Fifteen Days: An Extract from Edward Colvil's Journal

by Mary Lowell Putnam

"And there we were in the middle of the road, with a dying boy on our hands.

"'If he lives!' Harry's look answered,—'He will live!'

"For my own part, I hoped it very little, and was not sure that I ought to hope it at all.

"It was my turn to fume now; for Harry, as soon as he had carried his point, was as calm as a clock. He had everything planned out. I was to go back to Quickster and hire some sort of wagon to take our patient to Omocqua, where Harry had promised to have him before night. I had permission to stay at Quickster, if I chose, until he came back,—or to go on to Tenpinville, or even to Harvey's, without him. But I had heard, since I left Omocqua, of a remarkable cave, not five miles from there, which had some points of interest for me. I had had half a mind to propose to Harry to go back and see it before we met with this adventure. So, as I must humor him at any rate, I thought it as well to do it with a good grace. I walked off to Quickster, got my wagon, drove back, and found our godsend asleep, with Harry watching by him like a miser over his treasure. We lifted him into the wagon without waking him,—he was no great weight,—and got him safe to the hotel we had left in the morning.

"Harry, when he was making his purchase, had his wits sufficiently about him to require the means of proving his title in case of question. The dealer promised to set all right at Omocqua. I had doubts whether we should meet him again; but Harry had none, and was right. The man arrived the next morning with his convoy, found us out, and gave Harry a regular bill of sale. Being now twenty miles from Tenpinville, he was somewhat more communicative than he had been in the morning. It appeared the sick boy was a great musical genius. He could sing anything he had ever heard, and many things that never had been heard before he sang them. He played upon the piano without any instruction except what he had got by listening under the windows. Indeed, he could make any instrument that was put into his hands, after a little feeling about, do whatever he wanted of it. But he had accidentally received a blow on the chest that had spoiled his voice, and had so injured his health besides, that his master, a tender-hearted man, couldn't bear to see him about. The family, tender-hearted too, couldn't bear to see him sold. So the master, to spare pain all round, decided that the boy should disappear silently, and that it should be understood in the house and neighborhood that he had been enticed away by an amateur from the North, who hoped to cure him and make a fortune out of his talent.

"'How came the master's sensibility to take such a different turn from that of the rest of the family?' I asked,—and drew out that the boy, being a genius, had some of the ways of one, and was at times excessively provoking. He had silent fits, when he would sit dreaming, moving his lips, but making no sound. There was no use in trying to rouse him. You might have shaken him to pieces without his soul's giving the least sign of being in his body. Not only this, but, sometimes, when he did sing, he wouldn't sing well, though perhaps it was just when he was most wanted. There were people he never would sing before, if he could help it; and when he was obliged to, he did himself no credit. Some of his caprices of this kind were insupportable. His master was only too indulgent; but one day, it seems, the provocation was too much for him. In a moment of anger, he flung the unlucky boy down the door-steps, or over a bank, or out of the open window, I forget which. Either the push on the chest or the shock of the fall did a harm that was not meant. The master was a good man, and was so accounted. He reproached himself, whenever he saw the ailing boy, and felt as if others reproached him. Better out of sight and out of mind.

"So Harry became the owner, or, as he says, the keeper, of a fragment of humanity distinguished from the mass by the name of Orphy: Orphy for Orpheus, I suppose; though Harry is modest for him, and calls him Orfano. He has splendid visions for his protégé, nevertheless. He sees in him the very type and representative of the African. I shouldn't wonder if he were looking forward to the rehabilitation of the race through him. He is to be a Mozart, a Beethoven, a Bach, or, perhaps, something beyond either. The world is to listen and be converted."

"I wish you could have brought him here," I said.

"Your house is within the twenty miles, and so is Harvey's, or we should have taken him on there with us. But he is well off where he is. Harry, by the aid of our innkeeper,—a Northern man, by the way,—installed him in a comfortable home at Omocqua. We are to take him up there on our return. We expect to be there again on the eighteenth of next month."

"So soon?" I exclaimed; for, with the Doctor's words the pang of parting fell on me prematurely.