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, of
unnumbered, 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 an instant 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 on his 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.