Читать книгу Mermaid - Grant M. Overton - Страница 7

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Spring advanced. The velvety grass of the salt meadows became a delightful green. Mermaid of the Lone Cove Station played all day among the dunes and down by the surf, and the men, particularly Ho Ha, played with her. She had a part in their daily drills and exercises. When they wigwagged with red and white flags she wigwagged with a small red and white flag, too. When the little brass cannon was fired and Jim Mapes, standing on a platform that encircled a high pole—a platform that represented the maintop as the pole represented a ship’s mainmast—caught the heaving line and made it fast Mermaid, her hair glinting in the sunlight, stood beside him. The line rigged, Mermaid made the round trip to the dunes and back, and then a last trip to the dunes in the breeches buoy. Her two small legs protruded ridiculously, and the tip of her head was hidden in the big circle of the buoy’s belt. On other days there was drill with the surf boat, but on these occasions Mermaid could only stand on the beach and jump up and down with excitement while her uncles (as she was taught to call them) waded warily out in big hip boots, watched for the right moment, and pushed beyond the breakers. Cap’n Smiley, who was always helping the little girl to invent games, had suggested to her that she play she was on a desert island. He had explained to her what a desert island was, and had made her acquainted, verbally, with one Robinson Crusoe.

She, Mermaid, was a desert islander and the surfboat, returning, was a boat come to take her off. She had been alone, utterly alone, on the desert island for years. At the sight of the boat coming through the surf emotion should be hers. It was, and would have been anyway; but it might never have been the imaginative and kindled thing it became with the keeper’s help. Standing at the tiller he would call out, as the boat turned shoreward:

“Courage! You shall be restored to your family and friends!”

And when the boat was beached he would advance to the child, bow respectfully before her, and even sometimes, kneeling, kiss her hand. He would say:

“Your gracious Majesty, we have voyaged to the Indies and have taken possession of them in the name of Castile!”

Or:

“Welcome, my lady, back to the world of living men!”

Or, merely bowing, and with a deference as studied as Stanley’s in the African jungle:

“Madame Mermaid, I believe!”

Mermaid received him without full comprehension but with high glee. With a deplorable lack of etiquette she invariably reached up both arms, put them around his lowered neck, and kissed him.

She was pretty with the promise of loveliness, perhaps of beauty. It was not only her hair and her eyes but the modelling of her chin and the spacing of her features. The skin was unusually clear, with colour in the cheeks, and a few faint, clustered freckles.

The men were devoted to her and she returned their affection. Even Ha Ha, the sad soul, the introspective one, though he never smiled, was less gloomy in his opinions when Mermaid stood by. Ho Ha, unable to compete with the keeper in telling engrossing stories, set himself to work to provide pets. There were foxes on the beach and he had come upon a litter. The cubs were dedicated to Mermaid—until nightfall when their mother gnawed the ropes which fastened them. Ho Ha sought vainly in Bellogue and Blue Port for a white rabbit with pink eyes. The beach was infested with plain brown rabbits, for the most part rather unafraid of man. Mermaid could approach within a few feet of these but they would not stay to let her touch them. Occasionally, trotting along the ocean shore beside Ho Ha, Mermaid came upon the round-toed tracks of a cat. Then the coast guardsman would explain how some of the summer people had left their cats on the beach in the fall to fend for themselves. Cats so abandoned, explained Ho Ha, quickly became wild; they doubtless caught birds and visited the water’s edge in the reasonable hope of finding a bit of fish for supper. They were as wild as the foxes and much more savage; if Mermaid should see one she must not make advances lest she be set upon and clawed. The sinuous line in the sand was the trail of a snake, probably a harmless garter snake, but possibly a black snake. Mermaid shuddered and her little hand closed more firmly over Ho Ha’s fingers.

While her natural education was thus proceeding Cap’n Smiley gave much thought to the question of her schooling. Soon she would be seven, if, indeed, she were not already. Since the lack of a birthday is troublesome he bestowed his own upon her and promised some sort of a birthday party come May 27th.

But before this celebration ripened the agreeable course of life on the beach suffered an intrusion. On a fine May day Cap’n Smiley was puzzled to see advancing along the beach and turning in toward his station a group of women whom he recognized, as they neared, to be from Blue Port. Hastily assuring himself that his sister was not one, he arrested the drill with the breaches buoy and stepped forward to meet them. There were Mrs. Horton, Mrs. Brand, Mrs. Dayton, and Miss Errily. The four came up slowly, talking among themselves with earnestness. When they were within earshot they stopped and Miss Errily seemed to take the lead, her thin lips closed in a straight line.

“Good morning,” said Cap’n Smiley, pleasantly. “We’re about finished with the drill, but there’s time enough to see it done over if——”

Miss Errily interrupted him:

“We didn’t come to see the drill, Cap’n Smiley,” she said in the severe tone natural to her. “We came to protest, on behalf of good people, against your allowing that child with the improper name to stay here. No one knows anything about her and I dare say the name you’ve given her is no worse than the rest if it were known; but a crew of rough men is not a fit surrounding in which any child should be brought up.”

For an ex-schoolteacher Miss Errily’s sentence construction was not flattering, but it was not the construction which bothered the keeper. The pleasant expression left his face.

“I don’t like insinuations, Miss Errily. Say what you have to say right out.”

Miss Errily compressed her lips more tightly before reopening them.

“Everyone knows, Cap’n Smiley, that this girl is a nobody-knows-who.”

“Go on,” the keeper told her.

“Doubtless,” pursued Miss Errily, “she is a—no, I cannot bring myself to say it, and it is unnecessary—an Improper Child” (Miss Errily’s tone capitalized the words) “With Improper Origins and Antecedents. Her proper place is an Institution. Naturally, the Children’s Home connected with the county house and poor farm. They train them very well for domestic service, and good servants are becoming scarce. Few nowadays can keep their place and so, few keep their places. Besides, it is a Scandal—I speak frankly—an Open Scandal for a child of her years to be living here with rough men who cannot look after her properly nor discipline her. School, church, and home; she goes without all three.”

Cap’n Smiley’s blue eyes flashed as the blue ocean at which he had been gazing flashed when the sun caught the waves. Now he turned and faced the women, but Ho Ha, who had been listening with clenched fists, was before him. At the beginning of Miss Errily’s remarks Ho Ha had whispered in Mermaid’s ear and the child had scampered toward the station, not unpleased, for she did not like the looks the visitors gave her.

“Wait a minute, Miss Errily,” said Ho Ha. He drawled the words. “Wait—a—minute. You are not holding school, now. Who sent you?”

The spokeswoman stiffened. She replied, angrily:

“We represent the Feeling of a Community. We——”

“And this,” observed Ho Ha, not waiting for her, “is another community. If you represent any feelings except your own and those of a few other meddlesome women, Miss Errily, it’s the first time in forty years—you’re about sixty-two, aren’t you? My father was in your first class and you were about twenty-two then.”

“Hosea!” said the keeper, in a low tone of rebuke, but he shook oddly as he said it.

“My age,” quivered Miss Errily, “whatever it is, should be sufficient to insure Respectful Treatment.” But she was obviously upset. Mrs. Brand took her place.

“Insult me, if you dare, Hosea Hand!” she cried, challengingly. Ho Ha looked at her thoughtfully.

“I wouldn’t tell any one to his face what you write about people to other people, Maria Brand,” he rejoined. “I still have your letter in which you wrote me that Cap’n Smiley’s sister——”

“I never wrote such a letter!” almost shrieked Maria Brand, with a look of half terror at the keeper, whose eye, fixed on the glittering ocean, remained there. Ho Ha, turning to Mrs. Dayton as if he were finishing a sentence addressed to her, went on implacably.

“—if you must look after other people’s children, why not look after your husband’s?” Mrs. Dayton went red and white, half opened her lips, and then started to walk rapidly away. The ranks had broken. Miss Errily and Maria Brand, followed by Mrs. Horton, were also in rapid retreat in the direction taken by Amelia Dayton who had no children, and whose husband’s did not bear the name of Dayton. Cap’n Smiley frowned on his surfman. “That was going too far!” he censured him.

“Not a bit, not a bit!” said Ho Ha with heat. “Nothing but a pack of busybodies! Dick Dayton’s brats roll in dirt while Amelia Dayton lends money at usury. My regret is that I didn’t get a chance to ask Jane Horton if she had paid her farmer’s fine yet. You know he watered the milk and I can guess by whose orders!”