Laughing Last, Jane Abbott [the false prince .txt] 📗
- Author: Jane Abbott
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It had been decided that they should conceal themselves in the fo’castle cabin. They groped their way forward, Sidney guiding Pola in the dark, for Lavender dared not light any of his matches. Stumbling, scarcely breathing, they slipped down the companion ladder and crawled into the small, ill-ventilated cabin. Sidney sat down upon some tarpaulins. Pola crouched close to Sidney’s side. Lav and Mart stowed themselves upon one of the bunks.
“There—now we’ll wait!”
“I—I wish I knew what for!” whispered Pola. The smell of rank bilge water, the lift and drop of the boat sickened her. The wind was whining and that and the swish of the water against the sides of the boat terrified the girl.
In a few short words Lav vouchsafed Pola a little information. Like Sidney he admired the girl’s gameness though he was beginning to wish they had not let her come.
“How long do you think we’ll have to wait? And what if no one comes?”
“We’ll have to wait until most morning anyway before the tide is out. And if no one comes tonight we’ll have to come out again, that’s all. We’re not in this business for any fun!”
“Oh—h!” sighed Pola, clinging closer to Sidney.
The wind howled over their heads with increasing velocity and Sidney thought involuntarily of the snugness of Miss Letty’s buggy. Miss Letty was probably almost to Truro now. And Aunt Achsa thought she was with her!
“Is—is the boat tied tight?” asked Pola; and Lav assured her that it was. “The wind could get a lot worse and you’d be as safe out here as in your bed at home.”
After a long while Mart muttered, “What’s that?” The others leaned forward in the blackness of the cabin. They had all felt rather than heard a soft thud as though something had touched the side of the boat. And in a few moments heavy footsteps came straight toward the fo’castle.
“Oh, will they come here?” breathed Pola, shaking. And for answer Sidney caught Pola’s arm with a warning clutch.
For an instant it seemed that the footsteps must descend to the cabin. But at the companionway they halted. A voice came, heavy and thick.
“I tell you it ain’t safe to take it off now. They got a man on Rockman’s and another on Teal’s and no knowin’ how many in the bay! Every constable on the Cape’s here, damn them! And old Davies’s been ’round all day and he ain’t rigged up for any picnic!”
“If we don’t take it off tonight Lav Green may find it—or that girl—”
At that someone laughed, horribly. “Huh—him! Why we could twist every crooked bone in his body until he wouldn’t know ’em. Him—ha, that’s a joke! Why, a look ’ud scare him to a pulp. The girl, too.”
Sidney, reaching her hand out instinctively, caught Lavender’s and held it tight. She felt the writhing of his body.
A new voice broke in above them. “I got a better scheme. Listen. We’ll—” But the voices suddenly died to silence; the footsteps moved away.
The four, huddled in the darkness of the cabin, drew long trembling breaths.
“Lav, those diamonds are on this boat!”
“Sh—h. I know it. But we got to be careful. They haven’t gone yet. We got to wait. And we’ll wait until we find ’em. Damn them I’ll show them who’s crooked!”
“Hush,” implored Sidney. “Of course you will”
“Isn’t it most morning? I—I wish I was home,” quavered Pola; but no one paid any heed to her.
With the howling of the wind, the slap-slap of the water, it was difficult to make out whether the men had left the boat or not. Once Lav crawled to the top of the companion ladder but a muttering like a human voice drove him back. Queer sounds struck upon their sensitized ears. And the boat seemed to lift to a new motion.
They waited for an interminable time. Then Mart spoke quickly.
“Lav, we’re moving!”
Lav needed no warning. He, too, had missed the pull of the boat on the anchor rope. He shot up the ladder.
“Oh, what’s the matter?” cried Sidney and Pola, forgetting all caution.
Mart had no time to explain her fears. In an instant Lav was back, fairly throwing himself into the cabin.
“We’re drifting! They cut the anchor rope! We’re drifting out! Fast! Way out! To sea!”
That had been the “better scheme.” To cut the Arabella free from its mooring and let the wind and tide carry it out into the bay. At first Starrow had not favored the plan; he had declared that it was too much risk, that the wind was shifting and freshening fast and that the old tub might open a seam, but Joe Josephs had convinced him with: “the Arabella would be good for a week out in a nastier sea than this. It’s safer than riskin’ runnin’ afoul one of Phin Davies’ men ashore. Guthrie’s Sally’ll stand this squall and pick up the Arabella easy and we can reckon sure on the course the old tub’ll take, even ’lowin’ for the wind to shift.”
As she comprehended what had happened Pola screamed. Mart and Sidney dragged her with them up the ladder. Lav was at the side of the boat tearing off his blouse.
“Oh, Lav, what’ll we do! What are you going to do now?” cried Sidney.
“It’s so black,” wailed Pola. “I’m—sick!”
“I’m going to swim ashore. It’s the only way. I don’t know how long this old tub’ll stand a sea and the wind’s rising. We got to get help.”
“You shan’t swim alone, Lavender Green. We’ll all swim. That’s nothing of a swim—”
“You can’t! You forget—Pola.”
Sidney wheeled in consternation. “Pola’s complex!” The girl was crouched, now, on the deck, an abject, wailing figure.
“You go with Lav, Mart,” said Sidney in a quiet voice. “I’ll stay with Pola.”
“What do you think I am? I guess I’ll stay with her too!”
“But your grandmother—”
“Oh, gran’ma!” Mart’s voice choked. “But she’d be the one to tell me to stay—”
“It’s no use our all trying it,” muttered Lav. “I’ll get there or I won’t get anywhere.”
“Maybe it’s too far for you to swim!” Sidney was at Lavender’s side, her hands on his arm. The boy’s form in its light underwear showed pitifully crooked but Sidney saw him straight and she saw the gleam in his eyes. Suddenly she remembered what Vick had said so lightly about the Grail. Ah, she was seeing its gleam now, transcendently beautiful, in Lav’s eyes! She dropped her hold of his arm.
“You see, I’ve got to try it, Sid.” And she understood. He went on: “I’ll swim for the lighthouse. They can telephone from there to Rockman’s. You girls find a light and signal with it. Don’t lose your nerve, Sid.” He poised for an instant on the rail then plunged into the black water.
“Oh, Lav,” cried Sidney. She leaned far over the side of the boat. She could see nothing but a crest of foam. “Mart, he’s—he’s—drowned!”
Pola screamed again.
“THERE’S SOMETHING WRONG!”
In the sunny embrasure of Mrs. White’s morning room Trude Romley sorted over the mail that Pepper, the butler, had brought in. So gay and colorful was the room itself with its cretonnes, its soft tinted walls, its singing birds, in wicker cages, that it seemed a part of the fragrant garden that crowded close to the French windows. A tiny fountain splashed azure blue water over delicately sculptured nymphs; a flowering vine trailed around the windows.
The mail arranged, Trude sat back in the cushions of a great wicker chair and with a long breath of delight enjoyed the beauty around her. Each day Edgeacres enraptured her anew and roused in her a wonder as to why it should be her lot to be there. “It ought to be Vick or Issy,” she would apologize to the nodding flowers or to Mitie, the yellow warbler.
And as might be expected Trude had found innumerable ways of making herself useful to Mrs. White as an expression of her gratitude. There were telephone calls she could answer, letters she could write, shopping she could do, ordering, she even conferred with old Pepper and Jonathan, the gardener. She drove with Mrs. White in the afternoon and served tea to the callers who flocked to the house from the nearby summer hotels.
“I do not know how I ever got along without you, my dear,” Mrs. White had said more than once. “What do you do to make yourself so invaluable? It seems as though just to look at you one leans on you! Even Pepper is saying ‘Miss Trude thinks this and Miss Trude thinks that—’”
Her benevolent interest in her husband’s wards, a certain pride in saying to her friends: “My husband, you know, is looking after the daughters of Joseph Romley, who was a college friend of his,” had grown into a real fondness for Trude. “I have never appreciated the dear girl when she’s been with us before,” she declared to her husband. “I suppose it was because we were in town, then, and I was too busy to get acquainted with her. Why, she’s really pretty. And she makes such a slave of herself to her sisters! She hasn’t any life of her own. I don’t believe they appreciate it, either. It’s a shame she doesn’t marry some nice young man—” Mrs. White’s kind always found virtue’s reward in the proverbial “nice young man.”
Mr. White agreed with her on every point but this. “If she deserted that household it would fall! She’s the only one that isn’t like her father.”
“Then she must find someone who’ll take the family with her,” Mrs. White asserted determinedly. But having no godmother’s fairy wand she had not been able, during the summer weeks, to bring the prince to Edgeacres; her husband’s acquaintances were too bald and round to play the part of princes.
Trude had not minded the dearth of young men. Since her unhappy experience on a former visit she was glad of that dearth. The serenity of the summer, the relaxation and rest from responsibilities had brought a lovely freshness to her face, a brightness to her eyes that was not all a reflection of the brightness about her. The sheer luxury of loafing, of not having to think out petty problems or worry one single minute was all her old-young heart now asked. Once in awhile, of course, she fretted because Isolde was not enjoying Edgeacres with her, or getting to know how really nice Aunt Edith White was. Where Vick and Sidney were concerned she had no remorse for Vick was seeing new lands, doubtless conquering them, and Sidney was happy at Cape Cod; but she could not help thinking that Issy must be working too hard at the Deerings—getting up early in the morning and typing all through the hot day and doubtless fussing over the housework and the small babies as well.
Trude thought of the mail. Again there had been no letter from either Issy or Sidney! Sidney really ought to write. Perhaps it had not been wise to let her go off alone with relatives of whom they knew nothing!
Suddenly a postmark on one of the letters on the little table at her elbow caught her eye. Provincetown. Trude caught it up apprehensively. That letter might be from their Cousin Achsa! She turned it over and over, wishing she might open it.
“Good morning, my dear! I get up with the birds myself and find that you’re up before me!”
Trude laughed, to cover her anxiety. “I told Jonathan I’d inspect his new beds this morning.”
“There, didn’t I say you were supplanting me in Jonathan’s esteem? But he only wants you to admire them and smile
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