The Christmas Megapack

by Reginald Robert

  On the board he had built an ingenious model of a town, or part of one, but it was not finished. It was entirely made of bits of cardboard, chips of wood, the sides of match-boxes, and odds and ends of all sorts, which he picked up wherever he saw them and brought home in his pocket for his purpose. He had an immense supply of such stuff stored away, much more than he could ever use.

  Overholt looked at it with admiration, but said nothing. It was the college town where he had lived so happily and hoped to live again. It was distinctly recognisable, and many of the buildings were not only cleverly made, but were colored very like the originals. He was so much interested that he forgot to say anything.

  “It’s a silly thing, anyway,” said Newton, disappointed by his silence. “It’s like toys!”

  Overholt looked up, and the boy saw his pleased face.

  “It’s very far from silly,” he said. “I believe you’re born to be a builder, boy! It’s not only not silly, but it’s very well done indeed!”

  “I’ll bet you can’t tell what the place is,” observed Newton, a secret joy stealing through him at his father’s words.

  “Know it? I should think I did, and I wish we were there now! Here’s the College, and there’s our house in the street on the other side of the common. The church is first-rate, it’s really like it—and there’s the Roman Catholic Chapel and the Public Library in Main Street.”

  “Why, you really do recognize the places!” cried Newton in delight. “I didn’t think anybody’d know them!”

  “One would have to be blind not to, if one knew the town,” said Overholt. “And there’s the dear old lane!” He was absorbed in the model. “And the three hickory trees, and even the little bench!”

  “Why, do you remember that bench, father?”

  Overholt looked up again, quickly and rather dreamily.

  “Yes. It was there that I asked your mother to marry me,” he said.

  “Not really? Then I’m glad I put it in!”

  “So am I, for the dear old time’s sake and for her sake, and for yours, my boy. Tell me when you made this, and how you can remember it all so well.”

  The lad sat down on the high stool again before the lathe and looked through the dingy window at the scraggy trees outside, beyond the forlorn yard.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “I kind of remember it, I suppose, because I liked it better than this. And when I first had the idea I was sitting out there in the yard looking at this board. It belongs to a broken table that had been thrown out there. And I carried it up to my room when you were out. I thought you wouldn’t mind my taking it. And I picked up scraps that might be useful, and got some gum, and old Barbara made me some flour paste. It’s got green now, and it smells like thunder, but it’s good still. That’s about all, I suppose. Now I’ll take it away again. I keep it in the dark closet behind my room, because that doesn’t leak when it rains.”

  “Don’t take it away,” said Overholt suddenly. “I’ll make room for it here, and you can work at it while I’m busy, and in the evenings I’ll try and help you, and we’ll finish it together.”

  Newton was amazed.

  “Why, father, it’s playing! How can you go to work at play? It would be so funny! But, of course, if you really would help me a little—you’ve got such lots of nice things!”

  He wistfully eyed a little coil of some very fine steel wire which would make a beautiful telegraph. Newton even dreamt of making the trolley, too, in the Main Street, but that would be a very troublesome job; and as for the railway station, it was easy enough to build a shed and a platform, but what is a railway station without a train?

  Overholt did not answer the boy at once, and when he spoke there was a queer little quaver in his voice.

  “We’ll call it our little City of Hope,” he said, “and perhaps we can ‘go to work to play,’ as you call it, so hard that Hope will really come and live in the City.”

  “Well,” said Newton, “I never thought you’d ever care to see it! Shall I go up and get my stuff, and the gum and the flour paste, and bring them down here, father? But the flour paste smells pretty bad—it might give you a headache.”

  “Bring it down, my boy. My headaches don’t come from such things.”

  “Don’t they? It’s true that stuff you use here’s about as bad as anything, till you get used to it. What is it, anyway?”

  Overholt gave him the almost unpronounceable name of some recently discovered substance, and smiled at his expression as he listened.

  “If that’s its name,” said the boy gravely, “it sounds like the way it smells. I wonder what a skunk’s name is in science. But the flour paste’s pretty bad too. You’ll see!”

  He went off, and his father finished cutting the little screw while he was gone, and then turned to look at the model again, and became absorbed in tracing the well-known streets and trying to recall the shops and houses in each, and the places where his friends had lived, and no doubt lived still, for college towns do not change as fast as others. He was amazed at the memory the boy had shown for details; if the lad had not yet developed any special talent, he had at least proved that he possessed one of those natural gifts which are sometimes alone enough to make success. The born builder’s eye is like an ear for music, a facility for languages, or the power of drawing from nature; all the application in the world will not do in years what any one of these does instantly, spontaneously, instinctively, without the smallest effort. You cannot make talent out of a combination of taste and industry. You cannot train a cart-horse to trot a mile in a little over a minute.

  Newton returned, bringing his materials, to describe which would be profitless, if it were possible. He had everything littered together in two battered deal candle-boxes, including the broken soup-plate containing the flour paste, a loathely, mouldering little mess that diffused a nauseous odour, distinctly perceptible through that of the unpronounceable chemical on which the Air-Motor was to depend for its existence.

  The light outside was failing in the murky November air, and Overholt lit the big reflecting lamp that hung over the work-table. There was another above the lathe, for no gas or electricity was to be had so far from the town, and one of old Barbara’s standing causes of complaint against Overholt was his reckless use of kerosene—she thought it would be better if he had more fat turkeys and rump-steaks and less light.

  So the man and the boy “went to work to play” at building the City of Hope, for at least an hour before supper and half an hour after it, almost every day; and with the boy’s marvellous memory and the father’s skill, and the delicious profusion of fresh material which Newton kept finding in every corner of the workshop, it grew steadily, till it was a little work of art in its way. There were the ups and downs, the crooked old roads and lanes and the straight new streets, the little wooden cottages and the big brick houses, and there was the grassy common with its trees and its tiny iron railing; and John Henry easily made posts to carry the trolley wires, which had seemed an impossible dream to the boy, beyond all realisation; and one day, when the inventor seemed farther from the tangent-balance than ever, he spent a whole afternoon in making a dozen little trolley-cars that ran on real wheels, made by sawing off little sections from a lead pencil, which is the best thing in the world for that, because the lead comes out and leaves nice round holes for the axles. When the first car was painted red and yellow and ran up and down Main Street, guided by the wire above and only needing one little artificial push to send it either way, it looked so real that the boy was in ecstasies of delight.

  “It’s worth while to be a great inventor to be able to make things like that!” he cried, and Overholt was as much pleased by the praise as an opera singer is who is called out three times before the curtain after the first act.

  So the little City of Hope grew, and they both felt that Hope herself was soon coming to dwell therein, if she had not come already.

  III. HOW THEY MADE BRICKS WITHOUT STRAW


  But then something happened; for Overholt was tormented by the vague consciousness of a coming idea, so that he had headaches and could not sleep at night. It flashed upon him at last one evening when Newton was in bed and he was sitting before his motor, wishing he had the thousand dollars which would surely complete it, even if he used the most expensive materials in the market.

  The idea which developed suddenly in all its clearness was that he had made one of the most important parts of the machine exactly the converse of what it should be; what was on the right should have been on the left, and what was down should certainly have been up. Then the engine would work, even if the tangent-balance were a very poor affair indeed.

  The particular piece of brass casting which was the foundation of that part had been made in New York, and, owing to the necessity for its being finished very accurately and machine planed and turned, it had cost a great deal of money. Already it had been made and spoilt three times over, and now it was perfectly clear that it must be cast over again in a reversed form. It was quite useless to make the balance yet, for it would be of no use till the right casting was finished; it would have to be reversed too, and the tangent would apply to a reversed curve.

  He had no money for the casting, but even before trying to raise the cash it was necessary to make the wooden model. He could do that, and he set to work to sketch the drawing within five minutes after the idea had once flashed upon him. As his eye followed the lines made by his pencil, he became more and more convinced that he was right. When the rough sketch was done he looked up at the engine. Its familiar features seemed to be drawn into a diabolical grimace of contempt at his stupidity, and it looked as if it were conscious and wanted to throw the wrongly-made piece at his head. But he was overwrought just then and could have fancied any folly.

  He rose, shook himself, and then took a long pull at a black bottle that always stood on a shelf. When a man puts a black bottle to his lips, tips it up, and takes down several good pulls almost without drawing breath, most people suppose that he is a person of vicious habits. In Overholt’s case most people would have been wrong. The black bottle contained cold tea; it was strong, but it was only tea, and that is the finest drink in the world for an inventor or an author to work on. When I say an author I mean a poor writer of prose, for I have always been told that all poets are either mad, or bad, or both. Many of them must be bad, or they could not write such atrocious poems; but madness is different; perhaps they read their own verses.

  When Overholt had swallowed his cold tea, he got out his drawing materials, stretched a fresh sheet of thick draughtsman’s paper on the board, and sat down between the motor that would not move and the little city in which Hope had taken lodgings for a while, and he went to work with ruler, scale and dividers, and the hard wood template for drawing the curves he had constructed for the tangent-balance by a very abstruse mathematical calculation. That was right, at all events, only, as it was to be reversed, he laid it on the paper with the under-side up.

  He worked nearly all night to finish the drawing, slept two hours in a battered Shaker rocking-chair by the fire, woke in broad daylight, drank more cold tea, and went at once to his lathe, for the new piece was in the nature of a cylinder, and a good deal of the work could be done by turning.

  The chisel and the lathe seemed to be talking to each other over the block of wood, and what they said rang like a tune in John Henry’s head.

  “Bricks without straw, bricks without straw, bricks without straw,” repeated the lathe regularly, at each revolution, and when it said “bricks” the treadle was up, and when it said “straw” the treadle was down, for of course it was only a foot lathe, though a good one. “Sh—sh—sh—ever so much better than no bricks at all—sh—sh—sh,” answered the sharp chisel as it pressed and bit the wood, and made a little irregular clattering when it was drawn away, and then came forward against the block again with a long hushing sound; and Overholt was inclined to accept its opinion, and worked on as if an obliging brassfounder were waiting outside to take the model away at once and cast it for nothing, or at least on credit.

  But no such worthy and confiding manufacturer appeared, even on the evening of the second day, when the wooden model was beautifully finished and ready for the foundry. While the inventor was busy, Newton had worked alone in a corner when he had time to spare from his lessons, but he understood what was going on, and he did not accomplish much beyond painting the front of the National Bank in the City of Hope and planning a possible Wild West Show to be set up on the outskirts; the tents would be easy to make, but the horses were beyond his skill, or his father’s; it would not be enough that they should have a leg at each corner and a head and a tail.

  He understood well enough what was the matter, for he had seen similar things happen before. A pessimist is defined to be a person who has lived with an optimist, and every inventor is that. Poor Newton had seen that particular part of the engine spoiled and made over three times, and he understood perfectly that it was all wrong again and must be cast once more. But he kept his reflections to himself and tried to think about the City of Hope.

  “I wish,” said John Henry, sitting down opposite the boy at last, and looking at what he had done, “that the National Bank in Main Street were real!”

  He eyed it wistfully.

  “Oh well,” answered the boy, “we couldn’t rob it, because that’s stealing, so I don’t see what particular good it would do!”

  “Perhaps the business people in the City of Hope would be different from the bankers in New York,” observed Overholt, thoughtfully.

  “I don’t believe it, father,” Newton answered in a sceptical tone. “If they were bankers they’d be rich, and you remember the sermon Sunday before last, about it’s being easier for the camel to get through the rich man—no, which is it? I forget. It doesn’t matter, anyway, because we can imagine any kind of people we choose in our city, can’t we? Say, father, what’s the matter? Are you going to cast that piece over again? That’ll be the fourth time, won’t it?”

  “It would be, my boy, but it won’t be. They won’t cast it for nothing, and I cannot raise the money. You cannot make bricks without straw.”

  He looked steadily down at the tiny front of the Bank in Main Street, and a hungry look came into his eyes.

  But Newton had a practical mind, even at thirteen.

  “I was thinking,” he said presently. “It looks as if we were going to get stuck some day. What are we going to do then, father? I was thinking about it just now. How are we going to get anything to eat if we have no money?”

  “I shall have to go back to teaching mathematics for a living, I suppose.”

  “And give up the Motor?” Newton had never yet heard him suggest such a thing.

  “Yes,” Overholt answered in a low tone; and that was all he said.

  “Oh, that’s ridiculous. You’d just die, that’s all!”

  Newton stared at the engine that was a failure. It looked as if it ought to work, he thought, with its neat cylinders, its polished levers, its beautifully designed gear. It stood under a big case made of thick glass plates set in an iron frame with a solid top; a chain ran through two cast-iron wheels overhead to a counterpoise in the corner, by which device it was easily raised and lowered. The Motor was a very expensive affair, and had to be carefully protected from dust and all injury, though it was worth nothing at present except for old brass and iron, unless the new part could be made.

  “Come, my boy, let’s think of something more cheerful!” Overholt said, making an effort to rouse himself and concentrated his attention on the paper model. “Christmas is coming in three weeks, you know, and it will come just the same in the little City. I’m sure the people will decorate their houses and the church. Of course we cannot see the insides of the houses, but in Boston they put wreaths in the windows. And we’ll have a snowstorm, just as we used to have, and we can clear it away afterwards! Wasn’t there a holly tree somewhere near the
College? You haven’t put that in yet. You have no idea how cheerful it will look! Tomorrow we’ll find a very small sprig with berries on it, and plant it just in the right place. I’m sure you remember where it stood.”

  “Real leaves would be too big,” observed the boy. “They wouldn’t look right. Of course, one could cut the branches out of tin and paint ’em green with red spots, and stick them into a twig for the trunk. But it’s rather hard to do.”

  “Let’s try,” said Overholt. “I’ve got some fine chisels and some very thin brass, but I don’t think I could draw the branches as well as you could.”

  “Oh, I can draw them something like, if you’ll only cut ’em out,” the boy answered cheerfully. “Come on, father! Who says we can’t make bricks without straw? I’ll bet anything we can!”

  So they worked together steadily, and for an hour or two the inventor was so busy in cutting out tiny branches of imaginary holly with a very small chisel that he did not look once at the plate glass from which his engine seemed to be grinning at him, in fiendish delight over his misfortunes. There were times when he was angry with it, outright, as if it knew what he was doing and did not mean to give in to him and let itself be invented.

  But now the tune of the lathe and the chisel still ran on in his head, for he had heard it through two whole days and could not get rid of it.

  “Bricks without straw, bricks without straw!” repeated the lathe viciously. “Ever so much better than no bricks at all, sh—sh—sh!” answered the chisel, gibbering and hissing like an idiot.

  “You will certainly be lying on straw before long, and then I suppose you’ll wish you had something else!” squeaked the little chisel with which he was cutting out holly leaves, as it went through the thin plates into the wood of the bench under each push of his hand.

  The things in the workshop all seemed to be talking to him together, and made his head ache.

  “I had a letter from your mother today,” he said, because it was better to hear his own voice say anything than to listen to such depressing imaginary conversations. “I’m sorry to say she sees no chance of getting home before the spring.”