CHAPTER XXIII—“HERE’S A STATE OF THINGS!”

“Well, who are you after?” demanded the boss, in great apparent vexation. “I ain’t got him, whoever he is!”

“Not a boy named Henry Smith?”

“What’s he done?”

“I see you’re some int’rested,” said Ricketts, drily. “Come on now, Jimson! I know you. The boy’s a bad lot.”

“Your say-so don’t make him so. And I dunno as I know the boy you mean.”

“Come now, your wife tol’ me all about him. He’s a curly-headed boy. He come along on a flatboat. You took him on as a hand in the warehouse.”

“Huh? I did, did I?” grunted Jimson, not at all willing to give in that he knew whom the deputy sheriff was talking about.

“I mean a curly-headed Yankee boy that come over yere last night in that old boat of yours, Jimson,” said the deputy sheriff, chuckling. “And your woman wants to know when you’re going to bring the boat back?”

“Huh?” growled Jimson.

“Don’t yo’ call him Curly?”

“Oh! you mean him?” said the boss. “Wal—I reckon he’s yere. Got a broken laig. Doctor won’t let him be moved. Impossible, Mr. Ricketts. Impossible!”

“I reckon I’ll look to suit myself, Jimson,” said Ricketts, firmly. “This ain’t no funnin’, you know.” Then he turned to the man in the boat. “Tie that rope to one o’ these posts, Tom, and come ashore. I may need you to hold Jimson,” and he winked and chuckled at the chagrined warehouse boss.

The big deputy sheriff strode across the porch, in at the door, scattering the wide-eyed negroes right and left, and came face to face with three pretty young girls, dressed in the party frocks donned for the ball the night before, all the frocks they had to wear on this occasion.

“Bless my soul, ladies!” gasped the confused Ricketts, sweeping off his hat. “Your servant!”

“Oh, Mr. Ricketts!” exclaimed Nettie Parsons, her hands clasped, and looking in her most appealing way up into the big man’s face. Although Nettie stood a step up from the hall floor, the deputy sheriff still towered above her head and shoulders. “Oh, Mr. Ricketts!”

“Ya-as, ma’am! that’s my name, ma’am,” said the embarrassed deputy.

“We heard what you just said,” pursued Nettie. “About Curly Smith, you know.”

“I—I——”

“And we’re awfully interested in Curly,” put in Helen, joining in the attempt to cajole a perfectly helpless officer of the law from the path of duty.

“Your servant, ma’am!” gasped the deputy, very red in the face now, and bowing low before Helen.

“There are three of us, Mr. Ricketts,” suggested Ruth, her own eyes dancing with fun, despite the really serious distress she felt over Curly’s case.

“Bless my soul!” murmured Mr. Ricketts, bowing in her direction, too. “So there are—so there are. Your servant, ma’am.”

“Then, Mr. Ricketts, if you are the servant of all of us, I know you will do what we ask,” and Nettie laughed merrily.

Little drops of perspiration were exuding upon the deputy’s broad, bald brow. He was not used to the society of ladies—not even extremely young ladies; and he felt both ridiculous and in a glow of delight. He chuckled and wabbled his head above his stiff collar, and looked foolish. But there was a grim firmness to his smoothly shaven chin that led Ruth to believe that he would not be an easy person to swerve from his path.

“You know,” repeated Nettie, taking her cue from Helen, “that we are awfully interested in that boy that you say you have come after.”

“The young scamp’s mighty lucky, then—mighty lucky!”

“But he has a broken leg—and he’s awfully sick,” said Nettie, her lips drooping at the corners as though she were about to cry.

“Tut, tut, tut! I’m awfully sorry miss. But——”

“And he’s had an awfully bad time,” broke in Helen. “Curly has. He’s ragged, and he has been ill-treated. And we saw him jump overboard and swim from that steamer before it reached Old Point Comfort, and he was picked up by a fishing boat. Oh! he is awfully brave.”

Mr. Ricketts stared and swallowed hard. He could not find voice to reply just then.

“And he saved that cat from drowning. Oh! I had forgotten that,” said Nettie, chiming in. “He really is very kind-hearted, as well as brave.”

“And,” said Ruth, from the stair above, “I am sure he never helped those men rob the Lumberton railroad station. Never!”

“My soul and body, ladies!” exclaimed the deputy sheriff. “You are sho’ more knowin’ about this yere boy from the No’th than I am. I only got instructions to git him—and git him I must.”

“Oh, Mr. Ricketts!” gasped Helen.

“Please, Mr. Ricketts!” begged Nettie.

“Do consider, Mr. Ricketts!” joined in Ruth. “He’s really not guilty.”

“Who says he ain’t?” demanded the deputy sheriff, shooting in the question suddenly.

“He says so,” said Ruth, firmly, “and I never knew Curly Smith to tell a story.”

Mr. Ricketts was undoubtedly in a very embarrassing position. He was the soul of gallantry—according to his standards. To please the ladies was almost the highest law of his nature.

Behind him, Jimson, his companion, Tom, and the negroes had gathered in a compact crowd to listen. Mr. Ricketts, hat in hand, and perspiring now profusely, did not know what to do. He said, feebly:

“My soul and body, ladies! I dunno what t’ say. I’d please yo’ if I could. But I’m instructed t’ bring this yere boy in, an’ I got t’ do it. A broken laig ain’t no killin’ matter. I’ve had one myself—ya-as, ma’am! We kin take him in this yere little launch that b’longs t’ Kunnel Peters. He’ll be ’tended to fust-class.”

“Not in your old jail at Pegburg!” cried Nettie. “You know better, Mr. Ricketts,” and she was quite severe.

“I know you, Miss Nettie,” Mr. Ricketts said, with humility, “You’re Mrs. Parsons’ niece. You say the wo’d an’ I’ll take the boy right to my own house.”

Ruth had been watching one of the negroes who had stood on the outskirts of the group. He was a big, burly, dull-looking fellow—the very man whom Curly had risked his life to save from the river the night before.

This man stepped softly away from the crowd. He disappeared toward the front of the porch. By craning her neck a little Ruth could see around the corner of the door-jamb and follow the movements of this negro with her eyes.

The man, Tom, had tied the painter of the launch to a post there. The negro stood for a moment near that post; then he disappeared altogether.

Ruth’s heart suddenly beat faster. What had the negro done? She leaned forward farther to see the launch tugging at its rope. The craft was already a dozen yards away from the hotel!

“I’m awful sorry, ladies,” declared the deputy sheriff, obstinately shaking his head. “I’ve got t’ arrest that boy. That’s my sworn and bounden duty. And I got t’ take him away in this yere launch of Kunnel Peterses.”

He turned to wave a ham-like hand toward the tethered launch. The gesture was stayed in midair. Jimson, turning likewise, burst into a high cackle of laughter.

“Here’s a state of things!” roared the deputy, and rushed out upon the porch. The launch was whirling away down the current, far out of reach. “Here, Tom! didn’t you hitch that boat?”

“I reckon ye won’t git away with that there little Yankee boy as you expected, Mr. Ricketts,” cried Jimson. “Er-haw! haw! haw!”

CHAPTER XXIV—THE CHAMBER CONCERT

Mr. Ricketts seemed satisfied to know that the boy was upstairs and in good hands. He did not—at that time—ask to see him; and Ruth wanted, if she could, to keep news of the deputy’s arrival from the knowledge of the patient.

“Oh, dear me, Ruth!” groaned Helen. “It never rains but it pours.”

“That seems very true of the weather in this part of the world,” agreed her chum. “I never saw it rain harder than it has during the past few days.”

“Goodness! I don’t mean real rain,” said Helen. “I mean troubles never come singly.”

“What’s troubling you particularly now?” asked Ruth.

“I’ve lost my last handkerchief,” said Helen, tragically. “Isn’t it just awful to be here another night without a single change of anything? I feel just as mussy as I can feel. And this pretty dress will never be fit to wear again.”

“We’re better off than some of the girls,” laughed Ruth. “One of those that room with us danced right through her stockings, heel and toe, the evening of the hop; and now every time she steps there is a great gap at each heel above her low pumps. With that costume she wears she can put on nothing but black stockings, and I saw her just now trying to ink her heels so that when anybody follows her upstairs, they will not be so likely to notice the holes in her stockings.”

“Well! if that were all that bothered us!” groaned Helen. “What are we going to do about Curly?”

“What can we do about him?” asked Ruth.

“You don’t want to see him arrested and carried to jail, do you?”

“No, my dear. But how can we help it—when this deputy sheriff manages to find a craft in which to take him away from the island?”

“I wish Nettie’s Aunt Rachel were here,” cried the other Northern girl.

“Even Mrs. Parsons, I fear, could not stop the law in its course.”

“I don’t know. She is pretty powerful,” returned her chum, grinning. “See how nice they have all begun to treat us since Nettie threatened them with the terrors of her Aunt Rachel’s displeasure.”

“Perhaps. But I would rather they were nice to us for our own sakes,” Ruth said thoughtfully. “If it were not for Nettie, and Curly and the concert we want to give for his benefit, I wouldn’t care whether many of them spoke to us or not. And every time that Miggs woman is in sight she makes me feel awfully unhappy,” confessed Ruth. “I don’t believe I ever before disliked anybody quite so heartily as I dislike her.”

“Dislike! I hate her!” exclaimed Helen.

“It’s awful to feel so towards any human creature,” Ruth went on. “And I fear that we ought to pity her, not to hate her.”

“I should like to know why?” demanded Helen, in some heat.

“Mrs. Holloway told one of the ladies the particulars of Miss Miggs’ coming down here, and why she is such a nervous wreck—and the lady just told me.”

“‘Nervous wreck,’” scoffed Helen. “Wrecked by her ugly temper, you mean.”

“She has been the sole support, and nurse as well, of a bed-ridden aunt for years. During this last term—she teaches in a big school in Bannister, Massachusetts—she had a very hard time. She has always had trouble with her girls; and evidently doesn’t love them.”

“Not so’s you’d notice it,” grumbled Helen.

“And they made her a good deal of trouble. The old aunt became more exacting toward the last, and finally Miss Miggs was up almost all night with the invalid and then was harassed in the schoolroom all day by the thoughtless girls.”

“Oh, dear me, Ruthie! now you are trying to find excuses for the mean old thing.”

“I’m telling you—that’s all.”

“Well! I don’t know that I want you to tell me,” sniffed Helen. “I don’t feel as ugly toward that Miggs woman as I did.”

“I feel very angry with her myself,” Ruth said. “It is hard for me to get over anger, I am afraid.”

“But you are slow to wrath. ‘Beware the anger of a patient man’ says—says—well, somebody. ‘Overhaul your book and, when found, make note of,’” giggled Helen. “Well! how did Martha get away from the aunt?”

“The aunt got away from her,” said Ruth, gravely. “She died—just before the end of the term. Altogether poor Miss Miggs was ‘all in,’ as the saying is.”

Helen sniffed again. She would not own up that she was affected by the story.

“Then,” said Ruth, earnestly, “just a few days before the end of school some of her girls played a trick on the poor thing and frightened her—oh, horribly! She fell at her desk unconscious, and the girls who had played the trick ran out of the room and left her there—of course, not knowing that she had fainted. She broke her glasses, and when she came to she could not find her way about, and almost went mad. It was a very serious matter, indeed. They found her wandering about the room quite out of her mind. Mrs. Holloway had already invited her down here and sent her a ticket from Norfolk to Pee Dee, where she was to take boat again. The doctors said the trip would be the best thing for her, and they packed her off,” concluded Ruth.

“Well—she’s to be pitied, I suppose,” said Helen, grudgingly. “But I can’t fall in love with her.”

“Who could? She has had a hard time, just the same, When she lost her ticket she had barely money enough to bring her on to Pee Dee where Mrs. Holloway met her. The poor thing was worried to death. You see, all her money had been spent on the aunt, and her funeral expenses.”

“Well! she’s unfortunate. But she had no business to accuse us of stealing her ticket—if it was stolen at all.”

“Of course somebody picked it up. But the ticket may have done nobody any good. She says she left it in the railroad folder on that seat in the steamer’s saloon—you remember.”

“I remember vividly,” agreed Helen, “our first encounter with Miss Miggs.” Then she began to laugh. “And wasn’t she funny?”

“‘Not so’s you’d notice it!’ to quote your own classic language,” said Ruth, sharply. “There was nothing funny about it.”

“That is when we first saw Curly on the boat.”

“Yes. He was there. But he didn’t hear anything of the row, I guess. He says he had no idea we were on that boat—and we saw him three times.”

“And heard him jump overboard,” finished Helen. “The foolish boy.”

She went away to sit by him and tell him stories. Helen was developing quite a reputation as a nurse. The boy was in pain and anything was welcome that kept his mind for a little off the troublesome leg.

The girls were very busy that evening with another matter. Permission had been asked and obtained to give the proposed “chamber concert” for Curly’s benefit. What the boy had done in saving two lives was well known now among the enforced guests at Holloway’s, and the idea of any entertainment was welcome.

There was a mimeograph on which the hotel menus were printed and Ruth got up a gorgeous program in two-colored ink of the “chamber concert,” inviting everybody to come.

“And they’ve just got to come, my dears,” said Nettie, who took upon herself the distribution of the concert programs and—as Helen called it—the “boning” for the money. “Ev’ry white person in this hotel has got to pay a dollar at least, fo’ the pleasure of hearing Helen play and Ruth sing. That’s their admission.”

“I’d like to see you get a dollar for that purpose out of Miss Miggs,” giggled Helen.

“Never mind, honey, somebody will have to pay fo’ her,” declared Nettie. “Then we’ll sell the choice seats and the boxes at auction.”

“Goodness, child!” cried Ruth. “What boxes do you mean; soap boxes?”

“The front stairs,” said Nettie, placidly. “The seats in the upstairs hall here will be reserved, and must bring a premium, too.”

“The ingenuity of the girl!” gasped Ruth.

“Why, Ruthie,” said Helen, “it isn’t anything to get up a concert, or to carry a program all alone. But it takes genius to devise such schemes as this. You will be a multi-millionairess before you die, Nettie.”

“I expect to be,” returned the Southern girl. “Now, listen: Each of these broad stairs will hold four people comfortably. We will letter the stairs and number the seats.”

“But those on the lower step will have their feet in the water!” cried Ruth, in a gale of laughter.

“Very well. They will be nearest to the performers. You say yourselves that you will probably have to be barefooted, when you are down there singing and playing,” said Nettie. “They ought to pay an extra premium for being allowed to be so near to the performers. That is ‘the bald-headed row.’”

“And every bald head that sits there will have a nice cold in his head,” Ruth declared.

However, Nettie had her way in every particular. The next evening the auction of “reserved seats and boxes” was held in the upper hall. Mr. Jimson officiated as auctioneer and for an hour or more the party managed to extract a great deal of wholesome fun from the affair.

The deputy sheriff was made to subscribe for the two lower tiers of seats on the stair at a good price, because, as Mr. Jimson said, “he was the bigges’ an’ fattes’ man in dis hyer destitute community.” The other seats sold merrily. No one hesitated over paying the admission fee. There is nobody in the world as generous both in spirit and actual practice as these Southern people.

Almost two hundred dollars was raised for Curly’s benefit. The concert was held the afternoon following the auctioning of the seats, and the chums covered themselves with glory.

The piano was rolled out into the hall and the negroes knocked together a platform on which Ruth and Helen could stand and play, while Nettie perched herself on the piano bench to accompany them, and kept her feet out of the water.

They sang the old glees together—all three of them, for Nettie possessed a sweet contralto voice. Ruth’s ballads were appreciated to the full and Helen—although the instrument she used was so poor a one—delighted the audience with her playing.

When she softly played the old, sweet harmonies, and Ruth sang them, the applause from Curly’s couch at the end of the hall to the foot of the stairs where the deputy sheriff sat with his boots in the water, was tremendous.

The concert ended with the girls standing in a row with clasped hands and for the glory of Briarwood giving the old Sweetbriar “war-cry:”

    “S.  B.—Ah-h-h!
    S.  B.—Ah-h-h!
    Sound  our  battle-cry
    Near  and  far!
    S.  B.—All!
    Briarwood  Hall!
    Sweetbriars,  do  or  die——
    This  be  our  battle-cry——
    Briarwood  Hall!
    That’s  All!”

During all the time it had rained intermittently, and the river did not show any signs of abating. But the morning following the very successful “chamber concert,” a large launch chugged up to the submerged steps of the hotel on Holloway Island. In it was Mrs. Rachel Parsons, and with her was the negro from the warehouse who had been swept down the river on the log when Mr. Jimson’s bateau made its landing at the island.

Mrs. Parsons had been unable to get to Charleston after all because of washouts on the railroad, and had come back to Georgetown, heard of the marooning on the island of the pleasure party and at the first opportunity had come up the river to rescue Nettie, Ruth and Helen.

A plank was laid for Mrs. Parsons from the bow of the launch to the lower step of the flight leading to the second story of the hotel. Mrs. Holloway came down in a flutter to meet the lady of the Big House.

Mrs. Parsons, however, had gone straight to Nettie’s room and was shut in with her niece for half an hour before she had anything to say to the hotel keeper’s wife, or to anybody else. Then she went first to see poor Curly, who was feverish and in much pain.

Just as Mrs. Parsons and her niece were passing down the hall they met Miss Miggs. Nettie shot the maiden lady an angry glance and moved carefully to one side.

“Is this the—the person who has circulated the false reports about Ruth and Helen?” asked Mrs. Parsons, sternly.

“No false reports, I’d have you know, ma’am!” cried Martha Miggs, “right on deck,” Curly said afterwards, “to repel boarders.” “I’d have you know I am just as good as you are, and I’m just as much respected in my own place,” she continued. Miss Miggs’ troubles and consequent nervous break had really left her in such a condition that she was not fully responsible for what she did and said.

“I have no doubt of that,” said Mrs. Parsons, quietly. “But I wish to know what your meaning is in trying to injure the reputation of two young girls.”

The little group had reached Curly’s bedside; but they did not notice that young invalid. Ruth had risen from her seat nervously, wishing that Nettie’s Aunt Rachel had not brought the unpleasant subject to the surface again.

“I could not injure the reputation of a couple of young minxes like these!” declared Miss Miggs, angrily. “I put the ticket in the railroad folder, and laid it on the seat beside me in the steamer’s saloon, and when I got up I forgot to take the folder with me. These girls were the only people in sight. They were watching me, and when my back was turned they took the ticket and folder.”

“Who?” suddenly shouted a voice behind them, and before any of the party could reply to Miss Miggs’ absurd accusation.

Curly was sitting up in bed, his cheeks very red and his eyes bright with fever; but he was in his right senses.

“Those girls did it!” snapped Miss Miggs.

“They didn’t, either!” cried Curly. “I did it. Now you can have me arrested if you want to!” added the boy, falling back on his pillows. “I didn’t know the ticket belonged to anybody. When I was drying my things aboard that fishing boat, I found it in a folder that I had picked up in the cabin of the steamer. I s’posed it was a ticket the railroad gave away with the folder, until I asked a railroad man if it was good, and he said it was as good as any other ticket. So I rode down to Pee Dee on it from Norfolk. There now! If that’s stealin’, then I have stolen, and Gran is right—I’m a thief!”

Even as obstinate a person as Miss Miggs was forced to believe this story, for its truth was self-evident. It completely ended the controversy about the lost ticket; but Curly Smith was not satisfied until enough money was taken out of the fund raised for his benefit to reimburse Mrs. Holloway for the purchase-money of the ticket she had sent to her New England cousin.

“I wish, Martha, I had never invited you down here,” the hotel keeper’s wife was heard to tell the New England woman. “You’ve made me trouble enough. I will never be able to pacify Mrs. Parsons. She is going to take the young ladies and the boy away at once, and I know that she will never again give me her good word with any of her wealthy friends. Your ill-temper has cost me enough, I am sure.”

Perhaps it had cost Miss Miggs a good deal, too; only Miss Miggs was the sort of obstinate person who never does or will acknowledge that she is wrong.

CHAPTER XXV—BACK HOME

Mr. Ricketts, too, received information that called him off the case. “That there li’le Yankee boy ain’t t’ be arrested after all,” he confessed to Ruth. “Guess he jest got in wrong up No’th. But yo’d better take him back with you when you go, Miss Ruth, He needs somebody to take care of him—sho’ do!”

The river subsided and the girls went back to Merredith. They spent the next fortnight delightfully and then the chums from Cheslow got ready to start home. They could not take Curly with them; but he would be sent to New York by steamer just as soon as the doctors could get him upon crutches; and eventually the boy from Lumberton returned to his grandmother, a much wiser lad than when he left her home and care.

The days at Merredith, all things considered, had been very delightful. But the weather was growing very oppressive for Northerners. Ruth and Helen bade Mrs. Parsons and Nettie and everybody about the Big House, including Mr. Jimson, good-bye and caught the train for Norfolk. They had a day to wait there, and so they went across in the ferry to Old Point Comfort, found Unc’ Simmy, and were driven out to the gatehouse to see Miss Catalpa.

“And we sho’ done struck luck, missy,” Unc’ Simmy confided to Ruth. “Kunnel Wildah done foun’ some mo’ money b’longin’ t’ Miss Catalpa, an’ it’s wot he calls a ‘nuity. It comes reg’lar, like a man’s wages,” and the old darkey’s smile was beautiful to see.

“Now Miss Catalpa kin have mo’ of the fixin’s like she’s use to. Glory!”

“He is the most unselfish person I have ever met,” said Ruth to Helen. “It makes me ashamed to see how he thinks only of that dear blind woman.”

Miss Catalpa welcomed the chums delightedly; and they took tea with her on the vine-shaded porch of the old gatehouse, Unc’ Simmy doing the honors in his ancient butler’s coat. It was a very delightful party, indeed, and Helen as well as Ruth went away at last hoping that she would some time see the sweet-natured Miss Catalpa again.

Three days later Mr. Cameron’s automobile deposited Ruth at the Red Mill—her arrival so soon being quite unexpected to the bent old woman rocking and sewing in the cheerful window of the farmhouse kitchen.

When Ruth ran up the steps and in at the door, Aunt Alvirah was quite startled. She dropped her sewing and rose up creakingly, with a murmured, “Oh, my back! and oh, my bones!” but she reached her thin arms out to clasp her hands at the back of Ruth Fielding’s neck, and looked long and earnestly into the girl’s eyes.

“My pretty’s growing up—she’s growing up!” cried Aunt Alvirah. “She ain’t a child no more. I can’t scurce believe it. What have you seen down South there that’s made you so old-like, honey?”

“I guess it is not age, Aunt Alvirah,” declared Ruth. “Maybe I have seen some things that have made me thoughtful. And have endured some things that were hard. And had some pleasures that I never had before.”

“Just the same, my pretty!” crooned the old woman. “Just as thoughtful as ever. You surely have an old head on those pretty young shoulders. Oh, yes you have.”

“And maybe that isn’t a good thing to have, after all—an old head on young shoulders,” thought Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill the night of her return, as she sat at her little chamber window and looked out across the rolling Lumano. “Helen is happier than I am; she doesn’t worry about herself or anybody else.

“Now I’m worrying about what’s to happen to me. Briarwood is a thing of the past. Dear, old Briarwood Hall! Shall I ever be as happy again as I was there?

“I see college ahead of me in the fall. Of course, my expenses for several years are assured. Mr. Hammond writes me that he will take another moving picture scenario. I have found out that my voice—as well as Helen’s violin playing—can be coined. I am going to be self-supporting and that, as Mrs. Parsons says, is a heap of satisfaction.

“I need trouble Uncle Jabez no more for money. But I can’t remain in idleness—that’s ‘agin nater,’ to quote Aunt Alvirah. I know what I’ll do! I’ll—I’ll go to bed!”

She arose from her seat with a laugh and began to disrobe. Ten minutes later, her prayers said and her hair in two neat plaits on the pillow, Ruth Fielding fell asleep.

THE RUTH FIELDING SERIES

By ALICE B. EMERSON