Laughing Last, Jane Abbott [the false prince .txt] 📗

I tell her of havin’ a house as big as a four-masted schooner and nary a chick or a child in it. I tell you, you ask your auntie or whatever she is to let you come over and stay a spell with us. Wellfleet ain’t so far. I’ll tell Elizy. You’ll come, now, won’t you? Anyone can tell you which is Phin Davies’ house—ain’t any much finer on the Cape.”

“Is it square—and white—and on an eminence?”

“Eh? If it’s a hill you mean, you’re right. I told Elizy after I’d made my last v’yage she could build anything she had her heart set on but it’d got to be where I could smell the harbor. Got a lookout atop where you can see the boats when they sail round the Point.” A faintly wistful note shaded the rugged voice. “You tell folks in Provincetown that you’re a friend of Cap’n Phin Davies and I guess you can just about have anything you want in the town. There’s a few of us old fellows left!”

As the train carried them further upon the Cape a boyish excitement seized the old man. He declared that, though he’d only been in Boston three or four days, it was as good as “moorin’ from a long v’yage.” He pointed out to Sidney the places and things of interest they were passing. Through his eyes Sidney saw the beauty of the old, elm-shaped villages, the rich meadow lands, the low-lying salt marshes, the sand-bars gleaming against stretches of blue water. Cap’n Phin Davies seemed to know something, and it was nearly always funny, about every one who lived in the quaint houses set here and there under century old trees. Wellfleet came all too soon.

“Now don’t forget, Missy, you’re coming to visit old Phin Davies. I’ll tell Elizy. And keep an eye to wind’ard for those pirates!”

“Gosh all fish hooks,” he exclaimed to his Elizy a half hour later, as he divested himself of his Sunday coat and vest and sprawled his great hulk in his own easy chair, “don’t know as I’ve ever seen a cuter little girl—and comin’ all this way by herself to visit what’s left of Zeke Green’s folks.”

In her way Elizy Davies registered sincere horror. “You don’t say! Why, all there is is old Achsa and that poor Lavender! Now, you don’t say! The little thing—”

With Cap’n Phin’s going Sidney was engulfed in a terrifying loneliness. The lump swelled in her throat again. She tried desperately to rally something of that splendid excitement with which she had started on her journey, to thrill again over the assembled belongings in the old satchel, some things Isolde’s and some Trude’s and some even Vick’s. The girls had been very kind and generous with her. But in spite of her valiant efforts her spirits sank lower and lower. She had come so far, she had sat through so many lonely hours that all that had happened back at Middletown seemed now to belong to someone else—some other Sidney Romley. Strong within her mounted an apprehension at what awaited her at her journey’s end.

But there was a chance the “baby” had lived; Cap’n Davies had said it’d be about sixteen. Sidney hoped it was a boy—a boy cousin would be such fun. And he’d be more likely to have a boat. In order to keep from thinking that the low dunes of sand and marsh, shrouded in twilight haze, through which they now were passing were very dreary she held stubbornly to her speculations concerning the “baby.” She was tired and hungry. The lump was growing very big and hurt. When, as she finally followed her fellow passengers off the train and along a bustling platform she heard a pleasant voice ask: “Is this Sidney Romley?” she gave an involuntary little gasp of relief.

“Oh, are you my cousin?”

Dugald Allan took her bag. “Well, yes, if both of us belonging to Aunt Achsa can make us cousins. Are you tired? It’s an endless journey—you think you are never going to get here, don’t you? Did you have any fears that you’d just ride off into the ocean? You had a coolish day.” As he talked he piloted her through the crowd, a crowd that startled Sidney after those miles of twilight loneliness. “It’s always like this toward the week-end,” he apologized. “But Sunset Lane is quiet enough. I’ve old Dobbin here and the one-hoss shay. Hoist this up, will you, Toby?” he addressed a lanky barefooted boy who slouched upon the driver’s high seat.

As they creaked and swayed down the sandy road Sidney turned searching eyes again upon her companion.

“I mean—are you the baby that was born? You see, Captain Phin Davies told me—”

“Oh, you mean Lavender. No—I am not Lavender. I just live with Aunt Achsa summers; wouldn’t that make me a—sort of half-nephew?”

“But there is a cousin?” Sidney drew a quick breath. “You see everything’s so strange to me that I have to put it all together, like a picture puzzle. And it will be nice having someone young in the picture. Then you’re—you’re—a sort of boarder?” Her voice rose, hesitatingly.

“I suppose so. Though Aunt Achsa holds me as one of the family and I hope you will, too, when you get that picture put together. What do you think of our Cape?”

“Oh, it’s wonderful! Only—” Sidney had to be honest. “I didn’t like it so well until Captain Phin Davies made me see what was so nice about it. You see I expected to see a stern and rock-bound coast.”

At this Allan laughed. “We’ll have to find one for you, won’t we? Well, wait until you see the back shore. Toby’s taking a short-cut home. I expect he knows Aunt Achsa has the finest dinner you ever tasted waiting for us—we’ll be there in two seconds now.”

Two seconds—and her journey would be over, her adventure begun. Again that apprehension mounted sweeping before it even her hope of the big house on an eminence. She was scarcely conscious of anything they were passing. The dusk had deepened, enveloping them like a heavy veil. She heard her companion say: “This is Sunset Lane.” Then, with a great jolt, the ancient equipage stopped. “Here we are—and there’s Aunt Achsa watching for us!”

They were so close to the house that Sidney almost could have jumped from the step of the carriage to the threshold. All about her she felt rather than saw crowding flowers. And in the open door silhouetted against a glow of lamplight waited a very small, brown old lady.

Ascha Green fluttered out to meet Sidney and touched the girl with shy hands.

“Well, well, you’re here. Don’t seem true. Let old Achsa look at you, child. Annie’s girl. Come in. Come right in. I expect you’re tuckered out and hungry, too. Lavender, come and meet your new cousin.”

Sidney’s glance shot across the room to the boy who huddled back of the stove, regarding her with shy dark eyes. And as quickly it dropped before what she saw. Ascha Green, watching, sensed her involuntary shudder.

“He’s strange,” Aunt Achsa hurried to explain, a tremble in her voice, “but he’ll make friends fast ’nough. Goodness knows he ain’t talked of much else than a new cousin’s comin’ sence we got your letter. This is your room, Sidney, right here handy and mebbe you’ll like to wash up while I put supper on the table. Here, take this candle; it’s darkened up fast.”

The “boarder” had already carried Sidney’s bag into the little room that opened directly out of the parlor. Aunt Achsa, after bustling her in, closed the door quickly between them.

It was the smallest room Sidney had ever seen. Why, she could reach out from just where she was standing and touch the ceiling or anyone of the walls. And it was the neatest. The small panes of the window twinkled at her between starched muslin curtains, coarse but immaculate towels covered the washstand and the highboy that stood at each side of the window. Another white towel Achsa had tacked on the wall behind the washbowl and under the oval mirror. A cushion, much faded from many washings, she had tied to the back of the straight rush-bottomed chair at the foot of the bed. A smell of strong soap hung in the air.

Sidney could not know that the highboy was priceless, that the two blue vases which Achsa had risked leaving on top of it had come from a Spanish port a century before, that the woven cover on the bed had the date of its making in one corner, that the hooked rug on the floor could have brought Achsa a hundred dollars any time she wanted to sell it; her eyes were too brimming with tears to notice the flowers that grew to her window-sill and peeped over it at her their bright heads nodding to the candle gleam. The lump that had been growing and growing mastered her. She drew a long-quivering breath. She had come all the way from home for this. This was her great adventure!

Oh, it was too humiliating, too cruel! That dreadful old woman—if she’d only had a broom she would have looked just like a witch. And in a few minutes she’d open the door and make her go out into the kitchen and eat supper with them. They were going to eat in the kitchen. She had seen the table. And the boarder—nice people in Middletown did not keep boarders. And, oh, that dreadful Lavender and his big eyes, staring at her—that was the cousin! And she could not telegraph Trude until tomorrow at the earliest—

She could not cry. She must not. If she began she’d never stop. She knew now that the tears had been starting deep down within her miles back on her long journey. Her teeth bit into her quivering lip. She went to the little window and leaned her face against its frame. The fragrant salt-laden air caressed her hot face and soothed her.

“Shame on you, Sidney Romley,” she finally muttered. “Remember you’re fifteen. And you wanted to come—no one made you! Anyway—” She addressed a rose that was wagging its pink head at her in an understanding way and that certainly had not been there a moment before! “Anyway, I’ll bet it won’t be a bit worse than traveling with fat, cross old Godmother Jocelyn!”