Judith Lynn: A Story of the Sea

“No,” Judith answered, dreamily. She was looking out of the little, many-paned window across the distant water. It looked like a very great way.

“I suppose it’s – pretty far,” she murmured wistfully.

“Oh, consid’able – consid’able,” the old man agreed vaguely. “But ye won’t mind that. It won’t be fur comin’ home!”

The faith of the old child and the young was good that this beautiful miracle could be brought about. Judith went home with elastic step and lifted, trustful face.

Jem Three, scuffing barefoot through the sandy soil, met this radiant dream-maiden with the exalted mien. Jem Three was not of exalted mien, and he never dreamed. He was brown up to the red rim of his hair, and big and homely. But the freckles in line across the brownness of his face spelled h-o-n-e-s-t-y. At least, they always had before to Judith Lynn and all the world. To-night Judith was to read them differently.

“Hullo, Jude!”

It is hard to come out of a beautiful dream, plump upon a prosaic boy who says, “Hullo!” It is apt to jolt one. It jolted Judith.

“Oh! Oh, it’s you!” she came out enough to say, and then went back. The prosaic boy regarded her in puzzled wonder. Head up, shoulders back, eyes looking right through you – what kind of a Jude was this! Was she walking in her sleep?

“Hullo, I said,” he repeated. “If you’ve left your manners to home – ”

“Oh! – oh, hello, Jem! I guess I was busy thinking.”

“Looked like it. Bad habit to get into. Better look out! I never indulge, myself. Well, how’s luck?”

“Luck? Oh, you mean lobsters?” Judith had not been busy thinking of lobsters, but now her grievance came back to her. “Oh, Jem! I never got but three! All my pains for three lobsters! And two of those just long enough not to be short. It means – I suppose it means a bad season, doesn’t it?”

Jem Three pursed his lips into a whistle. Afterward, when Judith’s evil thoughts had invaded her mind, she remembered that Jem Three had avoided looking at her; yes, certainly he had shifted his bare toes about in the sand. And when he spoke, his voice had certainly sounded muttery.

“Guess somethin’ ails your traps,” he had said. “Warn’t nothin’ the matter with mine.”

“Did you get more than three?”

“Got a-plenty.”

“Jemmy Three, how many’s a-plenty?”

“’Bout twenty-four.”

Jemmy Three had got twenty-four! Judith turned away in bitterness and envy, and afterwards suspicion.

There was nothing the matter with her traps. If Jem Three got twenty-four lobsters in his, why did she get only three in hers? Twenty-four and three. What kind of fairness was that! She could set lobster-traps as well as any Jem Three – or Jem Four – or Five – or Six.

There had always been good-natured rivalry between the fisher-boy and the fisher-girl, and Judith had usually held her own jubilantly. There had never been any such difference as this.

Suddenly was born the evil thought in Judith’s brain. It crept in slinkingly, after the way of evil things. “How do you know but he helped himself out o’ your traps?” That was the whisper it whispered to Judith. Then, well started, how it ran on! “When you and he quarreled a while ago, didn’t he say, ‘I’ll pay you back’? – didn’t he? You think if he didn’t.”

“Oh, he did,” groaned Judith.

“Well, isn’t helping himself to your lobsters paying you back?”

“Yes – oh, yes, if he did. But Jemmy Three never – ”

“How do you know he never? Is twenty-four to three a fair average? Is it? Is it?”

“No, oh, no! But I don’t believe – ”

“Oh, you needn’t believe! Don’t believe. Go right on finding your traps empty and believing Jemmy Three’d never! I thought you were going to save your lobster-money for Blossom.”

“Oh, I was – I am going to! I’m going to save it to take her across the ocean to that doctor. It was going to be a little wheel-chair, but now it’s going to be legs.”

“But supposing there isn’t any lobster-money? You can’t do much with three lobsters a day. If somebody helps himself – ”

“Stop!” cried Judith angrily, and the evil thought slunk away. But it came again – it kept coming. One by one, little trivial circumstances built themselves into suspicions, until the little brown freckles on Jemmy Three’s face came to spell “Dishonesty” to Judith Lynn. If it had not been for the terrible need of lobster-money – Judith would have fought harder against the evil thing if it had not been for that.

“I’ve got to have it! There’s got to be lobsters in the traps!” she cried to herself. “The doctor over there might die! If he died before I could carry Blossom to him, do you think I’d ever forgive Jemmy Three?” – which showed that the Evil Thing had done its work. It might slink away now and stay.

It was a hard night for Judith. Joyful thoughts and evil ones conflicted with each other, and among them all she could not sleep. It was nearly morning before she snuggled up against Blossom’s little warm body and shut her eyes. Her plans were made, as far as she could make them. To-morrow she would go down and question the hotel mother, as Uncle Jem said. To-morrow – she must not wait. And after that – after that, heaven and earth and the waters of the sea must help her. There must be no faithlessness or turning back.

“You shall walk, little Blossom,” Judith whispered softly.

How could she know how soon the sea would help?

Chapter III

“I want to go, Judy – please, please!”

Blossom was up on her elbow, pleading earnestly. Judith was dressing.

“It’s a Blossom day – you know it’s a Blossom day! And Jemmy Three’ll carry me down. I know Jemmy Three will! I haven’t been out a-dorying for such a long time; Judy – please!”

It was always hard work for Judith to refuse Blossom anything. Besides – Judith went to the window and lifted the scant little curtain – yes, it certainly was a “Blossom day.” The sky was Blossom-blue, the sea spread away out of sight, Blossom-smooth and shining. And the little pleader there in the bed looked so eager and longing – so Blossom-sweet! She should go “a-dorying,” decided Judith, but it would not be Jemmy Three that carried her down to the sea.

“You little tease, come on, then!” laughed Judith. “I’ll dress you in double-quick, for I’ve got to get out to my traps.”

Judith had overslept, for a wonder. When had Judith done a thing like that before! For two hours Blossom had been awake, lying very quietly for fear of waking Judy; poor, tired Judy must not be disturbed. Downstairs mother had gone away to her work at the beautiful summer cottage down-beach, beyond the hotel. It was ironing-day at the cottage, and all day mother would stand at the ironing-board, ironing dainty summer skirts and gowns.

“I’ll ride in front an’ be a – a what’ll I be, Judy?”

“A little bother of a Blossom in a pink dress,” laughed Judith, as she buttoned the small garments with the swift, deft fingers that had buttoned them for six years.

“No, no! a – don’t you know, the kind of a thing that brings good luck? You read it to me your own self, Judy Lynn!”

“I guess you mean a mastif,” Judith said slowly. “Queer it sounds so much like a dog! – it didn’t make me think of a dog when I read it.”

“M-m – yes, I’ll be a mastif” – Blossom’s voice was doubtful; it hadn’t reminded her so much of a dog, either, at the time. “An’ so you’ll have good luck. You’ll find your traps brim-up full, Judy! Then I guess you’ll say, ‘Oh, how thankful I am I brought that child!’”

Judith caught the little crippled figure closer in a loving hug. “I’m thankful a’ready!” she cried.

They hurried through the simple breakfast that mother had left for them, and then Judith shouldered the joyous child and tramped away over the half-mile that separated them from the old black dory.

“Now, Judy, now le’s begin right off an’ pretend! Go ahead – you pretending?”

“I’m pretending. I’m a chariot and you’re a fine lady in pink ging – ”

“Ging – !” scorned Blossom. “Silk, Judy – in pink silk, a-ridin’ in the chariot. It’s a very nice, easy chariot an’ doesn’t joggle her hip – Oh, I forgot she hasn’t got any hips, of course! Well, here she goes a-riding and a-riding along, just as comfortable, but pretty soon she says – we’re coming to the beautiful part now, Judy! – ‘I guess I better get out an’ walk now,’ she says. Now pretend she got out and walked, Judy– you pretending?”

“I’m pretending,” cried Judy, her clasp on the little figure tightening and her eyes shining mysteriously. Sometime the little fine lady should get out and walk! She should – she should!

“Now she’s walking – no, she isn’t, either, she’s riding, and it isn’t in a chariot, it’s in her sister’s arms, an’ she’s Blossom. Don’t le’s pretend any more, Judy. There’s days it’s easy to an’ there’s days it’s hard to – it’s a hard-to day, I guess, to-day. Those days you can’t pretend get out and walk very well.”

“Pretend I’m an elephant!” laughed Judy, though the laugh trembled in her throat. “That’s an easy-to-pretend! And you’re an – Oh, an Arab, driving me! You must talk Arabese, Blossom!”

Blossom was gay again when they got to the dory, and Judith dropped her into the bow, out of her own weary arms.

“Now say ‘Heave-ho! – heave-ho’!” commanded Judith, “to help me drag her down, you know. Here we go!”

“I don’t know the Arabese for ‘heave-ho,’” laughed little Blossom, mischievously. “I could say it in American.”

“Say it in ‘American,’ then, you little rogue!” panted Judith, all her tough little muscles a-stretch for the haul.

They were presently out on the water, rocking gently with the gentle waves. And Blossom was presently shouting with delight. Her little lean, sharp face was keen with excitement.

“Now pretend – now, now, now! It’s easy to out here! The fine lady’s going abroad, Judy – do you hear? She’s going right straight over ’cross this sea, in this han’some ship! When she gets there she’ll step out on the shore an’ say what a beautiful voyage she’s had, an’ good-by to the cap’n – you’re the cap’n, Judy. An’ you’ll say, ‘Oh, my lady, sha’n’t I help you ashore?’ An’ she’ll laugh right out, it’s so ridic’lous! ‘Help me, my good man!’ she’ll ’xclaim. ‘I guess you must think I can’t walk!’”

Blossom’s face was alive with the joy of the beautiful “pretend.” But Judith’s face was sober.

“Laugh, why don’t you, Judy?” cried the child.

“I’m laugh – I mean I will, dear. But I’ve got to row like everything now, so you must do the pretending for us both. We’ve got to get out there to those traps before you can say ‘scat’!”

“Scat!” shrilled Blossom.

It was Blossom’s sharp eyes that discovered Jem Three “out there.” Judith was bending to her work.

“There’s Jemmy Three, Judy! True-honest, out there a-trapping! He looks ’s if he was coming away from our place – he is, Judy! He’s got our lobsters, to s’prise us, maybe.”

“It won’t surprise me,” muttered Judy, in the clutch of the Evil Thought again. She was watching the distant boat now keenly, her eyes hard with suspicion. Jem Three it surely was, and he was rowing slowly away from Judith’s lobster “grounds.” It seemed to her his dory was deep in the water as if heavily weighted. He had been – had been to her traps again. He was whistling – Judith could hear the faint, sweet sound – but that didn’t hide anything. Let him whistle all he wanted to – she knew what he had been up to!

“Ship aho-oy!” came across faintly to them, but it was only Blossom that answered.

“Ahoy! Ship ahoy!” she sent back clearly. Judith bent over her toiling oars.

“He’s going away from us, we sha’n’t meet him,” Blossom said in disappointment.

“Of course he’s going away – of course he won’t meet us,” Judith retorted between her little white teeth.

“An’ I wanted to ‘speak him,’” the disappointed little voice ran on; “I was going to call out, ‘How’s the folks abroad? We’re on our way ’cross, in the Judiana B.,’ – this is the Judiana B., Judy, after both of us. B. stands for me.”

“Funny way to spell me!” laughed Judith with an effort. She must hide away her black suspicions. Not for the world would she have Blossom know! Blossom was so fond of Jemmy Three, and she had so few folks to be fond of.

A surprise was waiting for them “out there.” The traps were pretty well loaded! Not full, any of them, but not one of them empty. In all, there were seventeen great, full-grown, glistening, black fellows for Blossom to shudder over as she never failed to do – Blossom was no part of a fisherman.

“He didn’t dare to take them all,” thought Judith, refusing to let the Evil Thought get away from her. “Probably he saw us coming. If he’d let ’em alone there might have been a lot more – perhaps there were fifty!”

“One, two, three,” – counted Blossom slowly. “Why, Judy, there’s seventeen. You didn’t s’pose there’d be as many as seventeen, did you? Isn’t that a splendid lot?”

“Not as splendid as fifty,” answered Judy, assured now that there had been as many as that.

“Seventeen from fifty is thirty – thirty-two,” whispered the Evil Thing in her ear. Evil things cannot be expected to be good in arithmetic or anything else. “So he helped himself to thirty-two, did he! Nice haul! Thirty-two big fellows will bring him in – ”

“Don’t!” groaned Judith.

“I don’t wonder you say ‘don’t!’ Thirty-two nice big fellows would have brought you in a pretty little sum. You could have put it away in a stocking in your bureau drawer, for the Blossom-fund.”

“Oh, I was going to! I was going to!”

“Thought so – well, you’ll have to get along with seventeen. That comes of having boys like that for friends!”

“He isn’t my friend!” Judith cried sharply to the Evil Thing in her breast. “He never will be again. If it wasn’t for Uncle Jem I’d never look at him again as long as I live!”

All this little dialogue had gone on unsuspected by the little pink “mastif” in the bow of the little dory. Blossom had been busy edging out of the reach of the ugly things in the bottom of the boat. If Judith had only edged away from her Ugly Thing!

Another surprise was even now on the way – a surprise so stupendous and unexpected that, beside it, the lobster-surprise would dwindle away into insignificance and be quite forgotten for the rest of the day. And oddly enough, it was to be Blossom who should be discoverer again.

“I’m going a little farther out and fish awhile,” Judith announced over her last trap. “I’ve got all my tackle aboard and maybe I can find something Mrs. Ben will want. You sit still as a mouse, Blossom, for I cant’t be watching you and fishing, too.”

“I’ll sit still as two mice. Needn’t think o’ me!” answered the little one proudly. Did Judy think she was little like that? Just because she hadn’t legs that would go! They didn’t need to go, did they, out here in the middle of the sea!

“What makes it look so ripply an’ bubbly out there?” she questioned with grown-up dignity. Judy should see she could sit still and talk like anybody.

“Where?” asked Judith absently. She did not take the trouble to follow the little pointing finger with her eyes.

“There– why don’t you look? It’s all pretty an’ ripply an’ kind of queer. Doesn’t look like plain water ’xactly. Look, Judy – why don’t you?”

“I am looking now – Oh, Oh, wait! It looks like – Blossom, I believe it’s a school! That’s the way the water always loo – Blossom, Blossom, do you hear me, it’s a school! A school of mackerel – a school, I tell you!”

“Well, you needn’t keep on a-telling me.” Blossom, anyway, was calm. “I’m not deaf o’ hearing, am I? If it’s a school, le’s us go right straight out there an’ fish it up, Judy.”

Judy was going right straight out there with all the strength of her powerful young arms. She was not calm; her face was quivering with excitement and joy. A school! A school! Oh, but that meant so much for the Blossom-fund, to put away in the stocking in the bureau drawer! If it should prove a big school – but she and Blossom could not manage a big one, never in the world. If Jemmy Thr – no, no, not Jemmy Three! This was not Jemmy Three’s school – what had he to do with it?

In all the stress and excitement of sending the old dory out there where the water was rippling its news to her, Judy had time to think of several things. She had time to remember how she and Jem Three had used, from the time they were little brown things in pinafores, to plan about their first school o’ mackerel – what they would do with all the wealth it should bring them, how they would share it together, how they would pull in the silvery, glistening fellows, side by side. What plans – what plans they had made! They had practiced a shrill, piercing call that was to summon the one of them who should happen to be absent when the “school” was descried out there in the bay. Even lately, big and old as they had grown, they had laughingly reviewed that call. Now – this minute – if Judith were to utter it, piercing and far-carrying and jubilant, perhaps Jemmy Three might hear and come plowing through the waves to get his share – had he any share? Because when they were little brown things they had made vows, did that give him any rights now?

Of course, if – if things had been different – lobster-things – Judith might have pursed her lips into that triumphant summons. But —

“Sit still! I’m going to swing her round!” called Judith sharply. “I’ve got to go ashore for father’s old net. It’s in the boat-house.”

“You won’t leave me, Judy – promise you’ll take me out with you!” pleaded Blossom, eagerly.

“I’ll have to,” Judith responded briefly. “There isn’t time to carry you home – I don’t dare take time.”

She made her plans as she went in, and put out again with the clumsy heap of netting towering at her feet. The thing she meant to do was stupendous for a girl to attempt alone, but she was going to attempt it. The shabby old net had lain in its corner, useless, for two years. Now it should be used – she, Judith Lynn would use it! She was glad as she pulled seaward again that she had thrown in two scoops – perhaps when the time came Blossom could make out to use one a little.

The net was like a long – a very long – fence, with its lower edge weighted heavily and its upper edge provided with wooden floats, to insure its standing erect under water. When in position properly it surrounded the school of fish, completely fencing in the darting, glimmering, silver fellows. Then the circle could be gradually narrowed and the fish brought together in a mass, when scoops could be used to dip them up into the boat.

The school once located, Judith began to circle slowly round it, “paying out” her fence of netting with no small difficulty, but gradually surrounding the unsuspected fish, until at length she had them penned.

“What did I tell you! I told you I’d be the – the mastif, Judy!” Blossom chattered. “I told you you’d say how thankful you was you brought that child!”

“How thankful I am!” chattered Judy. Then, launched into the thick of the arduous work, they both fell into breathless silence and only worked. It was not much Blossom could do, but she did her little splendidly. And Judith toiled with all her strength.

They stopped at last, not because there were no more of the glistening, silver fellows about them, but because the old black dory was weighted almost to the water’s edge. They had to stop. And then began Judith’s terrible hour. For the heavy boat must somehow be worked back, a weary little at a time, to the distant shore. Judith set herself to this new task gallantly, but it was almost too much for her. Over and over again it seemed to her she must give it up and toss overboard part, at least, of her silver freight, to lighten her load. But over and over again she nerved herself to another spurt of strength.

She must do it! She could not give up! She would shut her eyes, like this, and row ten more strokes – just ten more. Then she would row ten with her eyes open. Ten, shut – ten, open. Perhaps that would help. She tried it. She tried other poor little devices – calling the strokes “eenie, meenie, minie, mo,” the way she and Jemmy Three had “counted out” for tag when they were little – brown – things. Her strength – was surely – giving out – it shouldn’t give out!

Blossom, watching silently from her weary perch, grew frightened at Judy’s tense, set face and began to sob. And then Judy must find breath enough to laugh reassuringly and to nod over her shoulder at the child.

They had gone out late – had been out a wearisome time – and the journey back to land was measured off by slow, laboring oar-strokes that scarcely seemed to move the great boat. So it was late afternoon when at length Judith’s hard task was done. She seemed to possess but one desire – to rest. To get Blossom over the remaining half mile between her and home and then to tumble over on the bed and sleep – what more could anyone wish than that?

But there would be more than that to do. She must get food for tired little Blossom, if not for herself. And before this towered gigantically the two last feats of strength that faced her and seemed to laugh at her with sardonic glee.

“Drag me up on the beach – drag me up!” the old black dory taunted her.

“Carry me home, Judy, I’m so tired! – carry me home,” Blossom pleaded, like a little wilted blossom.

She did both things, but she never quite realized just how she could have done them. She remembered telling herself she couldn’t and then finding them done. Of covering her load of mackerel with an old rubber blanket she was dimly conscious. It was not until she lay drowsing in utter exhaustion on her own bed that she thought of all of the rest that must be done to that boat-load of precious freight. Then she tried to sit up, with a cry of distress.

“I must go! I cant’t stay here! Or I shall lose – Oh, what shall I lose?” she groaned in her drowsiness and dread. Something would happen if she did not get up at once – she would lose something that she mustn’t lose. She must get up now, at once.

“I shall lose Blossom – no, I mean Blossom will lose – oh, yes, Blossom will lose her legs, if I don’t get up,” she drowsed, and fell asleep.

Chapter IV

Judith awoke with a bewildering sensation of guilt and need of action. What had happened? What had she done that she ought not to have done? – or was it something that she ought to? Memory struggled back to her dimly, then flashed upon her in sudden clearness.

She had taken a school of mackerel – that was what she had done that was praiseworthy. She had left them down there in the old black dory, undressed and unpacked – that was the thing she ought not to have done. That was the awful thing! For if they were not dressed and packed at once —

“Oh, I shall lose them! I shall lose them!” moaned poor Judith, sitting up in bed and wringing her hands in the keenness of her distress. “How could I have let myself fall asleep! How could I have slept all this time like a log!”

It was very dark, so it must be midnight or later. There was no light anywhere, on land or sea, or in Judith’s troubled soul. To her remorseful mind all her terrible labor and strain of body had been in vain; she had gone to sleep and spoiled everything, everything!

Judith had never been so utterly tired out as when she went to sleep; she had never been so tired as she was now. She felt lame in every joint and muscle of her body. But her conscience stood up before her in the dark and arraigned her with pitiless, scathing scorn.

“Well, aren’t you ashamed of yourself? See what you’ve done! All those beautiful fish lost, when you might have saved them – just by staying awake and attending to them. A little thing like that! And you worked so hard to get them – I was proud of you for that. Ah-h, but I’m ashamed of you now!”

“Don’t! don’t – you hurt!” sighed Judith, “I’ll get up now, this minute, and go down there. Don’t you see me getting up? I’ve got one shoe on now.”

Judith was not experienced in the dressing of many fish at a time and the packing of them in barrels for market. At sixteen, how can one be – and one a girl? But she knew in a rather indefinite way the importance of having it done promptly. She remembered father’s and the boys’ last school of fish – how she had hurried down to the shore and watched the dory come creeping heavily in, how the boys had cheered, as they came, how father had let her help at the dressing, and mother had brought down hot coffee for them all and then “fallen to,” herself and worked like a man. How they all had worked to get the barrels packed full of the shining layers in time for the steamer next morning!