The Brick Moon and Other Stories Part 19

"Lizzy was my G.o.dchild," said Mrs. Molyneux, who now remembered everything.

"Certainly she was, Mrs. Molyneux, and last month Lizzy was married to as good a fellow as ever presided over the melting of ingots. We marry them earlier at the West than you do here."

"Where Lizzie would have been," he said more gravely, addressing Tom again, "where my mother would have been, or where I should have been but for your father and mother here, it would be hard to tell. And all to-day I have taken it for granted that to him, as to me, this has been one part of that old Christmas! Surely you remember?" he turned to Mrs. Molyneux.

Yes, Mrs. Molyneux did remember, but her eyes were all running over with tears and she did not say so.

"Mr. Molyneux," said Bruce Kuypers, again addressing Tom, "seventeen years ago this blessed day, there was a Christmas morning in the poor old tenement above Ma.s.sachusetts Avenue such as you never saw, and such as I hope you never may see.

"There was fire in the stove because your father had sent the coal. There was oatmeal mush on the table because your father paid my mother's scot at your father's grocer.

"But there was not much jollity in that house, and there were no Christmas presents, but what your mother had sent to Bruce and Ben and Flora, and even to the baby. Still we kept up such courage as we could.

It was a terribly cold day, and there was a wet storm.

"All of a sudden a carriage stopped at the door, and in came your father here. He came to say that that day's mail had brought a letter from Dr. Wilder of the navy, conveying the full certificate that William Chappell's death was caused by exposure in the service. That certificate was what my mother needed for her pension.

She never could get it, but your father here had sifted and worried and worked. The 'Macedonian' arrived Thursday at New York, and had Dr. Wilder on board, and Friday afternoon your father had Wilder's letter, and he left his own Christmas dinner to make light my mother's and mine. That was not all. Your father, as he came, had stopped to see Mr. Birdsall, who was the Speaker of the House. He had seen the Speaker before, and had said kind things about me. And that day the Speaker told him to tell me to come and see him at his room at the Capitol next day. Oh! how my mother dressed me up! Was there ever such a page seen before! What with your father's kind words and my dear mother's extra b.u.t.tons, the Speaker made me his own page the next day, and there I served for four years. It was then that I was big enough to go into the War Department, and Mr. Goodsell--he was the next Speaker, if you remember--recommended me there.

"After that," said Bruce Kuypers, modestly, if I did not see you so often, but I used to see you sometimes, and I did not think"--this with a roguish twinkling of the eye--"that you forgot your young friends so soon."

"I remember you," said Tom. "I used to think you were the grandest man in Was.h.i.+ngton. You gave me the first ride on a sled I ever had, when there was some exceptional fall of snow."

"I think we all remember Mr. Kuypers now," said Matty, and she laughed while she blushed; "he always bought things for our stockings. I have a Noah's Ark upstairs now, that he gave me. In my youngest days I had a queer mixture of the name Bruce and the name Santa Claus. I believe I thought Santa Claus' name was Nicholas Bruce. I am sure I did not know that Mr. Bruce had any other name."

"If you had said you were Mr. Chappell," said Mr.

Molyneux, "I should have known you in a minute."

"But I was not," said the young man, laughing.

"Well, if you had said you were 'Bruce,' I should have known."

"Dear me, yes; but I have been a man so long, and at Gem City n.o.body calls me Bruce, but my mother and Lizzy.

So I said 'Mr. Kuypers,' forgetting that I had ever been a boy. But now I am in Was.h.i.+ngton again, I shall remember that things change here very fast in ten years.

And yet not so fast as they change at the mines."

And now everybody was at ease. How well Mrs.

Molyneux recalled to herself what she would not speak of that Christmas Day of which Mr. Kuypers told his story! It was in their young married life. She had her father and mother to dine with her, and the event was really a trial in her young experience. And then, just as the old folks were expected, her husband came das.h.i.+ng in and had asked her to put dinner a little later because he had had this good news for the poor Widow Chappell, and she had to tell her father and mother, when they came, that they must all wait for his return.

The Widow Chappell was one of those waifs who seem attracted to Was.h.i.+ngton by some fatal law. It had been two or three months before that Mr. Molyneux had been asked to hunt her up and help her. A letter had come, asking him to do this, from Mrs. Fales, in Roxbury, and Mrs. Fales had sent money for the Chappells. But the money had gone in back rent, and shoes, and the rest, and the wolf was very near the Chappells' door, when the telegraph announced the "Macedonian." Mr. Molyneux had telegraphed instanter to this Dr. Wilder. Dr. Wilder had some sense of Christmas promptness. He remembered poor Chappell perfectly, and mailed that night a thorough certificate. This certificate it was which Mr. Molyneux had carried to the poor old tenement of Ma.s.sachusetts Avenue, and this had made happy that Christmas Day--and this.

"Why," said Mr. Bruce Kuypers, almost as if he were speaking aloud, "it seems so queer that Christmas comes and goes with you, and you have forgotten all about that stormy day, and your ride to Mrs. Chappell's!

"Why, at our place, we drink Mr. Molyneux's health every Christmas Day, and I am afraid the little ones used to think that you had a red nose, a gray beard, and came down the chimney!"

"As, at another place," said Matty, "they thought of Mr. Bruce--of Noah's Ark memory."

"Anyway," said Mr. Molyneux, "any crumbs of comfort we scattered that day were BREAD UPON THE WATERS."

Of Mr. Kuypers's quick journey the main points have been told. Six days before, by some good luck, which could hardly have been expected, the "Gem City Medium's"

despatch from Was.h.i.+ngton was full enough to be intelligible. It was headed, "ANOTHER SWINDLER NAILED."

It said that Mr. Molyneux, of the Internal Improvement office, had feathered his nest with $500,000 during the war, in a pretended expedition to the Rio Grande. It had now been discovered that there never was any such expedition, and the correspondent of the a.s.sociated Press hoped that justice would be done.

The moment Bruce Kuypers read this he was anxious.

Before an hour pa.s.sed he had determined to cross to the Pacific train eastward. Before night he was in a sleeping-car. Day by day as he met Eastern papers, he searched for news of the investigation. Day by day he met it, but thanks to his promptness he had arrived in time. It was pathetic to hear him describe his anxiety from point to point, and they were all hushed to silence when he told how glad he was when he found he should certainly appear on Christmas Day.

After the dinner, another procession, not wholly unlike the rabble rout of the morning, moved from the dining-room to the great front parlor, where the tree was lighted, and parcels of gray and white and brown lay round on mantel, on piano, on chairs, on tables, and on the floor.

No; this tale is too long already. We will not tell what all the presents were to all the ten,--to Venty, Chloe, Diana, and all of their color. Only let it tell that all the ten had presents. To Mr. Kuypers's surprise, and to every one's surprise, indeed, there were careful presents for him as for the rest, but it must be confessed that Horace and Laura had spelled Chipah a little wildly. The truth was that each separate person had feared that he would feel a little left on one side,--he to whom so much was due on that day. And each person, severally, down to the Brick himself, had gone secretly, without consulting the others, to select from his own possessions something very dear, and had wrapped it up and marked it for the stranger. When Mr. Kuypers opened a pretty paper, to find Matty's own ill.u.s.trated Browning, he was touched indeed. When in a rough brown paper he found the Brick's jack-knife labelled "FOR THE MAN," the tears stood in his eyes.

The next day the "Evening Lantern" contained this editorial article:--

"The absurd fiasco regarding the accounts of Mr.

Molyneux, which has occupied the correspondents of the periodical press for some days, and has even been adverted to in New York journals claiming the t.i.tle of metropolitan, came to a fit end at the Capitol yesterday.

The wiseacre owls who started it did not see fit to put in an appearance before the committee. Mr. Molyneux himself sent to the Chairman a most interesting volume of ma.n.u.script, which is, indeed, a valuable historical memorial of times that tried men's souls. The committee and other gentlemen present examined this curious record with great interest. Not to speak of the minor details, an autograph letter of the lamented Gen. Trebou gives full credit to the Bureau of Internal Improvement for the skill with which they executed the commission given them in a department quite out of their line. Our brethren of the 'Argus' will be pleased to know that every grain of oats and every spear of straw paid for by, the now famous $47,000, are accounted for in detail. The authenticated signatures of the somewhat celebrated Camara and Gazza and the mythical Captain Cole appear. Very valuable letters, throwing interesting light on our relations with the Government of Mexico, from the pens of the lamented Adams and Prigg, show what were the services of those Spanish turncoats and their allies.

"We cannot say that we regret the attention which has thus been given to a very important piece of history, too long neglected in the rush of more petty affairs.

We take the occasion, however, to enter our protest once more against this preposterous system of 'Resolutions,' in which, as it were in echo to every niaiserie of every hired pen in the country, the House degrades itself to the work of the common scavenger, orders at immense expense an investigation into some subject where all well informed persons are fully advised, and at a cost of the national treasure, etc., etc., etc. to the end of that chapter.'"

But I fear no one at the Molyneux mansion had "the lantern." They had "found a man," and did not need a lantern to look farther.

It was as Mr. Molyneux had said: he had cast his Bread upon the Waters, and he had found it after many days.

THE LOST PALACE

THE LOST PALACE

[From the Ingham Papers.]

"Pa.s.sengers for Philadelphia and New York will change cars."

This annoying and astonis.h.i.+ng cry was loudly made in the palace-car "City of Thebes," at Pittsburg, just as the babies were well asleep, and all the pa.s.sengers adapting themselves to a quiet evening.

"Impossible!" said I, mildly, to the "gentlemanly conductor," who beamed before me in the majesty of gilt lace on his cap, and the embroidered letters P. P. C.

These letters do not mean, as in French, "to take leave,"

for the peculiarity of this man is, that he does not leave you till your journey's end: they mean, in American, "Pullman's Palace Car." "Impossible!" said I; "I bought my ticket at Chicago through to Philadelphia, with the a.s.surance that the palace-car would go through.

This lady has done the same for herself and her children.

Nay, if you remember, you told me yourself that the 'City of Thebes' was built for the Philadelphia service, and that I need not move my hat, unless I wished, till we were there."

The man did not blush, but answered, in the well- mannered tone of a subordinate used to obey,

Here are my orders, sir; telegram just received here from headquarters: '"City of Thebes" is to go to Baltimore.' Another palace here, sir, waiting for you."

And so we were trans-s.h.i.+pped into such chairs and berths as might have been left in this other palace, as not wanted by anybody in the great law of natural selection; and the "City of Thebes" went to Baltimore, I suppose.

The promises which had been made to us when we bought our tickets went to their place, and the people who made them went to theirs.

Except for this little incident, of which all my readers have probably experienced the like in these days of travel, the story I am now to tell would have seemed to me essentially improbable. But so soon as I reflected, that, in truth, these palaces go hither, go thither, controlled or not, as it may be, by some distant bureau, the story recurred to me as having elements of vraisemblance which I had not noticed before. Having occasion, nearly at the same time, to inquire at the Metropolitan station in Boston for a lost shawl which had been left in a certain Brookline car, the gentlemanly official told me that he did not know where that car was; he had not heard of it for several days. This again reminded me of "The Lost Palace." Why should not one palace, more or less, go astray, when there are thousands to care for? Indeed had not Mr. Firth told me, at the Albany, that the worst difficulty in the administration of a strong railway is, that they cannot call their freight-cars home? They go astray on the line of some weaker sister, which finds it convenient to use them till they begin to show a need for paint or repairs.