College closed. Mermaid went home. She found Keturah Hand in “poor
health,” but a diagnosis of any specific complaint seemed difficult.
“Old age and remorse, my girl,” her aunt assured her. “Thinking of
all the things I’ve done I might better not have done, or have done
differently.”
“Why, any one can do that,” Mermaid answered. “I looked for you to
develop some interesting ailment, Aunt Keturah, something new and
original that I might exercise my knowledge upon. I am now certified to
be competent to analyze you. I know all the diets. If there is anything
you’d like particularly to eat, don’t eat it.”
“You remind me of John Pogginson of Patchogue,” protested Mrs. Hand.
“An up-to-date doctor put him on a diet some time ago. But instead of
telling John what he couldn’t eat he gave him a list of all the things
he could eat. There were eighty-seven of them; and in the eighty-seven
were things John Pogginson had never heard of. He had a wonderful time.
But his wife almost died of indigestion. She said it wasn’t what she
ate, but seeing the things John could eat, that made her ill.”
The two women sat down that night for what Keturah called “a long
talk.” Mrs. Hand wanted first to discuss Mermaid’s plans; but Mermaid
said she hadn’t any.
“Thanks to you,” she told her aunt, “I’ve been able to get what I
wanted; but I confess I don’t know yet what I want to do with it. I
want to go to work, of course, and I hope I can get into experimental
work of some kind. Perhaps at the Rockefeller Institute, perhaps
elsewhere. Chemicals won’t cure all the ills flesh is heir to, but they
will cure a lot more than we know about. I don’t care about a career,
that is, I don’t care about making a world-startling discovery or
getting particularly rich or especially famous. I do care about getting
a reasonable amount of happiness and satisfaction out of life; and
that means being busy at something congenial to you. And going ahead a
little in one direction or another.”
“I hope you’ll marry,” said Mrs. Hand, abruptly.
“I hope so, too,” assented Mermaid. “If I can be so fortunate as to
find the right man, or if some man can be fortunate enough to find me
the right woman, or--well, both. We’ve both got to find each other, I
suppose.”
“Children,” said Mrs. Hand, with condensation.
“The more the merrier.” Mermaid did not speak lightly. Some deepening
of her voice took all the flippancy from the words.
“You’ll have money, my money,” pursued Keturah Hand. “Eventually; it
goes to John first. He’s a good brother to me and he’s been a good
father to you, as good as he could have been to his own flesh and
blood. You know the story?” she asked, with harsh suddenness.
“Dad has told me,” Mermaid replied, quietly. “It is so many years ago
that he has no thought but that his wife and his own daughter are dead.”
“I have something to answer for in that connection,” her aunt said, and
in spite of the harshness with which she spoke, her voice trembled. “I
made Mary Smiley, that was Mary Rogers, very unhappy. I thought her
unfit to be John’s wife. I--I rubbed it into her that she was unfit.
Little, silly, childish, frivolous creature. How much I am to blame for
her running away with her baby I don’t know--never shall, I suppose,
until the time comes to answer for it.”
“Whatever you said to her, the facts remain,” the girl commented.
“Actions not only speak louder than words, they talk the universal
language. She ran away.”
“I think John felt that,” said Keturah. “He has a strict sense of
justice and she wronged it. It was the child. That cut him to the
heart, and no wonder. After five years you were washed ashore. I’ve
always believed in miracles since that day.”
Mermaid nodded.
“When you study science, Aunt,” she said, confidingly, “you come to
believe in miracles as a matter of course. That is, unless you have
one of these impossible minds that thinks a thing more wonderful than
the explanation. It’s the explanation of everything that’s really
miraculous. For instance, you used to scoff at Dad and myself because
we saw ghosts. There was the Duneswoman----”
“You wrote me that it was an effect of phosphor----” Mrs. Hand paused,
helplessly.
“Phosphorescence,” supplied Mermaid, “the wonderful glow you see
sometimes in sea water. It’s rare as far north as this but very common
in the tropics. But to say it is an effect of phosphorescence doesn’t
explain it, except to the impossible, narrow little mind. The real
explanation lies in the mind of the person seeing it. If it were just a
peculiar phosphorescent outline everybody should see it--everybody who
was around. Dad and I see it; the others don’t. Do you know why?”
Keturah hesitated, then shook her head.
“It is something in common,” Mermaid told her. “There is, or was,
someone who knew us both, and who becomes manifest to us both in that
way. It’s like two people seeing the same ghost. Why should the ghost
appear in that way? I can’t tell you. Perhaps the person was drowned.
Why should the Duneswoman appear to us at all? Perhaps to witness to
something. We may never discover what; and then again the day may come
when that vision will be the last impalpable evidence necessary to make
something clear. Then the Duneswoman may make complete the explanation
of a surprising but perfectly ordinary set of facts; and the
explanation, and not the facts themselves, will make up the miracle.”
“I guess likely you’re right enough,” surmised Mrs. Hand, “though I’m
not sure I follow you all through. I’m a matter-of-fact kind of a
person. That’s why any one like Captain Vanton gives me the creeps and
gets on my nerves so. I don’t know what he does to that wife of his, or
what he has done, but I don’t wonder we never see anything of her. She
must be a wreck, living with that man. And he’s ruining that boy.”
“Guy?” asked Mermaid. A quick ear would have caught the peculiar note
in her voice.
“Guy goes around with a hang-dog look. He never speaks to any one. He
lives like a hermit, and his father’ll make him as bad as himself,”
stated Keturah, with conviction.
“I must go see him,” said the girl. Her voice was deep and vibrant. “I
must see his father.”
“His father has got Aunt Keturah’s jewels,” announced Mrs. Hand. “I’ve
been sure of it ever since the day they disappeared over to the beach.
How he knew about them I don’t pretend to say; but as he followed
Captain John Hawkins in the command of the _China Castle_ he must have
come to knowledge of them some way or other. Do you remember when you
were not more than eleven his coming to call here?”
“I’ve never forgotten it.”
“He said a Captain King was dead and that he had killed him. He said
this Captain King wouldn’t trouble us any longer--your father and me.
Your father remembered then that one of the crew from the wreck of
the ship, the ship you were saved from, had talked of a Captain King
when he was dying and of a little girl that must have been you. So we
thought--your father thought, anyway--that Captain Vanton might have
known something about you.” She reached over and took Mermaid’s hand,
awkwardly. “He went to see him, but Captain Vanton couldn’t or wouldn’t
tell him anything.” Keturah paused and sighed.
“Captain Vanton told Dickie Hand’s father about the death of Captain
King,” said Mermaid, surprising her aunt. “Dickie once told me so.”
“I want to know!” exclaimed Keturah. She was silent for several moments
in busy speculation.
“What do you make of it all?” she asked, finally, lifting her head.
Mermaid, who had been looking steadfastly at the wall, her hands
clasped behind her head, the whiteness of her arm gleaming against the
rich colouring of her hair, spoke without looking at her aunt, without
shifting her pose.
“I make something of it,” she said, “and I am going to find
out--something. I may not find out the truth of it all, but I will at
least find out if I am wrong.”