The Panchronicon
by Harold Steele MacKaye · English · Gutenberg #27682 · 463,377 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Panchronicon
Author: Harold Steele MacKaye
Release date: January 1, 2009 [eBook #27682]
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PANCHRONICON ***
Produced by David Clarke, Meredith Bach and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
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by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
THE PANCHRONICON
THE
PANCHRONICON
BY
HAROLD STEELE MACKAYE
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1904
COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
Published, April, 1904
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE THEORY OF COPERNICUS DROOP 1
II. A VISIT TO THE PANCHRONICON 23
III. A NOCTURNAL EVASION 38
IV. A CHANGE OF PLAN 58
V. DROOP'S THEORY IN PRACTICE 86
VI. SHIPWRECKED ON THE SANDS OF TIME 103
VII. NEW TIES AND OLD RELATIONS 123
VIII. HOW FRANCIS BACON CHEATED THE BAILIFFS 157
IX. PHOEBE AT THE PEACOCK INN 179
X. HOW THE QUEEN READ HER NEWSPAPER 208
XI. THE FAT KNIGHT AT THE BOAR'S HEAD 242
XII. HOW SHAKESPEARE WROTE HIS PLAYS 258
XIII. HOW THE FAT KNIGHT DID HOMAGE 277
XIV. THE FATE OF SIR PERCEVALL'S SUIT 297
XV. HOW REBECCA RETURNED TO NEWINGTON 317
XVI. HOW SIR GUY KEPT HIS TRYST 324
XVII. REBECCA'S TRUMP CARD 340
THE PANCHRONICON
CHAPTER I
THE THEORY OF COPERNICUS DROOP
The two sisters were together in their garden.
Rebecca Wise, turned forty and growing slightly gray at the temples, was
moving slowly from one of her precious plants to the next, leaning over
each to pinch off a dead leaf or count the buds. It was the historic
month of May, 1898, and May is the paradise of flower lovers.
Phoebe was eighteen years younger than her sister, and the beauty of
the village. Indeed, many declared their belief that the whole State of
New Hampshire did not contain her equal.
She was seated on the steps of the veranda that skirted the little white
cottage, and the absent gaze of her frank blue eyes was directed through
the gate at the foot of the little path bordered by white rose-bushes.
In her lap was a bundle of papers yellowed by age and an ivory
miniature, evidently taken from the carved wooden box at her side.
Presently Rebecca straightened her back with a slight grimace and looked
toward her sister, holding her mold-covered hands and fingers spread
away from her.
"Well," she inquired, "hev ye found anythin'?"
Phoebe brought her gaze back from infinity and replied:
"No, I ain't. Only that one letter where Isaac Burton writes her that
the players have come to town."
"I don't see what good them letters'll do ye in the Shakespeare class,
then."
Rebecca spoke listlessly--more interested in her garden than in her
sister's search.
"I don't know," Phoebe rejoined, dreamily. "It's awful funny--but
whenever I take out these old letters there comes over me the feelin'
that I'm 'way off in a strange country--and I feel like somebody else."
Rebecca looked up anxiously from her work.
"Them sort o' philanderin' notions are foolish, Phoebe," she said, and
flicked a caterpillar over the fence.
Phoebe gave herself a little shake and began to tie up the papers.
"That's so," she replied. "But they will come when I get these out, an'
I got 'em out thinkin' the' might be somethin' about Shakespeare in 'em
for our class."
She paused and looked wistfully at the letters again.
"Oh!" she cried, "how I do wonder if he was among those players at the
Peacock Inn that day! You know 'players' is what they called play-actors
in those days, and he was a play-actor, they say."
"Did he live very far back, then?" said Rebecca, wishing to appear
interested, but really intent upon a new sprout at the foot of the
lilac-bush.
"Yes, three hundred years ago. Three of these letters has a date in 1598
exactly."
There was a long silence, and at length Rebecca looked up from the
ground to ascertain its cause. She frowned and drew her aching back
stiffly straight again.
"Everlastin'ly lookin' at that pictur'!" she exclaimed. "I declare to
goodness, Phoebe Wise, folks'll think you're vain as a pouter pigeon."
Phoebe laughed merrily, tossed the letters into the box and leaped to
her feet. The miniature at which she had been gazing was still in her
hands.
"Folks'll never see me lookin' at it, Rebecca--only you," she said.
Then with a coaxing tone and looking with appealing archness at her
sister, she went on:
"Is it really like me, Rebecca? Honest true?"
The elder woman merely grunted and moved on to the next bed, and
Phoebe, with another laugh, ran lightly into the house.
A few moments later she reappeared at the front door with consternation
on her face.
"Land o' goodness, Rebecca!" she cried, "do you know what time it is?
Near onto one o'clock, an' I've got to be at the Shakespeare class at
half past. We'll have to dish up dinner right this minute, and I don't
see how I can change my dress after it an' help with the dishes too."
She whisked into the house again, and Rebecca followed her as rapidly as
possible.
She was very proud of her baby sister, proud of her having been "clear
through high school," and proud of her eminence in the local literary
society. There was certainly something inspiring in having a sister who
was first corresponding secretary of the Women's Peltonville Association
for the Study of Shakespearian History and Literature; and it was simply
wonderful how much poetry she could repeat from the pages of her
favorite author.
* * * * *
Peltonville Center, New Hampshire, was one of those groups of neatly
kept houses surrounding a prettily shaded, triangular common which seem
to be characteristic of New England. Standing two miles from the nearest
railway station, this little settlement possessed its own combined store
and post-office, from whose narrow veranda one might watch the rising
generation playing Saturday base-ball on the grassy triangle.
The traditional old meeting-house stood on the opposite side of the
common, facing the store. The good old days of brimstone theology were
past, and the descendants of the godly Puritans who raised this steeple
"in the fear of the Lord," being now deprived of their chief source of
fear, found Sunday meetings a bore, and a village pastor an unnecessary
luxury.
Indeed, there seemed little need of pastoral admonition in such a town
as Peltonville Center. There was a grimly commonplace and universal
goodness everywhere, and the village was only saved from unconsciousness
of its own perfection by the individual shortcomings of one of its
citizens. Fortunately for the general self-complacence, however, the
necessary revealing contrast was found in him.
Copernicus Droop was overfond of the bottle, and in spite of the
prohibition laws of his State, he proved himself a blessed example and
warning by a too frequent and unmistakable intoxication in public. He
was gentle and even apologetic in his cups, but he was clearly a "slave
of rum" and his mission was therefore fulfilled.
On this first of May, 1898, a number of idle young men sat in a row on
the edge of the store veranda. Some were whittling, some making aimless
marks in the dust with a stick. All leaned limply forward, with their
elbows on their knees.
It was clearly not a Sunday, for the meeting-house was open, and from
time to time, one or perhaps two young women together passed into the
cool and silent room. The loungers at the store let none escape their
notice, and the name of each damsel was passed down the line in an
undertone as its owner entered the church.
A lantern-jawed young farmer at the end of the row slowly brushed the
shavings from his clothes and remarked:
"Thet's the secon' meetin' of the Shekspeare class this month, ain't
it?"
"Yep, an' there'll be two more afore the summer boarders comes up----"
The second speaker would have continued, but he was here interrupted by
a third, who whispered loudly:
"Say, fellers, there goes Copernicus."
All eyes were raised and unanimously followed the shabby figure which
had just emerged from behind the church and now started into the road
leading away from the common toward the north.
"Walks pretty straight fer him, don't he?" snickered the first speaker.
"He's not ben tight fer two days."
"Bet ye a jack-knife he'll be spreein' it fer all he's wuth to-morrow."
Fortunately these comments did not reach the ears of their object, who,
all unconscious of the interest which he inspired, made good his way at
a fairly rapid pace.
Presently he stopped.
With muslin skirts swaying, hair rumpled, and fair young face flushed
with exertion, Phoebe Wise was hurrying toward the common. She was
almost running in her haste, for she was late and the Shakespeare class
was a momentous institution.
"Oh, say, Cousin Phoebe," was the man's greeting, "can you tell me ef
yer sister's to home?"
The young girl came to a sudden full stop in her surprise. This cousinly
greeting from the village reprobate was as exciting and as inexplicable
as it was unheard of.
"Why, Mr. Droop!" she exclaimed, "I--I--I s'pose so."
The truth was the truth, after all. But it was hard on Rebecca. What
_could_ this man want with her sister?
Droop nodded and passed on.
"Thank ye. Don't stop fer me," he said.
Phoebe moved forward slowly, watching Copernicus over her shoulder.
She noted his steady steps and pale face and, reassured, resumed her
flying progress with redoubled vigor. After all, Rebecca was forty-two
years old and well able to take care of herself.
Meanwhile, Rebecca Wise, having carefully wrung out her dishcloth,
poured out the water and swept the little sink, was slowly untying her
kitchen apron, full of a thankful sense of the quiet hour before her
wherein to knit and muse beside the front window of her little parlor.
In the centre of this room there stood a wide, round table, bearing a
large kerosene-lamp and the week's mending. At the back and opposite the
two windows stood the well-blacked, shiny, air-tight stove. Above this
was a wooden mantel, painted to imitate marble, whereon were deposited
two photographs, four curious Chinese shells, and a plaster cross to
which there clung a very plaster young woman in scant attire, the whole
being marked "Rock of Ages" in gilt letters at the base.
Horse-hair furniture in all the glory of endless "tidies" was arranged
against walls bedight with a rainbow-like wilderness of morning-glories.
The ceiling was of white plaster, and the floor was painted white and
decked here and there with knitted rag-carpets, on whose Joseph's-coated
surfaces Rebecca loved to gaze when in retrospective mood. In those
humble floor-coverings her knowing eyes recognized her first clocked
stockings and Phoebe's baby cloak. There was her brother Robert's wool
tippet embalmed in loving loops with the remnants of his wife's best
Sunday-go-to-meetin' ribbons. These two had long been dead, but their
sister's loving eyes recreated them in rag-carpet dreams wherein she
lived again those by-gone days.
Rebecca had just seated herself and was unrolling her work, when her
eyes caught a glimpse of a man's form through the window. He had passed
into her gate and was approaching the door. She leaned forward for a
good look and then dropped back into her chair with a gasp of surprise.
"Copernicus Droop!" she exclaimed, "did you ever!"
She sat in rigid astonishment until she heard his timid knock, followed
by the sound of shoes vigorously wiped upon the door-mat.
"Well, come! Thet's a comfort!" she thought. "He won't muss the
carpet"--and she rose to admit her visitor.
"Good mornin'," said Droop, timidly. "I seen Cousin Phoebe a-runnin'
down the road, an' I sorter thought I'd run in an' see how you was."
"Come right in," said Rebecca, in non-committal tones. She shut the door
and followed him into the parlor.
"Here, give me yer hat," she continued. "Set right there. How be ye?"
Droop obeyed. In a few moments the two were seated facing each other,
and Rebecca's needles were already busy. There was an interval of
awkward silence.
"Well, what did ye come fer?"
It was Rebecca who broke the spell. In her usual downright fashion, she
came to the point at once. She thought it as well he should know that
she was not deceived by his polite pretence of casual friendly interest.
Droop settled forward with elbows on his knees and brought his
finger-tips carefully and accurately together. He found this action
amazingly promotive of verbal accuracy.
"Well, Cousin Rebecca," he began, slowly, "I'm lookin' fer a partner."
He paused, considering how to proceed.
The spinster let her hands drop in speechless wonder. The audacity of
the man! He--to her--a proposal! At her age! From him!
Fortunately the next few words disclosed her error, and she blushed for
it as she lifted her work again, turning nearer the window as if for
better light.
"Yes," Droop proceeded, "I've a little business plan, an' it needs
capital an' a partner."
He waited, but there was no response.
"Capital an' a partner," he repeated, "an' intelligence an' ambition. So
I come to you."
Rebecca turned toward him again, scarcely less surprised now than
before.
"To me! D'ye mean to say ye've me in yer mind fer a partner--with
capital?"
Droop nodded slowly and compressed his lips.
"Well, I want to know!" she exclaimed, helplessly.
"Oh, I know you ain't overly rich right now," said Droop,
apologetically; "but it warn't no secret thet ye might hev hed Joe
Chandler ef ye hadn't ben so shifty in yer mind an' fell betwixt two
stools--an' Lord knows Joe Chandler was as rich as--as Peter Craigin
down to Keene--pretty nigh."
Again Rebecca blushed, but this time in anger.
"See here, Copernicus Droop--" she began.
"Oh, I don't mean nothin' mean, now," he insisted, earnestly. "I'm jest
leadin' up to the pint sorter natural like--breakin' the thing easy, ye
know."
"What _air_ you a-drivin' at?"
Droop shifted uneasily in his seat and ran his finger around inside of
his collar before he replied:
"Ye see, it's sorter hard to explain. It's this way. I hev a mighty
fine plan in my mind founded on a mixin' up of astronomical
considerations with prior inventions----"
"Mister Droop!" exclaimed his hostess, gazing severely into his eyes,
"ef you think I'll let you go to drinkin' rum till----"
"Honest to goodness, Miss Wise, I've not teched a drop!" cried Droop,
leaping to his feet and leaning forward quickly. "You may smell my
breath ef----"
A violent push sent him back to his chair.
"Thet'll do, Mr. Droop. I'll undertake to believe ye fer once, but I'll
thank ye to speak plain English."
"I'll do my best," he sighed, plaintively. "I don't blame ye fer not
takin' to it quick. I didn't myself at first. Well--here. Ye see--ye
know----"
He paused and swallowed hard, gazing at the ceiling for inspiration.
Then he burst out suddenly:
"Ye know the graphophone an' the kodak and the biograph an' all them
things what ye can see down to Keene?"
Rebecca nodded slowly, with suspicion still in her eye.
"Well, the's a heap o' things ben invented since the Centennial of 1876.
Don't you s'pose they've made hills o' money out o' them things--with
patents an' all?"
"Of course."
"An' don't you s'pose that ef anybody in 1876 was to up an' bring out
sech inventions all at once he'd be bigger than all the other inventors
put together!"
Rebecca slowly pushed her needle through her hair, which was a sign of
thoughtfulness.
"Wal, o' course," she said, at length, "ef anybody hed aben smart enough
to've invented all them things in 1876 he'd aben a pretty big man, I
guess."
Droop edged forward eagerly.
"An' s'posen' that you hed married Joe Chandler back in 1876, an' you
was rich enough to back up an inventor like that, an' he come to you an'
offered to give you half ef you'd up an' help him put 'em on the market,
an' s'posen'----"
"What the land sake's the use o' s'posin'?" Rebecca cried, sharply.
"This is 1898, an' I ain't married, thanks be to goodness!"
"Ah, but ye could be, ef we was in 1876! There, there--I know what you
want to say--but 'taint so! What would ye say ef I was to tell ye that
all ye've got to do is jest to get into a machine I've got an' I can
take ye back to 1876 in next to no time! What would ye say----"
"I'd say ye was tighter'n a boiled owl, Copernicus Droop."
"But I ain't, I ain't!" he almost screamed. "I tell ye I hevn't teched
liquor fer two days. I've reformed. Ef ye won't smell my breath----"
"Then you're plum crazy," she interrupted.
"No, nor crazy either," he insisted. "Why, the whole principle of it is
so awful simple! Ef you'd ben to high school, now, an' knew astronomy
an' all, you'd see right through it like nothin'."
"Well, then, you c'n explain it to them as hez ben to high school, an'
that's sister Phoebe. Here she comes now."
She went at once to the door to admit the new-comer. Her visitor,
watching the pretty younger sister as she stepped in, rosy and full of
life, could not but remark the contrast between the two women.
"Twenty-two years makes a heap o' difference!" he muttered. "But Rebecca
was jest as pretty herself, back in 1876."
"Look, Rebecca!" cried Phoebe, as she entered the door, "here's a new
book Mrs. Bolton lent me to-day. All about Bacon writing Shakespeare's
plays, an' how Bacon was a son of Queen Elizabeth. Do you s'pose he
really did?"
"Oh, don't ask me, child!" was the nervous reply. "Mr. Droop's in the
parlor."
Phoebe had forgotten her short interview with Droop, and she now
snatched off her hat in surprise and followed her elder sister, nodding
to their visitor as she entered.
"Set down, both o' ye," said Rebecca. "Now, then, Mr. Droop, perhaps
you'll explain."
Rebecca was far more mystified and interested than she cared to admit.
Her brusque manner was therefore much exaggerated--a dissimulation which
troubled her conscience, which was decidedly of the tenderest New
England brand.
Poor Copernicus experienced a sense of relief as he turned his eyes to
those of the younger sister. She felt that Rebecca's manner was
distinctly cold, and her own expression was the more cordial in
compensation.
"Why, Miss Phoebe," he said, eagerly, "I've ben tellin' your sister
about my plan to go back to the Centennial year--1876, ye know."
"To--to what, Mr. Droop?"
Phoebe's polite cordiality gave place to amazed consternation. Droop
raised a deprecating hand.
"Now don't you go to think I'm tight or gone crazy. You'll understand
it, fer you've ben to high school. Now see! What is it makes the days go
by--ain't it the daily revolution of the sun?"
Phoebe put on what her sister always called "that schoolmarm look" and
replied:
"Why, it's the turning round of the earth on its axis once in----"
"Yes--yes--It's all one--all one," Droop broke in, eagerly. "To put it
another way, it comes from the sun cuttin' meridians, don't it?"
Rebecca, who found this technical and figurative expression beyond her,
paused in her knitting and looked anxiously at Phoebe, to see how she
would take it. After a moment of thought, the young woman admitted her
visitor's premises.
"Very good! An' you know's well's I do, Miss Phoebe, that ef a man
travels round the world the same way's the sun, he ketches up on time a
whole day when he gets all the way round. In other words, the folks that
stays at home lives jest one day more than the feller that goes round
the world that way. Am I right?"
"Of course."
Droop glanced triumphantly at Rebecca. This tremendous admission on her
learned young sister's part stripped her of all pretended coldness. Her
deep interest was evident now in her whole pose and expression.
"Now, then, jest follow me close," Droop continued, sitting far forward
in his chair and pointing his speech with a thin forefinger on his open
palm.
"Ef a feller was to whirl clear round the world an' cut all the
meridians in the same direction as the sun, an' he made the whole trip
around jest as quick as the sun did--time wouldn't change a mite fer
him, would it?"
Phoebe gasped at the suggestion.
"Why, I should think--of course----"
She stopped and put her hand to her head in bewilderment.
"Et's a sure thing!" Droop exclaimed, earnestly. "You've said yerself
that the folks who stayed to home would live one day longer than the
fellow that went round. Now, ef that feller travelled round as fast as
the sun, the stay-at-homes would only be one day older by the time he
got back--ain't that a fact?"
Both sisters nodded.
"Well, an' the traveller would be one day younger than they'd be. An'
ain't that jest no older at all than when he started?"
"My goodness! Mr. Droop!" Phoebe replied, feebly. "I never thought of
that."
"Well, ain't it so?"
"Of course--leastways--why, it must be!"
"All right, then!"
Droop rose triumphantly to his feet, overcome by his feelings.
"Follow out that same reasonin' to the bitter end!" he cried, "an' what
will happen ef that traveller whirls round, cuttin' meridians jest twice
as fast as the sun--goin' the same way?"
He paused, but there was no reply.
"Why, as sure as shootin', I tell ye, that feller will get jest one day
younger fer every two whirls round!"
There was a long and momentous silence. The tremendous suggestion had
for the moment bereft both women of all reasoning faculty.
At length the younger sister ventured upon a practical objection.
"But how's he goin' to whirl round as fast as that, Mr. Droop?" she
said.
Droop smiled indulgently.
"Et does sound outlandish, when ye think how big the world is. But what
if ye go to the North Pole? Ain't all the twenty-four meridians jammed
up close together round that part of the globe?"
"Thet's so," murmured Rebecca, "I've seen it many's the time on the map
in Phoebe's geography book."
"Sure enough," Droop rejoined. "Then ain't it clear that ef a feller'll
jest take a grip on the North Pole an' go whirlin' round it, he'll be
cuttin' meridians as fast as a hay-chopper? Won't he see the sun gettin'
left behind an' whirlin' the other way from what it does in nature? An'
ef the sun goes the other way round, ain't it sure to unwind all the
time thet it's ben a-rollin' up?"
Rebecca's ball of yarn fell from her lap at this, and, as she followed
it with her eyes, she seemed to see a practical demonstration of Droop's
marvellous theory.
Phoebe felt all the tremendous force of Droop's logic, and she flushed
with excitement. One last practical objection was obvious, however.
"The thing must be all right, Mr. Droop," she said; "an' come to think
of it, this must be the reason so many folks have tried to reach the
North Pole. But it never _has_ been reached yet, an' how are you agoin'
to do it?"
"You think it never hez," Copernicus replied. "The fact is, though, that
I've ben there."
"You!" Phoebe cried.
"And is there a pole there?" Rebecca asked, eagerly.
"The's a pole there, an' I've swung round it, too," Droop replied,
sitting again with a new and delightful sense of no longer being
unwelcome.
"Here's how 'twas. About a year ago there come to my back door a
strange-lookin' man who'd hurt his foot some way. I took him in an'
fixed him up--you know I studied for a doctor once--an' while he was
bein' fixed up, he sorter took a fancy to me an' he begun to give me the
story of his life. He said he was born in the year 2582, an' had ben
takin' what he called a historical trip into the past ages. He went on
at a great rate like that, an' I thought he was jest wanderin' in his
mind with the fever, so I humored him. But he saw through me, an' he
wouldn't take no but I should go down into Burnham's swamp with him to
see how he'd done it.
"Well, down we went, and right spang in the thickest of the bushes an'
muck we come across the queerest lookin' machine that ever ye see!
"Right there an' then he told me all the scientific talk about time an'
astronomy thet I've told you, an' then he tuck me into the thing. Fust
thing I knew he give a yank to a lever in the machinery an' there was a
big jerk thet near threw me on the back o' my head. I looked out, an'
there we was a-flyin' over the country through the air fer the North
Pole!"
"There, now!" cried Rebecca, "didn't Si Wilkins' boy Sam say he seen a
comet in broad daylight last June?"
"Thet was us," Droop admitted.
"And not a soul believed him," Phoebe remarked.
"Well," continued Droop, "to make a long story short, thet future-man
whirled me a few times 'round the North Pole--unwound jest five weeks o'
time, an' back we come to Peltonville a-hummin'!"
"And then?" cried the two women together.
"Ef you'll believe me, there we was back to the day he fust come--an'
fust thing I knew, thet future-man was a-comin' up to my back door, same
ez before, a-beggin' to hev his foot fixed. It was hard on him, but I
was convinced fer keeps."
Copernicus shook his head sadly, with retrospective sadness.
"An' where is the future-man now?" Phoebe asked.
"Tuk cold on his lungs at the North Pole," said Droop, solemnly. "Hed
pneumonia an' up'n died."
"But there warn't nobody round heerd of him except you," said Rebecca.
"Who buried him?"
"Ah, thet's one o' the beauties o' the hull business. He'd showed me all
the ropes on his machine--his Panchronicon, as he called it--an' so I
up'n flew round the North Pole the opposite way as soon's he passed
away, till I'd made up the five weeks we'd lost. Then when I got back it
was five weeks after his funeral, an' I didn't hev to bother about it."
The two sisters looked at each other, quite overcome with admiration.
"My land!" Rebecca murmured, gathering up her yarn and knitting again.
"Sence they've invented them X-rays an' took to picturin' folks'
insides, I kin believe anythin'."
"You don't hev to take my word fer it," Droop exclaimed. "Ef you'll come
right along with me this blessed minute, I'll show you the machine right
now."
"I'd jest love to see it," said Rebecca, her coldness all forgotten,
"but it's mos' too late fer this afternoon. There's the supper to get,
you know, an'----"
"But the plan, Rebecca," Phoebe cried. "You've forgotten that I
haven't heard Mr. Droop's plan."
"I wish 't you'd call me 'Cousin Copernicus,'" said Droop, earnestly.
"You know I've sworn off--quit drinkin' now."
Phoebe blushed at his novel proposal and insisted on the previous
question.
"But what is the plan?" she said.
"Why, my idea is this, Cousin Phoebe. I want we should all go back to
1876 again. Thet's the year your sister could hev married Joe Chandler
ef she'd wanted to."
Rebecca murmured something unintelligible, blushing furiously, with her
eyes riveted to her knitting. Phoebe looked surprised.
"You know you could, Cousin Rebecca," Droop insisted. "Now what I say
is, let's go back there. I'll invent the graphophone, the kodak, the
vitascope, an' Milliken's cough syrup an' a lot of other big modern
inventions. Rebecca'll marry Chandler, an' she an' her husband can back
up my big inventions with capital. Why, Cousin Phoebe," he cried, with
enthusiasm, "we'll all hev a million apiece!"
The sentimental side of Droop's plan first monopolized Phoebe's
attention.
"Rebecca Wise!" she exclaimed, turning with mock severity to face her
sister. "Why is it I've never heard tell about this love affair before
now? Why, Joe Chandler's just a _fine_ man. Is it you that broke his
heart an' made him an old bachelor all his life?"
Rebecca must have dropped a stitch, for she turned toward the window
again and brought her knitting very close to her face.
"What brought ye so early to home, Phoebe?" she said. "Warn't there no
Shakespeare meetin' to-day?"
"No. Mis' Beecher was to lead, an' she's been taken sick, so I came
right home. But you can't sneak out of answerin' me like that, Miss
Slyboots," Phoebe continued, in high spirits.
Seating herself on the arm of her sister's chair, she put her arms about
her neck and, bending over, whispered:
"Tell me honest, now, Rebecca, did Joe Chandler ever propose to you?"
"No, he never did!" the elder sister exclaimed, rising suddenly.
"Now, Mr. Droop," she continued, "your hull plan is jest too absurd to
think of----"
Droop tried to expostulate, but she raised her voice, speaking more
quickly.
"An' you come 'round again after supper an' we'll tell ye what we've
decided," she concluded.
The humor of this reply was lost on Copernicus, but he moved toward the
door with a sense of distinct encouragement.
"Remember the rumpus we'll make with all them inventions," Droop called
back as he walked toward the gate, "think of the money we'll make!"
But Rebecca was thinking of something very different as she stood at the
front door gazing with softened eyes at the pasture and woods beyond the
road. She seemed to see a self-willed girl breaking her own heart and
another's rather than acknowledge a silly error. She was wondering if
that had really been Rebecca Wise. She felt again all the old bewitching
heart-pangs, sweetened and mellowed by time, and she wondered if she
were _now_ really Rebecca Wise.
CHAPTER II
A VISIT TO THE PANCHRONICON
At precisely eight o'clock that evening, a knock was again heard at the
door of the Wise home, and Droop was admitted by the younger sister. She
did not speak, and her face was invisible in the dark hall. The visitor
turned to the right and entered the parlor, followed by his young
hostess. Rebecca was sitting by the lamp, sewing. As she looked up and
nodded, Droop saw that her features expressed only gloomy severity. He
turned in consternation and caught sight for the first time of
Phoebe's face. Her eyes and pretty nose were red and her mouth was
drawn into a curve of plaintive rebellion.
"Set down, Mr. Droop. Give me yer hat," she said; and there was a
suspicious catch in her voice.
The visitor seated himself by the centre-table beside the lamp and sat
slowly rubbing his hands, the while he gazed mournfully from one to the
other of the silent sisters. Phoebe sat on the long horse-hair
"settle," and played moodily with the tassel hanging at its head.
There was a long pause. Each of the women seemed bent on forcing the
other to break the silence.
Poor Droop felt that his plans were doomed, and he dared not urge either
woman to speech, lest he hear the death-sentence of his hopes. Finally,
however, the awkward silence became unbearable.
"Well?" he said, inquiringly, still rubbing his hands.
"Well," Rebecca exclaimed, "it seems it's not to be done," and she
looked reproachfully at Phoebe.
The words fulfilled his fears, but the tone and glance produced a thrill
of hope. It was evident that Rebecca at least favored his plans.
Turning now to the younger sister, Droop asked, in a melancholy tone:
"Don't you want to get rich, Cousin Phoebe?"
"Rich--me!" she replied, indignantly. "A mighty lot of riches it'll
bring me, won't it? That's just what riles me so! You an' Rebecca just
think of nothin' but your own selves. You never stop to think of me!"
Droop opened his eyes very wide indeed, and Rebecca said, earnestly:
"Phoebe, you know you ain't got any call to say sech a thing!"
"Oh, haven't I?" cried Phoebe, in broken accents. "Did either of you
think what would happen to me if we all went back to 1876? Two years
old! That's what I'd be! A little toddling baby, like Susan Mellick's
Annie! Put to bed before supper--carried about in everybody's arms--fed
on a bottle and--and perhaps--and perhaps getting _spanked_!"
With the last word, Phoebe burst into tears of mingled grief and
mortification and rushed from the room.
The others dared not meet each other's guilty eyes. Droop gazed about
the room in painful indecision. He could not bear to give up all hope,
and yet--this unforeseen objection really seemed a very serious one. To
leave the younger sister behind was out of the question. On the other
hand, the consequences of the opposite course were--well, painful to her
at least.
In his nervousness he unconsciously grasped a small object on the table
upon which his left hand had been lying. It was a miniature daintily
painted on ivory. He looked vacantly upon it; his mind at first quite
absent from his eyes. But as he gazed, something familiar in the lovely
face depicted there fixed his attention. Before long he was examining
the picture with the greatest interest.
"Well, now!" he exclaimed, at length. "Ain't that pretty! Looks jest
like her, too. When was that tuck, Miss Wise?"
"That ain't Phoebe," said Rebecca, dejectedly.
"Ain't Phoebe!" Droop cried, in amazement. "Why, it's the finest
likeness--why--but--it _must_ be yer sister!"
"Well, 'tain't. Thet pictur is jest three hundred years old."
"Three hundred--" he began--then very slowly, "Well, now, do tell!" he
said.
"Phoebe's got the old letter that tells about it. The's a lot of 'em
in that little carved-wood box there. They say it come over in the
Mayflower."
Droop could not take his eyes from the picture. The likeness was
perfect. Here was the pretty youthful oval of her face--the same playful
blue eye--the sensitive red lips seeming about to sparkle into a
smile--even the golden brown mist of hair that hid the delicately turned
ear!
Then Droop suddenly remembered his plans, and with his hand he dropped
the picture as his mind dismissed it. He rose and looked about for his
hat.
"Ye wouldn't want to come back to '76 with me an' leave Cousin Phoebe
behind, would ye?" he suggested, dismally.
"What!" cried Rebecca, giving vent to her pent-up feelings, "an' never
see my sister again! Why, I'd hev to come livin' along up behind her,
and, all I could do, I'd never catch up with her--never! You'd ought to
be ashamed to stand there an' think o' sech a thing, Copernicus Droop!"
For some time he stood with bent head and shoulders, twirling his hat
between his fingers. At length he straightened up suddenly and moved
toward the door.
"Well," he said, "the' isn't any use you seem' the Panchronicon now, is
the'?"
"What's it like, Mr. Droop?" Rebecca inquired.
He paused helpless before the very thought of description.
"Oh," he said, weakly, "et's like--et's a--why--Oh, it's a machine!"
"Hez it got wings?"
"Not exactly wings," he began, then, more earnestly, "why don't ye come
and see it, anyway! It can't do ye any harm to jest look at it!"
Rebecca dropped her hands into her lap and replied, with a hesitating
manner:
"I'd like to fust rate--it must be an awful queer machine! But I don't
get much time fer traipsin' 'round now days."
"Why can't ye come right along now?" Droop asked, eagerly. "It's dry as
a bone underfoot down in the swamp now. The's ben no rain in a long
time."
She pondered some time before replying. Her first impulse was to reject
the proposal as preposterous. The hour seemed very ill chosen. Rebecca
was not accustomed to leaving home for any purpose at night, and she was
extremely conservative.
On the other hand, she felt that only under cover of the darkness could
she consent to go anywhere in company with the village reprobate. Every
tongue in the place would be set wagging were she seen walking with
Copernicus Droop. She had not herself known how strong was the curiosity
which his startling theories and incredible story had awakened in her.
She looked up at her visitor with indecision in her eyes.
"I don't see how I could go now," she said. "Besides, it's mos' too
dark to see the thing, ain't it?"
"Not a mite," he replied, confidently. "The's lights inside I can turn
on, an' we'll see the hull thing better'n by daylight."
Then, as she still remained undecided, he continued, in an undertone:
"Cousin Phoebe's up in her room, ain't she? Ye might not get another
chance so easy."
He had guessed instinctively that, under the circumstances, Rebecca
preferred not revealing to Phoebe her own continued interest in the
wonderful machine.
The suggestion was vital. Phoebe was in all probability sulking in her
own bedroom, and in that event would not quit it for an hour. It seemed
now or never.
Rebecca rolled up her knitting work and rose to her feet.
"Jest wait here a spell," she said, rapidly. "I won't be a minute!"
* * * * *
Shortly afterward, two swiftly moving, shadowy figures emerged from the
little white gate and turned into a dark lane made more gloomy by
overhanging maples. This was the shortest route to Burnham's swamp.
Copernicus was now more hopeful. He could not but feel that, if the
elder sister came face to face with his marvellous machine, good must
result for his plans. Rebecca walked with nervous haste, dreading
Phoebe's possible discovery of this most unconventional conduct.
The night was moonless, and the two stumbled and groped their way down
the lane at a pace whose slowness exasperated Rebecca.
"Ef I'd a-known!" she exclaimed, under her breath.
"We're 'most there, Cousin Rebecca," said Copernicus, with deprecating
softness. "Here, give me holt o' yer hand while we climb over the wall.
Here's Burnham's swamp right now."
Accepting the proffered aid, Rebecca found herself in the midst of a
thicket of bushes, many of which were thorny and all of which seemed
bent upon repelling nocturnal adventurers.
Droop, going ahead, did his best to draw aside the obstinate twigs, and
Rebecca followed him with half-averted head, lifting her skirts and
walking sidewise.
"'Mighty lucky, 'tain't wet weather!" she mumbled.
At that moment her guide stood still.
"There!" he exclaimed, in a low, half-awed voice.
Rebecca stopped and gazed about. A little to the right the dark gray of
the sky was cut by a looming black mass of uncertain form.
It looked like the crouching phantom of some shapeless sea-monster.
Rebecca half expected to see it dissolve like a wind-driven fog.
Their physical sight could distinguish nothing of the outer
characteristics of this mysterious structure; but for this very reason,
the imagination was the more active. Rebecca, with all her directness of
nature and commonplace experience, felt in this unwonted presence that
sense of awed mystery which she would have called a "creepy feeling."
What unknown and incomprehensible forces were locked within that
formless mass? By what manner of race as yet unborn had its elements
been brought together--no, no--_would_ they be brought together? How
assume a comfortable mental attitude toward this creation whose present
existence so long antedated its own origin?
One sentiment, at least, Rebecca could entertain with hearty
consistency. Curiosity asserted its supremacy over every other feeling.
"Can't we get into the thing, an' light a candle or suthin'?" she said.
"Of course we can," said Droop. "That's what I brought ye here fer. Take
holt o' my hand an' lift yer feet, or you'll stumble."
Leading his companion by the hand, Copernicus approached the dark form,
moving with great caution over the clumps of grassy turf. Presently he
reached the side of the machine. Rebecca heard him strike it with his
hand two or three times, as though groping for something. Then she was
drawn forward again, and suddenly found herself entering an invisible
doorway. She stumbled on the threshold and flung out her free hand for
support. She clutched at a hand-rail that seemed to lead spirally
upward.
Droop's voice came out of the blackness.
"Jest wait here a minute," he said. "I'll go up an' turn on the light."
She heard him climbing a short flight of stairs, and a few moments later
a flood of light streamed from a doorway above her head, amply lighting
the little hallway in which Rebecca was standing.
The hand-rail to which she was already clinging skirted the iron stairs
leading to the light, and she started at once up this narrow spiral.
She was met at the door by Copernicus, who was smiling with a proud
complacency.
"Wal, Cousin Rebecca," he said, with a sweeping gesture indicating their
general surroundings, "what d'ye think o' this?"
They were standing at the head of a sort of companion-way in a roomy
antechamber much resembling the general cabin of a luxurious old-time
sailing-packet. The top of the stairs was placed between two windows in
one side wall of the machine, through which there was just then entering
a gentle breeze. Two similar openings faced these in the opposite side
wall, and under each of the four windows there was a long wooden bench
carrying a flat mattress cushion.
In the middle of the room, on a square deep-piled rug, stood a table
covered with a red cloth and surrounded by three or four solid-looking
upholstered chairs. Here were some books and papers, and directly over
the table a handsome electric chandelier hung from the ceiling of
dark-wood panels. This was the source of their present illumination.
"This here's the settin'-room," Droop explained. "An' these are the
state-rooms--that's what he called 'em."
He walked toward two doors in one of the end walls and, opening one of
them, turned the switch of the lamp within.
"'Lectric lights in it, like down to Keene," Rebecca remarked,
approaching the cabin and peering in.
She saw a small bedroom comfortably furnished. The carpet was apparently
new, and on the tastefully papered walls hung a number of small
oil-paintings.
Droop opened the other door.
"They're both alike," he said.
Rebecca glanced into the second apartment, which was indeed the
counterpart of its companion.
"Well, it wouldn't do no harm to sweep an' beat these carpets!" she
exclaimed. Then, slipping her forefinger gingerly over the edge of a
chair: "Look at that dust!" she said, severely, holding up her hand for
inspection.
But Droop had bustled off to another part of the room.
"Here's lockers under these window-seats," he explained, with a
dignified wave of the hand. "Here's books an' maps in this set o'
shelves. Here's a small pianner that plays itself when you turn on the
electricity----"
There was a stumbling crash and a suppressed cry at the foot of the
stairs.
With his heart in his mouth, Droop leaped to the chandelier and turned
out the lights; then rushed to the state-rooms and was about to turn
their switches as well, when a familiar voice greeted their ears from
below--
"Don't be scared--it's only Phoebe."
"What ever possessed--" began Rebecca, in a low tone.
But at that moment Phoebe's head appeared over the stair rail in the
light shed from the two state-rooms.
"Won't you light up again, Mr. Droop?" she said, merrily, smiling the
while into her sister's crestfallen face. "I heard you two leavin' the
house, an' I just guessed what you'd be up to. So I followed you down
here."
She dropped into one of the chairs beside the table just as Droop
relighted the lamps.
With one slender hand resting upon the table, she looked up into Droop's
face and went on:
"I was havin' a dreadful time, stumbling over stocks an' stones at every
step, till suddenly there was quite a light struck my face, and first I
knew I was lookin' right into your lighted windows. I guess we'll have a
pleasant meetin' here of all the folks in town pretty soon--not to
mention the skeeters, which are comin' right early this year!"
"Lands sakes!" cried Rebecca.
"There now!" exclaimed Copernicus, bustling toward the windows, "I must
be a nateral born fool!"
Phoebe laughed in high spirits at thought of her prank, while Droop
closed the tight iron shutters at each window, thus confining every ray
of light.
Rebecca seated herself opposite Phoebe and looked severely straight
before her with her hands folded in her lap. She was ashamed of her
curiosity and much chagrined at being discovered in this unconventional
situation by her younger sister.
Phoebe gazed about her and, having taken in the general aspect of the
antechamber in which they were assembled, she explored the two
state-rooms. Thence she returned for a more detailed survey. Droop
followed her about explaining everything, but Rebecca remained unmoved.
"What's all those dials on the wall, Mr. Droop?" asked the younger
sister.
"I wish't you'd call me Cousin Copernicus," said Droop, appealingly.
Phoebe ran up very close to a large steel dial-plate covered with
figures.
"Now what the land is this for?" she exclaimed.
"Thet," said Droop, slowly, "is an indicator of height above ground and
tells yer direction."
"And what d'ye do with this little handle?"
"Why, you set that for north or west or any other way, an' the hull
machine keeps headed that way until ye change it."
"Oh, is that the rudder?"
"No, that is fer settin' jest one course fer a long ride--like's ef we
was goin' north to the pole, ye know. The rudder's in here, 'long with
the other machinery."
He walked to one of the two doors which faced the state-rooms.
Phoebe followed him and found herself in the presence of a bewildering
array of controlling and guiding handles--gauges--test cocks--meters and
indicators. She was quite overawed, and listened with a new respect for
her distant relative as he explained the uses of the various
instruments. It was evident that he had quite mastered the significance
of each implement.
When Droop had completed his lecture, Phoebe found that she understood
the uses of three of the levers. The rest was a mystery to her.
"This is the starting-lever," she said. "This steers, and this reverses.
Is that it?"
"That's correct," said Droop, "an' if----"
She cut him short by whisking out of the room.
"What drives the thing?" she asked, as he meekly followed her.
"Oh, the's power storage an' all kinds o' works down below stairs."
"An' what's this room for?" she asked, opening the door next the
engine-room.
"Thet's the kitchen an' butler's pantry," said Droop. "It's mighty
finely fitted up, I tell ye. That future-man was what ye call a
conusure. My, but he could cook up fine victuals!"
Rebecca found this temptation stronger than her ill humor, and she rose
with alacrity and followed her companions into the now brightly lighted
kitchen.
Here the appointments were the completest possible, and, after she and
Phoebe had mastered the theory of the electric range, they agreed that
they had never seen such a satisfactory equipment.
Phoebe stood in the middle of the room and looked about her with
kindling eyes. The novelty of this adventure had intoxicated her.
Rebecca's enthusiasm was repeated threefold in the more youthful bosom
of her sister.
"My!" she cried, "wouldn't it be lovely if we could make this our house
down here for a while! What would the Mellicks an' the Tituses an'----"
"They'd take us for a lunatic asylum," Rebecca exclaimed, severely.
Phoebe considered a moment and then gravely replied:
"Yes, I s'pose they would."
Copernicus was pacing slowly up and down from range to china-closet and
back, rubbing his hands slowly over each other.
"I wish't you'd try to see ef ye couldn't change yer mind, Cousin
Phoebe," he said, earnestly. "Jest think of all there is in this
extrordnery vessel--what with kitchen an' little cunnin'
state-rooms--what with the hull machinery an' all--it's a sinful waste
to leave it all to rot away down in this here swamp when we might all go
back to the Centennial an' get rich as--as Solomon's temple!"
Phoebe led the way in silence to the outer room again, and Droop
carefully extinguished the lights in the kitchen and engine-room.
As the three stood together under the main chandelier their faces were
the exponents of three different moods.
Droop was wistful--anxious.
Rebecca looked grimly regretful.
In Phoebe's eyes there shone a cheerful light--but her expression was
enigmatic.
"Now let's go home," she said, briskly. "I've got somethin' that I want
to talk to Rebecca about. Can't you call in to-morrow mornin', Mr.
Droop?"
"Don't ye believe ye might change yer mind?" he asked, mournfully.
"We'll be through with the breakfast an' have things set to rights by
eight o'clock," said Phoebe.
CHAPTER III
A NOCTURNAL EVASION
Promptly at the appointed time, Copernicus Droop might have been seen
approaching the white cottage. Still nursing a faint hope, he walked
with nervous rapidity, mumbling and gesticulating in his excitement. He
attracted but little attention. His erratic movements were credited to
his usual potations, and no one whom he passed even gave him a second
glance.
Nearing the house he saw Phoebe leaning out of one of the second-story
windows. She had been gazing westward toward Burnham's swamp, but she
caught sight of Droop and nodded brightly to him. Then she drew in her
head and pulled down the window.
Phoebe opened the door as Copernicus entered the garden gate, and it
was at once apparent that her buoyant mood was still upon her, for she
actually offered her hand to her visitor as he stood at the threshold
wiping his feet.
"Good mornin'," she said. "I've ben tryin' to see if I could find the
Panchronicon out of my window. It's just wonderful how well it's hidden
in the bushes."
She led him to the parlor and offered him a seat.
"Where's Cousin Rebecca?" he said, as he carefully placed his hat on the
floor beside his chair.
Phoebe seated herself opposite to her visitor with her back to the
windows, so that her face was in shadow.
"Rebecca's upstairs," she replied.
Then, after a moment's pause: "She's packin' up," she said.
Droop straightened up excitedly.
"What--packin'!" he cried. "Hev ye decided ye'll go, then?"
"Well," said Phoebe, slowly, "we have an'--an' we haven't."
"What d'ye mean?"
"Why, Mr. Droop, it's just like this," she exclaimed, leaning forward
confidentially. "Ye see, Rebecca an' I are both just plumb crazy to try
that wonderful plan of cuttin' meridians at the North Pole--an' we're
wild fer a ride on that queer kind of a boat or whatever ye call it. At
the same time, Rebecca has to acknowledge that it's askin' too much of
me to go back to two years old an' live like a baby. For one thing, I
wouldn't have a thing to wear."
"But ye might make some clothes before ye start," Droop suggested.
"Mr. Droop!" Phoebe exclaimed, severely, "what _do_ you s'pose folks
would say if Rebecca and I was to set to work makin' baby clothes--two
old maids like us?"
Droop looked down in confusion and plucked at the edge of his coat.
"Phoebe Wise, you're only just tryin' to be smart fer argument!"
This sentence was delivered with a suddenness which was startling. Droop
looked up with a jump to find Rebecca standing at the door with a pile
of clean sheets on her arm.
She was gazing sternly at Phoebe, who appeared somewhat disconcerted.
"You know's well's I do," continued the elder sister, "that every one
o' your baby clothes is folded an' put away as good as new in the
attic."
Phoebe rallied quickly and repelled this attack with spirit.
"Well, I don't care. They'll stay right where they are, Rebecca," she
answered, with irritation. "You know we settled it last night that I
wasn't to be pestered about goin' back to 1876!"
"That's true," was the reply, "but don't you be givin' such fool reasons
for it. It's really just because you're afraid o' bein' whipped an' put
to bed--an' goodness knows, you deserve it!"
With this, Rebecca turned grimly and went into the garden to hang the
sheets up for an airing.
There was a moment's awkward pause, and then Phoebe broke the silence.
"Our plan's this, Mr. Droop," she said, "an' I hope you'll agree. We
want to have you take us to the North Pole and unwind about six years.
That'll take us back before the World's Fair in Chicago, when I was
eighteen years old, an' we can see fer ourselves how it feels to be
livin' backward an' growin' younger instead of older every minute."
"But what's the good of that?" Droop asked, querulously. "I ain't goin'
to do it jest fer fun. I'm growin' too old to waste time that way. My
plan was to make money with all them inventions."
"Well, an' why can't ye?" she replied, coaxingly. "There's that X-ray
invention, now. Why couldn't you show that at the World's Fair an' get a
patent fer it?"
"I don't understand that business," he replied, sharply. "Besides I
can't get one o' them X-ray machines--they cost a heap."
This was a blow to Phoebe's plan and she fell silent, thinking deeply.
She had foreseen that Droop would take only a mercenary view of the
matter and had relied upon the X-ray to provide him with a motive. But
if he refused this, what was she to do?
Suddenly her face lighted up.
"I've got it!" she cried. "You know those movin' picture boxes ye see
down to Keene, where ye turn a handle and a lot of photograph cards fly
along like rufflin' the leaves of a book. Why, it just makes things look
alive, Mr. Droop. I'm sure those weren't thought of six years ago.
They're span spinter new. Why won't they do?"
"I ain't got one o' those either," Droop grumbled. "I've got a kodak
an' a graphophone an' a lot o' Milliken's cough syrup with the
recipe----"
"Why there!" cried Phoebe, exultantly. "Milliken's cough syrup is only
four years old, ain't it?"
Droop did not reply, but his silence was a virtual assent.
"The's a mint o' money in that--you know there is, Mr. Droop," she
urged. "Why, I guess Mr. Milliken must have two or three millions,
hasn't he?"
Rebecca returned at this moment and seated herself on the haircloth
settle, nodding silently to Droop.
"What's about Mr. Milliken's money, Phoebe?" she asked.
"Why Mr. Droop says the X-ray is no good because it costs a heap and he
hasn't got a machine fer it--an' I was tellin' him that Milliken's cough
syrup was just as good--for that wasn't invented six years ago, an'----"
"Phoebe Wise, what do you mean!" exclaimed Rebecca. "Why, it would be
jest like robbery to take Mr. Milliken's syrup, an' palm it off as Mr.
Droop's. I'm surprised at ye!"
This attack upon the ethical plane struck Phoebe speechless. She
blushed and stammered, but had no reply to make. The seeming defeat
really concealed a victory, however, for it instantly converted
Copernicus into an ally.
"You don't understand the thing, Cousin Rebecca," he said, gently but
firmly. "Ye see ef we go six years back, it'll be a time when Mr.
Milliken hadn't ever thought of his cough syrup. How could we be
robbin' him of somethin' he hasn't got?"
Rebecca looked confused for a moment, but was not to be so easily
convinced.
"'Tain't somethin' he ain't thought of," she said, stoutly. "He's makin'
money out of it, an' ef we get back before him, why, when time comes
agin for him to invent it he won't have it to invent. I'm sure that's
jest as bad as robbin' him, ain't it?"
Phoebe looked anxiously at Copernicus and was much pleased to find him
apparently unmoved.
"Why, you certainly don't understand this yet," he insisted. "Milliken
ain't agoin' back six years with us, is he? He'll jest go right along
livin' as he's ben doin'."
"What!" Rebecca exclaimed. "Will he be livin' in one time an' we be
livin' in another--both at the same--" She stopped. What _was_ she
saying!
"No--no!" replied Copernicus. "He'll go on livin'. That's what he _will_
do. We'll go on havin' lived. Or to put it different--we _have_ gone on
livin' after we get back six years--to 1892. Ye see, we really have past
all the six years--so the's no harm in it. Milliken won't be hurt."
Rebecca glanced at Phoebe, in whose face she found her own perplexity
reflected. Then, throwing out her hands, as though pushing away her
crowding mental obstructions, she cried:
"There--there! I can't get the hang of it. It's too much for me!"
"Oh, when you've done it once it'll be all easy and clear," said Droop,
soothingly.
Phoebe looked hopefully into his face.
"Will you take us, Mr. Droop?" she asked.
"Oh, I s'pose I'll hev to."
"An' only unwind six years?"
"Yes--jest six years."
She jumped up excitedly.
"Then I'll be off to my packin'!"
She ran to the door and, pausing here, turned again to their visitor.
"Can we start to-night, Mr. Droop?"
"Yes, indeed!" he replied. "The sooner the better."
"That's splendid!" she cried, and ran quickly up the stairs.
The two older people sat for a while in melancholy silence, looking
down. Each had hoped for more than this. Copernicus tried to convince
himself that the profit from the cough syrup would comfort him for his
disappointment. Rebecca dismissed with a sigh the dreams which she had
allowed herself to entertain--those bright fictions centering on Joe
Chandler--not the subdued old bachelor of 1898, but the jolly young
fellow of the famous Centennial year.
At length Rebecca looked up and said:
"After all, Mr. Droop, come to think of it, you've no call to take us
with ye. I can't do ye any good--goin' back only six years."
"Yes ye can," said Droop. "I'll need somebody to help me keep house in
the Panchronicon. I ain't no hand at cookin' an' all, an' besides, it'll
be mighty lonely without anybody in there."
"Well," she rejoined, rising, "I'll jest go up an' finish my packin'."
"An' I'll go tend to mine."
As they parted at the front door, it was arranged that Droop was to
bring a wheelbarrow after supper and transport the sisters' belongings,
preparatory to their departure.
The rest of the day was spent in preparation for the momentous voyage.
Phoebe went to the little bank at Peltonville station and withdrew the
entire savings of herself and sister, much to the astonishment and
concern of the cashier. She walked all the way to the bank and back
alone, for it was obviously necessary to avoid inconvenient questions.
When the two sisters stood in their little dining-room with the heap of
greenbacks on the table before them, Rebecca was attacked by another
conscientious scruple.
"I don't hardly know as we're doin' right, Phoebe," she said, shaking
her head dubiously. "When we get back to 1892 we'd ought to find some
money in the bank already. Ef we hev this with us, too, seems to me
we'll hev more'n we're entitled to. Ain't it a good deal like cheatin'
the bank?"
"Mercy, no!" Phoebe exclaimed, pettishly. "You're forever raisin' some
trouble like that! Ain't this our money?"
"Yes--but----"
"Well, then, what's the use o' talkin' 'bout it? Just wait till we can
mention your trouble to Mr. Droop. He'll have a good answer for you."
"But s'posin' he can't answer it?" Rebecca insisted.
"Well, if he can't we can give back the difference to the bank."
So saying, Phoebe took her share of the bills and quickly left the
room.
"I've got lots of things to do before night," she remarked.
At promptly half-past nine all the lights in the house were
extinguished, and the two sisters sat together in the dark parlor
awaiting Copernicus. It was Rebecca who had insisted on putting out the
lights.
"Ef folks was to see lights here so late in the night," she said,
"they'd suspicion somethin' an' they might even call in."
Phoebe admitted the justness of this reasoning, and they had both
directed every endeavor to completing all their arrangements before
their accustomed bed-time.
It was not long after this that a stealthy step was heard on the gravel
path and Phoebe hurried to the door. Copernicus came in with a low
word of greeting and followed the ghostly shadow of his hostess into the
parlor.
The three stood together in the dark and conversed in an undertone,
like so many conspirators surrounded by spies.
"Hev ye got everythin' ready?" Droop asked.
"Yes," said Phoebe. "The's only two little trunks for you. Did you
bring the wheelbarrow?"
"Yep--I left it outside the gate. 'Twould hev made a lot of noise on the
gravel inside."
"That's right," said Phoebe. "I guess you'll not have any trouble to
carry both o' those trunks at once. We haven't packed only a few things,
'cause I expect we'll find all our old duds ready for us in 1892, won't
we?"
"Why, 'f course," said Droop.
"But how 'bout linen--sheets an' table-cloths an' all?" said Rebecca.
"We'll need some o' them on the trip, won't we?"
"I've got a hull slew o' them things in the Panchronicon," said
Copernicus. "Ye won't hev to bother a bit about sech things."
"How long do you s'pose it'll take to make the trip," asked Phoebe. "I
mean by the clock? We won't have to do any washing on the way, will we?"
"I don't see how we can," Rebecca broke in. "The's not a blessed tub on
the hull machine."
"No, no," said Droop, reassuringly. "We'll make a bee-line for the pole,
an' we'll go 'bout three times as fast as a lightnin' express train.
We'd ought to reach there in about twenty-four hours, I guess. Then
we'll take it easy cuttin' meridians, so's not to suffer from side
weight, an'----"
"Side weight!" exclaimed the two women together.
"Yes," said Droop. "That's a complaint ye get ef ye unwind the time too
fast. Ye see, growin' young isn't a thing folks is used to, an' it
disgrummages the hull constitution ef ye grow young too fast. Well, 's I
was a-sayin', I guess it'll take 'bout eighteen hours by the clock to
cut back six years. Thet's by the clock, ye understand. As a matter of
fact, of course, we'll be just six years less'n no time in finishin' the
trip."
"Well," said Phoebe, briskly, "that's no kind o' reason fer dawdlin'
about it now. Let's be startin'."
"Where's the trunks?" said Droop.
The trunks were pointed out, and with very little trouble Copernicus put
them onto the barrow. He then came to the door for his last
instructions.
"'S anythin' more?" he asked.
"No," said Rebecca. "We'll bring on our special duds in our arms. We'll
wait a spell an' come on separate."
The door was carefully closed and they soon heard the slight creak of
the weighted wheel as Droop set off with the trunks for Burnham's swamp.
"Now, then," said Phoebe, bustling into the parlor, "let's get our
things all together ready to start. Have ye got your satchel with the
money in it?"
Rebecca gently slapped a black leather bag hanging at her side.
"Here 'tis," she said.
"Let's see," Phoebe went on. "Here's my box with the letters an'
miniature, here's the box with the jewelry, an' here's that book Mrs.
Bolton gave me about Bacon writin' Shakespeare."
"Whatever air ye takin' that old book fer, Phoebe?"
"Why, to read on the train--I mean on the way, ye know. We'll likely
find it pretty pokey in that one room all day."
"I don't know what ye mean by 'all day,'" Rebecca exclaimed in a
discouraged tone. "So far's I see, th'ain't goin' to be any days.
What'll it feel like--livin' backward that way? D'ye guess it'll make us
feel sick, like ridin' backward in the cars?"
"Don't ask me," Phoebe exclaimed, despairingly. "'F I knew what 'twas
like, perhaps I wouldn't feel so like goin'."
She straightened herself suddenly and stood rigid.
"Hark!" she exclaimed. "Is that Mr. Droop comin' back, d'you s'pose?"
There were distinctly audible footsteps on the path.
Phoebe came out into the hall on tiptoe and stood beside her sister.
There was a knock on the door. The two sisters gripped each other's arms
excitedly.
"'Taint Copernicus!" Rebecca whispered very low.
The knock was repeated; rather louder this time. Then--
"Miss Wise--Miss Wise--are ye to home?"
It was a woman's voice.
"Sarah Allen!" Phoebe exclaimed under her breath.
"Whatever shall we do?" Rebecca replied.
"Miss Wise," the voice repeated, and then their visitor knocked again,
much more loudly.
"I'll go to the door," exclaimed Phoebe.
"But----"
"I must. She'll raise the whole town if I don't."
So saying, Phoebe walked noisily to the door and unlocked it.
"Is that you, Mis' Allen?" she asked.
The door was opened, and Phoebe found herself face to face with a
short, light woman whose white garments shone gray in the night.
"Why, you're up'n dressed!" exclaimed Mrs. Allen. She did not offer to
enter, but went on excitedly:
"Miss Phoebe," she said, "d'you know I b'lieve you've ben robbed."
"What!"
"Yes; on'y a minute ago I was a-comin' up the road from M'ria
Payson's--you know she's right sick an' I've ben givin' her
massidge--an' what sh'd I see but a man comin' out o' your gate with
suthin' on his shoulder. I couldn't see who 'twas, an' he was so quiet
an' sneaky without a light that I jest slipped behind a tree. You know
I've ben dreadful skeery ever sence Tom was brought home with his arm
broke after a fight with a strange man in the dark. Well, this man
to-night he put the bundle or what not into a wheelbarrow an' set off
quiet as a mouse. He went off down that way, an' says I to myself, 'It's
a robber ben burglin' at the Wise's house,' says I, an' I come straight
here to see ef ye was both murdered or what. Air ye all right? Hez he
broken yer door? Hev ye missed anythin'?"
As the little woman paused for breath, Phoebe seized her opportunity.
"Did you say he went off to the north, Mis' Allen?" she said, with
feigned excitement.
"Yes."
"Oh, dear--oh, dear!" cried Phoebe, wringing her hands. "Didn't I say
I heard a noise--I told you I heard a burglar, Rebecca," she went on,
hysterically, turning to her sister.
"Is Miss Rebecca there?" asked Mrs. Allen.
Rebecca came forward in silence. She was quite nonplussed. To tell the
truth, Phoebe's sudden outburst was as great a tax upon her nerves as
Mrs. Allen's unwelcome visit. Surely Phoebe had said nothing about a
burglar! It was Droop that Mrs. Allen had seen--of course it was. She
dared not say so in their visitor's presence, but she wondered mightily
at Phoebe's apparent perturbation.
Phoebe guessed her sister's mental confusion, and she sought to draw
Mrs. Allen's attention to herself to avoid the betrayal of their plans
which would certainly follow Rebecca's joining the conversation.
"Mis' Allen," she exclaimed, excitedly, "the's just one thing to be
done. Won't you run's quick's ever you can to Si Pray, an' ask him to
bring his gun? You won't meet the burglar 'cause he's gone the other
way. Rebecca 'nd I'll jest wait here for you an' Si. I'll get some hot
water from the kitchen, in case the burglar should come back while
you're gone. Oh, please will you do it?"
"Course I will," was the nervous reply. This hint of the possible return
of the robbers made an immediate retreat seem very desirable. "I'll go
right now. Won't be gone a minute. Lock your door now--quick!"
She turned and sped down the path. She had not reached the gate before
Phoebe walked rapidly into the parlor.
"Quick--quick!" she panted, frantically gathering up her belongings.
"Get your duds an' come along."
"But what d'you----"
"Come--come--come!" cried Phoebe. "Come quick or they'll all be here.
Gun and all!"
With her arm full of bundles, Phoebe rushed back through the hall and
out of the front door. Rebecca followed her, drawn along by the fiery
momentum of her sister.
"Lock the front door, Rebecca," Phoebe cried. Then, as she reached the
gate and found it fastened: "Here, I can't undo the gate. My hands are
full. Oh, _do_ hurry, Rebecca! We haven't a minute!"
The elder sister locked the front door and started down the path in
such a nervous fever that she left the key in the lock. Half way to the
gate she paused.
"Come on--come on!" Phoebe cried, stamping her foot.
"My land!" stammered Rebecca. "I've forgot everythin'!" She started
back, running with short, unaccustomed steps.
"My umbrella!" she gasped. "My recipes--my slips!"
Phoebe was speechless with anger and apprehension at this delay, and
Rebecca was therefore allowed to re-enter the house without objection.
In a short time she reappeared carrying an umbrella, two flower-pots,
and a folded newspaper.
"There!" she panted, as she came up to her sister and opened the gate.
"Now I guess I've got everythin'!"
Silently and swiftly the two women sped northward, following the
imaginary burglar, while the devoted Mrs. Allen ran breathless in the
opposite direction for Si Pray and his gun.
"We'll hev to go more careful here," said Rebecca as they turned into
the lane leading down to the swamp.
With many a stumble and some scratches they moved more slowly down the
rutted track until at length they reached the point where they were to
turn into the swamp.
Here the sisters leaned against the wall to rest and recover breath.
"My goodness, but that was a narrow escape!" murmured Phoebe.
"Yes," said Rebecca, with reproachful sadness; "but I'm afraid you paid
a heavy price fer it, Phoebe!"
"What do you mean?"
"Why, 's fur's I could make out, you told Mis' Allen a deliberate wrong
story, Phoebe Wise."
"What did I say?" said Phoebe, in shocked surprise.
"You said you hed told me you'd heerd a burglar!"
"Did I say that? Those very words?"
"Why, you know you did."
"Wasn't it a question, Rebecca?" Phoebe insisted. "Didn't I _ask_ you
ef I hadn't told you I heard a burglar?"
"No, it was a plain downright wrong story, Phoebe, an' you needn't to
try to sneak out of it."
Phoebe was silent for a few moments, and then Rebecca heard her laugh.
It was a very little, rippling thing--but it was genuine--there was real
light-heartedness behind it.
"Phoebe Wise!" exclaimed Rebecca, "how ken you laugh so? I wouldn't
hev the weight of sech a thing on my mind fer a good deal."
"Well, Rebecca," tittered her sister, "I didn't have it on my mind
yesterday, did I?"
"Course not--but----"
"An' won't it be yesterday for us mighty soon--yes, an' a heap longer
ago than that?"
She laughed again merrily and began to climb over the wall, a proceeding
not rendered easier by the various articles in her hands.
A few minutes later the two women had joined Copernicus within his
mysterious machine and were standing in the brightly lighted antechamber
at the head of the stairs.
"Well--well!" cried Droop, as he caught sight of the two women for the
first time in the light. "Where ever did ye get them funny dresses? Why,
your sleeves is all puffed out near the shoulders!"
"These are some of our old dresses," said Rebecca. "They was made in
1891, an' we thought they'd prob'bly be more in the fashion back in 1892
when we get there than our newer dresses."
"Never mind our dresses, Mr. Droop," said Phoebe. "Where can we put
down all these things? My arms are breakin' off."
"Right here, Cousin Phoebe."
Droop bustled over to the state-rooms, opening both the doors at once.
"Here's a room apiece fer ye. Take yer choice."
"Oh, but where'll you sleep?" said Phoebe. "P'raps Rebecca and I'd
better have one room together."
"Not a bit of it," said Droop. "I'll sleep on one o' them settles under
the windows. They're real comfortable."
"Well--just as you say."
The sisters entered their rooms and deposited their bundles, but
Phoebe returned at once and called to Droop, who had started down the
stairs.
"Mr. Droop, you've got to start right straight off. Mrs. Allen knows 't
you've carried off the trunk and she's comin' after us with Si Pray an'
a gun."
Just then they heard the loud barking of a dog. He was apparently
running rapidly down the lane.
"Sakes alive!" cried Phoebe, in alarm. "Slam to that door, Copernicus
Droop! Si has let his dog loose an' he's on your tracks!"
The baying was repeated--now much nearer. Droop clattered frantically
down the stairs, and shut the door with a bang. At the next moment a
heavy body leaped against it, and a man's voice was heard close at hand.
"Sic um, Touser, sic um! Where is he, boy?"
Up the stairs went Copernicus two steps at a time. He dashed into the
anteroom, pale and breathless.
"Lie down on the floor!" he shouted. "Lie down or ye'll get throwed
down. I'm agoin' to start her!"
By this time he had opened the engine-room door.
The two women promptly lay flat on their backs on the carpet.
Droop braced himself firmly and had just grasped the starting lever when
a cry from Rebecca arrested him.
"Copernicus Droop--hold on!" she cried.
He turned to her, his face full of anxious fear. Rebecca lay on her back
with her hands at her sides, but her head was raised stiffly from the
floor.
"Copernicus Droop," she said, solemnly, "hev ye brought any rum aboard
with ye? 'Cause if ye have I won't----"
She never concluded, for at this moment her head was jerked back sharply
against the floor by a tremendous upward leap of the machine.
There was a hissing roar as of a thousand rockets, and even as Rebecca
was wondering, half stunned, why she saw so many jumping lights, Si Pray
gazed open-mouthed at the ascension of a mysterious dark body apparently
aimed at the sky.
The Panchronicon had started.
CHAPTER IV
A CHANGE OF PLAN
It was long after their bed-time and the two sisters were utterly
exhausted; but as the mysterious structure within which they lay glided
northward between heaven and earth with the speed of a meteor, Rebecca
and Phoebe long courted sleep in vain.
The excitement of their past adventures, the unreal wonder of their
present situation, the bewildering possibilities and impossibilities of
their future plans--all these conspired to banish sleep until long past
midnight. It was not until, speeding due north with the unswerving
obedience of a magnet, their vessel was sailing far above the waters of
the upper Saguenay, that they at length sank to rest.
They were awakened next morning by a knocking upon Rebecca's door.
"It's pretty nigh eight-thirty," Droop cried. "I've got the kettle on
the range, but I don't know what to do nex'."
"What! Why! Who! Where! Sakes! what's this?"
Rebecca sat up in bed, unable to place herself.
"It's pretty nigh half-past eight," Copernicus repeated. "Long after
breakfast-time. I'm hungry!"
By this time Phoebe was wide awake.
"All right!" she cried. "We'll come in a minute."
Then Rebecca knew where she was--or rather realized that she did not
know. But fortunately a duty was awaiting her in the kitchen and this
steadied a mind which seemed to her to need some support in the midst of
these unwonted happenings.
Phoebe was the first to leave her bedroom. She had dressed with
frantic speed. In her haste to get to the windows and see the world from
the sky, she had secured her hair very imperfectly, and Droop was
favored with a charming display of bright locks, picturesquely
disarranged.
"Good-mornin', Cousin Phoebe," he said, with his suavest manner.
"Good-morning, Mr. Droop," Phoebe replied. "Where are we? Is
everything all right?"
She made straight for one of the windows the iron shutters of which were
now open.
"I wish't you'd call me Cousin Copernicus," Droop remarked.
"Oh--oh! What a beautiful world!"
Phoebe leaned her face close to the glass and gazed spell-bound at the
wonderful landscape spread before her.
The whole atmosphere seemed filled with a clear, cold sunlight whose
brilliance irradiated the giant sphere of earth so far away.
Directly below and to the right of their course, as far as she could
see, there was one vast expanse of dark blue sea, gilded dazzlingly over
one portion where the sun's beams were reflected. Far ahead to the north
and as far behind them the sea was bordered with the fantastic curves of
a faint blue coast dotted and lined with the shadows of many a hill and
mountain. It was a map on which she was gazing. Nature's own map--the
only perfect chart in the world.
So new--so intensely, almost painfully, beautiful was this scene that
Phoebe stood transfixed--fascinated. She did not even think of
speaking.
The scene was not so new to Droop--and besides he was a prey to an
insistent appetite. His mental energies, therefore, sought expression in
speech.
Approaching Phoebe's side, he said:
"Mighty pretty, ain't it?"
She did not reply, so he continued:
"That water right under us is Hudson Strait. The ocean to the right is
the Atlantic. Ye can see Hudson's Bay off to the left out o' one o' them
windows. I've ben lookin' it up on the map."
He strolled toward the table, as if inviting Phoebe to see his chart
which lay there unrolled. She did not follow him.
"Yes," he continued, "that's Hudson Strait, and we're four miles high,
an' that's all I'll tell ye till I have my breakfast."
He gazed wistfully at Phoebe, who did not move or speak, but let her
eyes wander in awed delight over the wonders thus brought before them.
Just then Rebecca emerged from her room.
"Good-mornin'," she said. "I guess I'm late."
"Good-mornin', Cousin Rebecca; I guess ye are a mite late. Cousin
Phoebe won't move--so I'm sayin' we're four miles high an' right over
Hudson Strait, an' that's all I'll tell ye till I get my breakfast."
"Goodness me!" exclaimed Rebecca. "Ain't that mos' too high, Mr. Droop?"
She hurried to the window and looked out.
"Sakes alive!" she gasped.
She was silent for a moment, awed in her turn by the immensity of the
prospect.
"Why--but--it's all water underneath!" she exclaimed at last. "Ef we was
to fall now, we'd be drowned!"
"Now don't you be a mite skeert," said Droop, with reassuring
politeness. "We've ben scootin' along like this all night an'--an' the
fact is, I've got the kettle on--p'raps it's b'iled over."
Rebecca turned from the window at once and made for the kitchen.
"Phoebe," she said, briskly, "you set the table now an' I'll hev
breakfast ready in a twinklin'."
Reluctantly Phoebe left the window and Droop soon had the satisfaction
of sauntering back and forth between kitchen and dining-table in pleased
supervision of the progress of both.
In due time a simple but substantial breakfast was in readiness, and
the three travellers were seated around the table partaking of the meal
each in his own way.
Droop was business-like, almost enthusiastic, in his voracious hunger.
Rebecca ate moderately and without haste, precisely as though seated in
the little Peltonville cottage. Phoebe ate but little. She was
overcome by the wonders she had seen, realizing for the first time the
marvellous situation in which she found herself.
It was not until the table was cleared and the two women were busy with
the dishes that conversation was resumed. Droop sat with his chair
tilted backward against the kitchen wall enjoying a quiet satisfaction
with his lot and a kindly mental attitude toward all men.
He glanced through the kitchen door at the barometer on the wall in the
outer room.
"We've climbed near a mile since before breakfast," he remarked.
Rebecca paused before hanging up the soap-shaker.
"Look here, Mr. Droop," she said, anxiously, "we are mos' too high
a'ready, I think. S'posin' we was to fall down. Where do you s'pose we'd
be?"
"Why, Rebecca," said Phoebe, laughing, "do you suppose five miles is
any worse than four? I guess we'd be killed by falling one mile jest as
quick as five."
"Quicker!" Droop exclaimed. "Considerable quicker, Cousin Rebecca, fer
it would take us a good deal longer to fall five miles than it would
one."
"But what ever's the use o' keepin' on a-climbin'?"
"Why, that's the nature of this machine," he replied. "Ye see, it runs
on the rocket principle by spurtin' out gases. Ef we want to go up off
the ground we squirt out under the machine an' that gives us a h'ist.
Then, when we get 'way up high, we spread out a pair o' big wings like
and start the propeller at the stern end o' the thing. Now them wings
on'y holds us up by bein' inclined a mite in front, and consequence is
we're mighty apt to climb a little right 'long."
"Well, but won't we get too high?" suggested Phoebe. "Ain't the air
too thin up very high?"
"Of course, we mustn't go too high," Droop conceded, "an' I was just
a-thinkin' it wouldn't go amiss to let down a spell."
He rose and started for the engine-room.
"How do you let down?" Phoebe asked, pausing in her work.
"Why, I jest turn the wings horizontal, ye know, an' then we sink very
slow till I incline 'em up again."
He disappeared. Phoebe gave the last of the dishes a brief touch of
the dish-towel and then ran into the main room to watch the barometer.
She was much interested to observe a gradual but continual decrease in
their altitude. She walked to the window but could see no apparent
change, save that they had now passed the sea and only the blue land
with silver streaks of river and indigo hill shadows was beneath them.
"How fast do you s'pose we're flyin', Mr. Droop?" she asked.
"There's the speed indicator," he said, pointing to one of the dials on
the wall. "Ye see it says we're a-hummin' along at about one hundred an'
thirty miles an hour."
"My gracious!" cried Phoebe. "What if we was to hit something!"
"Nothin' to hit," said Droop, with a smile. "Ye see, the's no sort o'
use goin' any slower, an' besides, this quick travellin' keeps us warm."
"Why, how's that?"
"The sides o' the machine rubbin' on the air," said Droop.
"That's so," Phoebe replied. "That's what heats up meteors so awful
hot, ain't it?"
Rebecca came out of the kitchen at this moment.
"I must say ye wasn't particler about gettin' all the pans to rights
'fore ye left the kitchen, Phoebe. Ben makin' the beds?"
"Land, no, Rebecca!" said Phoebe, blushing guiltily.
"Well, there!"
Rebecca said no more, but her set lips and puckered forehead spoke much
of displeasure as she stalked across to the state-rooms.
"Well, I declare to goodness!" she cried, as she opened her door. "Ye
hevn't even opened the window to air the rooms!"
Phoebe looked quite miserable at thought of her remissness, but
Copernicus came bravely to the rescue.
"The windows can't be opened, Cousin Rebecca," he said. "Ef ye was to
open one, 'twould blow yer head's bald as an egg in a minute."
"What!"
"Yes," said Phoebe, briskly, "I couldn't air the beds an' make 'em
because we're going one hundred and thirty odd miles an hour, Rebecca."
"D'you mean to tell me, Copernicus Droop," cried the outraged spinster,
"that I've got to go 'thout airin' my bed?"
"No, no," Copernicus said, soothingly. "The's special arrangements to
keep ventilation goin'. Jest leave the bed open half the day an' it'll
be all aired."
Rebecca looked far from pleased at this.
"I declare, ef I'd known of all these doin's," she muttered.
Unable to remain idle, she set to work "putting things to rights," as
she called it, while Phoebe took her book to the west window and was
soon lost in certain modern theories concerning the Baconian authorship
of Shakespeare's works.
"Is these duds yourn, Mr. Droop?" asked Rebecca, sharply, pointing to a
motley collection of goods piled in one corner of the main room.
"Yes," Droop replied, coming quickly to her side. "Them's some of the
inventions I'm carryin' along."
He stooped and gathered up a number of boxes and bundles in his arms.
Then he stood up and looked about him as though seeking a safe place for
their deposit.
"That's all right," said Rebecca. "Ye can put 'em right back, Mr. Droop.
I jest wanted to see whether the' was much dust back in there."
Droop replaced his goods with a sigh of relief. One box he retained,
however, and, placing it upon the table, proceeded to unpack it.
Rebecca now turned her attention to her own belongings. Lifting one of
her precious flower-pots carefully, she looked all about for a more
suitable location for her plants.
"Phoebe," she exclaimed at length, "where ever can I set my slips?
They ought to be in the sun there by the east window, but it'll dirt up
the coverin' of the settle."
Phoebe looked up from her book.
"Why don't ye spread out that newspaper you brought with you?" she said.
Rebecca shook her head.
"No," she replied, "I couldn't do thet. The's a lot o' fine recipes in
there--I never could make my sweet pickle as good as thet recipe in the
New York paper thet Molly sent me."
Phoebe laid down her book and walked over to her sister's side.
"Oh, the' must be some part of it you can use, Rebecca," she said. "Land
sakes!" she continued, laughing. "Why, it's the whole of the _New York
World_ for a Sunday--pictures an' all! Here--take this advertisin' piece
an' spread it out--so."
She tore off a portion of the voluminous paper and carefully spread it
out on one of the eastern settles.
"Whatever did you bring those slips with you for?" she asked.
Rebecca deposited the flower-pots carefully in the sun and slapped her
hands across each other to remove the dust on them.
"One o' them is off my best honeysuckle thet come from a slip thet Sam
Mellick brought from Japan in 1894. This geranium come off a plant thet
was given me by Arabella Slade, 'fore she died in 1896, an' she cut it
off'n a geranium thet come from a lot thet Joe Chandler's father raised
from slips cut off of some plants down to Boston in the ground that used
to belong to our great-grandfather Wilkins 'fore the Revolution."
This train of reasoning seemed satisfactory, and Phoebe turned to
resume her book.
Copernicus intercepted her as she passed the table.
"What d'ye think o' this little phonograph, Cousin Phoebe?" he said.
One of Droop's boxes stood open and beside it Phoebe saw a phonograph
with the usual spring motor and brass megaphone.
"I paid twenty-five fer that, secon' hand, down to Keene," said the
proud owner.
"There!" exclaimed Phoebe. "I've always wanted to know how those
things worked. I've heard 'em, you know, but I've never worked one."
"It's real easy," said Droop, quite delighted to find Phoebe so
interested. "Ye see, when it's wound up, all ye hev to do is to slip one
o' these wax cylinders on here--so."
He adjusted the cylinder, dropped the stylus and pushed the starting
lever.
Instantly the stentorian announcement rang out from the megaphone.
"The Last Rose of Summer--Sola--Sung by Signora Casta Diva--Edison
Record!"
"Goodness gracious sakes alive!" cried Rebecca, turning in affright.
"Who's that?"
Her two companions raised their right hands in a simultaneous appeal for
silence. Then the song began.
With open eyes and mouth, the amazed Rebecca drew slowly nearer, and
finally took her stand directly in front of the megaphone.
The song ended and Copernicus stopped the motor.
"Oh, ain't it lovely!" Phoebe cried.
"Well--I'll--be--switched!" Rebecca exclaimed, with slow emphasis. "Can
it sing anythin' else?"
"Didn't you never hear one afore, Cousin Rebecca?" Droop asked.
"I never did," she replied. "What on the face of the green airth does
it?"
"Have ye any funny ones?" Phoebe asked, quickly, fearful of receiving
a long scientific lecture.
"Yes," said Droop. "Here's a nigger minstrels. The's some jokes in it."
The loud preliminary announcement made Rebecca jump again, but while the
music and the songs and jokes were delivered, she stood earnestly
attentive throughout, while her companions grinned and giggled
alternately.
"Is thet all?" she asked at the conclusion.
"Thet's all," said Droop, as he removed the cylinder.
"Well, I don't see nothin' funny 'bout it," she said, plaintively.
Droop's pride was touched.
"Ah, but that ain't all it can do!" he cried. "Here's a blank cylinder.
You jest talk at the machine while it's runnin', an' it'll talk back all
you say."
This was too much for Rebecca's credulity, and Droop could not induce
her to talk into the trumpet.
"You can't make a fool o' me, Copernicus Droop," she exclaimed.
"You try, Cousin Phoebe," he said at last.
Phoebe looked dubiously at her sister as though half of opinion that
her shrewd example should be followed.
"You sure it'll do it?" she asked.
"Certain!" cried Copernicus, nodding his head with violence.
She stood a moment leaning over with her pretty lips close to the
trumpet.
Then she straightened up with a face of comical despair.
"I don't know what to say," she exclaimed.
Droop stopped the motor and looked about the room. Suddenly his eyes
brightened.
"There," he cried, pointing to the book Phoebe had been reading, "read
suthin' out o' that into it."
Phoebe opened the book at random, and as Droop started the motor again
she read the following lines slowly and distinctly into the trumpet:
"It is thus made clear from the indubitable evidence of the plays
themselves that Francis Bacon wrote the immortal works falsely ascribed
to William Shakespeare, and that the gigantic genius of this man was the
result of the possession of royal blood. In this unacknowledged son of
Elizabeth Tudor, Queen of England, was made manifest to all countries
and for all centuries the glorious powers inherent in the regal blood of
England."
"That'll do," said Droop. "Now jest hear it talk back."
He substituted the repeating stylus for the recording point and set the
motor in motion once more. To the complete stupefaction of Rebecca, the
repetition of Phoebe's words was perfect.
"Why! It's Phoebe's voice," she began, but Phoebe broke in upon her
suddenly.
"Why, see the hills on each side of us, Mr. Droop," she cried.
Droop glanced out and leaped a foot from the ground.
"Goramighty!" he screamed, "she'll strike!" He dashed to the engine-room
and threw up the forward edges of the aeroplanes. Instantly the vessel
swooped upward and the hills Phoebe had seen appeared to drop into
some great abyss.
The two women ran to a window and saw that they were over a bleak and
rocky island covered with ice and snow.
Droop came to their side, quite pale with fright.
"Great Moses!" he exclaimed. "I warn't more'n jest in time, I tell ye!
We was a-settlin' fast. A little more'n we'd ha' struck--" He snapped
the fingers of both hands and made a gesture expressive of the complete
destruction which would have resulted.
"I tell you what, Mr. Droop," said Rebecca, sternly, but with a little
shake in her voice, "you've got to jest tend to business and navigate
this thing we're a-ridin' on. You can't work and play too. Don't you say
anythin' more to Phoebe or me till we get to the pole. What time'll
that be?"
"About six or half-past, I expect," said Droop, humbly. "But I don't see
how I can be workin' all the time. The machine don't need it, an',
besides, I've got to eat, haven't I?"
"When it comes time fer your victuals, Phoebe'll watch the windows
an' the little clocks on the wall while I feed ye. But don't open yer
head agin now, only fer necessary talkin' an' eatin', till we get there.
I don't want any smash-ups 'round here."
Copernicus found it expedient to obey these instructions, and under
Rebecca's watchful generalship he was obliged to pace back and forth
from engine-room to window while Phoebe read and her sister knitted.
So passed the remainder of the day, save when at dinner-time the
famished man was relieved by his young lieutenant.
Immediately after supper, however, they all three posted themselves at
the windows, on the lookout for the North Pole. Droop slowed down the
propeller, and the aeroplanes being thus rendered less effective they
slowly descended.
They were passing over an endless plain of rough and ragged ice. In
every direction all the way to the horizon nothing could be seen but the
glare of white.
"How'll you know when we get there?" asked Phoebe.
Droop glanced apprehensively at Rebecca and replied in a whisper:
"We'll see the pole a-stickin' up. We can't go wrong, you know. The
Panchronicon is fixed to guide itself allus due north."
"You don't need to whisper--speak right up, Mr. Droop," said Rebecca,
sharply.
Copernicus started, looked nervously about and then stared out of the
window northward with a very business-like frown.
"Is the' really an' truly a pole there?" Phoebe asked.
"Yes," said Droop, shortly.
"An' can ye see the meridians jammed together like in the geographies?"
asked Rebecca.
"No," said Droop, "no, indeed--at least, I didn't see any."
"Why, Rebecca," said Phoebe, "the meridians are only conventional
signs, you know. They don't----"
"Hallo!" Droop cried, suddenly, "what's that?" He raised a spyglass with
which he had hitherto been playing and directed it northward for a few
seconds. Then he turned with a look of relief on his face.
"It's the pole!" he exclaimed.
Phoebe snatched the spyglass and applied it to her eye.
Yes, on the horizon she could discern a thin black line, rising
vertically from the plain of ice. Even as she looked it seemed to be
nearer, so rapid was their progress.
Droop went to the engine-room, lessened speed and brought the aeroplanes
to the horizontal. He could look directly forward through a thick glass
port directly over the starting-handle. Gradually the great machine
settled lower and lower. It was now running quite slowly and the
aeroplanes acted only as parachutes as they glided still forward toward
the black upright line.
In silence the three waited for the approaching end of this first stage
of their journey. A few hundred yards south of their goal they seemed
about to alight, but Droop slightly inclined the aeroplanes and speeded
up the propeller a little. Their vessel swept gently upward and
northward again, like a gull rising from the sea. Then Droop let it
settle again. Just as they were about to fall rather violently upon the
solid mass of ice below them, he projected a relatively small volume of
gas from beneath the structure. Its reaction eased their descent, and
they settled down without noise or shock.
They had arrived!
Copernicus came forward to the window and pointed to a tall, stout steel
pole projecting from the ice a few yards to the right of the vessel.
"Thet, neighbors, is the North Pole!" he said, with a sweeping wave of
the hand.
For some minutes the three voyagers stood in silence gazing through the
window at the famous pole. This, then, was the goal of so much heroic
endeavor! It was to reach this complete opposite of all that is
ordinarily attractive that countless ambitious men had suffered--that so
many had died!
"Well!" exclaimed Rebecca at length. "I be switched ef I see what there
is fer so many folks to make sech a fuss about!"
Droop scratched his head thoughtfully and made no reply. Surely it would
have been hard to point out any charms in the endless plain of opaque
ice hummocks, unrelieved save by that gaunt steel pole.
"Where's the open sea?" Rebecca asked, after a few moments' pause. "Dr.
Kane said the' was an open sea up here."
"Oh, Dr. Kane!" said Droop, contemptuously. "He's no 'count fer modern
facts."
"What I can't understand," said Phoebe, "is how it comes that, if
nobody's ever been up here, they all seem to know there's a North Pole
here."
"That's a fact," Rebecca exclaimed. "How'd they know about it? The'
ain't anythin' in the Bible 'bout it, is the'?"
Droop looked more cheerful at this and answered briskly:
"Oh, they don't know 'bout it. Ye see, that pole there ain't a nat'ral
product of the soil at all. Et's the future man done that--the man who
invented this Panchronicon and brought me up here before. He told me how
that he stuck that post in there to help him run this machine 'round and
'round fer cuttin' meridians."
"Oh!" exclaimed both sisters together.
"Yes," Droop continued. "D'ye see thet big iron ring 'round the pole,
lyin' on the ground?"
"I don't see any ground," said Rebecca, ruefully.
"Well, on the ice, then. Don't ye see it lyin' black there against the
snow?"
"Yes--yes, I see it," said Phoebe.
"Well, that's what I'm goin' to hitch the holdin' rope on to. You'll see
how it's done presently."
He glanced at the clock.
"Seven o'clock," he said. "I guessed mighty close when I said 'twould
take us twenty hours. We left Peltonville at ten-thirty last night."
"Seven o'clock!" cried Rebecca. "So 'tis. Why, what's the matter with
the sun. Ain't it goin' to set at all?"
"Not much!" said Droop, chuckling. "Sun don't set up here, Cousin
Rebecca. Not until winter-time, an' then et stays set till summer
again."
"Well!" was the breathless reply. "An' where in creation does it go when
it stays set?"
"Why, Rebecca," exclaimed Phoebe, "the sun is south of the equator in
winter, you know."
"Shinin' on the South Pole then," Droop added, nodding.
For a moment Rebecca looked from one to the other of her companions, and
then, realizing the necessity of keeping her mind within its accustomed
sphere, she changed the subject.
"Come now--the' ain't any wind to blow us away now, I hope. Let's open
our windows an' air out those state-rooms."
She started toward her door.
"Hold on!" cried Droop, extending his arm to stop her. "You don't want
to fall down dead o' cold, do ye?"
"What!"
"Don't you know what a North Pole is like fer weather an' sich?" Droop
continued. "Why, Cousin Rebecca, it's mos' any 'mount below zero
outside. Don't you open a window--not a tiny crack--if ye don't want to
freeze solid in a second."
"There!" Rebecca exclaimed. "You do provoke me beyond anythin',
Copernicus Droop! Ef I'd a-knowed the kind o' way we'd had to live--why,
there! It's wuss'n pigs!"
She marched indignantly into her room and closed the door. A moment
later she put out her head.
"Phoebe Wise," she said, "if you take my advice, you'll make your bed
an' tidy yer room at once. Ain't any use waitin' any longer fer a chance
to air."
Phoebe smiled and moved toward her own door.
"Thet's a good idea," said Droop. "You fix yer rooms an' I'll do some
figurin'. Ye see I've got to figure out how long it'll take us to get
back six years. I've a notion it'll take about eighteen hours, but I
ain't certain sure."
Poor Rebecca set to work in her rooms with far from enviable feelings.
Her curiosity had been largely satisfied and the unwonted conditions
were proving very trying indeed. Could she have set out with the
prospect of returning to those magical days of youth and courtship, as
Droop had originally proposed, the end would have justified the means.
But they could not do this now if they would, for Phoebe had left her
baby clothes behind. Thus her disappointment added to her burdens, and
she found herself wishing that she had never left her comfortable home,
however amazing had been her adventures.
"I could'v aired my bed at least," she muttered, as she turned the
mattress of her couch in the solitude of her chamber.
She found the long-accustomed details of chamber work a comfort and
solace, and, as she finally gazed about the tidy room at her completed
work, she felt far more contented with her lot than she had felt before
beginning.
"I guess I'll go help Phoebe," she thought. "The girl is that slow!"
As she came from her room she found Copernicus leaning over the table,
one hand buried in his hair and the other wielding a pencil. He was
absorbed in arithmetical calculations.
She did not disturb him, but turned and entered Phoebe's room without
the formality of knocking. As she opened the door, there was a sharp
clatter, as of a door or lid slamming.
"Who's there?" cried Phoebe, sharply.
She was seated on the floor in front of her trunk, and she looked up at
her sister with a flushed and startled face.
"Oh, it's you!" she said, guiltily.
Rebecca glanced at the bed.
It had not been touched.
"Well, I declare!" Rebecca exclaimed. "Ain't you ever agoin' to fix up
your room, Phoebe Wise?"
"Oh, in a minute, Rebecca. I was just agoin' over my trunk a minute."
She leaned back against the foot of the bed, and folding her hands gazed
pensively into vacancy, while Rebecca stared at her in astonishment.
"Do you know," Phoebe went on, "I've ben thinkin' it's awful mean not
to give you a chance to go back to 1876, Rebecca. Joe Chandler's a
mighty fine man!"
Rebecca gave vent to an unintelligible murmur and turned to Phoebe's
bed. She grasped the mattress and gave it a vicious shake as she turned
it over. She was probably only transferring to this inoffensive article
a process which she would gladly have applied elsewhere.
There was a long silence while Rebecca resentfully drew the sheets into
proper position, smoothed them with swift pats and caressings, and
tucked them neatly under at head and sides. Then came a soft, apologetic
voice.
"Rebecca!"
The spinster made no reply but applied herself to a mathematically
accurate adjustment of the top edge of the upper sheet.
"Rebecca!"
The second call was a little louder than the first, and there was a
queer half-sobbing, half-laughing catch in the speaker's voice that
commanded attention.
Rebecca looked up.
Phoebe was still sitting on the floor beside her trunk, but the trunk
was open now and the young woman's rosy face was peering with a
pathetic smile over a--what!--could it be!
Rebecca leaned forward in amazement.
Yes, it was! In Phoebe's outstretched hands was the dearest possible
little baby's undergarment--all of cambric, with narrow ribbons at the
neck.
For a few seconds the two sisters looked at each other over this
unexpected barrier. Then Phoebe's lips quivered into a pathetic curve
and she buried her face in the little garment, laughing and crying at
once.
Rebecca dropped helplessly into a chair.
"Phoebe Martin Wise!" she exclaimed. "Do you mean--hev you
brought----?"
She fell silent, and then, darting at her sister, she took her head in
her hands and deposited a sudden kiss on the smooth bright gold-brown
hair and whisked out of Phoebe's room and into her own.
In the meantime Copernicus was too deeply absorbed in his calculations
to notice these comings and goings. Apparently he had been led into the
most abstruse mathematical regions. Nothing short of the triple
integration of transcendental functions should have been adequate to
produce those lines of anxious care in his face as he slowly covered
sheet after sheet with figures.
He was at length startled from his preoccupation by a gentle voice at
his side.
"Can't I help, Mr. Droop?"
It was Phoebe, who, having made all right in her room and washed all
traces of tears from her face, had come to note Droop's progress.
Dazed, he raised his head and looked unexpectedly into a lovely face
made the more attractive by an expression only given by a sense of duty
unselfishly done.
"I--I wish'd you'd call me Cousin Copernicus," he said for the fifth
time.
She picked up one of the sheets on which he had been scribbling as
though she had not heard him, and said:
"Why, dear me! How comes it you have so much figurin' to do?"
"Well," he began, in a querulous tone, "it beats all creation how many
things a feller has to work out at once! Ye see, I've got a rope forty
foot long that's got to tie the Panchronicon to the North Pole while we
swing 'round to cut meridians. Now, then, the question is, How many
times an hour shall we swing 'round to get to 1892, an' how long's it
goin' to take an' how fast must I make the old thing hum along?"
"But you said eighteen hours by the clock would do it."
"Well, I jest guessed at that by the time the future man an' I took to
go back five weeks, ye know. But I can't seem to figur it out right."
Phoebe seated herself at the table and took up a blank sheet of paper.
"Please lend me your pencil," she said. "Now, then, every time you
whirl once 'round the pole to westward you lose one day, don't you?"
"That's it," said Droop, cheerfully. "Cuttin' twenty-four meridians----"
"And how many days in twenty-two years?" Phoebe broke in.
"You mean in six years."
"Why, no," she replied, glancing at Droop with a mischievous smile,
"it's twenty-two years back to 1876, ain't it?"
"To '76--why, but----"
He caught sight of her face and stopped short.
There came a pleased voice from one of the state-rooms.
"Yes, we've decided to go all the way back, Mr. Droop."
It was Rebecca.
She came forward and stood beside her sister, placing one hand
affectionately upon her shoulder.
Droop leaned back in his chair with both hands on the edge of the table.
"Goin' all the way! Why, but then----"
He leaped to his feet with a radiant face.
"Great Jumpin' Jerusha!" he cried.
Slapping his thigh he began to pace excitedly up and down.
"Why, then, we'll get all the big inventions out--kodak an' phonograph
and all. We'll marry Joe Chandler an' set things agoin' in two shakes
fer millions."
"Eight thousand and thirty-five," said Phoebe in a quiet voice,
putting her pencil to her lips. "We'll have to whirl round the pole
eight thousand and thirty-five times."
"Whose goin' to keep count?" asked Rebecca, cheerfully. Ah, how
different it all seemed now! Every dry detail was of interest.
Phoebe looked up at Droop, who now resumed his seat, somewhat sobered.
"Don't have to keep count," he replied. "See that indicator?" he
continued, pointing to a dial in the ceiling which had not been noticed
before. "That reads May 3, 1898, now, don't it? Well, it's fixed to keep
always tellin' the right date. It counts the whirls we make an' keeps
tabs on every day we go backward. Any time all ye hev to do is to read
that thing an' it'll tell ye jest what day 'tis."
"Then what do you want to calculate how often to whirl round?" asked
Phoebe, in disgusted tones.
"Well, ye see I want to plan out how long it'll take," Droop replied. "I
want to go slow so as to avoid side weight--but I don't want to go too
slow."
"I see," said Phoebe. "Well, then, how many times a minute did the
future man take you when you whirled back five weeks?"
"'Bout two times a minute."
"That's one hundred and twenty times every hour. Did you feel much side
weight then?"
"Scarcely any."
"Well, let's see. Divide eight thousand and thirty-five whirls by one
hundred and twenty, an' you get sixty-seven hours. So that, ef we go at
that rate it'll be two days and nineteen hours 'fore we get back to
1876."
"Don't talk about days," Droop objected. "It's sixty-seven hours by the
clock--but it's twenty-two years less than no time in days, ye know."
"Sixty-seven hours," said Phoebe. "Well, that ain't so bad, is it? Why
not go round twice a minute?"
"We can't air our beds fer three days, Phoebe," said Rebecca.
"But if we go much faster, we'll all be sick with this side weight
trouble that Mr. Droop tells about."
"I vote fer twice a minute," said Droop. And so twice a minute was
adopted.
"Air ye goin' to start to-night, Mr. Droop?" asked Rebecca.
"Well, no," he replied. "I think it's best to wait till to-morrow. Ye
see, the power that runs the Panchronicon is got out o' the sunlight
that falls on it. Of course, we're not all run out o' power by a good
lot, but we've used considerable, an' I think it's a little mite safer
to lie still fer a few hours here an' take in power from the sun. Ye
see, it'll shine steady on us all night, an' we'll store up enough power
to be sure o' reachin' 1876 in one clip."
"Well," said Rebecca, "ef thet's the plan, I'm goin' to bed right now.
It's after eight o'clock, an' I didn't get to sleep las' night till
goodness knows when. Good-night! Hedn't you better go, too, Phoebe?"
"I guess I will," said Phoebe, turning to Copernicus. "Good-night, Mr.
Droop."
"Good-night, Cousin Phoebe--good-night, Cousin Rebecca. I'll go to bed
myself, I b'lieve."
The two doors were closed and Droop proceeded to draw the steel shutters
in order to produce artificially the gloom not vouchsafed by a
too-persistent sun.
In half an hour all were asleep within the now motionless conveyance.
CHAPTER V
DROOP'S THEORY IN PRACTICE
All were up betimes when the faithful clock announced that it ought to
be morning. As for the sun, as though resenting the liberties about to
be taken by these adventurers with its normal functions, it refused to
set, and was found by the three travellers at the same altitude as the
night before.
Promptly after breakfast Droop proceeded to don a suit of furs which he
drew from a cupboard within the engine-room.
"Ye'd better hev suthin' hot ready when I come in again," he said. "I
'xpect I'll be nigh froze to death."
He drew on a huge cap of bear's fur which extended from his crown to his
shoulders. There was a small hole in front which exposed only his nose
and eyes.
"My, but you do look just like a pictur of Kris Kringle!" laughed
Phoebe. "Don't he, Rebecca?"
Rebecca came to the kitchen door wiping a dish with slow circular
movements of her towel.
"I don't guess you'll freeze very much with all that on," she remarked.
"Thet shows you don't know what seventy or eighty below zero means,"
said a muffled voice from within the fur cap. "You'll hev suthin' hot,
won't ye?" Droop continued, looking appealingly at Phoebe.
"The'll be a pot o' good hot tea," she said. "That'll warm you all
right."
Droop thought of something more stimulating and fragrant, but said
nothing as he returned to the cupboard. Here he drew forth an apparently
endless piece of stout rope. This he wound in a thick coil and hung over
his head.
"Now, then," he said, "when I get down you shet the door at the top of
the stairs tight, coz jest's soon's I open the outside door, thet hall's
goin' to freeze up solid."
"All right!" said Phoebe. "I'll see to it."
Droop descended the stairs with a heavy tread, and as he reached the
foot Phoebe closed the upper door, which she now noticed was provided
with weather-strips.
Then the two women stood at the windows on the right-hand side of the
vessel and watched Droop as he walked toward the pole. He raised the
huge iron ring, snapping over it a special coupling hook fixed to the
end of the rope.
Then he backed toward the vessel, unrolling the coil of rope as he moved
away from the pole. Evidently they were within the forty-foot limit from
the pole, for Droop had some rope to spare when he at length reached
under the machine to attach the end to a ring which the sisters could
not see.
He emerged from beneath the bulging side of the vessel swinging his
arms and blowing a mighty volume of steam, which turned to snow as it
left him. As he made directly for the entrance again, Phoebe ran to
the kitchen.
"Poor man, he'll be perished!" she exclaimed.
As Droop entered the room, bringing with him a bitter atmosphere,
Phoebe appeared with a large cup of hot tea.
"Here, Mr. Droop," she said, "drink this quick!"
Copernicus pulled off his cap and sat down to drink his tea without a
word. When he had finished it, he pulled back his chair with a sigh.
"Whillikins! But 'twas cold!" he exclaimed. "Seems mos' like heaven to
get into a nice warm room like this!"
"An' did ye get every thin' done right?" Rebecca asked.
"I guess I did," he said, emphatically. "I don't want to take no two
bites out o' that kind o' cherry."
He rose and proceeded to remove his fur coverings.
"Goin' to start right now?" said Phoebe.
"Might's well, I guess."
He proceeded to the engine-room, followed by Phoebe, who watched his
actions with the greatest interest.
"What you doin' with that handle?" she asked.
"That sets the airyplane on the uptilt. I'm only settin' it a mite--jest
'nough to keep the machine from sinkin' down when we get to movin'."
"How are you goin' to lift us up?"
"Just let out a mite o' gas below," said Droop. He suited the action to
the word, and, with a tremendous hissing beneath it, the vessel rose
slowly.
Droop pulled the starting lever and they moved forward with increasing
speed. When they had gathered way, he shut off the gas escape and
carefully readjusted the aeroplanes until the machine as a whole moved
horizontally.
There was felt a slight jerk as they reached the end of the rope, and
then they began to move in a circle from east to west.
Phoebe glanced at the clock.
"Just five minutes past eight," she said.
The sun was pouring its beams into the right-hand windows when they
started, but the shafts of light now began to sweep circularly across
the floor, and in a few moments, as they faced the sun, it ceased to
shine in from the right. Immediately afterward it shone in at the
left-hand windows and circled slowly around until again they were in
shadow with the sun behind them.
Droop took out his watch and timed their revolutions by the sun's
progress from window to window.
"'Bout one to the minute," he remarked. "Guess I'll speed her up a
mite."
Carefully he regulated the speed, timing their revolutions accurately.
"There!" he said at length. "I guess that's pretty nigh two to the
minute. D'ye feel any side weight?" he said, addressing his companions.
"No," said Rebecca.
Phoebe shook her head.
"You manage right well, Mr. Droop," she said. "You must have practised a
good deal."
"Oh, not much," he replied, greatly pleased. "The future man showed me
how to work it three--four times. It's simple 'nough when ye understand
the principles."
These remarks brought a new idea to Rebecca's mind.
"Why, Mr. Droop," she exclaimed, "whatever's the use o' you goin' back
to 1876! Why don't ye jest set up as the inventor o' this machine? I'm
sure thet ought to make yer everlastin' fortune!"
"Oh, I thought o' that," he said. "But it's one thing to know how to
work a thing an' it's a sight different to know how it's made an' all
that. The future man tried to explain all the new scientific principles
that was mixed into it--fer makin' power an' all--but I couldn't
understand that part at all."
"An' besides," exclaimed Phoebe, "it's a heap more fun to be the only
ones can use the thing, I think."
"Yes--seems like fun's all we're thinkin' of," said Rebecca, rising and
moving toward the kitchen. "We're jest settin' round doin' nothin'. I'll
finish with the breakfast things if you'll put to rights and dust,
Phoebe. We can't make beds till night with the windows tight shut."
These suggestions were followed by the two women, while Droop, picking
up the newspaper which Rebecca had brought, sat down to read.
After a long term of quiet reading, his attention was distracted by
Rebecca's voice.
"I declare to goodness, Phoebe!" she was saying. "Seems's if every
chance you get, you go to readin' those old letters."
"Well, the's one or two that's spelled so funny and written so badly
that I haven't been able yet to read them," Phoebe replied.
Droop looked over his paper. Phoebe and her sister were seated near
one of the windows on the opposite side.
"P'raps I could help ye, Cousin Phoebe," he said. "I've got mighty
strong eyesight."
"Oh, 'tain't a question of eyesight," Phoebe replied, laughing.
"Oh, I see," said Droop, smiling slyly, "letters from some young feller,
eh?"
He winked knowingly at Rebecca, who drew herself up indignantly and
looked severely down at her knitting.
Phoebe blushed, but replied quite calmly:
"Yes--some of them from a young man, but they weren't any of them
written to me."
"No?" said Droop. "Who was they to--'f I may ask?"
"They were all written to this lady."
Phoebe held something out for Droop's inspection, and he walked over
to take it.
He recognized at once the miniature on ivory which he had seen once
before in Peltonville.
"Well," he said, taking the portrait from her and eying it with his head
on one side, "if ye hadn't said 'twasn't you, I'd certainly a-thought
'twas. I'd mos' sworn 'twas your photygraph, Cousin Phoebe. Who is it,
anyway?"
"It isn't anybody," she replied, "but it _was_ Mistress Mary Burton of
Burton Hall. I'm one of her descendants, an' these are some letters she
had with her in this funny old carved box when she disappeared with her
lover. They fled to Holland and were married there, the story goes, an'
one o' their children came over in the early days o' New England. He
brought the letters an' the picture with him."
"Well, now! I want to know!" exclaimed Droop, in great admiration.
"'Twouldn't be perlite, I s'pose, to ask to hear some o' them letters?"
"Would you like to hear some of them?" Phoebe asked.
"I would fer a fact," he replied.
"Well, bring your chair over here and I'll read you one," she said.
Droop seated himself near the two sisters and Phoebe unfolded a large
and rather rough sheet of paper, yellow with age, on which Droop
perceived a bold scrawl in a faded ink.
"This seems to have been from Mary Burton's father," Phoebe said. "I
don't think he can have been a very nice man. This is what he says:
"'Dear Poll'--horrid nickname, isn't it?"
"Seems so to me," said Droop.
"'Dear Poll--I'm starting behind the grays for London, on my way, as you
know ere this, to be knighted by her Majesty. I send this ahead by
Gregory on Bess--she being fast enow for my purpose--which is to get
thee straight out of the grip of that'----"
Phoebe hesitated.
"He uses a bad word there," she said, in a low tone. "I'll go on and
leave that out."
"Yes, do," said Droop.
"'That ---- aunt of thine,'" she continued, reading. "'I know her tricks
and I learn how she hath suffered that'----"
"There's another," said Phoebe.
"Skip it," said Droop, gravely.
"'That ---- milk-and-water popinjay to come courting my Poll. So see you
follow Gregory, mistress, and without wait or parley come with him to
the Peacock Inn, where I lie to-night. The grays are in fine fettle and
thy black mare grows too fat for want of exercise. Thy mother-in-law
commands thy instant return with Gregory, having much business forward
with preparing gowns and fallals against our presentation to her
Majesty.'"
"It is signed 'Isaac Burton,'" said Phoebe, "and see, the paper was
sealed with a steel gauntlet."
Droop examined the seal carefully and then returned it, saying:
"Looks to me like a bunch of 'sparagus tumbled over on one side."
Phoebe laughed.
"But what always interests me most in this letter is the postscript,"
she said. "It reads: 'Thy mother thinks thou wilt make better speed if I
make thee to know that the players thou wottest of'----"
"What's a 'wottest'?" said Droop, in puzzled tones.
"Wottest means knowest--haven't you read Shakespeare?"
"No," said Droop.
"'The players thou wottest of are to stop at the Peacock, and will be
giving some sport there.'
"Now, those players always interest me," Phoebe continued. "Somehow I
can't help but believe that William Shakespeare----"
"Fiddle ends!" Rebecca interrupted. "I've heard that talk fifty-leven
times an' I'm pinin' fer relief. Mr. Droop, would you mind tellin' us
what the time o' year is now. Seems to me that sun has whirled in an'
out o' that window 'nough times to bring us back to the days o'
creation."
Droop consulted the date indicator and announced that it was now
September 5, 1897.
"Not a year yet!" cried the two women together.
"Why, no," said Copernicus. "Ye see, we are takin' about three hours to
lose a year."
"Fer the lands sakes!" cried Rebecca. "Can't we go a little faster?"
"My gracious, yes!" said Droop. "But I'm 'fraid o' the side weight fer
ye."
"I'd rather hev side weight than wait forever," said Rebecca, with a
grim smile.
"D'ye think ye could stand a little more speed, Cousin Phoebe?" said
Droop.
"We might try," she replied.
"Well, let's try, then," he said, and turned promptly to the
engine-room.
Very soon the difference in speed was felt, and as they found themselves
travelling more rapidly in a circle, the centrifugal force now became
distinctly perceptible.
The two women found themselves obliged to lean somewhat toward the
central pole to counteract this tendency, and as Copernicus emerged from
the engine-room he came toward the others at a decided angle to the
floor.
"There! now ye feel the side weight," he exclaimed.
"My, ain't it funny!" exclaimed Rebecca. "Thet's the way I've felt afore
now when the cars was goin' round a curve--kinder topplin' like."
"Why, that is the centrifugal force," Phoebe said, with dignity.
"It's the side weight--that's what I call it," Droop replied,
obstinately, and for some time there was silence.
"How many years back are we makin' by the hour now, Mr. Droop?" Rebecca
asked at length.
"Jest a little over two hours fer a year now," he replied.
"Well," said Rebecca, in a discontented tone, "I think the old
Panchronicle is rayther a slow actin' concern, considerin' th' amount o'
side weight it makes. I declare I'm mos' tired out leanin' over to one
side, like old man Titus's paralytic cow."
Phoebe laughed and Droop replied:
"If ye can't stand it or set it, why lay, Cousin Rebecca. The's good
settles all 'round."
With manifestly injured feelings Droop hunted up a book and sat down to
read in silence. The Panchronicon was his pet and he did not relish its
being thus contemned.
The remainder of the morning was spent in almost completely silent work
or reading. Droop scarce took his eyes from his book. Phoebe spent
part of the time deep in the Baconian work and part of the time
contemplating the monotonous landscape. Rebecca was dreaming of her
future past--or her past future, while her knitting grew steadily upon
its needles.
The midday meal was duly prepared and disposed of, and, as the afternoon
wore away, the three travellers began to examine the date indicator and
to ask themselves surreptitiously whether or not they actually felt any
younger. They took sly peeps at each other's faces to observe, if
possible, any signs of returning youth.
By supper-time there was certainly a less aged air about each of the
three and the elders inwardly congratulated themselves upon the
unmistakable effects of another twelve hours.
Not long after the supper dishes had been washed, Rebecca took Phoebe
aside and said:
"Phoebe, it seems to me you'd ought to be goin' to bed right soon,
now. You're only 'bout eighteen years old at present, an' you'll
certainly begin to grow smaller again very soon. It wouldn't hardly be
respectable fer ye to do yer shrinkin' out here."
This view of the probabilities had not yet struck Phoebe.
"Why, no!" she exclaimed, rather startled. "I--I don't know's I thought
about it. But I certainly don't want Mr. Droop to see me when my clothes
begin to hang loose."
Then a new problem presented itself.
"Come to think of it, Rebecca," she said, dolefully, "what'll I do all
the time between full-grown and baby size? I didn't bring anything but
the littlest clothes, you know."
"Thet's so," said Rebecca, thoughtfully. Then, after a pause: "I don't
see but ye'll hev to stay abed, Phoebe, till we get to th' end," she
said, sympathetically.
"There it is," said Phoebe, crossly. "Gettin' sent to bed
a'ready--even before I expected it."
"But 'tain't that, Phoebe," said Rebecca, with great concern. "I ain't
sendin' ye to bed--but--but--whatever else _can_ ye do with a _man_ in
the house!"
"Nothin'," Phoebe replied, with a toss of her chin.
She crossed the room and held out her hand to Droop.
"Good-night, Mr. Droop," she said.
Surprised at this sudden demonstration of friendship, he took her hand
and tipped his head to one side as he looked into her face.
"Next time you see me, I don't suppose you'll know me, I'll be so
little," she said, trying to laugh.
"I--I wish't you'd call me Cousin Copernicus," he said, coaxingly.
"Well, p'raps I will when I see ye again," she replied, freeing her hand
with a slight effort.
Rebecca retired shortly after her sister and Copernicus was once more
left alone. He rubbed his hands slowly, with a sense of satisfaction,
and glanced at the date dial.
"July 2, 1892," he said to himself. "I'm only thirty-four years old.
Don't feel any older than that, either."
He walked deliberately to the shutters, closed them and turned on the
electric light. Surrounded thus by the wonted conditions of night, it
was not long before he began to yawn. He removed his coat and shoes and
lay back in an easy chair to meditate at ease. He faced toward the pole
so that the "side weight" would tend to press him gently backward into
his chair and therefore not annoy him by calling for constant opposing
effort.
He soon dozed off and was whisked through a quick succession of
fantastic dreams. Then he awoke suddenly, and as though someone had
spoken to him. Listening intently, he only heard the low murmur of the
machinery below and the ticking of the many clocks and indicators all
about him.
He closed his eyes, intending to take up that last dream where he had
been interrupted. He recollected that he had been on the very point of
some delightful consummation, but just what it was he could not recall.
Sleep evaded him, however. His mind reverted to the all-important
question of the recovered years. He began to plan again.
This time he should not make his former mistakes. No--he would not only
make immense wealth promptly with the great inventions, he would give up
liquor forever. It would be so easy in 1876, for he had never taken up
the unfortunate habit until 1888.
Then--rich, young, sober, he would seek out a charming, rosy,
good-natured girl--something of the type of Phoebe, for instance. They
would be married and----
He got up at this and looked at the clock. It was after midnight. He
looked at the date indicator. It said October 9, 1890.
"Well, come!" he thought. "The old Panchronicon is a steady vessel.
She's keepin' right on."
He put on his shoes again, for something made him nervous and he wished
to walk up and down.
The first thing he did after his shoes were donned was to gaze at
himself in the mirror.
"Don't look any younger," he thought, "but I feel so." He walked across
the room once or twice.
"Shucks!" he exclaimed. "Couldn't expect to look younger in these old
duds, an' at this time o' night, too--tired like I am."
For some time he walked up and down, keeping his eyes resolutely from
the date indicator. Finally he threw himself down in the chair again and
closed his eyes, nervous and exhausted. He did not feel sleepy, but he
must have dozed, for the next time he looked at the clock it was
half-past one.
He put out the light and crossed to a settle. Here he lay at full length
courting sleep. When he awoke, he thought, refreshed and alert, he would
show his youth unmistakably.
But sleep would not return. He tried every position, every trick for
propitiating Morpheus. All in vain.
At length he rose again and turned on the light. It was two-fifteen.
This time he could not resist looking at the date indicator.
It said September 30, 1889.
Again he looked into the glass.
"My, but I'm nervous!" he thought as he turned away, disappointed. "I
look older than ever!"
As he paced the floor there all alone, he began to doubt for the first
time the success of his plan.
"It _must_ work right!" he said aloud. "Didn't I go back five weeks
with that future man? Didn't he----"
A fearful thought struck him. Had he perhaps made a mistake? Had they
been cutting meridians the wrong way?
But no; the indicator could not be wrong, and that registered a
constantly earlier date.
"Ah, I know!" he suddenly exclaimed. "I'll ask Cousin Phoebe."
He reflected a moment. Yes--the idea was a good one. She would be only
fifteen years old by this time, and must certainly have changed to an
extent of which he was at his age incapable. Besides, she had been
asleep, and nervous insomnia could not be responsible for retarding the
evidences of youth in her case. His agony of dread lest this great
experiment fail made him bold.
He walked directly to Phoebe's door and knocked--first softly, then
more loudly.
"Cousin Phoebe--Cousin Phoebe," he said.
After a few calls and knockings, there came a sleepy reply from within.
"Well--what--who is it?"
"It's Cousin Copernicus," he said. "Please tell me. Hev ye shrunk any
yet?"
"What--how?" The tones were very sleepy indeed.
"Hev ye shrunk any yet? Are ye growin' littler in there? Oh, please feel
fer the footboard with yer toe!"
He waited and heard a rustling as of someone moving in bed.
"Did ye feel the footboard?" he asked.
"Yes--kicked it good--now let me sleep." She was ill-natured with much
drowsiness.
Poor Droop staggered away from the door as though he had been struck.
All had failed, then. They were circling uselessly. Those inventions
would never be his. The golden dreams he had been nursing--oh,
impossible! It was unbearable!
He put both hands to his head and walked across the room. He paused
half-consciously before a small closet partly hidden in the wall.
With an instinctive movement, he touched a spring and the door slid
back. He drew from the cupboard thus revealed two bottles and a glass
and returned to seat himself at the table.
A half an hour later the Panchronicon, circling in the outer brightness
and silence, contained three unconscious travellers, and one of them sat
with his arms flung across the table supporting his head, and beside him
an empty bottle.
CHAPTER VI
SHIPWRECKED ON THE SANDS OF TIME
Rebecca was the first of the three to waken. Over her small window she
had hung a black shawl to keep out the light, and upon this screen were
thrown recurrent flashes of sunlight.
"Still a-swingin'," she murmured. "Wonder how fur back we be now!"
She was herself surprised at the eagerness she felt to observe at last
the results of their extraordinary attempt.
She rose quickly and was very soon ready to leave her room. She was
longing to see Phoebe--Phoebe as she had been when a girl.
Opening her door, she was astonished to find the lamps of the main room
aglow and to see Copernicus in his shirt-sleeves, asleep with his head
on the table.
As she stepped out of her own room, her senses were offended by the odor
of alcohol. With horror she realized that rum, the spirit of all the
sources of evil, had found its way into their abode.
She entertained so violent a repugnance for liquors and for men under
their influence that she could not bring herself to approach Copernicus.
"He's gone an' got drunk again," she muttered, glaring with helpless
anger at the bottles and then at him.
"Mister Droop! Copernicus Droop!" she cried in a high, sharp voice.
There was no reply.
She looked about her for something to prod him with. There was an
arm-chair on casters beside her door. She drew this to her and pushed it
with all her might toward the unconscious man.
The chair struck violently against Droop's seat, and even caused his
body to sway slightly, but he still slept and gave no sign.
"That settles it!" she exclaimed, with mingled disgust and alarm in her
face.
"What's the matter?"
It was Phoebe who called.
"It's me," said Rebecca. "Can I come in?"
"Yes."
Rebecca walked into Phoebe's room, which she found darkened like her
own. Her sister was in bed.
"What ever happened to you?" Phoebe asked. "Sounded as though ye'd
fallen down or somethin'."
Rebecca stood stiffly with her back to the closed door, her hands folded
before her.
"Copernicus Droop is tight! Dead drunk!" she exclaimed, with a shaking
voice.
"Drunk!" cried Phoebe. "Lands sakes!--an'--" She looked about her with
alarm. "Then what's happened to the machine?" she asked.
"Whirlin', whirlin', same as ever! Cuttin' meridians or sausage meat
fer all I care. I jest wish to goodness an' all creation I'd never ben
sech a plumb born nateral fool as to--oh, wouldn't I like to jest
_shake_ that man!" she broke out, letting her anger gain the upper hand.
Then Phoebe recalled their situation and their expectations of the
night before.
"Why, then I ought to be gettin' little pretty fast," she said, feeling
her arms. "I don't see's I've shrunk a mite, hev I?"
"No more'n I hev!" Rebecca exclaimed, hotly. "Nor you won't, nuther. Ye
might jest's well make up yer mind to it thet the whole business is
foolish folderols. We're a nice couple o' geese, we are, to come out
here to play 'Here we go round the mulberry bush' with the North
Pole--an' all along of a shif'less, notorious slave o' rum!"
She plumped herself into a chair and glared at the darkened window as
though fascinated by those ever-returning flashes of sunlight.
"Well--well--well!" murmured Phoebe.
She was much disappointed, and yet somehow she could not avoid a certain
pleasure in the thought that at least there was no fear of a return to
childhood.
"But what're we goin' to do?" she asked at length. "If Mr. Droop's so
tight he can't manage the machine, what'll we do. Here we are tied up to
the North Pole----"
"Oh, drat the old Panchronicon!" cried Rebecca.
Then rising in her wrath, she continued with energy: "The's one thing
I'm goin' to do right this blessed minute. I'm goin' to draw a hull
bucket o' cold water an' throw it over that mis'able critter in there!
Think o' him sleepin' on the table--the table as we eat our victuals
on!"
"No--no. Don't try to wake him up first!" cried Phoebe. "Let's have
breakfast--we can have it in the kitchen--an' then you can douse him
afterward. Just think of the wipin' an' cleanin' we'll have to do after
it. We'll be starved if we wait breakfast for all that ruction!"
Rebecca reflected a moment. Then:
"I guess ye're right, Phoebe," she said. "My, won't that carpet look a
sight! I'll go right an' fix up somethin' to eat, though goodness knows,
I'm not hungry."
She left Phoebe to dress and made a wide circuit to avoid even
approaching the table on her way to the kitchen. Not long afterward she
was followed by her sister, who took a similar roundabout path, for
Phoebe was quite as much in horror of drink and drinkers as Rebecca.
She glanced at the date indicator as she passed it.
"My sakes!" she said, as she entered the kitchen, "it's March 25, 1887.
Why, then's the time that I had the measles so bad. Don't you remember
when I was thirteen years old an' Dr. ----"
Rebecca broke in with a snort.
"Eighty-seven grandmothers!" she exclaimed. "Don't you get to frettin'
'bout gettin' the measles or anything else, Phoebe--only sof'nin' of
the brain--I guess we've both got that right bad!"
"I don't know 'bout that," Phoebe replied, as she began to set the
small table for two. "I believe we're gettin' back, after all, Rebecca.
The's one thing sure. Everybody knows that ye lose a day every time you
go round the world once from east to west, an' I'm sure we've gone round
often enough to lose years. I believe that indicator's all right."
"We've not ben goin' round the world, though," Rebecca replied. "That's
the p'int. This old iron clothes-pole out here ain't the hull world, I
can tell ye!"
"Well, but all the meridians----"
"Oh, bother yer meridians! I ain't seen one o' the things yet--nor you
hevn't, either, Phoebe Wise!"
Phoebe was not convinced. It seemed not at all unreasonable, after
all, that they should lose time without undergoing any physical change.
She concluded to argue the matter no further, however.
Their meal was eaten in silence. As they rose to clear the table,
Phoebe said:
"Th' ain't any use of goin' back to 1876 now, is there, Rebecca. Though
I do s'pose it won't make any difference to Mr. Droop. He can bring out
his inventions an'----"
"Not with my money, or Joe Chandler's, either," Rebecca declared,
firmly. "Not as Joe'd ask me to marry him now. He'd as soon think o'
marryin' his grandmother."
"Then what's the use o' goin' back any further. We might's well stop the
machine right now, so's not to have so many more turns to wind up
again."
"Fiddlesticks!" Rebecca exclaimed. "Don't you fret about that! Don't I
tell ye it's folderol! Tell ye what ye can do, though. Open them
shutters out there an' let in some sunlight. I've more'n half a mind to
open a window, too. Thet smell o' rum in there makes me sick."
"We'd freeze to death in a minute if we tried it," said Phoebe, as she
entered the main room.
She went to each of the four windows and opened all the shutters,
avoiding in the meantime even a glance at the middle of the room. She
did not forget the date indicator, however.
"Merry Christmas!" she cried, with a little laugh. "It's Christmas-day,
1886, Rebecca."
The engine-room door was open. Perhaps it was a sign of her returning
youth, but the fact is her fingers itched to get at those bright,
tempting brass and steel handles. Droop had explained their uses and she
felt sure she could manage the machinery. What a delightful thing it
would be to feel the Panchronicon obeying her hand!
"Really, Rebecca," she exclaimed, "if we're not going back to '76 after
all, I think it's a dreadful waste of time for us to be throwin' away
six months every hour this way."
"'Twon't be long," Rebecca replied, as she turned the hot water into her
dishpan. "You come in here an' help wash these dishes, an' ef I don't
soon wake up that mis'able--" She did not trust herself further, but
tightly compressed her lips and confined her rising choler.
"Why, Rebecca Wise," said Phoebe, "you know it will be hours before
that man's got sense enough to run this machine. I'm goin' to stop it
myself, right now."
Rebecca had just taken a hot plate from her pan, but she paused ere
setting it down, alarmed at Phoebe's temerity.
"Don't you dast to dream o' sech a thing, Phoebe!" she cried, with
frightened earnestness.
But Phoebe was confident, and crossed the threshold with a little
laugh.
"Why, Rebecca, what you scared of?" she said. "It's just as easy as
that--see!"
She pulled the starting lever.
The next instant found her flying out into the middle of the main room
following Droop, the table, and all the movable furniture. In the
kitchen there was a wild scream and a crash of crockery as Rebecca was
thrown against the rear partition.
Phoebe had pulled the lever the wrong way and the Panchronicon was
swiftly reaching full speed.
"Heavens and airth!" cried Rebecca.
"Whatever in gracious--" began the dismayed Phoebe.
She broke off in renewed terror as she found herself pushed by an
irresistible force to the side of the room.
"Here--here!" she heard from the kitchen. "What's this a-pullin'? Land
o' promise, Phoebe, come quick! I've got a stroke!"
"I can't come!" wailed Phoebe. "I'm jammed tight up against the wall.
It's as though I was nailed to it."
"Oh, why--why did ye touch that machinery!" cried Rebecca, and then said
no more.
The speed indicator pointed to one hundred and seventy-five miles an
hour. They were making one revolution around the pole each second--and
they were helpless.
As she found herself pushed outward by the immensely increased
centrifugal force, Phoebe found it possible to seat herself upon one
of the settles, and she now sat with her back pressed firmly against the
south wall of the room, only able by a strong effort to raise her head.
She turned to the right and found that Droop had found a couch on the
floor under the table and chairs at the rear of the room, also against
the south wall.
In the kitchen Rebecca had crouched down as she found herself forced
outward, and she now sat dazed on the kitchen floor surrounded by the
fragments of their breakfast all glued to the wall as tightly as
herself.
"Oh, dear--oh, dear!" she cried, closing her eyes. "Copernicus Droop
said that side weight would be terrible if we travelled too fast. Why,
I'm so heavy sideways I feel like as if I weighed 497-1/2 pounds like
that fat woman in the circus down to Keene."
"So do I," Phoebe said, "only I'm so dizzy, too, I can hardly think."
"Shet your eyes, like me," said Rebecca.
"I would only I can't keep 'em off the North Pole there," said Phoebe,
as she gazed fascinated through the north window opposite.
"Why, what's the matter with the child!" Rebecca exclaimed, in alarm.
"Air ye struck silly, Phoebe?"
"No, but I guess you'd want to watch it too if you could see that ring
we're tied to spinnin' round right close to the top of the pole.
There--there!" she continued, shrilly. "It'll fly right off in another
minute! There! Oh, dear!"
Their attachment did indeed appear precarious. The increased speed
acting through the inclined aeroplane had caused the vessel to rise
sharply, and the rope had raised the ring by which it was attached to
the pole until it came in contact with the steel ball at the top, when
it could rise no farther. Here the iron ring was grinding against and
under the retaining ball which alone prevented its slipping off the top
of the pole.
"I don't see's we'd be any wuss off ef we did come loose," said Rebecca,
with eyes still closed. "At least we wouldn't be gummed here ez tight's
if the walls was fly-paper."
"No, but we'd fly off at a tangent into infinite space, Rebecca Wise,"
Phoebe said, sharply.
"Where's that?" asked her sister. "I'll engage 'tain't any wuss place
than the North Pole."
"Why, it's off into the ether. There isn't any air there or anythin'.
An' they say it's fifty times colder than the North Pole."
"Who's ben there?"
"Why, nobody--" Phoebe began.
"Then let's drop it," snapped Rebecca. "Dr. Kane said the' was an open
sea at the North Pole--an' I'm sick o' bein' told about places nobody's
ever ben to before."
Phoebe was somewhat offended at this and there was a long silence,
during which she became more reassured touching the danger of breaking
away from the Pole. Soon she, too, was able to shut her eyes.
The silence was broken by a meek voice from under the table.
"Would you mind settin' off my chist?" said Droop.
There was no answer and he opened his eyes. His bewilderment and
surprise were intense when he discovered his situation.
Shutting his eyes again, he remarked:
"What you flashin' that bright light in my eyes so often for?"
Phoebe gave vent to a gentle sniff of contempt.
"My--my--my!" Droop continued, in meek amazement. "I s'pose I must hev
taken two whole bottles. I never, never felt so heavy's this before!
What's the old Pan lyin' on it's side fer?"
"'Tain't on its side," snapped Phoebe. "The old thing's run away,
Copernicus Droop, an' it's all your fault." There was a quiver in her
voice.
"Run away!" said Droop, opening his eyes again. "Where to?"
"Nowheres--jest whirlin'. Only it's goin' a mile a second, I do
believe--an' it'll fly off the pole soon--an'--an' we'll all be killed!"
she cried, bursting into tears.
She dragged her hands with great difficulty to her face against which
she found them pressed with considerable energy. Crying under these
circumstances was so very unusual and uncomfortable that she soon gave
it up.
"Oh, I see! It's the side weight holds me here. Where are you?"
There was no reply, so he turned his head and eyes this way and that
until at length he spied Phoebe on the settle, farther forward.
"Am I under the table?" he said. "Where's Cousin Rebecca? Was she
pressed out through the wall?"
"I'm out here in the kitchen, Copernicus Droop," she cried. "I wish to
goodness you'd ben pressed in through the walls of the lock-up 'fore
ever ye brought me'n Phoebe into this mess. Ef you're a man or half
one, you'll go and stop this pesky old Panchronicle an' give us a chance
to move."
"How can I go?" he cried, peevishly. "What the lands sakes did you go
an' make the machine run away for? Couldn't ye leave the machinery
alone?"
"I didn't touch your old machine!" cried Rebecca. "Phoebe thought we'd
be twisted back of our first birthday ef the thing wasn't stopped, an'
she pulled the handle the wrong way, that's all!"
Droop rolled his eyes about eagerly for a glimpse of the date indicator.
"What's the date, Cousin Phoebe?" he asked.
"April 4, 1884--no, April 3d--2d--oh, dear, it's goin' back so fast I
can't tell ye the truth about it!"
"Early in 1884," Droop repeated, in awe-struck accents. "An' we're
a-whirlin' off one day every second--just about one year in six minutes.
Great Criminy crickets! When was you born, Cousin Phoebe?"
"Second of April, 1874."
"Ten years. One year in six minutes--gives ye jest one hour to live.
Then you'll go out--bang!--like a candle. I'll go next, and Cousin
Rebecca last."
"Well!" exclaimed Rebecca, angrily, "ef I can hev the pleasure o' bein'
rid o' you, Copernicus Droop, it'll be cheap at the price--but the's no
sech luck. Ef you think ye can fool us any more with yer twaddle 'bout
cuttin' meridians, ye're mistaken--that's all I can say."
Droop was making desperate efforts to climb along the floor and reach
the engine-room, but, although by dint of gigantic struggles he managed
to make his way a few feet, he was then obliged to pause for breath,
whereupon he slid gently and ignominiously back to his nook under the
table.
Here he found himself in contact with a corked bottle. He looked at it
and felt comforted. At least he had access to forgetfulness whenever he
pleased to seek it.
The two women found it wisest to lie quiet and speak but little. The
combined rotary movement and sense of weight were nervously disturbing,
and for a long time no one of the three spoke. Only once in the middle
of the forenoon did Phoebe address Droop.
"Whatever will be the end o' this?" she said.
"Why, we'll keep on whirlin' till the power gives out," he replied. "Ye
hevn't much time to live now, hev ye?"
With a throb of fear felt for the first time, Phoebe looked at the
indicator.
"It's May, 1874," she said.
"Jest a month--thirty seconds," he said, sadly.
"Copernicus Droop, do you mean it?" screamed Rebecca from the kitchen.
"Unless the power gives out before then," he replied. "I don't suppose
ye want to make yer will, do ye?"
"Stuff!" said Phoebe, bravely, but her gaze was fixed anxiously on the
indicator, now fast approaching the 2d of April.
"Oh, dear! 'F I could only see ye, Phoebe!" cried Rebecca. "I know
he's a mis'able deceivin' man, but if--if--oh, Phoebe, can't ye
holler!"
"It's April 8th--good-bye!" Phoebe said, faintly.
"Phoebe--Phoebe!"
"Hurray--hurray! It's March 31st, and here I am!"
Phoebe tried to clap her hands, but the effort was in vain.
"I allus said it was folderol," said Rebecca, sternly. "Oh, but I'd like
to throw somethin' at that Copernicus Droop!"
"Come to think of it," said Droop, "that future man must hev come back
long, long before his birthday."
"Why didn't ye say that sooner?" cried Rebecca.
There was no further conversation until long afterward, when Rebecca
suddenly remarked:
"Aren't ye hungry, Phoebe?"
"Why, it's gettin' along to dinner-time, ain't it?" she replied. "I
don't see, though, how I'm to get any victuals, do you?"
"Why, the's bread an' other scraps slammed up against the wall here all
round me," said Rebecca. "Couldn't we fix some way to get some of 'em to
ye?"
Phoebe looked anxiously about and finally caught sight of her sister's
knitting work near at hand. It proved to be just within reach, and by
slow degrees and much effort she brought it into her lap within easy
reach of both her heavy hands.
"Oh, dear!" she said, "I feel's if both my arms had turned to lead.
Here, Rebecca, I'm goin' to see if I can roll your ball o' yarn along
the floor through the kitchen door. The centrifugal force will bring it
to you. Then you can cut the yarn an' tie somethin' on the end for me to
eat an' I'll haul it back through the door."
"That's jest the thing, Phoebe. Go on--I'm ready."
The theory seemed excellent, as Rebecca had fortunately been working
with a very tough flaxen yarn; but so great was the apparent weight of
Phoebe's arms that it was only after a long series of trials ending in
failures that she finally succeeded.
"I've got it!" cried Rebecca, triumphantly. "Now, then, I've got a slice
of ham and two slices of bread----"
"Don't send ham," said Phoebe. "I'd be sure to eat it if I had it, an'
'twould make me fearful dry. I'm sure I don't see how I'm to get any
water in here."
"Thet's so," said Rebecca. "Well, here's an apple and two slices of
bread."
"Are you keepin' enough for yourself, Rebecca?"
"Enough an' to spare," she replied. "Now, then--all ready! Pull 'em
along!"
Phoebe obeyed and soon had secured possession of the frugal meal which
Rebecca had been able to convey to her.
She offered a portion of her ration to Droop, but he declined it, saying
he had no appetite. He had lapsed into a kind of waking reverie and
scarce knew what was going on about him.
The two women also were somewhat stupefied by the continual rotation and
their enforced immobility. They spoke but seldom and must have dozed
frequently, for Phoebe was much surprised to find, on looking at the
clock, that it was half-past five.
She glanced at the date indicator.
"Why, Rebecca!" she cried. "Here 'tis November, 1804!"
"My land!" cried Rebecca, forgetting her scepticism. "What do you s'pose
they're doin' in New Hampshire now, Phoebe?"
"It's 'bout election time, Rebecca. They're probably votin' for Adams or
Madison or somebody like that."
"My stars!" said Rebecca. "What ever shall we do ef this old machine
goes on back of the Revolution! I should hate to go back an' worry
through all them terrible times."
"We'll be lucky if we stop there," said Phoebe. "I only hope to
gracious we won't go back to Columbus or King Alfred."
"Oh, I hope not!" said Rebecca, with a shudder. "Folks ud think we was
crazy to be talkin' 'bout America then."
Phoebe tried to toss her head.
"If 'twas in Alfred's time," she said, "they couldn't understand _what_
we was talkin' about."
"Phoebe Wise! What do you mean?"
"I mean just that. There wasn't any English language then.
Besides--who's to say the old thing won't whirl us back to the days of
the Greeks an' Romans? We could see Socrates and Pericles and Croesus
and----"
"Oh, I'd love to see Croesus!" Rebecca broke in. "He's the richest man
that ever lived!"
"Yes--and perhaps we'll go back of then and see Abraham and Noah."
"Ef we could see Noah, 'twould be worth while," said Rebecca. "Joe
Forrest said he didn't believe about the flood. He said Noah couldn't
hev packed all them animals in tight enough to hev got 'em all in the
Ark. I'd like mighty well if I could ask Noah himself 'bout it."
"He couldn't understand ye," said Phoebe. "All he spoke was Hebrew, ye
know."
"Oh!" exclaimed Rebecca. Then, after a pause: "S'pose we went back to
the tower of Babel. Couldn't we find the folks that was struck with the
English language an' get one of 'em to go back an' speak to Noah?"
"What good would that do? If he was struck with English he wouldn't know
Hebrew any more. That's what made-- But there!" she exclaimed, "what
ninnies we are!"
There was a long pause. After many minutes, Rebecca asked one more
question.
"Do you s'pose the flood would come up as fur's this, Phoebe?"
"I don't know, Rebecca. The Bible says the whole earth, you know."
And so passed the slow hours. When they were not dozing they were either
nibbling frugally the scant fare in reach or conversing by short
snatches at long intervals.
For thirty hours had they thus whirled ceaselessly around that circle,
when Phoebe, glancing through the window at the ring to which their
rope was attached, noticed that its constant rubbing against the ball at
the top of the pole had worn it nearly through.
"My goodness, Rebecca!" she cried. "I believe we're goin' off at a
tangent in a minute."
"What? How?"
"The ring on the pole is nigh worn out. I believe it'll break in a
minute."
"If it breaks we'll move straight an' get rid o' this side weight, won't
we?"
"Yes--but goodness only knows where we'll fly to."
"Why--ain't Mr. Droop there? If the side weight goes, he can get into
the engine-room an' let us down easy."
"That's so!" cried Phoebe. "Oh, won't it be grand to stand still a
minute after all this traipsin' around and around! Mr. Droop," she
continued, "do you hear? You'd better be gettin' ready to take hold an'
stop the Panchronicon, 'cause we're goin' to break loose in half no
time."
There was no reply. Nor could any calling or pleading elicit an answer.
Droop had yielded to his thirst and was again sleeping the sleep of the
unregenerate.
"Oh, Rebecca, what-- Oh--oo--oo!"
There was a loud scream from both the sisters as the iron ring, worn
through by long rubbing, finally snapped asunder.
The tremendous pressure was suddenly lifted, and the two women were
free.
With a single impulse, they flew toward the kitchen door and fell into
each other's arms.
The Panchronicon had gone off at a tangent at last!
"Oh, Rebecca--Rebecca!" cried Phoebe, in tears. "I was afraid I'd
never see you again!"
Rebecca cried a little too, and patted her sister's shoulder in silence
a moment.
"There, deary!" she said, after awhile. "Now let's set down an' hev a
good cup o' tea. Then we can go to bed comfortable."
"But, Rebecca," said Phoebe, stepping back and wiping her eyes, "what
shall we do about the Panchronicon? We're jest makin' fer Infinite
Space, or somewheres, as fast as we can go."
"Can't help it, Phoebe. Ye sha'n't touch a thing in that engine-room
this day--not while I'm here. Ye might blow us up the nex' time. No--I
guess we'll jest hev to trust in the Lord. He brought us into this
pickle, an' it's fer Him to see us out of it."
With this comforting reflection the two sisters brewed a pot of tea,
and after partaking of the refreshing decoction, went to their
respective beds.
"I declare, I'm dog tired!" said Rebecca.
"So'm I," said Phoebe.
Those were their last words for many hours.
CHAPTER VII
NEW TIES AND OLD RELATIONS
How long they slept after their extraordinary experience with the
runaway air-ship neither Rebecca nor Phoebe ever knew; but when they
awoke all was still, and it was evidently dark outside, for no ray of
light found its way past the hangings they had placed over their
windows.
There was something uncanny in the total silence. Even the noise of the
machinery was stilled, and the two sisters dressed together in Rebecca's
room for company's sake.
"Do you suppose we've arrived in Infinite Space yet?" Rebecca asked.
"It's still enough fer it," Phoebe replied, in a low voice. "But I
don't hear the Panchronicon's machinery any more. It must have run down
entirely, wherever we are."
At that moment there was borne faintly to their ears the distant crowing
of a cock.
"Well, there!" said Rebecca, with an expression of immense relief, "I
don't believe the's any hens an' roosters in Infinite Space, is the'?"
Phoebe laughed and shook her head as she ran to the window. She drew
aside the shawl hanging before the glass and peered out.
The first gleams of dawn were dispelling the night, and against a dark
gray sky she saw the branches of thickly crowding trees.
Dropping the shawl, she turned eagerly to her sister.
"Rebecca Wise!" she exclaimed. "As sure as you're alive, we're back safe
on the ground again. We're in the woods."
"Mos' likely Putnam's wood lot," said Rebecca, with great satisfaction
as she finally adjusted her cameo brooch. "Gracious! Won't I be glad to
see all the folks again!"
She pushed open her door and, followed by Phoebe, entered the main
room. Here all was gloom, but they could hear Droop's breathing, and
knew that he was still sleeping under the table in the corner.
"For the lands sakes! Let's get out in the fresh air," Rebecca exclaimed
as she groped her way toward the stairs. "You keep a-holt o' me,
Phoebe. That's right. We'll get out o' here an' make rabbit tracks fer
home, I tell ye. We can come back later for our duds when that mis'able
specimen is sober fer awhile again."
Slowly the two made their way down the winding stairs to the lower hall,
where, after much fumbling, they found the door handle and lock.
As they emerged from the prison that had so long confined them, a cool
morning zephyr swept their faces, bringing with it once more the
well-known voice of distant chanticleer.
They walked across the springing turf a few yards and were then able to
make out the looming black mass of some building beyond the end of the
air-ship.
"Goodness!" Rebecca whispered. "This ain't Peltonville, Phoebe. There
ain't a house in the town as high as that, 'less it's the meetin'-house,
an' 'tain't the right shape fer that."
They advanced stealthily toward the newly discovered building, in which
not a single light was to be seen.
"In good sooth," Phoebe exclaimed, putting one hand on her sister's
arm, "it hath an air of witchcraft! Dost not feel cold chills in thee,
Rebecca?"
Rebecca stopped short, stiff with amazement.
"What's come over ye?" she asked, trying to peer into her sister's face.
"Whatever makes ye talk like that, child?"
Phoebe laughed nervously and, taking her sister's arm, pressed close
up to her.
"I don't know, dear. Did I speak funny?" she asked.
"Why you know you did. What's the use o' tryin' to scare a body with
gibberish? This place is creepy 'nough now."
As she spoke, they reached the door of the strange building. They could
see that it stood open, and even as they paused near the threshold
another puff of air passed them, and they heard a door squeak on its
rusty hinges.
They stood and listened breathlessly, peering into the dark interior
whence there was borne to their nostrils a musty odor. A large bat
whisked across the opening, and as they started back alarmed he returned
with swift zig-zag cuts and vanished ghostlike into the house.
"It's deserted," whispered Rebecca.
"Perhaps it's haunted," Phoebe replied.
"Well, we needn't go in, I guess," said Rebecca, turning from the door
and starting briskly away. "Come on this way, Phoebe--look out fer the
trees--lands! Did y'ever see so many?"
A few steps brought them to a high brick wall, against which flowers,
weeds, and vines grew rank together. They followed this wall, walking
more rapidly, for the day was breaking in earnest and groping was
needless now. Presently they came to a spot where the wall was broken
away, leaving an opening just broad enough to admit a man's body.
Rebecca squeezed boldly through and Phoebe followed her, rather for
company's sake than with any curiosity to see what was beyond.
They found themselves in a sort of open common, stretching to the edge
of a broad roadway about a hundred yards from where they stood. On the
other side of the road a cluster of gabled cottages was visible against
the faint rose tint of the eastern sky.
As Phoebe came to her sister's side, she clutched her arm excitedly:
"Rebecca!" she exclaimed. "'Tis Newington, as true as I live! Newington
and Blackman Street!"
Suddenly she sat down in the grass and hid her face in her hands.
"What d'ye mean?" said Rebecca, looking down at her sister with a
puzzled expression. "Where's Newington--I never heerd tell of Blackman
Street. Air ye thinkin' of Boston, or----"
Phoebe interrupted her by leaping to her feet and starting back to the
opening in the wall.
"Come back, Rebecca!" she exclaimed. "Come back quick!"
Rebecca followed her sister in some alarm. Phoebe must have been taken
suddenly ill, she thought. Perhaps they had reached one of those regions
infected by fevers of which she had heard from time to time.
In silence the two women hurried back to the Panchronicon, whose uncouth
form was now quite plainly visible behind the trees into the midst of
which it had fallen when the power stored within it was exhausted.
Not until they were safely seated in Rebecca's room did Phoebe speak
again.
"There!" she exclaimed, as she dropped to a seat on the edge of the bed,
"I declare to goodness, Rebecca, I don't know what to make of it!"
"What is it? What ails ye?" said Rebecca, anxiously.
"Why, I don't believe I'm myself, Rebecca. I've been here before. I know
that village out there, and--and--it's all I can do to talk same's I've
always been used to. I'm wanting to talk like--like I did awhile back."
"It's all right! It's all right!" said Rebecca, soothingly. "Th' ain't
nothing the matter with you, deary. Ye've ben shet up here with side
weight an' what not so long--o' course you're not yerself."
She bustled about pretending to set things to rights, but her heart was
heavy with apprehension. She thought that Phoebe was in the first
stages of delirium.
"Not myself! No," said Phoebe. "No--the fact is, I'm somebody else!"
At this Rebecca straightened up and cast one horrified glance at her
sister. Then she turned and began to put on her bonnet and jacket. Her
mind was made up. Phoebe was delirious and they must seek a doctor--at
once.
"Get your things on, Phoebe," she said, striving to appear calm. "Put
on your things an' come out with me. Let's see if we can't take a little
exercise."
Phoebe arose obediently and went to her room. They were neither of
them very long about their preparations, and by the time the sun was
actually rising, the two women were leaving the air-ship for the second
time, Phoebe carrying the precious carved box and Rebecca her satchel
and umbrella.
"What you bringin' that everlastin' packet o' letters for?" Rebecca
asked, as they reached the opening in the wall.
"I want to have it out in the light," Phoebe replied. "I want to see
something."
Outside of the brick wall she paused and opened the box. It was empty.
"I thought so!" she said.
"Why, ye've brought the box 'thout the letters, Phoebe," said Rebecca.
"You're not agoin' back for them, air ye?"
"No," Phoebe replied, "'twouldn't do any good. Rebecca. They aren't
there."
She dropped the box in the grass and looked wistfully about her.
"Not there!" said Rebecca, nonplussed. "Why, who'd take 'em?"
"Nobody. They haven't been written yet."
"Not--not--" Rebecca gasped for a moment and then hurried toward the
road. "Come on!" she cried.
Surely, she thought--surely they must find a doctor without delay.
But before they reached the road, Rebecca was glad to pause again and
take advantage of a friendly bush from whose cover she might gaze
without being herself observed.
The broad highway which but so short a time ago was quite deserted, was
now occupied by a double line of bustling people--young and old--men,
women, and children. Those travelling toward their left, to the north,
were principally men and boys, although now and then a pair of
loud-voiced girls passed northward with male companions. Those who were
travelling southward were the younger ones, and often whole families
together. Among these the women predominated.
All of these people were laughing--calling rough jokes back and
forth--singing, running, jumping, and dancing, till the whole roadway
appeared a merry Bedlam.
"Must be a county fair near here!" exclaimed Rebecca. "But will ye
listen to the gibberish an' see their clothes!"
Indeed, the language and the costumes were most perplexing to good New
England ears and eyes, and Rebecca knew not whether to advance or to
retreat.
The women all wore very wide and rather short skirts, the petticoat worn
exposed up to where a full over-skirt or flounce gave emphasis to their
hips. The elder ones wore long-sleeved jackets and high-crowned hats,
while the young ones wore what looked like low-necked jerseys tied
together in front and their braided hair hung from uncovered crowns.
The men wore short breeches, some full trunk hose, some tighter but
puffed; their jackets were of many fashions, from the long-skirted open
coats of the elders to the smart doublets or shirts of the young men.
The children were dressed like the adults, and most of them wore wreaths
and garlands of flowers, while in the hands of many were baskets full of
posies.
Phoebe gazed from her sister's side with the keenest delight, saying
nothing, but turning her eyes hither and thither as though afraid of
losing the least detail of the scene.
Presently two young girls approached, each with a basket in her hand.
They moved slowly over the grass, stopping constantly to pick the
violets under their feet. They were so engrossed in their task and in
their conversation that they failed to notice the two sisters half
hidden by the shrubbery.
"Nay--nay!" the taller of the two was saying, "I tell thee he made oath
to't, Cicely. Knew ye ever Master Stephen to be forsworn?"
"A lover's oaths--truly!" laughed the other. "Why, they be made for
breaking. I doubt not he hath made a like vow to a score of silly
wenches ere this, coz!"
"Thou dost him wrong, Cicely. An he keep not the tryst, 'twill only
be----"
"'Twill only be thy first misprision, eh?"
"Marry, then----"
Here their words were lost as they continued to move farther away, still
disputing together.
"Well!" exclaimed Rebecca, turning to Phoebe. "Now I know where we've
ben carried to. This is the Holy Land--Jerusalem or Bethlehem or Canaan
or some sech place. Thou--thee--thy! Did ye hear those girls talkin'
Bible language, Phoebe?"
Phoebe shook her head and was about to reply when there was a loud
clamour of many tongues from the road near by.
"The May-pole! The May-pole!" and someone started a roaring song in
which hundreds soon joined. The sisters could not distinguish the words,
but the volume of sound was tremendous.
There was the tramp of many rushing feet and a Babel of cries behind
them. They turned to see a party of twenty gayly clad young men bearing
down upon them, carrying a mighty May-pole crowned with flowers and
streaming with colored ribbons.
Around these and following after were three or four score merry lads and
lasses, all running and capering, shouting and dancing, singly or in
groups, hand in hand.
In a trice Rebecca found herself clinging to Phoebe with whom she was
borne onward helpless by the mad throng.
The new-comers were clad in all sorts of fantastic garbs, and many of
them were masked. Phoebe and her sister were therefore not conspicuous
in their long scant black skirts and cloth jackets with balloon sleeves.
Their costumes were taken for disguises, and as they were swallowed up
in the mad throng they were looked on as fellow revellers.
Had Rebecca been alone, she would probably have succeeded in time in
working her way out of this unwelcome crowd, but to her amazement, no
sooner had they been surrounded by the young roysterers than Phoebe,
breaking her long silence, seized her sister by the hand and began
laughing, dancing, and running with the best of them. To crown all,
what was Rebecca's surprise to hear her sister singing word for word
the madcap song of the others, as though she had known these words all
her life. She did not even skip those parts that made Rebecca blush.
It was incredible--monstrous--impossible! Phoebe, the sweet, modest,
gentle, prudish Phoebe, singing a questionable song in a whirl of
roystering Jerusalemites!
Up the broad road they danced--up to the northward, all men making way
for them as, with hand-bag and umbrella flying in her left hand, she was
dragged forward on an indecorous run by Phoebe, who held her tightly
by the right.
On--ever on, past wayside inn and many a lane and garden, house and
hedge. Over the stones and ruts, choking in clouds of dust.
Once Rebecca stumbled and a great gawky fellow caught her around the
waist to prevent her falling.
"Lips pay forfeit for tripping feet, lass!" he cried, and kissed her
with a sounding smack.
Furious and blushing, she swung her hand-bag in a circle and brought it
down upon the ravisher's head.
"Take that, you everlastin' rascal, you!" she gasped.
The bumpkin dodged with a laugh and disappeared in the crowd and dust,
cuffing, pushing, scuffling, hugging, and kissing quite heedless of
small rebuffs.
When they had proceeded thus until Rebecca thought there was nothing
left for it but to fall in her tracks and be trampled to death, the
whole crowd came suddenly to a halt, and the young men began to erect
the May-pole in the midst of a shaded green on one side of the main
road.
Rebecca stood, angry and breathless, trying to flick the dust off her
bag with her handkerchief, while Phoebe, at her side, her eyes bright
and cheeks rosy, showed her pretty teeth in a broad smile of pleasure,
the while she tried to restore some order to her hair. As for her hat,
that had long ago been lost.
"I declare--I declare to goodness!" panted Rebecca, "ef anybody'd told
me ez you, Phoebe Wise, would take on so--so like--like a--a----"
"Like any Zanny's light-o-love," Phoebe broke in, her bosom heaving
with the violence of her exercise. "But prithee, sweet, chide me not.
From this on shall I be chaste, demure, and sober as an abbess in a
play. But oh!--but oh!" she cried, stretching her arms high over her
head, "'twas a goodly frolic, sis! I felt a three-centuries' fasting
lust for it, in good sooth!"
Rebecca clutched her sister by the arm and shook her.
"Phoebe Wise--Phoebe Wise!" she cried, looking anxiously into her
face, "wake up now--wake up! What in the universal airth----"
A loud shout cut her short, and the two sisters turned amazed.
"The bull! The bull!"
There was an opening in the crowd as four men approached leading and
driving a huge angry bull, which was secured by a ring in his nose to
which ropes were attached. Another man followed, dragged forward by
three fierce bull-dogs in a leash.
The bull was quickly tied to a stout post in the street, and the crowd
formed a circle closely surrounding the bull-ring. It was the famous
bull-ring of Blackman Street in Southwark.
A moment later the dogs were freed, and amid their hoarse baying and
growling and the deep roaring of their adversary, the baiting began--the
chief sport of high and low in the merry days of good Queen Bess.
The sisters found themselves in the front of the throng surrounding the
raging beasts, and, before she knew it, Rebecca saw one of the dogs
caught on the horns of the bull and tossed, yelping and bleeding, into
the air.
For one moment she stood aghast in the midst of the delighted crowd of
shouting onlookers. Then she turned and fiercely elbowed her way
outward, followed by her sister.
"Come 'long--come 'long, Phoebe!" she cried. "We'll soon put a stop to
this! I'll find the selectmen o' this town an' see ef this cruelty to
animals is agoin' on right here in open daylight. I guess the's laws o'
some kind here, ef it _is_ Bethlehem or Babylon!"
Hot with indignation, the still protesting woman reached the outskirts
of the throng and looked about her. Close at hand a tall, swaggering
fellow was loafing about. He was dressed in yellow from head to foot,
save where his doublet and hose were slashed with dirty red at elbows,
shoulders, and hips. A dirty ruff was around his neck, and on his head
he wore a great shapeless hat peaked up in front.
"Hey, mister!" cried Rebecca, addressing this worthy. "Can you tell me
where I can find one o' the selectmen?"
The stranger paused in his walk and glanced first at Rebecca and then,
with evidently increased interest, at Phoebe.
"Selectmen?" he asked. "Who hath selected them, dame?"
He gazed quizzically at the excited woman.
"Now you needn't be funny 'bout it," Rebecca cried, "fer I'm not goin'
to take any impidence. You know who I mean by the selectmen jest's well
as I do. I'd be obliged to ye ef ye'd tell me the way--an' drop that
Bible talk--good every-day English is good enough fer me!"
"In good sooth, dame," he replied, "'tis not every day I hear such
English as yours."
He paused a moment in thought. This was May-day--a season of revelry and
good-natured practical joking. This woman was evidently quizzing him, so
it behooved him to repay her in kind.
"But a truce to quips and quillets, say I," he continued. "'Twill do me
much pleasure an your ladyship will follow me to the selectman. As it
happens, his honor is even now holding court near London Bridge."
"London Bridge!" gasped Rebecca. "Why, London ain't a Bible country, is
it?"
Deigning no notice to a query which he did not understand, the young
fellow set off to northward, followed closely by the two women.
"Keep close to him, Phoebe," said Rebecca, warningly. "Ef we should
lose the man in all this rabble o' folks we would not find him in a
hurry."
"Thou seest, sweet sister," Phoebe replied, "'tis indeed our beloved
city of London. Did I not tell thee yon village was Newington, and here
we be now in Southwark, close to London Bridge."
Rebecca had forgotten her sister's ailment in the fierce indignation
which the bull-baiting had aroused. But now she was brought back to her
own personal fears and aims with a rude shock by the strange language
Phoebe held.
She leaped forward eagerly and touched their guide's shoulder.
"Hey, mister!" she exclaimed, "I'd be obliged to ye if ye'd show us the
house o' the nearest doctor before we see the selectman."
The man stopped short in the middle of the street, with a cunning leer
on his face. The change of purpose supported his belief that a May-day
jest was forward.
"Call me plain Jock Dean, mistress," he said. "And now tell me further,
wilt have a doctor of laws, of divinity, or of physic. We be in a merry
mood and a generous to-day, and will fetch forth bachelors, masters,
doctors, proctors, and all degrees from Oxford, Cambridge, or London at
a wink's notice. So say your will."
Rebecca would have returned a sharp reply to this banter, but she was
very anxious to find a physician for Phoebe, and so thought it best to
take a coaxing course.
"What I want's a doctor," she said. "I think my sister's got the shakes
or suthin', an' I must take her to the doctor. Now look here--you look
like a nice kind of a young man. I know it's some kind of antiques and
horribles day 'round here, an' all the folks hes on funny clothes and
does nothin' on'y joke a body. But let's drop comical talk jest fer a
minute an' get down to sense, eh?"
She spoke pleadingly, and for a moment Jock looked puzzled. He only
understood a portion of what she was saying, but he realized that she
was in some sort of trouble.
"Why bait the man with silly questions, Rebecca," Phoebe broke in. "A
truce to this silly talk of apothecaries. I have no need of surgeons, I.
My good fellow," she continued, addressing Jock with an air of
condescension that dumfounded her sister, "is not yonder the Southwark
pillory?"
"Ay, mistress," he replied, with a grin. "It's there you may see the
selectman your serving-maid inquired for."
Rebecca gasped and clinched her hands fiercely on her bag and umbrella.
"Serving-maid!" she cried.
"Ahoy--whoop--room! Yi--ki yi!"
A swarm of small white animals ran wildly past them from behind, and
after them came a howling, laughing, scrambling mob that filled the
street. Someone had loosed a few score rabbits for the delight of the
rabble.
There was no time for reflection. With one accord, Jock and the two
women ran with all speed toward the pillory and the bridge, driven
forward by the crowd behind them. To have held their ground would have
been to risk broken bones at least.
Fortunately the hunted beasts turned sharply to the right and left at
the first cross street, and soon the three human fugitives could halt
and draw breath.
They found themselves in the outskirts of a crowd surrounding the
pillory, and above the heads of those in front they could see a huge red
face under a thatch of tousled hair protruding stiffly through a hole in
a beam supported at right angles to a vertical post about five feet
high. On each side of the head a large and dirty hand hung through an
appropriate opening in the beam.
Under the prisoner's head was hung an account of his misdeeds, placed
there by some of his cronies. These crimes were in the nature of certain
breaches of public decorum and decency, the details of which the
bystanders were discussing with relish and good-humor.
"Let's get out o' here," said Rebecca, suddenly, when the purport of
what she heard pierced her nineteenth-century understanding. "These
folks beat me!"
She turned, grasping Phoebe's arm to enforce her request, but she
found that others had crowded in behind them and had hemmed them in.
This would not have deterred her but, unaccountably, Phoebe did not
seem inclined to move.
"Nay--nay!" she said. "'Tis a wanton wastrel, and he well deserves the
pillory. But, Rebecca, I've a mind to see what observance these people
will give the varlet. Last time I saw one pilloried, alas! they slew him
with shards and paving-stones. This fellow is liker to be pelted with
nosegays, methinks."
"Mercy me, Phoebe! Whatever--what--oh, goodness gracious grandmother,
child!" Poor Rebecca could find only exclamations wherein to express her
feelings. She began to wonder if she were dreaming.
At this moment a sprightly, dashing lad, in ragged clothing and
bareheaded, sprang to the platform beside the prisoner and waved his
arms for silence.
There were cries of "Hear--hear!" "Look at Baiting Will!" "Ho--ho--bully
rook!" "Sh-sh-h!"
After a time the tumult subsided so that Baiting Will could make himself
heard. He was evidently a well-known street wag, for his remarks were
received with frequent laughter and vocal applause.
"Hear ye--hear ye--all good folk and merry!" he shouted. "Here ye see
the liege lord of all May merry-makers. Hail to the King of the May, my
bully boys!"
"Ho--ho! All hail!"
"Hurrah--crown him, crown him!"
"The King of the May forever!"
By dint of bawling for silence till he was red in the face, the speaker
at length made himself heard again.
"What say ye, my good hearts--shall we have a double coronation? Where's
the quean will be his consort? Bring her forward, lads. We'll crown the
twain."
This proposal was greeted with a roar of laughter and approval, and a
number of slattern women showing the effects of strong ale in their
faces stepped boldly forward as competitors for coronation.
But again Baiting Will waved his arms for a chance to speak.
"Nay, my merry lads and lasses," he cried, "it were not meet to wed our
gracious lord the king without giving him a chance to choose his queen!"
He leaned his ear close to the grinning head, pretending to listen a
moment. Then, standing forward, he cried:
"His gracious and sovereign majesty hath bid me proclaim his choice. He
bids ye send him up for queen yon buxom dame in the black doublet and
unruffed neck--her wi' the black wand and outland scrip."
He pointed directly at Rebecca. She turned white and started to push her
way out of the crowd, but those behind her joined hands, laughing and
shouting: "A queen--a queen!"
Two or three stout fellows from just beneath the pillory elbowed their
way to her side and grasped her arms.
She struggled and shrieked in affright.
Phoebe with indignant face seized the arm of the man nearest her and
pulled lustily to free her sister.
"Stand aside, you knaves!" she cried, hotly. "Know your betters and keep
your greasy hands for the sluttish queans of Southwark streets!"
The lads only grinned and tightened their hold. Rebecca was struggling
fiercely and in silence, save for an occasional shriek of fear.
Phoebe raised her voice.
"Good people, will ye see a lady tousled by knavish street brawlers!
What ho--a rescue--a Burton--a Burton--a rescue--ho!"
Her voice rose high above the coarse laughter and chatter of the crowd.
"What's this? Who calls?"
The crowd parted to right and left with screams and imprecations, and on
a sudden two horsemen reined up their steeds beside the sisters.
"Back, ye knaves! Unhand the lady!" cried the younger of the two,
striking out with his whip at the heads of Rebecca's captors.
Putting up their hands to ward off these blows, the fellows hastily
retreated a few steps, leaving Rebecca and Phoebe standing alone.
"What's here!" cried the young man. "God warn us, an it be not fair
Mistress Burton herself!"
He leaped from his horse, and with the bridle in one hand and his
high-crowned hat in the other, he advanced, bowing toward the sisters.
He was a strongly built young man of middle height. His smooth face,
broad brow, and pleasant eyes were lighted up by a happy smile wherein
were shown a set of strong white teeth all too rare in the England of
his time. His abundant blond hair was cut short on top, but hung down on
each side, curling slightly over his ears. He wore a full-skirted,
long-sleeved jerkin secured by a long row of many small buttons down the
front. A loose lace collar lay flat over his shoulders and chest. His
French hose was black, and from the tops of his riding-boots there
protruded an edging of white lace.
He wore a long sword with a plain scabbard and hilt, and on his hands
were black gloves, well scented.
Phoebe's face wore a smile of pleased recognition, and she stretched
forth her right hand as the cavalier approached.
"You come in good time, Sir Guy!" she said.
"In very sooth, most fair, most mellific damsel, your unworthy servitor
was erring enchanted in the paradise of your divine idea when that the
horrific alarum did wend its fear-begetting course through the
labyrinthine corridors of his auricular sensories."
Phoebe laughed, half in amusement half in soft content. Then she
turned to Rebecca, who stood with wide-open eyes and mouth contemplating
this strange apparition.
"Be not confounded, sweetheart," she said. "Have I not told thee I have
ta'en on another's self. Come--thou art none the less dear, nor I less
thine own."
She stepped forward and put her hand gently on her sister's.
Rebecca looked with troubled eyes into Phoebe's face and said,
timidly:
"Won't ye go to a doctor's with me, Phoebe?"
There was a rude clatter of hoofs as the elder of the new-comers trotted
past the two women and, with his whip drove back the advancing crowd,
which had begun to close in upon them again.
"You were best mount and away with the ladies, Sir Guy," he said. "Yon
scurvy loons are in poor humor for dalliance."
With a graceful gesture, Sir Guy invited Phoebe to approach his horse.
She obeyed, and stepping upon his hand found herself instantly seated
before his saddle. She seemed to find the seat familiar, and her heart
beat with a pleasure she could scarce explain when, a moment later, the
handsome cavalier swung into place behind her and put one arm about her
waist to steady her.
Rebecca started forward, terror-stricken.
"Phoebe--Phoebe!" she cried. "Ye wouldn't leave me here!"
"Nay--nay!" said a gruff but kindly voice at her side. "Here, gi'e us
your hand, dame, step on my foot, and up behind you go."
Sir Guy's horse was turning to go, and in her panic Rebecca awaited no
second bidding, but scrambled quickly though clumsily to a seat behind
the serving-man.
They were all four soon free of the crowd and out of danger, thanks to
the universal respect for rank and the essential good nature of the
May-day gathering.
The horses assumed an easy ambling gait, a sort of single step which was
far more comfortable than Rebecca had feared she would find it.
The relief of deliverance from the rude mob behind her gave Rebecca
courage, and she gazed about with some interest.
On either side of the street the houses, which hitherto had stood apart
with gardens and orchards between them, were now set close together,
with the wide eaves of their sharp gables touching over narrow and dark
alleyways. The architecture was unlike anything she had ever seen, the
walls being built with the beams showing outside and the windows of many
small diamond-shaped panes.
They had only proceeded a few yards when Rebecca saw the glint of
sunbeams on water before them and found that they were approaching a
great square tower, surmounted by numberless poles bearing formless
round masses at their ends.
With one arm around her companion to steady herself, she held her
umbrella and bag tightly in her free hand. Now she pointed upward with
her umbrella and said:
"Do you mind tellin' me, mister, what's thet fruit they're a-dryin' up
on thet meetin'-house?"
The horseman glanced upward for a moment and then replied, with
something of wonder in his voice:
"Why, those are men's heads, dame. Know you not London Bridge and the
traitors' poles yet?"
"Oh, good land!" said the horrified woman, and shut her mouth tightly.
Evidently England was not the sort of country she had pictured it.
They rode into a long tunnel under the stones of this massive tower and
emerged to find themselves upon the bridge. Again and again did they
pass under round-arched tunnels bored, as it were, through gloomy
buildings six or seven stories high. These covered the bridge from end
to end, and they swarmed with a squalid humanity, if one might judge
from the calls and cries that resounded in the vaulted passageways and
interior courts.
As they finally came out from beneath the last great rookery, the
sisters found themselves in London, the great and busy city of four
hundred thousand inhabitants.
They were on New Fish Street, and their nostrils gave them witness of
its name at once. Farther up the slight ascent before them they met
other and far worse smells, and Rebecca was disgusted.
"Where are we goin'?" she asked.
"Why, to your mistress' residence, of course."
Rebecca was on the point of objecting to this characterization of her
sister, but she thought better of it ere she spoke. After all, if these
men had done all this kindness by reason of a mistake, she needed not to
correct them.
The street up which they were proceeding opened into Gracechurch Street,
leading still up the hill and away from the Thames. It was a fairly
broad highway, but totally unpaved, and disgraced by a ditch or "kennel"
into which found their way the ill-smelling slops thrown from the
windows and doors of the abutting houses.
"Good land o' Goshen!" Rebecca exclaimed at last. "Why in goodness' name
does all the folks throw sech messes out in the street?"
"Why, where would you have them throw them, dame?" asked her companion,
in surprise. "Are ye outlandish bred that ye put me such questions?"
"Not much!" she retorted, hotly. "It's you folks that's outlandish. Why,
where I come from they hev sewers in the city streets an' pavements an'
sidewalks an' trolley cars. Guess I've ben to Keene, an' I ought to
know."
She tossed her head with the air of one who has said something
conclusive.
The man held his peace for a moment, dumfounded. Then he laughed
heartily, with head thrown back.
"That's what comes of a kittenish hoyden for a mistress. Abroad too
early, dame, and strong ale before sunrise! These have stolen away your
wits and made ye hold strange discourse. Sewers--side-walkers
forsooth--troll carries, ho--ho!"
Rebecca grew red with fury. She released her hold to thump her companion
twice on the arm and nearly fell from the horse in consequence.
"You great rascal!" she cried, indignantly. "How dare ye talk 'bout
drinkin' ale! D'you s'pose I'd touch the nasty stuff? Me--a member of
the Woman's Christian Temperance Union! Me--a Daughter of Temperance an'
wearin' the blue ribbon! You'd ought to be ashamed, that's what you
ought!"
But the servant continued to laugh quietly and Rebecca raged within. Oh
how she hated to have to sit thus close behind a man who had so insulted
her! Clinging to him, too! Clinging for dear life to a man who accused
her of drinking ale!
They turned to the left into Leadenhall Street and Bucklesbury, where
the two women sniffed with delighted relief the spicy odor of the herbs
exposed on every hand for sale. They left Gresham's Royal Exchange on
the right, and shortly afterward stopped before the door of one of the
many well-to-do houses of that quarter.
Sir Guy and the two women dismounted, and, while the groom held the
horses, the others approached the building before which they had
paused.
Rebecca was about to address Phoebe, whose blushing face was beaming
with pleasure, when the door was suddenly thrown open and a
happy-looking buxom woman of advanced middle age appeared.
"Well--well--well!" she cried, holding up her fat hands in mock
amazement. "Out upon thee, Polly, for a light-headed wench!
What--sneaking out to an early tryst! Fie, girl!"
"Now, good mine aunt," Phoebe broke in, with a smile and a curtsey,
"no tryst have I kept, in sooth. Sir Guy is my witness that he found me
quite by chance."
"In very truth, good Mistress Goldsmith," said the knight, "it was but
the very bounteous guerdon of fair Dame Fortune that in the auspicious
forthcoming of my steed I found the inexpressible delectancy of my so
great discovery!"
He bowed as he gave back one step and kissed his hand toward Phoebe.
"All one--all one," said Dame Goldsmith, laughing as she held out her
hand to Phoebe. "My good man hath a homily prepared for you, mistress,
and the substance of it runneth on the folly of early rising on a
May-day morning."
Phoebe held forth her hand to the knight, who kissed it with a
flourish, hat in hand.
"Shall I hear from thee soon?" she said, in an undertone.
"Forthwith, most fairly beautiful--most gracious rare!" he replied.
Then, leaping on his horse, he dashed down the street at a mad gallop,
followed closely by his groom.
Rebecca stood stupefied, gazing first at one and then at the other, till
she was rudely brought to her senses by no other than Dame Goldsmith
herself.
"What, Rebecca!" she exclaimed. "Hast breakfasted, woman--what?"
"Ay, aunt," Phoebe broke in, hurriedly. "Rebecca must to my chamber to
tire me ere I see mine uncle. Prithee temper the fury of his homily,
sweet aunt."
Taking the dame's extended hand, she suffered herself to be led within,
followed by Rebecca, too amazed to speak.
On entering the street door they found themselves in a large hall, at
the farther end of which a bright wood fire was burning, despite the
season. A black oak table was on one side of the room against the wall,
upon which were to be seen a number of earthen beakers and a great
silver jug or tankard. A carved and cushioned settle stood against the
opposite wall, and besides two comfortable arm-chairs at the two
chimney-corners there were two or three heavy chairs of antique pattern
standing here and there. The floor was covered with newly gathered
fresh-smelling rushes.
A wide staircase led to the right, and to this Phoebe turned at once
as though she had always lived there.
"Hast heard from my father yet?" she asked, pausing upon the first
stair and addressing Dame Goldsmith.
"Nay, girl. Not so much as a word. I trow he'll have but little to say
to me. Ay--ay--a humorous limb, thy father, lass."
She swept out of the room with a toss of the head, and Phoebe smiled
as she turned to climb the stairs. Immediately she turned again and held
out one hand to Rebecca.
"Come along, Rebecca. Let's run 'long up," she said, relapsing into her
old manner.
She led the way without hesitation to a large, light bedroom, the front
of which hung over the street. Here, too, the floor was covered with
sweet rushes, a fact which Rebecca seemed to resent.
"Why the lands sakes do you suppose these London folks dump weeds on
their floors?" she asked. "An' look there at those two beds, still
unmade and all tumbled disgraceful!"
"Why, there's where we slept last night, Rebecca," said Phoebe,
laughing as she dropped into a chair. "As for the floors," she
continued, "they're always that way when folks ain't mighty rich. The
lords and all have carpets and rugs."
Rebecca, stepping very high to avoid stumbling in the rushes, moved over
to the dressing-table and proceeded to remove her outer wraps, having
first deposited her bag and umbrella on a chair.
"I don't see how in gracious you know so much about it," she remarked,
querulously. "'Pon my word, you acted with that young jackanapes an'
that fat old lady downstairs jest's ef you'd allus known em."
"Well, so I have," Phoebe replied, smiling. "I knew them all nearly
three hundred years before you were born, Rebecca Wise."
Rebecca dropped into a chair and looked helplessly at her sister with
her arms hanging at her sides.
"Phoebe Wise--" she began.
"No, not now!" Phoebe exclaimed, stopping her sister with a gesture.
"You must call me Mistress Mary. I'm Mary Burton, daughter of Isaac
Burton, soon to be Sir Isaac Burton, of Burton Hall. You are my dear old
tiring-woman--my sometime nurse--and thou must needs yield me the
respect and obedience as well as the love thou owest, thou fond old
darling!"
The younger woman threw her arms about the other's neck and kissed her
repeatedly.
Rebecca sat mute and impassive, making no return.
"Seems as though I ought to wake up soon now," she muttered, weakly.
"Come, Rebecca," Phoebe exclaimed, briskly, stepping to a high, carved
wardrobe beside her bed, "this merry-making habit wearies me. Let us don
a fitter attire. Come--lend a hand, dearie--be quick!"
Rebecca sat quite still, watching her sister as she proceeded to change
her garments, taking from wardrobe and tiring chest her wide skirts,
long-sleeved jacket, and striped under-vest with a promptitude and
readiness that showed perfect familiarity with her surroundings.
"There," thought Rebecca, "I have it! She's been reading those old
letters and looking at that ivory picture so long she thinks that she's
the girl in the picture herself, now. Yes, that's it. Mary Burton was
the name!"
When Phoebe was new-dressed, her sister could not but acknowledge
inwardly that the queer clothes were mightily becoming. She appeared the
beau ideal of a merry, light-hearted, healthy girl from the country.
On one point, however, Rebecca could not refrain from expostulating.
"Look a-here, Phoebe," she said, in a scandalized voice, as she rose
and faced her sister, "ain't you goin' to put on somethin' over your
chest? That ain't decent the way you've got yerself fixed now!"
"Nonsense!" cried Phoebe, with a mischievous twinkle in her eye.
"Wouldst have me cover my breast like a married woman! Look to thine own
attire. Come, where hast put it?"
Rebecca put her hands on her hips and looked into her sister's face with
a stern determination.
"Ef you think I'm agoin' to put on play-actor clothes an' go round
lookin' indecent, Phoebe Wise, why, you're mistaken--'cause I
ain't--so there!"
"Nay, nurse!" Phoebe exclaimed, earnestly. "'Tis the costume thou art
wearing now that is mummer's weeds. Come, sweet--come! They'll not
yield thee admittance below else."
She concluded with a warning inflection, and shook her finger
affectionately at her sister.
Rebecca opened her mouth several times and closed it again in despair
ere she could find a reply. At length she seated herself slowly, folded
her arms, and said:
"They can do jest whatever they please downstairs, Phoebe. As fer me,
I'd sooner be seen in my nightgown than in the flighty, flitter-scatter
duds the women 'round here wear. Not but you look good enough in 'em, if
you'd cover your chest, but play-actin' is meant for young folks--not
fer old maids like me."
"Nay--but----"
"What the lands sakes d'ye holler neigh all the time fer? I'm not agoin'
to neigh, an' you might's well make up your mind to't."
Phoebe bit her lips and then, after a moment's hesitation, turned to
the door.
"Well, well! E'en have it thy way!" she said.
Followed by Rebecca, the younger woman descended the stairs. As she
reached the entrance hall, she stopped short at sight of a tall, heavy
man standing beside the table across the room with his face buried in a
great stone mug.
He had dropped his flat round hat upon the table, and his long hair fell
in a sort of bush to his wide, white-frilled ruff. He wore a
long-skirted, loose coat of green cloth with yellow fringe, provided
with large side-pockets, but without a belt. The sleeves were loose, but
brought in tightly at the wrists by yellow bands. His green hose were of
the short and tight French pattern, and he wore red stockings and
pointed shoes of Spanish leather.
As he removed the cup with a deep sigh of satisfaction, there was
revealed a large, cheerful red face with a hooked nose between bushy
brows overhanging large blue eyes.
Phoebe stood upon the lowest stair in smiling silence and with folded
hands as he caught her eye.
"Ha, thou jade!" cried Master Goldsmith, for he it was. "Wilt give me
the slip of a May-day morn!"
He set down his cup with a loud bang and strode over to the staircase,
shaking his finger playfully at his niece.
Rebecca had just time to notice that his long, full beard and mustache
were decked with two or three spots of froth when, to her great
indignation, Phoebe was folded in his arms and soundly kissed on both
cheeks.
"There, lass!" he chuckled, as he stepped back, rubbing his hands. "I
told thy aunt I'd make thee do penance for thy folly."
Phoebe wiped her cheeks with her handkerchief and tipped her head
impudently at the cheerful ravisher.
"Now, God mend your manners, uncle!" she exclaimed. "What! Bedew my
cheeks with the froth of good ale on your beard while my throat lacks
the good body o't! Why, I'm burned up wi' thirst!"
"Good lack!" cried the goldsmith, turning briskly to the table. "Had ye
no drink when ye first returned, then?"
He poured a smaller cupful of foaming ale from the great silver jug and
brought it to Phoebe.
Rebecca clutched the stair-rail for support, and, with eyes ready to
start from her head, she leaned forward, incredulous, as Phoebe took
the cup from the merchant's hand.
Then she could keep silence no longer.
"Phoebe Wise!" she screamed, "be you goin' to drink ALE!"
No words can do justice to the awful emphasis which she laid upon that
last dread word.
Phoebe turned and looked up roguishly at her sister, who was still
half-way up the stairs. The young girl's left hand leaned on her uncle's
arm, while with her right she extended the cup in salutation.
"Here's thy good health, nurse--and to our better acquaintance," she
laughed.
Rebecca uttered one short scream and fled up to their bed-room. She had
seen the impossible. Her sister Phoebe with her face buried in a mug
of ale!
CHAPTER VIII
HOW FRANCIS BACON CHEATED THE BAILIFFS
It was at about this time that Copernicus Droop finally awakened. He lay
perfectly still for a minute or two, wondering where he was and what had
happened. Then he began to mutter to himself.
"Machinery's stopped, so we're on dry land," he said. Then, starting up
on one elbow, he listened intently.
Within the air-ship all was perfect silence, but from without there came
in faintly occasional symptoms of life--the bark of a dog, a loud laugh,
the cry of a child.
Droop slowly came to his feet and gazed about. A faint gleam of daylight
found its way past the closed shutters. He raised the blinds and blinked
as he gazed out into a perfect thicket of trees and shrubbery, beyond
which here and there he thought he could distinguish a high brick wall.
"Well, we're in the country, anyhow!" he muttered.
He turned and consulted the date indicator in the ceiling.
"May 1, 1598," he said. "Great Jonah! but we hev whirled back fer
keeps! I s'pose we jest whirled till she broke loose."
He gazed about him and observed that the two state-room doors were open.
He walked over and looked in.
"I wonder where them women went," he said. "Seems like they were in a
tremendous hurry 'bout gettin' way. Lucky 'tain't a city we're in,
'cause they might'v got lost in the city."
After an attempt to improve his somewhat rumpled exterior, he made his
way down the stairs and out into the garden. Once here, he quickly
discovered the building which had arrested the attention of the two
women, but it being now broad daylight, he was able thoroughly to
satisfy himself that chance had brought the Panchronicon into the
deserted garden of a deserted mansion.
"Wal, we'll be private an' cosy here till the Panchronicon hez time to
store up more force," he said out loud.
Strolling forward, he skirted the high wall, and ere long discovered the
very opening through which the sisters had passed at sunrise.
Stepping through the breach, he found himself, as they had done, near
the main London
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