CHAPTER XI
"COME ... TO CHINA!"
LONG before the Delphian reached Shanghai, long before there arrived in Resthaven the slow letter telling of her delay at Honolulu, Mr. Bolliver had formulated in his uneasy mind a plan of action which he contemplated now dubiously, now confidently. He had not been entirely at rest since the boys had sailed from New York that drizzling June day. Times were very different now, after all, he reflected. Boys in their teens were not the men that lads of the last century had been. He began to feel that he had laid upon his own shoulders a burden of responsibility that the passage of weeks did not serve to lighten. But it was Jane, in large measure, who really tipped the scales in favor of his new and somewhat daring plan. For Jane, to the eyes of her anxious friends and relatives, was not at all as they liked to see her. She troubled Mr. Bolliver exceedingly, for at first he could not really believe what he was observing.
It was just after luncheon—Mr. Bolliver was spending the week-end at Ingram Mansion—and he and Jane were alone in the garden. His mind was at last made up, definitely. He fingered his seal watch-fob—the one with the flying-fish on it—and looked at her several times. Then he said suddenly, in a much gruffer voice than he had intended:
"Jane, you didn't eat any lunch."
Jane started, and looked at him, and almost at once looked away again.
"I wasn't hungry."
"But you ate almost no breakfast."
"I wasn't hungry then, either."
"Why not?"
Jane pulled a leaf sharply from a bonding shrub beside them and picked it into shreds.
"I suppose I'm too much bothered," she admitted.
"Come here," he said.
She came, and he put one hand on her shoulder and with the other turned her face up to his. She met his eyes then, squarely, with a long unfaltering look. But her eyes reminded him, he thought, of nothing so much as the dangerous blue calm before a devastating wind-flaw lashes the sea. There was something strained about her mouth, too, that troubled him.
"You know that I know what's the matter with you," he said. "I'm worried about them, too, and you have even more cause to worry, because they're your brothers—and because the other Mark Ingrams come and bother you. And probably the old Fortune of the Indies goes sailing around in your poor head every night."
Jane laughed, rather, and turned away.
"I'll be good," she said, "I won't think about it any more."
But she whirled suddenly upon him, with the Ingram blue flashing fiercely in her eyes.
"How can I help thinking about it? How can I keep waiting and waiting, and not knowing?" she asked swiftly. "How can I go on fiddling around and knitting stuff to please the aunts—and not even any school—when—when—"
She was suddenly silent, twisting the leaf still in her hands. He would rather have had her cry, Mr. Bolliver thought, for her face frightened him. He looked once around the quiet garden, the seaport garden, where gulls flew above the elms and harbor fog was beginning to dim the farthest lilac bushes.
"We are both going to China," he said quietly; "you and I, at once. Er—it's high time I went to look after my own business," he added in an apologetic sort of way, half to himself.
But Jane did not hear that explanation. She was crying at last, standing very straight and still, with one hand across her face. Mr. Bolliver did not know just what to do. But in a moment he muttered:
"I don't care a snap if she is a proud Ingram, the poor little witch!" And he drew her within his arm.
The fog crept nearer, and with it came the sound of bells. The sea-drift slowly whitened the garden and the elm-tops grew fainter and were lost. Still Jane stood with her hand across her eyes and her forehead bowed upon Mr. Bolliver's sleeve, until he said:
"Come—come, now—to China, my dear."
Mr. Bolliver's medicine certainly seemed to take speedy effect. The aunts stared to see the color in their grandniece's cheeks and to hear the gay excitement in her voice. But when she had gone to bed they conferred together and prepared to deal very solemnly with Mr. Bart Bolliver. They sat down side by side on the davenport and confronted him in a manner most frightening.
"She'll die if you take her off to China," they said in unison.
"She'll die if I don't—that's certain," said Mr. BoUiver, who was standing in front of the fire-place, beneath the ship model.
And his remark was voiced in tones so firm and so final that the aunts found their other arguments upside down, and leaned back rather helplessly to gaze at this dreadfully decided little gentleman and to shake their heads gently.
There was to be no merchant ship about this expedition, you may believe. No indeed! It was to be a swift and purposeful affair of gilt-edged express-train and Pacific liner. Mr. Bolliver was deep in reservations and Toyo Kisen Kaisha passage in no time, and Jane flew like a joyous wraith from her open trunk to the drawing-room, in order to confide various sudden rapturous fancies to the Fortune of the Indies.
The aunts were beyond worry now. They could not collect their wits. They stood, one at each end of Jane's trunk, and let her put into it just about what she pleased, almost without seeing. They supposed that before long they would awaken from this strange and somewhat frightening dream.
But when they did awaken, Jane was gone, and so was Mr. Bolliver. Expressmen had come; people had driven off in a cab. Miss Lucia, long after, actually hurried to the door and flung it wide. But Chesley Street was empty and quite dark, for night had come and a swift train was already speeding west.
"Ellen," Miss Lucia faltered, holding to the door-knob, "Jane's gone—gone to China. She can't go; we mustn't let her."
But there was not even a light on Chesley Street. The little old ladies suddenly held out their arms to one another and stood there, trembling, in the open door of the Ingram mansion.