Silver Shoal Light/Chapter 14
CHAPTER XIV
THE PEACOCK FEATHER
THE elevator-man in the office building remembered Garth and grinned delightedly. Joan had thought him a dismal-looking person when they came in, but the smile greatly changed his tired, uninteresting face.
"Still livin’ on the lighthouse?" he inquired genially. "Wisht I could!" He clanged the elevator door open. "Always does me good, seein’ that feller," he remarked to Joan; "wisht he came oftener."
They were five minutes late, but there was no sign of Dr. Stone.
"You always have to wait ages," said Garth; "so we might as well do something. Let's play The Miraculous Memory-Stretcher."
"May I ask what that is?" Joan said.
"That's what Fogger calls it. You show a person a picture in a magazine or something for about two flashes, and then snatch it away again, and they have to say all the things that were in it. It's awfully hard. You'd be surprised."
He brought a magazine from the table, exhibited an illustration to Joan for perhaps ten seconds, and whisked it away, leaving her gasping.
"Why," she said, "there—there were two men and a cat, standing in front of a house."
On looking again at the picture, it was found that the cat was a dog, and that Joan had entirely neglected to mention a woman leaning in the doorway of the house and two horses hitched to a picket-fence beneath a tree. Garth was overjoyed and thrust the magazine into her hands.
"Now let me try one! But prob’ly I'll do just as badly, so never mind, Joan."
As a matter of fact, he succeeded much better than she, because he had often played the game before. Joan grew quite excited, and they passed the magazine back and forth in great glee, their memories stretching wonderfully at every attempt.
In the doctor's private room a frightened child whimpered, and Garth frowned a little. The door of the inner office opened presently and a woman came out, holding a little boy in her arms. He was a thin, twisted child, with a white face and unhappy eyes. He clung miserably to the woman, staring at Garth over her shoulder. Garth looked after them as they passed through the outer door.
"I'm sorry about that little boy, Joan," he said, as he pulled himself to his feet.
"Well, Mister Pemberley," said the doctor, "how much more tan are you going to get? I wish I could send all my patients off to lighthouses! Now suppose you let Miss Robinson roll up a yard or two of those trousers and let's look at things."
He laid Garth down on a very hard, high table and proceeded to stretch him and poke him. He tickled Garth in unexpected places and made him laugh.
"Been sailing a lot, I suppose," said Dr. Stone, working vigorously, "and swimming, and all that. Not so cold out there now as when you were up here before, eh? Now suppose you try a little walking for me. I'll catch you."
Garth took exactly four steps, and collapsed into the doctor's arms.
"Better than last time, eh?" said Dr. Stone. "Now stand up there and let me look at you,—and those shoulders straight, please!"
While the nurse was helping Garth on with his shoes, Joan spoke with the specialist.
"What do you think about him?" she asked.
"Well," said the doctor, pulling his beard, "it's this way. I can't do much for him; I simply want to keep an eye on him and see that he has the right sort of appliance for that leg. But, my dear young lady,"—the doctor was very earnest,—"his mind is full of everything on earth except himself, and he's been living under absolutely ideal conditions for four years. That's done more than I could do. I wish you could have seen him when his family went away from here; I never thought he'd stand on his feet. Did you happen to notice that child that just left the office?"
"Yes, I did," said Joan.
"My dear young lady," said Dr. Stone, "that was a well child, compared to what Garth Pemberley was. He's done far more himself than I could do for him, he and that father and mother of his!" The doctor nodded his head gravely. "That's an extraordinary family," he said. "Well, good-bye! Good-bye, Mister Pemberley! Keep it up!"
"If I don't have something to eat pretty soon," said Garth, as they went down in the elevator, "I'm afraid I'll die, or something."
"I was just thinking that very thing,” said Joan. "We ate that omelet weeks ago, it seems to me. We'd better have lunch right away, because we've not any too much time before our train leaves."
They went to a tea-room called "The Peacock Feather," and Garth was enthusiastic.
"Mudder and I mostly used to go to that dairy-place opposite the doctor's, because we hadn't much time," he told Joan, as they stood waiting for a table. "This is much nicer! It looks a good deal like something in a fairy-tale."
They secured seats presently, and Joan ordered a lunch which she thought might be ready in a reasonably short time. Garth looked about the place with delight. It was a low-ceiled room, with quaint windows and peacock blue hangings draped against oak panels. The craft furniture was odd in design, and its picturesque shape had some disadvantages; for when a boy and his mother came to share the small table with Joan and Garth, they were all rather crowded. The boy was three or four years older than Garth and wore the initials of a big school on his cap.
"Say, Mother," he said, when she had finished looking over the menu, "I wish you'd let me go to Kewonset Camp this year. Nearly all the fellows have gone. It's no fun out at Aunt Maud's. And oh, Mother! Billy Stenway's father gave him a boat,—a real one, I mean,—and he wants me to come down to their place and go sailing."
"Does Billy know how to sail?" asked the mother.
"I don't believe so yet. He's going to, though; his uncle is going to teach him. I don't even know what kind of a boat it is. I think it has two sails, though."
"She might be a sloop," said Garth suddenly.
The boy and his mother looked across the table in amazement. The boy frankly stared.
"What do you know about it, kid?" he said.
"But of course she might be a cat-yawl," said Garth, "only I don't believe so. How big is she?"
"Oh, about sixteen feet long, I guess," said the boy, fairly surprised into answering.
"Has she a center-board, or a keel?" asked Garth.
"I don't know," said the boy; "I don't know which is which."
"You know, the center-board's the thing that sticks down at the bottom of the boat," said Garth, neglecting his luncheon, "to keep her from sliding, so that she can sail on the wind, and everything. It's like a keel, only you can haul it up by a rope when you get in among the rocks or somewhere. You know!"
"Well, I do now," said the boy, "but I don't know whether Bill's boat has one or not. It—she has one big sail, and then a little one in front."
"She must be a knockabout," said Garth, hastily consuming a little bread and butter. "She'll prob'ly go like everything; those little ones can. And they don't yaw much when you're running before the wind, the way a cat-boat does."
"Say!" said the boy, "I wish I knew enough to tell Billy all that! Where'd you get on to it all?"
"I live in a lighthouse," said Garth, putting down his cup, "and we sail every day."
The boy and his mother looked at each other.
"Do you mean that, kid,—that you live in a lighthouse?"
"Of course I do," said Garth. "I've lived there always."
The boy looked suddenly rather wistful.
"It must be bully," he said. "I wish we lived somewhere interesting, Mother."
The luncheon was ended, and Joan reached for Garth's hat and the crutches. The boy looked even more dumfounded than before as Garth got out of his chair with some trouble. He opened his mouth to say something, but, catching his mother's eye, stopped short.
"Good-bye!" said Garth over his shoulder. "I hope you'll have fun in the boat; she must be a nice one!"
Joan wished very much that she could hear what the boy and his mother said when they had gone.
What with the early start, the excitement of traveling, and the vigorous treatment of the doctor, Garth was beginning to be very tired. He said little as he sat with his head against Joan's shoulder, looking out at the window. The train by which they were returning was an express and stopped only once or twice on its way to Tewksville Junction. It flashed, shrieking, through shabby towns, through thin, burned-over woodland, past half-mown fields where men were haying. Then presently the dry, rough sod of wild pastures gave way to the rippling orange grass of salt marshes, and on the skyline there gleamed one sudden flash of blue.
Garth raised his head and drew a deep breath.
"Did you see it, Joan?" he said. "A little scrap of the bay!"
Though the sunshine had been burningly bright in town all day, a high fog still hung at the mouth of the bay, veiling the open sea. The Pettasantuck lifted up her deep voice majestically at intervals as she steamed toward the misty ocean.
"To think that it's the very same fog!" said Joan. "Oh, how many years ago it was that we sailed out of it!"
The hot, inland atmosphere gradually faded; the waves under the bow of the steamer grew more choppy. Joan and Garth put on their coats and stood at the rail in silence. Through the haze a line of opaque gray marked the shore, dimly dappled with green and russet. The Pettasantuck blew a mighty blast and rounded the point into Quimpaug Harbor.
"Listen, oh, listen, Joan!" said Garth suddenly.
Far off and faint, yet clear above the throb and creak of the boat, there came a sound,—a melancholy note, sad, remote, beautiful.
"It's our bell," whispered Garth. "Our own fog-bell!"
The next moment he had hung himself halfway over the rail, to the alarm of several bystanders.
"There's the Ailouros!" he shouted.
"Where? Which one?" said Joan, pulling him back by his sailor collar.
"Just coming in!" he cried. "Oh, you must know her, Joan. Don't you see the green stripe around her and the little patch in her sail?"
"Of course I do now," Joan said; "and I can see your father, too."
It seemed as though the Pettasantuck would never have done with backing and warping, so long did she take to make her landing. The Ailouros came in and lay beside the pier. Jim stood up in front of the sail and sent a long semaphore message, which neither Joan nor Garth understood. He was at the gangplank when they finally came ashore, and he held Garth very tightly.
"You're twenty minutes late," he informed them, as he cast off from the landing, "but I didn't start until I heard you coming. The Pettasantuck has a voice like the very prince—or princess—of all sea-monsters. We heard her whoop before she passed Barclay Neck."
"How's Mudder?" Garth asked.
"Oh, she's a good deal better now," said Jim, "but we've both been very lonely and sad. I like to have you sit so close beside me, old man," he added, "but I'm afraid the tiller will hit you on the nose.”
Faintly, through the mist, Silver Shoal Light took form and grew more and more clear—the line of foam about the rock, the Cymba slowly circling her moorings, the green shutters against the white-walled house, the bright splash of color that marked the geraniums in the "informal garden." Some one in a blue dress came to the open door and stood looking out. Garth gave an exultant shout, and his father seized him by the sleeve of his coat.
"Wait! Wait a bit!" said Jim. "Never try to get out of a boat until she's less than fifty feet away from shore. Do you think you can sit still while I come in, or shall I have to lash you to the mast with the peak halyard?"
Elspeth ran down to the end of the pier, and an instant after the boat had slid up, Garth was in his mother's arms. Jim leaped out with the painter in his hand, and stood bending over her, Garth's arms flung about them both and the three heads very close together. Joan, standing behind them on the pier, looked on with a wistful little smile.
"We had lots of fun," Garth said, as they went up to the lighthouse. "Joan was so good. We went to such a wonderful place for lunch, and we rode in a taxicab, and everything! And, Fogger! There was such a beautiful ship in a shop-window,—only little, you know,—and there were hundreds of other things."
"You'd rather live in town all the time, I dare say," Elspeth suggested.
"Mudder!" said Garth, in reproach. "Oh, if you knew how nice it was to hear the old fog bell, when we came in!"
"How about you, Joan?" asked Elspeth, with a mischievous flash in her eyes.
Joan scorned to answer. She merely gave Elspeth one look, which she hoped would settle the question definitely.