help was old McAndrews, who lived in two fascinating rooms over the
stable and managed Miss Lydia’s comfortable estate--and Miss Lydia.
There existed between these two a curious friendship. McAndrews, Junior
thought, was the oldest person alive. When Miss Lydia’s bedtime chapter
had been fifth Genesis Junior had glanced rather uneasily at McAndrews,
who seemed to him actually to visualize those long-lived gentlemen
whose many years Aunt Lydia was sonorously enumerating.
All of a ripe eighty, with a hale, ruddy face framed in a New England
snow of beard, McAndrews had known every Palmer born for three
quarters of a century. What tales of them he told Junior! Some of them
sailors, some of them soldiers, all of them men of action. Junior’s
Daddy was in his memory as a little boy, a youngster fresh from West
Point, a big brown fellow home from Cuba. And oh, more wonderful than
all, he had known Junior’s mamma, for she had lived within a few miles
of this self-same little town! She was, he said, the most beautiful
girl in the world. Even yet his voice broke a little when he talked
about her.
He used to take Junior by the hand and go trudging over the
country-side in heavenliest rambles. Every house called for a history
in detail, until once they passed a fine old place set back from the
road, embowered among many elms, and McAndrews, pausing, glowered at it
silently. He hadn’t intended to take Junior by the Holcomb house, and
he was angry with himself.
“What a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful place!” said Junior, attracted
by the old mansion and its magnificent trees.
“Aye!” snarled McAndrews.
“I wish,” said Junior, “that I could climb up in those trees,
McAndrews, or roll in the grass beneath them. I like how this place
looks. Whose house is it?”
“That,” said the old man after a pause, “is the Holcomb house. And,” he
added, shaking his stick at it, “if it hadn’t belonged to an old devil
it might have sheltered a young angel. That door’s closed to you and
your father, boy; it was closed against your mother.”
McAndrews trudged along in grim silence for a while, and Junior, too,
had no words. His heart was beating fast. His mother had lived there
in that place! But why had those doors been closed against her and him
and Daddy? Junior couldn’t understand. Nobody at the post had ever told
him anything about her, save that she was very young and very, very
lovely. But of a sudden, as if he thought the little boy should know,
McAndrews began to tell him more.
She had been a great heiress, McAndrews said--that is, very, very rich.
Her papa and mamma had been very vain and proud of her, and they had
planned that she was to make what is called a great marriage: that is,
they wanted her to marry a man they knew who wished to marry her--a man
who had millions of dollars. But she had laughed and shaken her head.
Then came the Captain from El Caney, with a wounded leg and a great
grief upon him because of the gallant old father he had left behind.
Everybody had been nice to him and had been proud of the handsome young
man; but the nicest and proudest of all had been the most beautiful
girl in the world.
“Because,” said McAndrews, “those two just were made to love each
other. They couldn’t help it.”
But when the captain went to Aaron Holcomb to ask for the most
beautiful girl there had been a terrible to-do. They said he shouldn’t
have her; they said he wasn’t anything but a poor soldier with nothing
but his pay; they said she’d have to choose between nothing but a
soldier and them; and that she would have to marry another man, anyhow.
Then she had put her hand in the captain’s and chosen him. Neither
her father nor her mother had ever looked upon her face again, nor
named her name, nor given any sign when she wrote to tell them about
the little boy that presently came to live with her and the captain.
They hadn’t even given a sign when they were told that she had left
the little boy and the soldier. So the little boy really hadn’t any
grandparents, you understand. In the place that should have been his
they had put a little great-grand-niece, who was to get all that was
theirs.
“Ah!” said McAndrews angrily, “how could anybody think of casting out
an angel, and a soldier, and a little chap that was an honor to their
blood?” Moved out of himself, he dove into his pocket and gave Junior
his own treasured clasp-knife--for keeps!
That night when Junior opened the little locket he kissed with a
deeper tenderness her girlish face. And somehow, as if she had gently
whispered it into his soul, he began to be sorry for that sad, bad old
man and woman who had turned away from her and couldn’t ever call her
back again.
Junior couldn’t say that he was actually unhappy at Miss Lydia’s; she
was too really just and kind to make anybody truly unhappy. But he was
horribly lonely at times. He missed, as little boys do so acutely, just
lovingness. He couldn’t actually put it into words, you know; but he
wanted people to do things for him because they loved him and wanted
to, not because it was their duty.
There were many lessons and much studying to catch up, for Miss Lydia
said the child’s education had been, to say the least, peculiar and
irregular. Miss Lydia only knew some of the things Junior didn’t know;
she couldn’t guess the many fine and tender and beautiful lessons the
regiment had taught him, because she was a reticent old lady and Junior
a shy little boy.
With the first snows and the red sled McAndrews had bought for him
things picked up. He was getting along fairly well in the mazes of
modern learning. He hadn’t done anything that the regiment would blush
for. He had had, too, a few good gallant fights, in which he had borne
himself like a man of his hands, thereby winning the enthusiastic
friendship of those whom he had “licked.” Also just outside of the
small town was a particular hill high enough and breakneck enough to
satisfy even the most ardent little boy’s desire for thrills, and a
pond big enough to hold a whole townful of skaters. Junior began to
think that life, even outside of the post, may be pleasant enough--in
spots.
It was on the rather lonesome road leading to the pond that Junior
fell in with the Fairy at the close of a particularly freezing day.
The Fairy was obviously out of her element, but was just as obviously
delighted with the fact. Floundering waist-deep in drifts had draggled
her line furbelows; for she was most gorgeously “got up,” as a fairy
should be. One mitten had gone, leaving bare a little hand turned
purple from the cold. Under her furred cap her eyes were dancingly,
gaily blue,--almost as bravely, steadily blue as Junior’s. Escaped in
many an ensnaring curl, her hair was of an indescribably bright gold.
At sight of Junior and his sled she gave a squeak of delight, holding
out both hands.
Her name, she said, was Ga’sie. His? Oh, just Junior. Junior was really
hungry to have somebody call him that again. Aunt Lydia wouldn’t.
She disapproved of it. She said it wasn’t a name, it was a sort of
appellation. But Junior thought it brought the post and the colonel and
the major and the rookies and Daddy a little nearer. Somehow it made
him feel as if it were not himself, but some other little boy, when
people addressed him as “Bruce Palmer.” The Fairy, however, accepted
“Junior” beamingly. Only, as he himself had once done, she called it
“Duny.” Duny began to adore her right then.
He knew that the proper thing was to put her on his sled and haul her
home; but this she brought to naught by not knowing where home might
be. Junior at her bidding put her on his sled and hauled her about the
pond, wrapping her bare little hand in his own larger mitten. They had
a beautiful time, for never was a fairy more graciously delightful to a
little boy hungry for one.
Junior was sorry when a giant in livery dashed, panting, out of the
growing gloom and swooped upon the Fairy with exclamations of joy and
reproach. Not a word of gratitude was bestowed upon Junior; nothing
but a growling threat against bad boys that helped runaways.
“Duny finded me, nas’y man!” shrieked the Fairy, kicking with all the
force of her short legs. “I tummin’ ’den, Duny! Doo’-by! Doo’-by!”
Junior went home rather unwillingly. There wasn’t anybody there to play
with nor to snuggle against. Under the bleak gray sky, in the fading
light, Miss Lydia’s square brick house looked squarer and brickier than
ever; it didn’t look a bit warm and welcoming, but rather as if it
thrust out angular elbows to push one away. And the Fairy had been so
like Mrs. Lieutenant’s youngest that it made Junior’s eyes smart. If
crying weren’t “cowardy custardy” he could have cried copiously; but
the regiment discourages sniffling.
As it was he was a full seven minutes late for dinner, which waited
coldly for him, Miss Lydia rigidly resigned in her high-backed chair.
She didn’t say one word; she just looked at the clock and then at
Junior. And the clock spoke up for her: “Sev-en min-utes late for
din-ner! Sev-en min-utes late for din-ner!” The little boy’s ears
burned.
He didn’t mention the Fairy. He had never even mentioned the pond
itself. Miss Lydia had a fashion of worriedly wrinkling her brows,
pursing her lips, and asking aloud: “Should that child be allowed to
run about so much by himself? Is that pond”--or that hill, or that
road, or that anything else--“perfectly safe? Perhaps, Bruce, you would
better stay within calling distance of the house to-day.”
Within calling distance of the house was out of calling distance of
any reasonable diversion. Junior didn’t want to stay away from the
pond. She hadn’t said he couldn’t go, but then she might, after the
unaccountable fashion of grown-ups. Junior wisely held his peace.
For instance, he had been forbidden by McAndrews to go down the big
road curving by the Holcomb house. So although he desired above all
things to see the place where his mother had played as a little girl,
he didn’t go.
He had, too, an almost fearful curiosity to see those two who had lost
her. In his short experience everybody had been kind, so he couldn’t
believe that unkind and naughty folks can look just like ordinary
people. No, indeed. You can always tell the witch by her long nose and
her curved chin and her fierce eyes; and the ogre usually has sharp and
bloody teeth, hasn’t he?
His mother became to his mind like one of those beautiful and charming
princesses who are detained by a wicked king and queen, but who escape
and ride away on the crupper of the prince’s big black steed. And,
despite his fear of the old king and queen whom she had left, Junior
wanted to see that house in which she had grown up.
The place, he learned later, was open. The old king and queen were
staying there that winter, after an absence of years. Distant
cousins, nephews, nieces, and their wives and husbands and children
filled up the many big rooms, for they were to spend Christmas there.
Preparations for that great event were already under way on a huge
scale. Sleighs full of noisy, laughing folks dashed by Miss Lydia’s
house; wagons loaded with crates and bales and bundles went to and fro.
But the little boy who was the lost princess’s son flattened his small
nose against Miss Lydia’s diamond-paned windows, watched them wistfully
and had no place in their thoughts, their merrymakings or their hearts.
His very existence was quite as effectually ignored as it had always
been. But, somehow, keeping faith with his mother’s sweetness, Junior
didn’t feel ill treated or resentful; he only felt sorry.
“Poor things!” he said to her at night, “they haven’t got you any more;
and Daddy and I have.”
Because of a slight cold he had been strictly kept indoors of late,
and it palled upon him who was by nature free. If there had been any
small folks to keep him company he wouldn’t have minded so much, but
there wasn’t anybody. And oh, how he wanted to go out and find that
fairy again!
Aunt Lydia, as she said herself, wasn’t much of a hand for visiting.
She sent you fine clear jellies and flaky bread and cake and spicy
pickles and steaming broths by way of neighborliness, but she never
seemed to give you herself. So she wasn’t what you’d call really
sociable. People didn’t drop in to see Aunt Lydia and bring the
children and stay for tea. Good gracious, no! When they called they sat
stately on the horsehair parlor sofa, and pretended to be thawed out by
the frosty fire which had just been kindled, and talked about church
work, district visitin’ and the Woman’s Auxiliary. Junior thought at
first that this latter was something to wear; later he decided that
it was something akin to the rheumatism which stiffened Aunt Lydia’s
fingers, or the everlasting cold which made Mrs. Pepper’s voice like a
crow’s. It was uninteresting, however, anyway you looked at it. Junior
usually managed by polite degrees to slide out of the room. Once when
he had closed the door gently upon half an hour of Auxiliary he had met
the cat in the hall and promptly kicked her. This was one act for which
Junior afterward blushed. The cat got sleek on tidbits covertly fed to
her by way of expiation.
* * * * *
Just before Christmas, the weather being then mild, Aunt Lydia
pronounced Junior’s cold cured and set him free. She was very busy with
Christmas cakes herself just then.
Junior made straight for the pond. Because of the thaw, the ice,
although not actually dangerous, was pretty thin in spots, and Junior
avoided these spots carefully. He knew that recklessness isn’t
bravery. When it comes down to risking your life--for other people’s
safety--why, you’ve just got to take it in your ten fingers and risk
it, that’s all. That’s the code. Otherwise you keep yourself in trust
and you are careful.
Over on the farther shore, under the shadow of the trees, the ice was
still thick and firm, and Junior flew up and down this shore until his
blood tingled joyously. The rapid flight made him almost forget for a
few minutes how horribly he wanted his Daddy, to hear him speak, to
hold his hand. Christmas had always been so gay at the post; this year
he was away from the regiment, and it came bitterly hard.
After a while he sat down, and, chin in hand, wondered about his
captain ’way over in the Philippines. Oh, wasn’t he missing Junior,
just as Junior was aching for him? And wasn’t he, too, feeling “all by
himself”? A big, big lump grew and grew and grew in the little boy’s
throat. You do miss people terribly just about Christmas-time, you
know. Despite pride and the regiment’s scorn of a cry-baby a full
half-dozen extra-sized tears ran bitingly down his cold cheeks.
And just then there fell upon his shoulder a small, light, friendly
hand.
“What you k’yin’ ’bout, Duny?” demanded the Fairy, thrusting the little
hand comfortingly into his. “Darlin’ Duny, don’t you k’y!” Of her own
accord she put up her rosy mouth and kissed him roundly. Junior didn’t
say a word. He couldn’t. But he put his arms about her warm little body
and snuggled her. She felt like a plaster upon his sore heart.
“Wanted to see you, Duny,” she said placidly, stroking his cheek.
“Ga’sie love Duny. ’Nen I yunned and yunned and yunned. Dot nas’y
Fräulein!” And she fetched a great sigh as if from a deeply afflicted
bosom; but her expression was so impish that Junior laughed aloud and
hugged her again.
A stout young woman broke through the screen of bushes behind them,
panting and indignant.
“_Ach_, thou naughty one! _Himmel_, but I have this day run!” she
gurgled. “Leave the boy and come away instantly.”
The Fairy turned into the Fury. Down came the small foot, stamping; the
mittened hands doubled, the face grew raging.
“I tummed to fin’ Duny. I want Duny. Duny take me home. You go ’way!”
But the Fräulein advanced, stretching out a determined hand.
“Shall thy mother and thy rich uncle ask for thee, naughty one, and I
answer that I left thee in the forest with a strange wild one of these
parts?” she demanded.
The Fairy backed off warily. In a second she was in full flight, flying
toward those danger signals in the center of the pond--signals which
meant nothing to her. And Junior, with an eagle swoop, flew after
her; but the Fairy was like one of her own elfin race and evaded his
clutching fingers, ignored his warning cries.
Just beyond the second pole she slipped, slid forward a few feet, the
thin ice crackling under her. Then the ice tipped and her bright head
disappeared. Junior found himself staring horror-stricken into the
black hole which had swallowed her. He waited for her to reappear, but
there wasn’t even a ripple on the surface of the black water which hid
her.
Sheer panic came upon him and by the very newness and terror of the
sensation he realized that for the first time in his life he was
scared, just plain scared. He was but nine. He wasn’t a particularly
good swimmer; even if he had been, one can’t swim under ice. There
wasn’t a rope nor any help near save the German woman screeching to
Heaven in her own tongue.
And then Junior remembered the regiment. Why, he held the honor of
the old regiment in the hollow of his hand! It was just as if he’d
heard his captain’s voice: “... the Youngest Officer ... representing
us older fellows....” And the face in his locket! His heart fell to
beating naturally. Off came skates, cap, shoes, jacket. Junior, with
his eyes wide open, disappeared after the Fairy.
One wouldn’t think that water could be so cold--so alive, as it were.
It seemed to Junior as he went under, groping for the child, that the
water had gripping fingers that caught at him, trying to hold him down.
There wasn’t much trouble in getting the Fairy, who had stayed down.
The only trouble was to get her back to the opening--and the ice was so
thin just there--and the water was above his head--
A million years marched over Junior’s head before he got it above
water, dragging the limp child up with him. With one hand he held her,
chin just above the surface; with the other he tried to hold on to the
edge of the ice. His choking cry was answered by a longer, louder,
shriller scream from the governess, a piercing cry that brought a
flying sleigh to a standstill a hundred yards down the road and sent
its two men occupants running toward the sound.
The Fairy was unconscious then, and heavier than lead in Junior’s
numbing grip. He barely managed to hold on. He doesn’t remember how
they pulled him out of those icy fingers which seemed to hold him. He
heard shouts; saw, as it were, a flash of fire before his eyes; felt
himself go, and then darkness came upon him.
Along with the Fairy he was bundled into the sleigh and rushed to a
house, whither doctors were wildly summoned, and a great hush fell upon
joyous Christmas preparations.
[Illustration: He tried to hold on]
Not a soul in his mother’s house knew him who should have been best
known and loved of all. They only knew that this strange child had at
the risk of his life saved little Grace’s, and a sense of gratitude
sent Mrs. Holcomb herself to the room where he had been brought.
She helped to remove his soaked and icy garments. She noticed then the
locket at his sturdy throat, and later, while the others were working
upon him, she took off the locket to see if by chance it might inform
her who he was.
Just as she smiled at Junior nightly, when he kissed her before he
went to sleep, so the little lost Princess smiled now, tenderly,
exquisitely, in her mother’s face.
The woman staggered; but she was a proud old woman, so she didn’t
scream aloud. Only, in a bound she was back by the bed, and all pale
and trembling looked down at her child’s child, and wondered why she
hadn’t known him at once. Oh, great and terrible link of Love, that
Time and Death might weaken but could not break! She knew him for blood
of her blood; she wanted to snatch up his beautiful unconscious body in
her arms, as if through him she might touch once more that other one.
It was as if God had drawn back a curtain and let her see the result
of her own pride and folly; as if his lost mother’s shadowy shape stood
beside him and looked at her and reproached her for what had befallen
him.
She gave a great cry at that and ran out of the room, with Junior’s
“talisman” in her hand. With a stirred and pale face she came up to her
husband, who, seated in the hall, waited for news of little Grace.
“Is Grace--” he began, alarmed at sight of her pallor. But she shook
her head impatiently. Grace was--Grace--dear and beloved of course, but
the other child was _hers_.
“The little boy!” she gasped. “Aaron, Aaron--the little boy! Come, come
at once!” And she dragged him to his feet.
Wondering if her mind were shaken he followed.
Junior was just giving faint signs of life under the doctor’s hand. His
thick light hair fluffed about his forehead in the curls he hated, and
his black lashes showed the marble of his cheek. But the brave little
face was one which a whole fighting regiment adored.
“Coming around now. But he’s had a tussle for it, the brave little
chap! Must have the grit of a man to hold out as long as he did,”
mumbled the doctor.
But the old lady paid no attention to the doctor. She just dropped on
her knees by the bed and took Junior’s hand in hers and kissed it.
She had ten years’ tears to shed, and they burst over the child in a
terrible flood.
The old man sank into a chair, his knees giving way beneath him. He
didn’t need to look into the locket thrust into his hand; he knew too
well whose unforgotten face looked out of its small gold door. So he
looked instead at the face on the pillow, a face to make any father
glad and proud. Presently the slow and awful tears of an old man who
has done wrong, and suffers for it, crawled into his eyes.
He and his wife were still with Junior when McAndrews, stern and
bitter, and Miss Lydia, in tears, came to demand the captain’s son.
Even the grief and remorse that met him couldn’t quite soften McAndrews.
“Give us the boy and let us go,” said McAndrews.
But the old lady kneeling beside Junior tightened her clasp. “Take him
away from us? Now?” she asked.
“And why not now when he’s naught to you?” asked McAndrews. For he was
touched to the heart about the lad, and angry and sore against these
people. “This roof,” he said stoutly, “is no place for the captain’s
son to bide under. He’s needin’ no care from them that never had aught
to give him, not even Christian kindness. Sir and Ma’am, keep you your
gold and your pride, and her you’ve put in his place and that he’s
given back to you. You’re welcome to them all. Miss Lydia and I, that
love him, will take and keep our little lad.”
The old man sitting sorrowfully beside the bed lifted his face and met
Miss Lydia’s gaze. All the pride and hardness had gone, leaving him
what he was in reality--a sad and sorry old man, lonely in his age and
his gray hairs.
“I am glad--that you have at least seen him; that he has been able to
render you so great a service,” said Miss Lydia, proudly. “Oh, such
a good, brave, gallant little soldier! It may ease your burden to
know him as he is--a credit to his father’s name--and to his mother’s
memory.”
McAndrews blew his nose fiercely then to conceal his feelings, and said
grumpily: “Let us take the child and go.”
But the doctor wouldn’t have it. He said McAndrews was a crazy old man
who talked as if he wanted to kill the child outright, after all the
trouble they’d had to pull him through.
When Junior woke up a brand-new, sun-bright, glittering day was getting
the earth ready for Christmas. But never in his life had Junior felt
so weak and tired as he did that morning. If it hadn’t been that a
strange new room caught his attention at once--and he a most curious
and observant little boy, bound to investigate everything new--he’d
have snuggled under the covers and gone right back to sleep.
Miss Lydia, however, had seen his eyes open and she spoke to him.
Her face wore a brand-new, sun-bright look too--a sort of unlocked,
doors-open look. She kissed him as if she’d been waiting to do it a
long time and was glad to have the chance, and she called him “Junior”
in a tone that widened his eyes.
Over Miss Lydia’s shoulder came two other faces: both old, both gray,
both sad and loving and entreating; both begging with their eyes for
Junior to look at them and be friends. They seemed nice old people, he
thought. The old man now--there was something in that old man’s hungry,
grim, stern, loving face that called to something just like it ’way
down deep in Junior.
“Why, he’s better, thank God! He’s all right! He’s all right!” said the
old man, and his eyes went right on claiming Junior.
But Junior was just then remembering things. Then came his first
words--the words of a youngest officer. “Is--is the Fairy all right?”
he asked anxiously.
“I suppose,” said the old man, smiling, “that you mean our little
Gracie. Oh, yes, she’s all right this morning, thanks to you.”