WORDS THAT SING
To seal their pact of palship Lavender took Sidney to Top Notch.
He led her over a little path that wound around the smaller sand dunes
directly behind Sunset Lane until they came to a clump of old willows.
Once a cottage had stood under the willows; its timbers and crumbling
bricks still lay about half buried in the sand and covered over with
moss and climbing weeds. Though not a quarter of a mile from Aunt
Achsa's the spot offered as complete solitude as though it had been at
the ends of the world. The only sounds that reached its quiet were the
far-off screaming of the seagulls as they fought for their food at low
tide, and the distant boom-boom of the surging sea on the beach of the
backside.
"Look up there!" commanded Lavender proudly. And Sidney, looking as he
had bidden her, gave a little cry of delight. For there among the great
limbs of the biggest of the willows was a tiny house.
"That's mine. Top Notch. Mr. Dugald built it. That's where I study."
"Why, it's the cutest thing I ever _saw_!" Sidney was already at the
bottom of the narrow ladder that led to the house. "Can I go up? I feel
just like Alice in Wonderland, as though I'd have to take a pill to get
small enough to squeeze in."
"Oh, no, you won't. It's big enough for two."
The structure had been cleverly contrived; plankings securely nailed to
the spreading branches gave indeed ample space for two and even more;
there were comfortable seats and wide unshuttered windows, a rough
table and a secret shelf that looked like part of the wall until one
unlocked and let down a little door and revealed a neat row of books. A
"wing" of the house, added to another branch, Sidney declared, was
"upstairs."
Sidney sat down on one of the seats and Lavender sat on the other.
"Why, this is the best _yet_!" Sidney cried with a long breath. "I
don't see how Mr. Dugald thinks of the nice things he does."
"He's the best sort that ever lived." Lavender asserted with a little
break in his voice. "I don't know why he bothers 'bout me. But he found
out that I came over here and sort o' camped among those ruins down
there and I used to hide my things in that old oven so's Aunt Achsa
wouldn't find them. He knew why, too. Y'see it bothers Aunt Achsa a lot
to have me want to read and study so much--she's afraid I'll get to
thinkin' of going away. She don't know, y'see, that I _am_ going, some
day. So then Mr. Dugald helped me build Top Notch. There are all my
books."
Sidney ran her eye over the different volumes; among them were stories
of seafaring adventure and books on travel and science, a dictionary, a
Bible--and a volume of Browning's poetry. Sidney's hand shot out toward
this last, then quickly dropped to her side.
Lavender saw the gesture. "I like poetry," he explained shyly. "I'm
kinda afraid of it--I mean I don't understand it and I wish I did. Mr.
Dugald says he don't, either. But there's something about the way
poetry goes that's like music--it makes a sound. It's like the ocean,
moving and beating, and kind o' like your heart. And sometimes the
words hurt, they're so beautiful. I wish I knew more about poetry."
Sidney felt shivery cold all over and hot at the same moment. She kept
her eyes on the square that was the open window. She knew she ought to
tell the truth to Lavender--right now. But, oh, she _couldn't_. Yet she
must! She had almost summoned the right words to begin when Lavender
rose and stepped toward the ladder.
"I brought you here so's you'd know 'bout it and use it when you want
to--the books'n everythin'. Only don't let Mart come. She'd make fun of
it. Here's where I hide the key to the shelf. S'long. I got to get down
to Rockman's." Lavender abruptly slipped down the ladder and ran out of
sight among the dunes.
Left alone in the Top Notch Sidney felt a guilty remorse sweep over
her. Lavender had shared with her his sanctum sanctorum, he had
admitted his love of poetry and she had sat silent and had not told him
the truth.
Like music--like the waves of the ocean beating--like one's
heart--words that hurt, his shy sentences rang in her ears. Probably he
had found it hard to tell her for fear she might laugh. Laugh--why,
suddenly she knew that that was really the way poetry seemed to her!
She just _made_ herself believe she hated it when she did not hate it
at all. Music--she could hear Isolde's soft drawling voice reading from
one of father's books and it was indeed music. She had all that
treasure that she could share with Lavender, hungry for the beautiful,
and yet she had sat mum. Oh, she had been horrid, stingy. And he was
sharing Top Notch with her.
Quite naturally Sidney, brooding secretly over her shortcomings, fell
back upon the long-neglected "Dorothea." And she took "Dorothea" at
once to Top Notch, the better to pour out her feelings undisturbed. She
covered a whole page with her appreciation of Lavender's confidence and
her utter unworthiness of such tribute. Then the fascination of Top
Notch brought her to Mr. Dugald.
"I wish the girls knew him. He's so much nicer than any of their
suitors, than even any of Vick's." Let it be recorded here that Sidney
paused and chewed her pencil and pondered the difficulties of bringing
about an acquaintance between Mr. Dugald and any one of her three
sisters. Romance was never far from Sidney's imaginings; she invariably
endowed every young man who came to the Romley house for any sort of a
reason with deep purposes of wooing. But this situation offered
obstacles to even Sidney's imagination for miles separated Mr. Dugald
from the charms of her sisters; there seemed no way in which he could
meet them.
However, obstacles only stimulated Sidney. "I know," she wrote
furiously, "I'll pick out one of them and talk about her all the time
and wish and wish in my heart and just _make_ something happen. Now,
which one, dear Dorothea, is the important thing for me to decide."
From point of romance Vick offered the most possibilities--there was so
much about Vick to talk about. But Mr. Dugald did not seem Vick's sort.
Vick liked what she called "smooth" men and Mr. Dugald was most
certainly not that. And, anyway, Vick would simply have to have a rich
man to give her all the things she said she intended having and Mr.
Dugald was not rich or he'd have more fashionable clothes. No, Vick was
out of it. Isolde--well, he wasn't Issy's sort, either. Sidney did not
know just what Issy's sort was like but she did not think it was like
Mr. Dugald. Anyway, she did not _want_ Issy to have him. She wanted
Trude to have him, dear old peachy Trude who had never had any beau
except her Lost Love.
"I shall talk about dear Trude and all her nice points. I shall even
say she is beautiful for she is in the eyes of love and I like to talk
about Trude, anyway. So from this day forth I shall gather the threads
of Destiny into my white hands and weave a beautiful pattern of love
and happiness."
Forthwith Sidney began her weaving and found it amazingly easy. She
talked through supper about Trude and took it as a promising sign that
Mr. Dugald himself asked her all sorts of questions as though he
"thirsted" to know more. And Sidney answered generously. She walked
with him after supper to the postoffice in order to talk more about
Trude. The next day she produced a very unflattering snapshot of Trude
and left it on the kitchen table and later gloated in secret over its
disappearance, though of course Aunt Achsa _might_ have burned it up in
her tireless cleaning and straightening.
After that Trude's name crossed the conversation of the little family
frequently and quite naturally. Mr. Dugald called her "Truda" and knew
that she was staying with the Whites on Long Island and that she was
the prop of the entire Romley family and never thought of herself at
all and that she wasn't as pretty as Vick or Isolde but really,
_nicer_--Sidney quite opened her heart. And then one morning when she
was helping Mr. Dugald clean his brushes she told him of Trude's Lost
Love. Not much about it for the reason that she herself knew only a
little and also because a strange look went suddenly over Mr. Dugald's
face.
"Put on the brakes, little sister. Aren't you letting me into secrets
that perhaps your Trude would not want me to know?"
Sidney's face flamed. She knew Mr. Dugald was right. "Oh, I _should_
not have told you. I--just got started and didn't think. Can't you
forget what I said as though I didn't say it?" she pleaded.
"I'll forget what you said," Mr. Dugald promised, knowing perfectly
well that he could not and from that day on he never asked any more
questions of Sidney concerning her family.
"I'm not playing fair," he said to himself but not to her.
To "Dorothea" Sidney confided her chagrin. "I didn't say _much_--just
that Trude had had one heartbreaking affair with a man she met at Mrs.
White's and that I didn't believe she'd gotten over it yet. I read a
book once where it said pity was akin to love and I thought if Mr.
Dugald _knew_ that Trude's heart was broken he would feel very sorry
for her. But he looked so embarrassed that I knew I had not been
maidenly as Isolde would say and I blushed furiously. He promised to
forget it and I think he will. But, oh, perhaps I have defeated my dear
purpose for now when I speak of Trude he looks funny as though he was
afraid of what I was going to say next. I am in despair."
The sound of voices, one unmistakably Mr. Dugald's, disturbed Sidney's
musings. She thrust "Dorothea" into the secret shelf and locked it.
Then she peeped out of the window.
Mr. Dugald and Miss Letty Vine approached down the narrow path of hard
sand straight toward the willows. Sidney's first impulse was to call to
them; in the next moment she realized that they had no intention of
climbing to Top Notch. Miss Vine wore heavy gloves on her hands and
carried a trowel and a basket and was making little jumps here and
there among the weeds in search of "specimens."
Sidney sat very still and watched her. She thought Miss Letty the most
interesting person, anyway. She always looked like the figurehead of a
ship come to life, as Mr. Dugald had described her. She was very tall
and bony, with huge bones that made lumps in her shoulders and elbows
and even at her knees; her temples protruded and her cheek-bones and
her jaw. She had long fingers with prominent knuckles.
Miss Letty always wore a style of dress that she had evolved for
herself long ago and that was plainly built for comfort rather than
style or beauty. She held any grace of trimming as "froppery" and
scorned it, going always unadorned. She wore her "learning" just as she
wore her clothes. That she had gone to school in Boston and studied
music there no one would ever know from anything she said. One just
thought of Miss Letty as being _born_ with knowledge, the way she was
born capable. "Capable from the cradle," Aunt Achsa sometimes said.
Everyone liked Miss Letty in spite of the bones and the sharp tongue
and the freakish dresses, and no one knew exactly why; it might have
been her eyes which were kindly and had little twinkles deep-set within
their irises, or her way of knowing the thing to do and going ahead and
doing it. Everyone respected Miss Letty and acknowledged her worth at
once.
Now Mr. Dugald was lounging against one of the rotting timbers of the
house-that-had-been and sketching Miss Letty on the pad which he always
carried in the pocket of his old coat. _He_ thought Miss Letty most
interesting, too. He spent considerable time at her house and often
took long walks with her.
While Sidney watched, Miss Letty sat down stiffly by Mr. Dugald's side
and looked with interest at the sketch.
"That's about the thousandth one you've made, isn't it? And you can't
seem to get any of them bad enough."
"I can't get into it what I want," Dugald Allan laughed, tearing off
the sheet and crumpling it in his hand. "You see I feel something about
you that I haven't been able yet to put on canvas. But I will some day.
Then I'll know I have gotten somewhere."
Miss Letty considered his words as though they were of some one quite
apart from herself.
"I suppose it's my soul you're hoping to catch. Well, I never did wear
it on my sleeve," and she laughed, a great laugh like a man's.
"No, you do not. That's true. But it's my job to get at people's souls,
wherever they wear 'em, and paint them in."
"Well, hunt, then. Souls are queer things," opined Miss Letty,
carefully drawing off her old gloves and smoothing them out with her
long, bony fingers. "I sometimes think the Lord gets the souls mixed up
and puts them in the wrong bodies. Maybe that's wicked but if 'tis I
think lots wickeder things."
"Maybe He knows more about it than we think He does--" said Dugald so
softly that Sidney, frankly eavesdropping, had hard work to catch the
words. They were so interesting, these two, that she was glad she had
not let them know she was in Top Notch; she hoped they would talk a
long time about souls and such things. But without warning Miss Letty
changed the subject.
"Did you ever know such a smart piece as that girl of Achsy Green's?"
"Sidney?" And Mr. Dugald chuckled. "She's sure one rare kid. I don't
know when I've enjoyed anything as much as having her around. And do
you know the youngster's rarely gifted--she has a colorful imagination
and a perception of verities that may take her further than her father.
She is fighting destiny just now, but it will get her; if she isn't a
poet she'll be a creator of something equally fine."
"I'm too old to live to know--but you will," answered Miss Letty, quite
calmly. "And maybe we're both wrong. Maybe her finest work will be to
raise a family. And I don't know, when all's said and done, but that's
as good a job as your daubs or my music or a book of verse. You've got
something then that can love you back."
But Sidney did not hear this simple philosophy for she had dropped to
the floor of Top Notch and covered her ears with her hands. Her face
flamed with the anger that held her. How _dared_ they sit there and
talk her over! And say that she was going to write poetry! That she had
something or other and might be greater than her father! A poet! Well,
she _wouldn't_! _She would not!_ She thought, with stinging
humiliation, of the verses she had written in her attic den and that
lay now hidden in the secret place under the floor. She'd written them
just because they hummed so in her ears that she had _had_ to write
them, but when she returned home she'd tear them into tiny bits and
never, _never_ write another line, even though the words did jingle and
hum.
She sat cramped on the floor of Top Notch, until she was certain the
intruders had gone away. Then she got stiffly to her feet and reached
for "Dorothea." Hot tears of mortification blinded her eyes so that she
had to dash them away with the back of her hand. One splashed upon the
page she had opened.
"I have come, dear Dorothea, to another crossroad in life. You only
shall witness my solemn vow. _I shall not be a poet!_ I shall be a
missionary. A missionary's life is fraught with danger and takes them
to distant climes and they have to dress in what is given to them out
of a barrel--"
She felt a little better and pleasantly sacrificial after she had
written this vow. Poor Sidney, she did not know that the words that
Lavender had likened to music and the beating sea would sing in her
ears as persistently in Timbuctoo as in the quiet of her attic den!