Chapter X.
As the darkness grew into the room where Frank Hallock was prisoned, the boy’s misery grew around his heart. Over and over to himself he said: “I am sorry I struck Kate; but I won’t tell father and mother I’m sorry—not if I have to stay here forever! They are always praising Kate, and they think everything she does is just right, and everything I do is as horrid as horrid can be—and it isn’t fair one bit. Kate has a real good time, and I never can do anything I want to. Father and mother love Kate a great deal more than they do me. Besides, I’m fourteen and over—big enough to take care of myself, without somebody to tell me every single thing I must do or mustn’t do; and I won’t stand it! Lots and lots of boys run away from home in story books, and have capital, good, jolly times. I’ve a great mind to run away myself.”
At the same time in which Frank was thinking these thoughts, he heard distinctly the voice of conscience telling him that his father and mother were right; that the best and only just thing for him to do was the very thing they desired him to do. And far louder and deeper than the wicked suggestion concerning the absence of love, came the ringing assurance, through all the days and nights that he could remember, ofunnumbered, untellable acts of love. Poor Frank, the good and the evil were striving for the mastery of him.
Sitting thus, and pondering the possibilities of running away from home—the home that he, for the moment, persuaded himself that he detested—there came to him a few trembling tones of sound from below. He knew that tea was over, and that Kate was at the piano. He could see the evening lamp on the table, and his father and mother sitting in the room. Yes, then it came—the song of thanks and praise for all the blessings of the day.
In the stillness that followed, Frank knew perfectly well what was going on down there. If he ran away, why he might never again hear Kate play his favorite music—never hear his father pray; and just here Frank began to wonder if the supper table was cleared away, if the good things Kate had referred to were all eaten up, if they really intended to leave him go supperless to bed. He had not heard a sound of approach to his door when there came through the keyhole a stifled “Bub!”
He answered it with “Fetch me some supper, Kate.”
“I can’t, Frank; they won’t let me. Mother is coming in a minute with some bread, and be good.Do, Frank—for they’re going to send you to General Russell’s School; you’ll wear a uniform, and everything!”
Frank’s heart beat proudly for a moment. The desire of his life was about to be gratified then. In aninstant all of the ill feeling that had hardened him seemed to be as though it had not been.
“I’ll say it, Kate,” he whispered.
Frank was going to be good again. Away fled Kate to her mother, saying,
“Won’t you hurry, mamma, with Frank’s supper? I know he must be hungry by this time, and please let me help you to carry it to him.”
“If Frank would only do what he ought to do, he might come down and get his supper,” sighed Mrs. Hallock.
“Try him, just once, mamma, and see,” urged Kate.
“Come with me, then.”
“Frank,” called Mrs. Hallock, “are you ready to ask your sister’s forgiveness?”
“Yes, ma’am,” shouted Frank in the most amiable of moods.
He was set free, marched down stairs and into his father’s presence, where, without the slightest hesitation, he made the required apology.
Kate kissed him for answer. As she did so, she turned suddenly very red in the face and nearly bit her lip through with the quick effort she made to suppress a scream; for Frank slyly caught a bit of her arm between his fingers and pinched it cruelly. The tears filled her eyelids, and she ran away quickly to hide all sign of her hurt.
The same night, by the light of the moon, Kate saw Frank standing beside her bed.
“Did I pinch you much?” he whispered.
“Awfully, Frank.”
“You were first-rate not to tell of a fellow by making a fuss.”
“And you were meaner than anybody I ever thought of; after I had been so good to you all day and everything.” Kate could not help saying this.
“I’ll just tell you what ’tis, Kate, you are a great deal better to me than you ought to be.”
“I sha’n’t be sorry, Frank, when you are away at school, that I was kind to you when you were at home; besides, Harry Cornwall told me something to-day that I never thought about before.”
“I hate Harry Cornwall, Kate!”
Kate made no sign of having heard the words.
Frank went on to say, “And I just wish that you would never speak to me of him again. I dare say he is putting you up to all sorts of disagreeable things on my account.”
Kate made no response for a moment, and then she said, the moonlight in the room making her pale face quite radiant as she spoke, “I wonder, Frank, what Jesus Christ would tell me to say to you, if he were here now.”
“Good night, Kate; I’m going,” said Frank.
“Bub, won’t you kiss me without a pinch?”
“Yes, I will, Kate, and I don’t really and truly hate Harry as much as I made out.”
“I am glad to hear you say so.”
“And Kate, I am just the least mite curious to know what the fellow did say to you to-day.”
“I sha’n’t tell you, because you call him a fellow.”
“Saint, then, Kate; will that do?”
“It’s nearer the truth.”
“Tell, then.”
“No, not to-night.”
“Then I don’t give the kiss.”
“Good night, Frank.”
“Good night, Kate; you’ll be awful sorry, when I’m gone to school.”
Frank went to his own room, and to sleep.
Kate wished with all her heart it was morning. She could not go to sleep, and it was so dismal to lie there thinking about Frank’s going away from home.
Hallock Point without Frank Hallock, Kate did not think could be a home at all, and just there, Kate began to wonder why she could not go to boarding school quite as well as Frank. Certainly she was as old, and as for progress in school, she was far in advance of her brother. Besides, it would be, O, so nice, to think of it! Frank at General Russell’s, and she at school in New Haven, too. Frank would come and visit her in his gay uniform, and how proud she would be of her handsome brother, only Kate did hope he would not pinch or slap her before the other girls. And then Kate looked around her pretty room, with its adornments, each and every one with its little history of birthday gift, Christmas greeting, or token of love; and then suddenly she saw it all—her room without herself in it, Frank’s room vacant; no merry shout or sound of boyish presence—no Kate, even. Then it was that Kate thought, “No, it shall not be. Poor mamma! it would be too, too bad. I will not say one word about going to school,” and she went to sleep, at last, strong in the determination.
The next day the good news was announced to Frank in formal manner. His parents thought their son received the intelligence very quietly.
“But, my son,” said Mr. Hallock, “if you are to go to school in September, the weeks that lie between are not to be devoted exclusively to play. You are to fit yourself to enter certain classes in the school, and you are to have a master every day.”
“How pokey, to study in summer, papa!”
“But he will teach Kate, as well. If he takes the trouble to come here every day from the village, he may as well have two pupils as one.”
“And, papa,” suggested Kate, “why not three, as well as two? There is Harry, and you know how he has had to stay out of school with the plowing and the planting and the hoeing, and all sorts of things, and now he could get time just as well as not to run over for his lessons; and papa,” she added slyly, whispering the words in at his ear so that Frank might not hear, “Frank would have to study then, ’cause he would be ashamed to have Harry get ahead, a poor circus boy, you know!”
“No, Kate, I do not know; but we will see about Harry afterward.”
The master was from the village. Captain Green was his name. He had taught school for forty years in the winter, and been a pupil of the sea during the summer for a still longer period. The villagers used to say that every billow sweeping the Sound had felt the stroke of his oar. He was out on the bay at early morn, and the last ray of light found him urging onhis little craft at night. He trapped lobsters, caught crabs, dug clams, sat for hours together holding the line over the edge of his boat that rocked idly on summer seas, in the hope of catching a black fish a little larger than any other fisherman had caught; and perfectly delighted to spend his nights in throwing out and drawing in the long seines, in the hope of the heaviest haul of bass or bluefish that ever came to shore. This was the master, Captain Green, who proposed to spend two hours every day at Hallock Point. He could run down the harbor to the Point, tie up his boat, and then, after lessons, go outside.
The villagers heard the news with unbelieving ears. “No power on earth,” they said, “could keep Captain Green on shore for two hours a day, so long as he could move an oar.” Nevertheless, Captain Green appeared prompt to the moment at the appointed hour.