THE WATERLOO OF BONAPARTE LAFAYETTE.
The teamster's cry of horror brought everybody to the scene. Cleena was
the first to reach it and to find John standing by the mouth of the
well, whitefaced and trembling.
"What's it? What's down there? What mean ye yellin' that gait? Speak,
man, if ye can."
He could only point downward, while he strained his ears to catch any
sound that might come from below.
Then Cleena shook him fiercely. "Speak, I tell ye! Where's the boy?"
The other still pointed down into the shaft, but he made out to say:--
"I heard him laugh, then shout, and he must have gone stark crazy."
"He down there? That poor, senseless gossoon? Where was you that you'd
leave him do it?"
"I was walking--wait! I hear something."
Four white, terror-stricken faces now bent above the old well, while
Cleena's arms clasped her "childer" tightly, fearing they, too, might be
snatched away from her.
"Saints save us, it's bewitched! Oh, the day, the day!"
"Shut up, woman! Keep still. I hear something."
Again they stooped and listened, and Amy's keen ears reported,
joyfully:--
"It's Fayette! It is, it is! It sounds as if he were speaking from the
far end of a long, long tube. But he's alive, he's alive!"
"He might as well be dead. His bones must be broken, and he can't live
long in such an air as that," said Hallam.
"I don't know. That he's alive at all proves that the air isn't as bad
as I thought. Besides, he may not have broken any bones. He's had
fearful falls, before this, and he always came out about sound. But the
rope doesn't reach much more than two-thirds down. I've heard they dug
this well a hundred and fifty feet deep. They had to, to reach water
from top this rock."
"A hundred and fifty feet! How can we possibly reach him?"
"Not by standin' talkin'. Whisk to the cottage, Amy, an' beg the length
of all the rope they have. To save a lad's life--be nimble!"
The girl was away long before Cleena finished speaking, while the latter
herself darted into the house, caught off the sheets and blankets from
the beds, and tore them into strips. Never wasting one motion of her
strong hands, and praying ceaselessly, she tied each fresh length and
tested it with all her force.
Meanwhile Amy almost flew over the space between "Spite House" and the
cottage, arriving there nigh breathless; but gasping out her errand, she
rushed straight to the line in the drying yard and began to tear it from
its fastenings on the poles.
"You're wanting my rope, miss? Somebody in the well? Heaven help him!
But wait! If it's _cleaning_ the well he is, why of course he'd be down
there. Who is it?"
"Fayette. Maybe you know him as 'Bony.'"
"The half-wit? Pshaw, Miss. Don't look that frightened. He's all safe,
never fear. Nothing hurts him. The Lord looks after him. I'm afraid this
rope won't hold, it's so old. Wait, I'll go, too. Never mind the
children, they'll have to take care of themselves."
All the while she was talking the kindly woman had been rolling the
line, retying it where their haste broke its worn strands, and following
Amy up over the slope. Now she paused for one second to remonstrate:--
"You, Victoria, go back! There's William Gladstone trying to creep after
us. Beatrice, Belinda, go home. You mustn't follow mother every time she
turns her back! Go home, I tell you. Go--right--straight--back--home.
My! but this _is_ steep!"
A shriek, shrill and piercing as only infant lungs could utter, made
even Amy stop, eager though she was to reach the well where poor "Bony"
might already have breathed his last. The one backward glance she cast
showed the numerous children of the house of Jones toiling industriously
skyward, in their mother's footsteps. Victoria, who was "eight and
should have known better," had left William Gladstone to take care of
himself, with the result that, being less than two years old and rather
unsteady on his legs, he had toddled up to the biggest stone in the
path, tried to step over it, lost his balance, and fallen. The hill was
so steep that once the fat little fellow began to roll downwards he
could not stop, and the terrified outcry first showed the mother his
danger.
"He'll bump his head against a rock and--"
Mrs. Jones did not finish her sentence, but faced about and ran
frantically down the slope, catching up her baby and smothering it with
kisses, although she had assured the little fellow, at least a dozen
times that day, that "he was the very plague of her life." She had
dropped the rope, and Amy caught it, then turned and ran as fast upward
as her neighbor was going in the other direction. Behind Amy still
followed Victoria, Beatrice, and Belinda.
"You should go back. Your little brother's hurt," shouted she.
"Yes'm. He is often," coolly replied Victoria, who could have the minor
excitement of examining the baby's bruises any day, but who did not
intend to lose the greater one of "a man down the well" for any
commonplace home matter.
Just before she came to the crest of the knoll Amy hesitated, and stood
still. It seemed to her she could not go on and face the possible, even
probable, tragedy at the top, and into the midst of her awestruck
waiting there was hurled this startling question:--
"Say, miss, where do you s'pose you'll have the funeral? May I come?"
"Ugh! Oh, you horrid little thing!"
Victoria appeared so amazed at the effect of her inquiry that she stared
back into Amy's face, wide-eyed and open-mouthed.
"Wh-h--why!"
"I shouldn't have said that. But you go right straight back home. Your
mother wants you. I don't. Oh, dear! How could you say it?"
"Why, 'cause I like to go to funerals. I go to every one Ma does. She's
got a real nice 'funeral dress,' an' so have I."
Amy fled. She had never seen anything like little Victoria, and she was
so indignant that she almost forgot her dread of what might lie before
her. She reached the group about the well, who were now utterly silent,
and seemed to be watching with more astonishment than terror something
happening within it.
Amy, also, stretched her neck to see, though she shut her eyes, and
this naturally prevented; nor did she open them till she felt Cleena
clutch the skirt of her frock and heard her exclaim:--
"Faith, but he's the biggest monkey out o' the Zoo! Arrah musha! I'll
teach him scaring folks out o' their wits, an' wastin' good bedclothes
on such havers! Huh!"
For this was the marvel that now presented. Poor, silly Fayette, looking
more foolish and grotesque than ever, climbing upwards into the
daylight, blinking and sputtering, his back against the stones of one
side the shaft, his feet against the other, his hands clutching,
pulling; both feet and hands almost prehensile, like the creature's to
which Cleena had likened him, yet safe, unbruised, and only mud-splashed
and laughing.
With a final, agile movement he reached the top, threw his arms about
the beam, and leaped to the ground beside them. Then he laughed again,
hilariously, uproariously, and not for long.
In Cleena Keegan's indignant soul a plan had been rapidly forming.
"So you'd be givin' us all the terrors, would ye, avick? Sure, a taste
o' the same medicine's good for the doctor as his patient. I'll just
give ye a try of it, an' see what ye say. Hmm, them sheets might ha'
lasted for years, so they might; an' them blankets, my heart!"
Before anybody, least of all the astonished "Bony," could comprehend
what she would be about, Cleena had tripped and thrown the lad to the
ground. She was more powerful than even his boasted muscle, and he quite
unprepared for what she meant to do. The life-line made from her
cherished bedclothing was twisted about his wet shoulders like a flash.
Yet there seemed nothing violent nor vindictive as she rolled him over
and over, wisely winding and binding first his hands and feet. After
that the punishment she administered was but a question of endurance on
her part, and the length of the line.
"There, you blatherskite! What's your guardian angel thinkin' of ye the
now, you poor, ignorant, heathen gossoon? Well for ye that old Cleena
has met up with ye to beat some bits o' sense into your idle pate.
Tight, is it? Well, not so tight as the bands o' me heart when I looked
to see ye brought up to me dead. 'Twon't hurt. Lie there an' rest."
Cleena finished her harangue and her task together. After that she stood
up straight and strong, and regarded the teamster with a questioning
eye.
"Is it true, what he says, that he's nor kith nor kin, hereabouts?"
"I guess it's true," answered John, laughing at the ludicrous appearance
of Fayette upon the ground. "He was born in the poorhouse, an' I've
heard his mother died. His father had before then, I know. I used--"
Cleena was in no mood for long stories, and she foresaw that one was
imminent. She interrupted without ceremony--
"So, if I take him in hand to train him a bit, what for no? There'll be
no one botherin' an' interferin', is it?"
"I guess there won't anybody worry about 'Bony.' He's right handy around
the mill, an' he does odd jobs for a many people; but if you want him, I
'low you can have him 'for a song.'"
"I'll have no song singin', not I, nor from him. But if I don't make a
smart, decent lad where there lies a fool, my name isn't Cleena Keegan,
the day. Now what's about the well?"
"That's what I want to know, Cleena," cried Amy. "How did he, could he,
fall into it and climb out of it alive?"
"Easier than you think, miss. He slid down the rope as far as it went, I
suppose, then caught his feet in the stones of the sides, then his
hands, and went down just as he came up. He didn't go into the water in
the bottom, of course; but he's proved that the well is safe enough, and
to-morrow morning he ought to be made to go down, properly fixed, with a
rope around his waist and the tackle for bailing it out. It'll be a job,
then, even after to-day's beginning. But I'll tell the boss about it,
and I don't doubt he'll send the other man that helps 'Bony' in the mill
village, and get things right this time. What say, boy? Think you'll
take matters a little soberer to-morrow, if I come back to help?"
Fayette lay with closed eyes and made no answer, but Cleena spoke for
him, and as one in authority:--
"Faith an' he will. An' I'm thankin' ye, sir, for all ye've done the
day. Sure, by this hour to-morrow, we should begin to see daylight
'twixt the dirt."
"I 'low you will. You're a master scrubber, and no mistake. Well,
good-by. Anything I can do for you village way?"
"I'm beholden to you, sir, an' so are my folks, but there's not. I'm for
sending the childer down on their donkeys to see how fares the mistress
an' master; an' they'll fetch back what's lackin' o' food an' so on,
when they come. It's hungerin' sore will the sweet lady be for a sight
of her own."
"Oh, Cleena, is that so? May we go? But--that will leave you quite
alone," said Amy.
Hallam smiled. "She'll not be so very much alone, after all, dear," and
he nodded significantly toward the still apparently sleeping Fayette.
Then they went away to saddle the burros, and after having received a
mysterious message which they were to deliver to Adam Burn, to the
effect that "he'll know what to send o' them things in his box."
"And it's as clear as the sunshine just what you are asking, dear old
Goodsoul. That Friend Adam shall give us your dollars out of his box.
You transparent old pretender! Well, never mind, Scrubbub. Some day our
ships will come home, and then--you shall live in lavender," said Amy,
hugging the faithful woman, and smiling, though tears of gratitude were
in her dark eyes.
Which eyes, happening to look downward, saw Fayette's own half open, and
watching this little affectionate by-play with deep interest. No sooner,
however, did he perceive that Amy had discovered this fact than his lids
went down with a snap.
"Ah, ha, Fayette! I saw you. I'm sorry for you, but just you tell
Goodsoul, here, that you'll remember not to shame your 'guardian angel'
any more, and she'll let you up. I know her. Her heart's made of honey
and sugar, and everything soft and sticky. I believe she's caught you in
it, now, bad as you are, and if she has, you'll never get quite clear of
her love and too demonstrative kindness."
Then she cried to Hallam, who was limping toward the tethered burros:
"Now for a race. These dear little beasties would trot a good pace if
they realized they were on the road to mother and father and Friend Adam
Burn's big oat-bin!"
As they passed through the gateless entrance to "Bareacre," Hallam
turned, and with something of Amy's cheerfulness waved his hand to
Cleena.
"We'll be back before dark, Goodsoul. Don't keep that lad tied any
longer. Don't."
"Arrah musha! Can't I do what I will with me own? There's somewhat to
pass 'twixt him an' me afore he gets free o' them bonds."
Evidently, there was; nor was she sorry to see all go and leave her
alone with Fayette. Of what occurred during their brief absence at the
Clove, nobody ever heard; but when the brother and sister rode up the
slope, just as the evening fell, Fayette appeared to meet them and take
their burros for them. His manner was subdued and gentle, and on his
homely face was a look of exceeding peace.
Amy nudged Hallam mischievously. "Another lull before another storm,
isn't it?"
Hallam regarded the half-wit critically. "No. But I think he's 'met his
Waterloo.'"
"Oh, is that what we are to call her in future? She's already as many
names as a Spanish princess." Then she lifted her voice to summon
Cleena.
"Heigho, 'Waterloo'! Father and mother are doing finely, and send love,
and dear old Adam sent something much more substantial, but not what you
asked for. Just plain beefsteak and potatoes, and a jolly chicken pie
that's in a basket on Hallam's crutch. Those crutches are the handiest
things!"
"Faith, so they be. An' there's a fire out of some wood the cottage
woman sent, an' the steak'll broil while the taties roast, like the
whisk of a squirrel in the tree."
So "Waterloo" became another of good Cleena's "love names." For it's
ever the tone and not the words that makes a sweet sound in one's ears,
and the woman's heart thrilled, and her weary shoulders lifted because
of the love which sang through Amy's innocent jest.