Achsa Green knew him only as “a nice appearin’ boy—not so much on looks,” with a kindly manner toward Lavender and an appreciation of the merits of Nip and Tuck. And inasmuch as Nip and Tuck made friendly advances to Poker and Lavender would do things for Dugald Allan that he would not do for anyone else, she finally consented to “let” her gable room to the young stranger and to board him as well. In settling the matter of board young Allan had had to deal with a pride as hard as the granite of the breakwall he could glimpse from the one window of his room; it had been only after he convinced Aunt Achsa that he could never feel like “one of the folks” until he contributed something to the upkeep of the family, that he had persuaded her to accept the sum of money which he considered barely repaid her trouble but which Aunt Achsa deemed a fortune.
Wisely young Allan paid the “board money” at the bank. He had come to know Aunt Achsa’s failings, how sometimes she stowed her scant earnings away and forgot its hiding place; how at other times she gave them to someone needier than herself. Many a one of her generation had told him that she was without “sense” where business was concerned. It was everyone’s wonder how she’d managed to feed two mouths, not counting the cats, with Lavender not earning so much as his salt. And gradually, as the summers passed, Allan took upon his shoulders other responsibilities; planning safe pastimes for Lavender; marketing, after which the kitchen cupboards groaned with food; persuading Aunt Achsa to let her rugs go and putter in her flowers while the summer lasted.
With the Cape standards of wealth it would not have made any difference to Achsa Green, anyway, or to anyone else, if they had known that the “nice-appearin’ boy” in the old flannels was the only son of Roderick Allan, President of the Allan Iron Works of Newark, New Jersey. Not half so much difference as the old flannels made to Dugald’s mother. The inclination on the part of their boy to be “queer,” for under that head they put all his predilections that differed from their ambitions—distressed his parents very much. The boy had “everything” and he didn’t care a rap about “anything”; they looked upon his spells of dreamy preoccupation as “loafing.” His father had an executive office in the iron works waiting for him when he finished college, a job at which any red-blooded young fellow would jump, and Dugald talked of painting. His mother had grieved that he would take no part in the social whirl that made up her existence, that he laughed at the creed of her “set,” scouted the class commandments by which she lived. When he expressed the intention of going on a tramp over Cape Cod she had encouraged the whim. She had believed that the discomforts of such an expedition would cure him of his “notions.” She had motored to Provincetown two summers before and she thought it a forlorn place; the hotels were impossible, the streets dusty and crowded, everything smelled fishy and one was always elbowing great foreign creatures in dirty oilskins and rubber boots.
Like many a mother she had been too busy living down to her rapidly accruing wealth to know the man her boy had grown to be. All her upbringing notwithstanding he was a simple soul with a sympathetic understanding of his fellow mortals; a quiet humor and a keen perception of beauty that abhorred the false or superficial, a brain that stifled in crowded places. He much preferred knocking elbows with men of homely labor to the crowded and law-breaking parties he came to Cape Cod to escape; he found among the fisherfolk, the old gray wharves, the sandy dunes, everlastingly swept with the clean breath of the Atlantic, a peace of mind and an inspiration he had never known elsewhere. The longing in his heart to paint that had been scarcely more than an urge, took definite and splendid shape. Someone else had the executive job in his father’s manufacturing plant.
That he grew to know that Aunt Achsa needed him and looked forward to his coming strengthened the bond that brought him back to Sunset Lane each spring. No one had ever needed him before and it was a man-satisfying sensation. And in Aunt Achsa’s affection for him there was a depth which he divined but only vaguely understood. In his hardy six feet four the compassionate mother-woman was seeing her poor Lavender, big and strong and “straight.” To her Dugald was what Lavender “wasn’t”; in her way she put him and Lavender together and made a satisfying whole. Sometimes she wondered if Dugald might not be the answer to her prayers!
It had been to young Allan that Aunt Achsa had carried the letter that the baker brought so unexpectedly to the door. Joe had lingered on the doorstep, but had not been rewarded by any hint of its contents. Achsa could not remember when she had had a letter before. She fingered the envelope apprehensively. Yet it could scarcely be bad news of any sort, for there was just herself and Lavender and he was only down in the flats. No one would write anything about him.
“Read it—my eyes ain’t certain with folk’s writing,” she had begged Dugald Allan, in a shaky voice. Thereupon he had read aloud Sidney’s letter.
“I never!” “I swan!” “Why, that’s Annie Green’s girl—Annie was Jon’than’s daughter—I rec’lect her when she wasn’t much bigger than a pint of cider.” Achsa Green fluttered with excitement like a quivering brown leaf caught in a sudden stir of wind. “And the little thing says she knows all about me. Heard her folks tell. Well, well, I wouldn’t ’a said there was a God’s soul knew about Achsa Green outside this harbor! The little pretty. And her ma’s dead—died when she was a baby, poor little mite. Sidney—that’s not a Cape name. Like as not they got it from the other side. Well, Uncle Jon’than allas was diff’runt—he was for books and learnin’ and was a peaked sort, as I rec’lect him—He was consid’rable younger than Pa!”
During Achsa’s excited soliloquy Dugald Allan had an opportunity to reread the letter. He smiled broadly over the reading. But his smile changed to a quick frown as he observed the signature. For a brief second he pondered over it, then by a shake of his head seemed to dismiss some thought.
“What are you going to tell her?” he asked Achsa Green. “Will you let her come on?”