mermaid, hurrying down the street from school, did not notice a boy coming out of the side street on which young dick hand lived. the boy was walking along with a most unboyish air. his head was down and he looked up too late to avoid a collision. it nearly knocked mermaid’s breath out of her. when she could talk she accepted his confused apology, and smiled.
“you’re guy vanton, aren’t you?”
he was a short boy with very black hair, a snub nose, and a pale face. his eyes, which were brown, had something uncanny about them; mermaid was struck with their resemblance to the eyes of wild animals. she had seen deer with eyes like that. the boy stood before her with his cap in his hand; he was somehow not in the least like dick hand or tommy lupton or any of the other blue port boys. he seemed to have very good manners and to be politely exercising them. mermaid unconsciously assumed her own.
“guy vanton, yes, mademoiselle.” the french word aroused mermaid to a high pitch of curiosity, and the immediate effect of her heightened curiosity was to make her still more polite.
“i—i beg your pardon,” the boy repeated. “it was all my fault. i was not looking where i was going, mademoiselle.”
[94]she noticed that he spoke english without the blue port twang, but also without a foreign accent; his speech was like that of one or two of the schoolteachers she had had.
he seemed about to replace his cap and hurry away. he made a little bow to her—from the waist. mermaid had seen the bow before. dickie hand had learned it in a children’s dancing class at patchogue. she smiled at young mr. vanton, who was so eager to get along. she had no intention he should go until they were fairly acquainted.
“you speak french?”
“mais oui, mademoiselle!” his uncanny eyes fixed her for a moment and his pale face flushed a little.
“oh, i don’t speak it,” mermaid explained, hastily, whereupon he looked down at the ground, as if he had lost interest. “what was that you just said?”
“i said: ‘but yes!’”
“i wish i knew it,” she exclaimed. “i should love to study it, but i don’t think they teach it even in high school at patchogue.”
he said, without looking at her: “i learned it in paris. i—we used to live there. my mother——” he stopped.
mermaid said, sympathetically: “she’s an invalid, isn’t she?”
“oh, that isn’t—i mean—why, why, yes. she is—she has to walk with a crutch. and then, only a[95] little.” his confusion was so evident that mermaid felt sorry for him. with true feminine instinct she decided that he must suffer some more so that ultimately she might help him. she knew he did not go to school, she knew that he lived all alone, shut up in that expensive house, surrounded by gloomy evergreens, which must be as sunless as miss smiley’s front parlour had been once on a time. he lived there with a crippled mother and a formidable father, a retired sea captain who was undoubtedly a stern disciplinarian. he was pale and undersized. mermaid had heard stories of sea captains all her remembering life and knew them to be a peculiar race of men. her imagination worked rapidly on the problem presented by guy vanton, and she concluded, perhaps somewhat rashly, that his father had spent most of his money on the mahogany and teakwood of the parlour and fed his boy on ship’s biscuits and water. at any rate, he looked it. but his eyes fascinated her. considering briefly the means of further advancing their acquaintance she decided that he should teach her french. in turn, she would ask him home with her to supper, and see that he got a square meal.
“i wonder if you wouldn’t teach me french?”
guy vanton looked surprised, but then an expression of pleasure came into the brown eyes. he nodded. mermaid continued: “i could come over in the afternoon, sometimes, when i haven’t to help miss smiley[96] clean house. we could be very still and not bother your mother. and sometimes you could come to our house. i’m sure miss smiley wouldn’t mind. i bring dickie hand there and she gives him cookies though she hates his father like anything.”
they were walking along the street together. young mr. vanton had got his cap back on his head at last, but he walked stiffly, a little deferentially, his body half turned toward the girl. mermaid chattered along easily on whatever themes came into her head, occasionally punctuating her talk with a question calling for no answer more elaborate than a “yes” or a “no.” she was much gratified when dick hand and tommy lupton stopped their regular afternoon pastime of punching each other’s heads to stare across the street at her escort. she heard dickie say to tom: “well, will you look? girls make me sick!”
as if this were the very effect she desired to produce, mermaid was remarking to the vanton heir: “that’s dick hand over there, and tommy lupton. you know them, don’t you? dick is thirteen and tommy’s fifteen. i’m only eleven, but i’m as big as either of them. you’re fifteen, aren’t you?”
“i’m seventeen,” he divulged. mermaid stood still in her astonishment.
“seven-teen!” she gasped. “why, but you’re no bigger than dickie—though you know french and he doesn’t, and you know a lot more than he does and are[97] lots—lots nicer,” she added, by way of retrieving her blunder. “but you won’t want anything to do with me,” she said with honest candor. “you’ll think i’m only a little girl. i suppose i am.”
he did not seem ready to cast her off as infantile and beneath his notice.
“i am too small,” he admitted. “i was not so small in paris—i mean, the boys at school there were not so large as fellows of the same age here. i was average height. here i’m a little—runt.”
“what a lot you must have seen,” mermaid marvelled. “i hope you’ll tell me all about it. you can do that and teach me french that way, can’t you? i’ve never been anywhere except here and on the beach. you know i came ashore in a shipwreck.”
she told him about the wreck, what she had heard of it from her dad and other men of the lone cove station; of her home with keturah smiley, and of life on the beach. then she spoke of captain john hawkins and the clipper ship china castle.
“you know your father commanded her afterward.”
guy did not seem to know it. “he never talks about his ships,” the boy explained. with the help of some questions from mermaid, he told her about himself.
he had been born in san francisco and had lived there for some years. in the presidio section of the city. as he talked of the town mermaid’s face took on a puzzled look.
[98]“it’s the funniest thing,” she declared. “do you know, i have a feeling that i lived there once on a time. it seems as if it came back to me, as if i just sort of half-remembered—— you know the mermaid, the ship i was aboard, came from san francisco.”
after they left san francisco, the vantons had gone to live in paris. guy’s father had then given up definitely all idea of going to sea again.
“he had really never had a ship since i was born,” the boy explained. “but he kept thinking, up to the time we went to paris, that he would take another command. my mother——” he hesitated, with a trace of the confusion he had shown before in speaking of her, and then went on: “we had plenty of money, and so there was no need for him to go, but in san francisco he kept thinking of it, and every day he would walk down to the foot of market street and along the waterfront and look at all the ships. sometimes he would go aboard them and talk to the captains. he used to take me with him. it was very interesting. ships from all over the world—british, japanese, american, german, french, norwegian, russian and a lot more. he would take me on board the square-riggers and teach me the ropes. ‘this,’ he would say, ‘is the fore t’ gallant halyard. this is the fore royal sheet. this is the fore topmast stays’l sheet. now what is this?’ i always got it wrong and it used to make him terribly angry. then he would tell me to[99] go aloft. i liked that, because you could always get such a splendid view of san francisco bay and the city, built on hills, and the mountains over in marin county, with oakland and alameda and all the other places spread out before you.”
“weren’t you dizzy?” mermaid asked.
“only the first time.”
they had reached keturah smiley’s house. mermaid invited little, old mr. vanton in. she gave him crullers and coffee, made him acquainted with miss smiley, and then said good-bye to him at the gate. it was agreed that they should meet the next afternoon pour parler fran?ais. as the french instructor hurried homeward he lit a cigarette. this was observed by the messrs. hand and lupton, who were considerably dazed.
“and i called him a sissy,” murmured mr. hand.
“d’ye know what i think?” exclaimed his side partner. “he’s a foreigner, that’s what he is, a cigarette-smoking foreigner. mermaid ought not to have anything to do with a fellow like that,” tommy concluded, virtuously, and with the sense of the protecting male.
