Chapter 12

A LOST OAR

Mrs. Lem's awe of the new Miss Lacey was short-lived. The fact that she came out of that vague locality known as the West seemed to soothe the housekeeper's latent suspicion that the young girl might be "big feeling." Sylvia was reticent even in the presence of Edna Derwent, and this silence could not proceed from snobbishness; moreover, her spirits rose after the departure of the Boston girl, and Mrs. Lem decided that Thinkright's guest was, in spite of her slim height and the dignity of her black garments, only a shy girl who needed encouraging.

"Do you think Miss Derwent's pretty?" she asked Sylvia after Edna had made her adieux.

"Very," answered Sylvia, who was enveloped in the apron the guest had worn the night before, and was awkwardly wiping dishes as the housekeeper washed them. Minty had gone to school.

"I know folks most always think so," said Mrs. Lem, whose pompadour had collapsed with her theories of Sylvia's New York origin; "but I don't know," she went on judicially, "when you come to diagnose Edna's features they ain't anything so great. Her nose wouldn't ever suit me,--kind of insignificant."

Mrs. Lem's own feature was of the strong Roman variety. "They're just rollin' in gold," she went on. "It's a wonder to me Edna sets such store by Anemone Cottage when they've got such a luxuriant home in Boston."

Sylvia listened with lowered eyes intently fixed on her work. She had wakened this morning with a sensation of relaxation. Some habitual tense resistance had given way. She was subdued and conscious of relief, as if from a cessation of responsibility. She realized what caused this as her interview with Thinkright rushed back upon her thought. He saw through her. That was her mental admission. He did not admire her at all, and yet for her mother's sake he would not despise her. He had made her view herself in a totally new light.

She had promised him to try to be humble. The thought had mingled with the sea's rhythmic lullaby as it hushed her restless soul to sleep last night. He had offered her a new God who was Love,--his God. One who gave him happiness and content. Why should she resist? Was there really such a God? if so, then He had led her to this unheard-of and unsuspected cousin, the one being in the universe who granted her the right to be, her right to rest in his care and protection.

With the thought came a novel rush of gratitude to the unknown God of whom she had never thought as a friend, a Father, One to count upon. She had turned her head on the pillow last night and buried her eyes with a certain gladness and hope.

In quiet she had sat through the hurried breakfast hour this morning, in serenity had bade the guest good-by, and with a novel ambition had asked Mrs. Lem to be allowed to assist her. A wakened sense, a new outlook on the world, filled her consciousness now while the housekeeper rambled on.

Edna Derwent had everything. Very well, it was the lesson that Thinkright had set her, to be willing that Edna should have it, to put away that heat of envy which had been like a sharp tooth at her vain heart. In the exaltation that followed yielding herself to the learning of this lesson a sense of humor had little place; so she listened intently to the substance of Mrs. Lem's information with scarcely a smile at its manner.

"I tell you, though, money won't buy everything," went on the housekeeper, scalding a fresh panful of china. "Here's a fresh wiper, Miss Sylvy. Mr. Derwent's ben entirely incapacitated for business or pleasure for years. What good's his money to him? All them luxuriant carriages and high-steppin' charges,--he'd give 'em all, I guess, to be able to walk off ten miles the way Thinkright can, and him his own age."

"It must be hard for Miss Derwent," returned Sylvia, able to-day to accept this idea.

"Jest so," agreed Mrs. Lem. "The more that her mother jest loves society and fine doin's and pines after 'em, so that Edna, who loves both father and mother, is caught betwixt the upper and nether grindstone, as the old sayin' is, and has the life about squoze out of her sometimes."

Sylvia bit her lip. "It's difficult to imagine it," she replied, "when one sees her so bright and happy as she has been here."

"Yes, this is the Hawk Island Miss Derwent. I've heard the other side from Thinkright. I lived over on the island summers when she and her pa and ma used to be there together, but I never knew any of 'em. I used to see the child rampagin' around the rocks in sneakers and cotton dresses, and her ma readin' to her pa in hammocks on the piazza; but later years she's gone with 'em to waterin' places in Europe. Leastwise that's what folks _say_, though where they'll find any more water than they can here gets me. You know how some folks is. The fishin' 's always better somewheres else. Yes," continued Mrs. Lem sagely, "we don't know what we're doin' when we're envyin' folks. There's a skeleton in most family closets. Most everybody's got somethin' to contend with. I used to think," she lowered her voice, "that the Creator sent 'em for our good. Thinkright says not; so I humor him, and I hope it won't be visited on me. I apologize reg'lar in my prayers at night. It's jest as well to be on the safe side."

Sylvia's grave little mouth broke into a sudden smile, but her eyes were wistful.

"I should love to believe as my cousin does," she answered. "He said we must judge everything by the fruits, and he is so good, so good."

"Yes, Thinkright's fruits is all right," agreed Mrs. Lem, squeezing out her dishcloth. "He ain't any feeble critter either, I tell you. When Judge Trent's here and somethin' goes wrong, and he scowls under them brows o' his, I often feel like sayin' to him, 'Thinkright ain't even afraid of his Creator; and I guess he ain't goin' to care for a few scowls o' _yours_.' Judge Trent gees and haws some, but he always has to come around if Thinkright's sure he's right. There ain't only one thing that man's afraid of, and that's doin' wrong; and though you hain't seen so very much o' the world yet, you'll find out that's quite an ovation in the way o' lookin' at things."

Sylvia's brain made a vain grasp for the word Mrs. Lem was trying to use. Two days afterward when she was out on the basin in Thinkright's rowboat "innovation" came to relieve her bewilderment.

Minty's lean, strong arms had often rowed her about the little salt lake, but Sylvia was ambitious to be her own boatman; and this afternoon she was practicing by herself, catching crabs and splashing, laughing at her own awkwardness until, breathing fast, her pale cheeks pink from exertion, she pulled in her oars and floated on the blue ripples, looking at the full green of leafy boughs among the sombre richness of the evergreens, and listening to the spring gladness of the robin's songs.

It was all very lovely. The Tide Mill only refused to be cheered. Silent, enduring, wrapped in memories, it stood gray and unapproachable.

"Poor old thing," murmured Sylvia, addressing it. "You're not thinking right." She laughed softly, and ran her hands through her thick curls.

Instantly an oar glided off the boat. She jumped for it, but it was too late. Nearly capsizing, her heart beat as the boat rocked back into safety and she tried to scull after the runaway with the remaining oar. Her inexperience and the clumsiness of the boat baffled her. The floating oar rose and fell, gently increasing its distance, and splash as she might she could not gain upon it.

A curt voice suddenly called from the shore behind her, "Here, girl, girl! Stop that. Be quiet, and probably you'll float in."

She turned involuntarily, and beheld, standing on the verge, a small, elderly man wearing a silk hat and scowling while he motioned to her imperiously.

Obediently she ceased her ineffectual splashing, and the boat danced and floated shoreward.

"Then why doesn't the oar float in, too?" she asked anxiously.

"Ask Neptune," returned the stranger curtly.

"I mustn't lose that oar," cried the girl.

"Why didn't you take care of it, then?" rejoined the judge, and the boat just then venturing near him and curtsying, he jumped aboard of her with an agility that astonished the passenger. The craft rocked in the shock.

"Sit still," commanded the judge, and Sylvia remained motionless while he seized the oar, and going to the end of the boat, began sculling with a practiced hand, which was at strange variance with his costume.

The trouble in Sylvia's eyes vanished, and two little stars danced therein as she saw by the steady approach of their craft that the lost was as good as found, and so had leisure to gaze furtively at her gondolier. The down-drawn corners of the judge's lips, his shaggy frown at the oar coquetting on the ripples with a breeze which was flapping the skirts of his formal frock coat, and the firm set forward of his high silk hat, formed an incongruous picture.

He took no notice of her gaze. "The currents in this basin," he said half to himself, "are most aggravating."

"They seem to have soured the disposition of the Tide Mill," ventured Sylvia.

"Eh?" returned the judge, glancing down into the eyes that laughed as mischievously as the small pearly teeth. The sunshine, glinting in the silky curls and brightening them to red, seemed laughing too.

"If you've never seen the Tide Mill before, do look at it," she went on. "Doesn't it seem as if it was refusing to be comforted?"

"It couldn't make its salt," remarked the judge briefly.

"Queer, with so much about," returned Sylvia demurely.

The lawyer caught her starry gaze again. He took no notice of her little joke.

"Can you swim?" he asked sternly.

"No," she returned.

"Then you've no business out here in a boat without some older person."

Sylvia was wearing Minty's blue sweater, and the heated, rosy face above it looked like that of a child. Judge Trent after his unexpected arrival had come down to the Basin to search for the pale and mourning niece concerning whom his conscience had been awakened. He had been looking for the black-clothed figure on the walk, at the moment when the dilemma of the awkward child in the boat had attracted his attention.

"The children of this neighborhood should every one be taught to swim and manage a boat, girls as well as boys," he went on. "They are not. It is a very stupid mistake."

"I do want to learn very much," returned Sylvia meekly. "Minty Foster, a little girl here, has given me one lesson, and I came out to practice this afternoon."

"Minty can row very well," said the judge. "I hope you've learned a lesson about watching your tools. Experience is a good teacher." As he spoke he reached the runaway oar and snatched it up dripping.

"Oh, I'm so much obliged," said Sylvia. She possessed a dimple in one cheek, and it was very busy while Judge Trent, his lips down-drawn, pushed both oars through the rowlocks beside her.

This accomplished, he sat down in the end of the boat and looked at her. She grasped the oars, wondering what he expected her to do. She felt that it would be a dangerous thing to splash that broadcloth, and she dared not laugh beneath the frowning, speculative gaze.

"I thought I knew all the people around these parts," he said, while Sylvia let the boat float. "I never saw you before."

"I'm a visitor," returned the girl. "Isn't it beautiful here?"

"There isn't any better place in this world," returned the lawyer impassively, "and I doubt very much if there is in the next."

He saw now that his companion was older than he had thought. He recalled, too, that she had made some comment on the Tide Mill.

"What was it you said about the Tide Mill?" he asked.

"Only that it _will_ look so sad and unapproachable even when the sun shines like this; as if its feelings had been hurt and it could never pardon or forget."

The judge continued to gaze. He was being penetrated by a suspicion. This girl knew Minty Foster. Supposing--

But he had called on Miss Derwent, and she had verified Thinkright's description. It was her impression of muteness, pallor, sadness, which had decided the judge to drop his affairs and have a look at the farm. What did Edna mean? What did Thinkright mean? Was it a plot to work on his sympathies? This smiling maid with mischief in her eyes frolicking recklessly in the clumsy old rowboat was the opposite type from the cold, pale specimen he had braced himself to meet in the Basin path. She would have been suitably environed in its changeless sombre firs. This girl, with her length of limb and graceful breadth of shoulder, had greater affinity with the white birches delicately fluttering their light bright greens as they leaned eagerly toward the water and Sylvia.

"The Tide Mill hurt beyond pardon, eh?" he returned. "Well, possibly it _didn't_ relish the epithets of the men who sank their money in it."

The flight of fancy was unprecedented for the speaker. He was sensible of unwonted excitement in a possibility.

His companion was still dimpling at the lean figure in the roomy frock coat and high hat.

Laura had been a small woman. The judge was considering that if his companion should rise she would equal or overtop his height.

Starved. Very needy. So Thinkright had put it. Nonsense. This _riante_ dryad of the birches could be nothing to him.

"Shows a small disposition, though, after all these years," he added after the brief pause. "Don't you think so? Nursing injuries and bearing malice and all that sort of business?"

The smile died from Sylvia's face. She half averted it, and trailed her fingers through the quiet ripples. "Thinkright says so," she answered.

And then the judge knew that those young lips so suddenly grave had kissed his picture good-night, that that young head had been pillowed on his sister's breast, and had constituted whatever brightness was in her troubled life.

A strange tightening constricted his throat, for, the temporary heat of the girl's exertion with the oars passing away, he saw her cheeks pale, and it was with a grave glance that she looked at him again. "Do you know Thinkright Johnson?" she asked.

He nodded.

"I suppose he is the best man in the world," she added. "Don't you?"

The high hat nodded again. Judge Trent would not have given unqualified assent to so sweeping an assertion, but, poorer than Dunham on a recent occasion, he had not even monosyllables at his command. It did something novel to him to remember Laura and then picture this girl alone at the Hotel Frisbie.

They floated in silence for nearly a minute, then the judge spoke: "Thinkright has some very good ideas. It's an excellent practice, for instance, to forgive your enemies, and even on some special occasions to stretch a point and forgive your friends."

The young girl looked up at him. If this stranger knew her cousin he could not be quite a stranger. "He is trying to teach me to think right," she said simply. "It seemed at first as if it were going to be easy even though it was different; but, oh, it's hard sometimes! I get sore inside just as my arms used to in the gymnasium at school. Father wrote me a note once to get me excused from physical exercise; but," she gave a little laugh and shrugged the shoulders of the blue sweater, "Thinkright won't write me any note of excuse."

"H'm," thought the judge uncomfortably, "I guess she's got some of the Trent old Adam to buck up against." His gaze did not remove from the half-averted head with its sun-crowned, red-gold aureole.

"Who'd have thought Sam Lacey's carrot-top could be made over into that?" he mused.