tommy lupton was a great, tall, strapping youth with everything indeterminate about him, from the colour of his hair and eyes to his behaviour. he had no visible ambitions beyond becoming a bayman like his father and ultimately a surfman in one of the coast guard stations on the beach, preferably the one at lone cove where john smiley was keeper and his father a member of the crew. since the day, some years earlier, when guy vanton had thrown tommy around in a pine-needled clearing in the woods about blue port, tommy and guy had been good friends, so far as too utterly unlike young men can be fast friends. neither fully understood the other. mermaid, who liked them both, had constantly to be explaining guy to tommy and interpreting tommy to guy.
“tommy likes you but thinks he ought not to,” she told guy. “tommy is the sort of boy that thinks he ought not to like anybody unless he can admire him, too. if tommy’s best friend were running against—oh, well, say colonel roosevelt—for some office, tommy would vote for roosevelt. you see, he’d admire roosevelt.”
“it’s a principle,” elucidated guy.
“it’s unreasonable,” elucidated mermaid.
[155]“it is better than just voting for a man because he’s a friend of yours.”
“of course. but to have to admire a person in order to like him comfortably is just like—like a boy!” exclaimed the young lady. “like a little boy,” she added.
to the hero-worshipping tommy she had something else to say.
“you’ll never see how much there is in guy vanton if you keep looking for what isn’t there,” she admonished him. tommy looked at her, cloudily.
“i suppose it takes a girl to see what there is in him,” he surmised, jealously. “you—i don’t suppose guy sees anything in me. i guess you don’t, either. i guess there isn’t anything much in me,” went on poor young mr. lupton, pathetically. “i sha’n’t ever amount to a lot. i’ve never been anywhere, and i can’t jabber french, and i never wrote poetry except on a valentine. i hate school and i’m glad i’m through with it. and i’d rather be a coast guard than write a book, as guy’s doing, or become a great chemical engineer, as you say dickie may some day. i’ll never be rich and i’ll never be famous, and you can’t make me either.”
mermaid was building things in the sand. she brushed her hands and looked at him with a smile.
“i don’t want to make you anything, tommy,” she said. “go on and be a coast guard. my dad’s a[156] coast guard. your father’s a coast guard. being a coast guard is just as good as anything else and better than most. it all depends upon the man.”
“well, i’m a man,” avowed mr. lupton. “and, anyway, you say that now, but after you’ve been away at school and all that you’ll look down on me. you won’t want anything to do with me, much. you won’t want me around. and i won’t be around,” he concluded. mermaid looked at him, briefly, and then glanced away. a slight uneasiness beset her. it was justified when tommy suddenly reached over for her hand, taking it roughly.
“mermaid,” he said. he stopped, and then went on, stammering a little: “you—you must know i love you—like everything,” he finished, helplessly. “you—of course i can’t expect you feel the same way——”
mermaid, much disturbed, cut in: “no, i don’t, tommy.”
“you oughtn’t to interrupt like that.” mr. lupton’s voice was boyishly irritated. “you—you wouldn’t interrupt guy vanton! i can’t expect you to listen to me, i suppose. maybe i haven’t any right to speak.” he was immediately astonishingly grown-up again. “you’ve got to hear me—at least, i hope you’ll hear me,” he went on, imploringly. “i told you you couldn’t make anything of me but you could help me make something of myself.”
a sixteen-year-old girl, listening to such words, can[157] hardly be blamed for a slight sense of self-importance. it is part of a girl’s education, or ought to be. perhaps not at sixteen; but mermaid had already experienced the self-importance that comes from handling rather risky material, even though it was only inert powder or colourless acid. this was one of those situations where there is no danger if the substances are not brought near to a spark. she therefore dampened her sympathy before mixing it with tommy’s unreserve. she felt self-importance, but she did not abate her caution. more than one explosion in the laboratory had taught her humility. it is fair to say that she was not consciously experimenting and she was not heartless when she answered the boy.
“i don’t want to help you make something of yourself, tommy. i don’t want to make anything of anybody except myself. i’ll have all i can do, maybe, to do that,” she continued. “i—i like you, and that’s all. no, it isn’t; i’ll let you alone. there—that’s a good deal, isn’t it? it’s supposed to be, from a girl.”
poor tommy was in no condition to jest. he picked himself up, unhappily, from the sand. for a moment mermaid’s mind ran back curiously to the story that, as a very little girl, she had heard her uncle ho tell of his boyhood. nightly, through the pane of a little attic window high up in the hills of the middle of long island, he had seen the flash of the fire island lighthouse,[158] many miles distant, a beacon inviting the youngster to adventures in the great world whose shores it guarded. mermaid, who was imaginative, had often re-lived those childish hours in the dark attic invaded by the beckoning ray. as she stood up now, gathering up her sweater and one or two books from the beach, it came home to her that tommy lupton, who was twenty, would never undergo such an experience. poor tommy was not imaginative; for him no beacon flamed anywhere; his whole idea of life was work well-performed, a wife and children (probably), and a comfortable home to visit in his hours off duty. and once, if fortune brought it about, once in a long lifetime of work and play and peacefulness, an heroic moment, one deed worthy of admiration, a single act of bravery or courage or devotion that would show the stuff that was in him—all the rest would be background. if the moment never came that would not matter. the only thing that mattered was to be ready for it if it should come.
whereas mermaid must be forever seeking moments and doing her part, when she was ready, to create them. there was a profound difference. tommy stood on guard, his back to the rock; she would be advancing—retreating, too, sometimes, no doubt—but constantly gaining ground. there was young dickie hand with his unquestionable gifts; he would go forward, and go far if—if—he had the right incentive. and guy vanton.... mermaid paused with a pang. in this[159] process of definition it struck upon her for the first time that guy would neither go forward like herself or dickie hand nor stand steadfast like tommy; he would shrink back. he would conduct a well-covered withdrawal, a leisurely, unobtrusive withdrawal; and it would be a retreat!
the pang was caused by the knowledge that of the three she most nearly loved guy.
