If Joseph Stagg had obeyed the precept of his little niece on this
particular afternoon and had been "looking up," instead of having his
nose in the big ledger, making out monthly statements, he might have
discovered the coming storm in season to withdraw his permission to Chet
to take Carolyn May out on the ice.
It was always dark enough in the little back office in winter for the
hardware dealer to have a lamp burning. So he did not notice the snow
flurry that had taken Sunrise Cove in its arms until he chanced to walk
out to the front of the store for needed exercise.
"I declare to man, it's snowing!" muttered Joseph Stagg. "Thought we'd
got through with that for this season."
He opened the store door. There was a chill, clammy wind, and the snow
was damp and packed quickly under foot. The street was already well
covered, and the snow stuck to the awning frames and the fronts of the
buildings across the way.
"Hum! If that Chet Gormley were here now, he might be of some use for
once," thought Mr. Stagg. "But, of course, he never is here when I want
him. He could clean this walk before folks get all balled up walking on
it."
Suddenly he bethought him of the errand that had taken the boy away from
the store. Not at once was the hardware merchant startled by the
thought; but he cast a critical glance skyward, trying to measure the
downfall of snow.
"He'll be coming back--with Hannah's Car'lyn. Of course, he isn't
rattle-brained enough to take her out on the ice when it's snowing like
this."
"Hey, Stagg!" shouted a shopkeeper from over the way, who had likewise
come to the door, "did you hear that?"
"Hear what?" asked Joseph Stagg, puzzled.
"There she goes again! That's ice, old man. She's breaking up. We'll
have spring with us in no time now. I told Scofield this morning he
could begin to load that schooner of his. The ice is going out of the
cove."
The reverberating crash that had startled Chet Gormley had startled
Joseph Stagg as well.
"My goodness!" gasped the hardware dealer, and he started instantly away
from the store, bareheaded as he was, without locking the door behind
him--something he had never done before, since he had established himself
in business on the main street of Sunrise Cove.
Just why he ran he could scarcely have explained. Of course, the
children had not gone out in this snowstorm! Mrs. Gormley--little sense
as he believed the seamstress possessed--would not have allowed them to
venture.
Yet, why had Chet not returned? Mr. Stagg knew very well that the
ungainly boy was no shirk. Having been sent home for the particular
purpose of taking Carolyn May out on her sled, he would have done that,
or returned immediately to the store. Although prone to find fault with
Chet Gormley, the hardware dealer recognised his good qualities as
certainly as anybody did.
He quickened his pace. He was running--slipping and sliding over the wet
snow--when he turned into the street on which his store boy and his
widowed mother lived.
The cottage was a little, boxlike place, and one had to climb steps to
get to it. Mrs. Gormley saw him coming from the windows of the tiny
front room which served her as parlour and workroom combined. The
seamstress tottered to the door and opened it wide, clinging to it for
support.
"Oh, oh, Mr. Stagg! What's happened now?" she gasped. "I hope poor Chet
ain't done nothin' that he shouldn't ha' done. I'm sure he tries to do
his very best. If he's done anything----"
"Where _is_ he?" Joseph Stagg managed to say. "Where--where is he?"
repeated the widow. "Oh, do come in, Mr. Stagg. It's snowin', ain't it?"
Mr. Stagg plunged into the little house, head down, and belligerent.
"Where's that plagued boy?" he demanded again. "Don't tell me he's taken
Hannah's Car'lyn out on the cove in this storm!"
"But--but you _told_ him he could!" wailed the widow.
"What if I did? I didn't know 'twas going to snow like this, did I?"
"But it wasn't snowin' when they went," said Mrs. Gormley, plucking up
some little spirit. "I'm sure it wasn't Chetwood's fault. Oh, dear!"
"Woman," groaned Joseph Stagg, "it doesn't matter whose fault it is--or
if it's anybody's fault. The mischief's done. The ice is breaking up.
It's drifting out of the inlet. You can hear it--if you'd stop talking
long enough." This was rather unfair on Mr. Stagg's part, for he was
certainly doing more talking than anybody else.
Just at this moment an unexpected voice broke into the discussion. There
was a second woman--she had been sitting by the window--in Mrs. Gormley's
front room.
"Are you positive they went out on the cove to slide, Mrs. Gormley?"
"Oh, yes, I be, Mandy," answered the seamstress. "Chet said he was goin'
there, and what Chet says he'll do, he always does."
"Then the ice has broken away and they have been carried out into the
lake," groaned Mr. Stagg.
Mandy Parlow came quickly to the little hall.
"Perhaps not, Joseph," she said, speaking directly to the hardware
dealer. "It may be the storm. It snows so fast they would easily get
turned around--be unable to find the shore."
Another reverberating crash echoed from the cove. Mrs. Gormley wrung her
hands.
"Oh, my Chet! Oh, my Chet!" she wailed. "He'll be drowned!"
"He won't be, if he's got any sense," snapped Mr. Stagg. "I'll get some
men and we'll go after them."
"Call the dog, Joseph Stagg. Call the dog," advised Miss Amanda.
"Heh? Didn't Prince go with 'em?"
"Oh, yes, he did," wailed Mrs. Gormley.
"Call the dog, just the same," repeated Amanda Parlow. "Prince will hear
you and bark."
"God bless you! So he will," cried Mr. Stagg. "You've got more sense
than any of us, Mandy."
"And I'll have the chapel bell rung," she said.
"Huh! what's that for?"
"The wind will carry the sound out across the cove. That boy, Chet, will
recognise the sound of the bell and it will give him an idea of where
home is."
"You do beat all!" exclaimed Joseph Stagg, starting to leave the house.
But Amanda stayed him for a moment.
"Find a cap of Chet's, Mrs. Gormley," she commanded. "Don't you see Mr.
Stagg has no hat? He'll catch his death of cold."
"Why, I never thought!" He turned to speak directly to Miss Amanda, but
she had gone back into the room and was putting on her outer wraps. Mrs.
Gormley, red-eyed and weeping, brought the cap.
"Don't--don't be too hard on poor Chet, sir," she sobbed. "He ain't to
blame."
"Of course he isn't," admitted the hardware dealer heartily. "And I'm
sure he'll look out for Hannah's Car'lyn--he and the dog."
He plunged down the steps and kept on down the hill to the waterfront.
There was an eating-place here where the waterside characters
congregated, and Mr. Stagg put his head in at the door.
"Some of you fellers come out with me on the ice and look for a little
girl--and a boy and a dog," said Mr. Stagg. "Like enough, they're lost in
this storm. And the ice is going out."
"I seen 'em when they went down," said one man, jumping up with
alacrity. "Haven't they come back yet?"
"No."
"Snow come down and blinded 'em," said another.
"Do you reckon the spring freshet's re'lly due yet?" propounded a third
man.
"Don't matter whether she be or not, Rightchild," growled one of the
other men. "The kids ought to be home, 'stead o' out on that punky ice."
They all rushed out of the eating-house and down to the nearest dock.
Even the cook went, for he chanced to know Carolyn May.
"And let me tell you, she's one rare little kid," he declared, out of
Mr. Stagg's hearing. "How she come to be related to that hard-as-nails
Joe Stagg is a puzzler."
The hardware dealer might deserve this title in ordinary times, but this
was one occasion when he plainly displayed emotion.
Hannah's Car'lyn, the little child he had learned to love, was somewhere
on the ice in the driving storm. He would have rushed blindly out on the
rotten ice, barehanded and alone, had the others not halted him.
"Hold on! We want a peavy or two--them's the best tools," said one of the
men.
"And a couple of lanterns," said another.
Joseph Stagg stood on the dock and shouted at the top of his voice:
"Prince! Prince! Prince!"
The wind must have carried his voice a long way out across the cove, but
there was no reply.
Then, suddenly, the clear silver tone of a bell rang out. Its pitch
carried through the storm startlingly clear.
"Hullo! what's the chapel bell tolling for?" demanded the man who had
suggested the lanterns.
"The boy will hear that!" cried another. "If he isn't an idiot, he'll
follow the sound of the chapel bell."
"Ya-as," said the cook, "if the ice ain't opened up 'twixt him an' the
shore."
There was a movement out in the cove. One field of ice crashed against
another. Mr. Stagg stifled a moan and was one of the first to climb down
to the level of the ice.
"Have a care, Joe," somebody warned him. "This snow on the ice will mask
the holes and fissures something scandalous."
But Joseph Stagg was reckless of his own safety. He started out into the
snow, shouting again:
"Prince! Prince! Here, boy! Here, boy!"
There was no answering bark. The ice cracked and shuddered and the gale
slapped the snow against the searchers more fiercely than before. Had
they been facing the wind, the snow would fairly have blinded them.
"And that's what's happened to the boy," declared one of the men. "Don't
you see? He's got to face it to get back to town."
"Then he is drifted with it," said Mr. Stagg hopelessly.
"Say, he'll know which is the right way! Hear that bell?" rejoined
another. "You can hear the chapel bell when you're beating into the cove
with the wind dead against you. I know, for I've been there."
"Me, too," agreed another.
The clanging of the chapel bell was a comforting sound. Joseph Stagg did
not know that, unable to find the sexton, Amanda Parlow had forced the
church door and was tugging at the rough rope herself.
Back and forth she rang the iron clapper, and it was no uncertain note
that clanged across the storm-driven cove that afternoon. It was not
work to which Carolyn May's "pretty lady" was used. Her shoulders soon
ached and the palms of her hands were raw and bleeding. But she
continued to toll the bell without a moment's surcease.
She did not know how much that resonant sound might mean to those out on
the ice--to the little girl and the boy who might have no other means of
locating the shore, to the men who were searching for the lost ones; for
they, too, might be lost in the storm.
The axle of the old bell groaned and shrieked at each revolution. Miss
Amanda pulled on the rope desperately. She did not think to put her foot
in the loop of the rope to aid her in this work. With the power of her
arms and shoulders alone she brought the music from the throat of the
bell. Every stroke was a shock that racked her body terribly. She dared
not leave the rope for a minute while she called from the door for help.
She hoped the sexton would come, wondering who was so steadily pulling
the bell rope. Stroke followed stroke. The axle shrieked--and she could
have done the same with pain had she not set her teeth in her lip and
put forth every atom of will power she possessed to keep to the work and
stifle her agony.
On and on, till her brain swam, and her breath came chokingly from her
lungs. Once she missed the stroke, her strength seeming to desert her
for the moment. Frantically she clawed at the rope again and pulled down
on it with renewed desperation.
"I will! I will!" she gasped.
Why? For the sake of the little child that she, too, had learned to
love?
Perhaps. And, yet, it was not the flowerlike face of little Carolyn May
that Amanda Parlow saw continually before her eyes as she tugged on the
bell rope with bleeding hands.
Going out into the storm, out on the treacherous ice, was a figure that
she had watched during the long years from behind the curtains of her
front room. It was the most familiar figure in the world to her.
She had seen it change from a youthful, willowy shape to a solid,
substantial, middle-aged figure during these years. She had seen it
aging before its time. No wonder she could visualise it now so plainly
out there on the ice.
"Joe! Joe!" she muttered each time that she bore down on the bell rope,
and the iron tongue shouted the word for her, far across the
snow-blotted cove.