SUNSET LANE
When Tillie Higgins saw Joe the baker's cart pass her house she ran to
her gate.
"He must be going to Eph Calkins or to Achsy Green's. Now I wonder--"
Joe rarely penetrated Sunset Lane with his goods; Tillie Higgins and
old Mrs. Calkins did their own baking and Achsa Green's pies were
legend.
Old Mrs. Calkins, too, had seen the baker's rickety cart approaching
through the deep sand. At once she "happened" to be out tying up her
yellow rambler.
"Got a letter for Achsy Green," the baker called to her, leaning out of
his cart.
"You don't say! Not bad news, I hope?"
"Dunno. It's a letter. Thought I'd bring it to her. Gettap, General.
Pretty nice weather we're havin'. Dry, though."
"Tell Achsy I'll drop over soon's my bakin's done."
Tillie Higgins' shadow fell across the yellow roses. Tillie was a
little breathless; she had hurried over to catch what the baker was
saying.
"A letter? For Achsy Green? You don't say. Not bad news I hope," she
echoed.
"Joe dunno. Cal'late that's why he came all this way with it. He'll
find out what's in that letter if he can. Then the hul town'll know. I
told him to tell Achsy I'd drop over soon's my pies are out of the
oven. Better set down a spell and go along with me."
But Tillie Higgins, with regret in her voice, explained that she had
bread in her own oven. "If it's news send Martie over with it. Hope
it's nothing bothersome. Achsy Green has 'nough as 'tis."
This Sunset Lane was the farthest byway of the northernmost habitation
of Cape Cod. Only a ridge of sandy dunes at its back door kept it from
tumbling into the blue Atlantic. Provincetown folk called it "up p'int
way" and "t'other end." The more fanciful name had been given to it by
a young Portuguese who had essayed to convert that corner of
Provincetown into a summer colony. He had only succeeded, after long
effort, in selling the Carpenter house nearest Commercial Street, then
had abandoned his enterprise to open a combination garage and one-arm
lunch room on Commercial Street.
Sunset Lane led nowhere, unless one counted the dunes; it was only wide
enough for a cart to pass between the hedging rows of crowding wild
flowers and the guardian willows; it was deep in sand. The rising tide
of commercialism that was destroying the eighteenth-century dignity of
the little town turned before it reached it. Few went there unless on
definite purpose bound, excepting the artists who came singly and in
groups to paint an old gray gable against an overtowering hill of sand
or a scrap of blue sky between crumbling chimney pots and peaked roofs
or old Mrs. Calkins' hollyhocks that flanked the narrow byway like
gaudy soldiers. Some sketched Jeremiah Higgins' octagonal house, more
of an oddity than a thing of grace yet ornamented with hand-wrought
cornices and dignified by a figurehead from the prow of a ship long
since split into driftwood; others went on to the end of the lane to
catch upon their canvases the grace of Achsa's Green's old
gray-shingled cottage with its low roof and white pilastered doorway.
With the changing years Achsa Green had become as quaint as her
surroundings. Bent, and small, her face seared to the brown of a
withered leaf from the hot suns and biting winds, her hands knotted
with labor, her sparse hair twisted into a knob at the exact center of
the back of her head, she was not lovely to look upon, yet from her
eyes gleamed a spirit that knew no wear of age, that took its knocks
upstanding, that suffered when others suffered but that spread a
healing philosophy of God's wisdom. For Achsa's acceptance of God's
wisdom faltered only when she thought of Lavender.
Lavender was her brother Asabel's only child. His mother had died a
week after his birth, his father five months before. Achsa had taken
the babe into her arms and had promised to "do" for him. And she had,
with a fierce yearning, a compassion that hurt to her very soul. For
Lavender was not like other children; his poor little body was sadly
crippled. Achsa had at first refused to believe but that he might "grow
straight," then as the years convinced her that this could never be she
consecrated herself to the single task of keeping him fed and clothed
and happy and "out o' mischief." She clung staunchly to the hope that,
if she prayed hard enough by night and believed by day that her boy was
"straight," sometime Lavender _would_ be straight and all their little
world--the Cape--would know.
There was nothing unusual in Dugald Allan of Rahway, N. J., finding
Sunset Lane, for he was a fledgling artist and came there like other
artists, but certainly a destiny that was kind toward old Achsa had
something to do in the skirmish that ensued between Poker, Allan's
brindle bull-pup, and Nip and Tuck, Achsa Green's two black cats. Tuck,
caught sunning herself in the middle of the lane, had recognized a foe
in Poker and had defended her stronghold; Poker, resenting her
exclusiveness, had offered battle. Nip, never far from his sister, had
promptly thrown himself into the fray. There had resulted a whirl of
sand like a miniature cyclone from which young Allan rescued Poker just
in time to save his brindle hide. Nip, unvanquished, had retreated to
the very doorway that Allan had come to paint; Tuck fled to the shelter
of a bed of tall sweet william.
"Dear! Dear!" cried Achsa Green in the open doorway. "Oh, my cats--"
"Nobody hurt. I'm sorry," laughed young Allan. "I mean--Poker's sorry.
I don't understand his rudeness. He never fights anyone smaller than
himself. I've brought him up to a high sporting code. He must have
misunderstood your cat's attitude. He apologizes, humbly."
Assured that her pets were unharmed the little old woman in the doorway
had laughed gleefully. "Tuck's sort o' suspicious o' strange folks, but
I cal'late she didn't take a good look at _you_! She must a looked at
your dog first!"
"I thank you for the compliment. You see, we came quite peaceably to
paint your doorway. You're Miss Green, aren't you? I'm sure that's the
door they told me about. And if your defiant animal will stand like
that long enough for me to sketch it--I'd consider myself in luck--"
"I cal'late he will--if your dog's 'round. Nip ain't 'fraid of nothin'
'slong as his own door's at his back. Don't know as anyone's wanted to
draw his picture before. He'll be all set up for sure!"
Whipping out his pad Dugald Allan, with rapid strokes, had sketched the
door and the cat--and Achsa Green. Later the picture he painted from
the sketch hung in a Paris exhibition. When he showed the drawing to
Achsa Green she had beamed with pleasure. "Why, that's as like Nip as
though it war a twin." Nip, scenting the friendly atmosphere, had
relaxed, stretched, yawned, waved a plumy tail toward poor Poker,
watching fearfully from behind his master, and had stalked, disdainful,
over to the sweet william to reassure the more timid Tuck.
Of course Achsa Green had wanted to show the "picture" to Lavender and
Dugald Allan, eager to see the inside of the old house, had followed
her into the low-ceilinged kitchen. And that had been ten years ago and
each succeeding spring since had brought Dugald Allan back to Sunset
Lane.
Achsa Green knew him only as "a nice appearin' boy--not so much on
looks," with a kindly manner toward Lavender and an appreciation of the
merits of Nip and Tuck. And inasmuch as Nip and Tuck made friendly
advances to Poker and Lavender would do things for Dugald Allan that he
would not do for anyone else, she finally consented to "let" her gable
room to the young stranger and to board him as well. In settling the
matter of board young Allan had had to deal with a pride as hard as the
granite of the breakwall he could glimpse from the one window of his
room; it had been only after he convinced Aunt Achsa that he could
never feel like "one of the folks" until he contributed something to
the upkeep of the family, that he had persuaded her to accept the sum
of money which he considered barely repaid her trouble but which Aunt
Achsa deemed a fortune.
Wisely young Allan paid the "board money" at the bank. He had come to
know Aunt Achsa's failings, how sometimes she stowed her scant earnings
away and forgot its hiding place; how at other times she gave them to
someone needier than herself. Many a one of her generation had told him
that she was without "sense" where business was concerned. It was
everyone's wonder how she'd managed to feed two mouths, not counting
the cats, with Lavender not earning so much as his salt. And gradually,
as the summers passed, Allan took upon his shoulders other
responsibilities; planning safe pastimes for Lavender; marketing, after
which the kitchen cupboards groaned with food; persuading Aunt Achsa to
let her rugs go and putter in her flowers while the summer lasted.
With the Cape standards of wealth it would not have made any difference
to Achsa Green, anyway, or to anyone else, if they had known that the
"nice-appearin' boy" in the old flannels was the only son of Roderick
Allan, President of the Allan Iron Works of Newark, New Jersey. Not
half so much difference as the old flannels made to Dugald's mother.
The inclination on the part of their boy to be "queer," for under that
head they put all his predilections that differed from their
ambitions--distressed his parents very much. The boy had "everything"
and he didn't care a rap about "anything"; they looked upon his spells
of dreamy preoccupation as "loafing." His father had an executive
office in the iron works waiting for him when he finished college, a
job at which any red-blooded young fellow would jump, and Dugald talked
of painting. His mother had grieved that he would take no part in the
social whirl that made up her existence, that he laughed at the creed
of her "set," scouted the class commandments by which she lived. When
he expressed the intention of going on a tramp over Cape Cod she had
encouraged the whim. She had believed that the discomforts of such an
expedition would cure him of his "notions." She had motored to
Provincetown two summers before and she thought it a forlorn place; the
hotels were impossible, the streets dusty and crowded, everything
smelled fishy and one was always elbowing great foreign creatures in
dirty oilskins and rubber boots.
Like many a mother she had been too busy living down to her rapidly
accruing wealth to know the man her boy had grown to be. All her
upbringing notwithstanding he was a simple soul with a sympathetic
understanding of his fellow mortals; a quiet humor and a keen
perception of beauty that abhorred the false or superficial, a brain
that stifled in crowded places. He much preferred knocking elbows with
men of homely labor to the crowded and law-breaking parties he came to
Cape Cod to escape; he found among the fisherfolk, the old gray
wharves, the sandy dunes, everlastingly swept with the clean breath of
the Atlantic, a peace of mind and an inspiration he had never known
elsewhere. The longing in his heart to paint that had been scarcely
more than an urge, took definite and splendid shape. Someone else had
the executive job in his father's manufacturing plant.
That he grew to know that Aunt Achsa needed him and looked forward to
his coming strengthened the bond that brought him back to Sunset Lane
each spring. No one had ever needed him before and it was a
man-satisfying sensation. And in Aunt Achsa's affection for him there
was a depth which he divined but only vaguely understood. In his hardy
six feet four the compassionate mother-woman was seeing her poor
Lavender, big and strong and "straight." To her Dugald was what
Lavender "wasn't"; in her way she put him and Lavender together and
made a satisfying whole. Sometimes she wondered if Dugald might not be
the answer to her prayers!
It had been to young Allan that Aunt Achsa had carried the letter that
the baker brought so unexpectedly to the door. Joe had lingered on the
doorstep, but had not been rewarded by any hint of its contents. Achsa
could not remember when she had had a letter before. She fingered the
envelope apprehensively. Yet it could scarcely be bad news of any sort,
for there was just herself and Lavender and he was only down in the
flats. No one would write anything about _him_.
"Read it--my eyes ain't certain with folk's writing," she had begged
Dugald Allan, in a shaky voice. Thereupon he had read aloud Sidney's
letter.
"I never!" "I swan!" "Why, that's Annie Green's girl--Annie was
Jon'than's daughter--I rec'lect her when she wasn't much bigger than a
pint of cider." Achsa Green fluttered with excitement like a quivering
brown leaf caught in a sudden stir of wind. "And the little thing says
she knows all about me. Heard her folks tell. Well, well, I wouldn't 'a
said there was a God's soul knew about Achsa Green outside this harbor!
The little pretty. And her ma's dead--died when she was a baby, poor
little mite. Sidney--that's not a Cape name. Like as not they got it
from the other side. Well, Uncle Jon'than allas was diff'runt--he was
for books and learnin' and was a peaked sort, as I rec'lect him--He was
consid'rable younger than Pa!"
During Achsa's excited soliloquy Dugald Allan had an opportunity to
reread the letter. He smiled broadly over the reading. But his smile
changed to a quick frown as he observed the signature. For a brief
second he pondered over it, then by a shake of his head seemed to
dismiss some thought.
"What are you going to tell her?" he asked Achsa Green. "Will you let
her come on?"
Achsa Green started. She had not thought of the real business of the
letter. "Why, I don't know. It's a poor place for a young girl--"
"Don't talk like that, Aunt Achsa. Haven't I told you this is the only
corner of the earth where God's air is sweet--and untainted?"
Achsa Green could only understand what her Mr. Dugald meant by the
expression of his eyes. Now, they encouraged her. "I might fix up the
downstairs bedroom. It ain't been used except to store things since
Lavender was born in there and his ma was taken out in a box, but I
don't know but that I could fix it up suit'ble; a young girl ain't so
finicky as grownups. If you won't mind havin' a young piece 'round--"
uncertainly.
It was _not_ exactly to Dugald Allan's liking to have a "young piece"
around. He had planned some difficult and steady work for the summer.
And he had an unreasonable aversion to fifteen-year-olds, at least the
kind like his young cousin and her friends, which was the only kind he
really knew. But he was touched by Aunt Achsa's delight in finding
"flesh-and-blood" kin; he did not like to dampen her pleasure. He could
work somewhere else, in one of the corners of the breakwall or among
the dunes. He smilingly assured her that a "young piece" around would
add tremendously to his summer.
"I dunno if I can write her a nice enough letter, my hand shakes so,
and I ain't much of a head at spelling. Pa never set anything by books
himself and Asabel's and my schoolin' sort o' depended on the
elements." Dugald Allan sensed that Achsa did not want this little
unknown cousin, miles away, to know of her lack of "schoolin'."
"Bless you, I'll write and I'll write just as though it came from you."
"Don't know as there's a scrap of writin' paper in this house."
"My best is none too good," promised young Allan promptly, delighting
in the growing pleasure in the wrinkled face.
But one more doubt assailed Achsa Green. Lavender.
"D'you think I ought to tell first hand--about Lavender?"
Early in his acquaintance with Aunt Achsa and Sunset Lane Dugald had
come to know how it hurt Aunt Achsa to speak of Lavender as "being
different." At first, with courteous consideration he had avoided the
truth--then as the summers passed he himself had grown fond enough of
the boy to forget the crooked body.
He hesitated a moment before he answered, then he spoke gently:
"No, Aunt Achsa. That is not necessary. And anyway--it's only the outer
shell of him that is different, his soul is fine and straight and
manly."
At this Achsa's eyes caressed him; he put so easily into words what she
tried so bravely to remember.
And thus it had come about that Dugald Allan wrote on his best
stationery (which he kept for his letters to his mother) to Sidney
Ellis Romley, as though, per promise, it was Cousin Achsa, herself. He
had had to write several letters before one quite suited both him and
Achsa. The letter despatched, to his surprise he shared with Aunt Achsa
considerable interest in its outcome. It would certainly knock the
summer flat, but Aunt Achsa's delighted anticipation was rare.
He helped her to prepare the "spare" room off the parlor and to remove
anything that might remind its young occupant of that tragic passing of
Lavender's mother "by box." He abetted her safeguarding the various
mementoes of the days when the _Betsy King_ sailed into the harbor from
foreign shores.
"No sense leavin' things 'round waitin' to be knocked off long's they
lived through them cats. You can't tell what fifteen's goin' to be!"
"No--" groaned Allan inwardly, "You certainly can not."
In the last hours before Sidney's expected arrival he agreed to meet
her. Though that was Lavender's duty he knew, as well as Achsa, that
she could not depend upon Lavender. "If he took it into his head to go
down to Rockman's wharf why, he'd go--cousin or no cousin comin'," Aunt
Achsa had worried; and then Dugald had come to the rescue, even
promising to go so far as to hire Hiram Foss's hack--none of the town
taxis would go through the sand of Sunset Lane!