A SECRET.
“Why,you, Harry? I didn’t know you had come home!” Kate, glancing up from the book from which she had been reading aloud, has only at this moment noticed the boy’s entrance.
“I haven’t been home yet. I wanted to consult you first. You see I’m expelled.” (Harry, you must know, has been away at school since early in September.) “Thought I’d tell you on the start, so you wouldn’t feel imposed upon. Why, you take it all as a matter of course! You don’t look a bit surprised!’
“To tell the truth, we’renotvery. And how do you do, you blessed boy? You don’t know how we’ve missed you!” And Kate seizes his two hands with a heartiness that proves her faith in him is still unshaken.
“Miss Katy! if you’ve got a particle of respect left for me, won’t you give me some supper? I’m hungry as a bear. Just got in on the train. Haven’t had a mouthful to eat since noon!”
“The poor child! So heshouldhave some supper. I’ll go directly and see about it.”
“This was the way it happened,” Harry explains, over the waffles and coffee. “You see, when I first went there the boys were a solemncholy lot, oh, I tell you! studious as owls, got to improve each shining hour, and all that. Well, I thought if that sort of thing was going to last I shouldn’t survive long. So I went to work and got ’em stirred up after awhile, and things got to be kind of lively. But Tabby—that’s the Principal—the way he hangs his eye out’s a caution. Oh, no, Miss Katy; that’s only a nickname we gave him; he’s got such a cattish way of prowling around nights to see if there’s any doings going on. Anything but a sneak! Well, I thought I’d be even with ’im; so last night I laid torpedoes all along the hall; oh, Miss Katy, nothing but those little paper wads that never hurt anybody in the world. Well, the last bell rung and we put out the lights, and lay still and listened. By’n by—pop! pop! pop! Tabby was coming to see if everything was all right. Ha, ha! guess his moccasins must ’ave run against every identical one. You’d ’ave thought he was having a Fourth of July celebration out there all by himself. But wasn’t he hoppin’ mad, though! Called me into the study this morning right after breakfast.”
“Ha, ha! guess his moccasins must ’ave run against every identical one.”—Page 78.
“Ha, ha! guess his moccasins must ’ave run against every identical one.”—Page 78.
“‘Did you place those torpedoes in the hall last night?’ says he.
“‘Yes, sir,’ says I.
“‘What was your object?’
“‘Fun,’ says I.
“Well, he gave me a long lecture, said he didn’t like my influence in the school, that he’d had more trouble during the few weeks I’d been there than in any five years before. Well, the long an’ short of it was I’d got to leave. That was just what I wanted. So off I come, and here I am, with a letter for father in my pocket that gives me an awful setting out, I expect.” (Harry’s countenance grows suddenly grave.) “I wouldn’t care if it was only father I’d got to chalk up to; but Aunt Sophi’!” (No use trying to describe the tone in which that name is uttered.) “I thought, Katy—I thought, maybe you’d be willing to go over there, and—well, kind of talk her around, you know—why, kind of smooth matters, that is, so she won’t be quite so hard on a fellow. Won’t you, now? If you will I’ll go back there to old Williams, and I’ll study like anything! I will, now, and behave myself; oh, you shall see! if you’ll only go this once.”
Kate doesn’t like to get up a reputation for being meddlesome; but she recalls how kind and attentive this boy has been to her brother, and it is not in her heart to refuse. So she leaves the two chatting by the fireside and crosses the street to spend an evening with Aunt Sophia.
“I don’t know what possesses me, sometimes,” says Harry, at length, waxing confidential as usually when alone with the Lieutenant. “I believe it’s the Old Nick! I was always getting into scrapes ever since I was knee-high to a grasshopper. Now, some fellows find it smooth sailing all along, never get into trouble. I wonder why?”
“Perhaps they are not so blessed with animal spirits.”
“Well, I don’t see how it’s to be called a blessing.”
“The river flowing through our town is a mischievous river, sometimes, especially in spring, when the snow is melting, and, overfed by the streams from the hills, it comes rushing along, sweeping away dams and bridges, and tearing about generally, in a very unreasonable fashion. Yet farther on, at Factoryville, where it plunges over the rocks, it keeps the mills going all the year round. In fact, there would be no mills there if it were not for our brave little river ‘putting its shoulder to the wheel.’ Besides, we must admit, it is quite an important feature in the landscape, winding among the woods and fields, flashing and shimmering in the sunlight. And how often you and I have stopped to listen to the plash and ripple of its waters as we walked along the banks. I remember what company that music was to me, one dark night, a good while ago,when I was returning from a long tramp up the valley. Just so, since the loss of my eyesight has made for me continual night, you scarcely would believe, Harry, how many times I have been cheered by your merry flow of spirits. As sister says, we have missed you. It is no small thing to be missed by one’s friends when he is away from them. Nor is such a good-for-nothing, stove-up piece of humanity as myself the only one you can find to cheer, if you will look about you. Life is full of shadows. It is a sorrowful sort of night to multitudes of people. Such natures as yours were meant to make the darkness less dreary, and when you come to the mill-wheels to turn them.”
“But the mill-wheels? I don’t exactly understand about that.”
“Well, for instance, the weather is growing cold; winter is not far off. We sit here by a fire and find it very comfortable. There are a good many to-night who haven’t any fire. We have had our supper. There are a good many who must go without. If you will notice in the streets to-morrow, you will see little feet shoeless, stockingless. People who go without food, and fire, and sufficient clothing, get sick, have fevers, diphtheria, what not? But, unfortunately, the fevers, and so forth, won’t stay shut up in alleys and tumble-down tenements; they creep out, out into the broad streets,into the fine mansions of brick and stone, and all over the city, hunting for the cunning little Ediths, the pretty Maries.”
“Oh, I never thought of that!”
“People who haven’t food, and fire, and warm clothing, often attempt to steal them, or the wherewithal to pay for them. People who steal, if they are caught at it, go to prison. When they come out again nobody will trust them or employ them. Since they cannot find work, and have got to live somehow, what must they do? Steal. So it comes about that a great many people steal for a living. And where did all this crime commence? Like the fevers, with the lack of food, and fire, and clothing. As Tennyson’s ‘Northern Farmer’ says:—
“‘’Tisn’ them as ’as munny as breäks into ’ouses an’ steäls,Them as ’as coäts to their backs and taäks their regular meäls.Noä, but it’s them as niver knaws wheer a meäl’s to be ’ad.’”
“‘’Tisn’ them as ’as munny as breäks into ’ouses an’ steäls,Them as ’as coäts to their backs and taäks their regular meäls.Noä, but it’s them as niver knaws wheer a meäl’s to be ’ad.’”
“‘’Tisn’ them as ’as munny as breäks into ’ouses an’ steäls,Them as ’as coäts to their backs and taäks their regular meäls.Noä, but it’s them as niver knaws wheer a meäl’s to be ’ad.’”
“‘’Tisn’ them as ’as munny as breäks into ’ouses an’ steäls,
Them as ’as coäts to their backs and taäks their regular meäls.
Noä, but it’s them as niver knaws wheer a meäl’s to be ’ad.’”
“That puts me in mind of the fellow that broke into our house.”
“This is the first I have heard of it.”
“Why, you see, one night last winter I thought I heard somebody in the dining-room. So down I went. There ’e was at the sideboard. He’d got it open, and was taking the silver out. Well, I pitched at ’im—you know I’m some on the muscle—and got hold of his revolver,and there I had ’im. But my! he looked so starved, and kind of forlorn, and hollow-eyed, I opened the front door for ’im and let ’im go. Expect I ought to ’ave handed ’im over to the police. Guess I never told of it before. It might scare the women-folks, you know. But wouldn’t it give Aunt Sophi the fidgets? After that I used to sleep with one ear open. She didn’t know she was sending away her watch-dog when she hustled me off to school in such a hurry.”
The Lieutenant reflects. Here is a boy who does not hesitate to cope with a burglar, who has been known to risk his own life to rescue a drowning companion, and yet is loth to enter his home from dread of an Aunt Sophia’s tongue.
“Then turning the mill-wheels,” Harry resumes, “that means helping the poor?”
“Partly, yes. Though, as one thinks about it, it seems to imply much more.”
“But where’s a body to begin? There’s poverty enough, I suppose; but some are so proud you can’t get at ’em, and some, but they’ve got the cheek! dogging you and sticking their paws out for a penny every turn you take. I always think they’re sham.”
“It might be a good way to exercise one’s ingenuity finding out. As for the pride, you’ve read in the story-books of the needfuls that found their way mysteriouslyto empty cupboards. It sounds rather fanciful; yet there are people who take great delight in putting romance into real life, and a generous deed is none the worse for being delicately done.”
“But thatwouldbe jolly, now! Jinks! I’d go at it to-morrow if I only knew where to begin.”
“Sister could give you more information on that subject than I can. You two will have to put your heads together and talk it over. Ah, yes! and I have in mind a little newsboy to whom you can be of service. I really believe our rollicking Harry would be better satisfied with himself for using some of his extra energy and pocket-money in these ways. Come, let him give the Tabbies, and Old Williamses, as he calls them, a rest. There’s something better for him to do than worrying them. As I heard said once: ‘There is so much to be done in this world! There are so few to do it.’ You are going to be one of those few, surely. A rich man’s son has it in his power to set a great many wheels in motion. You see the Lieutenant is quite a sermonizer when he gets fairly started. But I have taken this opportunity to be earnest, for once, and before it is too late.”
Before it is too late! Harry, who has been wondering, the while, at this serious language, so uncommon from his genial friend, wonders still more at that expression. What does he mean? He asks, finally.
“I’m half sorry I let the words escape me; but now that I have aroused your curiosity, and since you trust me with your secrets, well, yes, I will tell you. You know one mustn’t expect to engage in battles and come out whole and sound. One day a small, round piece of lead discharged from a rifle took lodgings in my shoulder, and has since been slowly working its way down towards my heart. So it seems that a bullet is to be the death of me after all.”
Harry stares at the Lieutenant in mute amazement. Death! He suddenly becomes aware how strong are the cords of love which bind him to the blind man. To lose him, his best friend! No more confidential talks, him no more to come to in trouble, and doubt, and perplexity, and lay open all one’s thoughts! he who first discovered good in the wayward nature—a little, tender plant, so covered by the dust that others could not see, and helped it to grow and thrive in spite of the trampling that else would have destroyed it.
“Oh, Lieutenant! it isn’t true! Something can be done!”
No, it appears from the reply, nothing can be done.
“Nobody knows? Katy doesn’t know?” the boy asks, at length, in a husky, tremulous voice.
“The surgeon and Lem have known of it only. It was on sister’s account that I wished the matter to bekept quiet. I wanted to spare her the sadness as long as possible. But I must tell her very soon. It will not do for it to come upon her too suddenly. Ah, my Katy!” and another voice is low and tremulous.
“Is it painful ever?”
“Sometimes.”
“And you’ve kept it to yourself all these years! We didn’t know!”
From the chimney corner where he has been lounging Harry gazes once more at the patient face, pallid from silent, secret suffering, at the empty sleeve, at the eyes which cannot see; then he throws himself flat upon the carpet in a fit of weeping—he who so rarely sheds a tear—and his surprise, and grief, and anger, take expression in one passionate outcry against the war which caused all this—that brothers’ war!
But as he lies there sobbing, listening to some calm and soothing words, there comes to him—even to Harry—a remembrance of a face he has somewhere seen pictured. That, too, was a pallid face and patient. It drooped from a cross; and the brow was encircled by thorns; and underneath was written:
IT IS FINISHED.