MISS PIKE’S STORY.
“PAPA, we are starving. Do send us a watermelon!” wrote Mary one day,
and sent home the note by little Kittyleen, whose visit was at last
over.
Dr. Gray laughed again and again at this pathetic appeal, and chancing
to see Mrs. Townsend picking strawberries in her garden, he paused as
he went by to tell her how the children were suffering.
“They had plenty day before yesterday,” said she, laughing in her turn.
“O doctor, have you ever been out to their camp? They are the most
disorderly, wasteful creatures: and just think of the grocer’s bills
they are running up.”
“It’s an extravagant piece of business,” assented the doctor; “but they
are having a delightful time, something to remember all their lives.
It won’t last more than two or three weeks at farthest, and I for one
shan’t mind the bills if the little souls don’t starve and are happy.”
“You are just like the general,” returned Mrs. Townsend, with a
disapproving smile; and then went into the house to make with her own
hands a strawberry short-cake for Miss Pike and Julia Gray to take to
Camp Comfort in the sunshade carriage with the other goodies.
It was quite the fashion for the parents, aunts, cousins, and other
friends to make little donation visits to the quintette, who always
hailed both visitors and viands with joy. But to-day the “favorite
friend,” Miss Pike, sister Julia, and the watermelon, coming all
together, were almost too much for Mary.
Miss Pike was the most entertaining of guests, and had brought a story
with her, written expressly for the Quintette Club—so she informed them
as they all gathered about her in a delighted group after dinner.
“Oh let’s have it now, this moment. Oh, Miss Pike, you are a darling.”
“Well, you may bring my hand-bag, Mary. And will Julia read aloud while
I sew? For I’m rather hurried, you see.”
She had already been over to Old Bluff, measured Pecy Pancake with her
eye, and found she was about Fanny’s size; and now the dear soul began
to baste a calico frock for the machine, while Julia read.
A FAMILY MYSTERY,
_Revealed by a Chimney._
Here I am, at my last gasp. I’ve stood it thirty-five years without
flinching, but now my time is come. Pleasant sky, you and I must part.
Bright sun, good by. Remember I am but a “humble instrument,” and
forgive me for smoking in your face. Look, iron-hearted men,—see how a
hero dies! For I’m dying in a good cause, and it’s not I that will cry
“Quarter.”
Well, what would you do? Here I am alone,—shovel, tongs, cooking-stove,
all gone, that made life desirable! Yesterday, sir, you climbed atop of
the house, tore off the tin roof, and rolled it up into parcels like so
much jelly-cake. I looked on and saw you, but the bitterness was past.
The time I could have wept was the day my family had notice to leave.
Now they are gone, and what care I what happens? I saw you pull down
the walls, till the air was so thick with plaster you could almost cut
it with a knife. I saw you rip up the chamber-floor as if it had been
a rag carpet. I saw you pull away the door-steps, where _she_ used to
stand, looking up and down the street.
I saw women and children coming to carry away shingles and clapboards
for kindlings. Little by little, crash by crash, down went the house,
till there was nothing left standing but the other chimney and me—and
this morning _he_ was taken. Now I’m sole survivor. I’m red as far down
as the chamber fireplace; the rest of the way I’m white. Some of you
laughed, seeing me standing up alone, with a white body and red head,
and said I looked “like a monument smiling at grief.”
Well, yes, and my grief began to come (or rather I began to come to
grief) last winter, when I first heard my family say the “city fathers”
were going to “improve the street.” As we were a frame house, one story
with basement kitchen, I feared, and my family feared, our room would
be considered better than our company.
“And if they do pull the house down, where shall _we_ go?” asked poor
Mr. Dean, as they all sat about the sitting-room fireplace. He was
always asking his wife “what they should do,” and she a sick woman,
coughing there in her chair! But Mr. Dean has been a broken-down man
ever since that affair of Dick’s, which I am about to relate.
There are three Dean children, John, Dick, and Nell. _She_—I mean
Nell—has a voice like a harp, and I’ve heard it remarked that her
hair is a trap to catch a sunbeam. Bless her, I always did my best
to draw when _she_ laid the coal on the grate! Her father never could
understand why she had so much better luck than he had in making a fire!
John, the oldest, is married, and living in Boston. He has always
paid his father’s rent, and the Deans have lived here ever since
Dick was born. I _think_ they had a life-lease. They could afford to
laugh at their neighbors on moving day. Who’ll laugh now? I’m getting
wheezy—thank you, little boy—put on more shingles, it warms my heart.
Where was I? O, speaking of the trouble. It is the family mystery,
twelve months old; and the odd part of it is, that I know more about it
than anyone else in the family.
A year ago, when Dick was attending the academy, he came home one night
with a diamond ring on his forefinger.
“How splendid! Whose is it?” said Nell, who was making buttered toast
for supper.
“That’s telling,” says Dick. “What if it’s my own?”
“Then it’s paste.”
“Paste, ma’am? It’s a _solitaire_, worth seven hundred dollars.”
Nell let the toast burn. She put the ring on her finger and turned
it round and round. Knowing it was worth seven hundred dollars, and
its owner wouldn’t take a thousand, she saw at once it was an elegant
affair. After Dick had teased her a while, he told her it belonged to
James Van Duster, the wealthiest boy in school.
“And he doesn’t know I’ve got it. I slipped it off his finger while I
was helping him out with his Greek. Won’t it be a good joke to see his
long face to-morrow morning?”
“O Dick, how dared you?” said Nell.
And then I smelt the toast burning again, and heard her scraping it
with a knife.
“The ring is too large for you, Dick. Let me take it for safe keeping.”
“You, Miss Nell! Why, you’d serve it up in the toast-dip, just as you
did the saltspoon last week.”
“But think, Dick, if anything should happen to such a splendid jewel!”
“There isn’t anything going to happen! Don’t fret! If I was in the
habit of losing things now——”
Dick checked himself, and I suspect he blushed. Nell, with all her
kindness of heart, couldn’t help laughing, for Dick was as harum-scarum
as a hurricane.
I felt low-spirited from that moment, and knew I shouldn’t breathe
freely till the precious ring was fairly out of the house.
In the evening Dick came down into the basement kitchen again to crack
some butternuts. He knelt by the brick hearth and began to pound. I
could have told him better than that. There was a crack in a corner of
the fireplace, and all of a sudden off slipped that ring and rolled
into it. _Of course!_
You could have knocked me over with a feather. But, as true as I stand
here, that boy went whistling upstairs, and never missed the ring till
Nell asked what he had done with it.
You may depend there were a few remarks made then. Dick rushed
upstairs and down, and the whole family went to hunting. Next morning
a carpenter was sent for to take up the boards under the dining-room
table. There was a hole in the carpet there, and Dick was almost sure
he must have dropped the ring when he stooped to pick up his knife.
How I longed to be heard! I talked then as plainly as I do now, but
they thought it was the wind “sighing down chimney.”
Nell suggested that the ring might be around the fireplace.
“You’re warm, my dear,” whispered I, as they say in games when you come
near a right guess.
But, alas, they didn’t look deep enough; there was a crack in the
mortar under the bricks, and there lies that ring now, at the
north-east corner, eight inches from the surface; there it lies to this
day!
Well, what’s a diamond ring? Nothing but the dust of the earth; no
better than Lehigh coal anyway. But James Van Duster didn’t think so.
And the worst is to tell. He wasn’t quite so absent-minded as our Dick
took him to be; _he_ knew when the ring was drawn off his finger as
well as either you or I would have known. And being a high-spirited
young fellow, with a narrow mind, and envious of our Dick besides,
what should he do that morning but send an officer after Dick. You
could have heard Mr. Dean groan across the street. The officer was very
polite, and listened respectfully to all the family had to say; but
I’ve no means of knowing whether he believed it or not. All I can state
with certainty is that old Mr. Van Duster interfered, and said if Dick
could pay James the price of the ring, the matter should be hushed up,
and he needn’t go to jail.
Seven hundred dollars! Why, old Mr. Dean just earned his salt by
tending an oven at a bakery! There was nothing in the house of any
value but Mrs. Dean’s piano, and that wouldn’t bring more than three
hundred dollars. Of course it went, though—poor Nelly, how that took
the life out of her!—and John made up the rest of the money in the
shape of a loan. I did think John was hard-faced, wife or no wife. He
might have _given_ Dick the money for their mother’s sake. It was too
bad for such a young fellow as Dick to be saddled with a debt.
After this he couldn’t afford his time to go to school; so he got a
clerkship. He tried to hold up his head with the best of them till
he began to see his mates turning the cold shoulder. The Van Dusters
hadn’t kept their word. You see, the story had been whispered around
that Dick stole a solitaire and sold it to a Jew who had run off with
it, and _that_ was why James Van Duster was obliged to stoop to wear a
cluster diamond. This was more than Dick could bear. He ran away, and
went to work on a farm in New Jersey. He kept writing home that his
mother’s letters were his greatest comfort. She had perfect faith that
the mystery would be cleared up some time, but I think hope deferred
was the cause of her illness.
The old gentleman gave up at once, and everything fell upon Nell. She
found some employment, embroidering and copying and the like of that,
and had most of the housework to do besides. I never knew such a girl.
All the amusement she seemed to have was going to the door, standing on
the steps, and looking up and down the street.
(More shingles, boys, I’m about out of breath.)
Ah, well, we’ve been a suffering family; but we have our blessings
after all; not the least of which is Nell. We have had some cosy times
this winter, too, popping corn over the open fire; but it’s all past
now. The family went to Thirty-fifth Street yesterday. I don’t know
how I could have borne it, but I’m sustained by this reflection; I am
dying; dying, too, for the good of the family.
Yes, when _I_ fall the ring will be revealed! To whom? Aye, there’s
the rub! Not to you noisy, rollicking boys, I hope and trust! I keep
looking out for Nell. I heard her tell her mother day before yesterday
“she should watch that kitchen chimney when it went.”
Bravo! There she stands! That’s Nell! That modest girl in the blue
dress, with the bird on her hat. Bravo, Nell! I’m reeling, dear. I’ve
got my death-blow, I’ve only been waiting for you!
Hammer away, ye iron-hearted men! Make an end of me now. I’m dying in a
good cause, sirs, in a good cause, _yes_!
Farewell, sweet Nell, _North-East corner; eight inches down_! Farewell,
N-e-l-l!
* * * * *
Allow me to add that our friend, the late Chimney, did not die with a
lie in his mouth. There _was_ a ring. Nell found it.
Imagine the delight of the Dean family! The newspapers made it appear
that the Honorable Van Duster was very magnanimous, for he gave Dick
the price of the ring—seven hundred dollars. Why not, indeed? Hadn’t
Mr. Van Duster received payment in full? But he also gave back the
boy’s good name, which was worth a thousand diamond rings.
“But he can’t make up to my Dick for the two dreadful years he has
borne. That suffering can _never_ be made up,” said old Mr. Dean,
shaking the ashes out of his pipe.
I can’t agree with him. Hasn’t the suffering been made up to Dick
in patience and thoughtfulness and charity for others? If you knew
him you would think so, I know. It was a hard experience; but Dick is
wondrously improved. He is the staff of the family now, and his loving
mother says:—
“The sorrows of his youthful days
Have made him wise for coming years.”