The Happy Venture/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII
WORK
ON a morning late in May, a train pulled into the Bayside station, which was the rail terminal for travelers to Asquam, and deposited there a scattering of early summer folk and a pile of baggage. The Asquam trolley-car was not in, and would not be for some twenty minutes; the passengers grouped themselves at the station, half wharf, half platform, and stared languidly at the bay, the warehouse, and the empty track down which the Asquam car might eventually be expected to appear. It did not; but there did appear a tall youth, who approached one of the groups of travelers with more show of confidence than he felt. He pulled off his new yachting-cap and addressed the man nearest him:
"Are you going to Asquam, sir?"
"I am, if the blamed trolley-car ever shows up."
"Have you baggage?"
"Couple of trunks."
"Are you sending them by the electric freight?"
"No other way to send them," said the man, gloomily. "I've been here before. I've fortified myself with a well-stocked bag, but I sha'n't have a collar left before the baggage comes. As for my wife—"
"I can get your luggage to Asquam in a bit over an hour," said the businesslike young gentleman.
The somewhat bored group lifted interested heads. They, too, had trunks doomed to a mysterious exile at the hands of the electric freight.
"I'm Sturgis," said the youth, "of the Sturgis Water Line. I have a large power-boat built for capacity, not looks. Your baggage will be safe in a store-room at the other end,"—Captain Sturgis here produced a new and imposing key,—"and will be taken to your hotel or cottage by a reliable man with a team at the usual rate of transfer from the trolley. My charges are a little higher than the trolley rates, but you'll have your baggage before luncheon, instead of next week."
A murmuring arose in the group.
"Let's see your vessel, Cap," said another man.
Ken led the way to a boat skid at the foot of the wharf, and pointed out the Flying Dutchman, unpainted, but very tidy, floating proudly beside the piles.
"I have to charge by bulk rather than weight," said the proprietor of the Sturgis Water Line, "and first come, first served."
"Have you a license?" asked a cautious one.
Ken turned back a lapel and showed it, with the color rushing suddenly to his face.
But the upshot of it was, that before the Asquam car—later than usual—arrived at Bayside, the Flying Dutchman was chugging out into the bay, so loaded with trunks that Ken felt heartily for the Irishman, who, under somewhat similar circumstances, said. "'t was a merrcy the toide wasn't six inches hoigher!" Out in the fairway, Ken crouched beside his engine, quite thankful to be alone with his boat and the harvest of trunks—so many more than he had hoped to have. For this was the first trip of the Sturgis Water Line, and its proprietor's heart, under the new license, had pounded quite agonizingly as he had approached his first clients.
Down at Asquam, the room on the wharf under the harbor-master's shop stood waiting to receive outgoing or incoming baggage; at the wharf, Hop would be drawn up with his old express-wagon. For Hop was the shore department of the Line, only too glad to transport luggage, and in so doing to score off Sim Rathbone, who had little by little taken Hop's trade. He and Ken had arranged financial matters most amicably; Ken was to keep all his profits, Hop was to charge his usual rates for transfer, but it was understood that Hopkins, and he alone, was shore agent of the Sturgis Water Line, and great was his joy and pride.
Ken, on this first day, helped the old man load the trunks, rode with him to their various destinations, saw them received by unbelieving and jubilant owners, and then tore back to Applegate Farm, exultant and joyful. Having no breath for words, he laid before Felicia, who was making bread, four dollars and a half (six trunks at seventy-five cents apiece), clapped the yachting cap over Kirk's head, and cut an ecstatic pigeon-wing on the kitchen floor.
"One trip!" gasped Phil, touching the money reverently with a doughy finger. "And you're going to make two round trips every day! That's eighteen dollars a day! Oh, Ken, it's a hundred and twenty-five dollars a week! Why, we're—we're millionaires!"
Ken had found his breath, and his reason.
"What a little lightning calculator!" he said. "Don't go so fast, Philly; why, your castle scrapes the clouds! This time of year I won't carry any baggage on the up trips—just gasolene wasted; and there's the rent of the dock and the storeroom,—it isn't much, but it's quite a lot off the profit,—and gas and oil, and lots of trips when I sha'n't be in such luck. But I do think it's going to work—and pay, even if it's only fifteen or twenty dollars a week."
Whereupon Felicia called him a lamb, and kissed him, and he submitted.
That night they had a cake. Eggs had been lavished on it to produce its delectable golden smoothness, and sugar had not been stinted.
"It's a special occasion," Felicia apologized, "to celebrate the Sturgis Water Line and honor Captain Kenelm Sturgis—defender of his kindred," she added mischievously.
"Cut it!" muttered Ken; but she took it to mean the cake, and handed him a delicious slice.
"All right," said Ken. "Let's feast. But don't be like the girl with the pitcher of milk on her head, Phil."
If you suppose that Miss Felicia Sturgis was lonely while her brother, the captain, was carrying on his new watery profession, you are quite mistaken. She hadn't time even to reflect whether she was lonely or not. She had no intention of letting Applegate Farm sink back to the untidy level of neglect in which she had found it, and its needs claimed much of her energy. She tried to find time in which to read a little, for she felt somewhat guilty about the unceremonious leave she had taken of her schooling. And there was cookery to practise, and stockings to mend, and, oh dear, such a number of things!
But Kirk's education filled the most important place, to her, in the scheme of things at Asquam. If she had not been so young, and so ambitious, and so inexperienced, she might have faltered before the task she set herself, temporary though it might be. Long before the Sturgis Water Line had hung out its neat shingle at the harbor-master's wharf; before the Maestro and music had made a new interest in Kirk's life; while Applegate Farm was still confusion—Felicia had attacked the Braille system with a courage as conscientious as it was unguided. She laughed now to think of how she had gone at the thing—not even studying out the alphabet first. In the candlelight, she had sat on the edge of her bed—there was no other furniture in the room—with one of Kirk's books on her knee. Looking at the dots embossed on the paper conveyed nothing to her; she shut her eyes, and felt the page with a forefinger which immediately seemed to her as large as a biscuit. Nothing but the dreadful darkness, and the discouraging little humps on the paper which would not even group themselves under her fingers! Felicia had ended her first attempt at mastering Braille, in tears—but not altogether over her own failure.
"Oh, it must be hideous for him!" she quavered to the empty room; "simply hideous!"
And she opened her eyes, thankful to see even the good candlelight on bare walls, and the green, star-hung slip of sky outside the window. But somehow the seeing of it had made her cry again.
Next day she had swallowed her pride and asked Kirk to explain to her a few of the mysteries of the embossed letters. He was delighted, and picked the alphabet, here and there, from a page chosen at random in the big book. The dots slunk at once into quite sensibly ordered ranks, and Felicia perceived a reason, an excuse for their existence.
She learned half the alphabet in an hour, and picked out b and h and l joyfully from page after page. Three days later she was reading, "The cat can catch the mouse"—as thrilled as a scientist would be to discover a new principle of physics. Kirk was thrilled, also, and applauded her vigorously.
"But you're looking at it, and that's easier," he said. "And you're growner-up than me."
Felicia confessed that this was so.
And now what a stern task-mistress she had become! She knew all the long words in the hardest lessons, and more too. There was no escaping school-time; it was as bad as Miss Bolton. Except that she was Felicia—and that made all the difference in the world. Kirk labored for her as he had never done for Miss Bolton, who had been wont to say, "If only he would work—" The unfinished sentence always implied untold possibilities for Kirk.
But Felicia was not content that Kirk could read the hardest lessons now. They plunged into oral arithmetic and geography and history, to which last he would listen indefinitely while Phil read aloud. And Felicia, whose ambition was unbounded,—as, fortunately, his own was,—turned her attention to the question of writing. He could write Braille, with a punch and a Braille slate,—yes, indeed!—but who of the seeing world could read it when he had done? And he had no conception of our printed letters; they might as well have been Chinese symbols. He would some day have a typewriter, of course, but that was impossible now. Phil, nothing daunted by statements that the blind never could write satisfactorily, sent for the simplest of the appliances which make it possible for them to write ordinary characters, and she and Kirk set to work with a will.
On the whole, those were very happy mornings. For the schoolroom was in the orchard—the orchard, just beginning to sift scented petals over the lesson papers; beginning to be astir with the boom of bees, and the fluttering journeys of those busy householders, the robins. The high, soft grass made the most comfortable of school benches; an upturned box served excellently for a desk; and here Kirk struggled with the elusive, unseen shapes of A. B. C—and conquered them! His first completed manuscript was a letter to his mother, and Phil, looking at it, thought all the toil worth while. The letter had taken long, but Felicia had not helped him with it.
DEAR MOTHER,
I AM WRITING THIS MYSELF A ROBIN IS SINGING NEARME BECAUSE HE HAS THREE EGGS WHICH FIL FOUND YESTERDAY. I HOPE YOUAREBETTER DEAR AND CAN COME BACK SOON YOUR KIRK XXXXXXXXXXXX
Mrs. Sturgis's feelings, on reading this production, may be imagined. She wept a little, being still not herself, and found heart, for the first time, to notice that a robin was singing outside her own window.
There is no question but that Kirk's days were really the busiest of the Sturgis family's. For no sooner did the Three R's loose their hold on him at noon, than the Maestro claimed him for music after lunch, three times a week. Rather tantalizing music, for he wasn't to go near the piano yet. No, it was solfeggio, horrid dry scales to sing, and rhythm, and notation. But all was repaid when the Maestro dropped to the piano-stool and filled a half-hour with music that made Kirk more than ever long to master the scales. And there was tea, always, and slow, sun-bathed wanderings in the garden, hand in hand with the Maestro.
He must bear, now, all about the Sturgis Water Line, and Ken's yachting cap with the shiny visor, and how Kirk had taken the afternoon trip three times, and how—if the Maestro did n't know it already—the sound of water at the bow of a boat was one of the nicest noises there was.
"There are those who think so," said the old gentleman. "Kirk, tell Ken not to let the sea gain a hold on him. He loves it, does he not?"
"Yes," said Kirk, aghast at the sudden bitter sorrow in the gentle voice. "Why?"
"The sea is a tyrant. Those she claims, she never releases. I know."
He stood among the gently falling blossoms of the big quince—tree by the terrace. Then he suddenly drew Kirk to him, and said:
"I spoke of the garden being filled, to me, with the memory of children; did I not?"
Kirk remembered that he had—on May-day.
"A little boy and a little girl played here once," said the Maestro, "when the pools were filled, and the garden paths were trim. The little girl died when she was a girl no longer. The boy loved the sea too well. He left the garden, to sail the seas in a ship—and I have never seen him since."
"Was be your little boy?" Kirk hardly dared ask it.
"He was my little boy," said the Maestro. "He left the garden in the moonlight, and ran away to the ships. He was sixteen. Tell Kenelm not to love the sea too much."
"But Ken wouldn't go away from Phil and me," said Kirk; "I know he wouldn't."
Kirk knew nothing of the call that the looming gray sails of the Celestine had once made.
"I thought," said the Maestro, "that the other boy would not leave his sister and his father." He roused himself suddenly. "Perhaps I do Ken injustice. I want to meet the gallant commander of the Flying Dutchman. It seems absurd that such close neighbors have not yet met. Bring him—and Felicia, when you come again. We'll drink to the success of the Sturgis Water Line. And don't dare to tell me, next time, that you never heard of the scale of A flat major, my little scamp!"
Kirk, to whom the Maestro's word was law, delivered his message very solemnly to Ken, who laughed.
"Not much fear of my cultivating too strong an affection for Mud Ocean, as navigated by the Dutchman. If I had a chance to see real water and real ships, it might be different."
"But how horrid of his son never to let him know—poor old gentleman!" said Felicia, who was putting on her hat at the window.
"Probably the old gentleman was so angry with him in the beginning that he did n't dare to, and now he thinks he's dead," Ken said.
"Who thinks who's dead?" Phil asked. "You'd never make a rhetorician."
"I should hope not!" said her brother. "Why, the sailor thinks his father's dead. Get your hat, Kirk."
"We're going to an auction," Felicia explained.
"A 'vandew'," Ken corrected. "You and Phil are, that is, to buy shoes and ships and sealing-wax, and a chair for room that won't fall down when I sit in it, and crockery ware—and I guarantee you'll come home with a parlor organ and a wax fruit-piece under a glass case."
Phil scoffed and reproved him, and he departed, whistling "Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep," lugubriously. His brother and sister caught up with him, and they all walked together toward Asquam, Ken bound for his boat, and the others for the "vendu," which was held at an old farm-house where Winterbottom Road joined Pickery Lane.
Many ramshackle old wagons were already drawn up in the barn-yard and hitched to trees along the cart track. Their owners were grouped in the dooryard around the stoves and tables and boxes of "articles too numerous to mention," chattering over the merits and flaws of mattresses and lamps, and sitting in the chairs to find out whether or not they were comfortable. A bent old farmer with a chin-beard, stood chuckling over an ancient cradle that leaned against a wash-tub.
"There's one most 's old 's I be!" he said, addressing the world at large; "fust thing I 'member, I crawled outen one like thet!"
The auctioneer was selling farm tools and stock at the other side of the house, and most of the men-folks were congregated there—tall, solemn people, still wearing winter mufflers—soberly chewing tobacco and comparing notes on the tools. Felicia and Kirk, though they would have liked well enough to own the old white horse and the Jersey heifers, felt themselves unable to afford live stock, and stayed in the dooryard. Among the furniture so mercilessly dragged from its familiar surroundings to stand on the trampled grass, was a little, square, weathered thing, which Felicia at first failed to recognize as the inevitable melodeon. It lacked all the plush and gewgaws of the parlor organ of commerce; such a modest, tiny gray box might easily have passed for a kitchen chest.
Felicia pushed back the cover, and, pressing a pedal with one foot, gave forth the chords of her favorite, "How should I your true love know?" The organ had a rather sweet old tone, unlike the nasal and somewhat sanctimonious drone of most melodeons, and Felicia, hungry for the piano that had not been brought to Asquam, almost wished she could buy it. She remembered Ken's prophecy—"you'll come home with a melodeon"—and turned away, her cheeks all the pinker when she found the frankly interested eyes of several bumpkins fixed upon her. But Kirk was not so ready to leave the instrument.
"Why don't we get that, Phil?" he begged. "We must have it; don't you think so?"
"It will go for much more than we can afford," said Felicia. "And you have the Maestro's piano. Listen! They're beginning to sell the things around here."
"But you haven't the Maestro's piano!" Kirk protested, clinging very tightly to her hand in the midst of all this strange, pushing crowd.
The people were gathering at the sunny side of the house; the auctioneer, at the window, was selling pots and candles and pruning-shears and kitchen chairs. Felicia felt somehow curiously aloof, and almost like an intruder, in this crowd of people, all of whom had known each other for long years in Asquam. They shouted pleasantries across intervening heads, and roared as one when somebody called "'Lisha" bought an ancient stove-pipe hat for five cents and clapped it on his head, adding at least a foot to his already gaunt and towering height. She felt, too, an odd sense of pathos at the sight of all these little possessions—some of them heirlooms—being pulled from the old homestead and flaunted before the world. She did not like to see two or three old women fingering the fine quilts and saying they'd be a good bargain, for "Maria Troop made every stitch on 'em herself, and she allus was one to have lastin' things." Poor little Mrs. Troop was there, tightly buttoned up in her "store clothes," running hither and thither, and protesting to the auctioneer that the "sofy" was worth "twicet as much's Sim Rathbone give for 't."
A fearful crash of crockery within brought her hand to her heart, and a voice from the crowd commented jocularly, "Huh! Breakin' up housekeepin'!" Even Mrs. Troop smiled wryly, and the crowd guffawed.
"Now here," bellowed the auctioneer, "is a very fine article sech as you don't often see in these days. A melodeon, everybody, a parlor organ, in size, shape, and appearance very unusual, so to say."
"Ain't it homely!" a female voice remarked during the stout auctioneer's pause for breath.
"Not being a musician, ladies and gents, I ain't qualified to let you hear the tones of this instrument, but—I am sure it will be an ornament to any home and a source of enjoyment to both old and young. Now—what'll you give me for this fine old organ?"
"Seventy-five cents," a deep voice murmured.
"Got your money with you, Watson?" the auctioneer inquired bitingly. "I am ashamed of this offer, folks, but nevertheless, I am offered seventy-five cents—seventy-five cents, for this fine old instrument. Now who'll—"
The melodeon climbed to two dollars, with comparative rapidity. The bidders were principally men, whose wives, had they been present, would probably have discouraged the bidding, on the score that it was impossible to have that thing in the house, when Jenny's had veneer candle-stands and plush pedals. Felicia was just beginning to wonder whether entering into the ring would push the melodeon too high, and the auctioneer was impatiently tapping his heel on the soap-box platform, when a clear and deliberate voice remarked:
"Two dollars and ten cents."
Several heads were turned to see the speaker, and women peeped over their husbands' shoulders to look. They saw a child in green knickerbockers and a gray jersey, his hand in that of a surprised young girl, and his determined face and oddly tranquil eyes turned purposefully to the auctioneer.
"Make it a quarter," said a man lounging against the leader-pipe.
"Two and a quarter," said the auctioneer. "I'm bid two dollars and a quarter for the organ."
"Two dollars and fifty cents," said the young bidder, a shade of excitement now betraying itself in his voice. The girl opened her mouth, perhaps to protest, and then closed it again.
"Two-fifty!" bawled the auctioneer. "Two-fifty? Going—any more? Going—going—" he brought his big hands together with a slap, "Gone! at two dollars and fifty cents, to—who's the party, Ben?"
Ben, harassed, pencil in mouth, professed ignorance.
"Kirkleigh Sturgis," said the owner of the musical instrument, "Winterbottom Road."
"Mister Sturgis," said the auctioneer, while Ben scribbled. "Step right up, young man. Give Ben your money and put your pianner in your pocket. Now folks, the next article—"
Kirk and Felicia, not to speak of the organ, two chairs, a wash-basin, a frying-pan, two boxes of candles, a good mop, and a pot of soft soap, were all carted home by the invaluable Hop. They met Ken, in from his second trip, in the middle of Winterbottom Hill, and they gave him a lift.
"Oh, if you knew what you're sitting on!" Phil chuckled.
"Good heavens! Will it go off?" cried Ken, squirming around to look down at his seat. "I thought it was a chist, or something."
"It's—a melodeon!" Phil said weakly.
"A melodeon! Oh ye golds and little fishes!" shouted Ken. "Oh, my prophetic soul!" and he laughed all the way to Applegate Farm.
But while Felicia was clattering pans in the kitchen, and Ken went whistling through the orchard twilight to the well, the purchaser of the organ felt his way to it, not quite sure, yet, of its place by the window. He sat down in front of it, and pressed the stiff old pedals. His careful fingers found a chord, and the yellow notes responded with their sweet, thin cadence—the vox humana stop was out. He pulled, by chance, the diapason, and filled the room with deep, shaken notes. Half frightened at the magic possibilities, he slipped from the chair and ran out into the young May night, to whisper to it something of the love and wonder that the Maestro's music was stirring in him. Here in the twilit dooryard he was found by his brother, who gave him the hand unoccupied by the bucket and led him in to the good, wholesome commonplaces of hearth-fire and supper and the jolliest of jokes and laughter.