III.
AS HISTORIAN.
Now that Hal had sent in his essay he felt weary, for the excitement of composition and of haste had ceased; and he tormented himself, too, by recalling sentence after sentence which he wished he could remodel. Also memory brought back his past failures; he had not succeeded as chemist or carpenter and all the boys knew it. What would they say when his name would be posted on the bulletin, down town, as a Rejected Essayist? Presently too, it was announced that the bestowal of the Old South Prizes must be deferred as an unexpectedly large number of essays had been presented! Hal whistled, shrugged his shoulders, refused to endure the suspense, cast aside his interest in the matter, and resolved to settle down into an office-boy.
He cleaned the office more vigorously than ever, and as he began a catalogue of his employer's library, there arose the faint glimpse of a new hope, in the thought that his present pursuit might eventuate in his being a lawyer. But with it there came a hot flush of shame as he remembered his many visions of the future; and to get rid of them he would run to the bank on an errand with such fury that his haste suggested a panic. But in spite of all his changes of intention he was growing manly; making character, developing mental fibre and muscle; his mother trusted him with her hopes and fears, and his father talked to him with a respect that was very consoling to his wounded spirit. Also the boys ceased to come for him in the evening; if they met him on the street, they called him "a dig" and asked him what new hobby made him so serious.
Some months had thus passed, when one day, Hal, who had almost forgotten his history in his law, thought Mr. Bryce's whistle for him had a peculiar sound. "Get your hat," said the lawyer, "and follow me. I want you to go to the Court House."
Hal's active imagination instantly saw himself seated there as Judge. Yes, law was his vocation. But when there, he was almost pushed into a corner, while Mr. Bryce pointed him out to the clerk of the court. This rather frightened Hal, but he felt reassured at the command to stay where he was until the clerk should bid him go for Mr. Bryce, for the latter could not afford to spend the morning in court waiting for his case to come up.
It was a new world to Hal and his astonishment and interest was increased as he recognized an old playmate in the one who was being examined. An officer had removed the boy's jacket and was calling the attention of the Judge to long, deep welts on the boy's back, the result of lashes inflicted by his father, because his son earned but little. The contents of a dirty paper-bag were also exhibited, as being the only dinner allowed the boy, who, with his mouldy crust, walked three miles each day to the shop where he worked. That very morning he had been so dull, that some one, suspecting the truth, had told "the boss" of his condition, and through an officer of the "Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children," his case had been brought into court.
Poor Hal! perhaps he was born to be a philanthropist after all. He resolved to interest himself in the S. P. C. C. Visions of "cases" hunted out and brought before the officers, thrilled his soul. How he ached for this particular boy! and how he contrived to make that boy feel he was there and to tuck some lozenges into his hand, as his former companion passed by him under the kind guardianship of the Secretary of the Society; and then the clerk ordered him to find Mr. Bryce.
The next day, when he was summoned to Mr. Bryce's inner office, from dreams of himself as the eminent legal adviser and prosecutor for the S. P. C. C., that gentleman asked him rather quizzically how he liked "court business." Hal replied that he did not know surely, but guessed he might come to prefer it to office work and cataloguing.
"Well," said Mr. Bryce, "I am rather sorry to hear that, for I had thought of raising your wages. However, I am doubtful about employing essayists as office-boys. It might work badly."
"Has it, sir?" he asked; then in an embarrassed manner, "I am not certain what you mean."
The lawyer made no reply, and Hal turned away crestfallen.
"O come back here, boy," called out Mr. Bryce then. "And by the way, can you tell me who is Nisus Sum?"
Harry wriggled with conflicting sensations until he could scarcely stand. At last he burst out: "What is that to you?"
"O not much!" replied Mr. Bryce, with an amused look, "only I hold an essay to return to him."
Hal grew so white that his employer pitied him, and forebore.
"You did not know I was chairman of the committee on the Old South Prizes, did you?" he added in a different tone.
"No, sir, I did not;" exclaimed Hal, flushing to his very temples.
"And I did not know that you were 'Nisus Sum' until ten minutes ago."
"Well, this may be fun to you, sir, but it isn't to me," said Hal, almost with a sob.
"Look here, my boy, listen. You knew Mr. Akers died; well, he was one of the judges, and I was asked to take his place, and I consented, because I saw that I had an office-boy who would attend to his work."
Hal put his hand out vaguely towards the table as if to lean on it for support. Mr. Bryce's tone involuntarily softened as he continued: "I have been comparing the estimates sent in by the other judges, and I see that we agree that the first prize for 'Colonial Policy' is taken by 'Nisus Sum.'"
"'Nisus Sum,'" said the boy dreamily, "first prize." Then suddenly, as if beside himself, he twirled Mr. Bryce's chair round and round with the poor man in it until the lawyer had to exert his strength to stop him.
"That'll do," exclaimed he. "Don't get frantic, but it was really very risky for you to try to do my work and yours too. There was danger of doing neither satisfactorily."
"Did I neglect anything, sir? you know I didn't. I began to read up for the essay before father was taken sick, and then when that came, I was bound I would do something at last."
"Well, well, you succeeded, didn't you? Go home now and tell them; only, remember this," and Mr. Bryce grew stern, "don't think because you have succeeded now that you always are to win. Stick to your daily work. Be a good clerk first, that you may be a good historian later."
"Trust me," said Hal gravely, who felt the awe of success stealing over him. He felt queer, yet happy and humble; and bowing low, he left the room. It took but a few moments for him to rush home; and if his father had not gained in strength he certainly would have suffered, for Hal bounded into the room, upsetting the chairs and a table and spinning his mother round in circles somewhat as he had treated Mr. Bryce, he exclaimed:
"I have won! I have won! first prize! Now you can be sick, father, as long as you please."
Then followed explanation and a quiet talk which made Harry always look back upon that evening as the happiest one of his boyhood.
It only remains to add that he was as good as his word; he was an able clerk first, and an historian only as a middle-aged man.
* * *
IN THE SECOND DORMITORY.
Ramon Valdez was an acquisition. He was a Cuban. Father had picked him up at Havana, where he was looking out for somebody who could teach him English instead of the queer jabber that he learned, second-hand, from a wizened little French adventurer, who had set up as a teacher of languages, and had nearly forgotten even his own. I did get sold in the most ridiculous way over father's telegram that announced his coming! But that's all over—they have about forgotten it.
He was real fun after we got acquainted; he didn't seem to know anything about base-ball, and couldn't catch a fly worth a cent! guess it is too hot in Havana to play ball. He couldn't fish either, but it wasn't the season for that, so we didn't care. But he could ride! He mounted the colt one day, bareback, and went around the lot five times before he fell off, and not one of us boys could stay on a rod. We respected him some after that.
But he was queer! The first thing mother did was to buy him a lung protector, as he wasn't acclimated yet, she said. Jack, the six-year-old, got hold of it and put it on outside of his frock, and then came galloping around with it on in that way. Well, Ramon came down to breakfast the next morning with that protector on just as Jack
had fixed it! Then he wanted some "john-bread." Where he got it, I don't know, but what he meant was "johnny-cake."
I heard him reciting some poetry to Mollie one night—that was father's way in teaching languages, to make us commit poetry and recite to each other—and this was what he made of it!
Zoze zevening bells,
Zoze zevening bells!
How may-nay tales zheir moozic tells
Of yuz an' home an' zat sweet time
W'en first I heard zheir queezing chime.
"Their what, Ramon?" cried Mollie.
"Zheir queezing chime," he repeated innocently, staring at her.
"Soothing, Ramon, soothing!" He laughed away too, like a good fellow, and didn't get mad in the least. I suppose our Spanish was as funny to him. He never laughed at us, though; I presume he was too polite.
But he just got into the ways of us boys about as quickly as any new boy that ever came to the Highland School, and before he had been there two weeks he was in a scrape!
It's dreadfully dull to be the teacher's son. You have to do just so, you know, "to set a good example," and it isn't any fun. Father never asked me to tell what was going on, no matter what was up; but he put me "upon honor" not to go in myself, so of course I had to keep out. But the fellows understood, and used to tell me all about it afterward, and as somehow they always came to grief, I felt a little more contented than I might have done.
One night we could not get to sleep.
The long moonbeams came down athwart the dormitory through the great windows, and lay in broad parallelograms, bisected and quartered, upon the floor. We got our geometry lesson out of the figures, and reeled off a whole section of theorems, without the least effect. That ought, by rights, to be enough to set a whole houseful of boys journeying into the Land of Nod, but it didn't us.
Father heard us jabbering and came up to see what the matter was, but our sudden interest in the science of planes and prisms so amused him that he laughed all the way down-stairs; for Charlie Brown crept to the door and heard him.
At last Frank Hapgood—"Happy-go-lucky"—sat up in desperation, flung his pillow on the floor, got out of bed deliberately and sat down on it. Nine other pillows, nine other white-robed figures solemnly followed suit. Said Harry Eveleth, "Fellows, I've tried to do my duty and go to sleep, and I can't. We must do something!"
A silence, broken by a sigh from Ramon. "Ah! on nights like zis I have gone to ze—ze zoogar houses to sleep some time, in Habana!"
THE OLD HORSE WAS SLEEPY ... BUT THEY WERE READY AT LAST.
Frank "Happy" gave a start, looked at the circle intently, then gave a little nod, and winked.
Eight others of the owl committee gave a simultaneous start in answer, as though they had been unconsciously fooling around a galvanic battery. The gentleman from Havana alone was quiet; he did not yet understand, but the others did, and he was ready to follow. Texan herders say that a drove of ten thousand cattle will sometimes at night leap to their feet like a flash, without apparent cause or warning. There will be a roar of thundering hoofs, a distant rumble, and that herd will have vanished like smoke from the camp-fire, "on the stampede!" Our boys had "stampeded."
Ten or fifteen minutes later a certain wakeful teacher was pleasantly made aware of the fact that a cataract of boys, each with one of the nice white blankets belonging to Mrs. Teacher, tied across his shoulders, was streaming down the lightning-rod by his window; and stepping lightly thither, he caught a disconnected word or two about "old Brown's sugar-house."
"How shall we get her out?"
"Tie up her feet in straw!"
"But the carriage will make such a racket!"
"Well"—after a moment's thought—"we can take the cart; that's been newly greased."
There was a rumble, a slow sque-e-ak, and the cart was out without much noise. Two boys at the thills and two more pushing behind, they softly trundled it down the yard, stopping at every unusually loud squeak. It was almost as light as day; only in the yard the trees cast a slight shadow of tangled branches, leafless as they were.
There was a suppressed sense of excitement, a strained thrill of the nerves that made thumby work of their handling the buckles. The old horse was sleepy, and wouldn't "stand round" to order, and they had to push her into place; but they were ready at last, and Happy-go-Lucky whispered "Pile in!"
They piled in literally one above the other, and lay down upon the hay in the bottom of the cart. There might yet be some stray wanderer to meet and run the gauntlet of his cross-questioning. The wheel struck a stone, and there was a jounce; the bottom fellows wriggled out, what was left of them, and sat up, gasping. They had rather run the risk than try that again. But they met no one.
THE RETURN OF THE VALIANT STAMPEDERS.
It was a night when there is no sound. The insects are dead, the birds have gone South with the other members of the higher circles of society; there was only the rattle of the heavy cart, springless and jolty, along the dusty road that wound like a great horseshoe around the long slope of the ridge that shot up suddenly into "Paradise Hill." Beyond the river a dog barked, a mile away, and ended in a melancholy howl. Ramon shivered, and drew his blanket around him; he had a superstitious fear of that sound.
The mountains in the North never seemed so high and dark before. Then they saw that it was a cloud, black, sullen-looking—great masses of vapor heaped in billowy folds, blackening the slopes with shadow, and barely touched above with silver-gilt.
"Looks a little like a storm to-morrow," said Harry.
No one answered him. The chatter had somehow died away, and they were more intent on keeping warm than talking. It wasn't all their fancy painted it—this clear, cold moonlight; it was icy.
"Never mind, boys!" cried Charlie Brown cheerfully, as they drew up at an old hop-house by the side of the road, and got out stiffly, "we can howl now if we like, and nobody to hear."
But nobody wanted to howl. They did want to get up the slope to the edge of the woods, where the sugar-house was, and putting horse and cart together in the shed, they scaled the fence and started up the hill at a lumbering trot. Now that their beds were so far away they were sleepy enough.
As it happened, just as they struck the fence, a brisk, elderly gentleman, with iron-gray hair, and spectacles, and a queer twinkle in his eye as he glanced up at the mass of clouds piling up in the mountains, walked hurriedly down a narrow sheep-path through the leafless woods, and entered the sugar-camp. It was dark in there,—dark as Erebus; only in two or three places a ray of light streamed down through the holes in the roof.
The gentleman in spectacles glanced around serenely; as though it was quite the thing for him to be wandering around in the woods at that unearthly hour; poked at the roof here and there with his cane, knocked up a few shingles that let more light in on the subject of his investigations, and came out again hastily as he heard the boys approach, and disappeared in a clump of spruces. Five or ten minutes afterward, he suddenly appeared at the bottom of the hill, backed the horse out of the shed, put on the bridle, and removed his blanket, sedately got in and drove quietly home.
Charlie Brown was the first up the hill, and heralded the sight of the camp with a cheer. "Now then, lively! Out with your jack-knives and off with a lot of spruce boughs!"
Then followed a great hacking of dull knives and cracking of limbs, with the occasional swish of an armful into the camp. The boys worked like beavers for a while, and got thoroughly warmed again, and the air within was filled with resinous fragrance. That done and arranged to their experienced leader's satisfaction, they wrapped themselves like Indians in their blankets and tumbled down upon the heap of boughs; the air trembled with a chorus of strange sounds as one by one they dropped off into a drowsy sleep, with an occasional wriggle as a knot, or the end of a limb, made itself felt through the many-folded blanket, and engraved a distinct dent upon the sleeper's back; while overhead, the giant cloud crept upward slowly, slowly toward the zenith, spre
ading east and west without a break. One half of the valley had vanished in the blackest shadow, and still the gilded edge swung steadily on, with the slow, resistless sweep of misty legions upon legions, armed in ebon mail; vast billows of night that drowned the scattered stars that met them, one by one. Then it struck the full moon and blotted it from sight. The world of the little valley dropped into night, and all was dark as Erebus. A breath of wind whispered through the forest, and died away, sighing, in the pines.
Ramon awoke suddenly.
Straight from the centre of that sea of blackness, like the plummet of an engineer, like the lead of a storm-tossed sailor, shot a drop of rain. Down it came with unerring swiftness, right through one of the spectacled gentleman's improvised "sky-lights" in the roof, and splashed in the Cuban's face. Half-dreaming still, he sleepily rolled over out of range; he had been awakened before in that way, and was used to it.
There was a slope now in the pile of boughs, and Harry Eveleth slid down into the vacated place unconsciously. Splash! and the raindrop covered his cheek with water. Dimly through his dormant brain the idea crept that he was back in the dormitory, and some one was trying the old trick of hanging a saturated sponge above his head; he had done it himself, once, and this was retribution. With a smothered grunt of discontent he gave Ramon a shove that sent him further, and rolled over into his place. Frank Hapgood began to slide—began to dream that he was falling down through a frightful place that had no bottom! The air whistled shrilly past his head. The black walls of the pit shot upward swiftly and he could see the faint light far up at the mouth of the shaft growing dimmer until it too went out! He tried to scream, but the wind caught the sound and carried it away with a rush of mocking laughter; he tried to reach out and grasp the walls but his hands were bound! Then he felt that he was drawing near the end; he had fallen miles!—and now his speed was slackening, and he was falling so softly, so lightly, till at last, like a downy feather he floated on the air, as a spirit from another world. He had reached the centre of the earth!
The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories Page 11
