The Towncrier Has His Say
The old Huntingdon house with its gray gables and stone chimneys, stood
on the beach near the breakwater, just beyond the place where everything
seemed to come to an end. The house itself marked the end of the town.
Back of it the dreary dunes stretched away toward the Atlantic, and in
front the Cape ran out in a long, thin tongue of sand between the bay and
the harbor, with a lighthouse on its farthest point. It gave one the
feeling of being at the very tip end of the world to look across and see
the water closing in on both sides. Even the road ended in front of the
house in a broad loop in which machines could turn around.
In summer there was always a string of sightseers coming up to this end
of the beach. They came to read the tablet erected on the spot known to
Georgina as "holy ground," because it marked the first landing of the
Pilgrims. Long before she could read, Mrs. Triplett taught her to lisp
part of a poem which said:
"Aye, call it holy ground,
The thoil where firth they trod."
She taught it to Georgina because she thought it was only fair to Justin
that his child should grow up to be as proud of her New England home as
she was of her Southern one. Barbara was always singing to her about "My
Old Kentucky Home," and "Going Back to Dixie," and when they played
together on the beach their favorite game was building Grandfather
Shirley's house in the sand.
Day after day they built it up with shells and wet sand and pebbles, even
to the stately gate posts topped by lanterns. Twigs of bayberry and wild
beach plum made trees with which to border its avenues, and every dear
delight of swing and arbor and garden pool beloved in Barbara's play-
days, was reproduced in miniature until Georgina loved them, too. She
knew just where the bee-hives ought to be put, and the sun-dial, and the
hole in the fence where the little pigs squeezed through. There was a
story for everything. By the time she had outgrown her lisp she could
make the whole fair structure by herself, without even a suggestion from
Barbara.
When she grew older the shore was her schoolroom also. She learned to
read from letters traced in the sand, and to make them herself with
shells and pebbles. She did her sums that, way, too, after she had
learned to count the sails in the harbor, the gulls feeding at ebb-tide,
and the great granite blocks which formed the break-water.
Mrs. Triplett's time for lessons was when Georgina was following her
about the house. Such following taught her to move briskly, for Tippy,
like time and tide, never waited, and it behooved one to be close at her
heels if one would see what she put into a pan before she whisked it into
the oven. Also it was necessary to keep up with her as she moved swiftly
from the cellar to the pantry if one would hear her thrilling tales of
Indians and early settlers and brave forefathers of colony times.
There was a powder horn hanging over the dining room mantel, which had
been in the battle of Lexington, and Tippy expected Georgina to find the
same inspiration in it which she did, because the forefather who carried
it was an ancestor of each.
"The idea of a descendant of one of the Minutemen being afraid of
_rats!_" she would say with a scornful rolling of her words which
seemed to wither her listener with ridicule. "Or of an empty garret!
_Tut!_"
When Georgina was no more than six, that disgusted "Tut!" would start her
instantly down a dark cellar-way or up into the dreaded garret, even when
she could feel the goose-flesh rising all over her. Between the
porringer, which obliged her to be a little lady, and the powder horn,
which obliged her to be brave, even while she shivered, some times
Georgina felt that she had almost too much to live up to. There were
times when she was sorry that she had ancestors. She was proud to think
that one of them shared in the honors of the tall Pilgrim monument
overlooking the town and harbor, but there were days when she would have
traded him gladly far an hour's play with two little Portugese boys and
their sister, who often wandered up to the dunes back of the house.
She had watched them often enough to know that their names were Manuel
and Joseph and Rosa. They were beautiful children, such as some of the
old masters delighted to paint, but they fought and quarreled and--Tippy
said--used "shocking language." That is why Georgina was not allowed to
play with them, but she often stood at the back gate watching them,
envying their good times together and hoping to hear a sample of their
shocking language.
One day when they strolled by dragging a young puppy in a rusty saucepan
by a string tied to the handle, the temptation to join them overcame her.
Inch by inch her hand moved up nearer the forbidden gate latch and she
was just slipping through when old Jeremy, hidden behind a hedge where he
was weeding the borders, rose up like an all-seeing dragon and roared at
her, "Coom away, lass! Ye maun't do that!"
She had not known that he was anywhere around, and the voice coming
suddenly out of the unseen startled her so that her heart seemed to jump
up into her throat. It made her angry, too. Only the moment before she
had heard Rosa scream at Manuel, "You ain't my boss; shut your big
mouth!"
It was on the tip of her tongue to scream the same thing at old Jeremy
and see what would happen. She felt, instinctively, that this was
shocking language. But she had not yet outgrown the lurking fear which
always seized her in his presence that either her teeth or his might fly
out if she wasn't careful, so she made no answer. But compelled to vent
her inward rebellion in some way, she turned her back on the hedge that
screened him and shook the gate till the latch rattled.
Looking up she saw the tall Pilgrim monument towering over the town like
a watchful giant. She had a feeling that it, too, was spying on her. No
matter where she went, even away out in the harbor in a motor boat, it
was always stretching its long neck up to watch her. Shaking back her
curls, she looked up at it defiantly and made a face at it, just the
ugliest pucker of a face she could twist her little features into.
But it was only on rare occasions that Georgina felt the longing for
playmates of her own age. Usually she was busy with her lessons or
happily following her mother and Mrs. Triplett around the house, sharing
all their occupations. In jelly-making time she had the scrapings of the
kettle to fill her own little glass. When they sewed she sewed with them,
even when she was so small that she had to have the thread tied in the
needle's eye, and could do no more than pucker up a piece of soft goods
into big wallops. But by the time she was nine years old she had learned
to make such neat stitches that Barbara sent specimens of her needlework
back to Kentucky, and folded others away in a little trunk of keepsakes,
to save for her until she should be grown.
Abo by the time she was nine she could play quite creditably a number of
simple Etudes on the tinkly old piano which had lost some of its ivories.
Her daily practicing was one of the few things about which Barbara was
strict. So much attention had been given to her own education in music
that she found joy in keeping up her interest in it, and wanted to make
it one of Georgina's chief sources of pleasure. To that end she mixed the
stories of the great operas and composers with her fairy tales and folk
lore, until the child knew them as intimately as she did her Hans
Andersen and Uncle Remus.
They often acted stories together, too. Even Mrs. Triplett was dragged
into these, albeit unwillingly, for minor but necessary parts. For
instance, in "Lord Ullin's Daughter," she could keep on with her knitting
and at the same time do "the horsemen hard behind us ride," by clapping
her heels on the hearth to sound like hoof-beats.
Acting came as naturally to Georgina as breathing. She could not repeat
the simplest message without unconsciously imitating the tone and gesture
of the one who sent it. This dramatic instinct made a good reader of her
when she took her turn with Barbara in reading aloud. They used to take
page about, sitting with their arms around each other on the old claw-
foot sofa, backed up against the library table.
At such performances the old Towncrier was often an interested spectator.
Barbara welcomed him when he first came because he seemed to want to talk
about Justin as much as she desired to hear. Later she welcomed him for
his own sake, and grew to depend upon him for counsel and encouragement.
Most of all she appreciated his affectionate interest in Georgina. If he
had been her own grandfather he could not have taken greater pride in her
little accomplishments. More than once he had tied her thread in her
needle for her when she was learning to sew, and it was his unfailing
praise of her awkward attempts which encouraged her to I keep on until
her stitches were really praiseworthy.
He applauded her piano playing from her first stumbling attempt at scales
to the last simple waltz she had just learned. He attended many readings,
beginning with words of one syllable, on up to such books as "The
Leatherstocking Tales." He came in one day, however, as they were
finishing a chapter in one of the Judge's favorite novels, and no sooner
had Georgina skipped out of the room on an errand than he began to take
her mother to task for allowing her to read anything of that sort.
"You'll make the lass old before her time!" he scolded. "A little scrap
like her ought to be playing with other children instead of reading books
so far over her head that she can only sort of tip-toe up to them."
"But it's the stretching that makes her grow, Uncle Darcy," Barbara
answered in an indulgent tone. He went on heedless of her interruption.
"And she tells me that she sometimes sits as much as an hour at a time,
listening to you play on the piano, especially if it's 'sad music that
makes you think of someone looking off to sea for a ship that never comes
in, or of waves creeping up in a lonely place where the fog-bell tolls.'
Those were her very words, and she looked so mournful that it worried me.
It isn't natural for a child of her age to sit with a far-away look in
her eyes, as if she were seeing things that ain't there."
Barbara laughed.
"Nonsense, Uncle Darcy. As long as she keeps her rosy cheeks and is full
of life, a little dreaming can't hurt her. You should have seen her doing
the elfin dance this morning. She entered into the spirit of it like a
little whirlwind. And, besides, there are no children anywhere near that
I can allow her to play with. I have only a few acquaintances in the
town, and they are too far from us to make visiting easy between the
children. But look at the time _I_ give to her. I play with her so
much that we're more like two chums than mother and child."
"Yes, but it would be better for both of you if you had more friends
outside. Then Georgina wouldn't feel the sadness of 'someone looking off
to sea for a ship that never comes in.' She feels your separation from
Justin and your watching for his letters and your making your whole life
just a waiting time between his furloughs, more than you have any idea
of."
"But, Uncle Darcy!" exclaimed Barbara, "it would be just the same no
matter how many friends I had. They couldn't make me forget his absence."
"No, but they could get you interested in other things, and Georgina
would feel the difference, and be happier because you would not seem to
be waiting and anxious. There's some rare, good people in this town, old
friends of the family who tried to make you feel at home among them when
you first came."
"I know," admitted Barbara, slowly, "but I was so young then, and so
homesick that strangers didn't interest me. Now Georgina is old enough to
be thoroughly companionable, and our music and sewing and household
duties fill our days."
It was a subject they had discussed before, without either convincing the
other, and the old man had always gone away at such times with a feeling
of defeat. But this time as he took his leave, it was with the
determination to take the matter in hand himself. He felt he owed it to
the Judge to do that much for his grandchild. The usual crowds of summer
people would be coming soon. He had heard that Gray Inn was to be
reopened this summer. That meant there would probably be children at this
end of the beach. If Opportunity came that near to Georgina's door he
knew several ways of inducing it to knock. So he went off smiling to
himself.