Ethel Morton at Rose House

by Mabell S. C. Smith

CHAPTER XIV

THE STORM

After all, they need not have jerked poor Dicky over the ground at such a rapid pace for the storm, though it grumbled and roared at a distance, did not break until a late hour in the night. Then it came with a vengeance and made up for its indecision by behaving with real ferocity.

To the women at Rose House, accustomed to the city, where Nature's sights and sounds are deadened by the number of the buildings and the narrowness of the streets, the uproar was terrifying. Flash after flash lit up their rooms so that the roosters and puppies and pigs and cows on the curtains stood out clearly in the white light. Crash after crash sent them cowering under the covers of their beds. The children woke and added their cries to the tumult.

As the electric storm swept away into the distance the wind rose and howled about the house. Shutters slammed; chairs were over-turned on the porch; a brick fell with a thud from the top of the chimney to the roof; another fell down the chimney into the fireplace where its arrival was followed by a roar that seemed to shake the old building on its foundation.

"Grrreat Scott!" ejaculated Mr. Schuler, who had learned some English expressions from his pupils. He was returning through the hall from a hobbling excursion to make sure that all the windows down stairs were closed. The candle dropped from his hand and he was left in the dark. His crutch slid from under his arm, and he was forced to cling to a table for support and call for his wife to come and find it for him.

Mrs. Schuler reached him from the kitchen where she had been attending to the fastenings of the back door. Fortunately her light had survived the gusty attack and she was able to help her husband to his prop.

"What is it?" she cried breathlessly, "Is the house falling? Did you ever hear such a noise!"

Mr. Schuler never had. The outcry upstairs was increased by the shrieks of Sheila who had slept until the last shock and who woke at last to add her penetrating voice to the pandemonium.

"Do you smell something queer?" asked Mrs. Schuler. "Do you think that was a lightning-bolt and it set the house on fire?"

Her husband shook his head doubtfully. "The lightning has gone by," he said, but they went together on a tour of investigation.

Nothing was burning in the kitchen, but the rays of the uplifted candle showed a zigzag crack on the wall behind the stove.

"That wall is the chimney," said Mrs. Schuler. "Something has happened to the chimney."

"Let's go into the dining-room and see if anything shows there."

Into the dining-room they went. An acrid smell filled the room, and as they entered a smouldering flame in the fireplace burst into a blaze, from the draught of the door. Its fuel consisted only of some trash that had been tossed into the fireplace and hidden behind the fresh pine boughs that filled the opening through the summer. The drinking water in the pitcher on the table was enough to put an end to it.

"It's hardly large enough to bother to put out," exclaimed Mr. Schuler, "if it weren't that the chimney seems to be so shaken that the flames might work through somewhere and set fire to the woodwork."

"There's no doubt about something serious having happened to the chimney," and Mrs. Schuler stooped and pushed back three or four bricks that had tumbled forward on to the hearth.

"The back is cracked," she announced from her knees. "With that big crack on the kitchen side I rather think Moya had better use the oil stove until Mr. Emerson can send a bricklayer to examine the chimney."

"Everything but this seems all right here; you'd better go up and try to calm the women," advised Mr. Schuler.

The wind storm was dying down and the inmates of Rose House were becoming quieter as the din outside moderated. The Matron went from room to room bringing comfort and courage as her candle shone upon one frightened face after another.

"It's all over; there's nothing to be afraid of," she said over and over again. Only to Moya did she tell what had happened to the chimney, so that she might prepare breakfast on the oil stove.

"It almost seems I heard a giant fall down the chimney," the Irish girl whispered hoarsely.

"I dare say you did hear the bricks falling. There's a gallon or two of soot in the dining-room fireplace for you to clean up in the morning."

"'Tis easy, that, compared wid cleaning up the whole house that seemed like to tumble!" said Moya with a sigh of relief.

The children were already asleep and the remainder of the night was unbroken by any sound save the dripping of the raindrops from the branches and the swish of wet leaves against each other when a light breeze revived their former activities.

Little Vladimir was up early with a memory of something queer having happened in the night. He was eager to go downstairs and find out what it was all about and his mother dressed him and let him out of her room and then turned over to take another nap. When Moya went down to set the oil stove in position for use he was amusing himself contentedly with the rubbish in the fireplace, his face and hands already in need of renewed attention from his mother.

"'Tis the sooty-faced young one ye are," she called to him good-naturedly. "Run up to the brook and wash yerself an' save yer mother the throuble."

She opened the back door and he ran out into the yard, but instead of going up the lane to the brook he scampered round the house and down the lane. Moya called after him but he paid no attention. "Sure, I've too much to do to be day-nursing that young Russian," she murmured.

There were wonderings and ejaculations in many tongues when all the women and children came down and examined the cracks in the kitchen side of the chimney and in the back of the dining-room fireplace and saw the heap of rubbish and bricks piled up in the fireplace. It gave them something to talk about all the morning. This was lucky, for the grass was too wet for the children to play on it, and when mothers and children were crowded on the veranda idle words sometimes changed to cross ones.

"Tis strange; they's good women, iv'ry wan, take 'em alone," Moya had said one day to Mrs. Schuler and Ethel Blue when they heard from the kitchen the sounds of dispute upon the porch; "yit listen to 'em whin they gits together."

"That's because each one of them gets out of the talk just what she puts into it," explained the Matron.

"Manin' that if she comes to it cross it's cross answers she gits. It's right ye are, ma'am. 'Tis so about likin' or hatin' yer work. Days when yer bring happiness to yer work it goes like a bird, an' days when ye have the black dog on yer back the work turns round an' fights wid yer."

Ethel Blue listened intently. Things like that had happened to her but she had not supposed that grown people had such experiences. She remembered a day during the previous week when she had waked up cross. A dozen matters went wrong before she left the house to go to school. On the way the mud pulled off one of her overshoes, and her boot was soiled before she was shod again. The delay made her five minutes late and caused a black mark to deface her perfect attendance record. Every recitation went wrong in one way or another, and every one she spoke to was as cross as two sticks. As she thought it over she realized that if what Mrs. Schuler and Moya said was true the whole trouble came from herself. When she woke up not in the best of humor she ought to have smoothed herself out before she went down to breakfast, and then she would have picked her way calmly over the crossing and not tried to take a short cut through the mud; she would not have been delayed and earned a tardy mark; she would have had an unclouded mind that could give its best attention to the recitations so that she would have done herself justice; people would have been glad to talk to her because she looked cheerful and was in a sunny mood and no one would have been cross.

"I guess it was all my fault," she thought. "I guess it will pay to straighten myself out before I get out of bed every morning."

All was well in and out of Rose House on the morning after the storm. Every one told her experiences as if she were the only person affected and they all talked at once and enjoyed themselves immensely. Vladimir came running up on to the porch in the middle of the morning and threw himself across his mother's lap.

"Where have you been now?" she asked him. He had come to breakfast only after being called a dozen times and he had disappeared immediately after breakfast. "What have you been doing?"

The little fellow laughed and poured into her lap a handful of nickels and ten-cent pieces.

"Where in the world did you get those?" demanded Mrs. Vereshchagin. "Who gave them to you?"

"A man in the road."

"A man in the road? All that money? What for?"

"I gave him the shiny thing and he gave me those moneys."

"What shiny thing?"

"The shiny thing I found on the floor."

"Where on the floor?"

"In the dining-room, and the youngster ran into the house to point out exactly the place where he had found the 'shiny thing.'"

"A 'shiny thing'," repeated Moya, who was putting the room in order and heard the Russian woman's inquiries. "'Tis two of 'em I found mesilf on the floor when I cleared up the mess from the fireplace this morning. 'Twas two bits of brass. See, I saved 'em," and she shook from a scooped-out gourd which served as an ornament on the mantel two bits of metal.

"Was it like these, Vladdy?" she asked, but Vladimir was too tired of being questioned and ran away without answering.

His mother shook her head as she gazed at the bits lying on her palm.

"Not worth all these moneys," she murmured as she counted forty cents in the small coins in her other hand. It was a mystery.

Moya put the bits of brass back into the gourd and went on with her dusting.

Mrs. Schuler telephoned to Mr. Emerson early in the morning, telling him of the damage to the house and asking him to come and see what had happened go that the bricklayers might be set to work as soon as possible.

"I'm afraid to let Moya light the kitchen stove until I'm sure the chimney is sound," she explained.

Mr. Emerson telephoned the news to his grandchildren and he and all the Mortons with Dorothy and her mother and Miss Merriam and Elisabeth arrived at the farm at almost the same time.

"I'm glad the house is in as good condition as it seems to be," exclaimed Mrs. Morton. "I couldn't bear to have the old homestead fall to ruin. I was startled at Father's message."

"Not so startled as all the people here were in the night," laughed her father who had been talking with Mrs. Schuler. "It seems that the worst noise came after the electric storm was over, but while the wind was at its highest."

"The chimney wasn't struck by lightning, then."

"It was not lightning," asserted Mr. Schuler. "The wind knocked bricks from the top of the chimney. I saw one or two on the roof this morning. As you see, several fell down the chimney into the fireplace."

"I can't see how bricks from the top of the chimney could have made the crack in the kitchen side of the chimney and this crack in the back of the fireplace."

"Nor I," agreed Mr. Schuler. "The roar was tremendous. I could not believe that I was seeing rightly when I beheld only these few fallen bricks."

"It sounded as if the whole chimney had fallen," Mrs. Schuler confirmed her husband's assertion.

"Mrs. Peterson says it sounded to her like an explosion, sir," said Moya, who had been talking with the women on the porch. "Her room is right over this. The bricks fell through the chimney, banging it all the way, says she, and thin there was a roar like powder had gone off, as far as I can understand what she says."

"If Mrs. Paterno heard that she must have thought the Black Hand was getting in its fine work, sure enough," smiled Mr. Emerson.

"Praise be, her room is on the other side of the house. We were all wailing like banshees up there, but she no more than the rest. 'Tis better she is," and Moya nodded reassuringly to the grown-ups, who were, she knew, deeply interested in the Italian woman's recovery of her nervous strength.

"This explosion business I don't understand," Mr. Emerson said slowly to himself. "What did you find in the fireplace this morning, Moya? I wish you had left all the stuff here for me to see."

"I'm sorry, sir. I was only thinkin' about havin' it clean before breakfast. There was the bricks, sir, two of 'em; and a pile of soot and some bits of trash wid no meanin'--"

"Did you find my two thinieth I picked up on the track yesterday?" asked Dicky. "Ethels made me throw away all the thingth in my pocket and my thinieth went too."

"What does he mean by his 'shinies'?" asked Mr. Emerson.

"He picked up a lot of stuff yesterday when we were hunting arrow heads and walking to Rosemont by the short cut over the track. When I was putting Mrs. Schuler's storm cape on him I emptied out his pocketful of trash into the fireplace."

"What did the shinies look like, son?" inquired Dicky's grandfather.

Dicky was entering into an elaborate and unintelligible explanation when Moya took the bits of brass from the gourd.

"Would these be the shinies?" she asked.

Mr. Emerson took them from her and examined them carefully.

"I rather think the explanation of the explosion is here," he decided. "You say you picked these up on the track, Dicky?"

"Yeth, I did, and Ethel threw them away," repeated the youngster who was beginning to think that he had a real grievance, since his "shinies" seemed to have some importance.

"These are two of the small dynamite cartridges that brakemen lay on the track to notify the engineer of a following train to stop for some reason. They use them in stormy weather or when there is reason to think that the usual flag or red light between the rails won't be seen."

"Dynamite!" exclaimed Ethel Brown, looking at her hand as she remembered that she had not been especially gentle when she tossed the contents of her brother's pocket into the fireplace.

"There is enough dynamite in a cartridge to make a sharp detonation but not enough to do any damage, unless, as happened here, there were two of them in a small space that was enclosed on three sides--"

"The trash was blown out on the floor of the room," interrupted Mr. Schuler.

"--by walls that were none too strong. With a wind such as last night's knocking down the chimney at the top and bricks setting dynamite cartridges into action below I only wonder that the old thing is standing at all this morning."

They gazed at it as if they expected the whole affair to fall before their eyes.

"I'll call up the brickmason and find out when he can come to examine it; he may have to rebuild the entire chimney."

Mr. Emerson was moving toward the hall where the telephone was when his eye fell on Elisabeth sitting contentedly on the floor close to the wall turning over and over something that gleamed.

"What have you got there, small blessing?" he asked, stooping to make sure that she was not intending to try the taste of whatever it might be.

"Hullo!" he cried, straightening himself. "Hullo!" and he held up his discovery before the astonished eyes of the group.

"It looks like a gold coin, Grandfather!" exclaimed Ethel Brown.

"That's just what it is. A guinea. Its date is 1762. Where did you find it, Ayleesabet?" he asked the child, who was reaching up her tiny hands for the return of her new plaything.

"Here, here," she answered, pointing to the floor where the casing of the chimney yawned from the planks for half an inch. "Here," and she pushed her fingers into the crack.

"I saw her pull something that was sticking out of there a little bit," said Dorothy, "but I was interested in what Mr. Emerson was saying and I didn't pay much attention to what she was doing."

Miss Merriam took Elisabeth on her lap and peered between her lips to make sure that no dirt from the floor was visible. Then she took a small emergency kit from her pocket, extracted a bit of sterile gauze and wiped out the little pink mouth.

"I live in hopes that the day will come when she'll outgrow her desire to test everything with her mouth," she remarked amusedly.

"Is it guineas ye're speaking about?" asked Moya. "Perhaps 'twas a guinea young Vladdy the Russian found this morning. He said he found a 'shiny thing.' I thought 'twas one of thim cartridges, like I found myself."

"Another shiny thing? What did he do with it? Let's see it?" demanded Mr. Emerson.

"He said he gave it to a man in the road and the man gave him a handful of ten-cent pieces and nickels. There was forty cents of it. I heard Mrs. Vereshchagin counting 'em."

"Forty cents! It must have been a valuable shiny thing that a man in the road would give a child forty cents for. He knew its value. I should say Vladimir and Elisabeth had tapped the same till. Helen, go and see if you can find out anything more from the child or his mother. And Roger, get a chisel and hammer and hatchet and perhaps you and Mr. Schuler and I can take down these boards and see what there is to see behind them."

"Wouldn't it be thrilling if there should be a hidden treasure!" exclaimed Ethel Blue. "Aren't you shivering all over with excitement, Miss Gertrude?"

Meanwhile Roger and his grandfather were prying off the boards that covered in the chimney on the right side and supported the mantel-shelf. As it fell back into their hands two more gold coins tumbled to the floor.

"Just take off this narrow plank, Roger and let me squint in there. Stand back, please, all of you, and let us have as much light as we can."

"I have a flashlight," said Mr. Schuler.

"Just the ticket. Now, then--," and Mr. Emerson kneeled down, peering into the space that was disclosed when the boards fell away. "I see something; I certainly see something," he cried as the electricity searched into the darkness. He thrust in his arm but the something was too far off.

"Take my crutch," suggested Mr. Schuler.

Mr. Emerson took it and tugged away with the top.

"It's coming, it's coming," his muffled cry rose from the depths.

Another tug and a blackened leather pouch, slashed with a jagged tear from which gold pieces were pouring, tumbled into the room.

"Pick it all up and put it on the table, Roger, while Mr. Schuler and I decide how it happened," ordered Mr. Emerson.

The investigation seemed to prove that there probably had been a crack in the bricks at the back of the mantel at the time when Algernon Merriam, Miss Gertrude's ancestor, had thrust the bag into the mantel cupboard. It had fallen off the back of the shelf and into the little crevasse where it lay beyond the reach of arm or bent wire or candle light for over a hundred and thirty years.

"Evidently last night's big shaking widened the crack and let the bag fall down. The ragged edge of a broken brick tore the leather and the two coins that Vladimir and Elisabeth found slipped out and fell just inside the plank covering of the chimney and below it out on to the floor."

"So did the two that fell out when we were working," added Roger.

"Let's open it and count the money. This may be some other bag," suggested Helen, who had brought back no farther information from the Russian. "If it's Algernon's it ought to have--how many guineas was it?"

"Five hundred and seventy-three, and a ring and a miniature," continued Ethel Brown who had heard his story.

"In a box," concluded Ethel Blue. "I can't wait for Roger to undo it!"

They gathered around the table on which Roger had placed the stained bag, the gold coins gleaming through a gash in its side. Moya cleaned the outside as well as she could with a damp cloth.

"See, here are some crumbs of sealing-wax still clinging to the cord," and Grandfather Emerson cut the string that still tied the mouth. Before their amazed eyes there rolled first a small box and then guineas as bright as when they were tied up in their prison.

"We shan't have to count the guineas; if the ring and the miniature are in the box that will prove that it's Algernon's bag," said Helen.

"Here, young woman; hands off," cried her grandfather as Helen was preparing to open the box. "Algernon and Patience were no direct ancestors of yours. Miss Merriam is the suitable person to perform this ceremony."

Helen, smiling, pushed the basket toward Miss Gertrude who slipped off the string with trembling fingers.

"I'm almost afraid to take off the cover," she whispered.

"O, do hurry up, Miss Gertrude," implored Ethel Brown. "I think I shall burst if I don't know all about it soon!"

With misty eyes Gertrude slowly lifted the cover from the box. Wrapped in a twist of cotton was a ring set with several large diamonds.

"Is it marked 'Gertrude'?" asked Dorothy breathlessly.

Miss Merriam nodded.

Below the ring lay a miniature, the portrait of a fair woman with deep blue eyes. It was set round with brilliants and on the gold back was engraved, "Gertrude Merriam."

Miss Merriam stared at it and then handed it to Mr. Emerson.

"What a marvellous likeness!" he exclaimed. "You must be able to see it yourself."

Gertrude nodded again, not trusting herself to speak.

"There's no question that she's your ancestor. Now, I'd like to see if the correct number of coins is here if you'll let Roger and me count your guineas for you."

"Count my guineas?" cried Miss Merriam.

"Certainly they're your guineas. You're a direct descendant of Algernon and Patience. The bag and its contents belong to you."

Gertrude stared at Mr. Emerson as if she could not understand him.

"Mine?" she repeated, "mine?" but when Mr. Emerson insisted and the other elders congratulated her and the girls kissed her and Roger shook hands formally, she began, to realize that this little fortune really was hers by right and not through the kindness of her friends.

The count of the coins proved exact. There were 569 of them.

"Here are the two that fell on the floor when we were hammering," said Roger, laying them on the table. "They make 571."

"And here is the one that Ayleesabet found," added Mr. Emerson, drawing it from his pocket. "That is the five hundred and seventy-second. Young Vladimir's trophy has gone for good, I'm afraid. He must have sold it to some passer-by who knew enough to realize that it was a valuable coin and wasn't honest enough to hunt for the owner or to pay the child its full value."

"Every one of the 573 is accounted for, anyway," declared Roger. "You won't think it impertinent if I figure out how much you're worth, will you Miss Gertrude?"

"I shall be glad if you will," she answered.

"A guinea is 21 shillings and a shilling is about 24 cents in American money. That makes a guinea worth about $5.04. Five hundred-and-seventy-two times that makes $2882.88."

"Almost three thousand dollars!" exclaimed Gertrude, her face radiant; "why--why now--" she broke off suddenly and hid her face on Mrs. Smith's shoulder, sobbing.

"Now I can pay all my indebtedness and be free to do what I please," she said to her friend in an undertone.

Mrs. Smith patted her gently, for she knew what it was she wanted to be free to do.

"This fortune is going to mount up to more than three thousand dollars," declared Mr. Emerson. "There isn't a coin here that was minted later than 1774. There can't be, because Algernon came to this country in the early part of 1775. Pile them up according to the dates on them, children, and let's see what there is that will appeal to the dealer in antiquities."

"At that rate every coin here, even the youngest, is worth more than $5.04," exclaimed Roger.

"You get the idea, my son," smiled his grandfather. "We'll sell these coins separately for Miss Gertrude and get a special price on each one. Here's one, for instance, that ought to be worth a good bonus; it is dated 1663. It was over a hundred years old when your respected great-great-grandfather brought it over here, and if I remember my English history correctly it was in 1663 that guineas were first minted. This is a 'first edition,' so to speak."

Gertrude leaned back in her chair, smiling happily.