in winter the great south bay is sometimes frozen over, and then it can be crossed very swiftly on a scooter, a better vehicle than the hudson river iceboat because it will go from ice into water and back again on to ice without a spill. it is also more easily handled and travels faster. but there are days and sometimes weeks when the bay is impassable even for a scooter, which is merely a tiny boat with a pair of runners, after all. thaw and freeze, freeze and thaw; a bay full of big, floating masses of ice, or so ridged and hillocked that nothing but an airplane will take you over it. and there were no airplanes when mermaid, all wrapped and mittened, looked out upon the bay that winter of her eighth year.
there was a telephone linking the coast guard stations on the beach with one at quogue on the island itself, but direct communication with the ordinary system there was none. on one side of the living room of the quogue station was the beach phone, on the opposite wall was a “local and long distance.” members of the quogue crew, called up on either wire, obligingly relayed messages along the other.
in this manner it was made known to cap’n smiley[50] one february morning that his sister wished to see him.
the keeper was privately astounded. so far as a hasty recollection served him, his sister had never before asked to see him about anything. the bay could not be crossed and he sent her word to that effect, thinking that she might disclose her purpose. her reply, toned down by the drawl of surfman no. 3, quogue station, was merely for him to visit her as soon as possible and to bring the little girl.
while waiting for the bay to freeze smooth, or clear from further thaws, cap’n smiley had some uneasy moments. he had never taken mermaid to his sister’s and he did not like the idea. she had seen the little girl; had met him walking with mermaid on the streets of blue port; had stopped to exchange a frosty word or two and then had walked on, ignoring the child completely. what could she be up to now?
he was so uneasy that he raised the question, in a guarded way, with ho ha. he could do this, for ho ha knew all about his sister, and without actually saying very much, both could say a good deal.
“my opinion she has some proposition to lay before you,” commented ho ha.
“i don’t care to consider propositions,” replied the keeper.
ho ha drew his weathered cheek together with his fingers.
[51]“it might advantage mermaid some way,” he suggested.
the keeper made a motion indicative of distrust.
about a week elapsed before the bay froze hard. mermaid, in many layers of wool, with a red muffler about her throat, trotted down to the bayside where her dad put her in the scooter. then as the odd little craft gathered way, he half reclined so as to steer with her jib and roll about handily to ballast her.
they shot along at a mile a minute or better. the air was like impalpable ice pressing against mermaid’s small cheeks and roaring in her ears. she could hardly open her eyes for the rush of tears. she shouted, but could barely make herself heard. it was all over in five or six minutes. the five-mile stretch had been crossed; dad rounded to; the sail, so enormous a top-hamper on so tiny a potbellied body, came down, and they were off blue port, with only a little way to walk to tread the reassuring, if rutty, earth.
mermaid put her hand in dad’s and they walked to the old-fashioned and heavily shuttered house where keturah lived. she met them at the door and ushered them into the living room, which was also the kitchen, but very large, so that there was no sense of crowding. a hot fire burned in the stove, and slowly cap’n smiley divested mermaid of her cocoon. it was a little butterfly of an unusual sort that emerged. keturah, looking with a severe, impassive face at the proceeding, said at[52] last, without altering a muscle of her face or softening her customary tone:
“she looks very much as you would have looked, john, at her age, if you had been a girl.”
her brother stared at the child with a gentleness in his eyes that left them when he glanced at his sister.
“are you going to adopt her, john?”
the answer came with decision.
“i think i shall.”
“what about her schooling?”
“i shall arrange for that next year. she knows her letters.”
“i’ll take her here and look after her.”
the keeper was startled, but he had long kept himself in hand in the presence of his sister.
“thank you,” he paused slightly, “but i shall send her to the biggleses’.”
keturah, as if recalling the duties of hospitality, said, “sit down. i’ll make a cup of tea. do you like bread and jelly?”
the question was directed at mermaid. the child had been eyeing the woman with attentiveness. now she answered politely, though she did not smile:
“i’m fond of it.”
keturah smiley entered her pantry and emerged with a brown jar and a loaf. she cut two large slices, spread them, and set a teapot on the stove. she said no more until the tea was brewed. as she poured out two[53] steaming cups of it she remarked, pushing one toward her brother:
“what i leave of aunt keturah’s property goes to you. as i am not a spendthrift, in the natural course of events i would leave you more than i inherited. if you die before me it goes to your children. it would go to her.”
john smiley swallowed too hastily and burnt his throat.
“this is not a matter to discuss before mermaid,” he said, shortly.
“i sent for her because i wanted to have a good look at her, and i wanted you to have her to look at while you choose,” keturah rejoined. “at first i thought it would not go to an adopted child, and so did judge hollaby. but he looked it up and the wording of the will is such that he thinks it would. i said once, to him, that if you ever adopted a child i would give or throw away every cent of that money. i was a fool; i can be as big a fool sometimes as any one else, brother.” it was on the tip of her tongue to add “yourself included,” but she checked it.
“now i’ve had a good look at her. you take a good look at her, too. i know you more than half hate me, but that’s neither here nor there. let the girl live with me and go to school and you can adopt her if you like, and i’ll do all i can in reason for her. send her here to live with the biggleses, and i’ll keep my promise to judge hollaby!”
[54]the tight-lipped rather hard-visaged woman was determined, but she was curiously excited, too. her rather flat chest rose and fell with her breath, and her breathing was almost audible in the stillness of the room. mermaid, who had finished her slices of bread, looked with wonder, but with a childish gravity and apparently a suspension of judgment, at this strange woman. the little girl knew who she was: she was dad’s sister, but evidently as unlike him as possible. still, her dad’s sister was entitled to respect and a certain deference, if not to affection. they were talking about money and dad was angry. she had never seen him so angry, not even when her youngest uncle, uncle joe, had capsized the life boat in the surf.
john smiley was indeed mad clear through. only the presence of mermaid restrained him. he stood up in all his height and placed himself squarely in front of his sister, his hands clenching and unclenching and clenching again.
“you can take your money, keturah,” he said, rather slowly, “and give it away or throw it away, as you please. i don’t care what you do with it. but there are some things it won’t buy you!”
“i know money means nothing to you, john,” said keturah, sarcastically, “but it might mean something to someone else. you’re forgetting her, john, you’re forgetting the girl. money can’t buy me some things i want, maybe, and it can’t buy you some things you[55] want, maybe; but it can buy her things she’ll want. you’ve no right to throw away her chance!”
her brother, his eyes on the child, seemed just perceptibly to waver, and then he burst out:
“what’s at the bottom of this? what are you after?”
keturah, calmed a little by the success of her argument, answered him:
“it might be just wanting to have a young and growing creature around me, john! it might be that i’m not the inhuman creature you take me for, that i’m sometimes lonely; that company would cheer me up; that i might even be a softer body than i’m generally considered to be if i had someone to talk to and listen to and work for and with! it might be all that, but i won’t tax your powers of belief, brother, by asking you to suppose so. no! the real reason is simply this—” her excitement returned and she appeared almost feminine in her rage—“that i am just human enough, and just woman enough, and just fool enough to hate having people say my own brother couldn’t trust his adopted daughter to live with me, and had to farm her out to susan and henry biggles to care for!”
the keeper was impressed. there was no denying keturah spoke the truth, so far as her own feeling was concerned. she, who cared nothing for the good will of her neighbours, for gossip, for backbiting, for well-earned dislike or worse, she, keturah smiley, with her grasping ways and her old clothes and her bitter tongue,[56] had a streak of femininity—or plain humanity—left in her after all these years. she could still care for public opinion on some things. they might call her stingy, mean, heartless in many ways; they might laugh at her, sneer at her, and hate her for many things; but that they should hold her in contempt; that they should be able to say that her own brother would not trust her with his little girl—that she dreaded. the prospect of it cut her like a lash. she might not care what people said about her behaviour toward john smiley’s wife, for john smiley’s wife had run away and left him, taking their baby, and so had sealed her unworthiness. she would care what people said about her behaviour toward john smiley’s daughter, whether a daughter of his own blood or a waif washed ashore from the ocean. she cared about that now and she would continue to care. john smiley saw this and knew that he held a hostage for her good behaviour. while the feeling lasted, anyway.... he spoke gently:
“mermaid, would you be willing to live with my sister here, and go to school?”
the child, with the soberness that was so unlike her usual mood, but that had been evident since she entered the house, looked straight at him and then straight at keturah smiley. she had gathered that a matter of importance was at stake. it might be that she could help her dad in some way, doing this. she said clearly and gravely:
[57]“yes, dad.”
keturah gave no demonstration of pleasure. she was not triumphant, but she seemed genuinely relieved. she looked at mermaid with a stern sort of satisfaction, and said nothing.
as they left the house and headed for the bay mermaid’s hand closed in a tight pressure over the keeper’s.
“you’ll come to see me as often as you are over, won’t you, dad?” she asked him, anxiously.
his answer was to lift her in his arms and kiss her.
