Tommy Lupton was a great, tall, strapping youth with everything
indeterminate about him, from the colour of his hair and eyes to his
behaviour. He had no visible ambitions beyond becoming a bayman like
his father and ultimately a surfman in one of the Coast Guard Stations
on the beach, preferably the one at Lone Cove where John Smiley was
keeper and his father a member of the crew. Since the day, some years
earlier, when Guy Vanton had thrown Tommy around in a pine-needled
clearing in the woods about Blue Port, Tommy and Guy had been good
friends, so far as too utterly unlike young men can be fast friends.
Neither fully understood the other. Mermaid, who liked them both, had
constantly to be explaining Guy to Tommy and interpreting Tommy to Guy.
“Tommy likes you but thinks he ought not to,” she told Guy. “Tommy is
the sort of boy that thinks he ought not to like anybody unless he can
admire him, too. If Tommy’s best friend were running against--oh, well,
say Colonel Roosevelt--for some office, Tommy would vote for Roosevelt.
You see, he’d _admire_ Roosevelt.”
“It’s a principle,” elucidated Guy.
“It’s unreasonable,” elucidated Mermaid.
“It is better than just voting for a man because he’s a friend of
yours.”
“Of course. But to have to admire a person in order to like him
comfortably is just like--like a boy!” exclaimed the young lady. “Like
a _little_ boy,” she added.
To the hero-worshipping Tommy she had something else to say.
“You’ll never see how much there is in Guy Vanton if you keep looking
for what isn’t there,” she admonished him. Tommy looked at her,
cloudily.
“I suppose it takes a girl to see what there is in him,” he surmised,
jealously. “You--I don’t suppose Guy sees anything in me. I guess you
don’t, either. I guess there isn’t anything much in me,” went on poor
young Mr. Lupton, pathetically. “I sha’n’t ever amount to a lot. I’ve
never been anywhere, and I can’t jabber French, and I never wrote
poetry except on a valentine. I hate school and I’m glad I’m through
with it. And I’d rather be a Coast Guard than write a book, as Guy’s
doing, or become a great chemical engineer, as you say Dickie may some
day. I’ll never be rich and I’ll never be famous, and you can’t make me
either.”
Mermaid was building things in the sand. She brushed her hands and
looked at him with a smile.
“I don’t want to make you anything, Tommy,” she said. “Go on and be a
Coast Guard. My Dad’s a Coast Guard. Your father’s a Coast Guard. Being
a Coast Guard is just as good as anything else and better than most. It
all depends upon the _man_.”
“Well, I’m a man,” avowed Mr. Lupton. “And, anyway, you say that now,
but after you’ve been away at school and all that you’ll look down on
me. You won’t want anything to do with me, much. You won’t want me
around. And I won’t _be_ around,” he concluded. Mermaid looked at him,
briefly, and then glanced away. A slight uneasiness beset her. It was
justified when Tommy suddenly reached over for her hand, taking it
roughly.
“Mermaid,” he said. He stopped, and then went on, stammering a little:
“You--you must know I love you--like everything,” he finished,
helplessly. “You--of course I can’t expect you feel the same way----”
Mermaid, much disturbed, cut in: “No, I don’t, Tommy.”
“You oughtn’t to interrupt like that.” Mr. Lupton’s voice was boyishly
irritated. “You--you wouldn’t interrupt Guy Vanton! I can’t expect you
to listen to me, I suppose. Maybe I haven’t any right to speak.” He was
immediately astonishingly grown-up again. “You’ve got to hear me--at
least, I hope you’ll hear me,” he went on, imploringly. “I told you you
couldn’t make anything of me but you could help me make something of
myself.”
A sixteen-year-old girl, listening to such words, can hardly be
blamed for a slight sense of self-importance. It is part of a girl’s
education, or ought to be. Perhaps not at sixteen; but Mermaid had
already experienced the self-importance that comes from handling rather
risky material, even though it was only inert powder or colourless
acid. This was one of those situations where there is no danger
if the substances are not brought near to a spark. She therefore
dampened her sympathy before mixing it with Tommy’s unreserve. She
felt self-importance, but she did not abate her caution. More than one
explosion in the laboratory had taught her humility. It is fair to say
that she was not consciously experimenting and she was not heartless
when she answered the boy.
“I don’t want to help you make something of yourself, Tommy. I don’t
want to make anything of anybody except _my_self. I’ll have all I can
do, maybe, to do that,” she continued. “I--I like you, and that’s all.
No, it isn’t; I’ll let you alone. There--that’s a good deal, isn’t it?
It’s supposed to be, from a girl.”
Poor Tommy was in no condition to jest. He picked himself up,
unhappily, from the sand. For a moment Mermaid’s mind ran back
curiously to the story that, as a very little girl, she had heard her
Uncle Ho tell of his boyhood. Nightly, through the pane of a little
attic window high up in the hills of the middle of Long Island, he had
seen the flash of the Fire Island Lighthouse, many miles distant, a
beacon inviting the youngster to adventures in the great world whose
shores it guarded. Mermaid, who was imaginative, had often re-lived
those childish hours in the dark attic invaded by the beckoning ray.
As she stood up now, gathering up her sweater and one or two books
from the beach, it came home to her that Tommy Lupton, who was twenty,
would never undergo such an experience. Poor Tommy was not imaginative;
for him no beacon flamed anywhere; his whole idea of life was work
well-performed, a wife and children (probably), and a comfortable
home to visit in his hours off duty. And once, if fortune brought it
about, once in a long lifetime of work and play and peacefulness, an
heroic moment, one deed worthy of admiration, a single act of bravery
or courage or devotion that would show the stuff that was in him--all
the rest would be background. If the moment never came that would not
matter. The only thing that mattered was to be ready for it if it
should come.
Whereas Mermaid must be forever seeking moments and doing her
part, when she was ready, to create them. There was a profound
difference. Tommy stood on guard, his back to the rock; she would be
advancing--retreating, too, sometimes, no doubt--but constantly gaining
ground. There was young Dickie Hand with his unquestionable gifts;
he would go forward, and go far if--if--he had the right incentive.
And Guy Vanton.... Mermaid paused with a pang. In this process of
definition it struck upon her for the first time that Guy would neither
go forward like herself or Dickie Hand nor stand steadfast like Tommy;
he would shrink back. He would conduct a well-covered withdrawal, a
leisurely, unobtrusive withdrawal; and it would be a retreat!
The pang was caused by the knowledge that of the three she most nearly
loved Guy.