There never had been anything in the professor’s school like the
excitement that was buzzing in every corner the next morning before the
bell rang. The boys were gathered in groups here and there, and the
affair of the day before, and its probable consequences, were the only
subjects under discussion.
“I say, Carter,” said one of the smaller boys, “I guess you wont hear
much more about the almanac, after what you had to do with this!”
“What did I have to do with it?” retorted Carter. “If you’ve got
anything to say, you’d better keep it for the one that was first to
call out _Humpy_!”
“And if it comes to that,” answered Hal, bravely enough, but looking
rather pale, “the first one never would have been heard if a dozen or
more of you hadn’t taken it up and shouted it loud enough for all the
world to hear. There’s a few of you to divide what the professor has to
say anyhow.”
“Well, never mind who it was,” said another voice, “but what’s up
anyhow? What’s the mischief done, and what’s the professor going to do
about it?”
No one seemed to have an answer to these questions, and at last Tom
ventured, though terrified at the sound of his own words.
“They say he’ll never get over it; they say he’s going to die.”
“Pshaw!” said Carter, “die of what?” but Tom’s words sounded very
disagreeably and there was a moment’s silence again.
“Well,” said one of the larger boys at last, “it’s too bad anyhow; it’s
a shame to crowd a little fellow like that, that’s never had half a
chance, though I don’t know as anybody meant to do it; but anyhow the
professor is in a terrible way, and I don’t know how he’s going to get
over it, if one or two fellows don’t get a ticket of leave before he’s
done with the thing.”
This had about as ugly a sound as what Tom had said, and the boys
feeling there wasn’t much comfort to be had in pursuing the subject,
broke up and went slowly into their places. But that was only fleeing
into the very teeth of the tempest. The black eyes of the professor
were fixed on the door, and each one as he entered had to pass under a
look so scathing that it seemed every guilty conscience must be read
through to the depths. And when he did speak, the words of yesterday
seemed only the first mutterings of a storm that was crashing over
their very heads to-day.
“Would you like to hear the message Dr. Thorndyke sends to my school
this morning? He sends you word that he doesn’t know whether you have
killed the little fellow or not; the chances of life and death seem
about equal at present; but that you might about as well have killed
him, as to do the work you did for him, body and soul!
“And _I_ would rather have heard that any misfortune had fallen on
you, than that you were capable of so cowardly a deed: striking at the
one little glimmer of light that was struggling up in a poor life like
that, and putting it out for ever, for aught you know! I have seen
enough of the same spirit among yourselves--the spirit that delights in
seeing another humiliated and pained; and it’s base and contemptible
enough even where each one takes his turn and stands his chance with
the rest. But when it comes to a little creature who, with hardly the
physical strength that lies in the left-hand of one of you great,
cowardly fellows, is trying to stand up, and _is_ standing like a hero
under the burden Heaven has seen fit to lay upon him, I have no words
for it. If I had had the least conception of the natures you have, I
would have gone down into the playground and defended him from you as
I would from a company of tigers; and with more need, for I believe
many a wild beast would have found some noble instinct by which the
strong cherishes the weak, and have saved his life. And if I can learn
the names of those who are responsible in this affair, I will expel
them every one from my school, for nothing I can teach them from books
will ever make anything better than brutes of them, until they learn
what are the first elements of a manly nature and a life that is above
contempt!”
There was no hiding away this time. No one dared to hide, lest he
should be taken for the guilty one; but guilty and innocent alike
almost felt their blood stand still before the professor was done
with them, and could bring those flashing eyes back from their sweep
around the room and fasten them down upon anything like a book. Carter
felt that if he could only live through the next six weeks, till his
graduation, he would not meet the professor’s eyes again as long as
he lived, if he could help it; Hal Fenimore had a mental somerset by
which his memory carried him back to the night of his chess-playing
with Tom, and a vague idea occurred to him that what his uncle had
said about “principles” then hadn’t altogether a different key-note
from what the professor was thundering this morning; and poor innocent
little Tom sat trembling with the feeling that in some way the whole
thing lay at his door, and would almost have been ready to change
places with Creepy, if that could in any sense have undone or atoned
for it.
Aleck sat feeling almost as much distressed as Tom with the thought
how different everything might have been if he had spied Creepy before
going back to the schoolroom, where his errand had really been to see
if he could find him. He had followed slowly behind, when the doctor
left the house in such hot haste, wishing he could do something or
search somewhere--but where? He felt sure the doctor knew, however,
from the unhesitating way he had dashed off, and it would be all right;
but when evening came he felt as if he must go once more and see how
things really were, and, moreover, he had given only half of the
professor’s message. Perhaps there had been no great harm done, after
all, and it would be such a comfort to know.
But he would hardly have mustered courage if he had realized the
reception he was to meet with. The moment Joan recognized him she
bristled like a watch-dog that had seen one onset upon his charge, and
did not know how to be furious enough in guarding it from a second. Her
face was white and hard, the spectacles sat grimly on her nose, and
she held the door so little open that her own form filled the space,
as if she thought Aleck was going to squeeze himself in if the least
opportunity were left.
“He’s asleep,” she said in a sharp, dry tone, “and the doctor says
he’s to remain sae for mony an hour yet, and it’s o’ the Lord’s mercy
that there’s aught in the power o’ medicine that can do it for a puir
suffering soul and body that a parcel o’ iron-clad boys have made it
their pleasure to trample upon.”
“Is he so very ill?” asked Aleck, too much troubled to be intimidated
by her manner. “The boys will want to know how he is.”
“The boys!” exclaimed Joan; “we want nane o’ their messages, but if ye
will tak them ane from mysel’, ye might tell them--”
She checked herself. “Na, na, that were a sinfu’ thought; I maun forgie
as I hope to be forgi’en; but it’s a cruel sight to look upon a little
life that the doctor had been cherishing and nourishing as no other
man could or would hae done, and see it lyin’ there now a crushed and
blighted thing.”
“Is he too ill?” ventured Aleck once more; “do you think he will be too
ill when he wakes to care for these flowers my sister has sent him? He
has seemed to like them once or twice before.”
“And were it your very sel’,” exclaimed Joan, throwing open the door,
“were it your very sel’ that made the bairnie’s heart sae glad mony a
time, when he’d never kenned before sae muckle as the fashion God made
a flower to grow in? Come inside, then, and see the doctor himsel’. It
will do his heart good to see a face that has once looked friendly on
the bairn.”
“No,” said Aleck, “I wont come in now, thank you, but I would like to
come every day for a while and ask how he is.”
“Come, then,” said Joan, “and as often as ye like, and the first day
he’s weel eneugh to speak to ony friend but the twa that’s truest to
him, ye shall e’en talk wi’ him a bit yoursel’.”
Joan wondered what made the doctor start, just the merest trifle, as
she carried the flowers to him and told him where they came from, and
she didn’t hear him say to himself, “So, so! the little fellow has
been thinking he hasn’t a friend in the world, and he’s richer than I
am this very moment!” She marched off up stairs again to take another
look at Creepy, and make sure the medicine was doing its work, and
that he was still asleep. But the doctor had looked out for that; and
wherever Creepy might be wandering, this world with all its ugliness
and sharp places was shut out; perfect rest for body and heart was the
only hope for saving them from going down together under the shock they
had received, and not until late the next morning did Creepy open his
eyes with anything like a clear look at things around him.
There stood the doctor, looking as strong and as fresh and exactly the
same in every way as the first day he saw him under the old butternut.
“Well, little man, and so you have waked at last. You and I both had a
nap of it last night; but the sun is shining and the birds are singing
for us once more.”
“All but me!”
“All but me!” those self-same dreaded, almost forgotten words once
more. So that miserable work of yesterday had brought them to life,
and killed everything else at the same time! The doctor stepped out
of sight, and for one instant Creepy did not know where he was. Only
at the window, having a sharp tussle with yesterday’s battle again;
but the next moment he was at Creepy’s side once more, looking just as
before, and holding Nellie Halliday’s flowers before his eyes.
“See here, little man, the world is beautiful after all, is it not?”
“All but me,” and the great eyes looked wearily at the doctor.
It took all the self-command the doctor could muster at that moment to
place the vase quietly on the table again, and take Creepy’s pulse in
his fingers without letting him suspect how hotly his own were flying.
“What is it?” he asked as gently as if there were neither battles nor
enemies to be thought of, as Creepy closed his eyes and turned wearily
on his pillow.
“Only the pain.”
“The old pain?”
Creepy nodded, and the doctor laid down his hand and stepped quietly
out of sight again, for that was the very story he had dreaded to
hear. There it was, raging and burning up and down the twisted spine,
the same trouble as of old, and threatening not only to undo all the
winter’s work, but to make mischief ten times greater than had ever
been there before.
“Hoot!” muttered Joan from the half-open door where she had been
watching the whole scene, “and fever too, plain eneugh, and as dree a
pain i’ the head, I warrant, as in the puir back itsel’, wi’ sic great
cords o’ blue veins swellin’ above the bairn’s brow. Not a word wad the
doctor hearken when I told him a cripple like itsel’ wad be wantin’ a
nurse ane day; but now the day has come, the nurse shall be Joan and
nane beside;” and stalking noiselessly to the head of the bed she took
her stand.
Aleck came the next day and the next; there was only the same story to
be told.
“He’s no himsel’ at all yet, wi’ all the drugs and sleeping potions
we’re striving to rest his soul and body wi’,” Joan said, and Aleck
turned away, feeling miserable enough. As he reached the corner, he
heard some one call him, and Carter came running up from behind.
“I say,” he said, pointing back toward Dr. Thorndyke’s, “have you been
up there?”
“Yes,” said Aleck.
“What’s the news there?”
“Just the same.”
“Do they call him very sick?”
“I’m afraid so. It’s the shock, they say, and the long run, and lying
so long on the wet ground. They say even if he pulls through this,
he’ll never be well again.”
“Well, it’s a shame,” said Carter, “and I’d give all I’m worth if I’d
had nothing to do with it. But I felt so confounded mean when they were
all letting me have it about that miserable almanac, that I couldn’t
help letting fly at the first game that came along.”
“And did that take off any of the meanness?” asked Aleck.
“Did it? I tell you I could have sold myself for a yellow dog any
minute since. I didn’t see it at the time; but if I ever get through
with this, I’m going to start things on a different tack somehow. The
only trouble is to see just how.”
“I’ll tell you how,” said Aleck. “If you could manage to remember how
the Lord has treated us, and that the only way to make a gentleman
or a Christian, is the one he taught us, to love him first, and your
neighbor as yourself.”
“Yes, but it makes a fellow too much of a prig to keep going over all
that in his mind all the time, and measuring a text to everything he
does or says.”
“Well, don’t go over it in your mind then,” said Aleck smiling; “just
feel it in your heart, and you’ll be all right without stopping to
measure anything when the time comes.”
“I don’t know,” said Carter, “but I must manage it somehow; I’ll never
be mean enough to make anybody else feel mean again, if I can help
it. But what’s the professor going to do about it? Has he found out
anything yet?”
“I don’t know; I think he’s got an idea he’d have to come into the
graduating class, and he don’t like to break that up. And I heard the
doctor begging him not to make any trouble.”
“Good for him,” said Carter, with a grateful warming at his heart; “it
would make a horrid mess for me at home if I got into trouble just now.
The executive has some pretty strict notions, and I should be likely
to lose something I’ve been fighting hard for, for a year. Do you
know what I want to strike for when I’ve done with Latin grammar and
all that rubbish? I want to go to sea, and my father wants me in the
counting-house with him. Think of that! Mounted up on a stool behind a
set of leather-covered books, with never a chance to stretch yourself,
or breathe the air from morning till night, and smelling of everything
from gunny-bags up.”
“And what do you expect to smell if you get aboard ship?” asked Aleck
laughing.
“Oh, I don’t know; horrid things enough, I suppose, but there
will always be a sniff of the glorious old ocean, and the feeling
you’re a free man, any how. That is to say, after you get on to the
quarter-deck, and that’s what I shall aim for, and make it too, as
fast as those things can be done. There are ships enough coming to the
counting-house every year to give all the boys in the firm good berths
if they wanted them; and as I’m the only one that does, it would seem
pretty tough if I couldn’t have one. The counting-house! Bah!”
“Where do you think I’m going, if you think the counting-house so bad?”
asked Aleck.
“I don’t know. Where?”
“In with Uncle Ralph.”
“You don’t mean it!” exclaimed Carter, looking at him in amazement. “I
thought you were a dead shot for the law.”
“So dead that I shall never come to life again, I guess,” said Aleck.
“Just step in one week after graduation, and you’ll find me there
behind the counter, mixing up everything that ever went into a mortar,
and not feeling myself anything but a free man either. But you never
could rest on dry land since I knew you, and I suppose you must follow
your destiny.”
“And when I have caught it, I’ll come to you to fit out my medicine
chest, and we’ll have time then to decide who’s having the best of it,”
said Carter. “But see here, can’t a fellow do anything down there at
the doctor’s? It would be a sort of comfort to make amends if there was
any way to do it.”
Aleck shook his head.
“He wont be fit to see any one for longer than I like to think, and I
believe his old nurse would sooner let a flying dragon into the house,
if she knew you belonged to the school. Making amends is a comfort that
don’t always come after a piece of work like that.”
“That’s a fact,” said Carter; “well, let me know if there’s a chance
turning up anywhere;” and the two boys separated.