standing well back in the hall mermaid had heard this extraordinary conversation. now she slipped into[79] the front parlour ahead of miss smiley, who stood, apparently forgetful or stunned, for two or three minutes in the open doorway. then she closed the door with a bang, entered the front parlour, and went through it into the living room. she stood before the stove a moment, warming her hands. her face was working and her mouth was twisting, but her lips remained closed. mermaid looked at her with deep sympathy and with a certain terror at the memory of what she had just heard. neither emotion drowned the awful curiosity within the girl to know what it had all been about. but she dared not ask questions.
in silence the two got their supper, in silence they ate it. once keturah smiley sighed, once she spoke, but only to say: “thank the lord, john will be coming over to-morrow!”
mermaid, who had been looking forward to this visit of her dad, thinking he might give her a scooter ride on the smoothly frozen bay, said: “how rich do you suppose cap’n vanton is, miss smiley?”
keturah looked at her absently.
“not rich enough to buy an easy conscience, probably,” she replied, drily. mermaid hesitated, and then took her courage in both hands.
“miss smiley, i heard some of what he said. i—i guess i heard most of it,” she said.
keturah showed neither surprise nor anger. she looked at mermaid attentively and there was a flicker of[80] interest in her eyes as she asked: “well, and what did you make of it?”
“he said he’d killed a captain king!” the girl blurted out. “how could he do that and not be in jail for it?”
“maybe he has been,” keturah suggested.
“but then how could he be so rich?” persisted mermaid.
“maybe it isn’t his money,” miss smiley replied.
“it seems to be now.” mermaid rested on the fact, solidly buttressed by all appearances.
“so it does,” agreed the woman.
but she was at some pains, the next day, to talk to her brother only after mermaid had had her scooter ride and had gone out to do errands at the store.
“when he first spoke of ‘a man named king,’” keturah explained to john smiley, “i couldn’t make the connection. then i remembered the entry about the flogging in uncle john’s log of that passage. aunt keturah was with him on that voyage. the log only says that the mate refused to obey orders. i never heard aunt keturah utter a word of such a thing, but it’s perfectly possible; more than that, it’s likely. mates, first mates, weren’t flogged before the crew for insubordination. there was something personal, i suspect. as for his—this fellow’s—having killed king, that’s neither here nor there with us. he said king had done us all the harm he ever would, but what harm did he ever do? uncle john and aunt keturah lived to a[81] peaceful old age and died comfortably in their beds—leastways, i suppose they were as comfortable as a person can be dying.”
but the “captain king” struck a full chord of memory in john smiley’s breast.
“don’t you remember?” he cried. “that miserable devil we found on the beach after the wreck of the mermaid, one of the crew? remember i told you i sat up all night with him and that i made out from his delirious talking that a ‘captain king’ had had the little girl, and had been sending her back to someone? he wanted to keep himself out of it and he wanted ‘forgiveness’—at any rate, that was one word in the letter we found in the pocket of the mermaid’s skipper.” he was deep in the painful process of recollection. “but still i can’t make head nor tail of it,” he confessed. “this man king may have hated john hawkins and been willing to do anything he could to hurt him, he may have hated aunt keturah, but they’re dead and that’s an end of them! as for his harming us, he never could have had a chance. and as he’s dead he’ll never get one. and that’s an end of him! captain vanton says he killed him, and probably if he did it was a good job. he must have thought that king had bothered us somehow. thoughtful of him to come and assure us that the dirty dog’s dead. i suppose,” he continued, reflectively, “i might go see him and talk with him. perhaps he may have learned something from king that[82] will set us on the track of mermaid’s people. i’ll go!”
keturah was inclined to dissuade him.
“he thinks,” she said, with her usual shrewdness, “that we know something we don’t know, and that he does know. or else,” she wavered, “he’s after something, and if we go after him we’ll be playing right into his hands. i don’t know——” she came to a dead stop for a moment, and a rare look of uncertainty, almost of panic, appeared in her eyes. “better keep away, john. better wait and see what he does. if he comes around here bragging of having killed another man i’ll ask him for the death certificate.” she had recovered her usual poise. and when her brother repeated his intention of calling on captain vanton she merely remarked:
“well, i sha’n’t mind hearing how you’re received.”
the interview between captain vanton and john smiley was extremely short and, to the keeper of the lone cove coast guard station, hopelessly baffling. captain vanton, with more courtesy than keturah had shown him, ushered her brother into a room which resembled nothing so much as a ship’s cabin. he seated his visitor, but himself paced up and down the floor, a very fine floor which seemed to have been freshly scrubbed and holystoned until it was of the whiteness of an afterdeck. cap’n smiley came to the point at once.
“the little girl who lives with my sister is my adopted daughter,” he began. “she was rescued from the[83] wreck of the mermaid.” he went on to tell of the few decipherable words in the letter found on the body of the mermaid’s skipper; then of the delirious sailor who had talked of “captain king.” captain vanton paced to and fro in perfect silence. he seemed not to be paying attention, but to be thinking.
“anything you may have learned that would help us to find out the child’s identity——” john smiley began, and then he stopped with a sudden sinking of the heart. if mermaid’s identity were established he would probably lose her! the thought gave him, as he afterward put it, “a turn.” he never finished his sentence, and while he was recovering himself captain vanton uttered his first words of the conversation.
“i know—knew of—the child,” he muttered. “he sent her back. yes. no, i don’t know anything that would make matters any better than they are.” he did not look through cap’n smiley, as was his customary way with people, but seemed to avoid his eye. he frowned at the floor as he might have frowned at the deck if the holystoning and cleaning had not been thorough. john smiley, rising, thanked him and took his departure. the sense of relief at the thought that mermaid would not be taken from him was so strong that he felt not in the least disappointed, but really grateful for vanton’s reticence. captain vanton may even have thought him effusive in his thanks. keturah[84] smiley heard her brother’s report of his failure with calmness.
“did he wear the scalp at his belt?” she inquired.
mermaid appearing, they all sat down and had a hot supper after which cap’n smiley and mermaid played checkers and keturah walked about with a yardstick in an effort to decide where she would have three shelves put up. she had a passion for shelves and drawers.
“what are these shelves to be for, miss smiley?” asked mermaid, looking up from the board after she had beat her dad for the third time.
“medicine, most like,” keturah, told her.
“why not for our books?” mermaid suggested.
“bottles break,” said keturah, concisely. “do you prefer books to medicine? not when you’re sick, i’ll warrant!”
“yes, i do,” mermaid insisted, and then she explained to her antagonist with a smile:
“you see, dad, it’s because—it’s because books can make you happy while you’re dying, but medicine can only make you miserable while you’re getting well!”
keturah gave the girl a look in which a skilled observer might have detected something resembling admiration.
“what an upside-down mind you have, child!” she said. “but then,” she allowed, “you use it and do your own thinking!”
“i wish she’d do some of my thinking,” exclaimed[85] cap’n smiley, looking ruefully at the checkerboard. “appears to me as if i had been out-thunk again!” he liked the defeated, “ker-plunk” sound of this past participle of his invention, and always used it to describe mermaid’s victories.
mermaid got up, went to the pantry, came back with a pan of sugared crullers, offered her dad one, took one herself, put up the pan, and then cuddled contentedly against his arm. “i made them myself,” she murmured.
her dad stroked her hair. it was remarkably like the colour his own had been before thirty years of beach sunshine—and other things—had bleached the colour out of it.
“what are you going to be when you grow up, mermaid?” he asked, dreamily.
“i shall try to make you a good home and keep you happy,” she assured him. “i’m knitting the slippers you’ll wear, now.”
they hugged each other in anticipation of their peaceful old age together, and went to bed.
