THE SUMMER’S END
They sat together in the canoe, each facing the other, Doris in the bow
and Sally in the stern. A full, mid-September moon painted its rippling
path on the water and picked out in silver every detail of shore and
river. The air was full of the heavy scent of the pines, and the only
sound was the ceaseless lap-lap of the lazy ripples at the water’s edge.
Doris had laid aside her paddle. Chin in hands, she was drinking in the
radiance of the lovely scene.
“I simply cannot realize I am going home tomorrow and must leave all
this!” she sighed at last.
Sally dipped her paddle disconsolately and answered with almost a groan:
“If it bothers _you_, how do you suppose it makes _me_ feel?”
[Illustration: They sat together in the canoe]
“We have grown close to each other, haven’t we?” mused Doris. “Do you
know, I never dreamed I could make so dear a friend in so short a time.
I have plenty of acquaintances and good comrades, but usually it takes
me years to make a real _friend_. How did you manage to make me care so
much for you, Sally?”
“‘Just because you’re you’!” laughed Sally, quoting a popular song. “But
do you realize, Doris Craig, what a different girl I’ve become since I
knew and cared for _you_?”
She was indeed a different girl, as Doris had to admit. To begin with,
she _looked_ different. The clothes she wore were neat, dainty and
appropriate, indicating taste and care both in choosing and wearing
them. Her parents were comparatively well-to-do people in the village
and could afford to dress her well and give her all that was necessary,
within reason. It had been mainly lack of proper care, and the absence
of any incentive to seem her best, that was to blame for the original
careless Sally. And not only her looks, but her manners and English
were now as irreproachable as they had once been provincial and faulty.
“Why, even my thoughts are different!” she suddenly exclaimed, following
aloud the line of thought they had both been unconsciously pursuing.
“You’ve given me more that’s worth while to think about, Doris, in these
three months, than I ever had before in all my life.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t _I_ that did it,” modestly disclaimed Doris, “but
the books I happened to bring along and that you wanted to read. If you
hadn’t _wanted_ different things yourself, Sally, I don’t believe you
would have changed any, so the credit is all yours.”
“Do you remember the day you first quoted ‘The Ancient Mariner’ to me?”
laughed Doris. “I was so astonished I nearly tumbled out of the boat. It
was the lines, ‘We were the first that ever burst into that silent sea,’
wasn’t it?”
“Yes, they are my favorite lines in it,” replied Sally. “And with all
the poems I’ve read and learned since, I love that best, after all.”
“My favorite is that part, ‘The moving moon went up the sky and nowhere
did abide,’” said Doris, “and I guess I love the thing as much as you
do.”
“And Miss Camilla,” added Sally, “says her favorite in it is,
“‘The selfsame moment I could pray,
And from my neck so free,
The Albatross fell off and sank
Like lead into the sea.’
She says that’s just the way she felt when we girls made that discovery
about her brother’s letter. Her ‘Albatross’ had been the supposed weight
of disgrace she had been carrying about all these fifty years.”
“Oh, Miss Camilla!” sighed Doris ecstatically. “What a darling she is!
And what a wonderful, simply wonderful adventure we’ve had, Sally.
Sometimes, when I think of it, it seems too incredible to believe. It’s
like something you’d read of in a book and say it was probably
exaggerated. Did I tell you that my grandfather has decided to purchase
her whole collection of porcelains, and the antique jewelry, too?”
“No,” answered Sally, “but Miss Camilla told me. And _I_ know how she
hates to part with them. Even _I_ will feel a little sorry when they’re
gone. I’ve washed them and dusted them so often and Miss Camilla has
told me so much about them. I’ve even learned how to know them by the
strange little marks on the back of them. And I can tell English Spode
from Old Worcester, and French Faience from Vincennes Sèvres,--and a lot
beside. And what’s more, I’ve really come to admire and appreciate them.
I never supposed I would.
“Miss Camilla will miss them a lot, for she’s been so happy with them
since they were restored to her. But she says they’re as useless in her
life now as a museum of mummies, and she needs the money for other
things.”
“I suppose she will restore the main part of her house and live in it
and be very happy and comfortable,” remarked Doris.
“That’s just where you are entirely mistaken,” answered Sally, with
unexpected animation. “Don’t you know what she is going to do with it?”
“Why, no!” said Doris in surprise. “I hadn’t heard.”
“Well, she only told me today,” replied Sally, “but it nearly bowled me
over. She’s going to put the whole thing into Liberty Bonds, and go on
living precisely as she has before. She says she has gotten along that
way for nearly fifty years and she guesses she can go on to the end. She
says that if her father and brother could sacrifice their safety and
their money and their very lives, gladly, as they did when their country
was in need, she guesses she oughtn’t to do very much less. If she were
younger, she’d go to France right now, and give her life in some
capacity, to help out in this horrible struggle. But as she can’t do
that, she is willing and delighted to make every other sacrifice within
her power. And she’s taken out the bonds in my name and Genevieve’s,
because she says she’ll never live to see them mature, and we’re the
only chick or child she cares enough about to leave them to. She wanted
to leave some to you, too, but your father told her, no. He has already
taken out several in your name.”
Doris was quite overcome by this flood of unexpected information and by
the wonderful attitude and generosity of Miss Camilla.
“I never dreamed of such a thing!” she murmured. “She insisted on giving
me the little Sèvres vase, when I bade her good-bye today. I hardly
liked to take it, but she said I must, and that it could form the
nucleus of a collection of my own, some day when I was older and times
were less strenuous. I hardly realized what she meant then, but I do
now, after what you’ve told me.”
“But that isn’t all,” said Sally. “I’ve managed to persuade my father
that I’m not learning enough at the village school and probably never
will. He was going to take me out of it this year anyway, and when
summer came again, have me wait on the ice-cream parlor and candy
counter in the pavilion. I just hated the thought. Now I’ve made him
promise to send Genevieve and me every day to Miss Camilla to study
with her, and he’s going to pay for it just the same as if I were going
to a private school. I’m so happy over it, and so is Miss Camilla, only
we had hard work persuading her that she must accept any money for it.
And even Genevieve is delighted. She has promised to stop sucking her
thumb if she can go to Miss Camilla and ‘learn to yead ’bout picters,’
as she says.”
“It’s all turned out as wonderfully as a fairy-tale,” mused Doris as
they floated on. “I couldn’t wish a single thing any different. And I
think what Miss Camilla has done is--well, it just makes a lump come in
my throat even to speak of it. I feel like a selfish wretch beside her.
I’m just going to save every penny I have this winter and give it to the
Red Cross and work like mad at the knitting and bandage-making. But even
that is no _real_ sacrifice. I wish I could do something like she has
done. _That’s_ the kind of thing that counts!”
“We can only do the thing that lies within our power,” said Sally,
grasping the true philosophy of the situation, “and if we do all of
that, we’re giving the best we can.”
They drifted on a little further in silence, and then Doris glanced at
her wrist-watch by the light of the moon. “We’ve got to go in,” she
mourned. “It’s after nine o’clock, and Mother warned me not to stay out
later than that. Besides I’ve got to finish packing.”
They dragged the canoe up onto the shore, and turned it over in the
grass. Then they wandered, for a moment, down to the edge of the water.
“Remember, it isn’t so awfully bad as it seems,” Doris tried to hearten
Sally by reminding her. “Father and I are coming down again to stay over
Columbus Day, and you and Genevieve are coming to New York to spend the
Christmas holidays with us. We’ll be seeing each other right along, at
intervals.”
Sally looked off up the river to where the pointed pines on Slipper
Point could be dimly discerned above the wagon bridge. Suddenly her
thoughts took a curious twist.
“How funny,--how awfully funny it seems now,” she laughed, “to think we
once were planning to dig for pirate treasure--up there!” she nodded
toward Slipper Point.
“Well, we may not have found any pirate loot,” Doris replied, “but
you’ll have to admit we discovered treasure of a very different
nature--and a good deal more valuable. And, when you come to think of
it, we did discover buried treasure, at least Miss Camilla did, and we
were nearly buried alive trying to unearth it, and what more of a
thrilling adventure could you ask for than that?” But she ended
seriously:
“Slipper Point will always mean to me the spot where I spent some of the
happiest moments of my life!”
“And I say--the same!” echoed Sally.
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's The Slipper Point Mystery, by Augusta Huiell Seaman