least account of the mere fact that he, himself, was on the point of stepping to the gang-plank leading to the first-cabin quarters, while Kreutzer, obviously, was about to seek the steerage-deck. M'riar, with her sharp, small eyes, noted that the youth, strong, graceful, tall, sun-burned and distinctly wholesome of appearance, did not look at Kreutzer, as he did the little service, but at Anna.
"Reg'lar toff!" she muttered, gazing at him with frank admiration, quite impersonal.
An instant later she saw that when he turned back from the rough, unpainted gang-plank to the steerage-deck to the more exclusive bridge, railed, hung with canvas at the sides and carpeted with red, which led to the first-cabin quarters, a lady seized his arm with a proprietary grasp and spoke a little crossly to him because he had delayed to do this tiny service for the pair of steerage passengers.
"Rg'lar cat!" said M'riar, estimating her as quickly as she had appraised the youth. "She's 'is mother, but she's catty. Dogs 'ud 'ate 'er, Hi'll go bail."
Her attention was absorbed, then, by the great problem of getting by the officer who examined steerage-tickets, without being seen by Kreutzer and his daughter.
"W'ere's yer luggage?" asked the officer.
"Luggage! Huh!" said M'riar. "W'at would Hi want o' luggage? Think Hi'm a hactress startin' hout hon tour?"
"Tykes six poun' ten to land on t'other side," the officer went on, suspiciously. "'Yn't got that, nyther, 'ave yer?"
"Betcher bloomink heye Hi gawt it," said M'riar confidently, and stooped as if she would pull out her wealth to show him, then and there.
"Hin yer stawckin', eh?" the man said grinning.
That which had been in her mouth was spent for ticket, mostly, but a little still was in her hand. "W'ere'd yer think Hi'd 'ave it?" she asked scornfully. "Hin me roight hear?" Then she showed him what was in her fist.
"Garn aboard," the man said, grinning.
"'Yn't I?" she asked briskly, and, seeing that Herr Kreutzer and his Anna had passed quite out of sight into the ship's mysterious interior, went up the gang-plank hurriedly, fearing to lose sight of them. She did not realize that on an impulse she was starting to go a quarter of the way around the earth. She only knew that love, love irresistible, supreme, was drawing her to follow where they led. But notwithstanding that it was pure love which drew her, she told herself, as she went up the plank: "Hif they ketches me they'll 'eave me hoverboard an' give me to th' fish, like's not."
Twenty minutes later the great ship was swinging out into the harbor. In a dark passage on the steerage-deck cowered M'riar, for the first time in her life afloat, and wondering why the motion of the vessel seemed to make her wish to die; her white face, strained, frightened eyes and trembling hands marking her, to the experienced, unsympathetic eyes of the stern steerage-stewardess, an early victim of seasickness.
"Hi, w'ere's yer ticket?" that fierce female cried, and M'riar showed it to her, weakly, scarcely caring whether it entitled her to passage or condemned her to expulsion from the ship by a sharp toss overside.
"Garn in there," said the stewardess, studying the ticket and its bearer's symptoms simultaneously. "S'y, yer