Laughing Last - Jane Abbott (portable ebook reader .txt) 📗

than he had seemed in Cousin Achsa’s kitchen the night before. “Is it early or late and is it your pipe that smells so good?”

“It’s early. Aunt Achsa has gone on an errand, for I assured her that you would probably sleep until noon. You see I’d forgotten that you are—fifteen, did you say? And that smell—well, it may be the good Atlantic, or Lav’s basket of fish, which is not likely. My best bet is that it’s breakfast over at the Calkins’. I have an idea. I’ll finish this pipe while you dress, then we’ll run down and meet Aunt Achsa and incidentally I’ll give you your first glimpse of the harbor. What say?”

Sidney indicated her willingness by drawing her head in from the frame of roses. She dressed with haste, splashing the cold water from the bowl over her face and scarcely disturbing the two braids of hair. In a few moments she joined the “boarder” in the garden, rousing him from a frowning contemplation of the little flower he had picked. At her “I’m ready” he put it into the pocket of his coat.

Unlike Sidney, Dugald Allan had not slept the night before. Argue as he would he could not shake the notion that he was responsible for Sidney’s coming. Because the idea had seemed to please Aunt Achsa he had encouraged her to invite the girl; to further humor her he himself had written the letter that he knew must have given Sidney’s family a wrong impression of conditions at Aunt Achsa’s. Its very tone had been unwittingly misleading He had not thought of that until he had caught the stricken look on Sidney’s face the night before, observed her involuntary shrinking from the intimacy of the supper table.

Poor Aunt Achsa, it had been rather a ghastly supper in spite of all her efforts and her expectations: Lavender had huddled in his chair with his great soft eyes on Sidney; Sidney had been too frightened to eat or to answer by more than a monosyllable Aunt Achsa’s eager questions; poor Aunt Achsa, in an agony of shyness and concern had fluttered over them all. It had been a relief when Sidney, pleading weariness from her long journey, took her candle from Aunt Achsa and went to bed. And later Allan could have sworn he heard the sound of sobbing from behind that closed door.

The whole thing had bothered him and kept him awake, thinking. And it was not alone Sidney’s disappointment that moved him. He was stirred by a strong desire to make the girl know Aunt Achsa as he knew her, to love the noble spirit in the weather-beaten old body. Even Lavender. These people might indeed be his own so quickly did he rise in their defense. “Well, they are my own!” he muttered. If this Sidney had been like the other fifteen-year-old girls who had crossed his path he would not have bothered, for they could not have been taught by any process to recognize the gold from the dross; but she seemed different. And he had caught the impression that she had come all this way for something that she had wanted very much to find. Her disappointment had bordered on the tragic. Well, it was no business of his, but he’d make amends by laying off work for a few days and playing around with her and Lavender.

He was a little taken aback when Sidney, clad in a middy and pleated skirt, for Trude’s last injunction had been to brush and hang away the new suit in which she had traveled, joined him, no trace of last night’s woe on her face. With Nip and Tuck following they tramped through the sand between the hollyhocks. Where the lane turned into the beach road Sidney stopped with a quick, delighted intake of breath. “Oh, the boats! Aren’t they darling? I never saw so many. Why, the sails look all pinky!”

Dugald Allan explained that this was a trick of the sun and water. “Sometimes they are green and sometimes they are gray and deep purple. The fishing boats are starting out for the grounds. They’ve been waiting for the tide. That large schooner’s headed for the banks—I think it’s the Puritan, Jed Starrow’s new boat. She won’t be back for a week or so. Most of the others will pull in by dark.”

“Can I go out on one of them? Oh, you don’t know how much I want to, I’ve never been in anything but a rowboat. And I can swim! Has Lavender a boat?”

“One can always find a dory one can use—whenever he wants one. And Lavender has the Arabella.”

It was on the tip of Sidney’s tongue to ask “What is the Arabella?” and something more of this Jed Starrow whom she remembered Captain Phin Davies had mentioned, but another thought seized her, crowding out all others. From this boarder who seemed to want to be very nice to her, she might learn the answer to the riddle that was perplexing her.

“Mr.— Mr.—”

“Dugald, please. Won’t you treat me like one of the family?”

“Mr.—Dugald, I—I want to ask you something. Prob’ly you’ll think it’s dreadfully rude but—you see, none of us, my sisters and me, really knew anything about Cousin Achsa and the Greens except what we found in a book in our attic—a sort of family tree book. But I wanted to go somewhere, so I wrote to her. I didn’t tell my sisters until I got an answer back. Mr.—Dugald, can letters be awfully different—from people?”

A guilty shiver raced the length of Mr. Dugald’s spine.

“What do you mean?” he parried.

“Why, I mean the letter I got back looked so nice. It looked as though the person who wrote it was—well, sort of rich and lived in a big house and—”

Dugald Allan motioned to an overturned dory.

“Suppose we sit here where we can see Aunt Achsa when she comes up the road. Now I’ll make a confession. I wrote that letter for Aunt Achsa. She didn’t feel quite up to the mark, her hand shakes and she’s a little uncertain as to her spelling. I did not think at the time that I possibly might be giving you—your family—a wrong impression. Aunt Achsa was so happy at finding a relative, so touched that you knew something of her, that I only thought of furthering her delight. Anyway—” he faced Sidney’s amazed eyes squarely; “You say you didn’t know anything of Achsa Green except what you—well, you might say, dug out of the attic, weren’t you taking a sporting chance when you came?”

Sidney flushed under the challenge in his tone. “I—I guess so. You see, I’ve never done anything different—like the other girls have, and I thought it was my turn to use the—the Egg, we call it. I wanted adventure. But I think I know what you mean; I ought not to be disappointed because my cousins aren’t just what I thought they’d be—”

“Sidney—I’ve lived—well, a little longer than you have; you see I’ve had a chance to find out a few things about this world of ours and the people in it. There’s one kind of an aristocracy that we find mostly in big cities—it comes up overnight, a sham thing made over with a gilding of money and wit, very grand on the outside but when you scratch it a little you find the common material underneath. Then there’s an aristocracy that’s the real thing way through—it’s so real that it doesn’t ever stop to think that it is an aristocracy. You find that mostly in old, forgotten, out-of-the-way places—like on Cape Cod. I think here it’s more solid than the most, though it’s fast dying; some day it’ll be a thing only of romance. But the real Cape Coders are descended from pioneer men who followed the sea for an honest living, who put bravery and justice and charity and how to live humanly with their fellows above money. Most of ’em have been crowded out by a different kind of a commerce than they knew how to deal with; that’s Lavender’s father’s story; others, the young ones, have scattered to inland places; some have saved enough money to keep their positions in their communities, like Captain Phin Davies; a few like your Cousin Achsa have nothing but the honor of their people. Miss Sidney, in your Cousin Achsa’s old body there is a spirit that has come to her from men who were like the Vikings of old—she lives by their standards. She’s never known anything but work and poverty, but she faces it—square to the wind. And I’ve never known her to make a complaint or to utter a begrudging word to or of a soul. Isn’t that nobility?”

“I adore the way you say it!” cried Sidney. “It’s just like the things that come to me to say in my attic!”

“Huh? Your—what?” Amazed, Allan looked at her to see if she were making fun of him. But her face was alight with enthusiasm.

“You must think a great deal of Cousin Achsa.”

“I do. But—wait, I have more I want to say. You see, I feel responsible on account of that letter—for your coming here. I want to tell you—about Lavender. You could not have known—knowing nothing of any of them—that poor old Lav wasn’t—well, like other boys.”

Sidney flushed. “No, I didn’t. But then I didn’t know there was a Lavender until I came.”

“Look here—” Allan drew from his pocket the flower he had picked up in the garden. “I was racking my brain for some way to make you see Lavender as I see him—and then I found this. It was growing in a corner of the garden where the soil is poor and the wind harsh and where there isn’t much sun; see, it’s only half-size and the stem is crooked. But look into the heart of it—it’s as beautiful as its fellows. Well—that’s Lavender. After all his poor little body is only a shell—if the heart of him is fine and straight, isn’t that all that matters? Like the blossom of the flower. Can’t you think of Lav like that?”

“I’ll try to,” promised Sidney, “and I’m ashamed dreadfully, to have been so disappointed—about everything. I’ll take the sporting chance. Of course Vick would poke no end of fun at me if she knew how different everything is. But—” with sudden determination, “Vick shall never know.” Then Sidney drew a long breath and let her thoughts revert to the Arabella.

“What is the Arabella?”

“Look beyond that schooner that’s nosing into the tide.”

“Why, that’s a real boat.”

“Oh, the Arabella’s real enough. But she’s been pensioned off—you might say; she’s enjoying a peaceful old age on a sand bar. When the tide is out she’s high and dry.”

“And she belongs to Lavender?” incredulously.

Dugald Allan laughed. “The blood of his ancestors is strong in the boy. He wanted a boat. A boat of his own—poor lad. He used to hide on the fishing schooners until they’d clear the Point. So I bought the Arabella for him. Her owner was going to chop her up for kindling wood. She serves a good purpose—and a safe one, moored out there. Lavender sails the globe on her—and nothing can harm him.

“Oh, I see—just pretend. But even that’s fun. Will he let me go with him?”

“I am sure he will. If you ask him to take you to the Caribbean Sea on his next voyage you’ll win him completely.”

“I’ll help Lavender play the game for I know lots of different places—though they’re mostly inside the map.”

Dugald Allan was regarding Sidney with thoughtful eyes. She certainly was not in the least like the fifteen-year-olds he had assiduously avoided. “Some kid,” he commented, inwardly. Aloud he ventured: “Will it be