The Slipper Point Mystery
Page 15
CHAPTER XV
THE SUMMER'S END
They sat together in the canoe]
They sat together in the canoe, each facing the other, Doris in the bowand Sally in the stern. A full, mid-September moon painted its ripplingpath on the water and picked out in silver every detail of shore andriver. The air was full of the heavy scent of the pines, and the onlysound was the ceaseless lap-lap of the lazy ripples at the water's edge.Doris had laid aside her paddle. Chin in hands, she was drinking in theradiance of the lovely scene.
"I simply cannot realize I am going home tomorrow and must leave allthis!" she sighed at last.
Sally dipped her paddle disconsolately and answered with almost a groan:
"If it bothers _you_, how do you suppose it makes _me_ feel?"
"We have grown close to each other, haven't we?" mused Doris, "Do youknow, I never dreamed I could make so dear a friend in so short a time.I have plenty of acquaintances and good comrades, but usually it takesme years to make a real _friend_. How did you manage to make me care somuch for you, Sally?"
"'Just because you're you'!" laughed Sally, quoting a popular song. "Butdo you realize, Doris Craig, what a different girl I've become since Iknew and cared for _you_?"
She was indeed a different girl, as Doris had to admit. To begin with,she _looked_ different. The clothes she wore were neat, dainty andappropriate, indicating taste and care both in choosing and wearingthem. Her parents were comparatively well-to-do people in the villageand could afford to dress her well and give her all that was necessary,within reason. It had been mainly lack of proper care, and the absenceof any incentive to seem her best, that was to blame for the originalcareless Sally. And not only her looks, but her manners and Englishwere now as irreproachable as they had once been provincial and faulty.
"Why, even my thoughts are different!" she suddenly exclaimed, followingaloud the line of thought they had both been unconsciously pursuing."You've given me more that's worth while to think about, Doris, in thesethree months, than I ever had before in all my life."
"I'm sure it wasn't _I_ that did it," modestly disclaimed Doris, "butthe books I happened to bring along and that you wanted to read. If youhadn't _wanted_ different things yourself, Sally, I don't believe youwould have changed any, so the credit is all yours."
"Do you remember the day you first quoted 'The Ancient Mariner' to me?"laughed Doris. "I was so astonished I nearly tumbled out of the boat. Itwas the lines, 'We were the first that ever burst into that silent sea,'wasn't it?"
"Yes, they are my favorite lines in it," replied Sally. "And with allthe poems I've read and learned since, I love that best, after all."
"My favorite is that part, 'The moving moon went up the sky and nowheredid abide,'" said Doris, "and I guess I love the thing as much as youdo."
"And Miss Camilla," added Sally, "says her favorite in it is,
"'The selfsame moment I could pray, And from my neck so free, The Albatross fell off and sank Like lead into the sea.'
"She says that's just the way she felt when we girls made that discoveryabout her brother's letter. Her 'Albatross' had been the supposed weightof disgrace she had been carrying about all these fifty years."
"Oh, Miss Camilla!" sighed Doris ecstatically. "What a darling she is!And what a wonderful, simply wonderful adventure we've had, Sally.Sometimes, when I think of it, it seems too incredible to believe. It'slike something you'd read of in a book and say it was probablyexaggerated. Did I tell you that my grandfather has decided to purchaseher whole collection of porcelains, and the antique jewelry, too?"
"No," answered Sally, "but Miss Camilla told me. And _I_ know how shehates to part with them. Even _I_ will feel a little sorry when they'regone. I've washed them and dusted them so often and Miss Camilla hastold me so much about them. I've even learned how to know them by thestrange little marks on the back of them. And I can tell English Spodefrom Old Worcester, and French Faience from Vincennes Sevres,--and a lotbeside. And what's more, I've really come to admire and appreciate them.I never supposed I would.
"Miss Camilla will miss them a lot, for she's been so happy with themsince they were restored to her. But she says they're as useless in herlife now as a museum of mummies, and she needs the money for otherthings."
"I suppose she will restore the main part of her house and live in itand be very happy and comfortable," remarked Doris.
"That's just where you are entirely mistaken," answered Sally, withunexpected animation. "Don't you know what she is going to do with it?"
"Why, no!" said Doris in surprise, "I hadn't heard."
"Well, she only told me today," replied Sally, "but it nearly bowled meover. She's going to put the whole thing into Liberty Bonds, and go onliving precisely as she has before. She says she has gotten along thatway for nearly fifty years and she guesses she can go on to the end. Shesays that if her father and brother could sacrifice their safety andtheir money and their very lives, gladly, as they did when their countrywas in need, she guesses she oughtn't to do very much less. If she wereyounger, she'd go to France right now, and give her life in somecapacity, to help out in this horrible struggle. But as she can't dothat, she is willing and delighted to make every other sacrifice withinher power. And she's taken out the bonds in my name and Genevieve's,because she says she'll never live to see them mature, and we're theonly chick or child she cares enough about to leave them to. She wantedto leave some to you, too, but your father told her, no. He has alreadytaken out several in your name."
Doris was quite overcome by this flood of unexpected information and bythe wonderful attitude and generosity of Miss Camilla.
"I never dreamed of such a thing!" she murmured. "She insisted on givingme the little Sevres vase, when I bade her good-bye today. I hardlyliked to take it, but she said I must, and that it could form thenucleus of a collection of my own, some day when I was older and timeswere less strenuous. I hardly realized what she meant then, but I donow, after what you've told me."
"But that isn't all," said Sally. "I've managed to persuade my fatherthat I'm not learning enough at the village school and probably neverwill. He was going to take me out of it this year anyway, and whensummer came again, have me wait on the ice-cream parlor and candycounter in the pavilion. I just hated the thought. Now I've made himpromise to send Genevieve and me every day to Miss Camilla to studywith her, and he's going to pay for it just the same as if I were goingto a private school. I'm so happy over it, and so is Miss Camilla, onlywe had hard work persuading her that she must accept any money for it.And even Genevieve is delighted. She has promised to stop sucking herthumb if she can go to Miss Camilla and 'learn to yead 'bout picters,'as she says."
"It's all turned out as wonderfully as a fairy-tale," mused Doris asthey floated on. "I couldn't wish a single thing any different. And Ithink what Miss Camilla has done is--well, it just makes a lump come inmy throat even to speak of it. I feel like a selfish wretch beside her.I'm just going to save every penny I have this winter and give it to theRed Cross and work like mad at the knitting and bandage-making. But eventhat is no _real_ sacrifice. I wish I could do something like she hasdone. _That's_ the kind of thing that counts!"
"We can only do the thing that lies within our power," said Sally,grasping the true philosophy of the situation, "and if we do all ofthat, we're giving the best we can."
They drifted on a little further in silence, and then Doris glanced ather wrist-watch by the light of the moon. "We've got to go in," shemourned. "It's after nine o'clock, and Mother warned me not to stay outlater than that. Besides I've got to finish packing."
They dragged the canoe up onto the shore, and turned it over in thegrass. Then they wandered, for a moment, down to the edge of the water.
"Remember, it isn't so awfully bad as it seems," Doris tried to heartenSally by reminding her. "Father and I are coming down again to stay overColumbus Day, and you and Genevieve are coming to New York to spend theChristmas holidays with us. We'll be seeing ea
ch other right along, atintervals."
Sally looked off up the river to where the pointed pines on SlipperPoint could be dimly discerned above the wagon bridge. Suddenly herthoughts took a curious twist.
"How funny,--how awfully funny it seems now," she laughed, "to think weonce were planning to dig for pirate treasure--up there!" she noddedtoward Slipper Point.
"Well, we may not have found any pirate loot," Doris replied, "butyou'll have to admit we discovered treasure of a very differentnature--and a good deal more valuable. And, when you come to think ofit, we did discover buried treasure, at least Miss Camilla did, and wewere nearly buried alive trying to unearth it, and what more of athrilling adventure could you ask for than that?" But she endedseriously:
"Slipper Point will always mean to me the spot where I spent some of thehappiest moments of my life!"
"And I say--the same!" echoed Sally.
THE END