Читать книгу Mermaid - Grant M. Overton - Страница 9

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In September Mermaid and Cap’n Smiley and Ho Ha went beach-plumming. As they wandered over the dunes picking the blue-red-purple berries there was much conversation, sometimes conducted in shouts, when the three were spread a little apart.

“D’ you know the Latin name of these plums, Hosea?” demanded the keeper. Ho Ha looked very serious.

“My bad mark in school was always in Latin!”

The keeper winked at Mermaid. Ho Ha had gone to a little red schoolhouse, winters, until he was thirteen.

“It’s prunus maritima,” he reminded the scholar. “That’s almost calling ’em maritime prunes.”

“They’re commoner than prunes with us. Do they get the name from being served in sailors’ boarding-houses?”

“You were shanghaied to sea, once, weren’t you, Hosea?”

“Sixteen when it happened. On South Street, New York. Froze my feet standing a trick at the wheel off Cape Horn. Mate came into the fo’c’s’le and grabbed one foot and twisted it until I howled; then he pulled me out on deck,” said the Coast Guard, reminiscently. “I’d always been sort of crazy about the sea from a kid.” He emptied his pickings into a big basket, straightened up a moment, resumed his picking, and said:

“I worshipped, just about, an uncle, my mother’s brother, who’d been to sea all his life. And when I was a shaver on our farm up in the hills in the middle of the Island I slept in the attic. Every night, Cap’n, as I got in bed I could see through a little attic window, right over the tree tops Fire Island light. ’Twas maybe twenty miles away. ’Twould show, just a faint spark, then kindle, then glow bright, then flame like—like a beacon. Just for a few seconds; then ’twould die out. Occulting. It seemed to beckon to me. I was only a kid and there was something wonderful and friendly about that light! And secret, too. It seemed to be signalling just to me, a little chap in an ice-cold attic on a lonely hill farm. Seemed as if that light said: ‘Come on, Hosea Hand! I’m set here to tell you that there’s a great world out here waiting for you! I’m an outpost! There’s lands and peoples and adventures and ten thousand leagues of ocean—and there’s life, the greatest adventure of all! Hurry up and grow up, Hosea Hand!’ And then all shivering and excited, I’d crouch under the big, pieced quilt and watch that light come and glow, shine and dim, flame and go out—until I’d fall asleep and dream I was out there where it called me!”

The little girl listened, fascinated. She had stopped picking, and her childish breast rose and fell with quick breathing. Cap’n Smiley picked perfunctorily and once his hand closed so tightly about the coloured plums that they crushed them. Ho Ha worked steadily and after a few moments he went on:

“I was fourteen when my father died. The year before I’d quit school to help work the farm. In those days there wasn’t any science called agriculture. We just tilled the soil. My father was always trying to get more land; I used to wonder what for, when it was such slavery to work it! Maybe he suspicioned the day would come when we’d understand the soil and know how to make it yield without back-breaking and heart-break.”

“Your brother is pretty comfortably off, Hosea.”

“Yes,” said Ho Ha, with a curious inflection. “Yes, Richard’s comfortable. But he’s getting along. You know he’s ten years older than me.”

Cap’n Smiley gave an ejaculation of surprise. There had been some unfairness of dealing by Richard Hand with Hosea Hand after their father’s death, but the keeper did not know exactly what it was. The Blue Port story had it that Richard Hand had wanted his brother to stay and help work the farm, and Ho Ha had run off to sea instead. Back of this lay a tale of the father’s will. This had left the dead man’s estate to be divided equally between the sons. Richard, however, was to have the farm intact; and he was to effect such a settlement as would assure Hosea of his share in cash for whatever use he wanted to make of it. The father’s idea had been simple: the younger boy hated the farm and wanted an education; this money would help him get it; after that he must fend for himself.

So much Cap’n Smiley knew; so much, indeed, everybody knew. The rest no one appeared exactly to know, but the general impression was that Richard, as executor, had wound up his father’s affairs to suit himself.

“What happened?” Cap’n Smiley asked himself as he picked away, giving only absent attention to Mermaid’s chatter. “Knowing Richard Hand as I do, I suspect Hosea never got a cent of money and never will. I can make a pretty good guess that after paying the debts there was nothing left but the farm. To settle fairly with the boy, Dick Hand would have had to borrow money by mortgaging the place—and I don’t see him doing that!

“Humph!” concluded the keeper to himself. “Fourteen-year-old boy with no one to look out to see he got his rights. No lawyer had a hand in that estate! Dick delays the settlement; in the meantime, his young brother gets restless. Dick treats him badly; insists the boy stay and help work the farm; Hosea runs away. Dick winds up the estate; represents himself willing to settle with his brother but unable to; don’t know his whereabouts. Ho Ha away for years; when he comes back he tells his brother to go to the devil!”

Mermaid was conducting a dialogue with the wronged Hosea.

“Uncle Ho!” she cried, and Cap’n Smiley was reminded of the “Land, ho!” of the sailor. “Wasn’t that a queer way for David to deal with the Ph’listines?” Mrs. Biggles read the Bible Sunday mornings to her Henry and Mermaid.

“Why,” inquired Mermaid, “do you suppose he spanked them?”

“Who spanked?”

“David spanked the Ph’listines,” explained Mermaid. Ho Ha and the keeper eyed each other and then looked perplexedly at the red-haired mite. “How do you know he spanked the Philistines?” ventured the keeper.

“Why, it says he smote—that means struck—them ‘hip and thigh,’ ” she replied. “I’ll be awful glad when I can read about it myself. David threw a stone at Gollyath and killed him. Maybe a good spanking was all Gollyath needed.”

“Maybe,” assented Cap’n Smiley. Ho Ha was speechless. The keeper looked at him. “See your uncle, Mermaid,” he directed. “Living up to his name, isn’t he?”

The child caught the contagion of laughter and bubbled with it herself. “Do tell me what’s so funny, Uncle Ho,” she begged. “Please do!”

“A ghost just told me a joke,” said Ho Ha, looking at her with twinkling eyes. Mermaid was alert and excited at once. She believed in ghosts, not only because she was seven years old but because she lived on the Great South Beach where ghosts are natural and both respectable and respected. She clamoured to hear the joke. Ho Ha considered. He did not know as he ought to tell her; perhaps the ghost would not like that; it might want to tell Mermaid itself.

“Could you tell me what ghost it is?” the youngster besought him. “Was it the Duneswoman?”

“No,” Ho Ha answered. “It was one of the pirates. One of Kidd’s men. One of those fellows with gold earrings and black whiskers. Well—I don’t know’s there’s any harm in my telling you. He said if Kidd had been spanked proper as a boy——” Ho Ha stopped, as if no more need be said, and shook his head with a regretful air. Mermaid remarked:

“Do you suppose, Uncle Ho, that Mrs. Biggles spanks Mr. Biggles?”

“No doubt she has to sometimes,” agreed Ho Ha, with perfect seriousness.

Mermaid emptied her apron of a pint of plums. Her mind slipped back to ghosts.

“Dad,” she asked Cap’n Smiley, “does the Duneswoman know everything about the beach?”

“I think she does, pretty nearly,” the keeper told her. “Do you see much of her?”

“Only her head and arms. Sometimes she reaches out her arm to me.”

“I meant, do you see her often?”

“Oh, yes! Except when I’m with Mrs. Biggles. Mrs. Biggles says she never has seen her. She says I ought not to see her and mustn’t pay any ’tention to her,” Mermaid informed him.

“Perhaps that’s because Mrs. Biggles never sees her and doesn’t know how nice she is.”

“Just what I said.” Mermaid bit a plum and made a wry face. She wanted to ask Dad more about the Duneswoman.

That was a ghost only he and she had seen—a lovely Face and Arm that sometimes floated for an instant on the dark summer ocean, looked toward you … and was gone.