Part 24 (2/2)
”But the danger--was it not there the canoeist was drowned last year?” said his mother, anxiously.
”Hang the danger! It's the prospect of sc.r.a.ping the bottom off my new canoe that troubles me.”
”Old age is privileged to prate, I suppose,” said Mrs. Arnold, feebly attempting to smile.
”Cut the fingers off that lemon-colored mitten, Indigo, and get me some salve double quick. My oar blister's worse than ever.”
Indigo sped up stairs for the scissors, and the party was soon on its way.
At the bridge Harry left them, proceeding alone to the boat-house, up-stream, while Indigo led the others to a rock below the rapids, where they were to witness the feat. To look at the long slope, nowhere steep, but white from end to end with foam, it did seem incredible that any craft could live through such a surge. The murmur was audible far away in the still countryside, and the air, even where the three onlookers stood, was moist with impalpable spray.
”Looks as though that wager was mine,” said Tristram. ”He might as well try to swim Niagara.”
”Ought we not to have a rope in case of accident?” said Mrs. Arnold.
”By all means,” cried Rosalie, and for an instant the two women were one in sympathy.
”Indigo,” said Mrs. Arnold, ”go over to Farmer Hedge's and procure a stout rope. If anything should happen----”
”Nothing will happen,” said Indigo. But he obeyed her command, and departed in the direction of the nearest farmhouse. The moments were long drawn out with anxiety before he returned, until at last even Tristram's sallies could not draw a smile from the two ladies. So he coolly took out a pad of white paper, sharpened his pencil and sketched off the rapids.
”There he comes,” cried Rosalie, peering up-stream.
”Harry!” murmured Mrs. Arnold, as her son rounded a bend of the river into view. Already he was coasting down without using his paddle. His brown arms rested on the handle before him and his muscles, seemingly relaxed, were tense for exertion.
A great log which had preceded him down had been whirled around like a chip and finally submerged, reappearing only in the clear water forty yards beyond. A similar fate surely awaited the light c.o.c.klesh.e.l.l which bore the beloved life.
As his canoe half-turned, Harry pushed his paddle into the water. Evidently it met a rock, for the prow righted at once and swept down a narrow channel where the rush was swiftest, but the foam seemed parted in two. Here again it caught, poised and spun around. It was fast on a ledge, and the young athlete was straining every sinew to push it off. While he was struggling in this peril, Indigo came down, staggering under a coil of thick rope.
”Indigo,” said Mrs. Arnold, excitedly, ”throw him the rope.”
Indigo stood on the bank, but instead of obeying, ran farther down to a rock that jutted over the clear water where the rapids ended. On his way he heard the ladies shrieking.
”His oar is broken.”
”But he has worked himself free,” said Tristram, nonchalantly sketching. ”He will win, confound it! Yet it's worth losing once to see that play of his right deltoid.”
Harry's paddle had indeed broken in the last successful shove, but it was a double blade, and the half in his hand was used to good advantage. As he came sweeping down, his eyes intent on the prow before him, Tristram raised his hat and the ladies leaned forward, waving their kerchiefs. Harry answered their salute by standing up in the boat. It was a superb piece of bravado.
”He doesn't always wear a glove canoeing?” asked Mrs. Arnold of Indigo. Harry had just put ash.o.r.e an eighth of a mile down stream.
”No, the mate to that one's lost,” replied the valet, ”and Mr. Harry told me to cut it up for his hand.”
”When lost and where?” said Rosalie.
”I don't know that.”
”Let me tell you.”
”What a sibyl!” exclaimed brother Tristram.
”It was on Broad street, the afternoon of the fire. Don't you remember, when we saw him crossing the street so hurriedly and I remarked he had only one glove on.”
”You must be mistaken,” said Mrs. Arnold. ”Harry was ill at home all that day.”
CHAPTER x.x.xI.
MATER DOLOROSA.
Honora Riley, who washed for Mrs. Barlow, lived in a ramshackle, desolate district of the city which was appropriately known as ”the Barrens.” Colliers, sooty to the eyerims, trudging home; ashy dump-pickers; women cowled in drab shawls from beneath whose folds peeped pitchers brimmed with foam like the whipped surface of the milk pail, but the liquor was not milk; such were the sights Emily noticed when she called at Mrs. Riley's to inquire whether it was a spell of illness that had prevented her from coming to wash that Monday.
”Come in,” a feeble voice answered her knock. ”Oh, is it you, Miss Barlow?”
Emily saw that the supper on the table, laid for two, was untasted, and that the eyes of the woman who sat on the chair clasping her knees before her, were red.
”We thought you might be ill, Mrs. Riley,” she said.
”It is heartsick I am, and too broken-hearted to work, dear. Land knows I have good reason or I wouldn't fail your mother.”
”It isn't the pneumonia again, I hope.”
”Shame and loneliness have come upon me in my old age,” said Mrs. Riley, wiping her tears with the corner of her tidy ap.r.o.n. ”They've taken Walter away.”
”Who took him away?”
”The officer came with a warrant this morning--and he my only child, and the kindest boy to his mother, with no harm or wickedness in him at all, at all.”
Walter was Mrs. Riley's only child, the last of seven. All the others had preceded their father to the grave, narrowing the resources of the little family with continual illnesses and funerals. Finally her husband himself, an honest roofer, had been fatally injured in a fall and had pa.s.sed away, kissing the six-months' infant who would never know a father. This was long ago. For this child the good mother had provided by her willing labor, and he had grown to be her pride and hope, a promising boy of 14.
”'It was a bicycle he stole,' said the officer, 'away out in the country.' 'But I never meant to steal it, mother,' says Walter, and the boy was that truthful he never lied to a soul that breathes. 'I never meant to steal it, mother,' he says,” repeated Mrs. Riley softly, her grief overmastering her.
”Did you say Walter stole a bicycle?” asked Emily, a vague reminiscence coming back to her.
”It was the bad company I warned him against, especially that Fenton boy and Mrs. Watts' little imp that has more tricks in him than a monkey. 'Keep away from them, Walter,' says I, but no, he would choose them for companions. And 'tis old Bagley, the junkman, I blame most of all. Upon my word, I believe he put them up to the trick. What would three little boys travel out to the country like that for, and ride away on three bicycles and then sell them to Bagley?”
”Walter sold it, then?” said Emily, thoughtfully.
”Indeed, Walter did not. 'Mine is safe and sound in the club-room,' says he; that's Lanty Lonergan's back kitchen he lets them use for a meeting place. 'It's in the club-room,' says Walter, 'and I wouldn't sell it, mother, but I was afraid to give it back; only I never meant to steal it.'”
”That I believe, Mrs. Riley, for I saw him take that bicycle.”
Mrs. Riley's tears stopped flowing for a moment in her surprise. Then Emily related the story of her trip to Hillsboro and the conversation of the boys which she had overheard, not forgetting to explain her own share in frightening them away.
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