Greensburg, Westmoreland Co., Pa.To Robert John Whilthaugh:When and where can I see you on important business? Answer.Beverly Molyneux, forThomas Molyneux.
Greensburg, Westmoreland Co., Pa.
To Robert John Whilthaugh:
When and where can I see you on important business? Answer.
Beverly Molyneux, forThomas Molyneux.
Then he took a walk, and after half an hour called at the office again. The office was still engaged in calling Greensburg. Greensburg was eating its Christmas dinner. But at last Greensburg was called. Then Beverly received this answer:—
Whilthaugh has been dead more than a year.Greensburg.
Whilthaugh has been dead more than a year.
Greensburg.
To which Beverly replied:—
Where does his wife live, or his administrator?
Where does his wife live, or his administrator?
To which Greensburg, having been called a second time with difficulty, replied:—
His wife is crazy, and we never heard of any property.Greensburg.
His wife is crazy, and we never heard of any property.
Greensburg.
With this result of his investment as a non-dividend member of the great Western Union Mutual Information Club, Beverly returned home, chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancies.
“There is no speech nor language,” sang the choir in St. Matthews as he passed, “where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth—” And Tom heard no more, as he passed on.
As he walked, almost unwillingly, up the street to the high steps of his father’s house, Matty, out of breath, overtook him.
“What have you found, Bev?”
“Nothing,” said the boy, moodily. And poor Matty had to confess that she had hardly more to tell.
They came into the house by the lower entrance, that they need not attract their mother’s attention. But she was on the alert. Even Horace and the younger children knew by this time that something was wrong.
Horace’s story about the strange man and papa was the last news of papa. Papa had not been at the bureau. The bureau people waited for him till two, and he did not come. Then Stratton had come round to see if he was to keep open any longer. Stratton had told Mrs. Molyneux that her husband had not been there since church.
Where in the world was he?
Poor Mrs. Molyneux had not known where to send or to go. She had just looked in at the Doctor’s, but he was not there.
Tom had appeared first to her tedious waiting. Tom would not tell her, but he even went and looked in on Newspaper Row, which he had been abusing so. For Tom’s first thought was that a formal information had been lodged somewhere, and that his father was arrested.
But Newspaper Row evidently was unsuspicious of any arrest.
Tom even walked down to the old jail, and made an absurd errand to see the Deputy-Marshal. But the Deputy-Marshal was at his Christmas dinner.
Tom told all this in the hall to Beverly and to Matty.
Everything had failed, and papa was gone. Who could the man in the shaggy coat be?
The three went together into the parlor.
For a little, Matty and Horace and Tom and Beverly then made a pretence of arranging the tree. But, in truth, Mrs. Molyneux, in the midst of all her care, had done that, while they were all away.
Dinner was postponed half an hour, and they gathered, all in the darkness, looking at the sickliest blaze that ever rambled over half-burned Cumberland coal.
The Brick came climbing up on Tom’s knees and bade him tell a story; but even Laura saw that something was wrong, and hushed the child, and said she and Flossy would sing one of their carols. And they sang it, and were praised; and they sang another, and were praised. But then it was quite dark, and nobody had any heart to say one word.
“Where is papa?” said the Brick.
“Where indeed?” everybody wanted to say, and no one did.
But then the door-bell rang, and Chloe brought in a note.
“He’s waiting for an answer, mum.”
And Tom lighted the gas. It popped up so bright that little Flossy said,—
“The people that sat in darkness saw a great light—”
This was just as Mrs. Molyneux tore open the note. For the instant she could not speak. She handed it to the three.
“Found“Home in half an hour!“All right! thank God!
“Found“Home in half an hour!“All right! thank God!
T. M.”
“Saw a great light, indeed!” said Horace, who, for once, felt awed.
Forhalf a minute, as it seemed afterwards, no one spoke. Then Matty flew to her mother, and flung her arms around her neck, and kissed her again and again.
Tom hardly knew what he was doing; but he recovered self-command enough to know that he must try to be manly and business-like,—and so he rushed downstairs to find the man who brought the note. It proved to be a man he did not know. Not a messenger from the bureau, not one from the Navy Department, least of all, an aid of the Assistant Marshal’s. He was an innocent waiter from the Seaton House, who said a gentleman called him and gave him the note, told him to lose no time, and gave him half a dollar for coming. He had asked for an answer, though the gentleman had not told him to do so.
Tom wrote: “Hurrah! All’s well! All at home.—T.” and gave this note to the man.
They all talked at once, and then they sat still without talking. The children—must it be confessed?—asked all sorts of inopportune questions. At last Tom was even fain to tell the story of the bear himself, by way of silencing the Brick and Laura; and with much correction from Horace, had got the bear well advanced in smelling at the almond-candy and the figs, when a carriage was heard on the street, evidently coming rapidly towards them. It stopped at the door. The bear was forgotten, as all the elders in this free-and-easy family rushed out of the parlor into the hall.
Papa was there, and was as happy as they. With papa, or just behind him, came in the man with the rough coat, whose face at church had been so dirty, whose face now was clean. To think that papa should have brought the Deputy-Marshal with him! For by the name of “the Deputy-Marshal” had this mysterious stranger been spoken of in private by the two young men since the fatal theory had been advanced that he had come into the church to arrest Mr. Molyneux.
The unknown, with great tact, managed to keep in the background, while Mrs. Molyneux kissed her husband, and while Matty kissed him, and while among them they pulled off his coat. But Mr. Molyneux did not forget. He made a chance in a moment for saying, “You must speak to our friend who has brought me here; no one was ever so welcome at a Christmas dinner. Mr. Kuypers, my dear, Mr. Kuypers, Matty dear; these are my boys, Mr. Kuypers.”
Then the ladies welcomed the stranger, and the boys shook hands with him. Mr. Molyneux added, what hardly any one understood: “It is not every friend that travels two thousand miles to jog a friend’s memory.”
And they all huddled into the parlor. But in a moment more, Mrs. Molyneux had invited Mr. Kuypers to go upstairs to wash himself, and he, with good feeling, which he showed all the evening, gladly took himself out of the way, and so, as Tom returned from showing him to his room, the parlor was filled with “those God made there,” as the little boy used to say, and with none beside.
“Now tell us all about it, dear papa,” cried Tom.
“I was trying to tell your mother. But there is not much to tell. Poor Mr. Kuypers had travelled all the way from Colorado, the minute he heard I was in trouble. Yesterday he bought the ‘Scorpion’ in the train, and found the Committee was down on us. He drove here from the station as soon as the train came in. He missed you here, and drove by mistake to Trinity. That made him late with us, and so, as the service had begun, he waited till it was done.”
“Well!” said Bev, perhaps a little impatiently.
“But so soon as we were going out he touched me, and said he had come to find me, in the matter of the Rio Grande vouchers. Do you know, Eliza, I can afford to laugh at it now, but at the moment I thought he was a deputy of the Sergeant-at-Arms?”
“There!” screamed Tom, “I said he was a deputy-marshal!”
“I said, ‘Certainly;’ and I laughed, and said they seemed to interest all my friends. Then he said, ‘Then you have them? If I had known that, I would have spared my journey.’ This threw me off guard, and I said I supposed I had them, but I could not find them. And he said eagerly—this was just on the church steps—‘But I can.’
“Then he said he had a carriage waiting, and he bade me jump in.
“So soon as we were in the carriage he explained, what I ought to have remembered, but could not then recollect for the life of me, that after General Trebou returned from Texas, there was a Court of Inquiry, and that there was some question about these very supplies, the beans and the coffee particularly; they had nothing to do with the landing nor with the Mexicans. And the Court of Inquiry sent over one day from the War Department, where they were sitting, to our office for an account, because we were said to have it. Mr. Kuypers was their messenger to us, and because we had bound them all together, the whole file was sent as it was. He took them, and as it happened, he looked them over, and what was better, he remembered them. Where our receipt is, Heaven knows!
“Well, that Court of Inquiry was endless, as those army inquiries always are. Mr. Kuypers was in attendance all the time. He says he never shall forget it, if other people do.
“So, as soon as he saw that we were in trouble at the bureau—that I was in trouble, I mean,” said Mr. Molyneux, stoutly, “he knew that he knew what nobody else knew,—that the vouchers were in the papers of that Court of Inquiry.”
“And he came all the way to tell? What a good fellow!”
“Yes, he came on purpose. He says he could not help coming. He says he made two or three telegrams; but every time he tried to telegraph, he felt as if he were shirking. And I believe he was right. I believe we should never have pulled through without him. ‘Personal presence moves the world,’ as Eli Thayer used to say.”
“And you found them?” asked Mrs. Molyneux, faintly essaying to get back to the story.
“Oh Yes, we found them; but not in one minute. You see, first of all, I had to go to the chief clerk at the War Department and get the department opened on a holiday. Then we had no end of clerks to disturb at their Christmas dinners, and at last we found a good fellow named Breen who was willing to take hold with Mr. Kuypers. And Mr. Kuypers himself,” here he dropped his voice, “why, we have not three men in all the departments who know the history of this government or the system of its records as he does.
“Once in the office, he went to work like a master. Breen was amazed. Why! We found those documents in less than half an hour!
“Then I sent Breen with a note to the Secretary. He was good as gold; came down in his own carriage, congratulated me as heartily—well almost as heartily as you do, Tom—and took us both round, with the files, to Mr. McDermot, the Chairman of the House Committee. He was dining with his mess, at the Seaton House, but we called him out, and I declare, I believe he was as much pleased as we were.
“I only stopped to make him give me a receipt for the papers, because they all said it was idle to take copies, and here we are!”
On the hush that followed, the Brick made his way up on his father’s knee and said,—
“And now, papa, will you tell us the story of the bear? Tom does not tell it very well.”
They all laughed,—they could afford to laugh now; and Mr. Molyneux was just beginning upon the story of the bear, when Mr. Kuypers reappeared. He had in this short time revised his toilet, and looked, Mr. Molyneux said in an aside, like the angel of light that he was. “Bears!” said he, “are there any bears in Washington? Why, it was only last Monday that I killed a bear, and I ate him on Tuesday.”
“Did you eat him all?” asked the Brick, whose reverence for Mr. Kuypers was much more increased by this story than by any of the unintelligible conversation which had gone before. But just as Mr. Kuypers began on the story of the bear, Chloe appeared with beaming face, and announced that dinner was ready.
That dinner, which this morning every one who had any sense had so dreaded, and which now seemed a festival indeed!
Well! there was great pretence in fun and form in marshalling. And Mr. Kuypers gave his arm to Matty, and Horace his to Laura, and Beverly his to Flossy, and Tom brought up the rear with the Brick on his shoulders. And Mr. Molyneux returned thanks and asked a blessing all together. And then they fell to, on the turkey and on the chicken pie. And they tried to talk about Colorado and mining; about Gold Hill and Hale-and-Norcross, and Uncle Sam and Overman and Yellow Jacket. But in spite of them all, the talk would drift back to Bundy and his various signs, “Our House” and Tom and Jerry; to the wife of Mr. Whilthaugh; to Commodore Benbow; to old Mrs. Gilbert and Delaware Avenue. And this was really quite as much the fault of Mr. Kuypers as it was of any of the Molyneux family. He seemed as much one of them as did Tom himself. This anecdote of failure and that of success kept cropping out. Walsingham’s high-bred and dignified enthusiasm for the triumph of the office, and the satisfaction that Eben Ricketts would feel when he was told that the Navy never had the vouchers,—all were commented on. Then Mr. Molyneux would start and say, “We are talking shop again. You say the autumn has been mild in the mountains;” and then in two minutes they would be on the trail of “Search and Look” again.
It was in one of these false starts that Mr. Kuypers explained why he came, which in Horace’s mind and perhaps in the minds of the others had been the question most puzzling of all.
“Why,” said Horace, bluntly, “had you ever heard of papa before!”
“Had I heard of him? “ said Mr. Kuypers. “I think so. Why, my dear boy, your father is my oldest and kindest friend!” At this exclamation even Mrs. Molyneux showed amazement. Tom laid down his fork and looked to see if the man was crazy, and Mr. Molyneux himself was thrown off his balance.
Mr. Kuypers was a well-bred man, but this time he could not conceal his amazement. He laid down knife and fork both, looked up and almost laughed, as he said with wonder,—
“Don’t you know who I am?”
“We know you are our good angel to-day,” said Mrs. Molyneux, bravely; “and that is enough to know.”
“But don’t you know why I am here, or what sent me?”
Mr. Molyneux said that he understood very well that his friend wanted to see justice done, and that he had preferred to see to this in person.
“I thought you looked queer,” said Mr. Kuypers, frankly; “but still, I did not know I was changed. Why, don’t you remember Bruce? You remember Mrs. Chappell, surely.”
“Are you Bruce?” cried Mr. Molyneux; and he fairly left his chair and went round the table to the young man. “Why, I can see it now. But then—why, you were a boy, you know, and this black beard—”
“But pray explain, pray explain,” cried Tom. “The mysteries increase on us. Who is Mrs. Chappell, and, for that matter, who is Bruce, if his real name be not Kuypers?”
And they all laughed heartily. People got back their self-possession a little, and Mr. Kuypers explained.
“I am Bruce Kuypers,” said he, “though your father does not seem to remember the Kuypers part.”
“No,” said Mr. Molyneux, “I cannot remember the Kuypers part, but the Bruce part I remember very well.”
“My mother was Mrs. Kuypers before she married Mr. Chappell, and Mr. Chappell died when my brother Ben was six years old, and little Lizzy was a baby.”
“Lizzy was my godchild,” said Mrs. Molyneux, who now remembered everything.
“Certainly she was, Mrs. Molyneux, and last month Lizzy was married to as good a fellow as ever presided over the melting of ingots. We marry them earlier at the West than you do here.”
“Where Lizzie would have been,” he said more gravely, addressing Tom again, “where my mother would have been, or where I should have been but for your father and mother here, it would be hard to tell. And all to-day I have taken it for granted that to him, as to me, this has been one part of that old Christmas! Surely you remember?” he turned to Mrs. Molyneux.
Yes, Mrs. Molyneux did remember, but her eyes were all running over with tears and she did not say so.
“Mr. Molyneux,” said Bruce Kuypers, again addressing Tom, “seventeen years ago this blessed day, there was a Christmas morning in the poor old tenement above Massachusetts Avenue such as you never saw, and such as I hope you never may see.
“There was fire in the stove because your father had sent the coal. There was oatmeal mush on the table because your father paid my mother’s scot at your father’s grocer.
“But there was not much jollity in that house, and there were no Christmas presents, but what your mother had sent to Bruce and Ben and Flora, and even to the baby. Still we kept up such courage as we could. It was a terribly cold day, and there was a wet storm.
“All of a sudden a carriage stopped at the door, and in came your father here. He came to say that that day’s mail had brought a letter from Dr. Wilder of the navy, conveying the full certificate that William Chappell’s death was caused by exposure in the service. That certificate was what my mother needed for her pension. She never could get it, but your father here had sifted and worried and worked. The ‘Macedonian’ arrived Thursday at New York, and had Dr. Wilder on board, and Friday afternoon your father had Wilder’s letter, and he left his own Christmas dinner to make light my mother’s and mine. That was not all. Your father, as he came, had stopped to see Mr. Birdsall, who was the Speaker of the House. He had seen the Speaker before, and had said kind things about me. And that day the Speaker told him to tell me to come and see him at his room at the Capitol next day. Oh! how my mother dressed me up! Was there ever such a page seen before! What with your father’s kind words and my dear mother’s extra buttons, the Speaker made me his own page the next day, and there I served for four years. It was then that I was big enough to go into the War Department, and Mr. Goodsell—he was the next Speaker, if you remember—recommended me there.
“After that,” said Bruce Kuypers, modestly, if I did not see you so often, but I used to see you sometimes, and I did not think”—this with a roguish twinkling of the eye—“that you forgot your young friends so soon.”
“I remember you,” said Tom. “I used to think you were the grandest man in Washington. You gave me the first ride on a sled I ever had, when there was some exceptional fall of snow.”
“I think we all remember Mr. Kuypers now,” said Matty, and she laughed while she blushed; “he always bought things for our stockings. I have a Noah’s Ark upstairs now, that he gave me. In my youngest days I had a queer mixture of the name Bruce and the name Santa Claus. I believe I thought Santa Claus’ name was Nicholas Bruce. I am sure I did not know that Mr. Bruce had any other name.”
“If you had said you were Mr. Chappell,” said Mr. Molyneux, “I should have known you in a minute.”
“But I was not,” said the young man, laughing.
“Well, if you had said you were ‘Bruce,’ I should have known.”
“Dear me, yes; but I have been a man so long, and at Gem City nobody calls me Bruce, but my mother and Lizzy. So I said ‘Mr. Kuypers,’ forgetting that I had ever been a boy. But now I am in Washington again, I shall remember that things change here very fast in ten years. And yet not so fast as they change at the mines.”
And now everybody was at ease. How well Mrs. Molyneux recalled to herself what she would not speak of that Christmas Day of which Mr. Kuypers told his story! It was in their young married life. She had her father and mother to dine with her, and the event was really a trial in her young experience. And then, just as the old folks were expected, her husband came dashing in and had asked her to put dinner a little later because he had had this good news for the poor Widow Chappell, and she had to tell her father and mother, when they came, that they must all wait for his return.
The Widow Chappell was one of those waifs who seem attracted to Washington by some fatal law. It had been two or three months before that Mr. Molyneux had been asked to hunt her up and help her. A letter had come, asking him to do this, from Mrs. Fales, in Roxbury, and Mrs. Fales had sent money for the Chappells. But the money had gone in back rent, and shoes, and the rest, and the wolf was very near the Chappells’ door, when the telegraph announced the “Macedonian.” Mr. Molyneux had telegraphed instanter to this Dr. Wilder. Dr. Wilder had some sense of Christmas promptness. He remembered poor Chappell perfectly, and mailed that night a thorough certificate. This certificate it was which Mr. Molyneux had carried to the poor old tenement of Massachusetts Avenue, and this had made happy that Christmas Day—and this.
“Why,” said Mr. Bruce Kuypers, almost as if he were speaking aloud, “it seems so queer that Christmas comes and goes with you, and you have forgotten all about that stormy day, and your ride to Mrs. Chappell’s!
“Why, at our place, we drink Mr. Molyneux’s health every Christmas Day, and I am afraid the little ones used to think that you had a red nose, a gray beard, and came down the chimney!”
“As, at another place,” said Matty, “they thought of Mr. Bruce—of Noah’s Ark memory.”
“Anyway,” said Mr. Molyneux, “any crumbs of comfort we scattered that day wereBread upon the Waters.”
Of Mr. Kuypers’s quick journey the main points have been told. Six days before, by some good luck, which could hardly have been expected, the “Gem City Medium’s” despatch from Washington was full enough to be intelligible. It was headed, “Another Swindler Nailed.” It said that Mr. Molyneux, of the Internal Improvement office, had feathered his nest with $500,000 during the war, in a pretended expedition to the Rio Grande. It had now been discovered that there never was any such expedition, and the correspondent of the Associated Press hoped that justice would be done.
The moment Bruce Kuypers read this he was anxious. Before an hour passed he had determined to cross to the Pacific train eastward. Before night he was in a sleeping-car. Day by day as he met Eastern papers, he searched for news of the investigation. Day by day he met it, but thanks to his promptness he had arrived in time. It was pathetic to hear him describe his anxiety from point to point, and they were all hushed to silence when he told how glad he was when he found he should certainly appear on Christmas Day.
After the dinner, another procession, not wholly unlike the rabble rout of the morning, moved from the dining-room to the great front parlor, where the tree was lighted, and parcels of gray and white and brown lay round on mantel, on piano, on chairs, on tables, and on the floor.
No; this tale is too long already. We will not tell what all the presents were to all the ten,—to Venty, Chloe, Diana, and all of their color. Only let it tell that all the ten had presents. To Mr. Kuypers’s surprise, and to every one’s surprise, indeed, there were careful presents for him as for the rest, but it must be confessed that Horace and Laura had spelled Chipah a little wildly. The truth was that each separate person had feared that he would feel a little left on one side,—he to whom so much was due on that day. And each person, severally, down to the Brick himself, had gone secretly, without consulting the others, to select from his own possessions something very dear, and had wrapped it up and marked it for the stranger. When Mr. Kuypers opened a pretty paper, to find Matty’s own illustrated Browning, he was touched indeed. When in a rough brown paper he found the Brick’s jack-knife labelled “FOR THE MAN,” the tears stood in his eyes.
The next day the “Evening Lantern” contained this editorial article:—
“The absurd fiasco regarding the accounts of Mr. Molyneux, which has occupied the correspondents of the periodical press for some days, and has even been adverted to in New York journals claiming the title of metropolitan, came to a fit end at the Capitol yesterday. The wiseacre owls who started it did not see fit to put in an appearance before the committee. Mr. Molyneux himself sent to the Chairman a most interesting volume of manuscript, which is, indeed, a valuable historical memorial of times that tried men’s souls. The committee and other gentlemen present examined this curious record with great interest. Not to speak of the minor details, an autograph letter of the lamented Gen. Trebou gives full credit to the Bureau of Internal Improvement for the skill with which they executed the commission given them in a department quite out of their line. Our brethren of the ‘Argus’ will be pleased to know that every grain of oats and every spear of straw paid for by, the now famous $47,000, are accounted for in detail. The authenticated signatures of the somewhat celebrated Camara and Gazza and the mythical Captain Cole appear. Very valuable letters, throwing interesting light on our relations with the Government of Mexico, from the pens of the lamented Adams and Prigg, show what were the services of those Spanish turncoats and their allies.“We cannot say that we regret the attention which has thus been given to a very important piece of history, too long neglected in the rush of more petty affairs. We take the occasion, however, to enter our protest once more against this preposterous system of ‘Resolutions,’ in which, as it were in echo to every niaiserie of every hired pen in the country, the House degrades itself to the work of the common scavenger, orders at immense expense an investigation into some subject where all well informed persons are fully advised, and at a cost of the national treasure, etc., etc., etc. to the end of that chapter.’”
“The absurd fiasco regarding the accounts of Mr. Molyneux, which has occupied the correspondents of the periodical press for some days, and has even been adverted to in New York journals claiming the title of metropolitan, came to a fit end at the Capitol yesterday. The wiseacre owls who started it did not see fit to put in an appearance before the committee. Mr. Molyneux himself sent to the Chairman a most interesting volume of manuscript, which is, indeed, a valuable historical memorial of times that tried men’s souls. The committee and other gentlemen present examined this curious record with great interest. Not to speak of the minor details, an autograph letter of the lamented Gen. Trebou gives full credit to the Bureau of Internal Improvement for the skill with which they executed the commission given them in a department quite out of their line. Our brethren of the ‘Argus’ will be pleased to know that every grain of oats and every spear of straw paid for by, the now famous $47,000, are accounted for in detail. The authenticated signatures of the somewhat celebrated Camara and Gazza and the mythical Captain Cole appear. Very valuable letters, throwing interesting light on our relations with the Government of Mexico, from the pens of the lamented Adams and Prigg, show what were the services of those Spanish turncoats and their allies.
“We cannot say that we regret the attention which has thus been given to a very important piece of history, too long neglected in the rush of more petty affairs. We take the occasion, however, to enter our protest once more against this preposterous system of ‘Resolutions,’ in which, as it were in echo to every niaiserie of every hired pen in the country, the House degrades itself to the work of the common scavenger, orders at immense expense an investigation into some subject where all well informed persons are fully advised, and at a cost of the national treasure, etc., etc., etc. to the end of that chapter.’”
But I fear no one at the Molyneux mansion had “the lantern.” They had “found a man,” and did not need a lantern to look farther.
It was as Mr. Molyneux had said: he had cast his Bread upon the Waters, and he had found it after many days.
“PASSENGERS for Philadelphia and New York will change cars.”
This annoying and astonishing cry was loudly made in the palace-car “City of Thebes,” at Pittsburg, just as the babies were well asleep, and all the passengers adapting themselves to a quiet evening.
“Impossible!” said I, mildly, to the “gentlemanly conductor,” who beamed before me in the majesty of gilt lace on his cap, and the embroidered letters P. P. C. These letters do not mean, as in French, “to take leave,” for the peculiarity of this man is, that he does not leave you till your journey’s end: they mean, in American, “Pullman’s Palace Car.” “Impossible!” said I; “I bought my ticket at Chicago through to Philadelphia, with the assurance that the palace-car would go through. This lady has done the same for herself and her children. Nay, if you remember, you told me yourself that the ‘City of Thebes’ was built for the Philadelphia service, and that I need not move my hat, unless I wished, till we were there.”
The man did not blush, but answered, in the well-mannered tone of a subordinate used to obey,
Here are my orders, sir; telegram just received here from headquarters: ‘“City of Thebes” is to go to Baltimore.’ Another palace here, sir, waiting for you.” And so we were trans-shipped into such chairs and berths as might have been left in this other palace, as not wanted by anybody in the great law of natural selection; and the “City of Thebes” went to Baltimore, I suppose. The promises which had been made to us when we bought our tickets went to their place, and the people who made them went to theirs.
Except for this little incident, of which all my readers have probably experienced the like in these days of travel, the story I am now to tell would have seemed to me essentially improbable. But so soon as I reflected, that, in truth, these palaces go hither, go thither, controlled or not, as it may be, by some distant bureau, the story recurred to me as having elements of vraisemblance which I had not noticed before. Having occasion, nearly at the same time, to inquire at the Metropolitan station in Boston for a lost shawl which had been left in a certain Brookline car, the gentlemanly official told me that he did not know where that car was; he had not heard of it for several days. This again reminded me of “The Lost Palace.” Why should not one palace, more or less, go astray, when there are thousands to care for? Indeed had not Mr. Firth told me, at the Albany, that the worst difficulty in the administration of a strong railway is, that they cannot call their freight-cars home? They go astray on the line of some weaker sister, which finds it convenient to use them till they begin to show a need for paint or repairs. If freight-cars disappear, why not palaces? So the story seems to me of more worth, and I put it upon paper.
It was on my second visit to Melbourne that I heard it. It was late at night, in the coffee-room of the Auckland Arms, rather an indifferent third-class house, in a by-street in that city, to which, in truth, I should not have gone had my finances been on a better scale than they were. I laid down, at last, an old New York “Herald,” which the captain of the “Osprey” had given me that morning, and which, in the hope of home-news, I had read and read again to the last syllable of the “Personals.” I put down the paper as one always puts down an American paper in a foreign land, saying to myself, “Happy is that nation whose history is unwritten.” At that moment Sir Roger Tichborne, who had been talking with an intelligent-looking American on the other side of the table, stretched his giant form, and said he believed he would play a game of billiards before he went to bed. He left us alone; and the American crossed the room, and addressed me.
“You are from Massachusetts, are you not?” said he. I said I had lived in that State.
“Good State to come from,” said he. “I was there myself for three or four months,—four months and ten days precisely. Did not like it very well; did not like it. At least I liked it well enough: my wife did not like it; she could not get acquainted.”
“Does she get acquainted here?” said I, acting on a principle which I learned from Scipio Africanus at the Latin School, and so carrying the war into the enemy’s regions promptly. That is to say, I saw I must talk with this man, and I preferred to have him talk of his own concerns rather than of mine.
“O sir, I lost her,—I lost her ten years ago! Lived in New Altoona then. I married this woman the next autumn, in Vandalia. Yes, Mrs. Joslyn is very well satisfied here. She sees a good deal of society, and enjoys very good health.”
I said that most people did who were fortunate enough to have it to enjoy. But Mr. Joslyn did not understand this bitter sarcasm, far less resent it. He went on, with sufficient volubility, to give to me his impressions of the colony,—of the advantages it would derive from declaring its independence, and then from annexing itself to the United States. At the end of one of his periods, goaded again to say something, I asked why he left his own country for a “colony,” if he so greatly preferred the independent order of government.
Mr. Joslyn looked round somewhat carefully, shut the door of the room in which we were now alone,—and were likely, at that hour of the night, to be alone,—and answered my question at length, as the reader will see.
“Did you ever hear of the lost palace?” said he a little anxiously.
I said, no; that, with every year or two, I heard that Mr. Layard had found a palace at Nineveh, but that I had never heard of one’s being lost.
“They don’t tell of it, sir. Sometimes I think they do not know themselves. Does not that seem possible?” And the poor man repeated this question with such eagerness, that, in spite of my anger at being bored by him, my heart really warmed toward him. “I really think they do not know. I have never seen one word in the papers about it. Now, they would have put something in the papers,—do you not think they would? If they knew it themselves, they would.”
“Knew what?” said I, really startled out of my determination to snub him.
“Knew where the palace is,—knew how it was lost.”
By this time, of course, I supposed he was crazy. But a minute more dispelled that notion; and I beg the reader to relieve his mind from it. This man knew perfectly well what he was talking about, and never, in the whole narration, showed any symptom of mania,—a matter on which I affect to speak with the intelligence of the “experts” indeed.
After a little of this fencing with each other, in which he satisfied himself that my ignorance was not affected, he took a sudden resolution, as if it were a relief to him to tell me the whole story.
“It was years on years ago,” said he. “It was when they first had palaces.”
Still thinking of Nimrod’s palace and Priam’s, I said that must have been a great while ago.
“Yes, indeed,” said he. “You would not call them palaces now, since you have seen Pullman’s and Wagner’s. But we called them palaces then. So many looking-glasses, you know, and tapestry carpets and gold spit-boxes. Ours was the first line that run palaces.”
I asked myself, mentally, of what metal were the spit-boxes in Semiramis’s palace; but I said nothing.
“Our line was the first line that had them. We were running our lightning express on the ‘Great Alleghanian.’ We were in opposition to everybody, made close connections, served supper on board, and our passengers only were sure of the night-boat at St. Louis. Those were the days of river-boats, you know. We introduced the palace feature on the railroad; and very successful it was. I was an engineer. I had a first-rate character, and the best wages of any man on the line. Never put me on a dirt-dragger or a lazy freight loafer, I tell you. No, sir! I ran the expresses, and nothing else, and lay off two days in the week, besides. I don’t think I should have thought of it but for Todhunter, who was my palace conductor.”
Again this IT, which had appeared so mysteriously in what the man said before. I asked no question, but listened, really interested now, in the hope I should find out what IT was; and this the reader will learn. He went on, in a hurried way:—
“Todhunter was my palace conductor. One night he was full, and his palace was hot, and smelled bad of whale-oil. We did not burn petroleum then. Well, it was a splendid full moon in August; and we were coming down grade, making up the time we had lost at the Brentford junction. Seventy miles an hour she ran if she ran one. Todhunter had brought his cigar out on the tender, and was sitting by me. Good Lord! it seems like last week.
“Todhunter says to me, ‘Joslyn,’ says he, ‘what’s the use of crooking all round these valleys, when it would be so easy to go across?’ You see, we were just beginning to crook round, so as to make that long bend there is at Chamoguin; but right across the valley we could see the stern lights of Fisher’s train: it was not more than half a mile away, but we should run eleven miles before we came there.”
I knew what Mr. Joslyn meant. To cross the mountain ranges by rail, the engineers are obliged to wind up one side of a valley, and then, boldly crossing the head of the ravine on a high arch, to wind up the other side still, so that perhaps half an hour’s journey is consumed, while not a mile of real distance is made. Joslyn took out his pencil, and on the back of an envelope drew a little sketch of the country; which, as it happened, I still preserve, and which, with his comments,
explains his whole story completely. “Here we are,” said he. “This black line is the Great Alleghanian,—double track, seventy pounds to the yard; no figuring off there, I tell you. This was a good straight run, down grade a hundred and seventy-two feet on the mile. There, where I make thisX, we came on the Chamoguin Valley, and turned short, nearly north. So we ran wriggling about till Drums here, where we stopped if they showed lanterns,—what we call a flag-station. But there we got across the valley, and worked south again to this otherX, which was, as I say, not five-eighths of a mile from thisXabove, though it had taken us eleven miles to get there.”
He had said it was not more than half a mile; but this half-mile grew to five-eighths as he became more accurate and serious.
“Well,” said he, now resuming the thread of his story, “it was Todhunter put it into my head. He owns he did. Todhunter says, says he, ‘Joslyn, what’s the use of crooking round all these valleys, when it would be so easy to go across?’
“Well, sir, I saw it then, as clear as I see it now. When that trip was done, I had two days to myself,—one was Sunday,—and Todhunter had the same; and he came round to my house. His wife knew mine, and we liked them. Well, we fell talking about it; and I got down the Cyclopaedia, and we found out there about the speed of cannon-balls, and the direction they had to give them. You know this was only talk then; we never thought what would come of it; but very curious it all was.”
And here Mr. Joslyn went into a long mathematical talk, with which I will not harass the reader, perfectly sure, from other experiments which I have tried with other readers, that this reader would skip it all if it were written down. Stated very briefly, it amounted to this: In the old-fashioned experiments of those days, a cannon-ball travelled four thousand and one hundred feet in nine seconds. Now, Joslyn was convinced, like every other engineman I ever talked to, that on a steep down-grade he could drive a train at the rate of a hundred miles an hour. This is thirteen hundred and fourteen feet in nine seconds,—almost exactly one-third of the cannon-ball’s velocity. At those rates, if the valley at Chamoguin were really but five-eighths of a mile wide, the cannon-ball would cross it in seven or eight seconds, and the train in about twenty-three seconds. Both Todhunter and Joslyn were good enough mechanics and machinists to know that the rate for thirty-three hundred feet, the width of the valley, was not quite the same as that for four thousand feet; for which, in their book, they had the calculations and formulas; but they also knew that the difference was to their advantage, or the advantage of the bold experiment which had occurred to both of them when Todhunter had made on the tender his very critical suggestion.
The reader has already conceived the idea of this experiment. These rash men were wondering already whether it were not possible to leap an engine flying over the Chamoguin ravine, as Eclipse or Flying Childers might have leaped the brook at the bottom of it. Joslyn believed implicitly, as I found in talk with him, the received statement of conversation, that Eclipse, at a single bound, sprang forty feet. “If Eclipse, who weighed perhaps one thousand two hundred, would spring forty feet, could not my train, weighing two hundred tons, spring a hundred times as far?” asked he triumphantly. At least, he said that he said this to Todhunter. They went into more careful studies of projectiles, to see if it could or could not.
The article on “Gunnery” gave them just one of those convenient tables which are the blessing of wise men and learned men, and which lead half-trained men to their ruin. They found that for their “range,” which was, as they supposed, eleven hundred yards, the elevation of a forty-two pounder was one degree and a third; of a nine-pounder, three degrees. The elevation for a railway train, alas! no man had calculated. But this had occurred to both of them from the beginning. In descending the grade, at the spot where, on his little map, Joslyn made the more westerly X, they were more than eleven hundred feet above the spot where he had made his second, or easterly X. All this descent was to the advantage of the experiment. A gunner would have said that the first X “commanded” the second X, and that a battery there would inevitably silence a battery at the point below.
“We need not figure on it,” said Todhunter, as Mrs. Joslyn called them in to supper. “If we did, we should make a mistake. Give me your papers. When I go up, Monday night, I’ll give them to my brother Bill. I shall pass him at Faber’s Mills. He has studied all these things, of course; and he will like the fun of making it out for us.” So they sat down to Mrs. Joslyn’s waffles; and, but for Bill Todhunter, this story would never have been told to me, nor would John Joslyn and “this woman” ever have gone to Australia.
But Bill Todhunter was one of those acute men of whom the new civilization of this country is raising thousands with every year; who, in the midst of hard hand-work, and a daily duty which to collegians and to the ignorant men among their professors seems repulsive, carry on careful scientific study, read the best results of the latest inquiry, manage to bring together a first-rate library of reference, never spend a cent for liquor or tobacco, never waste an hour at a circus or a ball, but make their wives happy by sitting all the evening, “figuring,” one side of the table, while the wife is hemming napkins on the other. All of a sudden, when such a man is wanted, he steps out, and bridges the Gulf of Bothnia; and people wonder, who forget that for two centuries and a half the foresighted men and women of this country have been building up, in the face of the Devil of Selfishness on the one hand, and of the Pope of Rome on the other, a system of popular education, improving every hour.
At this moment Bill Todhunter was foreman of Repair Section No. II on the “Great Alleghanian,”—a position which needed a man of first-rate promptness, of great resource, of good education in engineering. Such a man had the “Great Alleghanian” found in him, by good luck; and they had promoted him to their hardest-worked and best-paid section,—the section on which, as it happened, was this Chamoguin run, and the long bend which I have described, by which the road “headed” that stream.
The younger Todhunter did meet his brother at Faber’s Mills, where the repair-train had hauled out of the way of the express, and where the express took wood. The brothers always looked for each other on such occasions; and Bill promised to examine the paper which Joslyn had carefully written out, and which his brother brought to him.
I have never repeated in detail the mass of calculations which Bill Todhunter made on the suggestion thus given to him. If I had, I would not repeat them here, for a reason which has been suggested already. He became fascinated with the problem presented to him. Stated in the language of the craft, it was this:
Given a moving body, with a velocity eight thousand eight hundred feet in a minute, what should be its elevation that it may fall eleven hundred feet in the transit of five-eighths of a mile?” He had not only to work up the parabola, comparatively simple, but he had to allow for the resistance of the air, on the supposition of a calm, according to the really admirable formulas of Robins and Coulomb, which were the best he had access to. Joslyn brought me, one day, a letter from Bill Todhunter, which shows how carefully he went into this intricate inquiry.
Unfortunately for them all, it took possession of this spirited and accomplished young man. You see, he not only had the mathematical ability for the calculation of the fatal curve, but, as had been ordered without any effort of his, he was in precisely the situation of the whole world for trying in practice his own great experiment. At each of the two X X of Joslyn’s map, the company had, as it happened, switches for repair-trains or wood-trains. Had it not, Bill Todhunter had ample power to make them.
For the “experiment,” all that was necessary was, that under the pretext of re-adjusting these switches, he should lay out that at the upper X so that it should run, on the exact grade which he required, to the western edge of the ravine, in a line which should be the direct continuation of the long, straight run with which the little map begins.
An engine, then, running down that grade at the immense rapidity practicable there, would take the switch with its full speed, would fly the ravine at precisely the proper slopes, and, if the switch had been rightly aligned, would land on the similar switch at the lower X. It would come down exactly right on the track, as you sit precisely on a chair when you know exactly how high it is.
“If.” And why should it not be rightly aligned, if Bill Todhunter himself aligned it? This he was well disposed to do. He also would align the lower switch, that at the lower X, that it might receive into its willing embrace the engine on its arrival.
When the bold engineer had conceived this plan, it was he who pushed the others on to it, not they who urged him. They were at work on their daily duty, sometimes did not meet each other for a day or two. Bill Todhunter did not see them more than once in a fortnight. But whenever they did meet, the thing seemed to be taken more and more for granted. At last Joslyn observed one day, as he ran down, that there was a large working-party at the switch above Drums, and he could see Bill Todhunter, in his broad sombrero, directing them all. Joslyn was not surprised, somehow, when he came to the lower switch, to find another working-party there. The next time they all three met, Bill Todhunter told them that all was ready if they were. He said that he had left a few birches to screen the line of the upper switch, for fear some nervous bungler, driving an engine down, might be frightened, and “blow” about the switch. But he said that any night when the others were ready to make the fly, he was; that there would be a full moon the next Wednesday, and, if there was no wind, he hoped they would do it then.
“You know,” said poor Joslyn, describing it to me, “I should never have done it alone; August would never have done it alone; no, I do not think that Bill Todhunter himself would have done it alone. But our heads were full of it. We had thought of it and thought of it till we did not think of much else; and here was everything ready, and neither of us was afraid, and neither of us chose to have the others think he was afraid. I did say, what was the truth, that I had never meant to try it with a train. I had only thought that we should apply to the supe, and that he would get up a little excursion party of gentlemen,—editors, you know, and stockholders,—who would like to do it together, and that I should have the pleasure and honor of taking them over. But Todhunter poohed at that. He said all the calculations were made for the inertia of a full train, that that was what the switch was graded for, and that everything would have to be altered if any part of the plan were altered. Besides, he said the superintendent would never agree, that he would insist on consulting the board and the chief engineer, and that they would fiddle over it till Christmas.
“‘No,’ said Bill, ‘next Wednesday, or never! If you will not do it then, I will put the tracks back again.’ August Todhunter said nothing; but I knew he would do what we agreed to, and he did.
“So at last I said I would jump it on Wednesday night, if the night was fine. But I had just as lief own to you that I hoped it would not be fine. Todhunter—Bill Todhunter, I mean—was to leave the switch open after the freight had passed, and to drive up to the Widow Jones’s Cross Road. There he would have a lantern, and I would stop and take him up. He had a right to stop us, as chief of repairs. Then we should have seven miles down-grade to get up our speed, and then—we should see!
“Mr. Ingham, I might have spared myself the hoping for foul weather. It was the finest moonlight night that you ever knew in October. And if Bill Todhunter had weighed that train himself, he could not have been better pleased,—one baggage-car, one smoking-car, two regular first-class, and two palaces: she run just as steady as an old cow! We came to the Widow Jones’s, square on time; and there was Bill’s lantern waving. I slowed the train: he jumped on the tender without stopping it. I ‘up brakes’ again, and then I told Flanagan, my fireman, to go back to the baggage-car, and see if they would lend me some tobacco. You see, we wanted to talk, and we didn’t want him to see. ‘Mr. Todhunter and I will feed her till you come back,’ says I to Flanagan. In a minute after he had gone, August Todhunter came forward on the engine; and, I tell you, she did fly!
“‘Not too fast,’ said Bill, ‘not too fast: too fast is as bad as too slow.’
“‘Never you fear me,’ says I. ‘I guess I know this road and this engine. Take out your watch, and time the mile-posts,’ says I; and he timed them. ‘Thirty-eight seconds,’ says he; ‘thirty-seven and a half, thirty-six, thirty-six, thirty-six,’—three times thirty-six, as we passed the posts, just as regular as an old clock! And then we came right on the mile-post you know at Old Flander’s. ‘Thirty-six,’ says Bill again. And then she took the switch,—I can hear that switch-rod ring under us now Mr. Ingham,—and then—we were clear!
“Wasn’t it grand? The range was a little bit up, you see, at first; but it seemed as if we were flying just straight across. All the rattle of the rail stopped, you know, though the pistons worked just as true as ever; neither of us said one word, you know; and she just flew—well, as you see a hawk fly sometimes, when he pounces, you know, only she flew so straight and true! I think you may have dreamed of such things. I have; and now,—now I dream it very often. It was not half a minute, you know, but it seemed a good long time. I said nothing and they said nothing; only Bill just squeezed my hand. And just as I knew we must be half over,—for I could see by the star I was watching ahead that we were not going up, but were falling again,—do you think the rope by my side tightened quick, and the old bell on the engine gave one savage bang, turned right over as far as the catch would let it, and stuck where it turned! Just that one sound, everything else was still; and then she landed on the rails, perhaps seventy feet inside the ravine, took the rails as true and sweet as you ever saw a ship take the water, hardly touched them, you know, skimmed—well, as I have seen a swallow skim on the sea; the prettiest, well, the tenderest touch, Mr. Ingham, that ever I did see! And I could just hear the connecting rods tighten the least bit in the world behind me, and we went right on.
“We just looked at each other in the faces, and we could not speak; no, I do not believe we spoke for three quarters of a minute. Then August said, ‘Was not that grand? Will they let us do it always, Bill?’ But we could not talk then. Flanagan came back with the tobacco, and I had just the wit to ask him why he had been gone so long. Poor fellow! he was frightened enough when we pulled up at Clayville, and he thought it was Drums. Drums, you see, was way up the bend, a dozen miles above Clayville. Poor Flanagan thought we must have passed there while he was skylarking in the baggage-car, and that he had not minded it. We never stopped at Drums unless we had passengers, or they. It was what we call a flag-station. So I blew Flanagan up, and told him he was gone too long.
“Well, sir, at Clayville we did stop,—always stopped there for wood. August Todhunter, he was the palace conductor; he went back to look to his passengers. Bill stayed with me. But in a minute August came running back, and called me off the engine. He led me forward, where it was dark; but I could see, as we went, that something was to pay. The minute we were alone he says,—
“‘John, we’ve lost the rear palace.’
“‘Don’t fool me, August,’ says I.
“‘No fooling, John,’ says he. ‘The shackle parted. The cord parted, and is flying loose behind now. If you want to see, come and count the cars. The “General Fremont” is here all right; but I tell you the “James Buchanan” is at the bottom of the Chamoguin Creek.’
“I walked back to the other end of the platform, as fast as I could go and not be minded. Todhunter was there before me, tying up the loose end of the bell-cord. There was a bit of the broken end of the shackle twisted in with the bolt. I pulled the bolt and threw the iron into the swamp far as I could fling her. Then I nodded to Todhunter and walked forward just as that old goose at Clayville had got his trousers on, so he could come out, and ask me if we were not ahead of time. I tell you, sir, I did not stop to talk with him. I just rang ‘All aboard!’ and started her again; and this time I run slow enough to save the time before we came down to Steuben. We were on time, all right, there.”
Here poor Joslyn stopped a while in his story; and I could see that he was so wrought up with excitement that I had better not interrupt, either with questions or with sympathy. He rallied in a minute or two, and said,—
“I thought—we all thought—that there would be a despatch somewhere waiting us. But no; all was as regular as the clock. One palace more or less,—what did they know, and what did they care? So daylight came. We could not say a word, you know, with Flanagan there; and we only stopped, you know, a minute or two every hour; and just then was when August Todhunter had to be with his passengers, you know. Was not I glad when we came into Pemaquid,—our road ran from Pemaquid across the mountains to Eden, you know,—when we came into Pemaquid, and nobody had asked any questions?
“I reported my time at the office of the master of trains, and I went home. I tell you, Mr. Ingham, I have never seen Pemaquid Station since that day.
“I had done nothing wrong, of course. I had obeyed every order, and minded every signal. But still I knew public opinion might be against me when they heard of the loss of the palace. I did not feel very well about it, and I wrote a note to say I was not well enough to take my train the next night; and I and Mrs. Joslyn went to New York, and I went aboard a Collins steamer as fireman; and Mrs. Joslyn, she went as stewardess; and I wrote to Pemaquid, and gave up my place. It was a good place, too; but I gave it up, and I left America.
Bill Todhunter, he resigned his place too, that same day, though that was a good place. He is in the Russian service now. He is running their line from Archangel to Astrachan; good pay, he says, but lonely. August would not stay in America after his brother left; and he is now captain’s clerk on the Harkaway steamers between Bangkok and Cochbang; good place he says, but hot. So we are all parted.
“And do you know, sir, never one of us ever heard of the lost palace!”
Sure enough, under that very curious system of responsibility, by which one corporation owns the carriages which another corporation uses, nobody in the world has to this moment ever missed “The Lost Palace.” On each connecting line, everybody knew that “she” was not there; but no one knew or asked where she was. The descent into the rocky bottom of the Chamouin, more than fifteen hundred feet below the line of flight, had of course been rapid,—slow at first, but in the end rapid. In the first second, the lost palace had fallen sixteen feet; in the second, sixty-four; in the third, one hundred and forty-four; in the fourth, two hundred and fifty-six; in the fifth, four hundred feet; so that it must have been near the end of the sixth second of its fall, that, with a velocity now of more than six hundred feet in a second, the falling palace, with its unconscious passengers, fell upon the rocks at the bottom of the Chamoguin ravine. In the dead of night, wholly without jar or parting, those passengers must have been sleeping soundly; and it is impossible, therefore, on any calculation of human probability, that any one of them can have been waked an instant before the complete destruction of the palace, by the sudden shock of its fall upon the bed of the stream. To them the accident, if it is fair to call it so, must have been wholly free from pain.
The tangles of that ravine, and the swamp below it, are such that I suppose that even the most adventurous huntsman never finds his way there. On the only occasion when I ever met Mr. Jules Verne he expressed a desire to descend there from one of his balloons, to learn whether the inhabitants of “The Lost Palace” might not still survive, and be living in a happy republican colony there,—a place without railroads, without telegrams, without mails, and certainly without palaces. But at the moment when these sheets go to press, no account of such an adventure has appeared from his rapid pen.
AGRAY morning, the deck wet, the iron all beaded with frost, all the longshoremen in heavy pea-jackets or cardigans, the whole ship in a bustle, and the favored first-class passengers just leaving.
One sad-looking Irish girl stands with her knit hood already spotted with the rime, and you cannot tell whether those are tears which hang from her black eyelashes or whether the fog is beginning to freeze there. What you see is that the poor thing looks right and left and up the pier and down the pier, and that in the whole crowd—they all seem so selfish—she sees nobody. Hundreds of people going and coming, pushing and hauling, and Nora’s big brother is not there, as he promised to be and should be.
Mrs. Ohstrom, the motherly Swedish woman, who has four children and ten tin cups and a great bed and five trunks and a fatuous, feckless husband makes time, between cousins and uncles and custom-house men and sharpers, to run up every now and then to say that Nora must not cry, that she must be easy, that she has spoken to the master and the master has said they are three hours earlier than they were expected. And all this was so kindly meant and so kindly said that poor Nora brushed the tears away, if they were tears, and thanked her, though she did not understand one word that dear Mrs. Ohstrom said to her. What is language, or what are words, after all?
And the bright-buttoned, daintily dressed little ship’s doctor, whom poor Nora hardly knew in his shore finery,—he made time to stop and tell her that the ship was too early, and that she must not worry. Father, was it, she was waiting for? “Oh, brother! Oh, he will be sure to be here! Better sit down. Here is a chair. Don’t cry. I am afraid you had no breakfast. Take this orange. It will cheer you up. I shall see you again.”
Alas! the little doctor was swept away and forgot Nora for a week, and she “was left lamenting.”
For one hour went by, and two, and three. The Swedish woman went, and the doctor went, and the girl could see the captain go, and the mate that gave them their orders every morning. The custom-house people began to go. The cabs and other carriages for the gentry had gone long before.
And poor Nora was left lamenting.
Then was it that that queer Salvation Army girl, with a coal-scuttle for a bonnet, came up again. She had smiled pleasantly two or three times before, and had asked Nora to eat a bun. Poor Nora broke down and cried heartily this time. But the other was patient and kind, and said just what the others had said. Only she did not go away. And she had the sense to ask if Nora knew where the brother lived.
“Why, of course I do, miss. See, here is the paper.”
And the little soldier lass read it: “99 Linwood Street, Boston.”
“My poor child, what a pity you did not let us see it before!”
Alas and alas! Nora’s box was of the biggest. But the army lass flinched at nothing.
An immense wagon, with two giant horses, loaded with the most extraordinary chests which have been seen since the days of the Vikings. Piled on the top were many feather-beds, and on the top of the feather-beds a Scandinavian matron. With Mike, the good-natured teamster, who was at once captain and pilot of this craft, the army lass had easily made her treaty, when he was told the story. He was to carry Nora and her outfit to the Linwood Street house after he had taken these Swedes to theirs. “And indade it will not be farr, miss. There’s a shorrt cut behind Egan’s, if indade he did not put up a tinimint house since I was that way.” And with new explanations to Nora that all was right, that indeed it was better this way than it would have been had her brother been called from his work, she was lifted, without much consent of her own, to the driver’s seat, and her precious “box” was so placed that she could rest her little feet upon it.
Nora had proudly confided to the friendly lass the assurance that she had money, had even shown a crisp $2 bill which had been sent to her for exigencies.
But when the lass made the contract with Mike Dermott, the good fellow said he should take Nora and her box for the love of County Cork. “Indade, indade, I don’t take money from the like of her.”
And so they started, with the Swedish men walking on one side of the cart with their rifles, keeping a good lookout for buffaloes and red Indians and grizzly bears, as men landing in a new country which they were to civilize. More sailing for there was the ferry to cross to old Boston. Much waiting, for there was a broken-down coal-wagon in Salutation Alley. Long conference between Nora and Mike, in which he did all the talking and she all the listening, as to home rule and Mr. McCarthy, and what O’Brien thought of this, and what Cunniff thought of that. Then an occasional question came in Swedish from the matron above their heads, and was followed by a reply in Celtic English from Mike, each wholly ignorant of the views or wishes of the others. And occasionally the escort of riflemen, after some particular attack of chaff, in words which they fortunately did not understand, looked up to their matron, controller, and director, exchanged words with her, and then studied the pavement again for tracks of buffalo. A long hour of all this, the stone and brick of the city giving way to green trees between the houses as they come to Dorchester.
Poor Nora looks right and looks left, hoping to meet her big brother. She begins to think she shall remember him. Everybody else looks so different from Fermoy that he must look like home.
But there is no brother.
There is at last a joyful cry as the Swedish matron and the riflemen recognize familiar faces. And Mike smiles gladly, and brings round the stout bays with a twitch, so that the end of the cart comes square to the sidewalk. Somebody produces a step-ladder, and the Swedish matron, with her bird-cage in her hand, descends in triumph. Much kissing, much shaking of hands, much thanking of God, more or less reverent. Then the cords are cut, beds flung down, the giant boxes lifted, the sons of Anak only know how. The money covenanted for is produced and paid, and Mike mounts lightly to Nora’s side.
“And now, Nora, my child, wherr is the paper? For in two minutes we’ll soon be therr, now that this rubbish is landed.”
And he read on the precious paper, “John McLaughlin, 99 Linwood Street.”
Strange to say, the paper said just what it had said two hours before.
“And now, my dear child, we will be therr in ten minutes, if only we can cross back of Egan’s.”
And although they could not cross back of Egan’s, for Egan had put up a “tinimint” house since Mike had passed that way, yet in ten minutes Linwood Street had been found. No. 99 at last revealed itself, between Nos. 7 and 2,—a great six-story wooden tinder-box, with clothes-lines mysterious behind, open doors in front, long passages running through, three doors on each side of a passage, and the wondering heads of eleven women who belonged to five different races and spoke in six different languages appearing from their eleven windows, as Mike and Nora and the two bays all stopped at one and the same moment at the door.
Mike was already anxious about his time, for he was to be at the custom-house an hour away or more at eleven sharp. But he selected a certain Widow Flynn from the eleven white-capped women; he explained to her briefly that John McLaughlin was to be found; he told Nora for the thirty-seventh time that all was right and that she must not cry; he looked at his watch again, rather anxiously, mounted his box, and drove swiftly away.
He was the one thread which bound Nora to this world. And this thread broke before her eyes.
Mrs. Flynn affected to be cheerful. But she was not cheerful. Mrs. Flynn was a prominent person in her sodality. And well she knew that if any John McLaughlin in those parts were expecting any sister from home, she should know him and where he lived. Well she knew, also, that John McLaughlin, the mason, was born in Glasgow; that John McLaughlin, who is on the city work, had all his family around him, and, most distinct of all, she knew that no McLaughlin, sisterless or many-sistered, lived in this beehive which she lived in, though it were 99 Linwood Street. Into her own cell of that beehive, however, she took poor, sad, desolate Nora. Into the hallway she bade the loafing neighbor boys bring Nora’s trunk; in a language Nora could hardly understand she explained to her that all would be well as soon as the policeman passed by. She sent Mary Murphy, who happened to be at home from school, for a pint of milk, and so compelled Nora to drink a cup of tea and to eat a biscuit and a dropped egg, while they waited for the policeman.
Of course he knew of seven John McLaughlins. He even went to the drug-store and looked in the Boston Directory to find that there were there the names of sixty-one more. But not one of them lived in Linwood Street, as they all knew already. All the same Nora was charged not to cry, to drink more tea and eat more bread and butter. The “cop” said he would look in on three of the Johns whom he knew, and intelligent boys now returning from school were sent to the homes of the other four to interrogate them as to any expected sister. Within an hour, now nearly one o’clock, answers were received from all the seven. No one of them expected chick or child from Fermoy.
But the “cop” had a suggestion to make. His pocket list of names of streets revealed another Linwood Street—in Roxbury; not this one in Dorchester. Be it known to unlearned readers, who in snug shelter in Montana follow along this little tale, that Roxbury and Dorchester are both parts of that large municipality called Boston. Though no John McLaughlin was in the directory for 99 Linwood Street, Roxbury, was not that the objective? Poor Nora was questioned as to Roxbury. She was sure she never heard of it.
But the clue was too good to be lost, and the authority of the friendly “cop” was too great to be resisted. He telephoned to the central office that Nora McLaughlin, just from Ireland, had been found, in a fashion, but that no one knew where to put her. Then he stopped a milkman from Braintree, who delivered afternoon milk for invalids.
Was he not going through Roxbury?
Of course he was.
Would he not take this lost child to 99 Linwood Street?
Of course he would. Milkmen, from their profession, have hearts warm toward children.
Well, if he were to take her, he had better take her trunk too.
To which illogical proposal the milkman acceded—on the afternoon route there is so much less milk to take than there is in the morning.
So Nora was lifted into the milk-wagon. In tears she kissed good Mrs. Flynn. The boys and girls assembled to bid her good-by, and even she had a hope for a few moments that her troubles were at an end.
At 99 Linwood Street, Roxbury, they were preparing for the Review Club.
The Review Club met once a fortnight at half-past two o’clock at the house of one or another of the members. They first arranged the little details of the business. Then the hostess read, or made some one read, the scraps which seemed most worthy in the reviews and magazines of the last issues, and at four the husbands and brothers and neighbors generally dropped in, and there was afternoon tea.
“You are sure you have cream enough, Ellen?”
“Oh, yes, mum.”
“All kinds of tea, you know, that which the Chinese gentlemen sent, and be sure of the chocolate for Mrs. Bunce.”
“Indeed yes, mum.”
“And let me know just before you bring up the hot water.” Doorbell rings. “There is Mrs. Walter now!”
No, it wasn’t Mrs. Walter. She came three minutes after. But before she came, Howells, the milkman, had lifted Nora from her seat. As the snow fell fast on the doorsteps, he carried her carefully up to the door, and even by the time Ellen answered the bell he had the heavy chest, dragging it over the snow by the stout rope at one end.
Ellen was amazed to find this group instead of Mrs. Walter. She called her mistress, who heard Howells’s realistic story with amazement, not to say amusement.
“You poor dear child!” she cried at once. “Come in where it is dry! John McLaughlin? No, indeed! Who can John McLaughlin be? Ellen, what is Mike’s last name?”
Mike was the choreman, who made the furnace fire and kept the sidewalk.
“Mike’s name, mum? I don’t know, mum. Mary will know, mum.”
And for the moment Ellen disappeared to find Mary.
“Never mind, never mind. Come in, you poor child. You are very good to bring her, Mr. Howells, very good indeed. We will take care of her. Is it going to storm?”