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

door and, anyway, everything was so very different here that it was ridiculous to expect to meet a girl like Nancy or the others at school or perfect like Pola.

Before Mart’s experience, her knowledge of the sea and boats, her background of seafaring ancestors, her easy assurance, Sidney’s pleasant sense of superiority soon went crash. Too, Mart revealed a quality of strongheartedness and a contentment with everything as it came along that amazed Sidney at the same time that it put her own restlessness to shame. Why, Mart, in all her life, had never been farther than Falmouth and had gone there to a funeral, but she had none of Sidney’s yearnings to “see places.” Pressed by Sidney’s inquiries she had answered, with a deceiving indifference: “Oh, what’s the use of wanting to go anywhere, it’s nice enough here.” Nor did Mart’s multitudinous tasks embarrass her; she would keep Sidney waiting while she finished scrubbing the kitchen floor. And she had a way of swishing her brush that made even this homely labor seem like play until Sidney, watching from the safety of a chair, her feet securely tucked between its rungs, longed to roll up her own sleeves and thrust her arms into the sudsy water. Martie had to work much harder than any girl Sidney had ever known or heard about; she did a man’s work and a woman’s work about her home and did not even think it was out of kindly proportion to her years. “Oh, there’s just gran’ma and me and she has rheumatiz awful,” she had explained just once to Sidney. That was why, of course, Martie looked so unkempt and overgrown and had had so little schooling, but Sidney came to think these shortcomings and their cause made Martie the more interesting.

Though after a week Sidney could toss her head like Mart, run as fast, go barefooted, sprinkle her chatter with a colloquial slang that would have horrified the League, affect ignorance to anything schooly, she found that it was not easy to emulate Mart’s fine independence. There was always that feeling of being tied to the things ingrained within her.

Mart’s ease with everyone, young or old, gave her, in Sidney’s eyes, the desirable quality of grown-upness. Mart talked to the fishermen and the women who were her grandmother’s friends and the artists and the tradespeople exactly as though she were their equal in point of years; Sidney, marvelling and admiring, did not know that this assurance was really a boldness that had grown naturally out of there just being “gran’ma and me.” Martie had had to hold her own since she was six years old.

Though from the first day of her coming Sidney, moved by a sense of the courtesy to be expected from a guest, had insisted that they include Lavender in all their plans, at the same time she had wished that he would refuse for she could not conquer a shyness with him. He was a boy and she had never known any boys very well, and he was a “different” boy. But Mart did not mind him at all; she played tolerantly with him, quarreled cheerfully and bitterly with him, laughed with him and at him exactly as though he were a girl like herself or she the boy that she should have been, gran’ma considered.

On this day Mr. Dugald had taken Lavender to the backside. He had not invited the girls to join them which had roused Sidney’s curiosity. She had watched them depart, loaded down with books and stools and an easel and a box of lunch and had wondered what they were going to do all day, alone, in the dunes. She was soon to know that those hours were sacred to Lavender, that in the great silences of the sandy stretches he and his Mr. Dugald with their books went far from the Cape and Sunset Lane and the crooked body.

The girls, left to themselves, had decided to go clamming. Of all the novel things she had done in the last two weeks Sidney liked clamming best. It was even more fun than the Arabella for after all the Arabella was only pretend. She liked to feel her bare toes suck up the goosy sand as she stepped over the wet beds. She could never dig as fast as Mart or Lavender because she had to stop and watch the sky and the clouds and the moving sails and the swooping seagulls. “You’d never make a living digging clams,” Martie had scolded. (Mart herself could dig faster than old Jake Newberry who had peddled clams through the town for fifty years. Mart had sometimes sold hers at the hotels.)

“There’s so much to look at!” Sidney had answered, drawing in a long happy breath.

“Look at! What? All I can see is sky and water and a lot of that and that ain’t nothing new.”

“But it is always different! The sky gets bluer and the clouds pinker and the water dances just as though there were sprites hiding in each wave.”

“Gee, anyone ’ud think you were a poet!” Mart had laughed and at that Sidney had fallen hastily to digging.

Now, as they lay on the beach, hot and happy, their basket of clams between them, Sidney’s thoughts went back to Lavender’s and Mr. Dugald’s mysterious departure.

“We’ve had just as much fun,” she declared, aloud.

“What d’you mean? Oh—Lav. Pooh, yes. Who’d want t’go off in the sand and sit in the hot sun all day? I wouldn’t.”

“Aunt Achsa packed them an awfully good lunch,” Sidney reflected.

“Sure she did. She spoils Lav like anything. Gran’ma says it’s a shame. And what she doesn’t spoil that boarder does.”

For an instant Sidney flared with resentment at her companion’s tone. However she realized that she was at a disadvantage in that she had only known these people for only two weeks and Mart for her whole lifetime.

“What do you s’pose they do over there?”

Mart shrugged her shoulders. “I used to be curious but I’m not any more. They go off somewhere like that together all the time, packed up ’sif they were headin’ for a whole winter’s cruise. I guess I know. Like as not the boarder’s paintin’ Lav’s picture and Lav don’t want him to do it where people’ll see on account of his being crooked.” Mart, satisfied with her explanation, stretched herself luxuriously, her arms upflung.

Sidney shuddered. “Oh, why should he want to paint Lavender’s picture? I think he’s cruel!” Then she remembered Dugald Allan’s allusion to the flower on the crooked stem. “Maybe he’s painting Lav’s spirit.”

At this Mart raised herself on her elbow, stared at Sidney, and burst into a loud laugh. “Oh, that’s the best! Lav’s spirit! Oh, my! You’re the funniest kid. Say, don’t get sore but I just have to howl, you’re so rich.” She threw herself back in the sand and rolled from one side to the other.

Sidney sat very still biting the lips that had betrayed her. She’d remember after this; she’d never make another slip that would provoke Mart to such amusement. Mart began looking hard at her again and she squirmed uneasily under the scrutiny. But Mart only asked:

“Say, ain’t your hair awful hot?”

Relieved, Sidney answered promptly, “Yes. I hate it.” She gave a fling to the heavy braids.

“Why do you have it then? I’d cut it off. I cut mine. I wouldn’t be bothered with a lot of hair. I s’pose your folks would make an awful fuss if you did, though.”

Sidney twisted her bare toes in the sand and frowned down at them. Yet it was not at their whiteness she frowned but at a sudden recollection of Mrs. Milliken’s: “Always wear your hair like that, my lamb, it is so beautifully quaint.”

“I don’t know that they’d mind. It’s my own hair. I’ve thought of having it cut often.”

Mart sat upright. “Say, I’ll do it for you—if you want me to. We can go straight home now. We’ll divide our clams when we get to our house. That is if you’re not afraid.”

“Afraid—of just cutting my hair? I may look a sight but who cares? I’ll do it. Come on!” Sidney sprang to her feet, a challenge in her voice that Mart, of course, could not understand.

Mart rose more leisurely and took the dripping basket of clams and seaweed. They were not far from Sunset Lane. It took them but a few moments to reach the Calkins’ house—not long enough for Sidney’s courage to falter.

“Gran’ma isn’t home, but anyway she wouldn’t say anything. She lets me do just as I please. She never said a word when I cut my own hair. Sit down here and I’ll find the shears in a jiffy.”

Sidney sat down in a rush-bottomed chair, thrilling pleasantly. This was a high moment in her life—the clipping of the two despised braids; a declaration of independence, a symbol of a freedom as great as Mart’s. And certainly Mart must be impressed by the way she had responded to the suggestion. “Afraid!” Well, Mart might laugh at things she said but she would see that she was quite her own mistress.

Mart returned with a pair of huge shears.

“Of course I can’t do it as good as a regular barber but it’ll be good enough for the first time and around here, anyway. Sure you don’t mind? Your hair is dandy!” While she was speaking she was unbraiding one pigtail. She shook it out. “It’s awful thick and wavy. Mebbe you could sell it. I’ve heard of girls doing that but I don’t know’s there’s any place around here. Sit still, now, so I can get it straight.”

Click. Sidney shut her eyes and sat rigid with a fearful certainty that she must suffer physical pain from the operation. Click. The touch of the steel against her neck sent icy shivers down her spine.

“There, now—it’s off,” cried Mart, taking a step backward. “It’s sort of crooked but that won’t show when it’s all loose. Go in gran’ma’s room and take a look at yourself.”

Sidney turned and stared stupidly at the mass of hair in Martie’s hand. It was beautiful hair. For an instant she wanted to cry out in a violent protest; she checked it as it rose to her lips. Mart’s eyes were on her. She managed instead a little laugh. “It feels so funny.”

“Oh, you’ll get used to that. You’ll like it. Take a look now and say I’m some barber.”

Gran’ma Calkins’ old mirror, hung where the light shone strong upon it, reflected back to Sidney a strange and pleasing image.

“Why I like it!” she cried, running her fingers through the mass. “It’s—it’s—so different. It’s jolly.”

“You won’t have to bother combing it much, either. I don’t touch mine sometimes for days.”

Sidney, still staring at the stranger in the old mirror, laughed softly. “Wait until Nancy sees it. Nancy hair is straight as can be or I’ll bet she’d cut hers. And Issy. Issy will have a fit when she knows. And Mrs. Milliken!” Here she broke off abruptly, not even in her triumph must she give hint to Mart of the League and its hold upon the house of Romley. “Oh, I like it!” she repeated exultingly. “And it won’t be half the bother.” She felt now that she was Mart’s peer in point of abandon.

“You don’t think your Aunt Achsa will make a fuss, do you?” asked Martie, with tardy concern.

“Aunt Achsa? Oh, no! At least—” It had not occurred to Sidney that Aunt Achsa had anything to say about it. “She lets me do anything.” Which was quite true. But something of Sidney’s exultance faded; she was beginning to wish that she had just said something to Aunt Achsa about it