Laughing Last, Jane Abbott [the false prince .txt] 📗
- Author: Jane Abbott
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It had been to young Allan that Aunt Achsa had carried the letter that the baker brought so unexpectedly to the door. Joe had lingered on the doorstep, but had not been rewarded by any hint of its contents. Achsa could not remember when she had had a letter before. She fingered the envelope apprehensively. Yet it could scarcely be bad news of any sort, for there was just herself and Lavender and he was only down in the flats. No one would write anything about him.
“Read it—my eyes ain’t certain with folk’s writing,” she had begged Dugald Allan, in a shaky voice. Thereupon he had read aloud Sidney’s letter.
“I never!” “I swan!” “Why, that’s Annie Green’s girl—Annie was Jon’than’s daughter—I rec’lect her when she wasn’t much bigger than a pint of cider.” Achsa Green fluttered with excitement like a quivering brown leaf caught in a sudden stir of wind. “And the little thing says she knows all about me. Heard her folks tell. Well, well, I wouldn’t ’a said there was a God’s soul knew about Achsa Green outside this harbor! The little pretty. And her ma’s dead—died when she was a baby, poor little mite. Sidney—that’s not a Cape name. Like as not they got it from the other side. Well, Uncle Jon’than allas was diff’runt—he was for books and learnin’ and was a peaked sort, as I rec’lect him—He was consid’rable younger than Pa!”
During Achsa’s excited soliloquy Dugald Allan had an opportunity to reread the letter. He smiled broadly over the reading. But his smile changed to a quick frown as he observed the signature. For a brief second he pondered over it, then by a shake of his head seemed to dismiss some thought.
“What are you going to tell her?” he asked Achsa Green. “Will you let her come on?”
Achsa Green started. She had not thought of the real business of the letter. “Why, I don’t know. It’s a poor place for a young girl—”
“Don’t talk like that, Aunt Achsa. Haven’t I told you this is the only corner of the earth where God’s air is sweet—and untainted?”
Achsa Green could only understand what her Mr. Dugald meant by the expression of his eyes. Now, they encouraged her. “I might fix up the downstairs bedroom. It ain’t been used except to store things since Lavender was born in there and his ma was taken out in a box, but I don’t know but that I could fix it up suit’ble; a young girl ain’t so finicky as grownups. If you won’t mind havin’ a young piece ’round—” uncertainly.
It was not exactly to Dugald Allan’s liking to have a “young piece” around. He had planned some difficult and steady work for the summer. And he had an unreasonable aversion to fifteen-year-olds, at least the kind like his young cousin and her friends, which was the only kind he really knew. But he was touched by Aunt Achsa’s delight in finding “flesh-and-blood” kin; he did not like to dampen her pleasure. He could work somewhere else, in one of the corners of the breakwall or among the dunes. He smilingly assured her that a “young piece” around would add tremendously to his summer.
“I dunno if I can write her a nice enough letter, my hand shakes so, and I ain’t much of a head at spelling. Pa never set anything by books himself and Asabel’s and my schoolin’ sort o’ depended on the elements.” Dugald Allan sensed that Achsa did not want this little unknown cousin, miles away, to know of her lack of “schoolin’.”
“Bless you, I’ll write and I’ll write just as though it came from you.”
“Don’t know as there’s a scrap of writin’ paper in this house.”
“My best is none too good,” promised young Allan promptly, delighting in the growing pleasure in the wrinkled face.
But one more doubt assailed Achsa Green. Lavender.
“D’you think I ought to tell first hand—about Lavender?”
Early in his acquaintance with Aunt Achsa and Sunset Lane Dugald had come to know how it hurt Aunt Achsa to speak of Lavender as “being different.” At first, with courteous consideration he had avoided the truth—then as the summers passed he himself had grown fond enough of the boy to forget the crooked body.
He hesitated a moment before he answered, then he spoke gently:
“No, Aunt Achsa. That is not necessary. And anyway—it’s only the outer shell of him that is different, his soul is fine and straight and manly.”
At this Achsa’s eyes caressed him; he put so easily into words what she tried so bravely to remember.
And thus it had come about that Dugald Allan wrote on his best stationery (which he kept for his letters to his mother) to Sidney Ellis Romley, as though, per promise, it was Cousin Achsa, herself. He had had to write several letters before one quite suited both him and Achsa. The letter despatched, to his surprise he shared with Aunt Achsa considerable interest in its outcome. It would certainly knock the summer flat, but Aunt Achsa’s delighted anticipation was rare.
He helped her to prepare the “spare” room off the parlor and to remove anything that might remind its young occupant of that tragic passing of Lavender’s mother “by box.” He abetted her safeguarding the various mementoes of the days when the Betsy King sailed into the harbor from foreign shores.
“No sense leavin’ things ’round waitin’ to be knocked off long’s they lived through them cats. You can’t tell what fifteen’s goin’ to be!”
“No—” groaned Allan inwardly, “You certainly can not.”
In the last hours before Sidney’s expected arrival he agreed to meet her. Though that was Lavender’s duty he knew, as well as Achsa, that she could not depend upon Lavender. “If he took it into his head to go down to Rockman’s wharf why, he’d go—cousin or no cousin comin’,” Aunt Achsa had worried; and then Dugald had come to the rescue, even promising to go so far as to hire Hiram Foss’s hack—none of the town taxis would go through the sand of Sunset Lane!
WHEN DREAMS COME TRUE
“Land O’ Goshen, you don’t tell me you’re cruisin’ down to the Cape all by yourself! Now, ain’t that exciting! And you never been there before, y’say?”
Sidney nodded, sitting very straight on the seat, her hand closed tightly over her purse which contained all that was left of the Egg after purchasing her tickets. Her face perceptibly brightened. Others had talked to her during the long journey but they had had a way of saying “brave little girl” that had been annoying and that had not helped the lump that persisted in rising in her throat.
This stranger Sidney felt was himself from the Cape. He was big and broad and had bushy white whiskers that encircled a very red face. From his booming voice she knew he must have commanded a ship; perhaps he knew Ezekiel Green and the Betsy King. She smiled shyly at him as he slid into the seat beside her. They were leaving Plymouth behind.
“Goin’ to Provincetown? Well, now, that’s about as far as you can go, ’lowin’ you ain’t goin’ to Race P’int Light, by chance. You be careful that no pirates come ’long and ship and stow you in the fo’castle! There’s a-plenty of ’em ’round these waters yet.”
“Of course I know there aren’t really pirates—but what’s a—a fo’castle?”
Her new friend roared. “Bless the heart of the little landlubber! Why, the—the fo’castle’s the—the fo’castle—for’ard of the fo’mast. And don’t you be too sure about the pirates—you ask Jed Starrow if there ain’t! Only they don’t run up their flag no more—I guess the black sky’s their flag.”
“Have they any treasure buried on the Cape?” Sidney ventured.
The old seaman started to laugh again, then smothered it by a big hand at his whiskers. “Now I won’t say they have or they haven’t. The Cape ought to be full of it. And these here pirates I speak of bury their treasures somewheres—jest where’s the business of Uncle Sam’s men to find out.” He struck his chest proudly and Sidney caught the gleam of a badge pinned to one of the red straps of his suspenders. He saw that she had glimpsed it; doubtless he had intended she should.
“Special deputy marshal—I’m Cap’n Phin Davies of Wellfleet, retired, you might say—at Uncle Sam’s command.”
“Oh, I guessed you’d sailed a ship. Do you—did you know the Greens?”
“Greens? There’s Greens all over the Cape. But I reckon I know ’most everyone in these parts and if I don’t, Elizy does—”
“Ezekiel Green sailed the Betsy King—” enlightened Sidney.
“Old Zeke? Why, sure as spatter! Well, well! I might say I was brought up on stories about Zeke Green. My father overhauled the Betsy King for Zeke. Zeke’s folks any folks of yours?” turning suddenly to Sidney.
Sidney explained that they were—that she was Sidney Romley of Middletown, going now to visit her Cousin Achsa, whom she had never seen and of whom she knew little.
“You don’t say. My, my, comin’ all this way. So Achsa’s livin’, is she? Zeke’s boy died, near as I can remember. I rec’lect a benefit they had for his widow. She was a Wellfleet girl. Seems to me she died, too. Yes, she did—suddenly, when her baby was born. Can’t rec’lect whether the baby lived or not. Don’t pay much time to those things, don’t have to for Elizy does it well enough for the two of us. Ain’t anything on the Cape Elizy misses. Comes to me though that I heard her say something about that kid—sure does. I remember that benefit like it was last night. I’d just come ashore from a long v’yage and was rigged from t’mast to mizzen for a night at Potter’s with the boys and Elizy puts me into a b’iled shirt and makes me hitch up the hoss and drive to that benefit. I guess I ought ’er remember it.”
He was too deep in his own reminiscences to observe the effect of his words upon Sidney. So Cousin Asabel was dead! And they had had a benefit for his widow. Sidney did not know just what a benefit was but the sound of the word connected it in her brain with the League and the mortgage. She wished Cap’n Phin Davies could remember whether the baby had lived or not.
“If it had lived—I mean that baby—how old would it be, now?”
“Oh—yes—the baby. Let’s see. That benefit must a’ been all a’ sixteen or seventeen year ago. It was the last trip I made on the Valiant. Yep, the last. Elizy’d know for sartin sure, though. Ain’t many dates she can’t remember down to the minit. There’s somethin’ about that kid of Green’s I’ve heard Elizy tell—” He turned suddenly to Sidney: “You’re comin’ down to this part of the country to visit what’s left of your folks hereabouts and you don’t know nothin’ ’bout them? Seems to me some one ought ’a shipped with you. Now I wish ’twas Elizy and me you was comin’ to visit. I sartin’ do. Elizy likes little girls—we’ve often wished we had a boat’s crew of ’em. What’s the use
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