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

“Dear Dorothea, again I stand at the crossroads, a saddened soul, and wiser—”

But Sidney could get no further than that. There was so much to tell Dorothea that she did not know how to begin. For those terrible hours on the Arabella she had no words; she shrank from trying to depict Lavender’s splendid courage for his white face as she had seen it in the precious five minutes still haunted her. Even the diamonds lost their lustre beside Trude’s ultimatum that they must go home.

Go home so ingloriously!

It was two hours since Dugald had led Trude away down the lane and Sidney’s apprehension had mounted as the time had passed. She was feeling very young and very forgotten; Miss Letty who had remained at the cottage to “be handy” and to answer the stream of inquiries that came to the door, had warned her to “keep quiet” as there had been enough excitement for one day and she had been too rebuffed to even confide to Miss Letty that Mr. Dugald was someone her sister had known a few years before and that they had gone away without her.

Miss Letty was baking vigorously, her great hands moving deftly among the cupboards, her straight back eloquently expressive of her mood. “I guess folks’ll have a different opinion of Lavender Green now,” she muttered and as Sidney was the only person within hearing she accepted the remark as addressed to her and agreed. Miss Letty went on, shaking the flour-sifter as though she wished she were shaking someone in particular: “I guess folks like that Mrs. Allan will have a different opinion of Cape Cod. She came here and asked to see Lavender and I took her in and waited outside the door—”

“Oh, what did she say?” begged Sidney.

“She offered him money! Well, I thought the boy’d have a relapse on the spot. And I walked in and took her by the arm and led her out and I said to her: ‘Madam, we on Cape Cod do not sell our bravery—we give it!’ I said just that. And she withered like a limp leaf. She sort of clung to me and cried like a baby. Yes, she’ll know now what sort o’ breed we Cape Coders are.”

Even that Sidney could not record in Dorothea.

She began to pack because it was the occupation best suited to her mood and because from the window of her room she could see Trude and Mr. Dugald the moment they turned the corner by Mart’s house. She spread her scant belongings over the bed and set the old satchel on the rush-bottomed chair. She was in the act of folding the precious cherry crêpe de chine when she spied approaching figures—Trude and Mr. Dugald, walking slowly. Her heart gave a quick bound only to grow cold at the sight of Trude’s chin which was set stubbornly in a way that Sidney well knew! Nor did Mr. Dugald appear the happy lover; he walked with bent face and occasionally kicked at the flowers that edged the lane.

Trude sought Sidney directly and nodded with approval when she saw the packing. She sat down on the edge of the bed.

“Sid,” she began in a queer voice that Sidney had never heard before. “I suppose I ought to tell you how I happened to know—Dugald Allan.”

Trude spoke so slowly and with such difficulty that Sidney hastened to make it easier for her.

“I do know. You met him at the Whites three winters ago and he wrote something. I overheard you and Issy talking once but I didn’t hear his name and I saw you crying over a letter—”

Trude laughed shakily.

“Sidney, you’re simply the limit! Yes, I met him there that first winter I went to visit Aunt Edith. His father and Mr. White are old friends and he was staying at Aunt Edith’s while he painted a portrait of one of Aunt Edith’s friends. I was just a silly, countrified girl and—I didn’t understand lots of things and thought—well, there’s no use, now going into all that. I lost my head and let myself think things that weren’t so—”

Sidney interrupted, impatiently. “Trude, you talk to me as though I was a baby and couldn’t hear the truth. I guess I know; you fell in love with Mr. Dugald and you thought he was in love with you—”

“Thank you, Sid. Yes, I had forgotten your extreme age. I fell in love with—him. I am not ashamed to admit it. I had never known anyone like him before. And I thought—yes, that—There was another girl there, Sylvia Thorn, from Atlanta. She was very pretty and she and Dugald were great pals and one day Aunt Edith told me she hoped they would marry, that it would be a very nice match for Dugald, a relief to his family, that he needed that type of girl to cure him of his queer ways. I remember just what she said. ‘You understand, my dear, you have lived with genius yourself.’ It wasn’t exactly what she said, it was the way she said it, as though she thought I would know because I lived entirely out of Dugald Allan’s class. It hurt cruelly. It made me sensitive and made me see little things between Dugald—and Sylvia. And it made me see myself as someone quite unworthy of—Dugald. I found some pretext to go home. I thought by running away from it all I could forget. Dugald wrote a few times—then that letter telling me that he was going on a six months’ painting cruise in the South Seas with Sylvia Thorn and her father and mother and wanted to run up to Middletown to tell me something before he went. I wrote back that he must not come that I—could not—see him. That’s all.”

Sidney was listening with clasped hands, a color on her cheeks that matched Trude’s, stars in her eyes. With magic swiftness her romantic soul was piecing together a beautiful picture.

“Why, that can’t be all! How could you have written to him like that! And he wasn’t in love with that Sylvia, was he?”

Trude’s eyes softened. “N—no. I know now. He told me—today. Sylvia was engaged at the time to his best friend, but they wanted it kept secret for awhile. Dugald thought I knew.”

“Then—then—” cried Sidney. But, somehow, she could not ask Trude what had happened during the afternoon, something new in Trude’s dear eyes plainly warned her that just now all that was too much her own to be shared with anyone.

Instead she threw her arms around Trude and hugged her violently.

“Oh, Trude, how I love you! And it’s so good to be with you. Out there—on the boat—I kept thinking of you and how safe I always feel with you—how I need you! I don’t ever want to feel grown-up again and independent, I don’t care how old I am—”

Trude kissed the tousled head. “You’ve said just what I wanted to hear, dear,” she answered softly. “And that you—need me!”

Summoning them to supper, Miss Letty stood with arms akimbo and with a satisfied eye surveyed the good things she had prepared. That Mr. Dugald was at the hotel starting his aunt and cousin homeward from Provincetown, was Miss Letty’s one regret. Sidney sniffed rapturously at everything, begging that Trude sit next to her. The old kitchen gleamed golden in the fading sunlight, a fragrance of flowers and sea-air and pines came on the breeze that wafted in through the wide-opened doors and windows. Aunt Achsa, her smiling self again, fluttered around in anxious concern as to Trude’s welfare. A great happiness held the little group. Though Lavender’s chair was empty Lavender was better—Lavender would get well!

After supper, while they still lingered over the empty plates, the voices of men came from the lane.

“More folks askin’ after Lav,” declared Miss Letty with pride.

Cap’n Davies himself halted before the door and nodded to the women inside. Back of him stood the men Sidney had met that morning at Rockman’s and back of them Mr. Dugald, smiling, and back of him many others, curious and excited. What ever had happened!

Cap’n Davies wore his most important air.

“I’m here to see one Lavender Green and one Sidney Romley.”

“Phin Davies, you know Lav Green’s flat on his back,” retorted Miss Letty brusquely but smiling. It seemed to Sidney, standing close to Trude, that everyone was smiling.

Mr. Dugald pushed into the room.

“Doctor Blackwell says that it won’t hurt Lav for me to carry him in!” And without another word he rushed off to Lav’s room and returned almost instantly with the boy in his arms. He put him carefully in Aunt Achsa’s rocker and then stood close to him.

Cap’n Phin cleared his throat an extra number of times. Having done this to his satisfaction he drew a blue slip of paper from a leather pocketbook and held it high.

“In the name of Truro and Wellfleet counties