It was almost dark when they reached Montrose. Chester lost sight of the rosy lady when they left the boat, and it gave him a lonesome feeling; but he could not indulge in that for long at a time. Here he was at his destination — at dark, in a strange city a hundred miles from home.
“The first thing is to find somewhere to sleep,” he said to himself, resolutely declining to feel frightened, although the temptation was very strong.
Montrose was not really a very big place. It was only a bustling little town of some twenty thousand inhabitants, but to Chester’s eyes it was a vast metropolis. He had never been in any place bigger than Belltown, and in Belltown you could see one end of it, at least, no matter where you were. Montrose seemed endless to Chester as he stood at the head of Water Street and gazed in bewilderment along one of its main business avenues — a big, glittering, whirling place where one small boy could so easily be swallowed up that he would never be heard of again.
Chester, after paying his fare to Montrose and buying his cheese and crackers, had just sixty cents left. This must last him until he found work, so that the luxury of lodgings was out of the question, even if he had known where to look for them. To be sure, there were benches in a public square right in front of him; but Chester was afraid that if he curled up on one of them for the night, a policeman might question him, and he did not believe he could give a very satisfactory account of himself. In his perplexity, he thought of his cosy lumber pile at Roxbury Station and remembered that when he had left the boat he had noticed a large vacant lot near the wharf which was filled with piles of lumber. Back to this he went and soon succeeded in finding a place to stow himself. His last waking thought was that he must be up and doing bright and early the next morning, and that it must surely be longer than twenty-four hours since he had crept downstairs and out of Aunt Harriet’s porch window at Upton.
Montrose seemed less alarming by daylight, which was not so bewildering as the blinking electric lights. Chester was up betimes, ate the last of his cheese and crackers and started out at once to look for work. He determined to be thorough, and he went straight into every place of business he came to, from a blacksmith’s forge to a department store, and boldly asked the first person he met if they wanted a boy there. There was, however, one class of places Chester shunned determinedly. He never went into a liquor saloon. The last winter he had been allowed to go to school in Upton, his teacher had been a pale, patient little woman who hated the liquor traffic with all her heart. She herself had suffered bitterly through it, and she instilled into her pupils a thorough aversion to it. Chester would have chosen death by starvation before he would have sought for employment in a liquor saloon. But there certainly did not seem room for him anywhere else. Nobody wanted a boy. The answer to his question was invariably “No.” As the day wore on, Chester’s hopes and courage went down to zero, but he still tramped doggedly about. He would be thorough, at least. Surely somewhere in this big place, where everyone seemed so busy, there must be something for him to do.
Once there seemed a chance of success. He had gone into a big provision store and asked the clerk behind the counter if they wanted a boy.
“Well, we do,” said the clerk, looking him over critically, “but I hardly think you’ll fill the bill. However, come in and see the boss.”
He took Chester into a dark, grimy little inner office where a fat, stubby man was sitting before a desk with his feet upon it.
“Hey? What!” he said when the clerk explained. “Looking for the place? Why, sonny, you’re not half big enough.”
“Oh, I’m a great deal bigger than I look,” cried Chester breathlessly. “That is, sir — I mean I’m ever so much stronger than I look. I’ll work hard, sir, ever so hard — and I’ll grow.”
The fat, stubby man roared with laughter. What was grim earnest to poor Chester was a joke to him.
“No doubt you will, my boy,” he said genially, “but I’m afraid you’ll hardly grow fast enough to suit us. Boys aren’t like pigweed, you know. No, no, our boy must be a big, strapping fellow of eighteen or nineteen. He’ll have a deal of heavy lifting to do.”
Chester went out of the store with a queer choking in his throat. For one horrible moment he thought he was going to cry — he, Chester Stephens, who had run away from home to do splendid things! A nice ending that would be to his fine dreams! He thrust his hands into his pockets and strode along the street, biting his lips fiercely. He would not cry — no, he would not! And he would find work!
Chester did not cry, but neither, alas, did he find work. He parted with ten cents of his precious hoard for more crackers, and he spend the night again in the lumber yard.
Perhaps I’ll have better luck tomorrow, he thought hopefully.
But it really seemed as if there were to be no luck for Chester except bad luck. Day after day passed and, although he tramped resolutely from street to street and visited every place that seemed to offer any chance, he could get no employment. In spite of his pluck, his heart began to fail him.
At the end of a week Chester woke up among his lumber to a realization that he was at the end of his resources. He had just five cents left out of the four dollars that were to have been the key to his fortune. He sat gloomily on the wall of his sleeping apartment and munched the one solitary cracker he had left. It must carry him through the day unless he got work. The five cents must be kept for some dire emergency.
He started uptown rather aimlessly. In his week’s wanderings he had come to know the city very well and no longer felt confused with its size and bustle. He envied every busy boy he saw. Back in Upton he had sometimes resented the fact that he was kept working continually and was seldom allowed an hour off. Now he was burdened with spare time. It certainly did not seem as if things were fairly divided, he thought. And then he thought no more just then, for one of the queer spells in his head came on. He had experienced them at intervals during the last three days. Something seemed to break loose in his head and spin wildly round and round, while houses and people and trees danced and wobbled all about him. Chester vaguely wondered if this could be what Aunt Harriet had been wont to call a “judgement.” But then, he had done nothing very bad — nothing that would warrant a judgement, he thought. It was surely no harm to run away from a place where you were treated so bad and where they did not seem to want you. Chester felt bitter whenever he thought of Aunt Harriet.
Presently he found himself in the market square of Montrose. It was market day, and the place was thronged with people from the surrounding country settlements. Chester had hoped that he might pick up a few cents, holding a horse or cow for somebody or carrying a market basket, but no such chance offered itself. He climbed up on some bales of pressed hay in one corner and sat there moodily; there was dejection in the very dangle of his legs over the bales. Chester, you see, was discovering what many a boy before him has discovered — that it is a good deal easier to sit down and make a fortune in dreams than it is to go out into the world and make it.
Two men were talking to each other near him. At first Chester gave no heed to their conversation, but presently a sentence made him prick up his ears.
“Yes, there’s a pretty fair crop out at Hopedale,” one man was saying, “but whether it’s going to be got in in good shape is another matter. It’s terrible hard to get any help. Every spare man-jack far and wide has gone West on them everlasting harvest excursions. Salome Whitney at the Mount Hope Farm is in a predicament. She’s got a hired man, but he can’t harvest grain all by himself. She spent the whole of yesterday driving around, trying to get a couple of men or boys to help him, but I dunno if she got anyone or not.”
The men moved out of earshot at this juncture, but Chester got down from the bales with a determined look. If workers were wanted in Hopedale, that was the place for him. He had done a man’s work at harvest time in Upton the year before. Lige Barton had said so himself. Hope and courage returned with a rush.
He accosted the first m
an he met and asked if he could tell him the way to Hopedale.
“Reckon I can, sonny. I live in the next district. Want to go there? If you wait till evening, I can give you a lift part of the way. It’s five miles out.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Chester firmly, “but I must go at once if you’ll kindly direct me. It’s important.”
“Well, it’s a straight road. That’s Albemarle Street down there — follow it till it takes you out to the country, and then keep straight on till you come to a church painted yellow and white. Turn to your right, and over the hill is Hopedale. But you’d better wait for me. You don’t look fit to walk five miles.”
But Chester was off. Walk five miles! Pooh! He could walk twenty with hope to lure him on. Albemarle Street finally frayed off into a real country road. Chester was glad to find himself out in the country once more, with the great golden fields basking on either side and the wooded hills beyond, purple with haze. He had grown to hate the town with its cold, unheeding faces. It was good to breathe clear air again and feel the soft, springy soil of the ferny roadside under his tired little feet.
Long before the five miles were covered, Chester began to wonder if he would hold out to the end of them. He had to stop and rest frequently, when those queer dizzy spells came on. His feet seemed like lead. But he kept doggedly on. He would not give in now! The white and yellow church was the most welcome sight that had ever met his eyes.
Over the hill he met a man and inquired the way to Mount Hope Farm. Fortunately, it was nearby. At the gate Chester had to stop again to recover from his dizziness.
He liked the look of the place, with its great, comfortable barns and quaint, roomy old farmhouse, all set down in a trim quadrangle of beeches and orchards. There was an appearance of peace and prosperity about it.
If only Miss Salome Whitney will hire me! thought Chester wistfully, as he crept up the slope. I’m afraid she’ll say I’m too small. Wisht I could stretch three inches all at once. Wisht I wasn’t so dizzy. Wisht —
What Chester’s third wish was will never be known, for just as he reached the kitchen door the worst dizzy spell of all came on. Trees, barns, well-sweep, all whirled around him with the speed of wind. He reeled and fell, a limp, helpless little body, on Miss Salome Whitney’s broad, spotless sandstone doorstep.
In the Mount Hope kitchen Miss Salome was at that moment deep in discussion with her “help” over the weighty question of how the damsons were to be preserved. Miss Salome wanted them boiled; Clemantiny Bosworth, the help, insisted that they ought to be baked. Clemantiny was always very positive. She had “bossed” Miss Salome for years, and both knew that in the end the damsons would be baked, but the argument had to be carried out for dignity’s sake.
“They’re so sour when they’re baked,” protested Miss Salome.
“Well, you don’t want damsons sweet, do you?” retorted Clemantiny scornfully. “That’s the beauty of damsons — their tartness. And they keep ever so much better baked, Salome — you know they do. My grandmother always baked hers, and they would keep for three years.”
Miss Salome knew that when Clemantiny dragged her grandmother into the question, it was time to surrender. Beyond that, dignity degenerated into stubbornness. It would be useless to say that she did not want to keep her damsons for three years, and that she was content to eat them up and trust to Providence for the next year’s supply.
“Well, well, bake them then,” she said placidly. “I don’t suppose it makes much difference one way or another. Only, I insist — what was that noise, Clemantiny? It sounded like something falling against the porch door.”
“It’s that worthless dog of Martin’s, I suppose,” said Clemantiny, grasping a broom handle with a grimness that boded ill for the dog. “Mussing up my clean doorstep with his dirty paws again. I’ll fix him!”
Clemantiny swept out through the porch and jerked open the door. There was a moment’s silence. Then Miss Salome heard her say, “For the land’s sake! Salome Whitney, come here.”
What Miss Salome saw when she hurried out was a white-faced boy stretched on the doorstep at Clemantiny’s feet.
“Is he dead?” she gasped.
“Dead? No,” sniffed Clemantiny. “He’s fainted, that’s what he is. Where on earth did he come from? He ain’t a Hopedale boy.”
“He must be carried right in,” exclaimed Miss Salome in distress. “Why, he may die there. He must be very ill.”
“Looks more to me as if he had fainted from sheer starvation,” returned Clemantiny brusquely as she picked him up in her lean, muscular arms. “Why, he’s skin and bone. He ain’t hardly heavier than a baby. Well, this is a mysterious piece of work. Where’ll I put him?”
“Lay him on the sofa,” said Miss Salome as soon as she had recovered from the horror into which Clemantiny’s starvation dictum had thrown her. A child starving to death on her doorstep! “What do you do for people in a faint, Clemantiny?”
“Wet their face — and hist up their feet — and loosen their collar,” said Clemantiny in a succession of jerks, doing each thing as she mentioned it. “And hold ammonia to their nose. Run for the ammonia, Salome. Look, will you? Skin and bone!”
But Miss Salome had gone for the ammonia. There was a look on the boy’s thin, pallid face that tugged painfully at her heart-strings.
When Chester came back to consciousness with the pungency of the ammonia reeking through his head, he found himself lying on very soft pillows in a very big white sunny kitchen, where everything was scoured to a brightness that dazzled you. Bending over him was a tall, gaunt woman with a thin, determined face and snapping black eyes, and, standing beside her with a steaming bowl in her hand, was the nice rosy lady who had given him the taffy on the boat!
When he opened his eyes, Miss Salome knew him.
“Why, it’s the little boy I saw on the boat!” she exclaimed.
“Well, you’ve come to!” said Clemantiny, eyeing Chester severely. “And now perhaps you’ll explain what you mean by fainting away on doorsteps and scaring people out of their senses.”
Chester thought that this must be the mistress of Mount Hope Farm, and hastened to propitiate her.
“I’m sorry,” he faltered feebly. “I didn’t mean to — I—”
“You’re not to do any talking until you’ve had something to eat,” snapped Clemantiny inconsistently. “Here, open your mouth and take this broth. Pretty doings, I say!”
Clemantiny spoke as sharply as Aunt Harriet had ever done, but somehow or other Chester did not feel afraid of her and her black eyes. She sat down by his side and fed him from the bowl of hot broth with a deft gentleness oddly in contrast with her grim expression.
Chester thought he had never in all his life tasted anything so good as that broth. The boy was really almost starved. He drank every drop of it. Clemantiny gave a grunt of satisfaction as she handed the empty bowl and spoon to the silent, smiling Miss Salome.
“Now, who are you and what do you want?” she said.
Chester had been expecting this question, and while coming along the Hopedale road he had thought out an answer to it. He began now, speaking the words slowly and gaspingly, as if reciting a hastily learned lesson.
“My name is Chester Benson. I belong to Upton up the country. My folks are dead and I came to Montrose to look for work, I’ve been there a week and couldn’t get anything to do. I heard a man say that you wanted men to help in the harvest, so I came out to see if you’d hire me.”
In spite of his weakness, Chester’s face turned very red before he got to the end of his speech. He was new to deception. To be sure, there was not, strictly speaking, an untrue word in it. As for his name, it was Chester Benson Stephens. But for all that, Chester could not have felt or looked more guilty if he had been telling an out-and-out falsehood at every breath.
“Humph!” said Clemantiny in a dissatisfied tone. “What on earth do you suppose a midget like you can do in the harvest field? And we don’t wan
t any more help, anyway. We’ve got enough.”
Chester grew sick with disappointment. But at this moment Miss Salome spoke up.
“No, we haven’t, Clemantiny. We want another hand, and I’ll hire you, Chester — that’s your name, isn’t it? I’ll give you good wages, too.”
“Now, Salome!” protested Clemantiny.
But Miss Salome only said, “I’ve made up my mind, Clemantiny.”
Clemantiny knew that when Miss Salome did make up her mind and announced it in that very quiet, very unmistakable tone, she was mistress of the situation and intended to remain so.
“Oh, very well,” she retorted. “You’ll please yourself, Salome, of course. I think it would be wiser to wait until you found out a little more about him.”
“And have him starving on people’s doorsteps in the meantime?” questioned Miss Salome severely.
“Well,” returned Clemantiny with the air of one who washes her hands of a doubtful proposition, “don’t blame me if you repent of it.”
By this time Chester had grasped the wonderful fact that his troubles were ended — for a while, at least. He raised himself up on one arm and looked gratefully at Miss Salome.
“Thank you,” he said. “I’ll work hard. I’m used to doing a lot.”
“There, there!” said Miss Salome, patting his shoulder gently. “Lie down and rest. Dinner will be ready soon, and I guess you’ll be ready for it.”
To Clemantiny she added in a low, gentle tone, “There’s a look on his face that reminded me of Johnny. It came out so strong when he sat up just now that it made me feel like crying. Don’t you notice it, Clemantiny?”
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 639