Czytaj książkę: «From School to Battle-field: A Story of the War Days», strona 5

And all this was passing through Shorty's mind as the steely blue eyes of Mr. Park were searching his flushing face, and more things, too. With all her ambition and moderate wealth, Mrs. Lawrence occupied a social position just a plane below that on which moved Shorty's kith and kin. Beautiful old homes on the lower avenue and around Washington Square where they were welcome knew not Mrs. Lawrence. She had encouraged, unquestioning, Snipe's growing intimacy with his little friend, because it "brought the families together," as she once gushingly explained to Shorty's favorite aunt, and, as she confided to her husband, might lead to even more. Much, therefore, did she question Snipe as to what took place at table, in the parlor and music-room of the big household in Fourteenth Street, and, in the engrossing interest she felt in the doings of certain of its elder inmates, lost all thought of those of the boys themselves. Not until within the past few days had she been required to give an account of her stewardship, and now the butler's revelations, gathered mainly, as he stated, from market conferences with the magnate who presided over the board at Shorty's, had filled her with dismay.

"Them boys, ma'am," was that dignitary's comprehensive summing up, "do be seeing the worst society in New York, 'stead of rejoicin' in the best – with their relatives."

"You do not answer," at last says Park. "Could you find no better way of spending your play hours than going around among low firemen?"

"We spent 'em at base ball when the weather was good," says Shorty, shortly, and there is glowing temper in the tone which the Doctor knows of old, and he sees it is time to interpose.

"I have never said anything to you about this, my young friend," says he, "because I found that your relatives knew all about it, and thought you capable of keeping out of trouble; but I did not know Lawton was so often with you. What Mr. Park wishes to know is why you spent so much time among the firemen and so little among your classmates?"

Shorty turns to the Doctor fearlessly. Him he knows and trusts. Twice for boyish misdemeanors has the great teacher bidden him take his books and leave the school, and both times has he reinstated him, as he had others, within twelve hours. "I don't care for these Sammy-go-softly boys," he had confided to Shorty. "I don't mind a little fun, but it must not take the form of impertinence to teachers or disobedience of their orders. If they are unjust, I'll straighten it out myself, but don't you try." Like most of the boys in the First Latin, Shorty knows he has the Doctor's sympathy and friendship, and so the answer comes pat. "The reason was because he had no money and was ashamed of his clothes."

Mr. Park is severely judicial. School-boy impetuosity must not be permitted to ruffle him. With great dignity he begins, —

"I do not approve of young lads having unlimited pocket-money or fashionable clothes, much less so in the case of a lad who must make his own way in the world, as George will have to do."

"That's what Snipe said," was Shorty's quick reply. "Most of the class have both, however; and as he had neither and I only a little, we couldn't keep up with the crowd, so we spent our time together."

"I am amazed that your grandparents should approve of such pernicious association for so young a lad as you," says Park, shifting the point of attack, for he feels that a revelation is imminent, and doesn't care to have the rector know how little he gave and how much he demanded. But it is bad fencing, for Shorty "disengages" with equal skill and follows with a palpable hit. Ignoring Park's comment, he faces the Doctor again.

"You know, sir, that there isn't another boy in the class has to get his boots and gloves and pay his way on fifty cents a week." And Pop, inwardly convulsed, feels compelled to reprove.

"Tut, tut!" he says. "These are matters for parents and guardians to settle. Little boys must hold their tongues." And when Pop means to be especially crushing he "little boys" the First Latin.

"Any proper and necessary expense incurred by George would have been promptly allowed," says Park, loftily, "had he seen fit to confide in me or in his mother."

"He couldn't tell his mother, even when he was nearly barefoot," blurts out Shorty. "She wrote him last year she'd rather sell her watch than ask you for money for him!" And now Park, too, reddens, for he realizes that the statement is probably true. Hastily he returns to the charge. This boy knows and talks too much. It isn't safe to allow him the floor. Pop turns away, with evidences of earthquake-like disturbances underneath that silken waistcoat.

"Then this is the excuse," says Park, severely, "for his resorting to pawnbrokers – with stolen property."

And Shorty bursts out indignantly, "He never stole a thing, or sold it either!" And now his eyes look pleadingly to the Doctor as though to say, "You know this can't be so! Why do you let him lie?"

And as though to answer the appeal and come to the rescue of a maligned and beloved pupil, Pop turns instantly, every sign of merriment gone.

"Surely you are misinformed, Park," he says. "There was nothing but some last year's books and his father's old shotgun. He told us everything."

"He didn't tell you everything," answers Park, with emphasis. "How much of this is due to evil associations you can judge better than I; but look here," and from a bulging pocket of his overcoat he produces a package wrapped in a red silk handkerchief. A minute later and he lays upon the desk Seymour's handsome gold pencil-case, an old-fashioned watch and chain, such as women wore twenty years earlier, and some cameo earrings, with breastpin to match. "These," says he, solemnly, "were recovered this morning. They represent only a small portion of what his aunt, his benefactress, has found to be missing from her box of disused trinkets and heirlooms. The boy was shrewd enough to confine his stealings to things that wouldn't have been missed for weeks or months, perhaps, had not a faithful domestic's suspicions been aroused. This will be a sore blow to his poor mother. It has almost prostrated his aunt, and I dare say we don't begin to know the worst. Has nothing been missed by his classmates here at school?"

There are beads of sweat on the Doctor's pale forehead as he turns away, Joy's watch instantly occurring to him. As for Shorty, in distress and consternation, mingled with vehement unbelief, for once in his life he is dumb.

CHAPTER VIII

Another week began. Pop's boys gathered on Monday morning, and the first question on every lip was for Snipe, and all in vain. He had disappeared as from the face of the earth. Shorty looked an inch shorter and several pounds lighter. His chatter was silenced, his young heart heavy as lead. He had had two miserable days, and there were more before him. He had been closely questioned, both at home and at the Lawrences', over and over again, as to all their haunts and habits, which he and poor Snipe had shared in their leisure hours, and stoutly he maintained that never had Snipe entered a pawnshop while they were together, – never had he mentioned such a thing. The one piece of information he could give, that went to confirm the suspicions attaching to the missing boy, was that during the three weeks previous to his disappearance George had seemed to have much more money than usual. He had ordered a new pair of shoes, had bought some collars and neckties, had "stood treat" two or three times, and had got Shorty to go with him to a great clothier's, much affected by the school, to try on some overcoats. He had totally outgrown the one he brought from home two years previous, and was going without one, and seemed divided in his mind whether to buy a new one for winter or a new suit of clothes. Another thing Shorty had to tell was that of late Snipe had missed several evenings when Shorty expected him, or had come very late and said he had been of an errand. Of course, it was now apparent to poor Mrs. Lawrence that her nephew's suddenly discovered crimes were all due to her intrusting him entirely to Shorty and his kindred, and Mr. Park was oracularly severe in his comments on youthful depravity of so glaring a character that it could be satisfied with no association less disreputable than that of the rowdies of the fire department. He went so far as to make some such assertion to Shorty's uncle, who was called into a conference, and this was lucky for Shorty, – one of the few lucky things that happened to him that sorrowful winter. Ordinarily he would doubtless have been made the recipient of several lectures of the same tenor as Mr. Park's, only less radical, but the moment Park ventured to assert that his step-son had been led astray, and that Shorty's kindred had shut their eyes to the boys' misdoings and let them go their wicked ways, he stirred up the whole tribe and put them on the defensive. Uncles and aunts might even have thought somewhat as did Park, but not after he laid his accusation at their door. Shorty submitted his whole cabinet of possessions to prove that nothing of his was missing, except one pair of gold sleeve-links, which he had lent Snipe, and gladly lent him. "If Snipe ever stole, why didn't he steal my watch?" he chokingly asked. "It was as good as Joy's, and hadn't any name on it, as his had, and he could have sold it easier." All the evidence in creation couldn't make that butt-headed boy believe that Snipe was a thief. What he probably had stolen, since they were missing from his room, were his school-books of previous years, a set of Marryat's novels that had belonged to his father, and his father's old shotgun, which he had brought to New York with him, and had no use for whatever. Perhaps he was thinking, poor fellow, of selling his father's old watch, a bulky, yellow "turnip," too big for him to wear, in order to get the money to buy those sorely needed clothes. Shorty well remembered Snipe's story of how his mother cried during that summer's vacation because she could give him so little when he needed so much; but Park's dominion was absolute. "That boy must learn the value of money," he constantly said. "He must know as I knew what it is to plan and contrive to make five cents do the work of twenty-five. Then he may amount to something." Park said the boy's clothes were better than he wore in his school-days, when he had to sweep shop and make the fires and sleep in an attic, without a curtain to his window or a rag to the floor. Shorty began to realize at last how great must have been Snipe's temptations, and still he wouldn't believe he stole. Even the sight of Seymour's pencil failed to convince him, – even the fact that Snipe had certainly run away, if indeed he had not made away with himself.

But in the class there was gloom and sadness almost equal to Shorty's, and by Monday noon all the story was out and much besides. Nothing could exceed the virtuous amaze of Briggs. He always had suspected Lawton, "but you fellows would not believe." Nothing more sardonic than Hoover's grinning face could be imagined. His blinking eyes seemed fairly to snap with comfort over the contemplation of Lawton's turpitude. By this time it was being asserted that Snipe had stolen his aunt's diamonds, Joy's watch, and every missing item, big or little, that had disappeared during the three years of his membership in the school. John, the janitor, was overhauled, questioned and cross-questioned. He dodged, parried, broke away, but by implication confessed that he found out that Lawton was going to a certain pawnshop on Third Avenue, and had been there two or three times within the previous month. Park paid the school another visit that afternoon and had brief conference with the Doctor, looked steadily and with stern disapproval at poor Shorty, sitting midway down the line and drifting gradually towards the foot. The First Latin took Park's measure, as they had Meeker's, and disapproved of him. They wondered would he attempt to address them. If he did, not one applauding hand could there be, except Briggs's or possibly Hoover's, if he referred to Snipe's to-be-expected fall. Snipe might have fallen, but if ever a boy was pushed and driven over a precipice he was, said they, and, take them by and large, the First Latin would have gone out of their way to shake hands with Snipe or to avoid shaking hands with his step-father. Park left before school closed, but to Joy's request of the Doctor, in the name of the class, for news of Snipe, the answer was given that they still had nothing authentic, though they thought they had a clue. He had once spent a month with some kinsfolk of his poor mother's in Pennsylvania, and Park opined that he would presently be heard of there, where his peculations, he might hope, had not yet become known.

There were half a dozen of the boys walking together down the avenue that afternoon, Shorty in their midst. They were plying him with questions and conjectures. No, he was not going to the Lawrences', he said. He would never, probably, go there again. No, he hadn't been around among the engine-houses. He didn't at all believe in Snipe's guilt, and wouldn't believe he was hiding on that account. How did he account for Seymour's pencil? He couldn't account for it. All he could say was, that he'd bet anything he owned that Snipe wasn't a thief, and some day they'd find it out, and find out who was. It so happened that Briggs had gone on ahead with Hoover, the two lads with their heads close together in eager conference, but at Eighteenth Street he held back and stood waiting for the little knot of excited boys. Bertram and Joy were of the lot, tall young fellows on whose upper lips the down was sprouting and who on Sundays went to church in their first tophats. They were the elders, the senate of the school, and at sight of Briggs they muttered malediction and cautioned silence.

"Say, Shorty!" cried the pachyderm, as Pop had named him, "twice last week I went to your house and asked for you, and the man said you weren't home. You were up in your room with Snipe Lawton, and I know it. I watched, and saw you come out with him half an hour later. What you 'fraid of? Think I was policeman with a search-warrant?"

The little fellow's blue eyes blazed up, but Bertram grabbed him and Joy turned savagely on the leering tormentor. "Shut up! you sneaking whelp!" he cried, "or I'll smash you here and now!" And glaring and red-faced in his wrath, Joy looked fully capable of doing it.

"Why, what have I done?" sneered Briggs. "He's the fellow that stood by the thief that's been robbing us right and left, and didn't dare let his own classmate come up in his room."

"You used to ring the bell and bolt up there the moment the door was opened, you cad!" answered Joy, "just as you did at my house and others until orders had to be given not to let you in. Get out of the way! No one in this party wants to be seen in the same street with you."

"Oh, all right," snarled Briggs. "If you want to run with thieves and pickpockets you're welcome. I don't."

But now there was a crash on the broad flagstones as the red-labelled, calf-bound, tightly-strapped volumes of Virgil and Xenophon went spinning to the curb, and, wrenching himself free from Bertram's relaxing grasp, Shorty flew at Sandy Briggs like a bull terrier at some marauding hound. Quick, alert, active, the surest-footed boy in the school, there was no dodging his spring. The whack of the leather on the flagging was echoed on the instant by the biff-bapp of two knotty fists, and Briggs reeled back before the sudden storm and tumbled into the gutter. Instantly the others threw themselves on Shorty or between the two. Briggs bounded up in a fury, the blood streaming from his nose, rage and blasphemy rushing from his swelling lips. He was ready enough to fight a boy so much smaller, and disdained Julian's prompt proffer of himself as Shorty's substitute. A policeman at the Everett corner came sprinting across at sight of the swift-gathering crowd. Joy and Julian saw him, and grabbing Briggs, darted with him down the stairway to the Clarendon's barber-shop. Bertram, Beekman, and Gray snatched up Shorty and Shorty's books and fled with him eastward towards Lexington Avenue. The row was over as quick as it began, but not, alas! the results. "I'll pay that blackguardly little cur for this, – you'll see if I don't!" shrieked Briggs at his captors, and they all knew that even as he could dissemble, that fellow could hate.

Late that afternoon the Doctor sat in the midst of his books and manuscripts in the solemn library, the sanctum in which he rarely permitted himself to be disturbed, yet he lifted his massive head and listened eagerly as a servant entered with a message.

"Send him right in here," said he, throwing down his pen, and the words were hardly out of his mouth when in came Shorty, bounding, breathless, excited, and with snapping eyes. "Ha, lad! So you've heard from Lawton! What does he say?" And trembling, rejoicing, triumphing, yet troubled, the youngster read from a letter in his hand.

Dear Shorty, – I couldn't stand it. I had to go, and, please God, I'll never come back, only I want you to know the reason and you won't blame me much. I begged Halsey not to tell the Doctor or anybody what that low sneak of a janitor told him. It's no disgrace to be so poor that a fellow has to pawn his old books and things to get shoes, and you know how I was fixed; you know that I was on my bare feet, almost, and that my clothes wouldn't cover me. I couldn't ask a penny of Aunt Lawrence, and they didn't seem to see or care how I looked. I couldn't worry mother any more, so what was there to do? They gave me a shilling apiece for the school-books, and then I took over my Marryats – I hadn't even read some of 'em – and got twenty cents apiece, and finally father's old shotgun. It was mine; mother had given it to me. It was no use to me. Why shouldn't I sell it and buy clothes? I didn't know it was so costly and valuable, but Aunt Lawrence says now it was worth one hundred and fifty dollars. It came from London. I thought I was lucky to get seven dollars for it. Of course old Binny saw me one night ["Binny is the butler," explained Shorty. "He hated both of us, I suppose, having to answer door so much, – Aunt Lawrence wouldn't let Snipe have a key"], and I guess he must have sneaked after me; but when Halsey told me it was known I visited the pawnbroker's (it wasn't a pawnbroker's. It was just a second-hand store), and demanded to know what I'd sold, and talked of the disgrace and all that, and hinted things about Joy's watch and other missing items I never even heard of, I told him the whole thing, and begged him not to make trouble for me, – I had enough. But he said the Doctor must know, and the Doctor sent me round with him and I showed him the shop, and he rowed the man in charge and said my aunt must be told at once. You never heard such a row as she made, – the shame and the disgrace I'd brought on them all. She could never show her face in society again. Selling my father's books! my father's beautiful gun, that my poor mother had so proudly intrusted to me! Why, Shorty, she drove me nearly mad. Even Halsey tried to stop her after a while, and to say it didn't begin to be as bad as she made it, but she ordered me to my room, and then came up and jawed until I was near crazy, and then when she'd talked herself out up comes Cousin Maud, and she just belched fire and brimstone for an hour; and after dinner that night Uncle Lawrence, – why, he never so much as noticed me generally, and you know how he used to pass us on the street and never see us, – he went on at a perfectly infernal rate. I was an ingrate and a thief and a consorter with the lowest order of humanity (rough on you that was, Shorty), and when he got through I'm blessed if they didn't wind up by sending my little cousin, Queenie, – I always liked her, – but she went on and preached about disgrace and shame just like Aunt Lawrence, and how good they'd all been to me, and how shocking was my ingratitude! She supposed I spent the money in liquor and cigars for my rowdy friends (I did stand treat to milk and custard pie as much as twice); and then Aunt Lawrence comes up again, and read me what she'd written to mother, and that was the last pound. I had five dollars left that I was saving for some clothes, and planning to sell the old watch and get the rest of the money I needed, but she took that away, lest I should steal that too, she said, and I was to be sent back to Rhinebeck as soon as mother could be heard from. She'd been to the Doctor and told him I don't know what, and came back and said the Doctor and teachers as much as declared they thought me the thief that stole Joy's watch. She told me to go and say good-by to you and confess everything, but I shall never disgrace the home where I was so kindly welcomed by setting foot inside its doors again. I've started out for myself, Shorty, dear old boy, and I'll make a living, never you fear, and I'll write to you sometimes when I can do so without being followed or found out. Don't let the fellows think too mean of me. Here's the one thing I've got to confess, and you tell it to Seymour. I found his pencil under the fourth bench that afternoon Beach kept me in two hours for welting Beekman with a putty-ball, and instead of giving it to Beach, as the rule is, I stuck it in my pocket and never thought of it again until next morning, just as I got to school and saw Seymour. I hunted in my pocket and it was gone. I ran home at recess and hunted everywhere, and asked the girl who makes believe do up my room, but couldn't find a trace of it. That was two weeks ago, and all this time I've been hoping to find it, or when I got the money on the watch to buy him another and tell him the whole story. Now I can't do either.

Good-by, Shorty, dear old fellow! Say good-by to Bonner and Hank and Keating and Joe Hutton. Forty's boys were always kind to us, weren't they? And if any of the class feel that I am not altogether a disgrace to them, give them a bit of love, from yours till death.

Snipe.

The little reader was almost sobbing when he got through, but the Doctor was on his feet and listening in undisguised interest and sympathy.

"But that pencil was found among those things Mr. Park brought to the school!" he exclaimed. Then, as a sudden light seemed to flash over the case, he took the missive in his big, white hand and pored over the last two of its many pages. "You have shown this to – ?" he began.

"Nobody, sir. Nobody was at home. I brought it right to you."

"Then leave it with me and say nothing about it till I tell you. I will see your grandfather to-morrow."