Java Head | Page 7

on the left, against a weeping
willow and frowning rock, four serene creatures gathered about a barge
with a gilded prow.
Still on her reluctant progress to the piano she stopped to examine the
East India money on the lowest shelf of a locked corner cupboard.
There was a tiresome string of cash with a rattan twisted through their
square holes; silver customs taels, and mace and candareen; Chinese
gold leaf and Fukien dollars; coins from Cochin China in the shape of
India ink, with raised edges and characters; old Carolus hooked dollars;
Sycee silver ingots, smooth and flat above, but roughly oval on the
lower surface, not unlike shoes; Japanese obangs, their gold stamped

and beaten out almost as broad as a hand's palm; mohurs and pieces
from Singapore; Dutch guilders from Java; and the small silver and
gold drops of Siam called tical.
She arrived finally at the harplike stool of the piano; but there she had
to wait until the clock in the hall above struck some division of the hour
for her guidance, and she rattled the brass rings that formed the handles
of drawers on either side of the keyboard. Later, her fingers picking a
precarious way through bass and treble, she heard Sidsall's voice at the
door; the latter was joined by their mother, and they went out to the
clatter of hoofs, the thin jingle of harness chains, where the barouche
waited for them in the street. Once Camilla obtruded into the room. "I
wonder you don't give yourself a headache," she remarked; "I never
heard more nerve-racking sounds."
Laurel gathered that Camilla was proud of this expression, which she
must have newly caught from some grown person. She considered a
reply, but, nothing sufficiently crushing occurring, she ignored the
other in a difficult transposition of her hands. Camilla left; the clock
above struck a second quarter; the third, while she honestly continued
her efforts up until the first actual note of the hour.
"Thank God that's over," she said in the liberal manner of a shipmaster.
Now only the walk with her grandfather remained of the actively
tiresome duties of the day. After dinner the sun blazed down with
almost the heat of midsummer, and Laurel felt unexpectedly indifferent,
content to linger in the house. Only too soon she heard inquiries for her;
and in her gaiter boots, a silk bonnet with a blue scarf tied under her
chin and flowing over a shoulder and palm leaf cashmere shawl, she
accompanied the old man across Pleasant Street and over the wide
green Square to the arched west gate with its gilt eagle and Essex
Street.
"Will we be going on Central Street?" she asked.
"No reason for turning down there," he replied, forgetful of the
gingerbread shop with the shaky little bell inside the door, the buttered
gingerbread on the upper shelf for three cents and that without on the

lower for two. She gathered her hopes now about Webb's Drugstore,
where her grandfather sometimes stopped for a talk, and bought her
rock candy, Gibraltars or blackjacks. It was too hot for blackjacks, she
decided, and, with opportunity, would choose the cooling peppermint
flavor of the Gibraltars.
The elms on Essex Street were far enough in leaf to cast a flickering
shade in the faintly salt air drifting from the sea; and they progressed so
slowly that Laurel was able to study the contents of most of the store
windows they passed. Some held crewels and crimped white cakes of
wax, gayly colored reticule beads with a wooden spoon for a penny
measure, and "strawberry" emery balls. There was a West India store
and a place where they sold oil and candles, another had charts for
mariners; while across the way stood the East India Marine Hall.
Here her grandfather hesitated, and for a moment it seemed as if he
would go over and join the masters always to be found about the
Museum. But in the end he continued beyond the Essex House with its
iron bow and lamp over the entrance, past Cheapside to Webb's
Drugstore, where he purchased a bag of Peristaltic lozenges, and--after
pretending to start away as if nothing more were to be secured
there--the Gibraltars.
They were returning, in the general direction of Derby Wharf, when
Jeremy Ammidon met a companion of past days at sea, and stopped for
the inevitable conversational exchange. The latter, who had such a
great spreading beard that Laurel couldn't determine whether or not he
wore a neck scarf, said:
"Barzil Dunsack all but died."
"Ha!" the other exclaimed. Laurel wondered at the indelicacy in
speaking about old Captain Dunsack to her grandfather, when everyone
in Salem knew they had quarreled years ago and not spoken to each
other since.
"He was bad