A MAYING
The City Transfer bill was paid; so were the other bills. Ken, on his
way out from Asquam, stopped with a sudden light in his dogged face and
turned back. He sought out the harbor-master, who was engaged in
painting a dory behind his shop.
"Wal, boy, want to get a fish-hook?" he queried, squinting toward Ken
with a preoccupied eye. (He sold hardware and fishing-tackle, as well as
attending to the duties of his post.)
Ken disclaimed any desire for the fish-hook, and said he wanted to ask
about a boat.
"Ain't got none for sale ner hire, just now," the harbor-master replied.
Ken said, so he had heard, but that wasn't it. And he told the man about
the abandoned power-boat in the inlet. The harbor-master stood up
straight and looked at Ken, at last.
"Wal, ding!" said he. "That's Joe Pasquale's boat, sure's I'm
a-standin' here!"
"Who," said Ken, "is Joe Pasquale?"
"He is--or _woz_--a Portugee fisherman--lobsterman, ruther. He got
drownded in Febrerry--fell outen his boat, seems so, an' we got _him_,
but we never got the boat. Couldn't figger wher' she _had_ got to. He
was down harbor when 't happent. Cur'ous tide-racks 'round here."
"Whose is she, then?" Ken asked. "Any widows or orphans?"
"Nary widder," said the harbor-master, chewing tobacco reflectively.
"_No_ kin. Finders keepers. B'longs to you, I reckon. Ain't much good,
be she?"
"Hole stove in her," Ken said. "The engine is all there, but I guess
it'll need a good bit of tinkering at."
"Ain't wuth it," said the harbor-master. "She's old as Methusaly,
anyways. Keep her--she's salvage if ever there wuz. Might be able to
git sunthin' fer her enjine--scrap iron."
"Thanks," said Ken; "I'll think it over." And he ran nearly all the way
to Applegate Farm.
Kirk did not forget his promise to the Maestro. He found the old gentleman
in the garden, sitting on a stone bench beside the empty fountain.
"I knew that you would come," he said. "Do you know what day it is?"
Kirk did not, except that it was Saturday.
"It is May-day," said the Maestro, "and the spirits of the garden are
abroad. We must keep our May together. Come--I think I have not
forgotten the way."
He took Kirk's hand, and they walked down the grass path till the sweet
closeness of a low pine covert wove a scented silence about them. The
Maestro's voice dropped.
"It used to be here," he said. "Try--the other side of the pine-tree.
Ah, it has been so many, many years!"
[Illustration: The Maestro sat down beside Kirk]
Kirk's hand sought along the dry pine-needles;
then, in a nook of the roots, what but
a tiny dish, with sweetmeats, set out, and little
cups of elder wine, and bread, and cottage
cheese! The Maestro sat down beside Kirk on
the pine-needles, and began to sing softly in a
rather thin but very sweet voice.
"Here come we a-maying,
All in the wood so green;
Oh, will ye not be staying?
Oh, can ye not be seen?
Before that ye be flitting,
When the dew is in the east,
We thank ye, as befitting,
For the May and for the feast.
Here come we a-maying,
All in the wood so green,
In fairy coverts straying
A-for to seek our queen."
"One has to be courteous to them," he added at the end, while Kirk sat
rapt, very possibly seeing far more garden spirits than his friend had
any idea of.
"I myself," the Maestro said, "do not very often come to the garden. It
is too full, for me, of children no longer here. But the garden folk
have not forgotten."
"When I'm here," murmured Kirk, sipping elder wine, "Applegate Farm and
everything in the world seem miles and years away. Is there really a
magic line at the hedge?"
"If there is, you are the only one who has discovered it," said the old
gentleman, enigmatically. "Leave a sup of wine and a bit of bread for
the Folk, and let us see if we cannot find some May-flowers."
They left the little pine room,--Kirk putting in the root hollow a
generous tithe for the garden folk,--and went through the garden till
the grass grew higher beneath their feet, and they began to climb a
rough, sun-warmed hillside, where dry leaves rustled and a sweet earthy
smell arose.
"Search here among the leaves," the Maestro said, "and see what you
shall find."
So Kirk, in a dream of wonder, dropped to his knees, and felt among the
loose leaves, in the sunshine. And there were tufts of smooth foliage,
all hidden away, and there came from them a smell rapturously
sweet--arbutus on a sunlit hill. Kirk pulled a sprig and sat drinking in
the deliciousness of it, till the old gentleman said:
"We must have enough for a wreath, you know--a wreath for the queen."
"Who is our Queen of the May?" Kirk asked.
"The most beautiful person you know."
"Felicia," said Kirk, promptly.
"Felicia," mused the Maestro. "That is a beautiful name. Do you know
what it means?"
Kirk did not.
"It means happiness. Is it so?"
"Yes," said Kirk; "Ken and I couldn't be happy without her. She _is_
happiness."
"Kenneth is your brother?"
"Kenelm. Does that mean something?"
The old gentleman plucked May-flowers for a moment. "It means, if I
remember rightly, 'a defender of his kindred.' It is a good Anglo-Saxon
name."
"What does my name mean?" Kirk asked.
The Maestro laughed. "Yours is not a given name," he said. "It has no
meaning. But--you mean much to me."
He caught Kirk suddenly in a breathless embrace, from which he released
him almost at once, with an apology.
"Let us make the wreath," he said. "See, I'll show you how."
He bound the first strands, and then guided Kirk's hands in the next
steps, till the child was fashioning the wreath alone.
"'My love's an arbutus
On the borders of Lene,'"
sang the Maestro, in his gentle voice. "Listen
and I will tell you what you must say to Felicia
when you crown her Queen of the May."
The falling sun found the wreath completed and the verse learned, and
the two went hand in hand back through the shadowy garden.
"Won't you make music to-day?" Kirk begged.
"Not to-day," said the old gentleman. "This day we go a-maying. But I am
glad you do not forget the music."
"How could I?" said Kirk. At the hedge, he added: "I'd like to put a bit
of arbutus in your buttonhole, for your May."
He held out a sprig in not quite the right direction, and the Maestro
stepped forward and stooped to him, while Kirk's fingers found the
buttonhole.
"Now the Folk can do me no harm," smiled the old gentleman. "Good-by, my
dear."
* * * * *
Felicia was setting the table, with the candle-light about her hair. If
Kirk could have seen her, he would indeed have thought her beautiful. He
stood with one hand on the door-post, the other behind him. "Phil?" he
said.
"Here," said Felicia. "Where have you been, honey?"
He advanced to the middle of the room, and stopped. There was something
so solemn and unchancy about him that his sister put a handful of forks
and spoons on the table and stood looking at him. Then he said, slowly:
"I come a-maying through the wood,
A-for to find my queen;
She must be glad and she must be good,
And the fairest ever seen.
And now have I no further need
To seek for loveliness;
She standeth at my side indeed--
Felicia--Happiness!"
With which he produced the wreath of Mayflowers, and, flinging himself
suddenly upon her with a hug not specified in the rite, cast it upon her
chestnut locks and twined himself joyfully around her. Phil, quite
overcome, collapsed into the nearest chair, Kirk, May-flowers and all,
and it was there that Ken found them, rapturously embracing each other,
the May Queen bewitchingly pretty with her wreath over one ear. "I
didn't make it up," Kirk said, at supper. "The Maestro did--or at least
he said the Folk taught him one like it. I can't remember the thanking
one he sang before the feast. And Ken, he says _your_ name's good
Anglo-Saxon and means 'a defender of his kindred.'"
"It does, does it?" said Ken. "You'll get so magicked over there some
time that we'll never see you again; or else you'll come back cast into
a spell, and there'll be no peace living with you."
"No, I won't," Kirk said. "And I like it. It makes things more
interesting."
"I should _think so_," said Ken--secretly, perhaps, a shade envious of
the Maestro's ability.
As he locked up Applegate Farm that night, he stopped for a moment at
the door to look at the misty stars and listen to the wind in the
orchard.
"'A defender of his kindred,'" he murmured. "_H'm!_"
* * * * *
Hardly anything is more annoying than a mysterious elder brother. That
Ken was tinkering at the _Flying Dutchman_ (as he had immediately called
the power-boat, on account of its ghostly associations) was evident to
his brother and sister, but why he should be doing so they could not
fathom.
"We can't afford to run around in her as a pleasure yacht," Felicia
said. "Are you going to sell her?"
"I am not," Ken would say, maddeningly, jingling a handful of bolts in
his pocket; "not I."
The patch in the _Flying Dutchman_ was not such as a boat-builder would
have made, but it was water-tight, and that was the main point. The
motor required another week of coaxing; all Ken's mechanical ingenuity
was needed, and he sat before the engine, sometimes, dejected and
indignant. But when the last tinkering was over, when frantic spinnings
of the flywheel at length called forth a feeble gasp and deep-chested
gurgle from the engine, Ken clapped his dirty hands and danced alone on
the rocks like a madman.
He took the trial trip secretly--he did not intend to run the risk of
sending Phil and Kirk to that portion of Davy Jones' locker reserved for
Asquam Bay. But when he landed, he ran, charging through baybush and
alder, till he tumbled into Felicia on the door-step of Applegate Farm.
"I didn't want to tell you until I found out if she'd work," he gasped,
having more enthusiasm than breath. "You might have been disappointed.
But she'll go--and _now_ I'll tell you what she and I are going to do!"