Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason Corner Folks Part 39

Tom was suspicious of his intentions and followed him. Quincy had left the hotel and was walking rapidly towards the scene of disturbance. Tom ran after him, and kept him in sight, but did not speak to him. At first he felt offended that Quincy had not asked him to go with him. Then he reflected: "I virtually told him in advance that I wouldn't go. He's his own master."

They were nearing a street from which came the sounds of conflict--loud cries, curses, and the reports of firearms. Tom ram forward to prevent Quincy from turning into the street. He was too late--Quincy had turned the corner. Tom, regardless of danger, followed him. He started back with a cry of horror. Quincy had been shot and was lying upon the sidewalk, the blood streaming from a gun-shot wound in his right arm.

Tom took him up in his arms, as though he had been a child, and returned to the safety of the unexposed street.

As he lay Quincy upon the sidewalk and took out his handkerchief to make a tourniquet with which to stanch the flow of blood, he cried: "Oh, Quincy, why did you walk right into danger?"

As he uttered the words, a man who was standing nearby, whose dress and swarthy face proclaimed him to be a foreigner, stepped forward and grasped Tom roughly by the arm.

"What did you call that young man," asked the stranger, his voice trembling, perceptibly.

"I called him by his name--Quincy."

"Quincy what? Pardon me, but I have a reason for asking."

"His name is no secret," said Tom, as he twisted the handkerchief tightly above the wound. "I can't understand your interest in him, but his name is Quincy Adams Sawyer."

"Thank Heaven," exclaimed the man. "And thank you," he added, grasping Tom's hand--"Is he English?"

"No, we're both Yankees, from Fernborough, Ma.s.sachusetts."

The man knelt beside Quincy and gazed at him earnestly. He looked up at Tom.

"I could bless the man who fired that shot. My name is Quincy Adams Sawyer and this young man is my son!"

Tom's surmise had been correct. Alice did not improve and a long stay at the Hospital became necessary before the return to England would be possible.

"What's that noise, Babette?" asked Alice.

"There must be a riot somewhere," was the reply. "The soldiers are marching past. They are fighting in a street nearby."

Alice said no more. What had she to do with fighting and bloodshed? Her suffering was greater than any bullet could inflict. She fell into a doze from which she was awakened by a loud cry from Babette.

"Oh, Madame, a carriage has just stopped here, and they are bringing a wounded man into the Hospital. There are two men with him--one looks like an Englishman or American."

"Go down, Babette, and see if you can find out who they are. I should be glad if I could be of help to one of my own countrymen."

It seemed a very long time before the maid returned. When she did, the usually self-confident Babette seemed dazed. She did not speak until her mistress asked:

"Did you find out anything?"

"Yes, Madame."

"What?"

"They are all Americans, Madame. A young man and his friend; the older man is the father."

"The companion's?"

"No, the young man's."

"Did you learn their names or where they are from?"

Babette sank upon her knees by the bedside.

"Oh, Madame, I am so happy."

Alice regarded her with astonishment.

"Happy! Happy because a young man has been shot. You must have a bloodthirsty nature, Babette."

"It isn't the shooting, Madame. It's the name."

"The name? What name? You are nervous, Babette. You must lie down and rest. I keep you up too late nights reading and writing."

"Oh, Madame, how can I say it? Can you bear it?"

"I have borne suspense for twenty-three years. I can bear much. What is it you would tell me?"

"You know, Madame, I said the older man was the young man's father. They both have the same name."

"That's not uncommon, especially in America. The young man is called Junior. Sometimes when they are very proud of a family name they number them. Supposing my husband were living, and my son had a son, named after himself, the little boy would be Quincy Adams Sawyer 3rd."

"Madame, I must tell you. The father and the son bear the name of Quincy Adams Sawyer!"

Alice regarded her as if affrighted. Then she leaped from the bed and cried: "Bring me my clothes, Babette. My husband and son! We three, brought together by the hand of G.o.d once more."

The revulsion was too great. The pent-up agony of twenty-three years dissolved in a moment. Alice fainted and fell into Babette's arms.

CHAPTER XXV

A PERIOD OF TWENTY-THREE YEARS

It took hours for the overjoyed wife and mother and the long-lost husband and father to tell their stories. Alice's was told first, and was followed by young Quincy's recital of his life at Fernborough, his four years at Harvard, and the story of the returned bill of exchange leading him to Europe, and his search for his mother in Vienna which ended with such happiness for all. Finally, the father began:

"On the night of the collision, after seeing you safely started in the life-boat with the last of the pa.s.sengers, Captain Hawkins thought of a small boat on the upper deck which had been overlooked in the general scramble to get away from the doomed _Altonia_. Shouting to me to follow him, the Captain rushed up the ladder to the railing, and together we started to lower the boat. It was raised about three feet above the deck, being held in position by two supports shaped like a letter X. I had already loosened the ropes on my side, and then tried to kick out the support nearest me. It stuck, and finally I got down on my hands and knees thinking I could force it out better in that position. The water was steadily pouring in at the s.h.i.+p's side, and it was only a question of a few minutes before the _Altonia_ would founder. Finally I gave one mighty push, the support gave away, the boat came down upon me like a ton weight,--and that was the last I knew until I awoke in a large room full of single beds, and a kindly faced old priest told me I was in the Hospital of San Marco, Palermo, Sicily.

"My G.o.d, the shock when I found that my sleep,--for such it was to me,--had lasted over twenty-three years! What thoughts went through my mind! Had you, Alice, been saved or lost? If saved, were you still living, and my son, whom I had never seen, was he living? Were Aunt Ella and my father and mother and my sisters still alive? I was roused from my revery by the good Father Paolo.

"He told me that the week before he had been summoned to the death-bed of an old seaman, Captain Vando, who had confessed that over twenty years before, while sailing from Boston to Palermo, two days after a very bad fog, he had picked up at sea a small open boat in which were two men, both of whom at first seemed dead. One, it was Captain Hawkins, was beyond all help; he was frozen to death,--frozen to death, Alice, in an effort to save my life, for, besides my own coat, his was found tucked around me.

"After hours of work, I was brought back to life,--but a life worse than death. The Captain told Father Paolo that my mind was a blank, I could remember nothing of my past, I did not know my name. Then temptation came to Captain Vando. He took from me my belt, in which I had some English gold, a few English bank-notes, and the five bills of exchange, each for a thousand pounds. The latter he did not dare to dispose of, but the money he appropriated to his own use. He soon found I could be of no use to him on s.h.i.+p-board, so, on his arrival at Palermo, he sold me to a rich planter, for a hundred lire, and I was put to work in the orange groves.

"Captain Vando in his confession told Father Paolo that he still had my belt containing the bills of exchange, and before his death he delivered these over to the priest. After the Captain's death, Father Paolo went to Signor Matrosa, who, when confronted with the facts, admitted I had been sold to him, and that I was known under the name of Alessandro Nondra, but he told him that I had been mixed up in a fight, and had received such a bad wound that I had been sent to the hospital. One of his managers, an Italian, had married an English girl, and they had a daughter with light hair, and blue eyes. It seems I had been sent to his house one day with a message, and when I saw his daughter, I cried out, 'Alice, Alice,' and caught the girl in my arms. Her father was so enraged that he picked up a gun lying near at hand, and gave me such a terrific blow on the head that I was knocked senseless. I remember nothing of it, but mistaking Anita for you was, undoubtedly, my first approach to my former consciousness. That scene was probably the one which you saw in your dream, Alice, and to think that afterwards you should be so near me in Palermo, and neither of us know it!

"At the hospital the doctors found that the blow on my head had caused but a comparatively unimportant scalp wound, but, in dressing it, they found that at some earlier time my skull had been crushed. They performed the delicate operation of trepanning the skull, and when I came out from the effects of the ether, my mind was in the same state as it had been twenty-three years before.