Kitabı oku: «Judith Lynn: A Story of the Sea», sayfa 3

“No, oh, no! But I don’t believe – ”

“Oh, you needn’t believe! Don’t believe. Go right on finding your traps empty and believing Jemmy Three’d never! I thought you were going to save your lobster-money for Blossom.”

“Oh, I was – I am going to! I’m going to save it to take her across the ocean to that doctor. It was going to be a little wheel-chair, but now it’s going to be legs.”

“But supposing there isn’t any lobster-money? You can’t do much with three lobsters a day. If somebody helps himself – ”

“Stop!” cried Judith angrily, and the evil thought slunk away. But it came again – it kept coming. One by one, little trivial circumstances built themselves into suspicions, until the little brown freckles on Jemmy Three’s face came to spell “Dishonesty” to Judith Lynn. If it had not been for the terrible need of lobster-money – Judith would have fought harder against the evil thing if it had not been for that.

“I’ve got to have it! There’s got to be lobsters in the traps!” she cried to herself. “The doctor over there might die! If he died before I could carry Blossom to him, do you think I’d ever forgive Jemmy Three?” – which showed that the Evil Thing had done its work. It might slink away now and stay.

It was a hard night for Judith. Joyful thoughts and evil ones conflicted with each other, and among them all she could not sleep. It was nearly morning before she snuggled up against Blossom’s little warm body and shut her eyes. Her plans were made, as far as she could make them. To-morrow she would go down and question the hotel mother, as Uncle Jem said. To-morrow – she must not wait. And after that – after that, heaven and earth and the waters of the sea must help her. There must be no faithlessness or turning back.

“You shall walk, little Blossom,” Judith whispered softly.

How could she know how soon the sea would help?

Chapter III

“I want to go, Judy – please, please!”

Blossom was up on her elbow, pleading earnestly. Judith was dressing.

“It’s a Blossom day – you know it’s a Blossom day! And Jemmy Three’ll carry me down. I know Jemmy Three will! I haven’t been out a-dorying for such a long time; Judy – please!”

It was always hard work for Judith to refuse Blossom anything. Besides – Judith went to the window and lifted the scant little curtain – yes, it certainly was a “Blossom day.” The sky was Blossom-blue, the sea spread away out of sight, Blossom-smooth and shining. And the little pleader there in the bed looked so eager and longing – so Blossom-sweet! She should go “a-dorying,” decided Judith, but it would not be Jemmy Three that carried her down to the sea.

“You little tease, come on, then!” laughed Judith. “I’ll dress you in double-quick, for I’ve got to get out to my traps.”

Judith had overslept, for a wonder. When had Judith done a thing like that before! For two hours Blossom had been awake, lying very quietly for fear of waking Judy; poor, tired Judy must not be disturbed. Downstairs mother had gone away to her work at the beautiful summer cottage down-beach, beyond the hotel. It was ironing-day at the cottage, and all day mother would stand at the ironing-board, ironing dainty summer skirts and gowns.

“I’ll ride in front an’ be a – a what’ll I be, Judy?”

“A little bother of a Blossom in a pink dress,” laughed Judith, as she buttoned the small garments with the swift, deft fingers that had buttoned them for six years.

“No, no! a – don’t you know, the kind of a thing that brings good luck? You read it to me your own self, Judy Lynn!”

“I guess you mean a mastif,” Judith said slowly. “Queer it sounds so much like a dog! – it didn’t make me think of a dog when I read it.”

“M-m – yes, I’ll be a mastif” – Blossom’s voice was doubtful; it hadn’t reminded her so much of a dog, either, at the time. “An’ so you’ll have good luck. You’ll find your traps brim-up full, Judy! Then I guess you’ll say, ‘Oh, how thankful I am I brought that child!’”

Judith caught the little crippled figure closer in a loving hug. “I’m thankful a’ready!” she cried.

They hurried through the simple breakfast that mother had left for them, and then Judith shouldered the joyous child and tramped away over the half-mile that separated them from the old black dory.

“Now, Judy, now le’s begin right off an’ pretend! Go ahead – you pretending?”

“I’m pretending. I’m a chariot and you’re a fine lady in pink ging – ”

“Ging – !” scorned Blossom. “Silk, Judy – in pink silk, a-ridin’ in the chariot. It’s a very nice, easy chariot an’ doesn’t joggle her hip – Oh, I forgot she hasn’t got any hips, of course! Well, here she goes a-riding and a-riding along, just as comfortable, but pretty soon she says – we’re coming to the beautiful part now, Judy! – ‘I guess I better get out an’ walk now,’ she says. Now pretend she got out and walked, Judy– you pretending?”

“I’m pretending,” cried Judy, her clasp on the little figure tightening and her eyes shining mysteriously. Sometime the little fine lady should get out and walk! She should – she should!

“Now she’s walking – no, she isn’t, either, she’s riding, and it isn’t in a chariot, it’s in her sister’s arms, an’ she’s Blossom. Don’t le’s pretend any more, Judy. There’s days it’s easy to an’ there’s days it’s hard to – it’s a hard-to day, I guess, to-day. Those days you can’t pretend get out and walk very well.”

“Pretend I’m an elephant!” laughed Judy, though the laugh trembled in her throat. “That’s an easy-to-pretend! And you’re an – Oh, an Arab, driving me! You must talk Arabese, Blossom!”

Blossom was gay again when they got to the dory, and Judith dropped her into the bow, out of her own weary arms.

“Now say ‘Heave-ho! – heave-ho’!” commanded Judith, “to help me drag her down, you know. Here we go!”

“I don’t know the Arabese for ‘heave-ho,’” laughed little Blossom, mischievously. “I could say it in American.”

“Say it in ‘American,’ then, you little rogue!” panted Judith, all her tough little muscles a-stretch for the haul.

They were presently out on the water, rocking gently with the gentle waves. And Blossom was presently shouting with delight. Her little lean, sharp face was keen with excitement.

“Now pretend – now, now, now! It’s easy to out here! The fine lady’s going abroad, Judy – do you hear? She’s going right straight over ’cross this sea, in this han’some ship! When she gets there she’ll step out on the shore an’ say what a beautiful voyage she’s had, an’ good-by to the cap’n – you’re the cap’n, Judy. An’ you’ll say, ‘Oh, my lady, sha’n’t I help you ashore?’ An’ she’ll laugh right out, it’s so ridic’lous! ‘Help me, my good man!’ she’ll ’xclaim. ‘I guess you must think I can’t walk!’”

Blossom’s face was alive with the joy of the beautiful “pretend.” But Judith’s face was sober.

“Laugh, why don’t you, Judy?” cried the child.

“I’m laugh – I mean I will, dear. But I’ve got to row like everything now, so you must do the pretending for us both. We’ve got to get out there to those traps before you can say ‘scat’!”

“Scat!” shrilled Blossom.

It was Blossom’s sharp eyes that discovered Jem Three “out there.” Judith was bending to her work.

“There’s Jemmy Three, Judy! True-honest, out there a-trapping! He looks ’s if he was coming away from our place – he is, Judy! He’s got our lobsters, to s’prise us, maybe.”

“It won’t surprise me,” muttered Judy, in the clutch of the Evil Thought again. She was watching the distant boat now keenly, her eyes hard with suspicion. Jem Three it surely was, and he was rowing slowly away from Judith’s lobster “grounds.” It seemed to her his dory was deep in the water as if heavily weighted. He had been – had been to her traps again. He was whistling – Judith could hear the faint, sweet sound – but that didn’t hide anything. Let him whistle all he wanted to – she knew what he had been up to!

“Ship aho-oy!” came across faintly to them, but it was only Blossom that answered.

“Ahoy! Ship ahoy!” she sent back clearly. Judith bent over her toiling oars.

“He’s going away from us, we sha’n’t meet him,” Blossom said in disappointment.

“Of course he’s going away – of course he won’t meet us,” Judith retorted between her little white teeth.

“An’ I wanted to ‘speak him,’” the disappointed little voice ran on; “I was going to call out, ‘How’s the folks abroad? We’re on our way ’cross, in the Judiana B.,’ – this is the Judiana B., Judy, after both of us. B. stands for me.”

“Funny way to spell me!” laughed Judith with an effort. She must hide away her black suspicions. Not for the world would she have Blossom know! Blossom was so fond of Jemmy Three, and she had so few folks to be fond of.

A surprise was waiting for them “out there.” The traps were pretty well loaded! Not full, any of them, but not one of them empty. In all, there were seventeen great, full-grown, glistening, black fellows for Blossom to shudder over as she never failed to do – Blossom was no part of a fisherman.

“He didn’t dare to take them all,” thought Judith, refusing to let the Evil Thought get away from her. “Probably he saw us coming. If he’d let ’em alone there might have been a lot more – perhaps there were fifty!”

“One, two, three,” – counted Blossom slowly. “Why, Judy, there’s seventeen. You didn’t s’pose there’d be as many as seventeen, did you? Isn’t that a splendid lot?”

“Not as splendid as fifty,” answered Judy, assured now that there had been as many as that.

“Seventeen from fifty is thirty – thirty-two,” whispered the Evil Thing in her ear. Evil things cannot be expected to be good in arithmetic or anything else. “So he helped himself to thirty-two, did he! Nice haul! Thirty-two big fellows will bring him in – ”

“Don’t!” groaned Judith.

“I don’t wonder you say ‘don’t!’ Thirty-two nice big fellows would have brought you in a pretty little sum. You could have put it away in a stocking in your bureau drawer, for the Blossom-fund.”

“Oh, I was going to! I was going to!”

“Thought so – well, you’ll have to get along with seventeen. That comes of having boys like that for friends!”

“He isn’t my friend!” Judith cried sharply to the Evil Thing in her breast. “He never will be again. If it wasn’t for Uncle Jem I’d never look at him again as long as I live!”

All this little dialogue had gone on unsuspected by the little pink “mastif” in the bow of the little dory. Blossom had been busy edging out of the reach of the ugly things in the bottom of the boat. If Judith had only edged away from her Ugly Thing!

Another surprise was even now on the way – a surprise so stupendous and unexpected that, beside it, the lobster-surprise would dwindle away into insignificance and be quite forgotten for the rest of the day. And oddly enough, it was to be Blossom who should be discoverer again.

“I’m going a little farther out and fish awhile,” Judith announced over her last trap. “I’ve got all my tackle aboard and maybe I can find something Mrs. Ben will want. You sit still as a mouse, Blossom, for I cant’t be watching you and fishing, too.”

“I’ll sit still as two mice. Needn’t think o’ me!” answered the little one proudly. Did Judy think she was little like that? Just because she hadn’t legs that would go! They didn’t need to go, did they, out here in the middle of the sea!

“What makes it look so ripply an’ bubbly out there?” she questioned with grown-up dignity. Judy should see she could sit still and talk like anybody.

“Where?” asked Judith absently. She did not take the trouble to follow the little pointing finger with her eyes.

“There– why don’t you look? It’s all pretty an’ ripply an’ kind of queer. Doesn’t look like plain water ’xactly. Look, Judy – why don’t you?”

“I am looking now – Oh, Oh, wait! It looks like – Blossom, I believe it’s a school! That’s the way the water always loo – Blossom, Blossom, do you hear me, it’s a school! A school of mackerel – a school, I tell you!”

“Well, you needn’t keep on a-telling me.” Blossom, anyway, was calm. “I’m not deaf o’ hearing, am I? If it’s a school, le’s us go right straight out there an’ fish it up, Judy.”

Judy was going right straight out there with all the strength of her powerful young arms. She was not calm; her face was quivering with excitement and joy. A school! A school! Oh, but that meant so much for the Blossom-fund, to put away in the stocking in the bureau drawer! If it should prove a big school – but she and Blossom could not manage a big one, never in the world. If Jemmy Thr – no, no, not Jemmy Three! This was not Jemmy Three’s school – what had he to do with it?

In all the stress and excitement of sending the old dory out there where the water was rippling its news to her, Judy had time to think of several things. She had time to remember how she and Jem Three had used, from the time they were little brown things in pinafores, to plan about their first school o’ mackerel – what they would do with all the wealth it should bring them, how they would share it together, how they would pull in the silvery, glistening fellows, side by side. What plans – what plans they had made! They had practiced a shrill, piercing call that was to summon the one of them who should happen to be absent when the “school” was descried out there in the bay. Even lately, big and old as they had grown, they had laughingly reviewed that call. Now – this minute – if Judith were to utter it, piercing and far-carrying and jubilant, perhaps Jemmy Three might hear and come plowing through the waves to get his share – had he any share? Because when they were little brown things they had made vows, did that give him any rights now?

Of course, if – if things had been different – lobster-things – Judith might have pursed her lips into that triumphant summons. But —

“Sit still! I’m going to swing her round!” called Judith sharply. “I’ve got to go ashore for father’s old net. It’s in the boat-house.”