Chapter 17

STAGE VI.—MY LAST WEEK ON THE FLYING HORSE

PEARL had invented a water-turbine, a dynamo, and a method of producing light by electricity, and many valuable devices, but had been able to patent only two of them. It is curious how, when there is universal need of a thing, men agree, without ever a word between them, that it shall be done, and nothing is so wonderful as the likeness of their energy and inspiration, as the rhythm of their hammer-strokes, the world over.

Pearl, struggling in the privacy of his little shop, was marching, step by step, with the great inventors, and never even suspected it until his best devices were a matter of record in the Patent Office to the credit of other men.

One evening I found him asleep on his bench. A hand hung over the edge, and a letter had dropped from it. His scarred face had a weary look. I turned to leave without disturbing him when he awoke and greeted me.

“Jake, I’m tired,” said he, as he rose, yawning, and began to fill his pipe. “I ain’t up to the mark.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Had a fall,” he said, passing the letter. “Read that.”

I read the news which had disappointed him, and he said:

“Yesterday I was a great man, an’ wouldn’t have sold out for a million dollars. I’ve rolled off the lap of luxury an’ hit the floor with a bump. Old Aunt Luxury is a long lady, an’ no mistake. It’s forty feet to her knees, an’ a good deal of a tumble. You see before you a melancholy ruin.”

“Here,” I said, “let me lend you some money. I’ll trust you with all I’ve got.”

I had just received my pay, and showed it to him.

“I’m so poor that I wouldn’t trust myself,” he answered; “an’ that bein’ so, I wouldn’t ask you to trust me.”

He left me to get some wood for the fire, and I saw a Bible lying on his desk and put a twenty-dollar bill between its leaves, at the eleventh chapter of Job, and closed it again. I talked with him for an hour or so, and asked, when I was leaving, if he had read the Book of Job.

“Not sence I was a boy,” he answered.

“Read the eleventh chapter before you go to bed,” I suggested, and went away.

Next day he came to my office.

“We’re off this evenin’, with all our tools and implements,” said he. “If it hadn’t been for you an’ Job we couldn’t have got away. You’re a strong pair. I read in that chapter, ‘Thou shalt forget thy misery and remember it as waters that pass away.’ It was the very sermon I needed. My misery is gone. We have given you a vote o’ thanks. It was hearty an’ unanimous.”

He was to take the freight and accommodation which left Heartsdale about eleven o’clock. He did not tell me his destination, but said that I should hear from him by-and-by. I went to the depot with Pearl and Barker, and saw them off.

As I passed the house of the postmaster on my way home, a man in a tall beaver hat came out of its front door and walked hurriedly to a carriage and drove away. It was a cool night in November, and the collar of his overcoat was up around his ears. Something familiar in the step of the man caused me to turn and look at him and remember the incident.

Three evenings later M. F. was with me on the wire of the hill circuit, deserted by all save us, and I was taking my part in this dialogue:

“I have important news,” said Jo.

“What?”

“Father has had a letter from the postmaster of Heartsdale about Mr. Squares. The letter says that he is a man of good character and excellent family.”

I saw, then, that mine was a rival who had the will and cunning to win his point. It was strange that I had failed to recognize that swagger of his when I had seen him walk to his carriage the night I passed the postmaster’s house.

“It’s enough to make lightning laugh,” I said. “Your father told him what he was going to do, and Bony drove to Heartsdale on Tuesday night and made friends with the postmaster. He came late in the evening and did not intend to be observed, but I saw him.”

“It is too bad,” she clicked.

“I can bear it as long as you think well of me,” I said. “Suppose I go to Merrifield and have a talk with your father?”

“Not now; there’s time enough.”

“No, there isn’t! You seem to forget that I’m getting along in life.”

“Poor boy!—you’re almost eighteen!”

“I’m older than most gentlemen of twenty.”

“Why can’t you wait?”

“Because I have something to tell you,” I wrote.

“To tell me?”

“Yes, and it’s too sacred for the wires. I must look into your eyes and hear your answer.”

“I wonder what it can be,” the receiver clicked. “I shall let you come as soon as I can. I want to see you very, very much. Good-night. Father has come for me. We are going to Washington in a day or two.”

At that moment I caught the first words of a thrilling message on the main line. It said: “Fort Sumter has been fired upon. It is the beginning of war.”

I took the news to my mother, and declared my wish to go and fight for the North.

“No,” she said; “your father gave his life in the war with Mexico. Now my health is gone and you are all that’s left to us. You are enlisted in a war with Poverty, and I can’t spare you.”

She put her arms around me and cried, and I promised to stay at home, if possible, and it seemed a hard fate in spite of my happiness.

I wrote a long letter to the Colonel and confessed my love for his daughter, and begged him not to think ill of me without full information as to my character, and referred him to a number of good people.

This brief and suggestive letter came promptly:

Dear Sir,—As to your character, I have had all the information I desire. I should think better of it if you were to cease communicating with my daughter against my wishes.

It hurt like the blow of a hammer, and I could not think of the Colonel with any degree of charity for a week or more, but, after all, it helped to make a man of me. In the heat of such days a man shapes his character—as the smith his iron that is hot from the forge—and tempers it in cool reflection. Soon I got a letter from Sam that told of the departure of Jo and the Colonel for Washington.