Kitabı oku: «Harry Watson's High School Days: or, The Rivals of Rivertown», sayfa 3
CHAPTER VIII – PAUL’S PARTY
The real reason for Harry’s declination of the invitation to form one of the merry party, was the fact that he knew there would be necessarily some expense attached to the dance, and his circumstances were such that he was obliged to watch his money carefully. Indeed, it had only been at a distinct personal sacrifice that his father had been able to arrange for the boy to go to Rivertown High School. Aware of this fact, he realized that it would not be right for him to start out by associating with those whose parents were in a position to give them liberal allowances for spending money.
For a few moments after Harry’s abrupt departure there was a silence among the boys and girls who were planning the sleighing party and dance.
“There’s no use in allowing a new freshy to interfere with our fun,” Socker exclaimed.
“Who’s going and who isn’t? I want to know, so that I can get the horses and the sled and the hay ready.”
The others sided in with this view of the matter, and arrangements for meeting were quickly made, after which the boys and girls separated, going to their respective homes.
“Don’t you think that was queer in Harry Watson to decline your invitation, Viola?” asked Nettie, as they walked along.
Before the girl could answer, however, a voice behind them exclaimed:
“He hasn’t got money enough to go, or to do anything the rest of us can. Father says he knows Watson’s father and that he’s poorer than a church mouse.”
Surprised to think their conversation had been overheard, the girls turned quickly and beheld Pud Snooks.
“Well, if that’s the real reason Mr. Watson declined to go with us, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. I’m sure it’s better not to go than to sponge on some of the boys who have money,” sniffed Viola. At this taunt, which was particularly stinging for the reason that, although the bully’s father had plenty of money, he gave his son very little to spend, with the result that he was always taking part in the pastimes of his schoolmates, and forcing his companions to pay his share, Snooks growled to himself and slunk away.
For several minutes the two girls walked along in silence.
“Well, if it is true that Harry Watson won’t be able to go to our dances and things, I’m going to be all the nicer to him at school and on the ice, because I like him. Honestly, I do, Nettie,” said Viola.
This frank avowal surprised her chum, but she discreetly kept the fact to herself, and it was not long before the unpleasant incident on the ice was forgotten.
But it had made a deep impression upon Harry and, when he arrived at the comfortable home of his aunt he was very serious, returning her greeting almost curtly.
Realizing that something was amiss with the boy, yet knowing well that should she question him about it, she would but add to his reticence, the aunt wisely held her peace, trusting that during the evening he would let her know what the trouble was, of his own accord.
The boy, however, came to the conclusion that the problem which confronted him was one that he alone could work out; and, during supper, he forestalled any possible inquiries on the part of his aunt by relating to her the incidents of the hockey game, and then the races to the brush-pile.
No sooner was the meal finished, however, than he betook himself to his room on the plea that he wished to unpack his trunk, and he was soon busily engaged in so doing, at the same time revolving plans in his mind by which he could either win the good will of the boys who had taken such an evident dislike to him, or else manage in some way to get the best of them so effectually that, for the future, they would not seek to annoy him.
“I thought you were going to grind out your Latin,” cried a voice, presently.
“Why, hello, Paul! I thought you were going on the sleigh-ride!” returned Harry.
“None of our crowd are going, because Mrs. Masterson wasn’t able to chaperone us to-night. Instead we are going to have a candy-pull over at my house, and I came over to get you. So put your duds on and come along.”
At first our hero thought of refusing, then he reconsidered his idea, and accompanied the fellow who was later to be his most intimate chum to his home, where he found all the boys and girls who were to have been members of Viola’s sleighing party, even to Annabel; and pleasant, indeed, was the evening which he passed.
As they bade Paul’s mother and the boy good night and went out on the piazza, Mildred suddenly cried:
“Oh, look at that red spot in the sky!”
Instantly the others turned in the direction towards which the girl was gazing.
“It’s a fire!” exclaimed Misery. “It’s a bad night for one, too, with the wind blowing, and it’s so cold it will be hard to get any water.”
“Where is it? Why doesn’t someone give the alarm?” exclaimed several of the boys and girls.
“It’s over toward the bluff leading up to the school.”
“Perhaps it’s only a manifestation of the aurora borealis!” exclaimed Annabel.
“That sounds fine, Annabel, but I guess I know a fire when I see one,” returned Misery.
“But it’s just as likely to be the aurora as it is a fire,” protested Mildred.
“No, it isn’t either,” retorted Misery. “It’s a bad night, and fires always come on bad nights.”
The excited voices attracted the attention of Paul’s father, and as the gentleman made his way to the front door, several of them turned to him.
“Is that a fire, Mr. Martin?” they asked.
Ere the old gentleman could reply, however, all doubt was put at rest by the shout of “Fire!” followed almost immediately by the ringing of the church bell.
Mr. Martin’s house was situated on the main street, and as the members of the volunteer fire company rushed by to get the hand engine, Paul’s father called out:
“Where is it, boys?”
“It’s Jed Brown’s house,” came the answer.
CHAPTER IX – THE FALSE CHARGE
A fire in a small country village, always a dread catastrophe, is much more serious in the winter, especially when any wind is stirring; and in the realization of these facts, the street was soon alive with men and women hurrying to the scene of the conflagration.
When they learned, however, that it was the home of the crippled veteran, many of them turned back.
All Paul’s friends, together with his father, had started towards the scene, as soon as they knew where the fire was; and as Mr. Martin met several men whom he knew, returning, he asked:
“Where are you going? Is the fire out, or what?”
“Oh, it’s nothing but old Jed Brown’s shanty,” retorted one of them.
“That doesn’t make any difference. You ought to be willing to help Jed as quickly as anyone else. Besides, there’s quite a wind, and if we don’t check the blaze, it may spread. Now turn around and come back with me.”
As Mr. Martin was a person of importance and influence in Rivertown, the men whom he had stopped and ordered to go back quickly obeyed.
When they arrived at the head of the street whence they could see the veteran’s little house, they all realized that it would be impossible to save it, for, though it had been a short fifteen minutes since the alarm had been sounded, the house was a seething mass of flames.
Frantically men were working with shovels, throwing the snow which they scooped up onto the leaping tongues of fire, but without any result.
Rising high into the air, the sparks were borne in all directions, and when an unusually strong gust of wind swirled down the bluff, the burning brands were carried from the doomed house.
“Where are the boys with the hand engine?” demanded Mr. Martin, when no sight or sound was there of the volunteer fire department. “Aren’t they coming?”
“They’re stuck. One of the runners on the front bob gave in,” informed a man who had just joined the constantly-increasing fringe of men and women whose figures stood out in prominent silhouette against the lurid flames.
“Then we must get busy and form bucket brigades to wet down the roofs of those two houses right alongside!” exclaimed Mr. Martin, pointing to two large white residences, one of which was about one hundred feet from the burning house, and the other almost directly across the not over-wide street.
“Come on, men! If those houses catch, the fire will sweep right through the town! A quarter of an hour’s work now will save them; but if we wait very long it will be too late.”
Aroused by the words of the town Nestor, the men and boys lost no time in rushing to each of the residences; and while some of them went into the kitchens and manned the pumps, others formed a line to pass the pails, which were contributed by everybody; while others of the men who had placed ladders against the eaves, mounted the roof, where they sat astraddle of the ridgepole, dousing the embers which were falling on the roofs with greater frequency.
Suddenly, the rumor spread among those still watching the fire that the crippled veteran was in his house.
Hysterical women wrung their hands and begged the men to rush into the flames and rescue the helpless man. Such an act, however, would have been the height of folly, and none of them made the attempt, knowing full well that were he inside he would have met his death long before.
The rumor, however, was dispelled almost as quickly as it had started.
“Ha! Old Jed ain’t in the house! I seen him sneaking off down the street just as soon as the fire was going well,” exclaimed Pud.
“How long was that before the alarm was given?” demanded several of the men, who had heard the statement of the butcher’s son.
“Oh, five or ten minutes, I should say. It seems funny to me that the house should burn so quickly; and then I should have thought Jed would have wanted to stay and watch it,” added Pud.
Had the boy known, however, the purpose for which the old veteran had gone down the street, he would have been less active in trying to sow the seeds of suspicion among those who were in earshot of him. But in his ignorance he continued to make statements that would cast suspicion upon the old man.
“When I first seen the fire, I thought I smelled kerosene.”
“So did I,” chorused several others.
This mention of the fact that they had noted the odor of the combustible oil immediately started the tongues of the women gossips to wagging; and gathering into little groups, they began to talk over with one another the reasons the crippled veteran would have for burning up his home.
The bully, however, had not finished his sensational statements. No sooner had he seen that his sowing of the seed of suspicion had found ready soil, than he added to his previous effect by saying:
“After I seen Jed and smelled the kerosene, I went down around behind the house and seen a fellow running. Seeing he was headed toward the village I cut around back and followed him while he walked up Kenosha street – and who do you think it was?”
The highly excitable minds of the women and the village gossips had been worked to concert pitch by the bully, and as he paused dramatically after his story, they cried:
“Who? Tell us, quick!”
Looking round from one to another of the score of people who had gathered about him, the bully exclaimed:
“It was Harry Watson, the boy that’s come to live here!”
CHAPTER X – HARRY IS EXONERATED
Unfortunately for Harry, he and his boy and girl friends who had been at the Martins’ house during the evening were all scattered between the two houses where the bucket brigades were working, and no one was there to speak a good word for him in contradiction of Snooks’ most despicable charge, for his manner as he spoke gave no room to doubt that he believed the new student had fired the building.
The others quickly put this interpretation upon his statement, and with the rapidity only to be found in villages, word spread about that Harry, for some fancied spite, had burned up the home of the crippled veteran.
And as the story was repeated, it lost nothing in the telling.
“Why doesn’t someone go swear out a warrant for the boy’s arrest?” demanded a particularly irascible old woman.
“You can’t do it, Mirandy, unless you got some reason for making the charge, and you didn’t see the boy,” returned one of the men.
“But Pud Snooks seen him. He can swear out a warrant!” exclaimed the spinster. “It ought to be done. There won’t be nobody safe in the village with that boy liable to burn us all up at any time.”
The words caused alarm among several of the women, who gathered about the old gossip, and they began to demand that action be taken; but when some of the men finally started to look for the bully who had spread the wicked report, he was nowhere to be seen.
The gossips, however, interpreted Snooks’ absence to their own ends.
“Some of the men have probably taken him up to Squire Baxter’s,” said Miranda, and others who had heard her words instantly gave the irresponsible old spinster’s remark the stamp of authority, declaring that Harry’s arrest was but the question of a few minutes.
In the meanwhile, the fire having burnt itself out on Jed Brown’s house, and the danger to the neighboring mansions being thereby over, the members of the bucket brigade made their way once more to the scene of the conflagration.
With Mr. Martin on one side, and his son Paul on the other, Harry approached the ruin.
“There he comes! There he comes! Luther Martin has the little sneak! He knows what to do with him!” snapped Miranda.
And in whispers, low but none the less audible, the word quickly ran around the circle of gossips that the village Nestor was holding the youthful fire-bug until the proper authorities could take him into custody. So curious were the glances cast at them by the rest of the people, that Mr. Martin could not help but notice them, and, wondering at their cause, he turned to the man nearest him, calling him by name, and asked:
“What is the matter, Zeke? Why is everybody whispering and looking at me?”
“’Tain’t you they’re looking at,” returned the man, in a voice as solemn as though he were chief mourner at a funeral.
“Then who is it?”
“Harry Watson.”
“What about him?”
“You know as well as I do.”
Too familiar with his neighbors not to know that something of unusual seriousness was afoot, Mr. Martin laid his hand heavily upon Zeke’s shoulder.
“I want you to tell me what people are saying about Harry Watson, and what all this mysterious whispering means?” declared the patriarchal man in stern tones.
Realizing that it would be folly to try to deceive the village Nestor, Zeke looked uneasily about him, then cleared his throat, preparatory to speaking.
“Well, it’s this way, Luther,” he began in a whining voice. “They are saying as how you’re holding Harry Watson until the constable can come and arrest him.”
Both Paul and the boy against whom the breath of suspicion had been directed could not help but hear what passed between Mr. Martin and the man with whom he was talking, and as the latter explained the action of the rest of the spectators, Harry staggered back as though he had been struck a blow in the face.
“Arrest me!” he exclaimed. “What for?”
“You know,” declared Zeke in a mournful voice.
“Nonsense, Zeke. Nobody’s going to arrest Harry Watson any more than they are me,” interrupted Mr. Martin. “And now if you’ll just get over your desire to create a mystery and tell me what this is all about, I’ll quickly settle it – and if you don’t, I’ll ask somebody who can tell me the plain facts without any trimmings.”
Fond as he was of beating about the bush and giving vague hints and meaning glances, rather than a plain statement of facts, Zeke, however, did not wish to be deprived of exploding the bomb.
“Pud Snooks says he seen young Watson running away from the fire, and he and a lot of us smelled kerosene just as the blaze started, and Mirandy and the rest of us has been saying that there won’t be any house safe in Rivertown until that boy is fast behind lock and key.”
His son having told him during supper the trick the bully had tried to play on Harry which had come so near to resulting in the death of the little children; also about the new student’s preventing Pud from snowballing the crippled veteran, and his attempt to foul the boy during the race on the river, Mr. Martin readily realized the story was but the emanation of the bully’s brain.
Raising his voice so that it could be heard by all within a radius of fifty feet, the village Nestor exclaimed:
“That’s utter nonsense, Zeke. Harry Watson is a good boy. He comes from an honorable family, and there’s no more reason for accusing him of setting Jed Brown’s place afire than there is of accusing me!” Then the patriarchal man paused a few moments to allow the murmurs of surprise to subside before he added in a still louder voice than at first, for the greater effect:
“Besides, Harry Watson has been at my house all the evening, and came to the fire together with my boy, Paul, several of his friends, and myself.”
“But Pud said he seen him!” declared several people, evidently unwilling to accept Mr. Martin’s words.
“Where is Pud?” demanded the village Nestor. “I – ”
“Yes, where is Pud Snooks? I want to talk to him!” exclaimed a shrill voice, interrupting.
Turning at the sound, the men and women beheld the bent and bowed form of old Jed Brown.
Instantly, there was a babel of talk and exclamations at this unexpected turn in affairs.
“What do you want to see him for?” demanded one of the men.
“I want to see him to ask him what he was doing in my shed just before I caught him coming out.”
At the words, several of the men and women crowded about the crippled veteran, plying him with questions; but with a wave of his hand, Mr. Martin silenced them.
“This is a very serious statement, Jed,” he exclaimed in a stern voice. “I warn you that you must be careful what you say. Now tell me just what happened, and how you discovered the fire.”
As they heard the words, those of the men and women who were still at the scene, formed a circle about the village patriarch and the crippled veteran, necks craned forward, ears cocked, that they might not lose a syllable of anything that was said.
“I was just getting ready to go to bed when I heard a noise out in the shed,” declared Jed. “For some time I’ve been missing tools, and so I picked up a club I had by the kitchen stove, and started out to see what the trouble was.
“I s’pose I made some noise, for just as I had stepped out of the kitchen door, somebody ran out from the shed and tried to pass me.
“‘Who is it?’ I cried. But instead of answering me, the person swung at me and caught me in the shoulder with a blow that would have knocked me down had I not thrown my arms about him and hung on.”
As he made this statement, the crippled veteran paused. For several moments his auditors waited, thinking he would continue, but when he did not several of them asked:
“Did you see who it was?” “Could you get a look at his face?”
“Yes.”
“Who was it?”
“Pud Snooks!”
At the pronouncement of the bully’s name, cries of astonishment arose from the circle of men and women.
“Why didn’t you hold onto him?” demanded Mr. Martin.
“Because he shook me off.”
“Then what did you do?”
“I started after him – and I hadn’t gone more than half way up the street before I saw flames burst from the shed.”
In silence all those in the circle heard these words.
“Do you want to have the boy taken up for this, Jed?” finally asked Mr. Martin.
“No. I don’t want to bring trouble to anyone, but I’m not going to have the house burnt over my head without getting some return. I want to find Pud Snooks and ask him some questions, and then I want to have a talk with his father.”
“You’re a sensible man, Jed,” declared Mr. Martin. “Just come along with me and we will go find Pud’s father. Come, Harry! Come, Paul.”
Without more words Mr. Martin turned on his heel, and led the way up the street, several of the more curious among the crowd tagging at his heels.
CHAPTER XI – “OLD GROUCH”
“I don’t believe it was Pud who set fire to Mr. Brown’s house,” exclaimed Harry, as they walked along.
“Don’t you s’pose I know him when I see him? I have good reason to!” retorted the crippled veteran.
“What makes you think it wasn’t he, Harry?” asked Mr. Martin.
“Because he was going on a sleigh ride with Socker Gales and some of the other boys and girls,” returned Harry.
“But evidently he didn’t go, for he was at the fire after it was burning fiercely,” asserted the venerable man. Nobody knew the cause for the bully’s remaining at home.
Stung deeply by the words Nettie had uttered when he had come up behind them when the two girls were walking home, Snooks had asked his father for some money that he might join his friends in driving to the Lake House at Cardell for the dance, only to be gruffly refused.
Angry at his father, his friends and himself, the bully had eaten his supper in sullen hastiness, and then left the house by the back way for the purpose of watching his friends depart on the sleigh ride. The route he took, however, led him past the house of the crippled veteran whom he hated so deeply, and the sight of it suggested to him that he might work off his ill-humor by playing some trick on old Jed.
Entering the shed, he lighted a match and was looking about the shop, when he had heard the crippled veteran opening the door of the kitchen, and, thinking only that he must escape, the boy had thrown the match on the floor and rushed to leave the shed. Instead of going out, the match had fallen into a pile of shavings, quickly igniting them, and the flames found ready food in the pieces of wood, oil-soaked leather and other odds and ends with which the shop was littered, and in a few moments had gained such headway that they were irresistible.
Such was the story which Mr. Martin and the bully’s father extorted from the boy after they had questioned him closely in the presence of the crippled veteran for a half hour.
Though the fire was purely an accident, it was so evident that Pud had gone to his arch-enemy’s house bent on mischief, that the butcher and Mr. Martin were at a loss how to proceed in the matter of meting out punishment; and as they sat in silence, pondering over the confession, it was Jed himself who solved the problem.
“Well, I’m glad you didn’t come to the house with the intention of burning it, Pud,” he exclaimed. “You and I know I hadn’t occasion for being fond of you, but I’d hate to think there was any boy, or man either for that matter, in Rivertown who was so down on me that he would want to burn the roof over my head.
“Now, I’ve carried a bit of insurance on the place and I’m not going to live very much longer, so if – ”
“Jed, I ain’t liked you no better than my boy,” interrupted the butcher, “but you’ve been so decent, and not asked me to punish Pud or send him away where they’ll take care of him, that if it’s agreeable to you I’ll give you two hundred and fifty dollars. Pud, go get my check book.”
“No need to bother about that to-night, Snooks. You can give me the money to-morrow,” declared Jed. And with this understanding Mr. Martin and the crippled veteran took their departure.
Once they were outside, the village patriarch seized the hand of the crippled veteran and shook it heartily.
“Jed, you certainly are a man!” he exclaimed, feelingly. “But where will you go to live, now?”
Ere the old man could answer, Harry and Paul, who had been waiting outside the house, joined them just in time to hear Mr. Martin ask this question.
“If you’d care to, I should like to have you come around to our house!” exclaimed Harry. “I know Aunt Mary would like it, and then as you’re an old friend of dad’s he’d want me to ask you.”
“That would be just the thing,” asserted Mr. Martin, “and I don’t doubt but that you can make arrangements to live at her house with Mary as long as you care to stay in Rivertown. I’ll go and explain things.”
Surprised at first, after the incidents of the evening had been made clear to her, Mrs. Watson readily agreed to board the veteran as long as he cared to remain; and after bidding them all a cordial good-night, Mr. Martin and Paul went to their home.
Many were the glances that were cast at the bully and Harry when they appeared at the high school the following day, but no one had the temerity to speak to them about the incident of the fire, although there were many whispered conversations held in which the sympathy was entirely with the new student.
As Paul had said, the only lesson of importance the freshman class were called upon to attend was the Latin, of which the crusty old Prof. Isaac Plummer, often called “Grouch” by the students, was instructor.
As the boys and girls filed into the classroom, the professor, who was a little squat man, with a scrubby beard, so thin that one of the girls had said it was really an individual beard, glanced at them over the tops of his spectacles.
“There’s no use asking any of you, I suppose, whether you have your lesson or not,” he snapped, in a high-pitched, jerky voice. “The fire last night would have been a sufficient excuse, I suppose, even if it wasn’t for the fact that you never do have your lesson anyway.”
Then, his eyes resting on Harry, he exclaimed:
“What are you doing in here?”
“I came to recite, sir.”
“Listen, the rest of you. Here’s a boy who has come to recite. Do you, by any chance, happen to be a member of the Rivertown High School, or have you just dropped in like manna sent from Heaven to show the rest of these young idiots that it is possible for a child to know its Latin lesson? What’s your name?”
“Harry Watson,” stammered the boy, his face scarlet at the brusqueness of the Latin instructor’s greeting.
“Where do you come from?”
“Lawrenceburgh, sir.”
“Do you like Latin?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then that explains it. I don’t wonder you left Lawrenceburgh. No man who cared for Latin would ever live there, let alone learn it in any of their schools. How far have you gone in Caesar?”
“Through the first two books.”
“Indeed! I didn’t suppose anyone ever got beyond the grammar in Lawrenceburgh. Suppose you start in at the beginning of the second book, which is our lesson to-day, and read as far as you can.”
During this tirade many were the nudges in which the boys and girls indulged themselves; and Elmer and Pud had reveled in it, gleefully, believing that they were about to witness the discomfiture of the boy for whom they had conceived such a dislike.
But Harry was fond of Latin and was also well grounded in his fundamentals. Opening his book at the part indicated, he began to translate, and Prof. Plummer allowed him to finish two sections before he began to ask him questions on construction. But though he tried his best to confuse the boy, Harry did not get rattled, and acquitted himself creditably.
“Watson, I want you to come up here,” the instructor exclaimed, when he had finished. “Let me shake hands with you. I’m glad to know there is one scholar in Rivertown High School who has even the faintest conception of the Latin fundamentals.”
Blushing even more furiously than he had while he was being baited, Harry stood in his place uncertain whether the professor meant what he said or not, and hoping in his heart that he did not.
“Ah, you hesitate, I see,” grinned Prof. Plummer, sardonically. “After you know me better you will know I never mean what I say. Never to my knowledge have I willingly had one of the pupils of Rivertown High School approach any nearer than you are now. Kindly remember that.”
And after calling upon one after another of the members of the class only to have them answer “Not prepared,” old Grouch dismissed the class in disgust.
