“I’ve ‘caught it,’” Overholt answered. “You have too, my dear boy, though you didn’t make the mistake—that’s not just.”
“Well, father, I don’t know what we’re going to do, but something has got to be done right away, and we’ve got to find out what it is.”
“Thank goodness you’re not a girl!” cried Overholt fervently.
“I’m glad too; only, if I were one, I should most likely die young and go to heaven, and you’d have me off your mind all right. The girls always do in storybooks.”
He made this startling and general observation quite naturally. Of course girls died and went to heaven when there was nothing to eat; he secretly thought it would be better if more of them did, even without starvation.
“Let’s work, anyhow,” he added, as his father said nothing. “Maybe we’ll think of something while we’re building that railroad depôt. Don’t you suppose that now you’ve got so far the Motor would keep while you taught, and you could go at it again in the vacations? That’s an idea, father, come now!”
He was already in his place before the board on which the little City was built, and his eyes were fixed on the lines his father had drawn as a plan for the station and the diverging tracks. But Overholt did not sit down. His usual place was opposite the Motor, where he could see it, but he did not want to look at it now.
“Change seats with me, boy,” he said. “I cannot stand the sight of it. I suppose I’m imaginative. All this has upset me a good deal.”
He wished he had the lad’s nerves, the solid nerves of hungry and sleepy thirteen. Newton got up at once and changed places, and for a few minutes Overholt tried to concentrate his mind on the little City, but it was of no use. If he did not think of the Motor, he thought of what was much worse, for the little streets and models of the familiar places brought back the cruel memory of happier things so vividly that it was torment. All his faculties of sensation were tense and vibrating; he could hear his wife’s gentle and happy voice, her young girl’s voice, when he looked at the little bench in the lane where he had asked her to marry him, and an awful certainty came upon him that he was never to hear her speak again on this side of the grave; there was the house they had lived in; from that window he had looked out on a May morning at the budding trees half an hour after his boy had been born; there, in the pretty garden, the young mother had sat with her baby in the lovely June days—it was full of her. Or if he looked at the College, he knew every one of the steps, and the entrance, and the tall windows of the lecture-rooms, where he had taught so contentedly, year after year, till the terrible Motor had taken possession of him, the thing that was driving him mad; and, strangely enough, what hurt him most and brought drops of perspiration to his forehead was the National Bank in Main Street; it made him remember his debt, and that he had no money at all—nothing whatsoever but the few dollars in his pocket left after paying the bills on the first of the month.
“It’s of no use!” he cried, suddenly rising and turning away. “I cannot stand it. I’m sorry, but it’s too awful!”
Never before had he felt so thoroughly ashamed of himself. He was breaking down before his son, to whom he knew he ought to be setting an example of fortitude and common sense. He had forgotten the very names of such qualities; the mere thought of Hope, whenever it crossed his mind, mocked him maddeningly, and he hated the little City for the name he had given it. Hope was his enemy since she had left him, and he was hers; he could have found it in his heart to crush the poor little paper town to pieces, and then to split up the very board itself for firewood.
The years that had been so full of belief were all at once empty, and the memory of them rang hollow and false, because Hope had cheated him, luring him on, only to forsake him at the great moment. Every hour he had spent on the work had been misspent; he saw it all now, and the most perfect of his faultless calculations only proved that science was a blatant fraud and a snare that had cost him all he had, his wife, his boy’s future, and his own self-respect. How could he ever look at his wretched failure again? How could he sit down opposite the son he had cheated, and who was going to starve with him, and play with a little City of Hope, when Hope herself was the lying enemy that had coaxed him to the destruction of his family and to his own disgrace? As for teaching again, who ever got back a good place after he had voluntarily given it up for a wild dream! Men who had such dreams were not fit to teach young men in any case! That was the answer he would get by post in a day or two.
Newton watched his father anxiously, for he had heard that people sometimes went mad from disappointment and anxiety. The pale intellectual face wore a look of horror, as if the dark eyes saw some dreadful sight; the thin figure moved nervously, the colorless lips twitched, the lean fingers opened and shut spasmodically on nothing. It was enough to scare the boy, who had always known his father gentle, sweet-tempered, and hopeful even under failure; but Overholt was quite changed now, and looked as if he were either very ill or very crazy.
It is doubtful whether boys ever love their fathers as most of them love their mothers at one time, or all their lives. The sort of attachment there often is between father and son is very different from that, and both feel that it is; there is more of alliance and friendship in it than of anything like affection, even when it is at its best, with a strong instinct to help one another and to stand by each other in a fight.
Newton Overholt did not feel any sympathetic thrill of pain for his father’s sufferings; not in the least; he would perhaps have said that he was “sorry for him” without quite knowing what that meant. But he was very strongly moved to help him in some way, seeing that he was evidently getting the worst of it in a big fight. Newton soon became entirely possessed by the idea that “something ought to be done,” but what it was he did not know.
The lid of Pandora’s box had flown open and had come off suddenly after smashing the hinges, and Hope had flown out of the window. The boy thought it was clearly his duty to catch her and get her into prison again, and then to nail down the lid. He had not the smallest doubt that this was what he ought to do, but the trouble lay in finding out how to do it, a little difficulty that humanity has faced for a good many thousand years. On the other hand, if he failed, as seemed probable, he was almost sure that his father would fall ill and die, or go quite mad in a few hours. He wished his mother were there; she would have known how to cheer the desperate man, and could probably have made him smile in a few minutes without really doing anything at all. Those were the things women could do very well, the boy thought, and they ought always to be at hand to do them when wanted. He himself could only sit there and pretend to be busy, as children mostly do when they see their elders in trouble. But that made him wild.
“I say, father,” he broke out suddenly, “can’t I do anything? Try and think!”
“That’s what I’m trying to do,” answered Overholt, sitting down at last on the stool before the work-bench and staring at the wall, with his back turned to his son. “But I can’t! There’s something wrong with my head.”
“You want to see a doctor,” said the boy. “I’ll go and see if I can get one of them to come out here.” He rose as if to go at once.
“No! Don’t!” cried Overholt, much distressed by the mere suggestion. “He could only tell me to rest, and take exercise and sleep at night and not worry!” He laughed rather wildly. “He would tell me not to worry! They always say that! A doctor would tell a man ‘not to worry’ if he was to be hanged the next morning!”
“Well,” said Newton philosophically, “I suppose a man who’s going to be hung needn’t worry much, anyway. He’s got the front seat at the show and nothing particular to do!”
This was sound, so far as it went, but insufficient as consolation. Overholt either did not hear, or paid no heed to the boy. He left the room a moment later without shutting the door, and threw himself down on the old black horsehair sofa in the parlour. Presently the lad rose again and covered up the City of
Hope with the big brown paper case he had made to fit down over the board and keep the dust off.
“This isn’t your day,” he observed as he did so, and the remark was certainly addressed to the model of the town.
He went into the other room and stood beside his father, looking down at his drawn face and damp forehead.
“Say, father, really, isn’t there anything I can do to help?”
Overholt answered with an effort. “No, my boy, there’s nothing, thank you. You cannot find money to pay my debts, can you?”
“Have you got no money at all?” asked Newton, very gravely.
“Four or five dollars! That’s all! That’s all you and I have got left in the world to live on, and even that’s not mine!”
His voice shook with agony, and he raised one hand to his forehead, not dramatically, as many foreigners would do, but quietly and firmly, and he pressed and kneaded the surface as if he were trying to push his brains back into the right place, so that they would work, or at least keep quiet. After that answer Newton was too sensible to ask any more questions, and perhaps he was also a little afraid to, because questions might make his father worse.
“Well,” he said vaguely, “if I can’t work at the City I suppose I may as well go out before it’s dark and take a look at the pond. It’s going to freeze hard tonight, and maybe there’ll be black ice that’ll bear by tomorrow.”
Overholt was glad to be left alone, for he could not help being ashamed of having broken down so completely before the boy, and he felt that he could not recover his self-control unless he were left to himself.
He heard Newton go up the rickety stairs to his own room, where he seemed to be rummaging about for some time, judging from the noises overhead; then the strong shoes clattered on the staircase again, the house door was opened and shut, and the boy was off.
VI. HOW A SMALL BOY DID A BIG THING AND NAILED DOWN THE LID OF THE BOX
Newton went to the pond, because he said he was going out for that purpose, and it might be convenient to be able to swear that he had really been down to the water’s edge. As if to enjoy the pleasure of anticipation, too, he had his skates with him in a green flannel bag, though it was quite out of the question that the ice should bear already, and it was not even likely that the water would be already frozen over. However, he took the skates with him, a very good pair, of a new model, which his father had given him towards the end of the previous winter, so that he had not used them more than half a dozen times. It was very cold, but of course the ice would not bear yet. The sun had not set, and as he was already half-way to the town, the boy apparently thought he might as well go on instead of returning at once to the cottage, where he would have to occupy himself with his books till supper-time, supposing that it occurred to his father to have any supper in his present condition. The prospect was not wildly gay, and besides, something must be done at once. Newton was possessed by that idea.
When Overholt had been alone for some time, he got up from the horsehair sofa and crept up the stairs, leaning on the shaky bannister like an old man. In his own room he plunged his face into icy cold water again and again, as if it were burning, and the sharp chill revived his nerves a little. There was no stove in the room, and before midnight the water would be frozen in the pitcher. He sat down and rubbed his forehead and wondered whether he was really any better, or was only imagining or even pretending that he was, because he wanted to be. Our own reflections about our own sensations are never so silly as at the greatest moments in our lives, because the tremendous strain on the higher faculties releases all the little ones, as in sleep, and they behave and reason as idiotically as they do in dreams, which is saying a good deal. Perhaps lunatics are only people who are perpetually asleep and dreaming with one part of their brains while the other parts are awake. They certainly behave as if that were the matter, and it seems a rational explanation of ordinary insanity, curable or incurable. Did you ever talk to a lunatic? On the subject on which he is insane he thinks and talks as you do when you are dreaming; but he may be quite awake and sensible about all other matters. He dreams he is rich, and he goes out and orders cartloads of things from shops. Pray, have you never dreamt that you were rich? Or he dreams that he is a poached egg, and must have a piece of toast to sit down upon. I believe that well-known story of a lunatic to be founded on fact. Have you never dreamt that you were somebody or something quite different from yourself? Have you never dreamt that you were an innocent man, persecuted, tried for a crime, and sentenced to prison, or even death? And yet, at the same time, in your dream, you were behaving with the utmost good sense about everything else. When you are dreaming, you are a perfect lunatic; why may it not be true that the waking lunatic is really dreaming all the time, with one part of his brain?
John Henry Overholt was apparently wide awake, but he had been morally stunned that day; he was dreaming that he was going crazy, and he could not, for the life of him, tell whether he really felt any better after cooling his head in the basin than before, though it seemed immensely important to find out, just then. Afterwards, when it was all over, and things were settled again, he remembered only a blank time, which had lasted from the moment when he had broken down before the little City until he found himself sitting in the parlour alone before the supper table with a bright lamp burning, and wondering why his boy did not come home. The dream was over then; his head ached a good deal and he did not feel hungry, but that was all; burning anxiety had cooled to leaden care. He knew quite well that it was all over with the Motor, that his friends at the College would find him some sort of employment, and that in due time he would succeed in working off his debt to the bank, dollar by dollar. He had got his soul back out of the claws of despair that had nearly flown away with it. There was no hope, but he could live without it because he must not only live himself, but keep his boy alive. Somehow, he would get along on credit for a week or two, till he could get work. At all events there were his tools to sell, and the Motor must go for old brass, bronze, iron, and steel. He would see about selling the stuff the next day, and with what it would bring he could at least pay cash for necessaries, and the bank must wait. There was no hope in that, but there was the plain sense of an honest man. He was not a coward; he had only been brutally stunned, and now that he had recovered from the blow he would do his duty. But an innocent man who walks steadily to endure an undeserved death is not a man that hopes for anything, and it was like death to Overholt to give up his invention.
The door opened and Newton came in quietly. His face was flushed with the cold and his eyes were bright. What was the weight of leaden care to the glorious main-spring of healthy thirteen? Overholt was proud of his boy, nevertheless, for facing the dreary prospect of no Christmas so bravely. Then he had a surprise.
“I’ve got a little money, father. It’s not much, I know, but it’s something to go on with for a day or two. There it is.”
Newton produced three well-worn dollar bills and some small change, which his father stared at in amazement.
“There’s three dollars and seventy cents,” he said. “And you told me you had four or five dollars left.”
Before he sat down he piled the change neatly on the bills beside his father’s plate; then he took his seat, very red indeed and looking at the table-cloth.
“Where on earth did you get it?” asked Overholt, leaning back in his chair.
“Well”—the boy hesitated and got redder still—“I didn’t steal it, anyway,” he said. “It’s mine all right. I mean it’s yours.”
“Of course you didn’t steal it!” cried John Henry. “But where did you get it? You haven’t had more than a few cents at a time for weeks and weeks, so you can’t have saved it!”
“I didn’t beg it either,” Newton answered.
“Or borrow it, my boy?”
“No! I wasn’t going to borrow money I couldn’t pay! I’d rather not tell you, all the same, father! At least, I earned twenty cents of it. That’s th
e odd twenty, that makes the three seventy. I don’t mind telling you that.”
“Oh, you earned twenty cents of it? Well, I’m glad of that, anyhow. What did you do?”
“I sort of hung round the depôt till the train came in, and I carried a man’s valise across to the hotel for him. He gave me ten cents. Some of the boys do that, you know, but I thought you wouldn’t care to have me do it till I had to!”
“That’s all right. It does you credit. How about the other ten cents?”
“Old Bangs saw me pass his shop, and he asked me to come in and said he’d give me ten cents if I’d do some sums for him. I guess he’s pretty busy just now. He said he’d give me ten cents every day till Christmas if I’d come in after school and do the sums. His boy’s got mumps or something, and can’t. There’s no harm in that, is there, father?”
“Harm! I’m proud of you, my boy. You’ll win through—some day!”
It was the first relief from his misery the poor man had felt since he had read the letter about the overdraft in the morning.
“What I can’t understand is the rest of the money,” said Overholt.
Newton looked very uncomfortable again, and moved uneasily on his chair.
“Oh well, I suppose I’ve got to tell you,” he said, looking down into his plate and very busy with his knife and fork. “Say, you won’t tell mother, will you? She wouldn’t like it.”
“I won’t tell her.”
“Well”—the boy hesitated—“I sold some things,” he said at last, in a low voice.
“Oh! There’s no great harm in that, my boy. What did you sell?”
“My skates and my watch,” said Newton, just audibly. “You see I didn’t somehow feel as if I were going to skate much this winter—and I don’t really need to know what time it is if I start right by the clock to go to school. I say, don’t tell mother. She gave me the watch, you know, last Christmas. Of course, you gave me the skates, but you’ll understand better than she would.”
The Christmas Megapack Page 56
