The loss of the jewels affected Keturah Hand strangely. At first it
made her ill, but soon she was not only well, but better than she had
been for a long time. She declared herself actually relieved, in a
sense, to be rid of the stones. They had been a constant worriment for
years. Now she did not have the care and anxiety of them--and she knew
they were in safe hands.
“Any one who steals them is going to take pretty good care of them,”
she declared. “And I think I know who stole them, and why.”
“Was it the ghost of one of Kidd’s pirates?” asked Mermaid, upon
whom the theft of the jewels had seemed to have a more persistently
depressing effect than it had had upon her aunt.
“He may have been one of Kidd’s pirates in a previous incarnation, and
he may have been Kidd himself in an earlier life,” responded Keturah.
“At present he’s a retired sea captain whose story wouldn’t look pretty
in print, I suspect. Not that it will ever get printed,” she added. “He
took them because----” She broke off. “I don’t know as I’m called upon
to air my guesses,” she explained. “I’m not a detective in a detective
story and I’ll not do any deducing out loud.”
Both Ho Ha and John Smiley were much upset by the disappearance of the
stones, though both felt called upon to remonstrate with Keturah when
she said, quite calmly, that Captain Vanton had got what he was after.
“If there’s the slightest shred of evidence that Captain Vanton took
them, Hosea and I can handle him,” her brother told her. “You won’t let
the theft be known, and you won’t hire a detective. You won’t tell us
anything that points to Vanton.”
“Because I can’t,” cut in Keturah. “I’m not like a good many women.
I don’t mistake my intuitions for evidence. I just _feel_ that he has
them--and I don’t much care if he has. I also feel that he won’t break
them up and sell them, and that eventually they will get where they
belong, as nearly as possible. Jewels aren’t like any other kind of
property, and everybody who has much to do with them knows it. I’m not
superstitious, but you don’t have to be superstitious to believe that
a sort of curse attends the possession of most really valuable gems
whenever they’re not in the right hands. They don’t rightly belong to
me, never did. As I say, it’s no use to hand down jewels like other
property. My aunt, to whom they belonged as rightfully as any one else,
had no more sense than to leave them to me along with her land and
furniture. I’ve always known they weren’t for me, but what could I do
about it? Nothing, except wait for them to get into the right hands
or throw them in the bay. Maybe they’ve got into the right hands now.
If they haven’t, they’ll make whoever’s got ’em trouble enough until
they do. If they belong to him it won’t matter how he came by them, or
whether he deserves ’em, or whether he is a good man or a devil; but if
they don’t belong in his hands, he may be a living saint and still be
sorrier than the worst sinner.”
Ho Ha and Cap’n Smiley affected to treat this argument as foolishness,
but something in it appealed to the mysticism in Mermaid. It fitted in
with what she had observed of the illogicality of life, and she was
readier than many an older person to believe that the world is ruled as
much by sentiment as by law, and that life is a series of compromises
only for those who can’t accept its contradictions, and go on with
their work.
She expressed this view to Guy Vanton without mentioning the loss of
the stones.
It was Mermaid’s last day on the beach. In a week she would be in New
York, taking special courses at Columbia and perhaps elsewhere. She was
going in for cooking and chemistry, the chemistry of foods, and later
she might take some medical courses leading to a study of the chemistry
of digestion.
“The chemistry of the human body,” she said to Guy, “is a job for the
next fifty years.”
Guy considered, lazily. “If you like it, I suppose,” he said,
reflectively. “I wish I knew enough chemistry to analyze my father,
for instance. Not his digestion, which is perfect, but his mind. But I
think the best approach to the mind is still alchemy. The philosopher’s
stone probably exists, only we’ve always been on the wrong track in
hunting it. It would be an idea that would transmute base-mindedness to
rare-mindedness, and not base metals to gold. My father needs that kind
of a philosopher’s stone; perhaps I do, too. We’re very unlike, you
know; often it seems to me as if he weren’t my father at all. Sometimes
I think he hates me, but even if he did--there are ties hate can’t
break.” His voice lowered and his queer eyes looked into the distance.
“Some day,” he said, “some day, Mermaid, I’ll tell you, maybe----You
pulled me out once, you know.” He looked at her with a painful appeal.
His eyes were those of a wild fawn. An almost overpowering desire to
answer that appeal swept through the girl, met the solid wall of her
final doubt of him, and was broken to pieces. She gave his hand a
friendly squeeze. “Good-bye,” she said, and left him.