CHAPTER VII
A-MAYING
THE City Transfer bill was paid; so were the other bills. Ken, on his way out from Asquam, stopped with a sudden light in his dogged face and turned back. He sought out the harbor-master, who was engaged in painting a dory behind his shop.
"Wal, boy, want to get a fish-hook?" he queried, squinting toward Ken with a preoccupied eye. (He sold hardware and fishing-tackle, as well as attending to the duties of his post.)
Ken disclaimed any desire for the fish-hook, and said he wanted to ask about a boat.
"Ain't got none for sale ner hire, just now," the harbor-master replied.
Ken said, so he had heard, but that wasn't it. And he told the man about the abandoned power-boat in the inlet. The harbor-master stood up straight and looked at Ken, at last.
"Wal, ding!" said he. "That's Joe Pasquale's boat, sure's I'm a-standin' here!"
"Who," said Ken, "is Joe Pasquale?"
"He is—or woz—a Portugee fisherman—lobsterman, ruther. He got drownded in Febrerry—fell outen his boat, seems so, an' we got him, but we never got the boat. Couldn't figger wher' she had got to. He was down harbor when 't happent. Cur'ous tide-racks 'round here."
"Whose is she, then?" Ken asked. "Any widows or orphans?"
"Nary widder," said the harbor-master, chewing tobacco reflectively. "No kin. Finders keepers. B'longs to you, I reckon. Ain't much good, be she?"
"Hole stove in her," Ken said. "The engine is all there, but I guess it'll need a good bit of tinkering at."
"Ain't wuth it," said the harbor-master. "She's old as Methusaly, anyways. Keep her—she's salvage if ever there wuz. Might be able to git sunthin' fer her enjine—scrap iron."
"Thanks," said Ken; "I'll think it over." And he ran nearly all the way to Applegate Farm.
Kirk did not forget his promise to the Maestro. He found the old gentleman in the garden, sitting on a stone bench beside the empty fountain.
"I knew that you would come," he said. "Do you know what day it is?"
Kirk did not, except that it was Saturday.
"It is May-day," said the Maestro, "and the spirits of the garden are abroad. We must keep our May together. Come—I think I have not forgotten the way."
He took Kirk's hand, and they walked down the grass path till the sweet closeness of a low pine covert wove a scented silence about them. The Maestro's voice dropped.
"It used to be here," he said. "Try—the other side of the pine-tree. Ah, it has been so many, many years!"
Kirk's hand sought along the dry pine-needles; then, in a nook of the roots, what but a tiny dish, with sweetmeats, set out, and little cups of elder wine, and bread, and cottage cheese! The Maestro sat down beside Kirk on the pine-needles, and began to sing softly in a rather thin but very sweet voice.
The Maestro sat down beside Kirk
"Here come we a-maying,
All in the wood so green;
Oh, will ye not be staying?
Oh, can ye not be seen?
Before that ye be flitting,
When the dew is in the east,
We thank ye, as befitting,
For the May and for the feast.
Here come we a-maying,
All in the wood so green,
In fairy coverts straying
A-for to seek our queen."
"One has to be courteous to them," he added at the end, while Kirk sat rapt, very possibly seeing far more garden spirits than his friend had any idea of.
"I myself," the Maestro said, "do not very often come to the garden. It is too full, for me, of children no longer here. But the garden folk have not forgotten."
"When I'm here," murmured Kirk, sipping elder Wine, "Applegate Farm and everything in the world seem miles and years away. Is there really a magic line at the hedge?"
"If there is, you are the only one who has discovered it," said the old gentleman, enigmatically. "Leave a sup of wine and a bit of bread for the Folk, and let us see if we cannot find some May-flowers."
They left the little pine room,—Kirk putting in the root hollow a generous tithe for the garden folk,—and went through the garden till the grass grew higher beneath their feet, and they began to climb a rough, sun-warmed hillside, where dry leaves rustled and a sweet earthy smell arose.
"Search here among the leaves," the Maestro said, "and see what you shall find."
So Kirk, in a dream of wonder, dropped to his knees, and felt among the loose leaves, in the sunshine. And there were tufts of smooth foliage, all hidden away, and there came from them a smell rapturously sweet—arbutus on a sunlit hill. Kirk pulled a sprig and sat drinking in the deliciousness of it, till the old gentleman said:
"We must have enough for a wreath, you know—a wreath for the queen."
"Who is our Queen of the May?" Kirk asked.
"The most beautiful person you know."
"Felicia," said Kirk, promptly.
"Felicia," mused the Maestro. "That is a beautiful name. Do you know what it means?"
Kirk did not.
"It means happiness. Is it so?"
"Yes," said Kirk; "Ken and I couldn't be happy without her. She is happiness."
"Kenneth is your brother?"
"Kenelm. Does that mean something?"
The old gentleman plucked May-flowers for a moment. "It means, if I remember rightly, 'a defender of his kindred." It is a good Anglo-Saxon name."
"What does my name mean?" Kirk asked.
The Maestro laughed. "Yours is not a given name," he said. "It has no meaning. But—you mean much to me."
He caught Kirk suddenly in a breathless embrace, from which he released him almost at once, with an apology.
"Let us make the wreath," he said. "See, I'll show you how."
He bound the first strands, and then guided Kirk's hands in the next steps, till the child was fashioning the wreath alone.
" 'My love's an arbutus
On the borders of Lene,'"
sang the Maestro, in his gentle voice. "Listen, and I will tell you what you must say to Felicia when you crown her Queen of the May."
The falling sun found the wreath completed and the verse learned, and the two went hand in hand back through the shadowy garden.
"Won't you make music to-day?" Kirk begged.
"Not to-day," said the old gentleman. "This day we go a-maying. But I am glad you do not forget the music."
"How could I?" said Kirk. At the hedge, he added: "I'd like to put a bit of arbutus in your buttonhole, for your May."
He held out a sprig in not quite the right direction, and the Maestro stepped forward and stooped to him, while Kirk's fingers found the buttonhole.
"Now the Folk can do me no harm," smiled the old gentleman. "Good-by, my dear."
Felicia was setting the table, with the candlelight about her hair. If Kirk could have seen her, he would indeed have thought her beautiful. He stood with one hand on the door-post, the other behind him.
"Phil?" he said.
"Here," said Felicia. "Where have you been, honey?"
He advanced to the middle of the room, and stopped. There was something so solemn and unchancy about him that his sister put a handful of forks and spoons on the table and stood looking at him. Then he said, slowly:
"I come a-maying through the wood,
A-for to find my queen;
She must be glad and she must be good,
And the fairest ever seen.
And now have I no further need
To seek for loveliness;
She standeth at my side indeed—
Felicia—Happiness!"
With which he produced the wreath of May-flowers, and, flinging himself suddenly upon her with a hug not specified in the rite, cast it upon her chestnut locks and twined himself joyfully around her. Phil, quite overcome, collapsed into the nearest chair, Kirk, May-flowers and all, and it was there that Ken found them, rapturously embracing each other, the May Queen bewitchingly pretty with her wreath over one ear.
"I did n't make it up," Kirk said, at supper. "The Maestro did—or at least he said the Folk taught him one like it. I can't remember the thanking one he sang before the feast. And Ken, he says your name's good Anglo-Saxon, and means 'a defender of his kindred.'"
"It does, does it?" said Ken. "You'll get so magicked over there some time that we'll never see you again; or else you'll come back cast into a spell, and there'll be no peace living with you."
"No, I won't," Kirk said. "And I like it. It makes things more interesting."
"I should think so," said Ken—secretly, perhaps, a shade envious of the Maestro's ability.
As he looked up Applegate Farm that night, he stopped for a moment at the door to look at the misty stars and listen to the Wind in the orchard.
"'A defender of his kindred,'" he murmured. "H'm!"
Hardly anything is more annoying than a mysterious elder brother. That Ken was tinkering at the Flying Dutchman (as he had immediately called the power-boat, on account of its ghostly associations) was evident to his brother and sister, but why he should be doing so, they could not fathom.
"We can't afford to run around in her as a pleasure yacht," Felicia said. "Are you going to sell her?"
"I am not," Ken would say, maddeningly, jingling a handful of bolts in his pocket; "not I."
The patch in the Flying Dutchman was not such as a boat-builder would have made, but it was water-tight, and that was the main point. The motor required another week of coaxing; all Ken's mechanical ingenuity was needed, and he sat before the engine, sometimes, dejected and indignant. But when the last tinkering was over, when frantic spinnings of the flywheel at length called forth a feeble gasp and deep-chested gurgle from the engine, Ken clapped his dirty hands and danced alone on the rocks like a madman.
He took the trial trip secretly—he did not intend to run the risk of sending Phil and Kirk to that portion of Davy Jones' locker reserved for Asquam Bay. But when he landed, he ran, charging through baybush and alder, till he tumbled into Felicia on the doorstep of Applegate Farm.
"I did n't want to tell you until I found out if she'd work," he gasped, having more enthusiasm than breath. "You might have been disappointed. But she'll go—and now I'll tell you what she and I are going to do!"