WADE DOWN!
The hugging of Wade by the happy pair had to be done metaphorically,
since it was done in the sight of all Dunderbunk.
He had divined a happy result, when he missed Bill Tarbox from the
arena, and saw him a furlong away, hand in hand with his reconciled
sweetheart.
"I envy you, Bill," said he, "almost too much to put proper fervor into
my congratulations."
"Your time will come," the foreman rejoined.
And says Belle, "I am sure there is a lady skating somewhere, and only
waiting for you to follow her."
"I don't see her," Wade replied, looking with a mock-grave face up
and down and athwart the river. "When you've all gone to dinner, I'll
prospect ten miles up and down and try to find a good matrimonial claim
that's not taken."
"You will not come up to dinner?" Belle asked.
"I can hardly afford to make two bites of a holiday," said Wade. "I've
sent Perry up for a luncheon. Here he comes with it. So I cede my
quarter of your pie, Miss Belle, to a better fellow."
"Oh!" cries Perry, coming up and bowing elaborately. "Mr. and Mrs.
Tarbox, I believe. Ah, yes! Well, I will mention it up at Albany. I am
going to take my Guards up to call on the Governor."
Perry dashed off, followed by a score of Dunderbunk boys, organized by
him as the Purtett Guards, and taught to salute him as Generalissimo
with military honors.
So many hundreds of turkeys, done to a turn, now began to have an effect
upon the atmosphere. Few odors are more subtile and pervading than this,
and few more appetizing. Indeed, there is said to be an odd fellow, a
strictly American gourmand, in New York, who sits, from noon to dusk
on Christmas-Day, up in a tall steeple, merely to catch the aroma of
roast-turkey floating over the city,--and much good, it is said, it does
him.
Hard skating is nearly as effective to whet hunger as this gentleman's
expedient. When the spicy breezes began to blow soft as those of
Ceylon's isle over the river and every whiff talked Turkey, the
population of Dunderbunk listened to the wooing and began to follow its
several noses--snubs, beaks, blunts, sharps, piquants, dominants, fines,
bulgies, and bifids--on the way to the several households which those
noses adorned or defaced. Prosperous Dunderbunk had a Dinner, yes, a
DINNER, that day, and Richard Wade was gratefully remembered by many
over-fed foundry-men and their over-fed families.
Wade had not had half skating enough.
"I'll time myself down to Skerrett's Point," he thought, "and take my
luncheon there among the hemlocks."
The Point was on the property of Peter Skerrett, Wade's friend and
college comrade of ten years gone. Peter had been an absentee in Europe,
and smokes from his chimneys this morning had confirmed to Wade's eyes
the rumor of his return.
Skerrett's Point was a mile below the Foundry. Our hero did his mile
under three minutes. How many seconds under, I will not say. I do not
wish to make other fellows unhappy.
The Point was a favorite spot of Wade's. Many a twilight of last summer,
tired with his fagging at the Works to make good the evil of Whiffler's
rule, he had lain there on the rocks under the hemlocks, breathing the
spicy methyl they poured into the air. After his day's hard fight, in
the dust and heat of the Foundry, with anarchy and unthrift, he used to
take the quiet restoratives of Nature, until the murmur and fragrance of
the woods, the cool wind, and the soothing loiter of the shining stream
had purged him from the fevers of his task.
To this old haunt he skated, and kindling a little fire, as an old
campaigner loves to do, he sat down and lunched heartily on Mrs.
Purtett's cold leg,--cannibal thought!--on the cold leg of Mrs.
Purtett's yesterday's turkey. Then lighting his weed,--dear ally of the
lonely,--the Superintendent began to think of his foreman's bliss, and
to long for something similar on his own plane.
"I hope the wish is father to its fulfilment," he said. "But I must not
stop here and be spooney. Such a halcyon day I may not have again in all
my life, and I ought to make the best of it, with my New Skates."
So he dashed off, and filled the little cove above the Point with a
labyrinth of curves and flourishes.
When that bit of crystal tablet was well covered, the podographer sighed
for a new sheet to inscribe his intricate rubricas upon. Why not write
more stanzas of the poetry of motion on the ice below the Point? Why
not?
Braced by his lunch on the brown fibre of good Mrs. Purtett's cold
drumstick and thigh, Wade was now in fine trim. The air was more
glittering and electric than ever. It was triumph and victory and paean
in action to go flashing along over this footing, smoother than polished
marble and sheenier than first-water gems.
Wade felt the high exhilaration of pure blood galloping through a body
alive from top to toe. The rhythm of his movement was like music to him.
The Point ended in a sharp promontory. Just before he came abreast of
it, Wade under mighty headway flung into his favorite corkscrew spiral
on one foot, and went whirling dizzily along, round and round, in a
straight line.
At the dizziest moment, he was suddenly aware of a figure, also turning
the Point at full speed, and rushing to a collision.
He jerked aside to avoid it. He could not look to his footing. His skate
struck a broken oar, imbedded in the ice. He fell violently, and lay
like a dead man.
His New Skates, Testimonial of Merit, seem to have served him a shabby
trick.