EVOLUTION
It was only when they had guests at the Mill Farm that a seven o'clock
breakfast was served, and as yet Sylvia was accounted one of that
privileged class. Thinkright had asked her when she arrived at what
hour it was her custom to breakfast, and she had shrugged her
shoulders.
"Father and I never liked to take it before nine o'clock," she said,
"but it made the landlady so cross that when we owed for board we
usually tried to get down by half past eight."
Thinkright smiled at this. "Here you can go to bed earlier," he
returned. "We will try breakfast at seven o'clock." Sylvia looked
somewhat aghast, and it was not for some time that she discovered what
a concession had been made in her favor.
One morning, a fortnight after Judge Trent's visit, she came out on the
stone step at the kitchen door to scent the morning, while Mrs. Lem
scoured the cooking dishes.
Cap'n Lem came along. His red face with its white fringe beamed kindly
upon her under the old straw hat.
"Wall, now, you're lookin' smaht, Sylvy," he said, as he paused.
"Beginnin' to look real kind o' sassy and rosy. I guess they use ye
pretty well here." His shrewd blue eyes twinkled at her, and he gave a
sharp nod of satisfaction. "Shouldn't wonder if you'd be gittin' up in
the mornin' some o' these days."
"Oh, I do," replied Sylvia. "It's no trouble for me any more. Mrs. Lem
let me make the coffee this morning, and we all sat down at seven
o'clock promptly. Where were you? I don't believe I've seen you at
breakfast since I've been here."
The old man's shoulders heaved in his toothless laugh. "Seven o'clock,"
he said scornfully. "Yew look through a knot-hole in your floor any
mornin' when it's handy to four o'clock and yew'll see my breakfast
doin's."
Sylvia opened her eyes, genuinely bewildered. "But why do you want to
get up in the night?" she asked.
"Night!" he repeated. "What ye talkin' abaout? It's jest the hahnsomest
time o' the hull day. I git up to go to the pound, o' course."
"The pound?" Sylvia stared in wonder. "Do you lose cows every day?"
"Cows! What ye talkin' abaout?"
"Why, you said pound. That's for lost cows and dogs, isn't it?"
Cap'n Lem stared a moment, and then cackled merrily.
"So 'tis, some places," he answered. "Geewhitaker! I must tell Lucil
that!" His eyes disappeared. When he could open them again he went on:
"I never give a thought to that afore. My pound's a net aout in the
fishin' ground; an' I go an' haul it every mornin'."
"Oh, may I go with you some time?" asked Sylvia eagerly.
"Sure ye kin." Cap'n Lem slapped his leg and burst forth again. "Haw,
haw, haw, Sylvy. Mebbe we'll find some lost sea cows and dogfish caught
out there. No knowin'. Well, anyway, I'm glad to see sech a change come
over a gal in a few weeks as there has over you. Yes, indeed, you'll be
gittin' up in the mornin' some day. It beats all how folks kin stay in
bed. I've took garden sass to the Derwents' to Hawk Island, and I've
found 'em eatin' breakfast at half past eight. Why, it's jest as easy
fer us to git up as 'tis for the cawtage folks to lay."
"Do you mean to say that everybody would get up here if it weren't for
me?" asked Sylvia disconcerted.
"Wall, Thinkright's allers done his chores afore he sits down with yer;
but Lucil, she's kind o' cawtage folks-y in her feelin's. When my woman
was alive I allers did git my own breakfast anyway, and let her lay as
long as she wanted, and so I do Lucil. Jes' as like as not she lays
till half past five o'clock."
"Well, probably it's because you go to bed so early that it's easy for
you."
"No, I don't," replied Cap'n Lem promptly. "Lots o' times when I've had
a real wearin' day I feel like settin' up to rest in the evenin'. Time
an' ag'in I hain't shet my eyes afore nine o'clock."
Sylvia's small teeth gleamed in her prettiest smile. After all, what
was the difference between dining at seven and retiring at eleven, and
supping at five o'clock, as they always did at the Mill Farm, and
retiring at nine?
"Well, I think it's my duty to make you and my cousin Thinkright more
lazy," she said.
The old man shook his head. "I don't cal'late to call myself lazy
s'long's I don't git one o' these here motor boats fer fishin'. Let a
man use one o' them three years, and by that time he's got to hev an
auto_mo_bile to git from the house to the boat. They're a good thing
fer religion though, 'cause they make a man so mad he can't swear. I'm
lazy to what I used to be," continued Cap'n Lem after a meditative
pause, "when I used to fish all day and then row all night in a calm to
git the ketch to market. Tell ye that wuz workin' twenty-five hours out
o' the twenty-four; and when a man does that he 'd ought to git a
life-sentence, and if he outlives it he'd ought to be hung." The
speaker took off his hat and fanned himself. "It's a-goin' to be some
scaldin' to-day, Sylvy."
The girl laughed. "Then when I carry the milk down cellar I shall stay
there. It's so funny to have the cellar under the parlor as it is
here."
"'Tis out o' the common, but the ground was so shoal at the kitchen end
it hed to be dug that way. Judge Trent hed that cellar made. I visited
him once to Seaton. Did he ever tell ye?"
"No."
"Well, you'd better believe, he and Miss Lacey they jest hove to, and
gave me the best time I ever"--
"Sylvy!" Mrs. Lem's voice sounded from within. "You can come now. The
water's as hot as Topet and we can begin."
Thinkright had taken an early start that morning with the team. Sylvia
would have liked to go with him, but he explained that he had to bring
back a cumbersome load and needed all the room in the wagon.
Her talks with him were ushering her farther and farther each day into
a new world. Even his silences were so full of peace and strength that
she loved to be with him. She found herself gaining a consciousness of
that peace,--a faith in the care of a Father for His children which was
the motive power of Thinkright's life. That she had found her cousin,
and been guided to him, was to her an undoubted proof and corroboration
of much that Thinkright told her. She looked back upon the idle,
discontented girl of the boarding-house in Springfield with wonder and
perplexity that such a state of mind could have existed for her. She
had impulsive longings to have her father back that she might help him
as she had never known how to do; and then came the thought, so quietly
but persistently instilled by Thinkright, that the beam in her own eye
need be her only care, for by the riddance of all wrong consciousness
in herself good would radiate to her environment, and that her father
was being taken care of.
From the first moment of yielding her heart and thought to Thinkright's
influence the eagerness of her nature made her long to show him
quickly--at once--that she would not be vain, would not be selfish,
would be humble, would arrive at that state which would cause her
cousin to say of her as he had of Edna Derwent, "She does some very
good thinking."
The impulse led her to offer help to Mrs. Lem, which, being accepted,
Sylvia found herself making beds, wiping dishes, and weeding a flower
garden; and her industry so astonished herself that she wondered that
those about her could take it so calmly. Her previous life had
consisted of more or less definite yearnings for good times. These
"good times" had consisted in an occasional dance or visit to the
theatre, and had been the oases in a dull life of idleness varied only
by occasional hours when she would pick up her father's materials, and,
without permission, would work on one of his unfinished pictures, or
else make lively sketches of his friends, to his unfailing amusement.
"I wish you'd be serious over it, Sylvia," he used to say at such
times. "There isn't a bit of doubt that some day I should be able to
point to you with pride."
Upon which his daughter would be likely to respond that neither of them
belonged to the laboring class, and he could not contradict her.
While she was still very young he had perceived her talent, and from
time to time in his desultory fashion had instructed her. There were
those among his friends who endeavored to rouse his ambition for the
girl, but he had not the force to combat her hereditary objection to
work, and he always shrugged away their pleas.
"Sylvia's bound for a matrimonial port, anyway," he used to say. "With
her face she'll make that harbor fast enough. It would only be throwing
money away to start her on a career."
He had made similar speeches often in her hearing, and she recalled
them now as with clearer vision she looked out upon life and peered
wistfully into the possible vistas of her future.
When her father had seen his end approaching with swiftness, and the
realization came that his pretty child was unprepared to meet the
world, he had said a good word for his actor friend, as the most
practical and substantial admirer on Sylvia's list; and this she
remembered, too, with a great wave of gratitude for deliverance.
The Mill Farm abounded in spots which tempted one to live out of doors.
There was the tall pine with its mystical whispered songs. Thinkright
had swung a hammock from one of its branches since Judge Trent's visit.
From beneath its shade was no view of the sea, but one could lie there
and listen to the rhythmic murmur of the waves answering the strains of
an Æolian harp which Thinkright's clever hands had fashioned and placed
in the shadow of the upper branches. There Sylvia took the books which
her cousin gave her to study, and read and study she did, despite the
temptation to day-dreaming. Little by little, by gentle implications,
Thinkright had conveyed to her that there was to be no thought of her
leaving him; and her love moved her strongly to do his bidding and win
his approval.
"He doesn't do it for my sake. He does it for God and mother," she
reflected, as often as some new proof of his thought for her appeared.
Little hints of the old yearnings to be admired, to be paramount,
flashed up through her new-found humility at times, but they grew
fainter with each discovery of her own ignorance, and her mental world
enlarged; and in this inner realm she always found two ideals reigning,
a prince and a princess,--John Dunham and Edna Derwent. They were
beings who breathed a rarer air than she had ever known. All that was
fine in her leaped to a comprehension that the more she developed, the
more she should value that in their experience which at present was a
sealed book to her. She always classed them together resolutely in her
thought. It was a species of self-defense which she had begun to employ
from the moment of mental panic which ensued upon Miss Derwent's
mention of Dunham's name.
Sylvia had read countless novels, for her father had been insatiate of
them; but she had been so confident of her own charm, and so busily
engaged in picturing the manner in which she should discourage or make
happy her suitors, that the possibilities of her own active
heart-interest had not absorbed much of her thought. The coming of John
Dunham into her life had changed all that. In a moment of high and
sensitive excitement he had dawned upon her vision as a novel type of
manhood, and one representing all that was desirable. In vain she knew
the superficiality of this judgment. In vain she reasoned her ignorance
of him and his character. He had captivated her imagination, and this
was the reason that Edna Derwent, as soon as she mentioned him, loomed
to Sylvia's stirred thought in the light of a dangerous foe. Edna's
very invincibility, however, aided Sylvia's final capitulation to
Thinkright. There was neither reason nor comfort for her in desiring to
rival the finished and all-conquering Miss Derwent. Thinkright held out
the hope that she could alter her own thought; change that sore and
miserable consciousness to one where reigned the beauty of peace. Never
since that night of bitterness had she strayed from the path which her
new light revealed. Judge Trent's visit removed the last doubt as to
her remaining with Thinkright, and she knew that if the Mill Farm were
to be her home neither Miss Derwent nor Mr. Dunham would remain a
stranger to her. Then it became doubly necessary for her to think right
concerning them. They had not met for years until this summer; and now
there could surely be but one result from their meeting again. So they
stood, equal and preëminent, prince and princess of Sylvia's mental
realm, and there she meant to let them reign; meant to rejoice in their
happiness, and never to permit herself to dream one dream of this ideal
man which could not pass under the espionage of Edna's bright eyes.