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

After all Sidney never sent the telegram to Trude. But it must not be thought that all in a moment she adapted herself to her new surroundings, or saw Cousin Achsa as the “boarder” had pictured her; her anticipations had soared too high, on the wings of too agile an imagination, to surrender at once to their downfall. Even Dugald Allan she regarded with inward skepticism.

How she rebuilt her small world can be chronicled best by peeping over her shoulder one afternoon, the third day after her coming, as she wrote in her precious “Dorothea” book. At the last moment she had brought this with her, moved by a doubt as to the wisdom of leaving it behind; there was no knowing what liberties the Leaguers, left alone, might take.

“Dorothea Mine, you do not know how it comforts me to feel your dear pages. I am not alone for you are with me. And when I think how I almost left you at home. There is so much to write that I scarcely know where to begin and must needs sit with my pen suspended. This is the funniest place I ever saw but no one, absolutely no one but you, dear bosom friend, shall ever know that. I mean it is funny because everything is just the opposite of what I expected it to be. I had thought, you see, that our relatives probably lived in a big white square house high up on a rock-bound coast against which the waves dashed in foamy crests. That’s the way I wanted the house to look. And instead it is very small and all wigglety, with sand hills around it. But it is cute for the rooms are small like a doll’s house. There is a kitchen in which we do everything which I did not like at first only it is a different kitchen and there is not any other place anyway for the parlor is so stiff and dressed-up looking that it would be shocking to muss it up. The kitchen smells good and shines it is so clean and there is a door that opens right out into the flowers. I shall not say much about Cousin Achsa because Dugald, who is the boarder, says that she is an aristocrat of solid material and he must know because he has lived here summers for a very long time. But she talks bad English like Huldah only she says ‘I swum,’ instead of ‘Yah!’ And she is queer looking but then all is not gold that glitters. But she is very kind to me and I think likes me and she cooks the grandest things and so much. She works all the time. I do not think I ever saw anyone who could work so fast. She is like she was wound up inside and had to keep working until she ran down.

“But pour out my heart I must about Lavender who is my cousin. You see I did not know I had a young cousin until Phin Davies (of him I will record later), told me of the benefit and of the baby who would be sixteen now, he said. Then I became greatly excited in anticipation of a cousin about my own age to play with. And oh, what did I find! But only once will I truly describe him for I have promised Mr. Dugald to think of Lavender as the poor flower on the crooked stem and I make myself shut my inside eyes so that I cannot see that he is different. He is small for he only comes to my ears and his arms hang way down and he has funny, long fingers and one shoulder is higher than the other and he has a hump on his back. There, I have written the truth. Now I will remember the flower. Lavender has beautiful and very wise eyes and a low voice that sounds like music and a lovely name, like a name in a languishing novel. And he is dreadfully smart, and gets it all from the lots and lots of books which he reads to make up for not going to school. I suppose he hates to go to school and anyway his mind is working all the while other boys are playing ball and doing things he can’t do. At least Mr. Dugald thinks it’s that way. Mr. Dugald told me how to win Lavender’s affection for he is terribly shy and that was by making a great fuss over Nip and Tuck who are the cats and Lavender is passionately fond of the cats. That was hard, too, for we never had any cats as you know and the only cat I ever touched was Mrs. Jordan’s old Tommy when I wanted him in a play Nancy and I were going to give in the attic and he scratched me. But I bravely took Nip and Tuck in my arms and you would have been surprised if you could have seen how beatified Lavender looked. At least that’s the way Mr. Dugald said he looked afterwards. And he has liked me ever since. I mean Lavender, of course. I must digress to say a word of Nip and Tuck. They are extraordinary cats. They are quite old and big and black and I think they are solid aristocrats, too, and you can only tell them apart by a nick in Nip’s ear that he got in a fight. They can lick any dog or cat in this part of Provincetown. They are terrors. And they are twins, I forgot to say. And they do the same things all the time like the Crooker twins at school. Lavender loves all animals. He is always bringing home some stray thing only Nip and Tuck will not let them stay and that makes Lavender sad.

“But I must not spend all my time telling you of my cousins and the cats when there is so much terribly exciting to write about. This is the most different place I ever knew. It is all sand and the houses look like doll’s houses most of them and come right out to the funniest little streets that are not much wider that our sidewalks at home and all the nice houses have flowers around them somewhere. And they are mostly a lovely shiny gray that is pinky in the sun. Mr. Dugald says they get that way from the salt in the air and that most of the old houses were shingled from the wood that was in old masts. And he says the reason flowers grow brighter and bigger here is because years ago the ships used plain earth for ballast and changed it when they got into the harbor and that there is soil right here in Provincetown from almost every corner of the world. I held a handful from Cousin Achsa’s garden and pretended I knew it was from Algiers. There are a lot of stores on the Main street and some are like the stores home and Mr. Dugald says they are a shame. It is hard to walk on the sidewalk because it is so narrow and most of the time you have to walk in the street. And everybody talks to everybody else whether they know them or not or if they do not talk they smile. There are lots of Portuguese and they have beautiful eyes and lovely voices like Isolde’s. I think Mr. Dugald means it’s them who have crowded out the solid aristocracy, but they are nice for they make it seem just like I was in a foreign land. But most, most of all, I like the docks. Mr. Dugald laughs at me when I call them docks; but I always forget to call them wharves. They are all gray and crookedy, as though they were leaning against one another and when the tide goes out it leaves the posts all shiny and green. And there are funny little houses all along the edge of the beach that are something like the boathouses of Cascade Lake, only more interesting and people live right in them and have flower boxes all around them and fix up weeny verandas over the water and go in bathing right out of their front doors. And some of them are fish lofts only Mr. Dugald says that consolidated companies (I do not exactly know what he means but will write it because he said it) have bought out all the small fish companies and that means that the men do not get enough for their ‘catch’ to pay for the expense and danger of their going out to sea. He says the Portuguese are satisfied to only get a little. Everyone knows Lavender and they let him go anywhere and on to the boats and everything and I follow him, though at first the little rowboats which Mr. Dugald calls dorys smelled so that it made me sick. But I did not want even Lavender to think I was afraid so I held my nose inside and went wherever he did. I cannot wear anything but my old clothes—but no one dresses up here like Pola probably does, which is a disappointment, for Vick let me bring her cherry crêpe de chine for she is very sure Godmother Jocelyn will get her some new dresses and I am simply dying to wear it.

“And now I must tell you about the good ship Arabella. It is a very old boat—I think it is a schooner—and Mr. Dugald says it has probably been in every port in the world. When it got too old to sail any more Mr. Dugald bought it for Lavender. And it is all Lavender’s own. I am sure I never heard of anyone before having a real big boat just to play on. But, then, Lavender is different. It is fastened with a great