directions, they made a certain broken start and were off into the
darkness at the base of the hill, before the two or three of their sex
who were left in charge of the women had fairly given the word. The
tramp of men's feet and horses' hoofs died down into the shadowy
distance. The women went inside the spacious old corn-crib that had been
turned into a gun-club shooting-box, and there the mother laid her face
on the breast of her best friend, and clung to her without a sound, only
shuddering once and again, and holding her with a convulsive grip. The
other women moved around, and busied themselves with little offices,
like the making of tea and the trimming of lamps, and talked among each
other in a quiet way with the odd little upward inflections with which
women simulate cheerfulness and hope, telling tales of children who had
been lost and had been found again all safe and unscathed, and praising
the sagacity and persistence of certain of the men engaged in the
search. Mr. Latimer, they said, was almost like a detective, he had such
an instinct for finding things and people. Mr. Brown knew every field
and hollow on the Brookfield Road. Mr. MacDonald could see just as well
in the darkness as in the daytime; and all the talk that reached the
mother's ears was of this man's skill of woodcraft, of that man's
knowledge of the country, or of another's unfailing cleverness or
tirelessness.
Outside, the two or three men in charge stood by the father in their own
way. It had been agreed that he should wait at the hilltop to learn if a
trail had been found. He was a good fellow, but not helpful or capable;
and it was their work to "jolly" him, as they called it; to keep his
hope up with cheering suggestions, and with occasional judicious doses
of whiskey from their flasks. For themselves, they did not drink; though
their voices were low and steady they were more nervous than the poor
sufferer they guarded, numbed and childish in his awful grief and
apprehension. They were waiting for the sounds of the beginning of the
search far below, and presently these sounds came, or rather one sound,
a hollow noise, changeful, uneven, yet of a cruel monotony. It was a cry
of "Willy! Willy! Willy!" rising out of that gray-black depth, a cry of
many voices, a cry that came from far and near, a cry at which the women
huddled closer together and pressed each other's hands, and looked
speechless love and pity at the woman who lay upon her best friend's
breast, clutching it tighter and tighter. Of the men outside, the father
leaned forward and clutched the arm of his chair. The others saw the
great drops of sweat roll from his brow, and they turned their faces
away from him and swore inaudibly.
[Illustration]
Then, as the deep below began to be alive with a faint dim light
reflected from the half awakened heaven, the voices died away in the
distance, and in their place the leaves of the great trees rustled and
the birds twittered to the coming morn.
* * * * *
The day broke with the dull red that prophesies heat. As the hours wore
on the prophecy was fulfilled. The moisture of the dew and the river
mist rose toward the hot sky and vanished, but the dry haze remained and
the low sun shone through it with a peculiar diffusion of coppery light.
Even when it reached the zenith, the warm, faintly yellow dimness still
rose high above the horizon, throwing its soft spell upon all objects
far or near, and melting through the dim blue on the distant hilltop
into the hot azure of the great dome above.
For an hour the watchers on the hill remained undisturbed, talking in
undertones. For the most part, they speculated on the significance of
the faint sounds that came up from below. Sometimes they could trace the
crash of a horse through dry underbrush; sometimes a tumultuous clamor
of commanding voices would tell them that a flat boat was being worked
across a broad creek or a pond; sometimes a hardly audible whirr, and
the metallic clinking of a bicycle bell would tell them that the
wheelmen were speeding on the search. But for the best part of the time
only nature's harmony of sounds came up through the ever-lightening
gloom.
But with the first of daylight came the neighbors who had not been
summoned, and they, of course, came running. It was also noticeable of
this contingent that their attire was somewhat studied, and showed more
or less elaborate preparation for starting on the already started hunt.
Noticeable also it was, that after much sagacious questioning and
profoundly wise discussion, the most of the new-comers either hung about
peering out into the dawn and making startling discoveries at various
points, or else went back to their houses to get bicycles, or horses, or
forgotten suspenders. The little world of a suburban town sorts itself
out pretty quickly and pretty surely. There are the men who do and the
men who don't; and very few of the men who _did_, in that particular
town, were in bed half an hour after the loss of that child was known.
But, after all, the late arrivals were useful in their way, and their
wives, who came along later, were still more useful. The men were
fertile in suggestions for tempting and practicable breakfasts; and the
women actually brought the food along; and by the time that the world
was well alight, the early risers were bustling about and serving coffee
and tea, and biscuits and fruit, and keeping up that semblance of
activity and employment that alone can carry poor humanity through long
periods of suspense and anxiety. And the first on the field were the
last to eat and the least critical of their fare.
It was eight o'clock when the first party of searchers returned to the
hill. There were eight of them. They stopped a little below the crib and
beckoned to Penrhyn to come down to them. He went, white-faced and a
little unsteady on his feet; his guardians followed him and joined with
the group in a busy serious talk that lasted perhaps five minutes--but
vastly longer to the women who watched them from above. Then Penrhyn and
two men went hastily down the hill, and the others came up to the crib
and eagerly accepted the offer of a hasty breakfast.
They had little to tell, and that little only served to deepen the doubt
and trouble of the hour. Of all the complication of unkind chance the
searchers had to face the worst and the most puzzling. As in many towns
of old settlement a road ran around the town, roughly circumscribing it,
much as the boulevards of Paris anciently circumscribed the old
fortifications of the city. It was little more than a haphazard
connection of roads, lanes, and avenues, each one of which had come into
existence to serve some particular end, and the connection had ended in
forming a circuit that practically defined the town limits. It had been
made certain that the boy had wandered this whole round, and that he had
not left it by any one of the converging roads which he must have
crossed. Nor could the direction of his wandering be ascertained. The
hard, dry macadam road, washed clean by a recent rainfall, showed no
trace of his light, infantile footprints. But sure it was that he had
been on the road not one hour, but two or three at least, and that he
had started out with an armful of his tiny belongings. Here they had
found his small pocket-handkerchief, there a gray giraffe from his
Noah's ark; in another place a noseless doll that had descended to him
from his eldest sister; then a top had been found--a top that he could
not have spun for years to come. Would the years ever come when that
lost boy should spin tops?
There were other little signs which attested his passage around the
circle--freshly broken stalks of milkweed, shreds of his brightly
figured cotton dress on the thorns of the wayside blackberries, and even
in one place the clear print of a muddy and bloody little hand on a
white gate-post.
There is no search more difficult than a search for a lost child five or
six years of age. We are apt to think of these wee ones as feeble
creatures, and we forget that their physical strength is proportionally
much greater than that of grown-up people. We forget also that the child
has not learned to attribute sensations of physical discomfort to their
proper sources. The child knows that it suffers, but it does not know
why. It is conscious of a something wrong, but the little brain is often
unable to tell whether that something be weariness or hunger. If the
wandering spirit be upon it, it wanders to the last limit of physical
power, and it is surprising indeed to find how long it is before that
limit is reached. A healthy, muscular infant of this age has been known
to walk nearly eight or ten miles before becoming utterly exhausted. And
when exhaustion comes, and the tiny form falls in its tracks, how small
an object it is to detect in the great world of outdoors! A little
bundle of dusty garments in a ditch, in a wayside hollow, in tall grass,
or among the tufts and hummocks of a marsh--how easy it is for so
inconspicuous an object to escape the eye of the most zealous searcher!
A young animal lost cries incessantly; the lost child cries out his
pitiful little cry, finds itself lifted to no tender bosom, soothed by
no gentle voice, and in the end wanders and suffers in helpless,
hopeless silence.
As the morning wore on Dirck and Halford beat the swampy lands of the
riverside with a thoroughness that showed their understanding of the
difficulty of their work, and their conviction that the child had taken
that direction. This conviction deepened with every hour, for the rest
of the countryside was fairly open and well populated, and there the
search should have been, for such a search, comparatively easy. Yet the
sun climbed higher and higher in the sky, and no sound of guns fired in
glad signal reached their ears. Hither and thither they went through the
hot lowlands, meeting and parting again, with appointments to come
together in spots known to them both, or separating without a word, each
knowing well where their courses would bring them together. From time to
time they caught glimpses of their companions on the hills above, who,
from their height, could see the place of meeting on the still higher
hill, and each time they signalled the news and got back the despairing
sign that meant "None yet!"
News enough there was, but not _the_ news. Mrs. Penrhyn still stayed,
for her own house was so situated that the child could not possibly
return to it, if he had taken the direction that now seemed certain,
without passing through the crowd of searchers, and intelligence of his
discovery must reach her soonest at that point. Perhaps there was
another reason, too. Perhaps she could not bear to return to that
silent house, where every room held some reminder of her loss. Certainly
she remained at the Club, and perhaps she got some unreasoning comfort
out of the rumors and reports that came to that spot from every side. It
was but the idle talk that springs up and flies about on such occasions,
but now and then it served as a straw for her drowning hope to clutch
at. Word would come of a farmer who had seen a strange child in his
neighbor's wagon. Then would come a story of an inn-keeper who had
driven into town to ask if anybody had lost a boy. Then somebody would
bring a report at third or fourth hand of a child rescued alive from the
river. Of course story after story, report after report, came to
nothing. The child seen in the wagon was a girl of fourteen. The
inn-keeper had come to town to ask about the lost child, but it was only
because he had heard the report and was curious. A child indeed had been
rescued from the river, but the story was a week old. And so it went,
and the hot sun rose to the zenith and declined, and the coppery haze
grew dim, and the shadows lengthened, and the late afternoon was come
with its awful threat of impending night.
[Illustration]
Dirck and Halford, down in the riverside marsh, saw that dreaded change
fall upon the landscape, and they paused in their search and looked at
one another silently. They had been ceaselessly at work all day, and the
work had left its marks on them. Their faces were burnt to a fiery red,
they were torn and scratched in the brambles, their clothes were soaked
in mud and water to the waist, and they had been bitten and stung by
insects until they looked as though some strange fever had broken out on
them.
They had just met after a long beat, each having described the half of a
circle around a piece of open water, and had sunk down in utter
weariness on a little patch of dry ground, and for a minute looked at
each other in silence. Then the younger man spoke.
"Hal," he said, "he never came this far."
By way of answer the other drew from his pocket a child's shoe, worn and
wet, and held it up.
"Where did you find it?" asked Dirck.
"Right over there," said Halford, "near that old wagon-trail."
Dirck looked at him with a question in his eyes, which found its answer
in the grave inclination of the elder's head. Then Dirck shook his own
head and whistled--one long, low, significant whistle.
"Well," he said, "I thought so. Any trail?"
"Not the least," replied Halford. "There's a strip of thick salt grass
there, over two yards wide, and I found the shoe right in the middle of
it. It was lying on its side when I found it, not caught in the grass."
"Then they were carrying him, sure," said Dirck, decisively. "Now then,
the question is, which way."
[Illustration]
The two men went over to the abandoned roadway, a mere trail of ruts,
where, in years before, ox-teams had hauled salt hay. Up and down the
long strip of narrow grass that bordered it, they went backward and
forward, hunting for traces of men's feet, for they knew by this time,
almost beyond doubt, that the child was in the hands of tramps. The
"tramp-hole" is an institution in all suburban regions which are
bordered by stretches of wild and unfrequented country. These
tramp-holes or camps are the headquarters of bands of wanderers who come
year after year to dwell sometimes for a week, sometimes for months. The
same spot is always occupied, and there seems to be an understanding
among all the bands that the original territory shall not be exceeded.
The tramps who establish these "holes" are invariably professionals,
and never casual vagabonds; and apparently they make it a point of honor
to conduct themselves with a certain propriety while they are in camp.
Curiously enough, too, they seem to come to the tramp-hole, mainly for
the purpose of doing what it is supposed that a tramp never does,
namely: washing themselves and their clothes. I have seen on a chill
November day, in one of these places, half a dozen men, naked to the
waist, scrubbing themselves, or drying their wet shirts before the
fire. I have always found them perfectly peaceable, and I have never
known them to accost lonely passers-by, or women or children. If a
shooting or fishing party comes along, however, large enough to put any
accusation of terrorism out of the question, it is not uncommon for the
"hoboes" to make a polite suggestion that the poor man would be the
better for his beer; and so well is the reputation of these queer camps
established that the applicant generally receives such a collection of
five-cent pieces as will enable him to get a few quarts for himself and
his companions.
Still, in spite of the mysterious system of government that sways these
banded wanderers on the face of the earth, it happens occasionally that
the tramp of uncontrollable instincts finds his way into the tramp-hole,
and there, if his companions are not numerous or strong enough to
withstand him, commits some outrage that excites popular indignation and
leads to the utter abolition of one of the few poor out-door homes that
the tramp can call his own, by the grace and indulgence of the world of
workers. That such a thing had happened now the two searchers for the
lost child feared with an unspeakable fear.
Dirck straightened himself up after a careful inspection of the strip of
salt grass turf, and looking up at the ridge, blew a loud, shrill
whistle on his two fingers. There was no answer. They had gone a full
mile beyond call of their followers.
"I'll tell you what, old man," said Dirck, with the light of battle
coming into his young eyes, "we'll do this thing ourselves." His senior
smiled, but even as he smiled he knit his brows.
"I'll go you, my boy," he said, "so far as to look them up at the
canal-boats. If they are not there we've got to go back and start the
rest off. It may be a question of horses, and it may be a question of
telegraphing."
"Well, let's have one go at them, anyway," said Dirck. He was no less
tender-hearted than his companion; he wanted to find the child, but also
he wanted, being young and strong and full of fight, to hunt tramps.
* * * * *
There were three tramp-holes by the riverside, but two were sheltered
hollows used only in the winter-time. The third was a collection of
abandoned canal-boats on the muddy strand of the river. Most of them
were hopeless wrecks; in three or four a few patches of deck remained,
enough to afford lodgment and shelter to the reckless wayfarers who made
nothing of sleeping close to the polluted waters that permeated the
rotten hulks with foul stains and fouler smells.
From the largest of these long, clumsy carcasses of boats came a sound
of muffled laughter. The two searchers crept softly up, climbed
noiselessly to the deck and looked down the hatchway. The low, red sun
poured in through a window below them, leaving them in shadow and making
a picture in red light and black shades of the strange group below.
Surrounded by ten tramps; ten dirty, uncouth, unshaven men of the road,
sat the little Penrhyn boy, his little night-shirt much travel-stained
and torn, his fat legs scratched and bruised, his soiled cheeks showing
the traces of tears, his lips dyed with the juices of the berries he
had eaten on his way, but happy, happy, happy--happier perhaps than he
had ever been in his life before; for in his hand he held a clay pipe
which he made persistent efforts to smoke, while one of the men, a big
black-bearded animal who wore three coats, one on top of the other,
gently withdrew it from his lips each time that the smoke grew
dangerously thick. And the whole ten of them, sitting around him in
their rags and dirt, cheered him and petted him and praised him, even as
no polite assemblage had ever worshipped him before. No food, no drink
could have been so acceptable to that delicately nurtured child of the
house of Penrhyn as the rough admiration of those ten tramps. Whatever
terrors, sufferings, or privations he had been through were all
forgotten, and he crowed and shrieked with hysterical laughter. And when
his two rescuers dropped down into the hole, instead of welcoming them
with joy, he grabbed one of the collars of the big brute with the three
coats and wept in dire disappointment and affright.
"Fore God, boss!" said the spokesman of the gang, the sweat standing out
on his brow, "we didn't mean him no harm, and we wouldn't have done him
no harm neither. We found de little blokey over der in the ma'sh yonder,
and we tuk him in and fed him de best we could. We was goin' to take him
up to the man what keeps the gin-mill up the river there, for we hadn't
no knowledge where he come from, and we didn't want to get none of you
folks down on us. I know we oughter have took him up two hours ago, but
he was foolin' that funny-like that we all got kinder stuck on it, see,
and we kinder didn't want to shake him. That's all there was to it,
boss. God in heaven be my judge, I ain't lyin', and that's the truth!"
The faces of the ten tramps could not turn white, but they did show an
ashen fear under their eyes--a deadly fear of the two men for whom any
one of them would have been more than a match, but who represented the
world from which they were outcasts, the world of Home, of whose most
precious sweetness they had stolen an hour's enjoyment--the world so
strong and terrible to avenge a wrong to its best beloved.
[Illustration]
Then the silence was broken by the voice of the child, wailing
piteously:
"I don't want to be tooken away from the raggedty gentlemen!"
Dirck still looked suspicious as he took the weeping child, but Halford
smiled grimly, thoughtfully and sadly, as he put his hand in his pocket
and said: "I guess it's all right, boys, but I think you'd better get
away for the present. Take this and get over the river and out of the
county. The people have been searching for this baby all day, and I
don't know whether they'll listen to my friend and me."
* * * * *
The level red light had left the valleys and low places, and lit alone
the hilltop where the mother was watching, when a great shout came out
of the darkness, spreading from voice to voice through the great expanse
below, and echoed wildly from above, thrilling men's blood and making
hearts stand still; and as it rose and swelled and grew toward her out
of the darkness, the mother knew that her lost child was found.
A LETTER TO TOWN
FERNSEED STATION.
ATLANTIS CO., NEW ----
_February 30, 189-._
MY DEAR MODESTUS:--You write me that circumstances have decided you to
move your household from New York to some inexpensively pleasant town,
village, or hamlet in the immediate neighborhood, and you ask me the
old, old innocent question:
"Shall I like suburban life?"
This question I can answer most frankly and positively:
"No, certainly not. You will not like it at all."
There is no such thing as _liking_ a country life--for I take it that
you mean to remove to the real suburban countryside, and not to one of
those abominable and abhorrent deserts of paved streets laid out at
right angles, and all supplied with sewers and electric light wires and
water-mains before the first lonely house escapes from the house-pattern
books to tempt the city dweller out to that dreary, soulless waste which
has all the modern improvements and not one tree. I take it, I say, that
you are going to no such cheap back-extension of a great city, but that
you are really going among the trees and the water-courses, severing all
ties with the town, save the railway's glittering lines of steel--or,
since I have thought of it, I might as well say the railway ties.
If that is what your intent is, and you carry it out firmly, you are
going to a life which you can never like, but which you may learn to
love.
How should it be possible that you should enjoy taking up a new life,
with new surroundings, new anxieties, new responsibilities, new duties,
new diversions, new social connections--new conditions of every
kind--after living half a lifetime in New York? It is true that, being
a born New Yorker, you know very little indeed of the great city you
live in. You know the narrow path you tread, coming and going, from your
house to your office, and from your office to your house. It follows, as
closely as it may, the line of Broadway and Fifth Avenue. The elevated
railroads bound it downtown; and uptown fashion has drawn a line a few
hundred yards on either side, which you have only to cross, to east or
to west, to find a strange exposition of nearsightedness come upon your
friends. Here and there you do, perhaps, know some little by-path that
leads to a club or a restaurant, or to a place of amusement. After a
number of books have been written at you, you have ventured timorously
and feebly into such unknown lands as Greenwich Village; or that poor,
shabby, elbowing stretch of territory that used to be interesting, in a
simple way, when it was called the French Quarter. It is now supposed to
be the Bohemian Quarter, and rising young artists invite parties of
society-ladies to go down to its table d'hôte restaurants, and see the
desperate young men of the bachelor-apartments smoke cigarettes and
drink California claret without a sign of trepidation.
[Illustration]
As I say, that is pretty near all you know of the great, marvellous,
multitudinous town you live in--a city full of strange people, of
strange occupations, of strange habits of life, of strange contrasts of
wealth and poverty; of a new life of an indescribable crudity, and of
an old life that breeds to-day the very atmosphere of the historic
past. Your feet have never strayed in the side paths where you might
have learned something of the infinite and curious strangeness of this
strange city.
But, after all, this is neither here nor there. You have accustomed
yourself to the narrow dorsal strip that is all New York to you. Therein
are contained the means of meeting your every need, and of gratifying
your every taste. There are your shops, your clubs, your libraries, your
schools, your theatres, your art-galleries, and the houses of all your
friends, except a few who have ventured a block or so outside of that
magic line that I spoke of a little while ago. And now you are not only
going to cross that line yourself, but to pass the fatal river beyond
it, to burn your boats behind you, and to settle in the very wilderness.
And you ask me if you will like it!