 | CHAPTER VII.
TOWNE'S PLAN. Antony Brade |  |
7. CHAPTER VII.
TOWNE'S PLAN.
Boys' secret plans may not be very deep; but there
is in laying them and carrying them out often immense
excitement and profuse concealment, which last, indeed,
sometimes defeats itself, and is the cause of discovery.
There are some boys who think themselves more cunning
than all the race of tutors, who may be abashed
perhaps, and depressed momentarily, by a discovery,
and then rally their self-confidence again, and brag as
before. So, too, there are others who accept these
heroes' estimate of their own capacity, and follow
them; and others again, who, whether they believe in
their leaders or not, are ready for a frolic or a plot, and
tumble into it as they would tumble into a boat which
another was pushing off shore. No adventure is without
attraction for boys. Towne, as we may remember,
had professed to know a trick for discovering the hidden
relation between the woman in black dress and
Antony Brade, and from the moment of its conception
worked pretty sedulously at it.
Wilkins was one of the first of his confidants, and
enjoyed the enterprise extremely. A good deal of this
confederate's activity was bestowed in giving intimations,
aside, to boys — particularly boys larger than
himself — that something good was going on. Others,
spoken to about the secret, and gave it to be understood
that they knew all about it. In this way was
created a pretty general expectancy in the school.
Towne himself was going about making requests or
holding conferences, apart, with different boys, generally
laughing and gesticulating much while he talked,
and having the appearance of being very busy.
He was not indiscriminate in these conferences, for at
the approach of certain boys — as Remsen and others
— he was at once silent, or drew away his listener.
Tom Hutchins he often addressed, and was listened to
a little loftily, as by one in advance of him. Most of
his confederates were of his own Form or lower. One
thing very inopportunely interfered with the devotion
of these cunning fellows to business, and very much
cut up the spare time which they could bestow on
their preparation for carrying out the plan, whatever
it was.
This inconvenient and ill-timed obstacle was the
keeping-in of many or most of the knowing ones —
Towne pre-eminently, always — for disorder somewhere
or other, in school or dormitory or wash-room,
or elsewhere; for not knowing lessons, or for chalking
backs, or kicking other fellows' feet, or tickling ears
in the recitation-room, or setting crooked pins, like
Bruce's caltrops at Bannockburn, with the point up, on
the seat of an unfortunate fellow reciting, who is using
all the wits he can find in his head upon Cæsar's accusatives
and infinitives and se and sibi, or the Greek aorist
participle, which he takes for a second person singular.
Day after day, as the sun slowly went down the western
side of the sky, he described his wide segment of a
misfortune, scattered in the school-room with dreary
faces, sometimes bent over a book, and sometimes
turned reproachfully at the unsympathizing school-room
clock. The time had been when Towne had tried
the persistent practice of not learning, and persistent
assertion of his inability to learn the “lines” imposed,
quoting his father and possibly his grandfather in support
of the assertion; but as this, instead of bringing
him an easy remission, had heaped up the unlearned
lines unremittingly, he had of necessity conformed
somewhat to inexorable conditions, and taken to doing
some reluctant and indignant work at his task. He
made amends (as far as it would go) by complaining
aloud, out-doors, when at length, with all kept-in boys,
he was set free for the afternoon at half-past four
o'clock.
What time he had to himself, however, he used
pretty industriously. In a corner of the gymnasium,
seated on one of the mattresses, until the noise of foot-ball
or hockey grew too loud to be endured passively
by a boy who certainly had a constitutional love of
play, if he had not a constitutional inability to learn
“lines,” he was busy at “some black thing” (so it was
said), and had a door-keeper to watch against sudden
intrusion. As may be supposed, few of the boys cared
for Sam Towne's secret operations; and Blake, of “Ulterior-College”-notoriety,
said, in his absurd way, that
“old Towne was one of those fellows that would
climb up a tree to get a good tumble.” Almost everybody
would be content to wait the development of
time to know his great secret. The post of door-keeper,
therefore, even though it combined the duties
was nothing to do in it. While things were in this
state, on the second or third afternoon, the shortening
days and chilly evenings giving warning of winter
coming, and making the blood in healthy boys run fast
to keep warm, Towne was singing “Dixie” in his corner,
when Nick Remsen walked quietly in, to look for
a hockey-stick, which, as he said, he had left there, and
(as it happened) under the very mattress on which
Towne was sitting.
That industrious fellow, almost before Remsen had
taken the place of his shadow inside the door, had
managed to thrust under himself, and to spread himself
over, the greater part of a quantity of black stuff on
which he had been working with needle and thread
while he sang.
The song he continued, looking aloft at the beams
of the ceiling, and trying to seem very much taken up
with it. As soon, however, as he allowed himself to
espy the intruder, which he could not help doing soon,
and had asked him the apparently purposeless question,
“Where he came from?” Towne rolled himself over,
carrying the mattress over him, and leaving the floor
bare for Remsen to satisfy himself. Now, of course,
Remsen, seeing so good a chance, instantly rolled the
mattress as far over as it would go, — suppressing
Towne entirely under it, — and then put himself on
top, to keep him down; and of course Towne, like
Enceladus under Ætna, made mighty struggles, which
Remsen set himself to resist. There is a wondrous
leverage in the joints of legs and arms, which, the moment
Towne could bring them to bear, carried mattress
and boy together right over, — for Remsen's weight
the mattress fell to the floor, there fell, at the same
moment, Towne's secret. This looked like a black
gown, but whether feminine or academic there was
scarce time to see; for Towne gathered it hurriedly up,
and, keeping it on the further side of himself, made it
into a parcel, while the other boy, swinging his hockey-stick,
departed, being met outside by Antony Brade.
At this juncture the door-keeper made his appearance,
and was sharply reproved; “for what business had
he to go away just when a fellow was going to poke his
nose in where he wasn't wanted?” Poor Wilkins (for
he it was who was officiating in the undesirable post of
watchman) excused himself on the ground that “he
hadn't been away more than a minute,” and also that
“he had been there all the time,” and ended with the
unanswerable appeal, “who could tell that a fellow
would be coming just then?” — which excuses, as there
was no help for it, and Towne was not an absolutely
irresponsible despot, with bowstring or beheading-block
at his service, were necessarily accepted.
Then Towne, taking the state of things as it was,
told Wilkins that “they must hurry up and get through
with the job, or their secret would be all found out;
that he himself was not quite ready, but was ready
enough, he guessed; and now was the time!” Wilkins
began at once to be impatient, and danced, and looked
out at the door for other untimely visitors. Then, by
the leader of the great secret, three extraordinarily significant
whistles were given, outside of the gymnasium,
and then (having failed of effect the first time) were
repeated, and again repeated, and again and again
repeated, until at length, as Towne kept marching
boy after another, as if just waking up to the meaning
of things, came running to him, to the number of four
or five, — for the most part pretty small lads.
One of these was sent straight off, with much
authority, to summon Wadham First, who was within
sight, and the others were kept waiting till the leader
was ready for them.
Towne advanced, like a man full of a good deal, to
meet Wadham, and sent the messenger back to the
rest.
“Look here, Wadham,” said Towne, “I've got the
best thing! I want you to get a black dress from your
house, — I'll take good care of it. I'm going to dress
up like that Mrs. Ryan, — only in fun, you know, —
just to see what Brade 'll do. I was making one, but
they found me out, and I don't want 'em to know it.”
Wadham, if not as enthusiastic as the contriver of
this scheme, entered into it with some spirit, possibly
because he may have known the state of things at
home. Accordingly, he undertook to supply what was
wanted; and Towne, having pledged him to secrecy, left
him, to join his own followers.
These, with a lofty summons of “Come, fellows!” he
drew off, not into, but behind the gymnasium, and there
held a secret conference with them, laying out plans
and assigning duties.
Wilkins (of gentle blood, late door-keeper) claimed
and obtained the general office of what he called
“peekin',” asserting also that “a fellow'd got to know
what he was about to do `peekin” well.”
“Now, Wilkins,” said Towne, “you'll have to be
sharper'n you ever was in your life.” (“Why, I'm
Towne, not heeding this suggestion, “you'll have to
give a signal, — you'll have to say something if a tutor
comes. But Fatty Dover's most importance. Now,
Fatty, you've got to rig right up, as soon's the lamp
goes out, and come to Royalty's alcove, and walk right
in, — you ain't to show your face, remember, — and,
quick as you come in (I shall be there, you know), quick
as you come in, I'll show the dark lantern right on you,
and say, `Why, Mrs. Ryan,' or something, you know,”
he said, with a little bashfulness, when he came to
authorship in the English language, however bold and
self-confident about the other effort of his mind, which
he was detailing. “I'll say something. Then you see
what he'll do.” So said the author of this cunning
plan, confidently. Whether one plot would or would
not have differed much from another, to their apprehension,
certainly this seemed to meet their approval.
Allowing a moment for his allies to take in the character
of his contrivance at this culminating point, and
taking as cheers and as what grammarians call “rhetorical
question” their inquiries, What he thought
Brade would do? would he fight her? or would he
be frightened? he then went on to show how he had
provided for all emergencies and contingencies; how
he first, and “Fatty” next, were to get out of Brade's
window, at the first alarm, and, as the contriver expressed
it, “put for bed, flat-footed, over the school-room
roof.”
“But they'll find that dress,” said Fatty Dover, looking
into the future, as so many plotters have done
before.
“No, they won't find that dress,” answered Towne.
right over the roof, and get into bed, — that's all you've
got to do; and after they've gone and all quiet, I'll go
down and fetch it. Well, suppose they did find it,” he
continued, second thoughts coming up to him, “it'll
be fun to have Wilson hold it up in the school-room.
Only,” — here third thoughts came in, showing that
our young friend had not bad feelings, — “I wouldn't
like any disrespect of a respectable woman; but I've
got that all fixed complete.”
From the smile which brightened the leader's face, as
he contemplated his own skill and sure success in providing
for the recovery of the dress, — a smile, indeed,
which might be said to pervade his whole body, for it
not only drew out the corners of his eyes, and mouth,
and nose, but drew his elbows out also, and bent his
back and knees, — it might be thought that, on the
whole, this last contemplated piece of cleverness was the
crowning contrivance of the whole plan.
The allies were eager to share in this part of the
secret, and in the leader's satisfaction; but he put them
all off, with the assurance that “they'd know, bymby.”
Wilkins claimed special confidence, on the ground that
“he was goin' to peek out for everybody.” But he
teased in vain, Towne telling him that if he used that
word so much they'd call him “Peak o' Gibraltar” next
(asking if he wasn't right in supposing there was a
Peak of Gibraltar). There were some things that, like
a leader, he knew how to keep to himself; and, in short,
Towne kept his secret, and, having cautioned Fatty
Dover and the rest not to say a word or give a look to
anybody about the business, he dismissed them.
Now, having Wilkins alone, he satisfied that worthy
was itching to communicate.
“Look here, Willicks,” said he, “if this ain't the best
thing yet. You know that old empty cask the masons
put there, by the school-room corner? Well” (and here
he chuckled), “a fellow that's only half good at gymnastics
can let himself down off the roof there, as easy's
not. But that ain't all: it's big, you know; and I
wouldn't be afraid but what I could hide in there
against anybody, — if he wa'n't too near. There ain't
any moon, now; and you know my gymnastic dress is
all gray. Well, you can't see that, in the night.”
“Loose, too,” said Wilkins, “so you would not look
so solid, would you?”
This support from the science of Optics, Towne
neither accepted nor rejected, in words, but continued
on his own line: —
“You know the rebel cruisers were painted gray, in
the war, and our vessels couldn't see 'em. They'd run
right before their noses, an' they couldn't see 'em. As
quick's he'd gone by, I'd go up on the roof in a jiffy,
and into bed, before he'd get along upstairs.”
To most of us the American navy is synonymous
with whatever is daring and successful; and no doubt
these two American boys had the true feeling of American
boys toward the pet and pride of the nation.
But Wilkins had yet a standard of comparison which
held its own, even in face of the American navy.
“Would you run in those clo'es, right before a
Tootor's nose?” he asked.
If we had heard this sentence spoken, we should
very likely have laughed at the ludicrous figure presented
of Towne, in his athletic suit, capering invisibly
have seized upon the rhyme, and rung the changes on
it, perhaps. But Towne heard it in the same sense,
probably, in which the author conceived it, and to him
one word drew off the force of all the rest. “Yes,
sir,” said he, “I don't believe but what I could.”
“I don't believe you could before Mr. Bruce,” said
the propounder of the question, — “you, nor nobody
else.”
The conversation had been turned aside by this new
element brought in; and, as if the private conference
were over, the two boys walked away. As they passed
the gymnasium door, a new turn was given to their
thoughts; for Remsen and Brade were chasing each
other on the ladders, up one, across another, down the
third, by the hands, as busily and as noisily as if their
lives depended on it.
“There's Remsen and Royalty!” said Towne. “I
wonder we didn't hear 'em. I hope they didn't hear
us, — there's a window open.”
Wilkins found comfort in the fact, to which he called
his friend's attention, that the two boys were a great
way off from the window. But this did not satisfy
Towne, who said that “boys could move.”
“Let's go in and chase 'em all over those timbers, in
the gymnasium,” he proposed; and added, in a whisper,
“if they've been listening, and heard what we're
going to do, you take Royalty (he's the smallest), and
I'll take Remsen, and if I catch him, won't I —?” And
he slapped his thigh with strong emphasis.
The notion of the wise contriver, Towne, seemed to
be that a little advantage gained over the two boys
would keep up the ascendency of the great plot. Let
as a little skirmishing before the lines of the great
battle; boyish, indeed, but into which, for the time, is
turned the whole current of young life.
Wilkins excused himself from his share, as not being
“much of a gymnast,” and being obliged to save “himself
for bymby, when he'd have to be pretty sharp.”
“Come on, old Gray-breeches,” cried Brade, who,
though a good way off, seemed to have overheard the
conversation. “Wilkins is pretty sharp, and he won't
try me. You're the man, and I'll give you plenty of
chance. I'm so `small,' you know.”
That epithet “Gray-breeches” might or might not
refer to the “gymnasium suit” which was to play an
important part in the approaching adventure. Brade's
face did not show whether it had or had not any
special application, for he was full of excitement for
the play.
Towne, too, as soon as Brade, sliding down a rope,
began to “dare” him, set off, at the utmost speed of
longer legs than Brade's, in pursuit.
Then, if their mothers could have seen them, there
would have been many a shriek, and possibly some
hysterics. Up and down ladders, up ropes and down
ropes, and down and up the same rope, along crossbeams,
springing and catching by the hands, swinging
up and catching by the legs, heels over head and head
over heels, — what a race that was, with Remsen and
Wilkins cheering! Remsen, it must be confessed, twice
to Wilkins's once.
Where length and strength would have an advantage,
Towne gained; where litheness and nimbleness, used as
fearlessly as on flat ground, could play their full part,
there Brade got the better, for he turned faster.
Towne tried familiar sleights, to lure his antagonist
within his reach. He sat up, with folded arms and
closed eyes, at a beam's end. He sat, with back turned,
in the middle of a beam, and counted aloud. He
asked such thoughtful and abstracted questions as
whether his hearer, whoever he might be, “supposed
there really ever was such a man as Duncigetorix,” or
“What's the cube-root of a quotient?” He busied
himself with carefully untying and tying a shoe. By
all these devices he got nothing but to be told that there
was such a place as Dunci-Towne, and he had better
not try scholarship.
Great struggles have their breathing-times; and
when, flushed and panting, the two antagonists sat
astride of different beams, watching each other, then,
too, Towne offered, like greater generals, when worsted
or unsuccessful, — like Artaxerxes to the Ten Thousand
Hellenes, or Pyrrhus, the Epirote, to the Romans,
— that “Royalty” should give in. In return he received
a shout of scorn, and a challenge to reverse the order
of things: he might run, and Brade would follow.
This he accepted, and again the flight and chase began,
hotter than ever.
Brade got, every now and then, near the shod ends of
Towne's long legs and close to his hands. But once,
as he came, in the eagerness of pursuit, to the top of a
rope which Towne had just slid down and clutched it,
he swung over, and falling came down in a heap on
one of the mattresses, as still as a stone. Remsen
rushed up with a cry of alarm, and Wilkins, too, rushed
up; and although Towne held off, and called it a “make-believe,”
yet when he saw the two sympathizers in earnest,
and the lithe and handsome boy lying silent and
helpless, he also hurried forward to help.
Remsen had not succeeded in getting the cap off the
face over which it had been thrust in the fall, and Wilkins
had not yet thought of any thing to be done.
Towne had probably seen or heard of such things
before.
“Stretch him out! stretch him out!” said he, bending
over, and laying hold of one of the half-doubled
hands: “that's the way they do.”
In an instant he was dragged down, and had taken
Brade's place, receiving, as he went to it, two or three
sharp applications of the two friends' hands, such as he
had himself intended to apply. Then Wilkins, his supporter,
was tumbled down on top of him, with as many
or more like applications; and then Brade made his
escape by the door, followed by Remsen.
“I knoo he was only makin' b'lieve,” said Wilkins.
“Let 'em go!” said Towne, not questioning his ally's
sagacity, but wiping his own wet forehead with a great
colored handkerchief. “He can't try that dodge again.
Come along, and I'll show you something. Look out
for those two fellows.”
The coast was clear outside; and Towne, with Wilkins
in company, went warily but quickly over to the
hogshead.
“Look here!” said he, peering in and lifting up a
piece of board, “I'd squat down low under this, and
then, if anybody should feel in, he'd think it was the
bottom, in the night, or he'd think there was something
under it, and he wouldn't want to feel down. Hullo!
there's some water! it's good I saw it. Villicks, you
pour it out, while I look out for those two fellows.”
Wilkins proceeded with alacrity to his task, but
made no more impression upon the strongly grounded
Vesuvius, by pulling at one side of it. Then Towne
gave his length of arm and weight of body to the
work; and then the two together soon brought the
further chines of the huge vessel over, and, as they got
it to a balance, Towne cautioned his far-descended
friend “not to let it come down too hard, or they
would have Mr. Stout after them, for he was in the
barn.”
Slowly and wisely they were lowering it, — Towne,
with successive mechanical appliances, was at the same
time working and teaching. They were standing now
at that angle at which Atlas is represented in his most
authentic portrait, where his great hands grasp his
knees and prop his body, on which the world is resting.
The boys' hands were at the level of their knees, on
which the lower lip of the hogshead was resting, while
the experienced Towne was showing his subordinate
how “they were going to lower it to its side so
softly it wouldn't break a robin's egg,” when, without
the slightest warning, while the boys were thus stooping,
— one talking and one listening, as they worked, —
the storm-house door, close by, burst open, a rush was
made, “Oppidum!” cried Brade's voice, and down
upon the most prominent and exposed part of each
laboring workman fell a flat blow, loud and far-resounding.
The effect was instantaneous.
“Outch!” cried Wilkins, at his share of the infliction.
“Hold on!” said Towne, in spite of his. But at the
word the hogshead went heavily to the earth, rolled
swashing and lumbering down the little slope, gained
strength with going, broke short off at the ground one
weakly clothes-post, and laid it low with a crash, then,
with a hollow rumbling, that sounded as if it enjoyed
mischief. Towne and Wilkins, with one glance, seeing
most likely from the beginning what was likely to be the
end, followed the two aggressors, overtook Brade, whom
they treated as he had served them, and could not
overtake Remsen, who in running easily kept out of
reach. As Mr. Stout came from the barn, with a quiet
but quick and business-like step, to the late scene of
action, Towne and his follower began to come back,
having evidently no intention of running away.
Mr. Stout was a thin, middle-aged man, with a strong
New England face. He walked with a hitch in his step,
as if from rheumatism.
Now he, having cast a look after the riotous hogshead,
and also called to it to “stop when it got ready to,”
proceeded to the broken and overthrown post, lifted its
lower end, and gave a short glance at the break, and
ended by a nod of the head. The vagrant hogshead
had by this time missed the other clothes-posts and
brought up, lengthwise, against a bank of earth. Mr.
Stout called to Towne and Wilkins.
“I want you boys should bring that cask back, as
fast as it went away, and set it up just where it came
from.” And this he said like a man that was accustomed
to do what he ought to do himself, and have
other people do what they ought to do.
“I'll do it, Mr. Stout,” answered Towne, with great
alacrity.
“And when you've got it there, I want you should
leave it there,” continued that definite man.
“Mr. Stout!” said Towne, “we didn't roll it down
at all, sir: all we did was, we tipped it down just as
care who he is, — we did, really.”
“Yes, that's plain to be seen,” said Mr. Stout, grimly,
as he set up the late involuntary agent of mischief
firmly on its broad base again. “You found him here
so dreadful uneasy and mischievous, and thrashing all
round, you thought you'd just lay him down where he'd
be quiet. I see all that plain enough. But now, boys,
I want you should let it stand where I put it, and I
guess it'll take about as good care of itself as you'll
take care of it.”
“We will,” said Towne, leading off. “Yes, we will,”
added Wilkins. Then, turning back, the leader asked,
“Do you want us to put that water in again, that was
spilt?”
“No, — I thank you,” said Mr. Stout, with a pause before
the thanks.
Towne led off again, saying aside to Wilkins, “All
we wanted was to get the water out. Let's go and have
a turn at shinney.” And they ran off.
As they disappeared, the other two came up hastily,
after stopping to confer a little on the way, and caught
Mr. Stout half way back to the barn again. Brade
planted himself in front of the busy-looking man, and
with a strongly persuasive look in his face, and holding
by the front of Mr. Stout's waistcoat, and being drawn
along, he said, —
“Mr. Stout! Mr. Stout! Won't you put that water
in again, with your hose? and won't you let us see
you? Do, Mr. Stout! won't you?”
“Boys are very good at asking for what they want,
don't you think they be?” said Mr. Stout, walking on,
as straight as he could.
“The engine's pumping now,” urged the boy.
“And we'll see how long it takes to fill it half full
with the hose,” said Remsen, adding an inducement to
Mr. Stout's curiosity.
“May we?” asked Brade, shaking the front of the
waistcoat which he held.
“We never saw it go; and I've got a watch,” said
Remsen, continuing the line of his appeal. “Oh! do
now, Mr. Stout!”
“S'pose I should, what's the great hurry?” asked the
man, used to boys.
“We want to do it before the other fellows come,”
said Remsen.
Mr. Stout during all this urgency did not change a
muscle of his face, and now, with the same unchanged
look, he brought the colloquy to a happy end, by saying,
—
“Well, there's no getting away from boys;” and he
turned and walked back with them, amid their profuse
thanks.
Brade was stationed near the corner of the laundry,
to watch and give warning; and Remsen took upon
him to handle the hose.
| CHAPTER VII.
TOWNE'S PLAN. Antony Brade | |