Chapter XIV.
Setting a Trap.
Ring, ring, ring!
The bell of St. John’s was busily swinging, flinging notes of gold and silver down upon the town, and in response, how many people came out into the streets as if to pick up the gold and silver shower. The bell was ringing for a temperance meeting. Many were immediately interested in the subject of temperance; but whether all would go, was a question. It was a serious doubt whether those that the meeting wanted would feel that they needed the meeting. There were several very important cases.
Case one—who?
Tim Tyler? He needed the meeting, but that is not the case here intended, but Dr. Tilton, the apothecary. Dr. Tilton? Yes. For some time it had been known he was in the habit of indulging in a glass, “only a glass.” As a result, he had been helped home drunk from his store. He did not feel desirous to attend the temperance meeting.
Case number two, Tim Tyler? Not yet, but—Will Somers! Ah, that was sad. If you could have seen Aunt Stanshy, you would have thought it was the saddest thing in the world.
“O, Miss Barry,” said Aunt Stanshy, bursting into tears, “I’m awful afraid I made an idol of that young man—so nice, you know. I’ve seen my idols break one after the other. I shouldn’t have said a word about it, but he was seen on the street, and it became town talk, and it’s all out and round. Dreadful, dreadful!”
“It is, and I’m afraid my uncle is responsible. It is bad every way. There is need of a temperance work here. We are all asleep,” replied Miss Barry, who was calling at Aunt Stanshy’s, the two women opening their hearts to one another during the call. Dr. Tilton was responsible for Will Somers’s fall. One day, when Will was complaining of an ill feeling, the apothecary had proffered wine as a remedy, and had offered it several times when he was tired, and Will had fallen under the influence of a seemingly innocent ally. People began to talk about Dr. Tilton and his clerk. Then they began to shun the store. Not all, though, for a line of red noses and trembling hands and unsteady knees filed into the store, and not the sick people sent orders, but old topers frequented the place more and more. Dr. Tilton noticed the change, and was alarmed. Still he did not change that habit of taking “only a glass.” Will Somers was unhappy. He saw his mistake, and knew that the community frowned upon him. He rarely whistled now. As for the musical instrument he once loved to perform upon, it was a silent piece of furniture. He had some fine qualities of character, and his vulnerable side was his susceptibility to outside influence. The enemy had found a weak wall on that side of his character, and there successfully assaulted him. Will knew that his misconduct grieved Aunt Stanshy. The club felt it, for by degrees the bad news reached them. It seemed as if each one was burdened by a load of guilt—as if having served in Dr. Tilton’s store, Charlie, Sid, Tony, and the rest had there sinned, and, in consequence, each had been seen tipsy on the street, and each carried a load that bowed him.
It was Charlie who happened to be at home when his teacher was calling on Aunt Stanshy, and he accidentally overheard a fragment of the conversation. When Miss Barry was fairly out of the house, and Aunt Stanshy was returning through the entry to her kitchen-work, sighing by the way, Charlie ran to her and excitedly said, “We—we—will get up a meeting!”
“A meeting about what?”
“Why, why, temperance.”
“Who get it up?”
“We—we boys—our club.”
Aunt Stanshy guessed at once the occasion and object of Charlie’s remarks, that he had heard the conversation between her and her caller, and that this proposition for a temperance meeting was to meet the grave necessities of the hour.
“Yes, yes,” he said, “let’s go and see teacher about it”
“What, go now?”
“Yes, you and she can talk it over.”
In a few minutes Charlie and Aunt Stanshy were hurrying down the street as if suddenly summoned by the pressing sickness of a friend.
“O, let’s get Sid,” suggested Charlie, as they neared Sid Waters’s house.
“Well,” replied Aunt Stanshy.
Sid, whose appetite never failed him, was eating a lunch, but he responded at once to Charlie’s invitation to “Come out.”
“What’s up, Charlie? I am the man for you,” replied the president, who had an abundance of resources at his command, and was prepared—in his own opinion—for any emergency. “What is up? Down-townies round?”
“We want to have a temperance meeting. Come down to teacher’s.”
“All right. Temperance meeting? The club get it up?”
“I don’t just know, but we can talk it over.”
“If they want a meeting, we can give ’em one,” said Sid, confidently.
Thus re-enforced, Aunt Stanshy and Charlie presented themselves at Miss Barry’s door.
“Come in, come,” said the teacher. “I have just got home myself.”
“We—we have come,” exclaimed Aunt Stanshy, “to see if we couldn’t have a temperance meeting! You know we need it.”
“O, I see; and the boys?”
“The boys,” said Sid, proudly, “think you could rely on them to—to—pull an oar.”
He felt it might be prudent not to propose to do the whole of the rowing, and offer the town a meeting managed wholly by the “Up-the-Ladder Club,” but modestly—to—pull an oar.
“Splendid!” said the teacher, her enthusiasm charming the boys. “Among us all, I guess we can manage it.”
“I don’t know as I can do any thing except to get people out,” said Aunt Stanshy, fearful that she might be called upon to speak in the meeting.
“Let us go and see Mr. Walton,” suggested Miss Barry.
“It would be the very thing,” declared Aunt Stanshy.
Very soon Aunt Stanshy, Miss Barry, Sid, and Charlie started for the minister’s. On the way, Juggie and Tony were secured as new members of the column, and thus augmented, this eager temperance band appeared at Mr. Walton’s door. Ushered into the study, Miss Barry told her errand.
“We need a temperance meeting very much, and we will have it at St. John’s, and I want you boys—the club, Miss Barry—to do the most of the singing,” said Mr. Walton.
“We will,” said Sid. “I know I can speak for them.”
“And Miss Barry will teach them what to sing, perhaps?” asked Mr. Walton.
“Yes sir,” replied Miss Barry.
“I’ll have my choir to help, but I expect the ‘Up-the-Ladder Club’ to do the most.”
The boys were eager in their interest. To encourage them, Miss Barry said, “I’ll make a little blue cross to go inside each white shield. A little blue cross—that is a temperance sign—will look pretty on the white silk.”
“There, there, won’t they be proud of it?” said Aunt Stanshy.
“Of course we will,” declared Sid. “Knights, we must give three cheers for teacher when we get to her door.”
During this conversation they were passing down the street, and when Miss Barry’s door was reached, be assured that three hearty cheers were given for her.
“Now three for temperance!” cried Sid. Then they cheered for temperance.
“I feel that my boys are, indeed, mounting the ladder of the true and noble,” was Miss Barry’s thought, as from her window she saw the ardent young knights pass away.
The next day Aunt Stanshy met Miss Barry. “Miss—Miss—Barry,” said Aunt Stanshy, nervously clutching her companion’s shawl, “we must—pray for our meeting.”
“O, we will, we will!”
There were earnest prayers going to God in behalf of that meeting. As step after step might be proposed, prayer went up from the altar of those two women’s hearts especially, beseeching God to recognize and bless each step that might be taken. O in what a cloud of prayer that enterprise was enveloped!
Aunt Stanshy and Miss Barry were talking about the meeting one day.
“I wish, Miss Barry, we could make sure that every body would go to the meeting. Will Dr. Tilton go?”
“That’s what I am wondering about, and Will Somers?”
Aunt Stanshy shook her head sadly: “He says, No.”
“They must be there,” said Miss Barry, “and—and—we must set a trap for them.”
“A trap?”
“I’ll ask my uncle to help the choir sing, and—of course, he wont refuse. I don’t suppose he cares to come to the meeting because he needs it, but if others go he won’t want to be left out, and if he can sing, that will give him a chance to attend. He is my uncle, you know.”
The “trap” for Dr. Tilton worked successfully. He scorned the idea that he might need the meeting. This he said to himself. However, he would help the choir sing, he said, to his niece. But a trap for Will Somers! Who could make that?
“Won’t you come to the meeting to hear us sing?” asked Charlie, with a sad face.
“O, you don’t want me, Charlie,” replied Will. “O, I can’t go.”
Aunt Stanshy made no remark. She sat silently, busily thinking, while Charlie and Will talked about the meeting. Aunt Stanshy was making a “trap.”
The day before that appointed for the temperance meeting, she went to her pastor.
“Mr. Walton, the meeting will begin at half past seven. If—if—say about quarter after seven—you should let Charlie and the other boys go down to the church door and sing one or two of their pieces, it might draw folks in.”
“Why, that’s a good idea, and I wish you would ask them.”
At a quarter after seven the next night the White Shields, each carrying a neat cross of blue on his badge, appeared at the church door and began to sing. It was the night when Dr. Tilton was accustomed to close his store earlier than usual, if customers did not appear; and at a quarter after seven Will Somers was accustomed that night to pass the church door on his way home. Would he fall into the trap that Aunt Stanshy had ingeniously set for him? The club began to sing their hymns. There was the touching plea containing the lines:
“O what are you going to do, brother?
Say, what are you going to do?
You have thought of some useful labor,
But what is the end in view?”
Tony sang this. It seemed that night as if some of Italy’s sweet singers must have lent him their notes. The people began to gather about the club. Aunt Stanshy was there on the watch, eager to see if Will Somers might be coming down the street. Tony’s voice warbled away. Now it was an exultant note that he touched, and then his voice sank to a plaintive appeal:
“Is your heart in the Saviour’s keeping?
Remember, he died for you;
Then what are you going to do, brother?
Say, what are you going to do?”
As Tony sang, there was a young man leaning against the fence adjoining the church door. It was somebody listlessly leaning, lifting to the light of the street lamp a face on which rested the shadow of a great sadness.
“It’s he!” said Aunt Stanshy, excitedly.
Charlie heard her. He guessed that it was some one out on the sidewalk whom she had discovered, and he stretched his small head beyond the ring of singers, anxiously looking out into the shadows. His sharp eye saw that form leaning against the fence. He could not wait until the song was finished. He ran out upon the sidewalk, and Aunt Stanshy followed.
“Do come, do come,” pleaded Charlie, as he seized Will’s hand and gently drew him toward the church.
“Yes, yes,” said Aunt Stanshy, “We all want you.”
And Will Somers irresolutely yielded to the gentle hands that were drawing him, and entered the church.
What a meeting that was!
“Never seed the beat of it in my life,” said Simes Badger, who was off duty at the lighthouse that night, and having attended the meeting, reported it soon after to a band of his old cronies. “Why, when the pledge was offered that meetin’, it seemed as if every man, woman, and child would go for it at once. No matter if they was as innocent of liquor as a baby a day old; they jest walked up and took that pledge. And Dr. Tilton, he couldn’t stand it, and he hopped down and he jined the pledge. And his clerk, that Will Somers, he did write his name handsome. O, it was a meetin’, I tell ye!”
Yes, it was a memorable evening. Dr. Tilton and Will Somers kept their word faithfully, and society recognized the fact and liberally patronized the doctor’s store, afterward.
“Got a new ’pothecary in our town,” said Simes Badger. “At any rate, he’s good as new, and new things draw. A ’pothecary can do amazin’ sight of harm if he aint jest the right sort of man in his business.”
Society, outside the store, recognized the new life that Dr. Tilton and Will had begun. They were received cordially by their old friends. The club gathered about Will, treating him after the fashion of the old enthusiastic friendship.
“He’s singin’ once more and a playin’,” Aunt Stanshy said to a neighbor, “jest as nice as can be. It does me good to see him.”
And Tim Tyler—where was he?
His sister Ann did hope he would be reached, but she folded her old shawl about her shoulders and went away from the meeting, saying sorrowfully to herself, “Tim didn’t come.”
No, he was not at the meeting. He did not show any interest in the movement.
“But—but we can’t give him up,” some of his praying friends whispered.
And when our prayers refuse to let the angel of blessing go, was that angel ever known to forsake us?
Chapter XV.
The Fair.
Poor Charlie! His life did not seem to him to be altogether agreeable.
Being fat and good-natured, the boys were rather disposed to pick on him. Then a standing vexation at school was his arithmetic. In addition to these things, he had a special trouble one day to grieve him. His class was reading a selection called the “Miller.” The teacher, Mr. Armstrong, permitted the members of the class to remain in their desks and there read. Charlie abused this privilege by clapping his head below his desk, and while the boys in another part of the room were reading, he was doing his best to pack away a corn-ball.
“Time enough,” he had concluded, “before it is my time to read, to have something good to pay for my old arithmetic.”
His mouth was full of corn-ball and preparing itself to take in more, when his teacher, watching the long detention of Charlie’s head in such a humble posture, and suspicious of the real reason, stole softly up behind Charlie and, looking over his shoulder, was puzzled to decide whether the corn-ball was going into Charlie or he into the corn-ball. He quietly stole back to his desk and there abruptly shouted, “Macomber, you may read about the ‘Miller’ at once.”
The shot struck. Charlie bounded up in great confusion, his month full of corn-ball!
“Hold, Macomber!” said the master, in a very sarcastic way. “It must be evident to you that a man cannot successfully read about the grinding of corn, and yet be grinding corn in his mouth at the same time.” Then he broke out into a roar, “Stand out in the floor! You may do any further grinding there. Stop after school, also!”
Unfortunate Charlie! When he went home at a late hour Aunt Stanshy was disposed to rebuke him for his tardiness. This was too much for Charlie. He broke out into a whimper: “I think I have a sad life, only scoldings at home and scoldings and arithmetic at school.”
“O, no!” said Aunt Stanshy, soothingly, guessing that the little fellow had had some trouble that day, and had been sufficiently punished for any fault; “O, no! not so bad as that! Haven’t you a pleasant home?”
“Yes—you—you are kind, I know, real kind.”
“Well, don’t think any thing more about it. Here is a big piece of mince pie.”
He had not eaten more than one half of his lunch when he felt very much comforted, and the outside world brightened very perceptibly. To comfort him still further Aunt Stanshy allowed him to go after several boys and bring them to the barn, and it was in connection with this gathering that a new and important enterprise was suggested by one of the boys.
“It’s something that will pay,” said Sid.
Every body wanted to believe it and was willing to help it along. Soon Charlie came running from the barn into the kitchen.
“Aunt Stanshy, will you please lend me your scales?”
“My what?”
“Your scales for weighing, please.”
“What on earth is it now?” exclaimed Aunt Stanshy. It was a—so the placard on the barn door stated—it was A FAIR!
Charlie did not have much to say about it, but through the remainder of the day often hummed, or smiled and chuckled complacently. When Aunt Stanshy had lighted the kerosene lamp that had a big lion’s claw for a base and boasted a yellow shade covered with green shepherdesses and blue sheep, then Charlie sat down at the center-table and for an hour was exceedingly busy. About eight he held up an object to Aunt Stanshy.
“What is that, Aunt Stanshy?” he asked.
“A rag-man,” she replied, promptly.
The artisan’s face dropped and a pout came out. A smile though quickly smoothed down the pout, and he exclaimed, in triumph, “Santa Claus! He’s a friend of our club! We thought we would be in season for Christmas, and people could buy their presents of us, and—and—will you buy?”
“I will—buy—that.”
“You will? I’ll give you a kiss for that,” and Aunt Stanshy’s young lover came up to her and in his delight gave her a kiss. Of a tuft of cotton Charlie had made a head. Another tuft furnished a body; two more supplied arms to work with, and two more supplied legs to stand on. Charlie put a three-cornered hat on Santa’s head and tied together the parts of his body with a girdle of pink worsted. A card on Santa announced the fact that he could be bought for TWO CENTS.
Charlie trembled when Aunt Stanshy’s eyes were directed toward the price lest she might not think it worth the money.
“What’s that?”
“Two cents,” replied Charlie, in fear.
“O! Well, I’ll give that.”
“You will?” said Charlie, in delight. “I’ll give you another kiss.”
“Charlie,” said the blushing Constantia, “you’ll make a fool of an old woman like me.”
In the night the lips of the sleeping Charlie parted as he said, with a smile, “Two cents!” When this good news of the first sale was announced to the club in the morning, it threw the members into a feverish excitement.
“First-rate opening, fellers,” declared the president, “even before we have opened any thing.”
“We don’t open,” said the governor, “till school is out to-night.”
“Let’s open now,” said Billy Grimes, in the excitement of his enthusiasm over the news;
“What a booby!” said the governor, in plain language. “We have got no things here yet, and there are no buyers, and we must all clear out to school in ten minutes.”
The governor’s massive logic crushed the foolish Billy at once.
“Let’s open in good style,” said the president, “and do it to-night.”
By fifteen minutes after four, just as soon as a lot of scampering, shouting boys could get to the barn, bringing pockets stuffed with “articles,” the fair was declared “opened.”
“But how dark it is!” said the president.
So it was. The boys had forgotten how early the sun was setting in the November days.
“Let’s postpone it till to-morrow afternoon, when there’s no school,” said Charlie.
“Who’s agreed?” asked the president.
“Me!” responded the club, vociferously. They all had prudently concluded to wait for the advent of more daylight, and, withdrawing from the barn, went down the yard talking as busily as if they were a lot of hens cackling after a successful venture at egg-laying. It had been left to Charlie to put above the notice, “FAIR,” the word “POSTPONED.”
“That will prevent any rush till morning, and save folks from being disappointed,” Sid had declared.
In the afternoon every thing was under way, and Aunt Stanshy went out to see the fair.
“I should never know the place, I must say,” remarked Aunt Stanshy, as her eyes swept the spot. There were several so-called “tables,” such as an old window-blind and a disused shelf propped up by various supports like boxes and barrels. These tables were covered with pieces of the old curtain, now doing service for the last time.
“Here is the confectionery table,” shouted Juggie. There were now on the table three pieces of molasses candy made by his grandmother. He had had twelve to start with, and, as he had sold none, the disposition of the missing nine pieces was a matter of grave suspicion.
“Here’s the toy table!” called out Charlie. He had a few paper dolls and a few “hand-painted” shells, the decorator being Sid, and prominent on the table was the cotton image of that friend of the club, Santa Claus.
“Buy a corner-copier stuffed wid candy!” shouted Juggie, holding up a brown paper tunnel into which he was about dropping a solitary piece of candy.
The governor had the “harvest table,” which was groaning under the weight of three pears and two papers of seed.
“What’s this?” asked Aunt Stanshy, stopping before a discarded mantel-piece resting on a rabbit-box and a coal-hod. On this “table” were autumn leaves, sprigs of hemlock, a few ferns, and one chrysanthemum blossom.
“Thith?” replied Pip, who, like all the others, had put on a “Sunday smile” to attract customers. “Thith ith a flower table. Will you buy a flower?”
“If I can see one,” said Aunt Stanshy, laughing.
“There,” said Pip, triumphantly holding up the lonely chrysanthemum. “One thent only! Thomething rare!”
“I’ll buy it, and here is the cent.”
“Cath!” sang out Pip, in tones of command, addressed to a supposed cash-boy.
No one responded.
“Cath!”
“Why, you are the cash-boy,” said the president, “and you bring the money to me, for I am the cashier.”
“I tend a counter,” squeaked Pip. A serious misunderstanding as to positions in the fair here threatened to arise, but it was all averted by the obliging Tony, who undertook to transport all bullion from the tables to the cashier’s office.
There now appeared the president’s little sister, “Callie Doodles,” as she was familiarly called.
“O, boys, she’s got a cent, for mother promised it to her! She isn’t a nail-one!” shouted her brother.
Nail-ones belonged to an inferior caste. This class included those who had been about the streets and yards, back of barns and in old corner-lots, picking up nails or cast-away bits of iron. Their currency was the more common. A hard-cash customer was about as common as bobolinks in December.
“Callie, come here and buy some fruit!”
“Don’t you want some candy, Callie?”
“Buy a toy, Callie!”
“Flowerth! flowerth!” were the various shouts greeting the cash customer. She was saluted eagerly, as hack-men hail the arrivals in the trains at a city station. Callie made no reply, but stubbed in a demure, dignified way, from table to table, finally halting where children’s strongest passion is sure to take them, at the candy table. Here she traded away her cash.
“And wont you try a piece?” said Juggie to Aunt Stanshy, displaying his stock of two pieces of candy. “Try dese goods.”
She graciously took the sample.
“How do you sell candy?”
“Cent a stick.”
“Well, I’ll take it.”
“Two cents,” said Juggie, prudently charging for the piece given on trial also.
As Aunt Stanshy left this enterprising trader, she heard a vigorous summons:
“Cash! cash!”
At the supper-table that night Charlie asked, “Aunty, what do you suppose we are going to have now in our club? Something at our fair, I mean?”
“A tornado.”
“No, a refreshment saloon; and the boys said they knew you would be in every day to buy something.”
“O dear!” groaned Aunt Stanshy, inwardly.
“We are going to have ice-cream, too, may be. We couldn’t afford it in summer.”
“Not in summer? Why, that’s the time when people want it most.”
“But we make ours out of snow, you know, and could only have it in cold weather.”
“Then I hope, for your sake, we may have some snow, and I see that the clouds look like it. But the weather is getting colder nowadays, and if you have your snow, and so can make your ice-cream, it may be so cold that you will have no customers.”
“We will risk that. Ice-cream always pays. Ours does, at any rate.”
“Snow is coming, I guess, for it looks like a change in the weather.”
A change, indeed, was setting in. The river indicated it. It was as smooth and glassy as if Aunt Stanshy’s flat iron had been over it and pressed every wrinkle and ripple down. The air was light. The smoke from the houses and the steam from the only tug that the commerce of the town could afford to support fell, and fluttered downward in thin veils. Overhead there was a mass of gray cloud halting directly above the town, and looking too lazy ever to stir again.
“Storm comin’!” declared Simes Badger to all his cronies at Silas Trefethen’s store. “Wind is sou’ already.”
It did not stay “sou’,” but swung around to the east, then worked into the north-east, and then all through the night the wind was sifting cotton-wool down on all the streets as if carpeting them, on all the roofs as if blanketing them, into all the cracks in the walls of houses and barns as if it would chink them up and make them tight for winter.
Chancing to look out of the window as soon as he was awake the morning after the storm, Charlie shouted,
“Ice-cream!”
“Yes, all you want,” said Aunt Stanshy, who, leaving her coffee-pot, her pan of fried potatoes, and batch of biscuit on the kitchen stove, had mounted the stairs to wake the sleepy Charlie.
“Boys will soon be here to make it.”
“I warrant you! They will make their ice-cream before shoveling the folks’ paths at home.”
It looked so, for half a dozen boys were out in the yard by eight o’clock, shouting “ice-cream” to Charlie, who had not finished his breakfast.
With the help of Aunt Stanshy’s “essences” enough snow was flavored to meet the demands of customers, who, quickly notified, quickly appeared, bringing the contents of all the nail-boxes at their homes. Even Aunt Stanshy was prevailed upon to buy a dish, and she consistently paid cash for it.
Her boarder, Will Somers, was induced to promise more extensive patronage.
“Will, we all think you a first-rate feller,” said the artful president; “and just to help us out at the fair, couldn’t you take your meals at our restaurant? Our mothers say they will cook us things—steak, you know, and so on.”
“Y—e—s, I will try it for—the present.”
For some reason the “things” said to have been promised—“steak, you know, and so on,” did not arrive. Will gave out soon after noon the first day.
“Aunt Stanshy, I shall starve if I stay there,” said Will, appearing at her pantry door; “and if I didn’t starve, they would kill me with their abominable ‘cream’ that they make me buy, though they say it is at a reduced price.”
The restaurant was given up very soon. The president said that people had left the sea-side for the city, and they could hardly expect enough home trade to make it pay.
Pip thought he could make his table pay if he had some flowers to set it off. But that was not all; he was envious of others’ success. The fair had been characterized by the usual amount of “human nature” displayed on such occasions, and Pip now exhibited his peculiarities. For ten cents he bought a few white flowers at a hot-house, and then thought he would get ahead of the boys and be at the barn at an early hour, making sure for himself any possible customers.
“To give all an equal chance,” declared the president, “to make it the same for those who get up early and those who lie abed, the barn will be open at nine o’clock, except on holidays, when we will accommodate the public at an earlier hour.”
Pip thought he would be on hand by eight one morning. He would then be sure to catch any “nail custom,” as that was a class apt to be astir early, hunting up currency before other people had a chance at it. But the weather had stiffened since the storm. It was too cold to be agreeable, and even the nail-customers, usually so early at the barn, were now at home hugging the kitchen stove. Pip stood alone at the grand flower table. His blossoms lay unsought upon the table.
“Pip! Pip!”
It was the governor down in the yard.
“We are going to see them skate on the pond back of the mill. Come, go!”
Pip could hardly be coming and going at the same time, but he left his table and left his flowers. That day, the cold increased steadily.
“It is nippin’ cold,” said Aunt Stanshy to a neighbor, and what did Jack Frost do but take out his nippers and clap them on Pip’s flowers! The next morning, Pip found a little heap of frozen petals on the “flower-table.” He could no more make them into flowers than if they had been petals of snow!
That day, “owing to the weather,” the “Fair” was closed. The boys divided the little heap of cash and the large heap of nails, and each knight took his share. The club now ceased to have an active existence. It became like any other stick that is laid aside and set up in the corner. It seemed as if the knights had forgotten that they belonged to a club whose expressive title suggested energetic movement.
Chapter XVI.
The Fire.
Will Somers belonged to the “Cataract,” which was not a “steamer,” but a hand-engine. To belong to the “Cataract” it was necessary to own a red flannel shirt, a good pair of lungs, and a nimble pair of legs. The shirt—did that mean fire? The lungs enabled one to do all the “hollering” that might be necessary. The legs were still more essential, that the engine might move with proper speed to a fire, and this was at a neck-breaking pace. As the engine company had many alarms to answer, some of them purposely raised to enable the company to “show off”—so Simes Badger said—the legs of a Cataract-boy were not the least valuable of his fire-apparatus. And then it did seem as if the company all took a fiendish delight in going “like mad” by the homes of old women and all single ladies like Miss Persnips, tossing their red helmets—I omitted this essential piece of property—directing at the windows defiant glances, and all the while their sharp, cracked engine-bell went up and down, over and over, as if it were an insane acrobat.
“Fire! Fire!” screamed a female voice, one afternoon. The screamer was Miss Persnips.
“Where, where?” shouted Simes Badger.
“O, there, there! I know it must be,” was the answer.
That was all Simes wanted, and especially as Mr. Walton was holding a service at St. John’s. If Simes could excite a neighborhood, and also create a sensation in church, he was happy. He now rushed into the church-vestibule, and then into the bell-tower, and seizing the rope pulled it as if the small-pox had broken out and attacked every other person in the community. Simes being the one to make the bell boom, “Danger!” he gave evidence that this one person certainly was not afflicted with the malady.
In just two minutes from the first rap on the bell, Will Somers, leaving behind him a caldron of boiling herbs, was at the door of the engine-house, and unlocking it, had seized the long rope attached to the engine. There were enough who joined him to rush out into the street the clumsy machine. There they received large re-enforcements.
“Where is the fire?” bawled the foreman.
Nobody knew.
“Where is the fire, Simes?” the bell-ringer was asked as the engine rattled toward the church-door.
“Miss Persnips!”
Simes meant not the place of the fire, but the source of the information.
“Miss Persnips’s house is afire!” shouted the engine-men. It was enough. They rushed for that lady’s place, and seeing a column of smoke above her roof, concluded that its source was directly below, and stopping at a pump this side of her house, ran their hose down into the well. They were working the brakes at a lively rate and preparing for a thorough bombardment of the building, when fortunately she appeared, screaming, “Fire is over there, beyond the woods!”
The smoke had now shifted its coarse, and rolling away from Miss Persnips’s, hung in a dark, sullen cloud above the forest but a little way off.
Away went the engine and its allies, sweeping along men and boys, and also every able-bodied member of the Up-the-Ladder Club whose legs could carry him. Down past shops and houses and farms rushed the crowd, pulling along several fat men who had grasped the rope. By and by they came to a farmer in a red shirt who pointed his spectacles at them across the top-rail of the fence at the right of the road.
“Where’s the’ fire, squire?” excitedly asked the foreman.
“Fire? I don’t know of fire,” replied the farmer, coolly, “at leastways, any fire that is worth puttin’ out. I have got a bonfire in back here, and it was purty big, and its smoke you may have seen in the village. If you want to stretch your muscle and soak your hose—and that is about all you engine-people do—you may come and play on my bonfire.”
“Come and play on you” shouted an angry voice.
“Put out him” screamed another.
“Play away, One,” bawled a third, giving the number of the engine as known at fires.
There was now a half-joking, half-angry comment on the “squire,” and there were enough there desirous of wetting down, not his bonfire, but its builder. The foreman quieted the strife and the “Cataract” started for home. A willingness was expressed to moisten “Miss Persnips’s place” because she had misled them, though it was unintentional on her part.
Some one sang out, “She can’t tell about smoke. She has only one good eye, and t’other one is a glass eye.”
This put them all in a good-natured mood, and the “Cataract” went home.
Soon there was a fire serious enough to satisfy the most ardent of the company. A milder style of weather had been prevailing after the late snow-storm. The sun had put extra coal on its fires and melted all the snow. Then came a wind that blew continuously two days, drying the grounds and the buildings.
“I notice, Somers,” said Dr. Tilton, “that you did not have good luck in finding a fire that last alarm, but if one is sounded now, I guess it will amount to something. Fearful dry, it is getting to be.”
The doctor was a true prophet. The next alarm did amount to something. One morning about half past seven, there echoed in the narrow streets of Seamont a cry that plain meant bad news. Will Somers heard, and might be said to have seen, that cry. He had taken down the shutters of his employer’s store, and was hanging in the windows two very gaudily lettered placards, “A balm for all, Jenkins’s Soporific,” “The need of an aching world, Muggins’s Liniment.” Will heard that magic cry, “Fire—re—re!” He turned and saw a man coming down the street. He was not only coming, but running, his hat off, and his mouth open wide enough to take in a ten-cent loaf of brown bread, Will thought.
“Woolen mill on fire!”
“Woolen mill!” gasped Will, and his first thought was, “glory enough for one day.”
The woolen mill was in a pretty little hollow, a nest whose walls were spreading elm-trees. The mill was a relic of the old industries of the place and represented a vain effort to make Seamont a “manufacturing center.”
“Then the fire is down in the hollow,” thought Will. He saw somebody approaching who he thought might be a customer, but he quickly decided the question whether he owed a greater duty to one person or to many—the public—by turning the key in the lock of the door. Then he hurried away. As he rushed to the house of the “Cataract,” he stopped at the door of Dr. Tilton’s home.
“There,” he said to Biddy Flannigan, who answered, “tell the doctor there’s a tremendous alarm in town, and I thought he might want me to go, as he is an owner, and here is the key.”
“What?” said Biddy.
“Woolen mill’s afire, tell him.”
“Woolen Mill Sophia! Who is she?” wondered Biddy, and she went to report to the doctor.
“Faith, sir, yer clerk says there is a tremenjus ’larm in town and it’s about Woolen Mill Sophia, and here is the key, sir.”
“Woolen-mill what?” asked the doctor. “I am an owner up there.”
“Indade! It must be that Sophia works up there.”
“Sophia?” the doctor asked, and then stared at her and exclaimed, “It is ‘woolen mill’s afire!’ My! Where are my boots? Quick! Bertha, bring down my boots, please.”
This last request was shouted up stairs to his niece, Bertha Barry, who was making a brief visit at the doctor’s. Bertha quickly appeared, boots in hand, her blue eyes looking bright and fresh as the spring violets just gathered from the fields.
“Bertha, it’s the old mill that is afire. Will Somers has left the key of the store here and gone to the fire. I can forgive him this morning, though I did think his duties as a fireman began to interfere with his duties as an apothecary. Let me see! I’m all ready, I believe—guess I must go up to the fire. Tell your aunt I have gone to the fire and I’ll be back—when I arrive.”
Off went the doctor. Bertha delivered the message to her aunt and went down stairs. Then she looked out of the window and watched the people on their way to the fire.
“Guess I’ll go to the fire, too,” said Bertha, “if aunt is willing.”
“Och,” said Biddy, as she watched the departing Bertha, “we’ll all be fur goin’ up to see Sophia. The saints defind us!”
The fire had started in the waste room of the old mill. Somebody had once insisted on isolating this quarter as much as possible, and brick partitions had been put up that happily interfered with the spread of the fire and allowed all the operatives a chance to escape. The fire finally reached an elevator. It then darted with startling rapidity to the top of the building, shooting up like an arrow sent by a destructive hand below. The flames were now spreading every-where in the highest story. People gathered from the town, and the engines soon were working.
“Get every body out of the building!” said a commanding voice, owned by a man who had just arrived.
“Of course! That’s what we have just been doing,” said a second.
The cry now arose, “Two boys in the mill!”
Some one said that the boys had made their escape with the other operatives, but had gone back into one of the lower stories after their overcoats.
“Boys in the mill!” rang out the fearful cry.
The owner of the commanding voice rushed forward into the lower entry of the mill, swinging an ax. Will Somers found him at the door trying to cut round the latch.
“What’s that for?” asked Will.
“Want to get ’em out, you fool!”
“Have you tried the door?”
“N—n—o.”
Will seized it, pulled it, and open it came!
Will was brave, and, in such an emergency as the present, generally took his wits with him. The room was full of smoke. He stepped in and shouted, but there was no response. While at the door of the first room, he heard some one behind saying, “Boys in the next story, they say.” Will turned and sprang up stairs. Just ahead was the person who had recently spoken. The proprietor of the commanding voice was now retreating, his ax over his shoulder, stepping proudly out in the consciousness that he had done a memorable thing. Up the stairs went Will and his companion, the smoke thickening about them. Reaching the second floor and pushing open the door of the adjoining room, they saw—was it a boy on the floor? He had evidently striven to gain the door, but when he had almost reached it, had succumbed to the suffocating smoke, falling with arms stretched out toward the goal he desired to secure. And who was it running toward them, boy or man, the smoke parting about him as he advanced, then closing up again? It was a boy rushing for the door, trying to make his way through the smoke which, light as it was, proved too heavy a burden for him, for down he dropped, felling flat upon his face. It was the work of a moment apparently to seize the boys and carry them out into the entry.
“Thank God for strong arms!” said Will Somers, lifting one boy and starting off with him.
“Yes, thank Him for every thing good,” answered his companion, shouldering the other prize. They descended the stairs. How the smoke had increased! They had been absent longer than they thought, and in that time the fire was rapidly advancing toward them. They heard a loud noise without, a shout rising above the crackle and roar of the flames. Then voices were heard at the foot of the stairs: “Come this way! Quick! Hurry!” As Will passed through the lower entry, he chanced to glance into the room whose door had been left open by the knight of the ax. A draft had been created, and Will could see that the flames were springing toward the outer air.
“This way! Hurry!” people were shouting, and through the almost blinding, bewildering, suffocating smoke, Will and his companion bore the trophies they had snatched from the flames.
“Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!” went up heartily from the dense, black crowd below. The rescued boys were laid upon the grass at a safe distance from the burning mill. The people began to gather about them.
“Ah, poor Tim, poor Tim!” said a woman, bending over one of the boys.
“That’s Ann there with Tim Tyler,” said Charlie to Sid Waters, these two enterprising knights having made good use of their legs and quickly reached the spot.
“Who’s Ann?”
“It is Tim’s mother.”
“I recognize the other boy. It’s Bob Landers.”
“Will Somers, this you?” asked Charlie.
“It will be when my face is washed. Dirty work at fires.”
“Why, Mr. Walton, is this you? What a ’ero! Did you save one of them boys?” squeaked Miss Persnips to Will’s companion.
The minister’s face was not very clean after his fight with the sooty enemy, but as Will thought, “Love sees through all disguises.”
“Yes, here I am, and if some of you good people will carry these boys home, the rest of us will soak down those tenement houses opposite the mill and see if we can’t save them.”
“The dear man! So disinterested, and before he had got his face washed,” said Miss Persnips, pressing nearer to gain a better look at the object of her admiration.
“Miss Persnips, excuse me,” said the foreman of the “Torrent,” the great rival of the “Cataract,” “but unless you withdraw, we shall be obliged to wash you out of the way with the hose. Play away, Three!” he roared.
“O, massy!” screamed the shop-keeper, retiring to a safe place.
Will Somers went back to his place at the brakes of the “Cataract.” As he passed the door of the mill he looked into the entry, “What a blaze!” he said.
It was not surprising that the flames had swept forward with such rapidity. Up those old wooden stairs drying for years, greasy with the oil drippings of the mill, the fire leaped and flew even rather than leaped. The flames were reaching out like long, forked arms, vainly clutching after the two boys that had been snatched away. The building was now the plaything of the flames. Through it and over it, now climbing to the highest point of the old-fashioned roof, then searching down into the cellar, scorching, raging, roaring every-where, went the fire. In places unexpected the flames would show themselves, looking out like the faces of firefiends. Then they would retire a moment, only to come again and burst out with a fury that nothing could resist, a fury that raged and rioted till beams, rafters, flooring, and stair-ways were a black, ashy heap, sputtering and hissing toward the sky—a snake heap full of hot fangs.
“I wonder how that fire started,” was a frequent exclamation. “Don’t know,” said every body save one poor, old tobacco-ridden man who confessed that he had been smoking in the waste room, the place where the fire started.
“When you see a man shoving a lighted pipe into sich a place.” said Simes Badger to the gossippy circle at Silas Trefethen’s store that night, “send in a bucket of water after him.”
“What for? to put out the fire, or to wash him?” asked a hearer.
“Both,” said Simes, “one to protect the place and the other to purify him.”
The wise men all laughed, and there was some sense in the laugh that applauded the oracle.
Tim Tyler and Bob Landers had both been carried to their homes. Bob escaped serious injury, but it was found that Tim was badly burned.
“I felt it a good deal at the very first,” he told Mr. Walton one day, “when, in going after my coat, I happened to open a door where the fire was, and it darted at me. You see the pain stopped, but now it has started up.”
“Yes, I understand that while the first contact with the fire is painful, then what you might call a paralyzing of the nerves takes place, and feeling is benumbed. When the action of the fire ceases, and the attempt at healing sets in, the nerves try to do their duty and the pain starts up once more. I have thought that the old martyrs who were burned at the stake, while they smarted terribly at first, had an easier time after that. Bad enough to step upon the hot round of such a ladder to heaven, but it was easier climbing after that. You got confused, Tim, didn’t you, in the mill, when trying to find your way back?”
“O yes; and as I said, I opened a door where the fire rushed at me. It was so smoky I wonder I ever got out at all. It seems I had some good friends.”
“Yes, and God was your best friend, and he helped you, and if you are not a martyr, you can try to bear your pain as patiently as you can, and some people in bearing pain stand more than the martyrs even.”
Tim looked up. “Could you—could you—say a small prayer for me? I don’t want to knuckle under, but grin and bear it best I can.”
When Mr. Walton came out into the kitchen where Ann was she said: “I heard Tim ask you to pray. That was a good deal for him to do. Afore, you did it without the asking, but I was glad to have him just speak up for himself. O, he has been a softenin’ since the fire, a comin’ round a good deal.”
“Where is your brother?”
“Mine? Tim, you mean?”
“Yes.”
She only shook her head, and looked sad.
As Mr. Walton was walking home he met Tony, one of his favorites.
“Well, Tony, how is the club? Have they all got the shields Miss Barry gave them?”
“I think so, and you were very kind to promise what you did; but we don’t have any meetings now.”
“Don’t you?”
“No, sir.”
“Won’t you come in and see me?”
Tony followed his friend into the clergyman’s study. Then Mr. Walton found his mother and brought her into the study.
“This little fellow is one of my Sunday-school boys, and his name is Tony.”
“Why,” said the old mother, looking into his face, “I have seen him before.”
And Tony lifted his eyes—large, lustrous, black—to the old lady’s face rimmed with silver hair, and said, ingenuously,
“I don’t think you ever did. I have never been here.”
“But I have seen you, and I want to see you again; and you will come when you can, won’t you? Where do you live?”
“At Mr. Badger’s, and I came from New York with a Mr. Blanco.”
“Where is your father?”
“He is in Italy.”
“And that is over the sea, over the sea!” she murmured, as she returned to her sitting-room. There she stood looking at the picture of a ship, and, glancing up at the church vane, which could be seen from her window, she wondered if the weather would be easterly and rainy that day.
When they were alone, Tony said to Mr. Walton, “Do you see Tim Tyler often?”
“Pretty often.”
“And they are real poor?”
“O yes.”
On his way home Tony met Charlie.
“Mr. Walton says they are real poor at Tim Tyler’s, Charlie. I wish I had some money to give him.”
Charlie thought a minute, and then he spoke up, eagerly, “I say, Tony, let’s get up a fair for him.”
“That’s the very thing I wanted to ask you about. Now it’s strange we should both think of it.”
“That’s so.”
“Let’s shake hands on it, Charlie.”
Tony and Charlie, standing on the sidewalk, shook hands cordially. “What next? The shaking of hands would not bring a fair.
“Let’s go and see Miss Barry,” suggested Charlie. This was in accordance with the boys’ custom to refer all their troubles to this sympathetic teacher.
“We want to get up a fair for Tim Tyler,” said Charlie, enthusiastically.
“Yes, yes!” cried Tony. Miss Barry looked down into the boys’ eager faces.
“Tim Tyler, that boy burned at the fire?”
“Yes,” said Charlie.
“That would be splendid.”
“But—but,” said Tony, “we want you to help us. Could—could you?”
“Yes, I’ll help.”
The boys were in raptures.
“Have you asked the other boys?” asked the teacher.
“No,” replied Charlie; “but there go Sid Waters and Rick Grimes down street now. We might ask them.”
“You tell them, please, I want to see them.”
When Sid and Rick arrived, their assent, at first, was readily given to the teacher’s proposition for a fair by the boys in behalf of Tim Tyler.
“Only,” said Rick, “won’t it go to old Tim, his uncle, for rum? I don’t believe in that.”
“O, Tim’s mother wouldn’t allow that.”
“But, you see, Tim had a fuss with Charlie Macomber, and imposed on him,” exclaimed Sid.
“Charlie is willing, for he has said so,” replied Miss Barry. “You are not going to hold on to an old grudge. Your name is ‘Up-the-Ladder Club,’ and not down the ladder. You go down when you hold on to a grudge, boys.”
“We won’t go down!” cried Charlie.
“No, no!” said the boys.
The different members of the club signified their willingness. Will Somers said he would assist.
One other person must be consulted, the older “honorary member” of the club, Aunt Stanshy. Knowing her very just and positive opposition to drinking habits, Miss Barry thought she might refer to old Tim’s, and throw out a sharp opinion that the uncle ought to help the boy, as he lived in the family of the boy’s mother. Charlie, too, thought his aunt might object, but she did not. She only put on that look of sadness Charlie had noticed when old Tim was in the neighborhood that rainy day, and to Will’s remark that old Tim ought to do more, she said, with a sigh,
“I suppose the boy is not responsible for other people’s failings, and they say his face is very white, and his hands are real thin, and he behaves better than he did. Yes, I’ll—help.”
It was easy to decide when to hold this fair, but “where” was a difficult problem.
“Take the barn chamber,” said Sid.
“It’s too cold,” replied Will, “and this is to be quite a grand affair.”
It was like Aunt Stanshy to offer her front room and sitting-room for Tim’s benefit, provided Will could spare his quarters, and spare he did.
“We will scatter some posters,” said Will. “I will see that they are printed.”
“We can do it ourselves with pen and ink, and then people will think more of it, you know. Besides, as we scatter them, we may have a chance to solicit donations, as they call it,” said Sid.
“Splendid!” replied Will.
“And we will call on the apothecary,” shouted Charlie.
“Yes, but if it be candy, I must put an extra string round the package to make sure that it all gets to the right place and is not troubled on the way.”
The members of the club who had met to “consult” were in excellent spirits, especially when Will said, in reply to the governor’s proposition to ask friends to contribute refreshments, “I see you know how to do it. Your experience at your fair fitted you to go right along with this thing in splendid style.”
Tony thought he could bring some pictures that had been forwarded from Italy, and Charlie said, “I guess I can get up a maginary.”
“A maginary?” asked Will.
Charlie only chuckled over his proposition, and made no explanations.
“I propose,” said Will, “I propose, Mr. President”—here he bowed to Sid, which caused that dignitary to stick his thumb into the lowest button hole of his jacket and swell out with pride—“I propose that we call our affair a ‘Helping-Hand Sale.’ You know there is a good deal in a name, and it sets people to thinking, and sets them to helping, too, and I think Miss Barry will like the name.”
This was agreeable to the club, whose members now separated to their homes.
“Aunt Stanshy,” said Charlie, that night, “do you know where my rabbit is?”
“I don’t know. Now I told you, when Miss Persnips came down here, that thing in her arms, and she smilin’ and blinkin’, as if she had an armful of gold, that she was givin’ you an elephant rather than a rabbit. Nobody knows where the critter is or what it is up to.”
Charlie found the white pet, and asked Will what he thought the rabbit looked like.
“Looks more like a rabbit than any thing else, Charlie.”
“Aunt Stanshy called it an elephant.”
“Well, you might say elephant, the white elephant of Siam—sort of a distant cousin. Why, what do you ask the question for?”
Charlie grinned, but made no reply.
Every thing was made ready for the sale. Aunt Stanshy’s two rooms were the scene of much bustle, and while the boys were at their tables, Miss Barry in a tastily-draped corner was ready for a reasonable sum to serve out refreshments to every applicant.
The Helping-Hand Sale had various attractions. Among them was Charlie’s “maginary.” It was a box covered with white cloth, a piece of workmanship at which Charlie had been secretly tinkering for two days. It was labeled “A Distant Cousin of the White Elephant of Siam. Price to see, three cents, and don’t tell when you’ve seen it.”
This attracted great attention.
“Miss Persnips,” said Charlie to the shopkeeper, who came to patronize the sale, “do you want to see my maginary? Only three cents, and don’t tell.”
“Your menagerie? Yes. What have you got there? Some dreadful animal! I’m afraid to.”
Charlie lifted the cover of the box, and there, fat and sleepy, was—Miss Persnips told the rest.
“Did you ever! That darling, sweet pet I gave you. Quite an idea, really, and here’s another cent.”
The white elephant’s relative was a conspicuous character—after the lifting of the cover—that evening.
The next morning Charlie appeared before Will, hanging out a long, dismal face, and speaking with difficulty.
“She’s gone!”
“Who, Aunt Stanshy?”
“No, Bunny!”
“Your rabbit? How?”
“I don’t know. I left her all right in the maginary, last night.”
“Let me go out and look round. But where did you put your box?”
“Well, Aunt Stanshy thought it would do just as well if I put the box out into the wood-shed—and—”
“Was the door left open?”
“I saw it open this morning.”
“I will look about.”
Will went into the wood-shed, and there before the door he saw two cats licking their chops, and their guilty eyes seemed to him to say, “Rabbit stew for breakfast! Keep dark!”
“Charlie,” said Will, entering the house again, “I think two cats out there took your rabbit, and we will catch them and box them and exhibit them.”
“As my maginary?”
“Yes, and I’ll tell you how to label them.”
The cats were caught and boxed, and this was the label their cage bore on the second and last evening of the “Helping Hand Sale:” “Destroyers of the Distant Cousin of the White Elephant of Siam.” This device took, and many pennies were put by the neighbors into Charlie’s hands. When the boys summed up the profits of the sale, they had for Tim Tyler’s benefit the sum of thirty dollars, which Mr. Walton promised should be judiciously expended.
“It all shows,” remarked Miss Barry to the club, “what we can do when we work in earnest, and also how much small sums amount to.”
Simes Badger’s comment on the affair was that Aunt Stanshy had shown herself a Christian, “knowin’ as I do,” said Simes, “the story of the Tyler affair way back.”
Mr. Walton and his old mother had something also to say about the sale, and it was in connection with one of Tony’s Italian pictures that Mr. Walton bought.
“A house, mother, in Naples, not far from the water, you see.”
The old lady was silent awhile. Then she murmured, “I have seen it, haven’t you, somewhere?”
“Why, yes—no. What is it?”
But the old lady herself was confused about it. She looked at the fair home by the sea, and then looked again, but she could not seem to positively identify it.
“And still I have seen it before,” she affirmed.
To identify the spot was like trying to get hold of the exact form of a ship that partially breaks through the fog and then recedes, ever coming yet ever vanishing.