Cupid of Campion

CHAPTER IV

In which Clarence Esmond, alone and deserted, tries to pray; and his parents defer their trip to the Coast

After all, Clarence was but fourteen years of age. He was brave beyond his years. He had a craving for adventure. But, picture to yourself a lad in a thin blue bathing suit, in an oarless boat, alone on a great river. Clarence was really a good swimmer. He was at home in any lake; he had disported many a time in the salt water; but a river with its unknown dangers was new to him. The fear of the unknown, therefore, coupled with the warning of the butcher’s boy, kept him in the boat, when in fact he could easily have made the shore. Adventure is all very well in its way, but one likes to meet that fair goddess with reassuring companions. No wonder, then, that the boy broke down.

For some minutes he continued to sob. His grief was poignant. Chancing to glance over the side of the boat, he saw his features, tear-stained and swollen, reflected in the clear water. It was the first time that he had ever seen his reflection when he was in heavy grief. He looked again, and then suddenly broke into a laugh.

“Never say die,” he muttered to himself, and forthwith, putting his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands, he began to meditate.

What would his parents think about it? They would search, they would find his clothes upon the river bank and conclude naturally that he was drowned. Perhaps, however, Master Abe would reassure them on that point. Clarence did not know that Abe, having taken to the bushes and making his way into the interior of Iowa, had already dickered with a farmer’s boy for an old pair of overalls and was now doing his best to put as wide a distance between himself and McGregor as possible.

Once more Clarence raised his head and looked about him. The sun was now in mid-heaven and, shining down upon the boy’s unprotected calves and shoulders, promised to leave the memory of that adventurous day in scarlet characters upon his tender skin. On one side flowed the Wisconsin into the Mississippi; on the other the Iowa hills frowned down on him. The river itself was clear of craft. Water, water, everywhere; and standing sentinel over the mighty stream the hills of two sovereign states. Hotter and hotter fell the rays of the sun.

“Lord, have mercy on me,” exclaimed Clarence. He really prayed as he uttered these words.

Clarence, it must be confessed, knew very little of prayer. They did not specialize on that form of devotion – nor, in fact, on any form of devotion – at the academy of which for two years he had been a shining ornament. Vainly did he try to cudgel his brain for some other prayer. Even the Our Father, recited in tender years at his mother’s knee, he had forgotten.

The sun grew hotter; it was getting almost unbearable. Clarence was driven to action. After some effort, in which he skinned his knuckles, he succeeded in dislodging one of the two boards serving as seats. Placing this next to the others he threw himself below, doubled up so as to get himself as much as possible under the welcome shade, and – happy memory – murmured:

In saying these homely but beautiful lines, our adventurer had no intention of courting slumber. Nevertheless, he was sound asleep in ten minutes. The incidents of the morning, the climb up the hill, the rowing, the brush with the tramp – all these things, combined with the fact that he had stayed up late the night before and had risen that morning at five o’clock, sent him into a slumber the sounder for the quiet and the freshness of the great river.

About the same hour in which Clarence had snuggled low down in the boat and presently fallen into deep slumber, a gentleman came hurrying down to the McGregor boat-landing. He was a rather handsome man in the prime of life, dressed in a manner that showed he belonged to the many-tailored East. He was pulling at his mustache, gazing anxiously all about him, and betraying in many ways nervousness and anxiety.

“Beg pardon,” he began, addressing a group of men and women who were waiting for the ferry-boat that plied between McGregor and Prairie du Chien, “but have any of you chanced to see a boy of fourteen in a white sailor suit about here? He’s my son.”

“Did you say a white sailor suit?” asked a man of middle age.

“Yes.”

“Why, I think I saw a boy dressed that way this morning. As I was coming down the street, towards nine o’clock, I saw a boat going down stream with two people in it. First, I thought the one rowing was a girl; I took another look, and I could almost swear it was a boy dressed in white. They were gone down some distance, and so I couldn’t say for sure.”

Just then a young man of about twenty-one dressed in flannels joined the group.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” he said. “I’m a stranger here, and am rowing down the river from LaCrosse to Dubuque. This morning I locked my boat here, leaving the oars in it, and went for breakfast and a little stroll into the country back of McGregor. My boat has disappeared.”

“Was it painted green?” inquired the first informant, “and did it ride rather high?”

“Yes, that’s the boat.”

“Well, the boat I saw, with, I thought, two boys in it, one in a white sailor suit, must have been your boat.”

“Strange!” exclaimed Clarence’s father. “My boy, I am sure, would not do such a thing.”

“What about the other boy?” said an old inhabitant. “There’s a no-account fellow here-abouts named Abe Thompson. He was the butcher’s boy and got fired early today. He’s disappeared this morning, too, and I’ll bet my boots that he’s the one who went off in that boat.”

“That reminds me,” put in another member of the group. “When the St. Paul came in here this morning, the passengers were all talking about a small boy rowing a boat up near Pictured Rocks, who tried to cross their bow. The Captain had to stop the steamboat and he said that the two boys in that boat seemed anxious to commit suicide. When the Captain roared at the oarsman and called him a jackass, the kid smiled and asked which one of the two he was speaking to.”

“That was my son Clarence beyond a doubt,” said Mr. Esmond with the suspicion of a smile. “It would be just like him to cut across the bow of a steamboat, and that question of his makes it a dead certainty. The boy sat up until one o’clock last night reading Treasure Island. He’s very impressionable, and he left the house this morning with his heart set upon meeting with an adventure of some sort or other. It’s near twelve o’clock now, and we were to start for the coast at one-forty. Can’t I get a motorboat around here somewhere?”

The man who had been the first to give information then spoke up.

“Sir,” he said, “I have a fairly good motorboat at the McGregor landing. It will be a pleasure for me to do anything I can to help you.”

“Thank you a thousand times. Let’s get off at once. My name is Charles Esmond.”

“And mine,” returned the other, “is John Dolan.” The two, as they made their way to the motorboat, shook hands.

“This is awfully kind of you,” continued Mr. Esmond, as he seated himself in the prow.

“It’s a pleasure, I assure you. I’ve really nothing to do at this season, and so I pass most of my time on the river.”

As he spoke these words, the boat shot out into the water.

“Now,” continued Mr. Dolan, “as a working hypothesis, we may take it for granted that those boys went to Pictured Rocks; everybody goes there. So we’ll make for that place and reach it, I dare say, in six or seven minutes.”

“I hope nothing has happened,” said the father. “This morning my wife had a bad sick headache, and Clarence was overflowing with animal spirits. We had promised him, the night before, a ride on the river and a swim. He had never been on the Mississippi, and he was all eagerness. To make matters worse, I got a telegram this morning to send on a report on a Mexican mine – it’s my business, by the way, to study mines here, in Mexico, and, in fact, almost anywhere. That report meant two or three hours of hard work. So I told Clarence to run out and get some good boatman, if he could, and go rowing. I cautioned him to be careful about where he went swimming and not to go in alone. He promised me faithfully to be back at twelve. Now I have no reason to think the boy would break his word. In fact, I had an idea that he was truthful.”

“You talk of your boy,” observed Mr. Dolan, “as though you didn’t know him very well.”

Mr. Esmond relaxed into a smile.

“It does sound funny, doesn’t it,” he said. “The fact of the matter is that I really have very little first-hand knowledge of him. At the age of five, Clarence learned how to read, and developed a most extraordinary passion for books at once. If allowed, he read from the time he got up till he went to bed. I never saw such a case of precocity. It was next to impossible to get him to take exercise. His mother did her best to restrain him, and I did my share too, though it was very little, as I was away looking up mines nine months out of the twelve. When the boy was eleven, it became clear that some radical action had to be taken. I looked around for some school that would suit or rather offset his idiosyncrasy. After no end of inquiries I discovered Clermont Academy in New York State, where athletics were everything and such studies as reading, grammar and arithmetic were a sort of by-product. Clarence has been there for three years, and, up to a week ago, his mother and I never saw him from the time of his entrance. Well, he’s a changed boy. He is fairly stout, and muscular beyond my most sanguine hopes. He is up in all sorts of games. In fact, in his class – boys of twelve to fourteen – he’s the leader. All the same, I blush to say that I really know very little about my boy.”

“Perhaps the lad is a genius,” suggested Mr. Dolan.

“Some of my friends have made that claim and accused me of trying to clip his wings. All the same, I want my boy, genius or no genius, to grow up to be a hale, hearty man.”

“Halloa!” exclaimed Dolan. He had turned the boat shoreward. Before the eyes of both lay in full view on the bank two suits of clothes. The boat had scarce touched the shore, when Mr. Esmond jumped from it and ran to the spot where the clothes lay spread upon the ground.

“My God! These are my son’s,” he cried, gazing with dismay upon the white sailor suit which he had caught up in his hands. His face quivering with emotion, he stood stock still for a moment, then sank upon the ground and buried his head in his hands.

“And this,” said John Dolan, looking closely at the abandoned overalls, “belongs to that ne’er-do-well butcher’s boy. It looks bad. They must have gone swimming here.”

Mr. Esmond arose and looked about.

“Where’s that boat they had?” he inquired.

“It may have drifted away,” answered John. “Or, more probably, that butcher’s boy, who is a known thief, has hidden it somewhere. He knew very well that there would be a search for it.”

“Say, Dolan, you’ll stand by me, won’t you? I am almost in despair; the thing is so sudden.”

“I’ll do anything you want.”

“Well, you leave me here and run back to McGregor. Send word to my wife that I am detained – don’t let her think or even suspect that our boy is drowned – and to put off our trip to the Coast, as I cannot make the train. Tell her to expect me and Clarence before supper. Then get the proper officials of McGregor to come here at once and drag the river. Hire any extra men you judge fit. Don’t bother about expense. Now go and don’t lose a moment.”

Left alone, Mr. Esmond made a careful search, tracing the boy’s steps in their ascent to Pictured Rocks. He went part of the way himself, crying out at intervals, “Clarence! Clarence! Clarence!” There was no answer save the echoes which to his anxious ears sounded far differently from the “horns of elfland.”

Again and again he called. And yet Clarence was not so far away – hardly half a mile down the river, locked in slumber, and, as it proved, in the hands of that bright-eyed goddess of adventure whom the reckless lad had not in vain wooed.

Returning to the shore, Mr. Esmond on further investigation traced his boy’s footprints to the river’s banks. At this juncture, several motorboats arrived, each carrying a number of men, and soon all were busy dragging the river.

At six o’clock John Dolan insisted on bringing the despairing father back to McGregor.

“Dolan,” he said, as they started upstream, “have you any religion?”

“I hope so. I’m a Catholic.”

“I don’t know what I am; – but my poor boy! His mother ought to be a Catholic, but she was brought up from her tender years by Baptist relations with the result that she’s got no more religion that I have. When my boy was born, I started him out on the theory that he was not to be taught any religion, but was to grow up without prejudices, and when he was old enough, he was to choose for himself. All the religion he ever got amounted to his saying the ‘Our Father’ and ‘Now I lay me down to sleep.’ At that school he’s been going to there’s no religion taught at all. I wish I had done differently. Think of his appearing before a God he never thought of. Some of our theories look mighty nice in ordinary circumstances. But now! My son is dead, and without any sort of preparation.”