Philippa, coming home from school one afternoon, late in September,
loitered at the gate for a few more words with the girls who had
walked that far with her. Sometimes the little group lingered there
until nearly sundown, between the laburnum bushes and hollyhocks of
the old garden, but to-day, Alec's impatient whistle from an upper
window signalled her. He waved a letter toward her, calling,
excitedly, "It's come, Flip! It's come! I'm to start in the morning.
I'm packing my trunk now."
With a hurried good-bye to the girls at the gate, Philippa rushed up
the stairs to her brother's room. The bureau drawers had all been
emptied on the bed, and every chair was full.
"Here's some things that need buttons," he announced, as she came in.
"Aunt Eunice is pressing my best suit, and Mack has gone down-town
after the shoes that I left to be half-soled. I'll have to rush, for
the letter says to come at once. I didn't suppose they'd be in such a
hurry. They're hustlers, I guess."
His haste was so contagious that Philippa ran into the next room for
her sewing-basket, without waiting to take off her hat, and sitting
down on the floor beside the window began to sew on buttons as fast
as she asked questions. She always had plenty to say to Alec, and now
that the time for conversation was limited to a few short hours, she
could not talk fast enough.
Presently the click of the gate made her look out. "Here comes Mack,"
she said. "Your shoes are wrapped in a newspaper, and he's so busy
reading something on it that he doesn't know where he is going. Look
out, snail!" she called; "you'll bump into the house in a minute if
you are not careful!"
The boy came slowly up the stairs still spelling out the paragraph
that interested him.
"Alec," he said, pausing in the doorway, "what's a green goods man?
This says that a gang of 'em were arrested in New York. The
detectives traced them by a letter one of them left here in
Ridgeville at the hotel. Think of that! Jonas Clark is the man's real
name, alias H-u-m-p-h," he spelled, "Humphrey (I guess it is) Long."
Alec snatched the knotty bundle and glanced at the paragraph so
eagerly that Philippa looked at him in surprise. She was still more
surprised to see a deep flush spread over his face, as he tore the
newspaper off the shoes and glanced at the date. Then he dropped it
on the bed and began to fumble for something in the bottom of his
trunk, saying, carelessly, "Oh, green goods men are just fellows who
rope people in to buy counterfeit money. Here, Mack, you'll not have
a chance to run many more errands for me. Trot down to Aunt Eunice
with these neckties, please, and ask her to press them for me while
she's in the business."
As soon as Mack disappeared, Alec caught up the paper again. "Flip,"
he said, in an impressive voice, after his second reading, "do you
remember the night of the fire I was to meet a man at the hotel and
make the final arrangement with him for taking a position he had
offered me?"
Philippa nodded.
"Well, that is the man; Humphrey Long. Think of what I have escaped.
From what he said about his sure scheme for making money and making
it easy, I know now that is what he meant; but I never suspected such
a thing then. He was the smoothest talker I ever saw, and was as
gentlemanly and well dressed as the minister. And such a way as he
had! He could almost make a body believe that black was white.
Suppose I had gone off with him. Whillikens! but I would be in hot
water now! Everybody would have said, 'Only a chip off the old block.
Just what might have been expected with such a father.'"
"But, Alec, you wouldn't have gone after he had told you what his
business was!" Philippa exclaimed, in a horrified tone. "You know
that you wouldn't."
"No," he answered, slowly, "but I think now that he intended to keep
me in the dark till he got me just where he wanted me, in too deep to
inform on them. And I was so desperate for a job away from here that
I would have accepted his offer with very few questions. Don't you
see, my very ignorance of his schemes would have made me a better
decoy in some cases than if I had not been such an innocent young
duck. Of course, Stumpy Fisher told him all about me," he added,
after a moment's thought. "He might have counted on my being enough
like my father to take kindly to his crookedness."
"How queerly things work out!" said Philippa. "If you had had your
own way, you'd have been off with that man and probably in jail with
him now. But the fire stopped you. And if it hadn't been for the
fire, Uncle Dick never would have been aroused to the necessity of
leaving his business long enough to make us a visit, and if it hadn't
been for the visit you never would have had this position in
Salesbury."
"That's so," Alec assented, gravely. "It's a whole chain of those
islands that you and Aunt Eunice are always singing about. I'll make
a map of them some day and name each one: 'Fire Island,' 'Isle of
Uncle Dick,' etc. Then I'll name the whole group after you: 'Flip's
Providence Islands,' or something like that."
Then the subject was dropped, as Macklin came clattering back up the
stairs.
* * * * *
If the history of Alec's experiences during the next few weeks could
have been written, it would have differed little from that of
thousands of boys who yearly leave farm and village to push their way
into the already overcrowded cities. Eager and hopeful, his ambition
placed no limit to the success he meant to achieve. That he might
fall short of the goal he set for himself never once entered his
thoughts. He knew the conditions requisite to success, and felt an
honest pride in the consciousness that he could meet them. He had a
strong, healthy body, a thorough education so far as the high school
could take him, good habits, and high ideals.
As the train whirled him on toward Salesbury, he felt that at last he
was placing himself in line with the long list of illustrious men who
had begun life as poor boys and ended it as the benefactors of
mankind. And he felt that he had a distinct advantage over Franklin
and some of his ilk, for he faced his future with far more than a
loaf of bread under his arm. Forward in the baggage-car his
grandfather's old leather trunk held ample provision for his present,
and an assured position awaited him.
Salesbury was not a large city, but it seemed a crowded metropolis to
Alec's eyes, accustomed to the quiet life of the little inland
village. But it was not as a gaping backwoodsman he viewed its
sights. If he had never seen a trolley-car before, he had carefully
studied the power that propels one. The whir and clang, the rush of
automobiles, the pounding of machinery in the great factory all
seemed familiar, because they were a part of the world he had learned
to know in his extensive reading. Keenly alive to new impressions, he
was so interested in everything that went on round him that he had
little time to be lonesome at first.
He stayed only a few days at the hotel. Anxious to repay his Aunt
Eunice as soon as possible the money she had spent in replenishing
his wardrobe after the fire, and defraying his travelling expenses,
he took a room in a lodging-house, and his meals at a cheap
restaurant. In that way he was able to save nearly twice as much each
week toward cancelling his indebtedness.
The letters he wrote home were re-read many times. They were so
bright and cheerful and full of interesting descriptions. He didn't
like the work in the factory, but he liked the manager, and with the
determination to make his apprenticeship as short as possible and
gain a place in the office, he pegged away with a faithfulness and
energy that he felt sure must bring a speedy reward.
Not till the cold November nights came did Miss Eunice detect a
little note of homesickness creeping into his letters. She would not
have wondered could she have looked in on him while he wrote,
buttoned up in his overcoat and with his hat on. His chilly little
bedroom, with its dim lamp and worn matting, was a dismal contrast to
the cheerful home where he had always spent his winter evenings. Then
she noticed that there was nearly always some reference to the
restaurant fare, some longing expressed for one more taste of her
cooking--the good cream gravy, the mince turnovers, the crisp
doughnuts that had been his favourite dishes at home.
Once he wrote to Philippa:
"Think of it, Flip! I don't know a single girl in town.
Excepting my landlady, I haven't spoken to a woman since I
pulled out of the depot at Ridgeville two months ago. It seems
so strange to know only the factory fellows, when at home I
was acquainted with everybody. The manager, Mr. Windom, has a
pretty daughter whom I'd give a good deal to know. She drives
down to the office with him sometimes, and I see her at church.
She looks something like your chum, Nordic Gray, laughing sort
of eyes, and soft, light hair, and a saucy little nose like
your own."
Later, in a reply to a question from Miss Eunice, he wrote:
"No, I haven't put in my church letter yet. I took it with me
every Sunday for awhile, but I can't get screwed up to the
point, somehow. People here are so stand-offish with strangers.
I've gone pretty regularly, but nobody has spoken to me yet. I
suppose they think that a gawky country boy doesn't belong in
such a fashionable congregation. The minister doesn't come down
after service to shake hands with people, as Doctor Meldrum
does at home. They have a Christian Endeavour Society that I
think might be nice if there was any way of breaking the ice to
get into it. The young people seem to have the best kind of
times among themselves, but they don't seem to care for anybody
that hasn't the inside track in their exclusive little circle."
Then the letters grew shorter. "He had no time to write during the
day," he explained. At night he was either so tired that he went to
bed as soon as he had his supper, or some of the boys that worked
where he did came round for him to go out with them. He had been to
the library several times, and to a free band-concert. When he was
out of debt, he intended to get a season lecture course ticket and go
to other entertainments once in awhile to keep from getting the
blues.
He did not mention some of the other places to which he had gone with
the boys. It would only worry his Aunt Eunice, he thought. Probably
she wouldn't think it was any harm if she lived in the city. People
in little places were apt to be narrow-minded, he told himself. He
could feel that his own opinions were broadening every day.
He wrote to Macklin on Thanksgiving Day, saying that he intended to
make the most of his holiday and skate all the afternoon. He was glad
that he had brought his skates, for the ice was in fine condition.
That was the last letter home for two weeks.
While Miss Eunice worried, and Philippa haunted the post-office, he
was lying ill in his cheerless little bedroom, on the top floor of
the cheap lodging-house. He had skated not only Thanksgiving
afternoon, but again at night when the ice was illuminated by
bonfires and lanterns. There was a danger-signal posted farther down
where the ice was thin. He had avoided it all the afternoon, but
intent on cutting some fancy figure one of the boys had taught him,
he did not notice how near he was to the dangerous spot until he
heard a cracking noise all round him, and it was too late to save
himself from a plunge into the icy water.
Although he was helped out immediately, and ran every step of the way
to his room, he was shaking with a chill when he reached it. All the
covering he could pile on the bed did not stop the chattering of his
teeth as he lay shivering between the cold sheets. In the morning he
was burning with fever. There was such a sharp pain in his lungs that
he could not draw a full breath.
He tried to get up and dress, but the attempt made him so weak and
dizzy that he could only stagger back to bed and lie there in a sort
of stupor. It was not quite clear to him who brought a doctor, but
one came in the course of the morning and left two kinds of little
pellets and a glass of water on the chair beside his bed. He was to
take two pink pellets every hour and one white one every two hours,
he was told.
There was no clock in the room, and he had no watch, but the
engine-house bell in the next block clanged the alarm regularly.
The responsibility of giving himself his own medicine kept him from
dropping asleep as he longed to do. He would doze for a few minutes
and start up, fearing that he had let the time go by, or that he had
taken a double dose, or that he had confused directions. Was it two
pink ones or two white ones, or one hour or two hours? He said it
over and over with every variation possible. The confusion was
maddening.
The pain in his lungs grew worse. He was burning with thirst, but
there was no more water in the glass. He looked round the room with
feverish, aching eyes, that suddenly filled with hot tears. If he
could only be back in his own room at home, with Aunt Eunice to care
for him, and Flip to make him comfortable, how good it would seem! He
was tasting to the dregs the misery of being ill, all alone among
strangers.
Toward evening the woman who kept the lodging-house sent a little
coloured boy up to ask if he wanted anything. A pitcher of water was
all that Alec asked for. That being supplied, the boy shut the door
and clattered down the hall, whistling. The night seemed endless.
Hour after hour he started up shuddering, as the bell's loud clang
awakened him, not knowing what it was that startled him. In his
feverish hallucinations he thought he was continually breaking
through the ice into a sea of burning water. He kept clutching at the
pillows, thinking they were islands that he was for ever drifting
past and could never reach.
When morning came at last, and the doctor made his second visit, he
found Alec delirious and the medicine still on the chair beside the
bed. With one glance round the cheerless room, he shrugged his
shoulders and went out for help.
When Alec next noticed his surroundings with eyes that were once more
clear and rational, he saw that the dingy little grate had been
opened and a bright fire was burning in it. The clothing he had left
on the floor in a heap had been put away. The window shade no longer
hung askew. He looked round half-expecting to see his Aunt Eunice or
Flip, and wondered if he had been so ill that some one had sent for
them. Then his glance fell on a grizzled old man with a wooden leg,
dozing in a rocking-chair by the fire.
"Old Jimmy Scott!" Alec said to himself after a moment's puzzled
scrutiny, in which he racked his brain to recall where he had seen
the face before. Finally he remembered. One of the boys had pointed
him out as an old soldier who had taken to nursing when he could no
longer fight. He held no diploma from any training-school for nurses,
he was uncouth and rough in many ways, but his varied experiences had
made him a valuable assistant to the doctor, whom he called his
general, and obeyed with military exactness.
As Alec stirred on his pillow, the old soldier looked up, and then
hobbled over to the bed as quietly as his wooden leg would allow. He
bent over him, felt his pulse, and then said, cheerfully, "All right,
buddy, guess it's time now for rations." Taking a covered cup from
the hob on the grate, he deftly put a spoonful of hot beef tea to
Alec's lips.
"You had a pretty close call, young man," he said, in response to
Alec's attempt to question him. "A leetle more and it would have been
double pneumonia. But you're about out of the woods now. We'll soon
have you on your feet." Giving his patient a few more spoonfuls, he
drew the covers gently in place, saying, "Now don't you talk any
more. Turn over and go to sleep."
Weak, yet thrilled with a delightful sense of comfort and freedom
from pain, Alec obeyed unquestioningly. True, a thought did trail
teasingly across his mind for a moment, a dim wonder as to where the
money was to come from to pay for the expensive luxuries of nurse and
doctor and medicines and fire, but it faded presently, and instead
his Aunt Eunice's old song took its place:
"I know not where His islands lift
Their fronded palms in air;
I only know I cannot drift
Beyond--beyond--beyond--"
He groped languidly for the final words, but could not recall them.
"Never mind," he thought, drowsily; "I've got as far as old Jimmy
Scott, and that's a big enough island for this trip."
A most comfortable stopping-place old Jimmy proved to be.
Considerate as a woman of his patient's comfort, cheerful, tireless,
and prompt as a minute-gun in carrying out the doctor's instructions,
it was not long before he had Alec sitting up for a little while each
day. With such an old philosopher to keep him company, and
entertained by the old veteran's endless fund of anecdote, Alec
enjoyed those few days of convalescence more than he could have
believed possible.
"It isn't such a bad sort of world, after all," he remarked one
morning, the day after the minister had called. "It is strange what a
difference knowing persons makes in the way you feel toward them. The
minister was as cordial and friendly as Doctor Meldrum used to be in
Ridgeville. Wonder how he found out about me? I didn't know he'd ever
heard of me or noticed me in the congregation."
Old Jimmy made no reply, although he longed to say: "He came because
I sent for him, buddy, as people ought to do. They are quick enough
to send for a doctor when their bodies are sick, but when they are
out of sorts either physically or mentally they never think of
letting their minister know. They hang back and feel hurt if he
doesn't come, just as if he could tell by intuition or a sort of
sixth sense that he's needed. How can a D. D. be expected to know
when you want him, any more than an M. D.?"
That afternoon as Alec sat propped up by the window for a little
while, looking down on the snowy street, there was a knock at the
door. Old Jimmy, answering it, came back with a florist's box
addressed, "Mr. Alec Stoker, with best wishes and sympathy of the
Grace Church Christian Endeavour Society." Inside was a fragrant
bunch of hothouse roses.
Alec held them up in amazement. "Why should they have sent them to
me?" he cried. There was no Endeavour society in Ridgeville, and he
did not understand its methods.
"The flower committee sends 'em to all the sick people in the
congregation," explained Jimmy. "Posies and piety always sorter go
together, seems like. Pretty, ain't they? But they ain't half so
pretty as the young ladies that brought 'em."
"Young ladies!" gasped Alec, looking toward the door.
"Yes, the flower committee itself, I suppose. I didn't know two of
them. But one of them you ought to know, buddy, seeing as it's the
daughter of your boss. Thomas Windom's daughter--Avery, I believe
they call her."
Alec's heart gave a thump. Avery Windom was the pretty girl he had
written to Flip about; the one whom he had wanted of all others to
know; and she had climbed to his door, had left the roses; it seemed
too strange to be true.
He leaned toward the window and looked down. Yes, there she went with
her friends, fluttering along the snowy street. He could see the
gleam of her soft, light hair under her velvet hat. Her cheeks were
flushed with her walk in the cold. He leaned eagerly nearer the
window as she fluttered along, farther and farther down the street,
until she was lost in the crowd. Then he lay back in the chair with a
sigh. It seemed so long since he had lived in a world where there
were bright, friendly girls like Flip. The sight of these who had
been so near made him homesick for the old friends of his school
days, and he began to talk to old Jimmy about his sister and the good
times they used to have together.
"I wonder which one wrote this card," he thought, as he slipped it
out of the box. "I am sure she did. The handwriting is so light and
graceful, just like her. So her name is Avery. I might have known it
would be different from other girls'. Avery! Avery!" he repeated
softly, while old Jimmy stumped out into the hall for some water in
which to put the roses. "It's a pretty name. I wonder if I'll ever
know her well enough to call her that."
"Time to get back into bed now," said old Jimmy, coming in with the
pitcher. He placed the roses in it on a stand beside the bed.
"Mustn't overdo matters."
"No, indeed," said Alec, with a new note of determination in his
voice which did not escape old Jimmy. "I've got to get well in a
hurry now, and go back to work." Then he settled himself on his
pillow, and lay smiling happily at the roses.