In the evening of the day when Mermaid ran out to meet young Dick Hand
on the sidewalk, sprites were abroad. As if it had conspired with Dick
and Mermaid, the wind refrained all day long from blowing and rattling
Keturah Smiley’s unfastened shutters, and thus giving the two youthful
conspirators away. But at night there came a wrenching sound, as if
the broadside of the house were being ripped off. Keturah Smiley gave
an exclamation and jumped to her feet. She rushed from the room and
returned a moment later carrying a pistol.
Mermaid saw it and screamed. Then she flung herself at the woman.
“No, no! Miss Smiley,” she implored in little gasps. “It’s only boys!
It’s only Hallowe’en!”
“Nonsense,” Keturah retorted, holding the pistol out of reach and
checking the girl with her other hand. “I’m not going to murder ’em.
I’m only going to frighten ’em into behaving themselves, and leaving my
property alone!”
She moved quickly to the door, opened it, and fired two shots. From the
darkness came an awful cry, as of mortal pain, followed by whimpers and
the sound of scurrying feet. Keturah became utterly pale, and her tall
figure seemed to lose its rigidity.
“Do you suppose one of those boys could have been perched in the big
maple?” she inquired, faintly. “I shot in the air!”
There was a great rushing about and the woman and girl finally went
outside with a lantern. The light bobbed about under the maple and
around the house, but no white, stricken face was illuminated by the
rays; they heard no other cries, no moans; and except for the rustle
of the fallen leaves they trod upon there was no sound. Gradually
recovering herself in the chill air Keturah strode indoors, Mermaid
following her. Miss Smiley, as her fright left her, became more and
more indignant.
“It’s that Dick Hand’s boy,” she commented. “Always up to mischief,
like his father. A bad lot, the Hands, all except Hosea, who’s a fool.”
At this mention of her Uncle Ho Mermaid pricked up her ears. Miss
Smiley was in a talkative mood, seeking relief from her vexation. The
girl could not refrain from asking, “Is Uncle Ho a fool?”
“Yes, he is, to have let his brother cheat him out of his rightful
property all these years,” Keturah Smiley told her.
Mermaid felt a pang.
“Uncle Ho is awfully good to me,” she said, sadly. “I can’t have
anything to do with Dick if his father cheated Uncle Ho.”
Keturah gave her a curious look.
“Don’t make other folks’ quarrels your quarrels, Mary,” she observed.
“And while ‘the boy is father to the man,’ Dick Hand’s boy may be a
better man than his father.”
“I won’t be friends with Dick if his father cheated Uncle Ho,” the girl
persisted.
“You go on being friends with Dick,” Keturah advised her, “and leave me
to deal with his father.”
A strange, grim expression was on her face, an expression which had
more of satisfaction in it than Mermaid had ever observed before, an
expression that was almost happy, and that was not unknown in Blue
Port. The senior Richard Hand had seen it on the day when he first
came to Keturah Smiley to borrow money. His brother, Hosea Hand, had
never witnessed it; and Hosea Hand thought he knew every shade of
Keturah Smiley’s countenance--a countenance that was singularly inapt
at denoting the finer shades of feeling. For Hosea Hand had even seen a
look of tenderness in those sharp eyes; he had seen that mouth, so firm
at the corners, relax into smiles at the smile he gave her. Once upon a
time Hosea Hand had been young, and once upon a time Keturah Smiley had
been young, and it was about that time that Hosea Hand’s brother--of
whom a reasonable doubt might be entertained as to whether he had ever
been young at all--that Dick Hand, the older, had come between two
lovers.
In the morning three shutters were gone from the front parlour windows
and the streaming sunshine had already, according to Keturah Smiley’s
emphatic pronouncement, begun to fade the old rose carpet. What was
worse, the shutters could not be found, though what appeared to be
their ashes lay, still smouldering, in a lot a quarter of a mile away.
Keturah poked through the black remains and fished out a peculiarly
shaped hinge, adding to her observations of the evening before on the
badness of the Hands. But she expressed no intention of putting her
hand in her pocket to buy new window coverings. With a wrench that
bade fair to take them from their rollers she pulled down the parlour
shades. Yet a spell had been broken. The sacred room could never regain
its dark repose. Mermaid, dusting the mahogany “deacon’s chairs,”
ventured discreetly to raise the shades a little at the bottom, and
gradually they rose higher and higher until they shielded the upper
sashes only. An agreeable light streamed into the room and lit up the
curios brought back from his sea voyages by Captain John Hawkins,
husband of Keturah Hawkins and master of the clipper ship _China
Castle_, curios that Keturah Smiley had inherited from Keturah Hawkins
along with the house and her aunt’s land and money. Though not more
wonderful than the full-rigged ship which Uncle Ho had carved in the
glass bottle, these heirlooms were perceptibly more precious.
There was a jade Buddha which, on its first appearance in Blue Port
fifty years earlier, had administered its shock to the Christian ladies
of the Missionary Society, and had long been retired into oblivion.
There was a collection of swords and cutlasses with which Keturah
Smiley might have defended herself against all Blue Port advancing
against her. On a mantel were ivory ornaments, intricately carved,
and on either side of the fireplace were mammoth elephants’ tusks.
Gold gleamed from damascened swords; silver bands shone more coldly
from the tusks; some copper vessels on the floor dully reflected the
unaccustomed daylight; but the precious stones which had once enhanced
the beauty of these relics of far ports had been removed from their
settings and their fires smothered forever in the feathers of a pillow
on Keturah Smiley’s four-poster bed.
Mermaid used to look at the empty sockets and express sorrow that all
these must once have held jewels which had been lost. She took an
imaginative joy in restoring them, in her mind’s eye, to their rightful
places, and in deciding just what gem belonged with every background.
She had a sense in these matters, and she never enshrined a diamond
where a ruby should have been bleeding.
Of the permanent results of their Hallowe’en pranks she apprised
thirteen-year-old Dick Hand when they met at school. She told him of
some of the treasures brought to light, but she said nothing of the
value of them and she never spoke of the vanished jewels. She was
curious, however, about the cry of pain and the whimpering that had
frightened Miss Smiley on the night of the raid. Dick, who was a merry
boy, laughed. “Oh, we knew she’d fire a pistol in the air; she’s done
it before. I just made those noises to scare her,” he explained.
Then, as Mermaid laughed with him, the boy became suddenly earnest. He
looked at the girl with an air of surprise.
“Say, Mermaid, you’re an awful nice girl,” he said, and looking at
her he slowly reddened. In a moment he recovered himself and finished
successfully, “An awful nice girl to be living with that--that--_old
cat_!”
Mermaid was really indignant. She told him so, and then she left him,
which was not what he wanted at all. He hardly knew what he wanted. As
for Mermaid, she was too incensed to be observant; she was certainly
not aware that he wanted anything. The boy stood looking after her
faintly dismayed, but a good deal more perplexed. Then he scratched his
head, gave a whistle to another boy across the street, and sang out:
“Hey, Tom! Did you find out who that new feller is on your street?”
Young Tom Lupton, son of Tom Lupton of the Lone Cove Coast Guard
Station, and therefore one of Mermaid’s cousins by courtesy in the
queer relationships that sprang out of her rescue from the surf,
waggled his head.
“C’m over and I’ll tell you all about him,” he invited.
Dick crossed the street and punched Tom’s head in a comradely fashion.
They clinched, broke away, sparred a little, and then stopped,
breathless and satisfied.
“Who is he?”
“Search me,” replied Tom Lupton 2nd, less in the voice of entreaty than
with the air of a man making a succinct statement. “I tried to talk
to him to-day over the fence and the guy only said ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ to
ever’thing. I got his name--that Guy.”
“What is it?” asked Dick, innocently.
“Guy,” answered Tom. “Ow!” He doubled over to protect his ribs from the
impatient Mr. Hand. “I told yuh, Guy! Guy! His name is Guy! Like--like
‘Guy Mannering,’” explained Mr. Lupton, who was fifteen and didn’t look
it, and was taking English I in Patchogue High School, and didn’t speak
it.
“Mannering, what sort of a name is that?” demanded Mr. Hand.
“It isn’t Mannering, it’s Vanton,” said Tom, wisely not trying to
explain. Whereupon Mr. Hand, remarking, “You said it was Mannering,
I’ll Mannering you!” fell upon him afresh and they punched each other
happily for several minutes until a shadow fell athwart them.
Stopping to see who approached, they were almost borne down by a
huge, elderly man who walked with a peculiar tread, planting his feet
firmly at each step and taking short steps. His preoccupied and lordly
expression took no cognizance of the young men as he went through them,
like a massive keel cutting in two a couple of sportive little waves.
Immense sidewhiskers, like studding sails, expanding the spread of his
ample countenance, fluttered in the breeze. His weathered cheeks looked
hard as the sides of a steel ship; there was a stony, distant stare in
his eyes, wrinkled at their corners. He wore a coat cut like a huge
boy’s reefer; there were brass buttons on it and his hands were thrust
in the pockets.
The boys gazed at his wake, and when he was out of all possible hearing
young Mr. Lupton nudged his companion.
“That’s him!” he exclaimed. “That’s Captain Vanton, this Guy’s father.
You know they say he was master of a three skysail-yarder that made a
passage from New York to Honolulu in 90 days. Doesn’t he look like a
Damn-Your-Eyes?”
Dick agreed.
“A regular brute!” ejaculated Tom. “Must have wads of money. Built
that house and it’s finished in mahogany and teakwood like a ship’s
cabin--cost a fortune! He must have been in the slave trade, eh? Where
does a sea captain get all that money, even if he’s been master of a
clipper ship?”
Dick, who reeked naught of the sea and cared less, didn’t know.
“That kid of his,” the garrulous Tom continued, “he’s a regular sissy.
I s’pose his father frightens the life out of him. Probably flogs him
with a rope’s end before breakfast.”
“Is he coming to school?” inquired young Mr. Hand.
“Naw. Leastways, I don’t believe so,” Tom responded. “He’d been by this
time. They were here before school started. Why, it’s months since they
moved into that house, and none of ’em has ever so much as spoke to
anybody in Blue Port. They eat their meals at the Roncador House, but
they never go _anywhere_. Not even to church.”
Everybody went to church in Blue Port. The information was astounding.
The two boys agreed that a real mystery invested the Vantons; and as
for Captain Vanton, he must have done something hellish to have so much
money and hold so aloof and walk down Main Street as if it were his
sacred quarterdeck on the queenly _China Castle_.