The Rich Little Poor Boy Part 40

Johnnie was staring at the floor. "John Blake!" he said under his breath. "O' course! Me! 'Cause it sounds all right, some way, and Smith _never_ did!--Not John Smith, but John Blake!"

"Johnnie," went on the Father, "I told the dear two o' ye the story o'

Edith Cavell. And ye thought that story grand, which it is. But t'day I'm tellin' ye another--one which, in its way, is equally grand. But this time the story's about a man--a wonderful man, gallant and brave, that ye'll love from this hour on."

"Please, what does he look like?" asked Johnnie, wanting a definite picture in his mind.

"A proper question!--And, see! The old gentleman's asleep again! Good!

Wheel him a mite away, would ye mind, Miss Narcissa? He'll dream a bit better if he isn't under me voice. Thanks!--Well, then, first o' all, I'll have ye take note o' this man's general appearance, like. He was young, as men go, bein' only thirty-one; though"--with a laugh and a shake of the head--"ye think him fairly old, don't ye? Ha! But the day'll come when thirty-one'll seem t' ye like a baby right out o' the cradle! Yes, indeed!--But t' go back t' the man: thirty-one he was----"

"Was?" inquired Johnnie. "Is he dead? Or--or maybe now he's thirty-two?"

"He'll be thirty-one," said Father Pat, "to the very end o' time. For he is dead, lad dear, though G.o.d knows I wish I could tell ye otherwise, but we'll not be questionin' His mercy nor His judgment. And when all is said and done, his brave death is somethin' t' give thanks for, as ye'll admit fast enough when ye've heard.--Well, thirty-one, he was, and about me own height. But not me weight. No, he was a lighter-weighing man. He had sandyish hair, this gentleman, and a smooth face. His eyes were gray-and-blue. And from what I hear about him, he smiled a good deal, and was friendly t' ev'rybody, with a nice word and cheery how-dy-do.

His skin was high-colored like, and his chin was solid and square, and he had a fine straight nose, and--but have ye got it all?"

"Yes, sir!" Johnnie scarcely remembered that any one else was with them.

"Slim, and light-haired (like me), and no whiskers, and kind of gray eyes, and all his face nice. But I can't see it _'xac'ly_ as I'd like t', 'cause maybe what I see and what he looked like ain't just the same."

"In that case," replied the Father, "it's a good thing, I'm thinkin', that I brought along a photograph!"

There it was in his hand. He held it (small and round, it was) cupped by a big palm; and Johnnie, leaning forward, studied the pictured countenance carefully. "That's right," went on the priest; "look at it close--close!"

"I--I like him," Johnnie said, after a little. "And I'm awful sorry he's dead.--But please go on, Father Pat. I want t' hear 'bout him. Though if the story's very sad, why, I'm 'fraid that Cis'll cry."

"I won't," promised Cis. "But--but if the story tells how he died, I don't think I'll look at the picture--not just yet, anyhow."

The priest laid the photograph, face down, upon the table. "It isn't that Miss Narcissa'll cry," he argued; "but, oh, what'll we say t' this young lady when she sees _us_ weep?--for, little lad dear, this is a tale--" He broke off, then and there, as if about to break down on the spot. But coughed, and changed feet, thus getting control of himself once more, so that he was able to go on.

"This young man I'm tellin' about lived in Buffalo," continued the Father. "Now that city is close t' the n.o.ble Falls that ye're so fond o'

visitin' with Grandpa. Well, one day in the Spring----"

"Scuse me! Last spring?" Johnnie interrupted.

"Eight long springs ago," answered the Father. "Which would make ye about two years o' age at the time, if me arithmetic is workin' fairly well t'day."

"Two is right," declared Johnnie, with the certainty of one who has committed to memory, page by page, the whole of a book on numbers.

"But as ye were all o' four years old at the time," corrected the priest, "eight springs ago would make ye twelve years old at this date----"

"_Twelve?_"

"Ha-ha-a-a-! Boy scout age!" reminded the Father.

At that, Johnnie, quite overcome by the news, tumbled sidewise upon One-Eye's hairy knees, and the cowboy mauled the yellow head affectionately. When the Westerner set Johnnie up again, "So ye see Mr.

Barber shoved yer age back a bit when ye first came here," explained the priest. "And as ye was shut in so much, and that made ye small for yer years, why, he planned t' keep ye workin' for him just that much longer.

Also, it helped him in holdin' ye out o' school."

One-Eye's mustache was standing high under the brown triangle of his nose. The single eye was burning. "Oh, jes' fer a good _ex_-cuse!" he cried. "Fer a chanst! Fer a' openin'! And--it'll come! It'll come! I ain't goin' t' leave Noo York, neither, till I've had it!"

If Cis caught the main drift of all this, Johnnie did not. "I'd like t'

be able t' send word t' Mister Perkins!" he declared. "Oh, wouldn't he be tickled, though!--Cis, I can be a scout--this minute!" Then apologetically, "But I won't int'rrupt y' again, Father Pat. I know better, only t' hear what you said was so awful fine!"

"Ye're excused, scout dear," declared the priest. "Shure, it's me that's glad I can bring a bit o' good news along with the sad--which is the way life goes, bein' more or less like bacon, the lean betwixt the fat. And now I'll go on with the story o' the young man and his wife, and----"

"There's a lady in the story?" asked Cis.

"A dear lady," answered the Father. "Young and slim, she was--scarce more than a girl. With brown hair, I'm told, though I'm afraid I can't furnish ye much more o' a description, and I'm sad t' say I've got no photograph."

"Guess I won't be able t' see her face the way I do his," said Johnnie.

"She must've been very sweet-lookin' in the face," declared Father Pat.

"And bein' as good as she was good-lookin', 'tis not hard t' understand why he loved her the way he did. And that he did love her, far above annything else in the world, ye'll understand when ye've heard it all.

So think o' her as beautiful, lad dear, and as leanin' on him always, and believin' in what he said, and trustin'. Also, she loved him in the same way that he loved her, and we'll let that comfort us hereafter whenever we talk about them--the strong, clean, fine, young husband, and the bit o' a wife.

"Well, it was Spring, and they, havin' been kept in all winter, had a mind one day t' visit the Falls. That same day was lovely, they tell me, sunny and crisp. And she wore a long, brown coat over her neat dress, and a scarf of silk veilin' about her throat. And he wore his overcoat, there bein' some snap in the air.

"Quite a lot o' folks was goin' out upon the ice below the Falls, for the thawin' and the breakin' up was not goin' forward too much--they thought--and a grand view was t' be had o' the monster frozen floor, and the icicles high as a house. So this gentleman and his wife----"

"My father and mother!" cried Johnnie. "Oh, Father Pat, y're goin' t'

tell me how they both got drownded!"

"Now! now! now!" comforted One-Eye, with a pat or two on a shoulder. "Y'

want t' know, don't y'? Aw, sonny, it'll make y' proud!"

Johnnie could only nod. The Father went on: "They went out upon the ice with all the others, and stood gazin' up at the beautiful sight, and talkin', I'll venture t' say, about how wonderful it was, and sayin'

that some day they'd bring the boy t' see it."

"Me,"--and Johnnie drew closer to One-Eye.

"Only a bit o' a baby, ye was, lad dear, safe at home with yer Aunt Sophie, but big enough t' be put into ev'ry one o' their dreams and plans. --So when they'd looked long, and with pleasure, at the fairy work o' the frozen water, they turned and watched downstream. There was a vast floor o' ice in that direction, all covered still with snow. At the far edge o' the floor showed open water, flowin' in terrible wildness, so that no boat ever rides safely in it, nor can anny man swim through it and live.

"The rapids lay below there, but these were a long way off from the sightseers at the Falls. They could see the tumblin', perhaps, and maybe hear the roar. But what was under their feet was firm as the ground, and they felt no fear."

"But--but was it safe?" Johnnie faltered. "Oh, Father Pat, I'm 'fraid it wasn't!"

"Where they stood, it was," declared the Father. "But all at once, a smart puff o' wind caught that pretty wisp o' veilin' from the young wife, and wafted it away. And as quick as the wind itself after it she darted; but when she was close to it, up and off it whirled again, and she followed it, and he after her, and--shouts o' warnin' from all!"

Johnnie took his underlip in his teeth. By that power of his to call before him vividly the people and places and things he heard, or read, about, and to see everything as if it were before him, now he was seeing the snow-covered flooring of the river, the hastening figure headed toward danger, and the frightened one who pursued, while the sun shone, and voices called, and the river roared below.

"There was good reason t' shout," continued the priest. "For by a bitter chance the ice had cracked clear across 'twixt where the two were hastenin' and where they had stood before."

Now Johnnie suddenly grew white, and his lip quivered out from its hold.

"But they must go back, Father Pat!" he cried, his breast heaving. "Oh, they must go back!"

"They can't," answered the Father, speaking very low. "Oh, dear lad, they're cut off from the sh.o.r.e. There's a big rift in the ice now, and it's growin' each moment bigger, and they're on the wrong side o' it, and--floatin' down river."

One-Eye slipped an arm about Johnnie, drawing the bright head to a shoulder. "Are y' all right, sonny?" he asked huskily. "Can y' hear the rest? Or----"

"Yes,"--but it was scarcely a whisper, and the flaxen lashes were shuttering the gray eyes tight. "I--I ought t' be able t' stand just hearin' it, if--if _they_ could stand the really thing."