Laughing Last, Jane Abbott [the false prince .txt] 📗
- Author: Jane Abbott
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Then Sidney heard for the first time of Isolde’s invitation to the Deerings. Isolde had thrown it in self-defense at Mrs. Milliken. “I do not expect to be here, Mrs. Milliken. I am going to Professor Deering’s for July and August to help him with his new book.” Sidney turned away to hide a sudden smile, not, however, before she caught Trude’s eyes anxiously upon her.
Then the Egg—seventy whole dollars—came on the same day that Godmother Jocelyn informed Vick by telegram that if she could be ready by the first of July she could go with her to California by way of the Canadian Rockies. “Be ready! Well, I should just say I could!” Vick’s eyes had shone like stars against a velvet black sky and Sidney had again intercepted that anxious glance from Trude.
Isolde considered this an auspicious moment, with all the excitement over Vick, to break to Sidney their plans for the summer—plans hurried to a head by the League’s announcement.
“And Trude’s going to Long Island with the Whites, dear, but you won’t be lonely with Huldah. You can have Nancy here and probably she will invite you down to Cascade.”
“Oh, there’s a letter from Huldah on the table in the hall! I meant to bring it in and forgot,” cried Vick.
“Get it, dear,” asked Isolde, gently, of Sidney. Action would help Sidney control her disappointment—if the child was disappointed. Perhaps Trude was over-apprehensive.
Trude hastily scanned the few lines of the letter Sidney put into her hands. “Oh, dear,” she exclaimed “Huldah can’t come.”
Could any fairy godmother, indeed, have shaped circumstances with more kindly hand?
“She says she can’t leave her niece. Her niece’s just had a baby. And her rheumatism is bad.”
“I call that rank disloyalty,” cried Isolde with spirit. “After all we’ve stood from Huldah!”
“What’ll we do? Can’t we make her come? Doesn’t she owe us more consideration than her niece?”
Trude put the letter down. “Huldah isn’t disloyal. You know that, Isolde. And she doesn’t owe us anything. Don’t forget, Vick, that she worked for us for years for almost nothing when she could have gone anywhere else and received good pay. This house is damp and big and Huldah is old. No, we can’t beg her to come—over this. It was probably hard for her to refuse. I’ll stay home with Sid. We’ll have lots more fun here together than I’d have with Aunt Edith White on Long Island—in spite of the League. Will we not, Sid?”
There was so much more sincerity in Trude’s honest blue eyes than any suggestion of self-sacrifice that Sidney ran around to her and hugged her. She longed to tell Trude and the others of her own budding plans—only she had not received as yet an answer from Cousin Achsa. So all she could say was: “We just won’t mind the League!”
And then that very afternoon the postman, meeting her outside the wall, had handed her an envelope addressed to “Miss Sidney Ellis Romley” and postmarked Provincetown!
Sidney ran with it straight to her attic retreat. Her heart within her breast hurt with its high hopes. There was a Cousin Achsa—her own letter had reached her and had been answered! She studied the unfamiliar writing on the envelope—it was a big sweeping script. The envelope felt fine and soft in her fingers and smelled faintly of a fragrance that was not of flowers and yet distinctly pleasant. Oh, this Cousin Achsa must be wealthy, like Pola!
She broke the envelope and spread out the double sheet it contained. At its top she read, “My dear little Cousin.” She paused long enough to wonder why Cousin Achsa thought that she was little.
“My dear little Cousin:
“Of course you may come to visit us. We shall enjoy learning to love a young cousin who must be delightful if we can judge from her letter. We blame ourselves and the miles that have separated us for not knowing anything of ‘Sidney Ellis Romley’ until yesterday, though we knew your mother in days long past. Will you write and tell us when we may expect you? Can a girl of fifteen find her way to this outlying bit of country? If you decide you cannot perhaps we can arrange for you to come with someone. We await your word with affectionate anticipation.
Sidney blinked hard simply to be certain that the words actually lay before her eyes. Then she read it again and again—aloud. Oh, it was too wonderful to believe. It was a beautiful letter—Cousin Achsa must surely live in the square white house on the eminence she had pictured. She had written “we” so perhaps Cousin Asabel still lived or maybe there were young cousins. Anyway, they wanted her. She hugged the letter to her and rushed off to find the girls. Oh, Huldah could stay with her niece if she wanted to! And Trude could go to Long Island! The Leaguers could come and camp in the house! Guided by the murmur of voices Sidney broke headlong into an informal conference of the older sisters. Her drama-loving soul could not have built a more perfect stage, nor asked a more thrilling moment of denouement. Isolde had just declared generously, that she could not enjoy a day of her stay with the Deerings if Trude had to give up the Long Island plans.
“It isn’t as though we girls received invitations every day,” she explained tearfully. “And it’ll be stupid for you here, Trude, with just Sidney. Perhaps it’s my duty to stay home and help Mrs. Milliken.”
“Your sacrifice is quite unnecessary!” Sid answered in such a queer voice that the three older girls stared at her in alarm. In truth her flushed face and wild eyes gave strength to the sudden conviction that she had gone mad! She fairly leaped at Isolde and flung her letter into Isolde’s lap. “I guess ‘just Sid’ is capable of making her own plans!”
Sidney had a moment’s terror that she was “beginning” wrong but Isolde’s remark which she had overheard had upset all her preplanned diplomacy. Now she stood back, anxiously, and watched Isolde read the letter.
As Isolde read it aloud she punctuated it with excited exclamations.
“‘My dear little Cousin’—Why, Sid, how did you happen to write to her? How did you know she wasn’t dead? Why—‘Of course you may come and visit us!’ Sid, what have you been doing? Why—” and so, to the end.
Sidney drew a long breath and braced herself. Her explanation tumbled out with such incoherence that the girls kept interrupting her to ask her to repeat something. Well, they had told her she could use the Egg any way she wanted to and she wanted to go somewhere a long way off—on a train. One always had to visit someone or with somebody and she’d remembered these cousins—
“Why, how could you, Sid? I don’t think you’ve ever heard us speak of them. I’m sure I’d almost forgotten them—”
“Well, I did. Blood’s thicker than water,” witheringly, “and maybe you can just remember relatives without ever hearing anything about them. She’s nice, I know, because her father was persevering and thrifty—”
A sudden laugh from Vick brought Sidney to an abrupt stop. But Isolde, rebuking Vick with a lift of her right shoulder, turned her attention again to the letter.
“It’s a very nice letter—a—a cultured letter, don’t you think so, Trude? Somehow I have always had the idea that these relations in the East—the Greens—were very poor and—well, uneducated. But this letter doesn’t look like it. And they actually seem to want Sidney to come!”
“It’s a long way—” Trude put in.
“But I want to go a long way. I don’t just want to go to some place right near home—like Cascade. There’s money enough—Nancy and I asked at the railroad station. And the man there gave me a timetable with all sorts of interesting pictures on it. It’s the very most interesting place I ever heard of—it’s an education. I want to go. I’ve—I’ve never been anywhere.”
Isolde was trying not to look as though this unexpected development of things was pleasing but she simply could not suppress the thought that in permitting Sid to go to these cousins lay their one chance of happy escape for their summer. After all—these Cape Cod relatives were first cousins of their mother’s, her very own people. She wished she could remember what her mother had told of them from time to time but it could not have been anything to their discredit or she would have remembered. And the letter, in its woody fragrance, the bold sweep of the handwriting, the expensive texture of the paper, bespoke culture, even wealth. However, with a lingering sense of duty, she reminded Sidney that this Cousin Achsa must be very old.
As if that mattered! Sidney flung out an impatient hand. It was like Isolde to sit rock-fashion and trump up reasons why she’d better not go. But Vick came unexpectedly to her aid.
“If she’s old—all the better. She’ll make Sid behave herself. I think this is the luckiest thing that could have happened. Now we can all go away. Sid wanted adventure—she’ll have it with Cousin—what’s her name?”
Though she writhed under the tone in Vick’s voice Sidney bit her lips over the retort that sprang to them. Anyway, she would have her adventure. She wanted to go on the train all alone; the ticket office man had said it would be quite safe and had told her that he’d write something on a card that she could show to each conductor. She’d like not to have even to do that, for that seemed a little babyish.
Trude had found a reassuring thought. “I’ll be near enough, anyway, so that if Sid gets homesick or finds that things aren’t just what she’d like them to be she can telegraph to me and come home. You will, won’t you, kid?”
Sid promised hastily. Then for the next half hour everything whirled about her; she could not believe what her ears heard, what her eyes beheld. The girls were actually planning for her—clothes, trunks, tickets, trains. Trude was figuring and making notes on the back of Cousin Achsa’s letter. It was, “Sid will need this—Sid had better do that—it will be nice for Sid to see this—I think by way of Boston is the better route—you’d better write to Cousin Achsa, Trude—No, let Sid write herself—had we ought to consult the Trustees? Why, we’re old enough to decide this for ourselves—she’d better go just before Vick and then we can pack away our intimate things and turn the house over to the League.”
“Didn’t Evangeline come from somewhere up that way? Oh, no. Well, I always think of Cape Cod and Nova Scotia as being off there on the map together. Anyway, write and tell us, kid, when you find the Chalice or Grail or whatever it is! If you discover any untrodden fields of romance—wire us and we’ll send one of Issy’s poets down—”
Now, in her exalted spirit Sid could meet Vick’s raillery with a level glance. Let Vick laugh! Cape Cod wasn’t off “somewhere” in a corner of the map. It was as intriguing as the Canadian Rockies. And she had a lot shut away in her heart about which Vick and the others knew nothing. All that about the good ship Betsy King. Betsy King had foundered as a good ship should, but there was a big chance that Cousin Asabel, Ezekiel’s son, might have a boat. Then she had a glimpse into a beautiful world that Pola had given her; she would see Pola’s world from the train window.
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