Laughing Last, Jane Abbott [the false prince .txt] 📗
- Author: Jane Abbott
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Sidney’s hand had barely closed over her dollar bill when she spied a woman and a girl slowly walking along the wharf, watching with interest the artists who were still at work. The girl looked startlingly familiar to Sidney. She gave a little gasp and ran forward.
“Pola!” she called loudly.
The girl turned in astonishment at the sound of her name, stared for a moment, then quickly advanced laughing.
“Why, you’re the Romley girl, aren’t you? Of all the things! What are you doing here?”
“I’m visiting my aunt,” explained Sidney, suddenly conscious of her appearance and in consequence painfully ill-at-ease.
“Oh, and do they hire you to pose? What fun! I suppose that’s a sort of costume they make you wear, isn’t it?”
“Y—yes,” Sidney faltered, miserably. Pola’s manner was prettily condescending and she made no move to join Sidney on the beach.
“I’m a wreck myself,” Pola went on, airily surveying her trim and elegant person. “Mother and I are motoring. And I made her bring me down here to see my cousin. He’s an artist and lives here summers. He’ll just despise seeing us because he comes here to get rid of everything home. And the car’s broken down and goodness knows how long we’ll have to stay.”
“Pola!” Her mother called sharply.
Pola waved her hand toward her mother. “Yes, mamma!” Then, to Sidney, “Isn’t it simply rare our meeting like this? It shows how small the world is. I must run now! By-by!” She gave the slightest flip of her hand in sign of leave-taking and, turning, ran lightly up the wharf toward her mother.
Sidney’s eyes followed her, devouring her dainty clothes, the tight-fitting motoring hat, the buckled pumps. Pola—the Pola she had carried enshrined in her heart! That heart hurt now, to the core. She had dreamed of a meeting sometime, somewhere, had planned just what it would be like and what she’d say and what Pola would say. And now Pola had turned a shoulder upon it.
Mart’s laugh behind her roused her.
“Who’s Guinevere, anyway? Her ma called her just in time—we might a hurt the doll-baby!”
Sidney turned on Mart fiercely. “She’s a friend of mine,” she cried, in a voice she made rough to keep the tears from it. “And she’s not a doll-baby.”
“All right—go and play with her then—she’s crazy about you, I guess.” And with that Mart swung on her heel and stalked away, her head in the air.
Poor Sidney hurried back to Sunset Lane to hide her humiliation and her dismay. For some reason she could not understand she had offended Mart. And Pola had snubbed her. It had indeed been a cruel fate that had brought Pola out on the wharf at that precise moment!
She spent a lonely afternoon in Top Notch, too miserable to even pour out her heart to “Dorothea.” Then she helped Aunt Achsa prepare supper and after supper, which was lonely, too, for neither Lavender nor Mr. Dugald were there, she insisted upon clearing up the dishes while Aunt Achsa went down to Tillie Higgins’.
Swishing her hands in the soapy water Sidney pondered sadly the things she had longed to learn of Pola. Her name—why she hadn’t even found out her name! What had her teacher said of that theme she had written on her visit to the Romley house? Where did Pola live? Of course she might see her again—Pola had said that they’d be in Provincetown for a few days, but she did not want to see her; she did not want Pola to see Sunset Lane and the little gray cottage and Aunt Achsa and Lavender. Pola would laugh at them and she would hate her!
At that moment footsteps crunched the gravel of the path and a shadow fell across the kitchen door. Sidney turned from the table. There stood Mr. Dugald and with him—Pola.
“I’ve brought my cousin, Sidney. She blew out to the Cape with that ill-wind we felt this morning. If you know what we can do with her I’ll be your slave for life.”
Playfully pushing Dugald Allan aside Pola walked into the kitchen.
“Isn’t he horrid? You wouldn’t dream that he’s really crazy about me, would you? I told him how we’d met, even before this morning. He’d written home that Miss Green’s cousin was here but I never dreamed it was you. I’m so sorry I didn’t have a chance to introduce you to mother this morning. But mother wants me to take you back to the hotel. You can have a room right next to mine and we’ll have scads of fun—You’ll come, won’t you?” For Sidney’s face was unyielding.
Like one cornered, Sidney stood straight against the table, her hands, red from the hot dish water, clasped tightly behind her back. Though she knew that Pola was trying to make amends for her rudeness of the morning, something within her heart turned hard. The dusty idol was crumbling to bits of clay.
“She’s only inviting me because Mr. Dugald has told her to,” she reasoned inwardly. And aloud she answered in a steady voice:
“I’m sorry, but I simply can’t leave Aunt Achsa. You must come here and we’ll find lots of jolly things to do—”
“Here?” laughed Pola, glancing around the old kitchen.
“Why not here?” roared Mr. Dugald. “As long as you’ve broken into our Secret Garden we’ll introduce you to some things you’ve never done before in your life. Only Sid will have to find some suitable clothes for you, and you’d better leave your complexion on the dressing table.”
Pola accepted his banter good-naturedly. “I shall be deeply grateful, old dear, if you will introduce me to any sensations I have not experienced before. There, now, will that hold you for awhile?” She turned to Sidney. “We quarrel like this all the time, but it’s fun and I always have the last word. I make him so mad he can’t think of anything withering enough to say and I seize that strategic moment to cease firing. You see, I practice on Dug. I will come tomorrow if I may. Now, Duggie dear, lead me out of this funny lane or else I’ll never find my way back to mamma. Goodby, Miss Romley.”
Behind Pola’s back Mr. Dugald cast such a despairing, apologetic and altogether furious look toward Sidney as to make Sidney suddenly laugh. And with her laugh all her sense of dismay and humiliation vanished. She forgot her red hands and the big gingham apron and the dishes spread about her in her amusement over Pola’s pathetic attempt to be very grown-up and sophisticated. And so ill-bred! How ashamed Mr. Dugald had been of her!
Then a thought struck Sidney with such force that she sat down in the nearest chair. Why, if Mr. Dugald was Pola’s own cousin, belonged to the grandeur that was Pola’s, he would never be attracted by poor, plain Trude. Her beautiful hopes were shattered! She felt distinctly aggrieved.
However, there was Vick. Sidney hated to give Mr. Dugald to Vick, who always got everything, yet it seemed the only thing to do if any of the sisters were to have him. Almost sadly she went to her room, opened her satchel and took from it a small framed photograph of Victoria, a photograph which, while it did not flatter Victoria, paid full justice to her enticing beauty. Considering it, Sidney reflected on how lucky it was that at the last moment she had put the pictures of her sisters into her baggage. Then she carried it to the kitchen and stood it on the narrow mantel next to the clock where Mr. Dugald’s eyes must surely find it. Unlike the snapshot of Trude the picture remained there undisturbed.
PEACOCKS
Early the next day Pola appeared with Mr. Dugald in Sunset Lane in a simple garb that must have satisfied even her exacting cousin. Her mood was in accord with her attire as though she had left her sophistication behind with her silks and her rouge. She declared she felt as “peppy as they make them” and ready to do anything anyone suggested. And Mr. Dugald, resigned to wasting two weeks to entertaining his young cousin, of whom he was really very fond, promptly offered an astonishing assortment of suggestions from which he commanded the girls to choose.
“Why, you wouldn’t believe there were so many things to do!” cried Pola with real enthusiasm. “Sidney, you’ll have to decide.” And Sidney at once decided upon a tramp to Peaked Hill on the ocean side with an early picnic supper.
In the days that followed, Sidney’s first admiration for Pola returned. Though Pola would never again be the idol she was much more enjoyable as a chum. Her spirits, though an affectation, were infectious and gay; in her pretty clothes and with her pretty face she made Sidney think of a butterfly, a fragile, golden-winged, dainty flitting butterfly. She professed to enjoy everything they did—even to the picnics. She tramped endlessly in her unsuitable shoes without a murmur of fatigue and Sidney suspected that she really did care a great deal for her cousin Dugald’s approval.
With Mr. Dugald they motored to Highland Light and to Chatham. They toured the shops at Hyannis. They sailed with Captain Hawkes on the Mabel T. They rose very early one morning and went to the Coast Guard Station to watch the drill and then ate ham and eggs with Commander Nelson. More than once Sidney donned the cherry crêpe de chine and dined with Mrs. Allan and Pola and Dugald at the hotel, feeling very grand and traveled.
But to Sidney’s deep regret Pola professed an abhorrence of swimming.
“Just please don’t ask me,” she had begged, shuddering. “I loathe it! It’s one of my complexes. Of course I’ve gone swimming in almost every body of water on the globe, but I hate it. You’ll spoil my fun utterly if you even try to make me!” After that Sidney could not urge. She did not know what complexes were, but Pola had made them sound real and convincing and a little delicate. Though Sidney missed the jolly swims with Lavender and Mart she refrained from even a hint of her feelings.
Often when they were together Pola waxed confidential over her cousin. “He’s a thorn in Aunt Lucy’s side,” she explained one day as the girls lounged in Pola’s room at the hotel, a huge box of candy on a stool between them. “She always wants him to go in for society and to go abroad with her and do all the fashionable resorts on the Continent, but couldn’t you see him? Not for Duggie boy, ever! When she starts planning something like that he bolts off somewhere and the next thing you hear is that he’s painted a wonderful picture and sold it or had first mention or a gold medal. Of course that makes him terribly interesting and there are dozens of single ladies from forty to fourteen itching to catch him. And Dug’s such a simple old dear that he doesn’t know it. But his mother does and she has them all sorted over and the eligible ones ticketed. You see Dug will be dreadfully rich some day and goodness knows what he’ll do with the money for he hasn’t the brains of a child where business is concerned. His father’s even richer than Dad.”
Sidney literally blinked before the picture Pola drew—blinked and blushed that she had dared angle for Mr. Dugald herself like the forty-to-fourteen single ladies. Mr. Dugald belonged to a world that was foreign to the Romley girls, Pola’s dazzling, peacock-world.
Sidney felt immensely flattered that Pola had taken her in among her peacocks. (Secretly, too, she considered that she carried herself well among them. She was most careful of her
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