The Happy Venture by Edith Ballinger Price
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Edith Ballinger Price >> The Happy Venture
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"What about it?" Felicia asked.
"I merely wished it were ours."
"Naturally it's some one else's."
"He takes mighty poor care of it, then. The engine's all rusted up, and
there's a hole stove in the bottom."
"Then _we_ shouldn't want it."
"It could be fixed," Ken murmured; "easily. I examined it."
He stared out at the misty bay's end, thinking, somehow, of the
_Celestine_, which he had not forgotten in his anxieties as a
householder.
But even the joy of April on the bayside was shadowed when the mail came
to Applegate Farm that day. The United States mail was represented, in
the environs of Asquam, by a preposterously small wagon,--more like a
longitudinal slice of a milk-cart than anything else,--drawn by two
thin, rangy horses that seemed all out of proportion to their load. Their
rhythmic and leisurely trot jangled a loud but not unmusical bell which
hung from some hidden part of the wagon's anatomy, and warned all
dwellers on Rural Route No. 1 that the United States mail, ably piloted
by Mr. Truman Hobart, was on its way.
The jangling stopped at Applegate Farm, and Mr. Hobart delved into a
soap-box in his cart and extracted the Sturgis mail, which he delivered
into Kirk's outstretched hand. Mr. Hobart waited, as usual, to watch,
admire, and marvel at Kirk's unhesitating progress to the house, and
then he clucked to the horses and tinkled on his way.
There was a penciled note from Mrs. Sturgis, forwarded, as always, from
Westover Street, where she, of course, thought her children were (they
sent all their letters for her to Mr. Dodge, that they might bear the
Bedford postmark--and very difficult letters those were to write!), a
bill from the City Transfer Company (carting: 1 table, etc., etc.), and
a letter from Mr. Dodge. It was this letter which shadowed Applegate
Farm and dug a new think-line in Ken's young forehead. For Rocky Head
Granite was, it seemed, by no means so firm as its name sounded. Mr.
Dodge's hopes for it were unfulfilled. It was very little indeed that
could now be wrung from it. The Fidelity was for Mother--with a margin,
scant enough, to eke out the young Sturgises' income. There was the bill
for carting, other bills, daily expenses. Felicia, reading over Ken's
shoulder, bit her lip.
"Come back to town, my dear boy," wrote Mr. Dodge, "and I will try to
get you something to do. You are all welcome to my house and help as
long as you may have need."
It had been dawning more and more on Ken that he had been an idiot not
to stay in town, where there _was_ work to do. He had hated to prick
Phil's ideal bubble and cancel the lease on the farm,--for it was really
she who had picked out the place,--but he was becoming aware that he
should have done so. This latest turn in the Sturgis fortunes made it
evident that something must be done to bring more money than the
invested capital yielded. There was no work here; unless perhaps he
might hire out as a farm-hand, at small wages indeed. And he knew
nothing of farm work. Nevertheless, he and Felicia shook their heads at
Mr. Dodge's proposal. They sat at the table within the mellow ring of
lamplight, after Kirk had gone to bed, and thrashed out their
problem,--pride fighting need and vanquishing judgment. It was a good
letter that Kenelm sent Mr. Dodge, and the attorney shook his own head
as he read it in his study, and said:
"I admire your principle, my boy--but oh, I pity your inexperience!"
CHAPTER VII
A MAYING
The City Transfer bill was paid; so were the other bills. Ken, on his
way out from Asquam, stopped with a sudden light in his dogged face and
turned back. He sought out the harbor-master, who was engaged in
painting a dory behind his shop.
"Wal, boy, want to get a fish-hook?" he queried, squinting toward Ken
with a preoccupied eye. (He sold hardware and fishing-tackle, as well as
attending to the duties of his post.)
Ken disclaimed any desire for the fish-hook, and said he wanted to ask
about a boat.
"Ain't got none for sale ner hire, just now," the harbor-master replied.
Ken said, so he had heard, but that wasn't it. And he told the man about
the abandoned power-boat in the inlet. The harbor-master stood up
straight and looked at Ken, at last.
"Wal, ding!" said he. "That's Joe Pasquale's boat, sure's I'm
a-standin' here!"
"Who," said Ken, "is Joe Pasquale?"
"He is--or _woz_--a Portugee fisherman--lobsterman, ruther. He got
drownded in Febrerry--fell outen his boat, seems so, an' we got _him_,
but we never got the boat. Couldn't figger wher' she _had_ got to. He
was down harbor when 't happent. Cur'ous tide-racks 'round here."
"Whose is she, then?" Ken asked. "Any widows or orphans?"
"Nary widder," said the harbor-master, chewing tobacco reflectively.
"_No_ kin. Finders keepers. B'longs to you, I reckon. Ain't much good,
be she?"
"Hole stove in her," Ken said. "The engine is all there, but I guess
it'll need a good bit of tinkering at."
"Ain't wuth it," said the harbor-master. "She's old as Methusaly,
anyways. Keep her--she's salvage if ever there wuz. Might be able to
git sunthin' fer her enjine--scrap iron."
"Thanks," said Ken; "I'll think it over." And he ran nearly all the way
to Applegate Farm.
Kirk did not forget his promise to the Maestro. He found the old gentleman
in the garden, sitting on a stone bench beside the empty fountain.
"I knew that you would come," he said. "Do you know what day it is?"
Kirk did not, except that it was Saturday.
"It is May-day," said the Maestro, "and the spirits of the garden are
abroad. We must keep our May together. Come--I think I have not
forgotten the way."
He took Kirk's hand, and they walked down the grass path till the sweet
closeness of a low pine covert wove a scented silence about them. The
Maestro's voice dropped.
"It used to be here," he said. "Try--the other side of the pine-tree.
Ah, it has been so many, many years!"
[Illustration: The Maestro sat down beside Kirk]
Kirk's hand sought along the dry pine-needles;
then, in a nook of the roots, what but
a tiny dish, with sweetmeats, set out, and little
cups of elder wine, and bread, and cottage
cheese! The Maestro sat down beside Kirk on
the pine-needles, and began to sing softly in a
rather thin but very sweet voice.
"Here come we a-maying,
All in the wood so green;
Oh, will ye not be staying?
Oh, can ye not be seen?
Before that ye be flitting,
When the dew is in the east,
We thank ye, as befitting,
For the May and for the feast.
Here come we a-maying,
All in the wood so green,
In fairy coverts straying
A-for to seek our queen."
"One has to be courteous to them," he added at the end, while Kirk sat
rapt, very possibly seeing far more garden spirits than his friend had
any idea of.
"I myself," the Maestro said, "do not very often come to the garden. It
is too full, for me, of children no longer here. But the garden folk
have not forgotten."
"When I'm here," murmured Kirk, sipping elder wine, "Applegate Farm and
everything in the world seem miles and years away. Is there really a
magic line at the hedge?"
"If there is, you are the only one who has discovered it," said the old
gentleman, enigmatically. "Leave a sup of wine and a bit of bread for
the Folk, and let us see if we cannot find some May-flowers."
They left the little pine room,--Kirk putting in the root hollow a
generous tithe for the garden folk,--and went through the garden till
the grass grew higher beneath their feet, and they began to climb a
rough, sun-warmed hillside, where dry leaves rustled and a sweet earthy
smell arose.
"Search here among the leaves," the Maestro said, "and see what you
shall find."
So Kirk, in a dream of wonder, dropped to his knees, and felt among the
loose leaves, in the sunshine. And there were tufts of smooth foliage,
all hidden away, and there came from them a smell rapturously
sweet--arbutus on a sunlit hill. Kirk pulled a sprig and sat drinking in
the deliciousness of it, till the old gentleman said:
"We must have enough for a wreath, you know--a wreath for the queen."
"Who is our Queen of the May?" Kirk asked.
"The most beautiful person you know."
"Felicia," said Kirk, promptly.
"Felicia," mused the Maestro. "That is a beautiful name. Do you know
what it means?"
Kirk did not.
"It means happiness. Is it so?"
"Yes," said Kirk; "Ken and I couldn't be happy without her. She _is_
happiness."
"Kenneth is your brother?"
"Kenelm. Does that mean something?"
The old gentleman plucked May-flowers for a moment. "It means, if I
remember rightly, 'a defender of his kindred.' It is a good Anglo-Saxon
name."
"What does my name mean?" Kirk asked.
The Maestro laughed. "Yours is not a given name," he said. "It has no
meaning. But--you mean much to me."
He caught Kirk suddenly in a breathless embrace, from which he released
him almost at once, with an apology.
"Let us make the wreath," he said. "See, I'll show you how."
He bound the first strands, and then guided Kirk's hands in the next
steps, till the child was fashioning the wreath alone.
"'My love's an arbutus
On the borders of Lene,'"
sang the Maestro, in his gentle voice. "Listen
and I will tell you what you must say to Felicia
when you crown her Queen of the May."
The falling sun found the wreath completed and the verse learned, and
the two went hand in hand back through the shadowy garden.
"Won't you make music to-day?" Kirk begged.
"Not to-day," said the old gentleman. "This day we go a-maying. But I am
glad you do not forget the music."
"How could I?" said Kirk. At the hedge, he added: "I'd like to put a bit
of arbutus in your buttonhole, for your May."
He held out a sprig in not quite the right direction, and the Maestro
stepped forward and stooped to him, while Kirk's fingers found the
buttonhole.
"Now the Folk can do me no harm," smiled the old gentleman. "Good-by, my
dear."
* * * * *
Felicia was setting the table, with the candle-light about her hair. If
Kirk could have seen her, he would indeed have thought her beautiful. He
stood with one hand on the door-post, the other behind him. "Phil?" he
said.
"Here," said Felicia. "Where have you been, honey?"
He advanced to the middle of the room, and stopped. There was something
so solemn and unchancy about him that his sister put a handful of forks
and spoons on the table and stood looking at him. Then he said, slowly:
"I come a-maying through the wood,
A-for to find my queen;
She must be glad and she must be good,
And the fairest ever seen.
And now have I no further need
To seek for loveliness;
She standeth at my side indeed--
Felicia--Happiness!"
With which he produced the wreath of Mayflowers, and, flinging himself
suddenly upon her with a hug not specified in the rite, cast it upon her
chestnut locks and twined himself joyfully around her. Phil, quite
overcome, collapsed into the nearest chair, Kirk, May-flowers and all,
and it was there that Ken found them, rapturously embracing each other,
the May Queen bewitchingly pretty with her wreath over one ear. "I
didn't make it up," Kirk said, at supper. "The Maestro did--or at least
he said the Folk taught him one like it. I can't remember the thanking
one he sang before the feast. And Ken, he says _your_ name's good
Anglo-Saxon and means 'a defender of his kindred.'"
"It does, does it?" said Ken. "You'll get so magicked over there some
time that we'll never see you again; or else you'll come back cast into
a spell, and there'll be no peace living with you."
"No, I won't," Kirk said. "And I like it. It makes things more
interesting."
"I should _think so_," said Ken--secretly, perhaps, a shade envious of
the Maestro's ability.
As he locked up Applegate Farm that night, he stopped for a moment at
the door to look at the misty stars and listen to the wind in the
orchard.
"'A defender of his kindred,'" he murmured. "_H'm!_"
* * * * *
Hardly anything is more annoying than a mysterious elder brother. That
Ken was tinkering at the _Flying Dutchman_ (as he had immediately called
the power-boat, on account of its ghostly associations) was evident to
his brother and sister, but why he should be doing so they could not
fathom.
"We can't afford to run around in her as a pleasure yacht," Felicia
said. "Are you going to sell her?"
"I am not," Ken would say, maddeningly, jingling a handful of bolts in
his pocket; "not I."
The patch in the _Flying Dutchman_ was not such as a boat-builder would
have made, but it was water-tight, and that was the main point. The
motor required another week of coaxing; all Ken's mechanical ingenuity
was needed, and he sat before the engine, sometimes, dejected and
indignant. But when the last tinkering was over, when frantic spinnings
of the flywheel at length called forth a feeble gasp and deep-chested
gurgle from the engine, Ken clapped his dirty hands and danced alone on
the rocks like a madman.
He took the trial trip secretly--he did not intend to run the risk of
sending Phil and Kirk to that portion of Davy Jones' locker reserved for
Asquam Bay. But when he landed, he ran, charging through baybush and
alder, till he tumbled into Felicia on the door-step of Applegate Farm.
"I didn't want to tell you until I found out if she'd work," he gasped,
having more enthusiasm than breath. "You might have been disappointed.
But she'll go--and _now_ I'll tell you what she and I are going to do!"
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 store-room,--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 candle-light, 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 good candle-light 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 M
YSELF A ROBIN IS SINGI
NG NEARME BECAUSE HE H
AS THREE EGGS WHICH FI
L FOUND YESTERDAY. I H
OPE YOU AREBETTER 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 hear, 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 didn't know it already--the sound
of water at the bow of a boat was one of the nicest noises there was.
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