MR. DUGALD EXPLAINS
Sidney had fallen asleep on that first night at Cousin Achsa's with the
resolution to escape at the earliest moment possible from her
humiliating situation; she would telegraph Trude in the morning.
But with errant sunbeams, as yellow as gold, dancing across one's face,
with a tang of salt and pine in the air, fifteen is certain to rise up
strong-hearted, despite all accumulated woe. Forgetting her bitter
disappointment of the night before Sidney sprang from her bed and
rushed to the window to look out upon her new surroundings.
There was not really much she could see, for the lane turned at Mrs.
Ephraim Calkins' house and beyond her house a hillock of sand rose
steeply to an azure blue sky. But Aunt Achsa's riotous flowers were
smiling their brightest, at the opening of the hedge crouched Nip and
Tuck regarding the morning with dignified satisfaction, over everything
shone the alluring sun.
A sudden whiff of tobacco caught Sidney's attention. At the same moment
the boarder emerged from the back of the house and walked slowly along
the clam-shell path that skirted the bit of garden. He was evidently
deep in thought. Suddenly he bent and picked a flower. As he
straightened his glance interrupted Sidney's curious speculations.
"Good morning, little half-cousin."
"Good morning," Sidney answered, quite cheerfully, thinking as she
spoke that he was nicer looking in the garden than he had seemed in
Cousin Achsa's kitchen the night before. "Is it early or late and is it
your pipe that smells so good?"
"It's early. Aunt Achsa has gone on an errand, for I assured her that
you would probably sleep until noon. You see I'd forgotten that you
are--fifteen, did you say? And that smell--well, it may be the good
Atlantic, or Lav's basket of fish, which is not likely. My best bet is
that it's breakfast over at the Calkins'. I have an idea. I'll finish
this pipe while you dress, then we'll run down and meet Aunt Achsa and
incidentally I'll give you your first glimpse of the harbor. What say?"
Sidney indicated her willingness by drawing her head in from the frame
of roses. She dressed with haste, splashing the cold water from the
bowl over her face and scarcely disturbing the two braids of hair. In a
few moments she joined the "boarder" in the garden, rousing him from a
frowning contemplation of the little flower he had picked. At her "I'm
ready" he put it into the pocket of his coat.
Unlike Sidney, Dugald Allan had _not_ slept the night before. Argue as
he would he could not shake the notion that he was responsible for
Sidney's coming. Because the idea had seemed to please Aunt Achsa he
had encouraged her to invite the girl; to further humor her he himself
had written the letter that he knew must have given Sidney's family a
wrong impression of conditions at Aunt Achsa's. Its very tone had been
unwittingly misleading He had not thought of that until he had caught
the stricken look on Sidney's face the night before, observed her
involuntary shrinking from the intimacy of the supper table.
Poor Aunt Achsa, it had been rather a ghastly supper in spite of all
her efforts and her expectations: Lavender had huddled in his chair
with his great soft eyes on Sidney; Sidney had been too frightened to
eat or to answer by more than a monosyllable Aunt Achsa's eager
questions; poor Aunt Achsa, in an agony of shyness and concern had
fluttered over them all. It had been a relief when Sidney, pleading
weariness from her long journey, took her candle from Aunt Achsa and
went to bed. And later Allan could have sworn he heard the sound of
sobbing from behind that closed door.
The whole thing had bothered him and kept him awake, thinking. And it
was not alone Sidney's disappointment that moved him. He was stirred by
a strong desire to make the girl know Aunt Achsa as he knew her, to
love the noble spirit in the weather-beaten old body. Even Lavender.
These people might indeed be his own so quickly did he rise in their
defense. "Well, they _are_ my own!" he muttered. If this Sidney had
been like the other fifteen-year-old girls who had crossed his path he
would not have bothered, for they could not have been taught by any
process to recognize the gold from the dross; but she seemed different.
And he had caught the impression that she had come all this way for
something that she had wanted very much to find. Her disappointment had
bordered on the tragic. Well, it was no business of his, but he'd make
amends by laying off work for a few days and playing around with her
and Lavender.
He was a little taken aback when Sidney, clad in a middy and pleated
skirt, for Trude's last injunction had been to brush and hang away the
new suit in which she had traveled, joined him, no trace of last
night's woe on her face. With Nip and Tuck following they tramped
through the sand between the hollyhocks. Where the lane turned into the
beach road Sidney stopped with a quick, delighted intake of breath.
"Oh, the _boats_! Aren't they darling? I never saw so many. Why, the
sails look all pinky!"
Dugald Allan explained that this was a trick of the sun and water.
"Sometimes they are green and sometimes they are gray and deep purple.
The fishing boats are starting out for the grounds. They've been
waiting for the tide. That large schooner's headed for the banks--I
think it's the _Puritan_, Jed Starrow's new boat. She won't be back for
a week or so. Most of the others will pull in by dark."
"Can I go out on one of them? Oh, you don't know how much I want to,
I've never been in anything but a rowboat. And I can swim! Has Lavender
a boat?"
"One can always find a dory one can use--whenever he wants one. And
Lavender has the _Arabella_."
It was on the tip of Sidney's tongue to ask "What is the _Arabella_?"
and something more of this Jed Starrow whom she remembered Captain Phin
Davies had mentioned, but another thought seized her, crowding out all
others. From this boarder who seemed to want to be very nice to her,
she might learn the answer to the riddle that was perplexing her.
"Mr.-- Mr.--"
"Dugald, please. Won't you treat me like one of the family?"
"Mr.--Dugald, I--I want to ask you something. Prob'ly you'll think it's
dreadfully rude but--you see, none of us, my sisters and me, really
knew anything about Cousin Achsa and the Greens except what we found in
a book in our attic--a sort of family tree book. But I wanted to go
somewhere, so I wrote to her. I didn't tell my sisters until I got an
answer back. Mr.--Dugald, can letters be awfully different--from
people?"
A guilty shiver raced the length of Mr. Dugald's spine.
"What do you mean?" he parried.
"Why, I mean the letter I got back looked so _nice_. It looked as
though the person who wrote it was--well, sort of rich and lived in a
big house and--"
Dugald Allan motioned to an overturned dory.
"Suppose we sit here where we can see Aunt Achsa when she comes up the
road. Now I'll make a confession. _I_ wrote that letter for Aunt Achsa.
She didn't feel quite up to the mark, her hand shakes and she's a
little uncertain as to her spelling. I did not think at the time that I
possibly might be giving you--your family--a wrong impression. Aunt
Achsa was so happy at finding a relative, so touched that you knew
something of her, that I only thought of furthering her delight.
Anyway--" he faced Sidney's amazed eyes squarely; "You say you didn't
know anything of Achsa Green except what you--well, you might say, dug
out of the attic, weren't you taking a sporting chance when you came?"
Sidney flushed under the challenge in his tone. "I--I guess so. You
see, I've never done anything _different_--like the other girls have,
and I thought it was _my_ turn to use the--the Egg, we call it. I
wanted adventure. But I think I know what you mean; I ought not to be
disappointed because my cousins aren't just what I thought they'd be--"
"Sidney--I've lived--well, a little longer than you have; you see I've
had a chance to find out a few things about this world of ours and the
people in it. There's one kind of an aristocracy that we find mostly in
big cities--it comes up overnight, a sham thing made over with a
gilding of money and wit, very grand on the outside but when you
scratch it a little you find the common material underneath. Then
there's an aristocracy that's the real thing way through--it's so real
that it doesn't ever stop to think that it is an aristocracy. You find
that mostly in old, forgotten, out-of-the-way places--like on Cape Cod.
I think here it's more solid than the most, though it's fast dying;
some day it'll be a thing only of romance. But the real Cape Coders are
descended from pioneer men who followed the sea for an honest living,
who put bravery and justice and charity and how to live humanly with
their fellows above money. Most of 'em have been crowded out by a
different kind of a commerce than they knew how to deal with; that's
Lavender's father's story; others, the young ones, have scattered to
inland places; some have saved enough money to keep their positions in
their communities, like Captain Phin Davies; a few like your Cousin
Achsa have nothing but the honor of their people. Miss Sidney, in your
Cousin Achsa's old body there is a spirit that has come to her from men
who were like the Vikings of old--she lives by their standards. She's
never known anything but work and poverty, but she faces it--square to
the wind. And I've never known her to make a complaint or to utter a
begrudging word to or of a soul. Isn't that nobility?"
"I adore the way you say it!" cried Sidney. "It's just like the things
that come to me to say in my attic!"
"Huh? Your--what?" Amazed, Allan looked at her to see if she were
making fun of him. But her face was alight with enthusiasm.
"You must think a great deal of Cousin Achsa."
"I do. But--wait, I have more I want to say. You see, I feel
responsible on account of that letter--for your coming here. I want to
tell you--about Lavender. You could not have known--knowing nothing of
any of them--that poor old Lav wasn't--well, like other boys."
Sidney flushed. "No, I didn't. But then I didn't know there _was_ a
Lavender until I came."
"Look here--" Allan drew from his pocket the flower he had picked up in
the garden. "I was racking my brain for some way to make you see
Lavender as I see him--and then I found this. It was growing in a
corner of the garden where the soil is poor and the wind harsh and
where there isn't much sun; see, it's only half-size and the stem is
crooked. But look into the heart of it--it's as beautiful as its
fellows. Well--that's Lavender. After all his poor little body is only
a shell--if the heart of him is fine and straight, isn't that all that
matters? Like the blossom of the flower. Can't you think of Lav like
that?"
"I'll try to," promised Sidney, "and I'm ashamed dreadfully, to have
been so disappointed--about everything. I'll take the sporting chance.
Of course Vick would poke no end of fun at me if she knew how different
everything is. But--" with sudden determination, "Vick shall never
know." Then Sidney drew a long breath and let her thoughts revert to
the _Arabella_.
"What is the _Arabella_?"
"Look beyond that schooner that's nosing into the tide."
"Why, that's a real boat."
"Oh, the _Arabella's_ real enough. But she's been pensioned off--you
might say; she's enjoying a peaceful old age on a sand bar. When the
tide is out she's high and dry."
"And she belongs to Lavender?" incredulously.
Dugald Allan laughed. "The blood of his ancestors is strong in the boy.
He wanted a boat. A boat of his own--poor lad. He used to hide on the
fishing schooners until they'd clear the Point. So I bought the
_Arabella_ for him. Her owner was going to chop her up for kindling
wood. She serves a good purpose--and a safe one, moored out there.
Lavender sails the globe on her--and nothing can harm him.
"Oh, I see--just pretend. But even that's fun. Will he let me go with
him?"
"I am sure he will. If you ask him to take you to the Caribbean Sea on
his next voyage you'll win him completely."
"I'll help Lavender play the game for I know lots of different
places--though they're mostly inside the map."
Dugald Allan was regarding Sidney with thoughtful eyes. She certainly
was not in the least like the fifteen-year-olds he had assiduously
avoided. "Some kid," he commented, inwardly. Aloud he ventured: "Will
it be too inquisitive if I ask you what an Egg is? I see Aunt Achsa
coming and I think you'll have just time to tell me--unless you'd
rather not."
"An Egg? Oh, you mean _my_ Egg. Of course you must have thought it
funny! Why the Egg's the money that comes each year from a book my
father wrote--Goosefeathers. He was always ashamed of it. So we--my
sisters, you see, take turns spending the money any way we want to.
This is my first turn. Oh, dear, I wasn't going to tell a soul."
"You don't mean to say that you have any--well, objection, to being
known as the daughter of Joseph Romley?"
"Why, I'm not _ashamed_, of course not, for he was my own dad, and we
loved him. Lots of times he acted just as though he wasn't a poet.
But--but I wanted to be my own self; that was to be part of my
adventure. You see its awfully stupid always having to remember to act
like a poet's daughter; at least it is for Victoria and me--my older
sisters are so used to it that they do it naturally--"
But the astonishing boarder interrupted her with a roar of laughter. In
fact, he seemed so amused and even delighted at something that he could
not control his mirth. "You _are_ the funniest kid!" Then he had to
laugh again. "Did you say you were--only fifteen? And just how do
poets' daughters _have_ to act, anyway? I've only known--one. Well,
I'll keep your secret. Only you'll let me talk about it with you once
in a while, won't you? With everyone else you shall be as 'different'
as your heart desires. I don't believe Aunt Achsa knows. Now, let's go
and meet her and assure her that you are ready for the biggest
breakfast she can give you!"
"And do you think we can go out on the _Arabella_ today?"