Laughing Last, Jane Abbott [the false prince .txt] 📗
- Author: Jane Abbott
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He never did finish his speech. His voice was drowned in loud hurrahs that echoed and reechoed down the lane and brought Gran’ma Calkins and Mart and Tillie Higgins in a great hurry to Achsa Green’s.
Sidney’s face flamed.
“Oh, I don’t want it!” she cried. “It’s Lav’s. Honestly. He really found out about the diamonds. I—I just—”
Everyone looked at Lavender, whose face had gone even whiter. Against it his eyes shone big and black. He seemed to straighten in the old chair and his poor shoulders took on a fine dignity.
“I—didn’t—want—any—money,” he answered in a voice so weak that it was scarcely anything more than a whisper.
But here the practical Miss Letty, who had taught Mrs. Allan her lesson on Cape Cod folks, took charge of matters.
“Well, you can do a whole lot with money, Lav Green. As long as the two counties decided it was worth that much to run down these smugglers I reckon you’ve earned it. And I want you men to go away from here and spread the word over the whole of Cape Cod that in that crooked body of Lav Green’s is a heart that’s as brave as the bravest and ambition, too. Folks have gotten to think he’s a loafer because he wouldn’t go to school, but they’ll come to know he isn’t and you can tell them Letty Vine knows for she’s taught him herself and he knows as much and more than any boy his age! And now—well, you watch Lav Green! That’s all I can say. Some day you men will hear about him and remember this day and be awful proud!”
Miss Vine had to stop to swallow something in her throat. Cap’n Phin forgot entirely the nice phrases he had practiced for the occasion. His men shuffled slowly out of the room, some of them coughing and others covertly wiping their eyes.
Mr. Dugald and Doctor Blackwell and Cap’n Phin and Martie and Gran’ma Calkins remained. Mart and Sidney were excitedly examining the little slip of paper that meant five thousand whole dollars, not with any coveting, for Mart was as vehement as Sidney in disclaiming any share in the reward. It was Lav’s. But for Lav’s risking everything to swim to shore no one might have known anything about Jed Starrow’s connection with the persistent smuggling.
“Oh, where is Jed Starrow?” Sidney suddenly asked and Cap’n Phin told her Jed Starrow was in jail.
“It’ll be a lesson to him and others like him,” he continued, sternly. “Betrayin’ the honor of the Cape! And him born and brought up on it!”
Sidney felt a moment’s regret that anyone had to be in jail. Then she forgot it in everyone’s interest as to what Lavender would do with so much money. They pressed him on every side, heedless of Doctor Blackwell’s warning that the boy should not be unduly excited.
Lav’s eyes found Aunt Achsa’s smiling face.
“Get Aunt Achsa an oil stove,” he answered promptly. “And—and lots of things. And books. And—” his eyes kindled. But he broke off abruptly. He was going to say that now he could go to school in one of the big cities where folks did not notice other folks who were “different.” But he did not say it, he did not want to spoil Aunt Achsa’s joy.
Sidney understood and, reaching out, squeezed one of Lavender’s hands.
Doctor Blackwell ordered his patient back to bed. Martie took Gran’ma Calkins home. With much handshaking Cap’n Phin took his leave. Miss Letty and Trude and Sidney briskly cleared away the dishes.
“I feel as though I had lived ten years since I heard those men pounding on Steve Blackwell’s door,” declared Miss Letty, piling the plates with a clatter.
“Oh, ten! A hundred! I didn’t know anyone could live so fast all at one time!” agreed Sidney solemnly. “Sometimes I think I’m just dreaming and will wake up and find that nothing’s happened. I won’t mind going home now for I’ll have so much to think about!”
“Going home?” gasped Aunt Achsa. “Why—why—”
Dugald Allan, coming from Lavender’s room, interrupted them.
“I beg to report that your millionaire nephew is resting quietly and is in fine shape.” Sidney noticed with a little glow of feeling how quickly Mr. Dugald’s eyes sought Trude’s. And she thought Trude cruel to look away!
Miss Vine persuaded Aunt Achsa to go to bed and then said good-night herself. Her “ten years” had left her fatigued. Dugald Allan walked as far as the lane with her then came back, remembering suddenly that he was carrying two letters in his pocket.
“In the excitement I nearly forgot them,” he apologized. He drew them out. Both were for Trude and had been forwarded by special delivery from Long Island. One was from Vick and one from Issy.
“Oh, open them quickly,” begged Sidney.
Trude’s hand trembled as she held Issy’s envelope. “I’m—almost afraid to. I know it’s silly—but so much has happened today that—I don’t think—I could bear—anything more!”
NO ONE LAUGHS LAST
Trude read Issy’s letter aloud, not noticing in her high pitch of anxiety that Dugald Allan had lingered.
“—I am going to tell something now concerning which I have given no hint in my former letters. It’s something that means so much to me that I have not dared write about it until it was decided. And now it is decided. Professor Deering has asked me to stay on with him as his secretary. And I have accepted. The salary will not be so very big though it will seem big to me and I am happy among books and bookish people and working right here in the college will give me opportunities I never had before.
“But Trude dear, I feel like a deserter! To think that I who used to preach the loudest of our duty to Dad’s memory and the tradition of his genius should be the first to break from it! I believe now that Sidney, that morning she had her little flare-up and we promised her the Egg, broke down restraints that have been holding us all. Certainly, ever since then, rebellious thoughts have been growing in me. I have come to see our lives differently and to believe that we’ve been silly. We thought we had to go on living the same kind of lives we led when Dad was with us, that we had to submerge our own personalities to his because his was so great. Maybe the League frightened us into thinking that; they bought us or thought they did. But Trude, they couldn’t! They can buy the house and the atmosphere and Dad’s coat and chair and pens and all that but they can’t buy Dad’s children! Dad wouldn’t want it that way. Why, we are his greatest creation and our lives are his gift to us and he would want us to make something fine of those gifts—something that would be our own. Sidney said that she wanted to be something besides Joseph Romley’s daughter and that was simply her real self crying for escape. I hope the dear child has found it in a happy summer and has had her fill of the adventure she craved.
“Happy as I am I cannot bear thinking of leaving you with the responsibilities of Vick and Sidney and the League, except that you have always carried the responsibility anyway. But it seems too much for even shoulders like yours. So I’ve been making schemes. Vick will be sure to marry soon, bless her pretty face, and then with my salary and the royalties we can send Sidney away to school and you can plan something for yourself just as I have done. It’s a wonderful feeling, Trude, I am just beginning to live! I don’t mind a bit now thinking of being an old maid—”
Trude folded the letter, suddenly conscious of her listeners. Sidney caught at it as though to make certain it had actually been written by her sister Isolde.
“Think of it. Trude! A hope-to-die secretary with a salary! I do believe it’s old Issy who’s going to laugh last.”
“What do you mean Sidney?” asked Trude; but she did not wait for Sidney to answer. Her thoughts were elsewhere. “I believe Issy has torn a veil from us all. We were silly. We held to the ties of Dad as a poet and were losing the sweet real ones of him as a father. Of course he’d want us—the father part of him—to live our own lives, make of them what we can—”
“Would he?” cried Dugald Allan from his corner. And at the sound of his voice Trude started, her face flushing crimson. “Then, Trude Romley, will you please withdraw that answer you gave me out on the breakwall? It can’t hold good now.”
“Oh, hush! Don’t! Not here—now—”
Sidney, alert to some deeper meaning, took up his question.
“What answer?” she demanded.
Mr. Dugald threw his arm about her shoulder. “Sid, I asked your sister to marry me. You see I found out that you needed a big brother, someone with a stern eye and a hard heart and I rather want the job. And that’s the only way I can think of. And she says she cannot, that she must keep the little household together in return for what the League has done and cook and sew and sweep and keep accounts. I think there was a lot more—”
Sidney threw out an imploring hand to her sister.
“Oh, Trude, please! I do need a big brother. And Mr. Dugald’s grand! And rich. Pola said so. And dear. And it’d be such fun having him in the family! I’ll go away to school and Vick can work and we can give the old house over to the League. Issy said they couldn’t buy us! And—why, there are just loads of women trying to get Mr. Dugald—”
“Sidney Romley, stop!” Trude stamped her foot in confused exasperation. She refused to meet Dugald’s yearning eyes.
“No League can mortgage your heart or your happiness!” he pleaded softly. “It belongs to you—to give—”
“I object to being courted in this—public—manner,” Trude broke in, her hands flying to her face. But Dugald Allan caught the surrender in her eyes. He seized her hand.
“All right. We’ll go out in the garden. Excuse us, Sid. When I come back I think I’ll be your big brother.”
Sidney’s eyes followed them longingly until they disappeared behind a hedge of hollyhocks. She wanted to laugh and to cry all at once she was so strangely happy; her girl heart stirred with a vicarious thrill to the look she had seen in Trude’s face. Well, Trude would laugh last! Dear old Trude. Trude a bride when everyone had thought that she would never marry, just because she had no beaus like Vick or languishing poets like Issy.
Sidney stood still in the center of the dusk gray room. She did not know what she wanted to do next—or even think of. She would like to plan the wedding at once with herself as a beautiful bridesmaid in shimmery white and Mart and Pola and Lavender and Aunt Achsa there to see, and she would like just to think of Mrs. Milliken’s face when she heard about everything and—
Suddenly her eyes fell upon Vick’s forgotten letter. What had Vick written? No ordinary letter could come on this momentous day! Perhaps Vick had written that she had eloped—she had read that sometimes even nice girls did that, girls oppressed by things like the League. She opened the letter without any hesitation and carried it to the door that she might read it by the fading light.
It was not neatly margined like Issy’s; the
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