CHAPTER XXI
Thestory which the Captain had told Anne, when they went for that memorable sail together, was this.
Fifteen years earlier his beloved daughter Anna had married a man from “the Main,” as the people of that part of the country called the mainland. To her parents’ grief he had taken her to live fifty miles away. How they had missed her! A year later she came home for a visit, bringing her little baby, called Anne—“and that wasyou,” the Captain said, “the cutest little baby I ever saw!”
Just before it was time for Anna to go back home, her husband came for her and they went on an automobile trip with some friends. The party had a terrible accident, and the young couple were killed. Their little babyremained for a few months with its grandparents, who grew to love it dearly. But the very next spring Captain Sackett’s own wife died. With all these griefs the Captain was nearly distracted. He was quite unfit to care for the little baby alone, and there was no one to help him. His one hope of recovering a quiet mind lay in a long ocean voyage. But what was to become of the little orphan?
Just before this time Mr. Poole came to the Harbor, and began buying land and cutting a wide swath. He seemed kind and generous—that was because he wanted to win the confidence of the people in that place. Many persons gave him their money to keep. The Captain did not do that; but he did more. He give him little Anne. The rich man’s wife had taken a fancy to the helpless little one, and as she had no children of her own wanted to adopt Anne. Mr. Poole was willing, and it seemed a lucky chance for the baby to be brought up in comfort and happiness. No one was ever to know Anne’s history. The only condition the Captain made was that the little girl should always be allowed to cometo see him when she was at the Harbor, and that she should call him “Uncle.”
“I thought I was doin’ ye a good turn, Anne,” the Captain added wistfully. “I thought he was a good man, and you were lucky. But I made a big mistake. He was always selfish. And after his first wife died he grew more so. You’d a’ been better off with me, I guess, even if I’d a’ taken ye with me to sea.”
The Captain told Anne how Mr. Poole had written him early in the summer that a crash was coming shortly, and that Anne must be told the whole truth sooner or later. Poole could no longer take care of her, for he was penniless and worse. Anyway, his wife would have all she could do to care for their own baby, born this very year of disaster. This boy of course made all the difference. There was no longer any place for Anne who, it now seemed, had never been properly adopted. He wanted to give her up. He had arranged for her summer at Mrs. Batchelder’s camp. After that he shifted the responsibility back to the Captain. The old man paused here.All this had been about the past. Nothing was said about the future.
At first Anne was only dazed by this toppling of her whole family and home. But gradually one thought came uppermost. She asked only one question, “I am glad I am not the daughter of a thief!” she said tremulously. “Oh, I am glad! But if Mr. Poole isn’t—who was my truly father?”
The Captain brightened. “He was all right,” he answered. “At first I didn’t like Anna to marry him, because he was a foreigner. But he was an honest man, a sailor named Carlsen, a Norwegian.”
“A Norwegian!” Anne stared. The Captain went on.
“You ought to love the sea, Anne. Your father came from ’way up in the Northern ocean, a regular sailor, like me. He was thrifty and doing well. He had laid by a little. But of course Poole got that. Lucky he didn’t get my savings, by gum! I’m not rich, but I’ve got enough,Anne—”he broke off abruptly. He seemed to want to say more, but perhaps he did not dare.
Anne Carlsen; that was her new name! She rather liked the sound of it. She had never cared for the jerky syllables “Anne Poole.” Her father had been a foreigner it seemed; and she had despised and laughed at those other foreigners! And she had not a penny in the world; no home; nobody who seemed to want her. But at any rate she was the daughter of honest people and her grandfather was the best man who ever lived! There was nothing for her to be ashamed of but the foolish ideas she had had in the past.
This was what Anne was thinking this morning as she moved about the pretty little room in Cap’n Sackett’s house, next to Nelly’s, where she had spent two days and nights as a guest. She was setting the room to rights and packing her little bag to go back to Camp. The Captain had said that was what she was to do at present; there were still two weeks before the Camp would break up, when Round Robin would go back to the city and school. Anne was still in Tante’s care, and Tante was expecting her, he said.
Anne finished her little chores—theyseemed very easy nowadays—and stood looking out of the window through the branches of the old apple tree at the bay. It was a sweet little view. Anne thought she had never seen a prettier one anywhere; the green grass above the quiet beach, the sparkling sea beyond the evergreen trees making a border. This was the view which her little mother had loved, too. In that very room she had sung Anne to sleep, a tiny baby. And that blue vastness was the ocean which all her Yankee ancestors had loved; so too had her Norse father, of a race of famous sailor-men. Anne remembered it was the Norse sailors who had really first discovered America.
Little white waves were breaking up on the beach where Cap’n Sackett was just landing from his boat with a basket of fish. He had been out since four o’clock that morning. How hard he worked; and how everybody respected him! It was fine to be honored by your neighbors.
Someone tapped on the door and Nelly entered. “Hello,” she said. “Can I help? Oh, you’re all ready. Anne! I’m sorry you aregoing away! I wish you were going to stay—always!” Nelly stammered at the last word.
“It’s funny, but it seems like home,” said Anne simply. She felt suddenly lonely at the thought of going away from this nest into which she had fluttered almost by accident; before she knew it had been builded by her own flock of sea-birds, and that she herself had once been sung asleep in its safety. “How long have youknown, Nelly?”
Anne had no need to explain what she meant. Nelly knew she was thinking of her name and history.
“I think I have always guessed it,” said Nelly, “ever since I first saw you on the pier, the day you landed. I felt as if we weresomething together. I can’t explain what I mean. No, you didn’t feel so, I know; it didn’t seem possible, then. No person told me till Uncle Eph did the other day. I justintuedit!” She looked shyly at Anne.
“You must have hated me,” said Anne, remembering the disagreeable airs she had put on and the way she had snubbed Nelly Sackett.
Nelly considered her cousin gravely. “No,” she said, “I didn’t hate you. I thought maybe that was the way I’d feel if I were in your place. Money often does turn people’s heads, doesn’t it? We aren’t a bit alike, really. But I guess there is something alike inside us. There must be inside everybody.”
Anne had been thinking of something else that troubled her. “What do you suppose will become of me?” she faltered. “I never thought about planning things till now. Nobody wants me, Nelly. Mr. Poole just gives me up—though I can’t be sorry forthat! If anybody wants to adopt me, all right, he says. But why should anybody want to? I’m no good. I’m just expensive.”
Nelly began to laugh, recalling how well Anne had fitted into their simple domestic life during the past two days; how many kinds of things she had learned to do in this queer summer; and how everybody was growing to like her. “Golden Girls sound expensive,” she said, “but maybe they are not so bad, when you know them.” Anne did not laugh at the old joke.
“Suppose nobody wants me?” she said. “What happens to people like that? Do they go to the poorhouse? If I could be earning my own living it would be different. But how can I, now? I don’t know enough.”
Nelly shook her head. “Not yet,” she said. “We are not old enough.” She had been thinking about these things too. “But don’t forget that Uncle Eph is your grandfather. You’ve got somebody behind you, anyway. That’s more than a good many children have.”
“He didn’t say he could help,” murmured Anne. “He didn’t offer.”
“He was afraid of you,” said Nelly eagerly. “I know how it is. He thought he would seem tooplainfor you. He thought it was too sudden to come down from the idea of Idlewild to this house! But he wants you, I know, if you’d be happy. He said so. He thinks maybe you can do better. But he would take care of you, just as he takes care of me. We’d divide everything. We’d be like sisters, Anne. I’d let you share my mother!”
Anne turned from the window and lookedat Nelly with new eyes. What a wonderful thing it would be to have a sister! Since living at camp she had begun to realize how nice it was to be close to other girls and do things together with them. She and Nelly really were cousins, that was certain. And how different Nelly seemed to her now that she knew her better. How unselfish she was!
“We’ll be like sisters anyway,” she said impulsively, “but the Captain—Grandfather—couldn’t support another big girl like me?”
“He isn’t poor,” said Nelly. “We can both learn to do something. Then some day we can both pay him back. What will you be, Anne?”
Anne had never really thought ofbeinganything until this moment. “Be? Why—I’d like to be a teacher,” she said suddenly. The idea popped into her head like an inspiration. “I’d like to teach foreigners how to become good ‘squares’ in the Patchwork Quilt, as Tante calls it. Oh yes! And I’d like to learn how to take care of little children like the children around here. I’d like to be able to nurse them or doctor them when theycan’t get a doctor in a hurry. I wish I could make up to this place for the things I had when I was little, when I didn’t know who was paying for them. I didn’t know it, but I was aPig!”
Nelly listened eagerly. “I think it’s a lovely idea,” she said, hugging Anne around the neck. “You can’t be everything; but you are awfully clever—much smarter than I. I want to be a teacher, too. But you can do a lot beside. Some day you will be my boss, I know; and you will like it, too.” Nelly understood her cousin pretty well already.
“Hello, Anne!” called the Captain from the foot of the stairs. “Ain’t ye most ready to go? They’re expectin’ ye, I guess.” Anne turned red. He seemed anxious to be rid of her, she thought. But when she saw his kind face she knew better. “I’m going to tell Uncle Eph what you said you wanted to be,” Nelly whispered, and she burst out with the whole story before Anne could stop her. The Captain listened gravely, with his eyes resting affectionately on Anne, but all he said was—“That’s good!”
“Thank you for being so kind to me, and for telling me all about myself so nicely,” said Anne a little stiffly. “I have had a very nice time here, and—I’m glad you are my Grandfather!” The Captain beamed.
“I’m glad ye’re not ashamed,” he said. “Now ye’ll run over to see us often, won’t ye? It ain’t long before Mrs. Batchelder breaks up camp, ye know, andthen—”he waited, “we dunnowhat.”
“Of course I’ll come,” said Anne. “This seems like home, now.”
“Does it?” the Captain’s face brightened. “Wal, I wish it was, truly. Of course it can be, Anne, if ye want it. It’s plain. But the door’s open. No, don’t say anything now. Maybe ye’ll have a better chance. But anyhow, here is my little Anna’s place ready for ye. I’ll send ye to school. I can help ye do whatever ye want to, I guess. Life won’t be so easy for ye, as it used to be. But it needn’t be empty. I don’t want to press ye, I give ye up once, and I guess that cost me the right to ye now. I thought I was doin’ the best thing for ye then. But I made amistake. Now maybe ye’ll know what’s best for yourself, if you have a chance. Anyway—no hurry!”
“Oh Grandfather!” Anne ran up and hugged the old man around the neck, till the tears came into his eyes. “How good you are! I’d choose this homeanyway!”
But the Captain gently shook his head. “There, there!” he said, “Don’t ye go too fast, little gal. I don’t want to take advantage of ye. Wait till ye get your bearin’s. It’s all so sudden for ye. I wanted ye to see this house and the way we live, so’s you’d know what ye was doin’ ef ye chose us. But take time. Finish out yer summer at the Camp, and see what happens. Then we can talk it over again. Run along now. They’ll be expectin’ ye.”
Aunt Polly added no word to the Captain’s invitation, but kissed Anne affectionately and said good-bye.
“Oh, I am so glad somebody wants me!” thought Anne, as she and Nelly walked slowly along the road together, talking of many things.