Читать книгу The Independence Day Horror at Killsbury - Asenath Carver Coolidge - Страница 5

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THE ROUND ABOUT ROAD TO SCHWARMER MANSION.

There were two roads leading up to the Schwarmer Mansion from the town of Killsbury. One of them was called “The Straight Way” and the other “The Round About Road.” The latter followed the steep declivity that led down to the river’s edge and passed the big lot that belonged to the Cornwallis grounds.

“Guess I’d better take the ‘Round About’ with all that heavy baggage of yours, Mr. Schwarmer,” said Captain Dan Solomon, the expressman at the station. “There’s a loose board in the bridge on the ‘Straight Way’ that my filly don’t exactly approve of.”

“Just as you choose, Dan,” replied Mr. Schwarmer. “It doesn’t make a cent’s worth of difference to me, most assuredly it doesn’t. How long before you’ll be around?”

“As soon as I can. Things are a little irregular today, you know.”

“Certainly! certainly Dan! Independence Day is every dog’s day, most assuredly it is; and business concerns are apt to move rather circuitously. Fons,” he added, turning to a youthful looking lad at his side, “suppose we take ‘The Round About,’ since there’s no carriage and we have to walk. We might as well make it worth while, you know. I haven’t walked around that way for years, most assuredly I haven’t.”

Fons assented and they walked on at a brisk pace.

“How many of those patriotic packages have you, Fons?”

“If you mean my improvements on ‘The Sacred Mandarin,’” laughed Fons, “I have enough yet to hold up the town, although I left a good sprinkling of them at every station and sowed them about six deep among the employees while you were hunting up Dan. I’m going to advertise in earnest this time.”

“Well, I’ve got half a dozen. That will be enough. We won’t be apt to meet more than one or two boys after we branch off if we do any. They didn’t expect me on this train. Most assuredly they didn’t; but they’ll flock up to the gates in due time—by the time Dan gets there I reckon.”

They went on, distributing fire-crackers and blank cartridges to every boy they met and every poor looking fellow also.

When they got to the Cornwallis lot Fons espied little Laurens in the distance flying his kite.

“Heigho! what gay little patriotic bird is that?” exclaimed Fons. “He’s worth the ammunition.”

Schwarmer stopped and put on his gold-rimmed magnifiers.

“That’s little Laurens Cornwallis—the handsomest boy in Killsbury or the world, they say. You’ve heard me speak of the Cornwallis’s, most assuredly you have. They are not eminently patriotic, I suspect, though they display the colors. We’ll see how the eaglet stands affected toward his country this morning.”

Schwarmer went to the fence and beckoned the boy to come to him.

Laurens came on a little distance but stopped when he recognized Schwarmer.

“Come on, my pretty” said Schwarmer, “I will give you a nice new box of powdered crackers to help you celebrate. You can make them go off without the aid of the fickle wind.”

Laurens shook his curly head vigorously. “I don’t want any. I told mamma I would not touch Mr. Schwarmer’s fire-things.” Then he turned and ran away from them as fast as his little legs could carry him.

“How’s that for frankness?” sneered Fons as they moved on. “It beats you who are a professional, ‘all the way to Buzzard’s Bay,’ as the boys say.”

“Yes, and it looks rather dull for your trade, Fons,” laughed Schwarmer rather derisively. “Perhaps you had better put your inventive genius into some other business. It’s pretty poor encouragement when you can’t even give away your productions. Most assuredly it is.”

“It’s doubtful policy to begin at the church door,” said Fons. “More stars and stripes and fewer fireworks is the church idea. I never see such a boy as that—with a regular Sunday School look and eyes rolled up—without wanting to call him down. The most beautiful Laurens needs a giant firecracker and a dynamite cap and cane to bring him down to the proper altitude. They don’t teach fire and brimstone in the churches now, so it’s necessary for the youngsters to get a smell of it from the outside.”

“Military slang aside, Fons. His mother is cosseting him and making a sort of an inspired idiot of him, most assuredly she is. He is a beauty—too much of a beauty for a boy; but he will never be fit for business. But mothers never think of things in a business way and Mrs. Cornwallis is the main spoke in Cornwallis’ wheel, most assuredly she is.”

“A wheel of domesticity all around I should judge,” laughed Fons. “Cornwallis is no business man.”

“No, Fons—only a counter of other men’s gains—no independent money-maker, so to speak. He would refuse to make money in your kind of business or mine either. He makes a terrible hullabaloo every time a little ragamuffin gets hurt with blank cartridges or toy pistols. He wants the manufactories shut down at once. He’d rather take the risk of having six youngsters starved to death, than to have one die of lockjaw.”

“I should say he ought to have the lockjaw himself and any other man who uses his jaw for the repression of legitimate trade. Faugh! we’ve no use for such effeminates on this end of the planet where more big manufactories are needed to keep it well balanced. I should like to see his jaw locked up.”

“O no! not quite so bad as that, Fons.”

“Yes, worse than that,” continued Fons angrily. “Shut up our own manufactories and send abroad for Fourth of July fireworks! That’s the kind of business fiend or fool he is—send to the English for things to celebrate our victory over them. Bah!”

“But we never have, Fons—that is to any ridiculous extent—any alarming extent, so to speak?”

“But we will if the idiots that would shut down our Pyrotechnic manufactories are not shut up. The London Pyro-king is trying to king it here now by catering to the Independence Day sentiment. He hates it, but he is going to coin money out of it all the same—the viper!”

“Head him off, then! Rule him out! We ought to manufacture our own implements—especially the patriotic ones and handle them too and teach our boys how to handle them. If we would teach them how to be brave and do brave things—really dare to do them, it would be better all around—the planet included, most assuredly it would.”

Fons made no reply to Schwarmer’s rather ragged reasoning, but when he got to the top of the hill he broke out:

“Excuse me. I’m going back to see if I can’t put a little of the dare devil stuff into that all too goodish boy. I must have a little fun out of him anyway.”

“Don’t be gone long, Fons. You must be here when your patriotic stuffs are unloaded. I don’t care to be near enough to smell powder if they should be handled too roughly or by the wrong end.”

“It’s the little idiot that sits down on my trade that will be likely to smell of the powdered beauties,” laughed Fons sardonically.

“Have a care, youngster. You can’t cut up here as you can in the city without having it known.”

“O! it’s only a little scare I’ll treat him to. Boys like to be scared, you know. That’s the secret of success in the money end of the Pyrotechnic business.”

Before he got back to the Cornwallis lot, he saw the baggage-man coming up the hill.

“Heigho,” he exclaimed, slapping his leg—“just in the nick of time! Providence permits! Now I will have some fun. Stop a bit, Dan. I want an assortment of that patriotic fervor. I am going to have a little picnic with some boys right here if nothing happens.”

After he had selected the things he wanted, he slipped a dollar into Dan’s hand, saying, “you may go on now, but you’d better stay up with us today, you and your nag, and help us celebrate. The women folks didn’t come and you haven’t any of those ‘pull backs,’ Schwarmer tells me, so we can have a very free time.”

Dan laughed and moved on. Fons carried his boxes to a shady nook on the steep bank just opposite the lot where Laurens Cornwallis was still flying his kite. After he had arranged them he stopped and looked at them with a satisfied air. Then he selected a thing with spiral stripes of red, white and blue.

“This will take the boy’s eye at once,” he said to himself as he climbed the hill to go to the Cornwallis lot. “I must have invented it for his kind of eye—a sort of Aaron’s rod—yes, that’s what I’ll name it—a bible name. That will be ahead of King Pang’s ‘Sacred Mandarin.’ It’s just the ticker for a little Sunday school chub like Laurens.”

When he got to the fence he saw that Laurens was having trouble with his kite.

“Providence permits again,” he muttered as he jumped over into the lot.

“Hello there! my dear fellow,” he called out. “I see Mistress Kite has gone back on you. They are always doing that sort of trick. I had about a hundred when I was your age. I know all about the pesky things. I can doctor it for you.” He left Aaron’s rod by the first tree he came to and went on.

Laurens shied off a little when he saw he was the lad that was with Schwarmer, but Fons paid no attention to the “instinctive dodge,” as he had heard his military professor call it. He marched boldly up, took hold of the kite and began to fix it as though it belonged to him by right of superior knowledge concerning kites. Laurens watched him with that kind of fascination which a young boy invariably feels for an older one, and especially one who has had an experience with so many kites and had so many implements in his pockets to fix and do things with it; for therefrom, during the process he took all sorts of beautifully made instruments, ranging from a gold toothpick to a silver match-box and gave them to him to hold while he was diving into the depths for his sharpest jack-knife. Besides, he had a diamond ring on his finger of dazzling brightness and a little jewelled watch in his vest pocket, which he pulled out to see what time of day it was. After he had fixed the kite and sailed it across the field several times, he stopped short and exclaimed:

“There, it sails beautifully; but I’ve had enough of it! Say, little ‘Can’t tell a lie.’ I should think you’d be awful tired of the kite business. I quit it long before I was as old as you are. Why don’t you play with something more patriotic—something like what George Washington used to lick the English with? I don’t blame you though for not wanting Schwarmer’s cheep truck; I’ve got some things that I brought from the city—things that I helped make for our school celebration. They are daisies! stars and stripes of just the right color! Come on and I’ll show you one. I’m going to have a picnic down by the river this afternoon.”

“I’m afraid mamma wouldn’t like to have me go out of the field.”

“O you needn’t be afraid. It’s liberty day. She won’t care, take my word for it. I’m older than you. Come on, you’ll never have another chance to see my prettiest piece. I haven’t but one left and when it’s once let off there’s an end of it; there it is leaning against the tree. Aaron’s rod, I call it. Your Sunday school teacher has told you about Aaron’s wonderful rod. Come and see how you like its namesake.”

Fons started off with the kite in hand and Laurens still had the beautiful implements.

“Come on,” shouted Fons, seizing Aaron’s rod and swinging it gayly. “Catch me if you can.”

It was a lively chase. Over the fence, across the road and down the steep bank! When they stopped they were side by side and both were laughing. They had enjoyed the race.

“Now,” said Fons, “we are here and if you don’t want to see my patriotic piece you will have to shut your eyes.”

Laurens opened his eyes still wider instead of shutting them, for Fons began to show off at once. It was a very pretty show. The place was in deep shadow and the effect was almost as vivid as it would have been at night.

“That’s the style of them,” laughed Fons after he had finished the piece. “I see you like it. Now you stay here while I run up to the house and get some lemons and candy; and don’t let any bad boys run off with my things.”

What Fons really did was to go up to the Schwarmer stables, where he found an army of small boys to whom Schwarmer was distributing packages of Fourth of July fireworks. He watched them and saw a squad of four rough little rascals who were trying to get a double or perhaps a quadruple supply. They were changing caps with each other and holding each other’s boxes.

“Here boys,” he said, calling them aside, “I know what you want. You haven’t got your share and some others have more than their share. I can fix that for you. I was a boy myself only a little while ago. There’s a boy down by the river just opposite the big Cornwallis lot who has a great lot of the very best kind of fireworks—stars and garters, Johnny-jump-ups and Yankee-doodle-doos. You go down there and make him divide up. You can swipe him easy enough. He’s a little Sunday-school angel, who wants to celebrate all by himself. You’ll know him. He is rigged out in the Can’t-tell-a-lie George Washington style.”

Fons’ intention was to go down to the river’s bank, secrete himself where the boys couldn’t see him and watch them while they fought it out; but his plan was baffled by an unexpected event.