Laughing Last - Jane Abbott (portable ebook reader .txt) 📗
- Author: Jane Abbott
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“Two cards, three advertising envelopes and—and two personal letters.” Trude held out the two letters, her heart beating in her throat.
Mrs. White glanced at them indifferently. She turned one as though to tear open the envelope, then stopped to play with Mitie. Next she gave her attention to Pepper who appeared in the door to summon her to breakfast. And all the time Trude’s eyes were beseeching her to open them—to open one of them quickly.
Trude followed her into the breakfast room and sat down across from her. After she had eaten her fruit Mrs. White took up the envelope that was postmarked Provincetown and studied it while Trude waited.
“Why, that’s from Laura Craig—a cousin of mine. I remember now she said she was going to study in a summer school on Cape Cod. I hope the girl’s getting on. She’s dependent upon her own labor.” As she spoke she spread out the sheet. A sketch dropped to the table.
Trude drew a long breath. She had not known how worried she was. She wanted to laugh aloud now from sheer relief. Because she had to do something she took up the sketch with a murmured: “May I?”
“Laura writes it’s a little sketch she made in class. ‘This will show you I am improving. It’s from life. It will give you an idea of the delightful types we find around here, types that you will not find anywhere else. These are two little vagabonds whom you see almost anytime on the beach or around the wharves—as wild and free and beautiful as the seagulls—’”
Mrs. White looked up from the letter to take the sketch and exclaimed aloud at Trude’s face. It had gone deathly white.
“My dear, what is it?”
For a moment Trude could not answer. She was staring at the sketch as though she could not take her eyes from it.
“Read that again! These are types—you find these girls any time on the wharves—wild—vagabonds! Oh, Aunt Edith that’s—that’s—Sidney!”
“Why, it can’t be, Trude. You said—”
Trude shook her head. “I can’t help what I said. It’s Sidney. I—know. The likeness is true—there can’t be anyone else who looks like Sidney! But she’s barefooted—and—and so—slovenly—and—her hair! She’s cut her beautiful hair!”
Mrs. White took the sketch forcibly from Trude. She frowned over it. One of the girls certainly did look like Sidney as she remembered the child from their one meeting.
“How do you explain it, Trude?”
Trude sighed heavily. “I can’t explain it. There’s something wrong somewhere. And it’s my fault, Aunt Edith. I—I consented—we all consented to let Sidney go off down there just so that we could go ahead with our own plans. But we thought—we felt certain that these cousins were very nice—I—I mean had a lovely home and were rich so that Sidney might get something out of her visit that she couldn’t get at home. It sounds shameful to say it.”
“I understand, my dear. But what made you think so?”
“The—the letter this Cousin Achsa wrote. It was a very nice letter!”
“Well, I have always thought you could judge anyone’s character and background by a letter. There must be something wrong. This girl—” pointing to the sketch, “is positively shocking! At least she would be around here.”
“I remember now something Sidney said—when she was begging us to let her go away. ‘I want to be different! I want to go somewhere where I won’t be Joseph Romley’s daughter. I want adventure and to do exciting things—’ Those were her very words! I didn’t take them seriously then, but, oh, Aunt Edith, perhaps she meant them more than we guessed!” Poor Trude rose quickly to her feet. “Aunt Edith, I simply must go to Provincetown at once. May I ask Pepper to find out about trains? You’ll—you’ll understand, won’t you? I can’t be happy one minute until I see the child. I feel that it’s all my fault.”
Mrs. White was all concern. She summoned Pepper and instructed him to find out the first train; she sent her maid to Trude’s room to pack her clothes. And last she wrote a generous check.
“You may need it, my dear. It is nothing. Don’t thank me. I wish I could do more. Somehow your shoulders seem too young to carry so much responsibility!”
So on the selfsame day that Sidney and the others set out upon their adventure Trude was journeying to Cape Cod. She missed connections at Boston and hired an automobile to take her to Provincetown, in her heart thanking Mrs. White for the check that made this possible. Two blow-outs delayed her journey so that it was midnight when she reached her destination. She could scarcely hunt out the Greens and Sidney at that hour. She took a room at the hotel for the night and sat for a while at its window straining her eyes out into the darkness. The howling of the wind intensified her apprehension; somewhere out in that strange blackness that enwrapped her was her little sister. Perhaps Sidney needed her that very moment!
Finally she crept into bed and fell into a troubled sleep. She did not hear the running steps that passed under her window or the muffled voices of excited men.
“WHAT THE NIGHT HELD”
“Oh—h, take me back to the cabin!” moaned Pola.
“I guess we might as well,” muttered Mart. Their matches had been long since exhausted; they had been of little avail for the one ship’s light on the boat was without oil.
One on each side of her, Mart and Sidney helped Pola down into the cabin. The boat was rolling heavily now in the rough sea, each lift and drop sending terror to the three young hearts. In the blackness of the night the waves looked mountain high. Even Mart was glad to shut them from view.
“If—if we’re going to drown I’d rather drown in—a—room,” gasped Pola, clinging to Sidney and burying her face in Sidney’s shoulder.
It seemed to the girls as though months had passed since Lav had plunged to what they felt certain was his death. The Arabella had tossed about on the roughening water like some wild thing, her old timbers creaking and groaning under their new living. Just at first Sidney and Mart had been too concerned in quieting the panic-stricken Pola to face their danger; not until Pola had exhausted herself did they think of their possible fate.
Unless Lav succeeded in reaching the beach and giving an alarm, they might toss about for days or be dashed to pieces on some reef. Or, worse fate, Jed Starrow and his gang might find the boat and—
“Wh-at are you thinking about, Mart?” whispered Sidney after a long time of silence, broken only by the howling of the wind and the pounding of the water. “Let’s talk—and then we can’t hear—”
“Don’t be afraid, Sidney,” Mart spoke calmly. “You sort o’ belong to the Cape and we Cape folks don’t think anything of drowning. We sort of expect to, sometime—” But here her voice broke with a tremble. “I—I was thinking of gran’ma. I wish I’d been better to her. I talk back to her lots of times when I shouldn’t.”
“But you are good to her, Mart. And—I was thinking of Aunt Achsa. I shouldn’t have deceived her—about coming out here. I fooled myself into thinking that even a lie didn’t matter considering what we were trying to do. But the honor of Cape Cod isn’t worth anything happening to Lav. And if anything does happen there won’t be anyone to tell about Jed Starrow, anyway! Oh, Mart, I can’t bear to think about Lav. Why did we let him do it? Dear old Lav. I’ve been mean to him, too. He adores poetry and I—I never even told him that my father was a poet and that I know lots and lots of poems and—and—that I’ve written most a book myself.”
“Honest, Sid, was your father a poet? And you can write it yourself? Gee,” softly. “I wish I could do something like that. I’d rather be like that than anything else. I just pretend that I hate school and books and such things—it’s because I had to stop going to school to stay with gran’ma that I’ve put on that I didn’t have any use for it. Even when I was sort of laughing at you, Sid, down in my heart I was feeling aw’fly proud that you’d want to fool ’round with anyone like me—I’ll always be proud.”
“Oh, Mart—” Sidney faltered. “I wish I could put into words what Mr. Dugald taught me when I first came here. That it’s the big inside things that really count. He told me so’s I’d see Aunt Achsa and Lav as they really are. And, Mart, your giving up school to take care of your grandmother is a big thing, a real thing! You don’t want to forget it.”
“Oh, I’m—I’m—sick!” broke in Pola.
“Sit up straight and talk and you won’t think about it,” commanded Mart, so sternly that Pola straightened, her white face wan in the darkness.
“I don’t see how you can talk when you’re—may be—going—to die!”
“Well, talking helps you more than crying.”
“But I—I don’t want to—die.”
“Who does?” retorted Mart roughly. Nevertheless, touched by Pola’s helplessness, she found Pola’s hand and held it close in hers. “But let’s face whatever happens with our heads up!”
“To the wind,” breathed Sidney, shivering.
“I—I just can’t be brave like you two. I—I’m an awful coward. I can’t help it. I’ve always been afraid to even try to swim. I’m afraid of lots of things. Oh, I’m afraid to—to—”
Sidney caught Pola’s other hand.
“Don’t say it, Pola. Maybe someone will find us. And probably you can’t help feeling afraid.”
Mart suddenly remembered the cookies she had brought. She found them where she had hidden them at the back of one of the bunks.
“Here, eat a cookie and you’ll forget things. I’m hungry, aren’t you, too?”
Pola ate with nervous greed. Sidney bit off a piece but found it dry in her mouth. She was thinking of her sisters and the safety of the dear old house; as vividly as though it hung in a picture before her eyes she saw the little circle around the dining room table, the embroidered square of Indian cloth, the green shaded lamp, Issy’s books and Trude’s sewing, Vick’s sketching things, the girls at their beloved tasks—and her chair empty! Oh, what if she never sat again in that dear circle? Her heart broke in an agony of longing for Trude.
A sudden thought roused Pola to a feeble show of spirit.
“If I had known how to swim we’d all be ashore now! And you two stayed with me! I—I don’t believe I’m worth that, girls.” She spoke with gloomy conviction.
But Mart answered with a promptness that settled that question forever. “Forget it. Why, you don’t think we could a’ done anything else, do you? And now I’m going up on deck and get some air. We must be most to Halifax by this time.”
“Halifax!” But this time Pola did not scream.
Lavender, after his first plunge, had struck out toward the lighthouse. His Mr. Dugald had taught him the science of swimming and because it was the one thing he could do easily and well, in spite of his misshaped body, Lavender had taken pride in perfecting the practice. His assurance helped him now; he had no fear, he knew how to save his strength; he swam first with one stroke, then with another, always keeping in sight the beacon of light.
But after a
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