CHAPTER XXI.
The same evening that Penfield’s fate was hanging in the balance, Uncle Ralph sat cosily by the library fire, newspaper in hand, and waiting for Aleck to come home. Everything was so sure to go well with his two faithful clerks, and the new luxury of home was so tempting, that he was getting into the way of leaving business early, and for the first time in his life enjoying his own fireside for an hour or two in the evening. But the newspaper was upside down this time, and his own thoughts seemed to be uppermost and so engrossing that he started when he heard Aleck’s key in the door.
“Well, sir,” he said, as Aleck came in with as light a step and as glowing a face as if such a thing as work had never been heard of, “I’ve been making a discovery, sitting here all alone; and that is, that I’ve been a poor fool not to have made a home for myself, in some shape or other, thirty years ago! Don’t you follow my example, old fellow. You must get a wife all in good time, but still it is possible there are some other things to be thought of first. What day is to-morrow?”
“Tuesday, I believe,” said Aleck.
“Humph! Yes. Anything else?”
“Only my birthday, so far as I know. I shall be twenty-one, I suppose, if I live to see it.”
“Ah! Well that is what I was thinking about half an hour ago, I believe; and I was only waiting for you to come home to ask you how you would like to have ‘Halliday’s’ known as ‘Halliday & Co.’ in future.”
Aleck started.
“O uncle, I don’t deserve that! That is too much!”
“We wont go as far as to talk of deserts,” said his uncle. “If I could tell you how my life came to be a lonely one, and how lonely it has been, you could understand better what you have been to me the last few years. If you had refused me when I asked you to come, I don’t know what I should have done, and it would be ten times worse to part with you now; and as one never knows what notion a young man may take, you see I’m only casting an anchor to windward for myself, if I can pin you a little closer. There aren’t many men lucky enough to have two such right-hands as you and Thorndyke; and if I can get one of them for a partner, why, we’ll divide the other between us, that is all. Thorndyke is a genius! If he keeps on at this rate, we old men may have to step aside and let him come in as number one some day, yet. But you are my brother’s son, Aleck, and I want you in my sight and by my side as long as I live; you have been the greatest comfort of my life; you have made a green spot in it the last few years, and it would be like going back to Sahara to give you up.”
Aleck did not sleep much that night; not for worlds would he have told his uncle that he had been fighting away with college studies all these years; and as he had watched Thorndyke coming on, a faint hope had grown stronger and stronger that he might take his place some day, and so much more than fill it that he could slip away without being really missed. But that was all gone now; he would never leave his uncle! And as for himself! Well, he had been happy in the store, even while dreaming all the time of getting away, and if he could once settle that question, and be done with fidgeting about it, he might be very happy. And he was quite sincere in all his gratitude to his uncle. He was giving him a position to be envied by any business man, and there was no better place than Halliday’s for making a fortune, at all events.
So it was all settled, and no one was more proud of the new arrangement than the senior clerk, as Thorndyke now became.
“And a lucky fellow you are, Thorndyke, to get your foot on that round in the ladder,” said Tom, who had come in to see how Aleck carried his new dignity, and stopped, as he always did, for a few words with Thorndyke. “If I thought I should ever get to that I should take courage, but it seems as if I never should; and I don’t know that I shall be any better off, after all, when the day comes at last.”
Thorndyke glanced quickly in Tom’s face. It had seemed to him looking rather wobegone for some time past, and he wondered if Tom was having any trouble. He could give a faint guess, for he had been sent over to Fenimore & Co.’s a good many times since he had been in the store, and though the thought of Hal was so inseparably connected with the one terrible memory of his life, that he had avoided even the sight of him when possible, he had heard him speak to Tom with those same taunting tones that brought the whole thing up with a rush, and made him tingle to his fingers’ ends for Tom. Never since that dreadful day could he hear an unkind word spoken to any human being without a shiver through his own heart; and when it came in Hal’s own voice, he could only look at Tom and wonder how he could bear it, and wish he were a strong man and a rich one, that he might somehow get hold of him and pull him out of the reach of it.
“It wont be very long, will it?” he asked; “isn’t Hal going in as partner soon?”
“Yes,” said Tom, “in two or three months; but there’s Gray between us, you know; and, after all, I don’t know that it makes any great difference. It will be the same old mill, whatever wheel in it I turn, and the same ugly grind. Some day before I know it I shall find it has ground whatever soul I ever had into such small dust I cannot find it.”
“If you think there is any danger of that, why don’t you get out of it?” asked Thorndyke, more earnestly than he dared to show Tom, and the next moment he was almost frightened at the look that came into Tom’s face.
“I tell you,” said Tom, “it’s all very fine to ask a drowning man why he don’t catch at some straw, when there are half a dozen other people hanging on him at the same time. If it wasn’t that they’re depending on me at home, and have been waiting for me all these years, the world isn’t so wide but I’d put half of it between me and Fenimore’s before many days had passed. But, as things are, of course there’s nothing for it but to stick by. I’ll hold on as long as I can, but if I go down, and the rest with me, I can’t help it.”
Tom’s eyes met Thorndyke’s with an almost desperate look, and then he turned suddenly away. “Pshaw, Thorndyke, I tell you again you don’t know what a lucky dog you are. Shut up here with a fellow like Aleck I should not think you had a trouble left in the world!”
So it was all out! It was Hal, as Thorndyke had thought! And with Tom’s forlorn face turning away as if ashamed of what he had said, Thorndyke felt more troubled than ever. What could he do about it?—as he had asked himself many times before.
But after Tom had gone the consciousness of another pain came over him; he had felt it like a stab, at Tom’s last words, but he was too much engrossed by anxiety for him, to dwell upon them at the moment; now they came echoing back: “I shouldn’t think you’d feel you had a trouble in the world.”
And was that all Tom knew, all he realized after all these years and with his memory of that terrible day long ago? Well, that was just as Thorndyke had meant it should be, just as he was trying to have it all the time; and why should he feel this strange pain when he found it was so? He had been so bent on being a brave soldier.
He had let every one look at him, and heard whisperings now and then, and had done his work, and gone home with a smile for the doctor and Nellie, and the thought of the great Captain had kept him strong through it all. It had been hard enough sometimes, and some of the hardest had been when the other boys came in to tell Aleck about their games or their excursions, or to beg him off to join them.
“All but me!” always came quickly up with its old ring, and brought with it the echo of what the doctor had said when he nodded good-by to him at the school-room.
“Remember you don’t run too hard till you are used to it; but I wont be afraid to match you with the fleetest of them, in a few months’ time.”
He thought no one had ever guessed a word; the pale face and great dark eyes looked quietly over the counter, or went about their work, or smiled good-by as Aleck went off, as if they had no thought of anything else; but Aleck and the doctor knew it all; and the doctor used to tramp up and down the room now and then, until Nelly would glance up wonderingly from her work.
“The very same! The very same look he gave me the first time he opened his eyes at me, after it began to seem as if he might pull through after all! Nothing in the world for him, and it’s all right there shouldn’t be, and he’s glad there’s such a good time for you and me; that’s what there is in that smile of his.”
“I don’t see how he can quite feel that there’s nothing in the world for him when he has us all,” said Nelly gently. “He surely can’t forget that.”
“No,” said the doctor, “he does not forget that, and I don’t believe the thought of us is out of his mind a moment from the time he leaves the house in the morning, and he hangs upon it till he comes back at night; but still, life has something outside of us, or ought to have, to a fellow like him. And it would have had, if it hadn’t been for a set of miserable——”
The doctor’s book was very near taking another fly out of the window; but he only added quietly, “However, he’ll find out that he’s somebody yet, and make his fortune, if nothing more. Halliday says he’s a genius, and he’ll be known as the first chemist in the state, some day.”
The doctor was right about Thorndyke’s “hanging on.” It seemed as if, aside from the thought of the Prince Royal, he lived and moved in the doctor and Aleck; and as for Nelly, she had never come to seem quite like a real person yet, always the beautiful vision of the flower window. The doctor was first of all, of course; Thorndyke watched his every movement as if it were food for his eyes, no matter how engrossed they might be with any work. But still, it only seemed wonderful that he had them all; he could not make it seem anything that really belonged to him; only a grace from day to day.
But poor Tom! He was sure he was having trouble somehow, and to see any one in trouble was always trouble itself to Thorndyke; what could he do? How could he make things seem any better? If he could only get Tom over to Halliday’s, with Aleck! But that would be throwing away the years he had been working and waiting for promotion at Fenimore’s.