The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army: A Story of the Great Rebellion, - [story reading .TXT] 📗

the law of the land; but it seemed to him to be one of those cases where prompt action was necessary, and the law was too tardy to be of any service. He was, however, determined that the business should be done with as little violence as possible, and he had instructed the citizens at the bridge to do no needless injury to the property or the feelings of the squire or his family.

When he entered the house, he had stationed three men at the door to prevent any of the people from following him. He had also directed them not to enter the yard or grounds of the house until he gave the signal. These directions proved a great hardship to the boys in the crowd, and they were completely disgusted when they saw the flag thrown loose from the front window.

The mansion of Squire Pemberton was an old-fashioned dwelling, about a hundred feet from the road. In front of it was a green lawn, adorned with several large buttonwood trees. There was no fence to enclose what was called the front yard. The crowd was assembled on this lawn, and agreeably to the directions of the leader, or chairman of the committee, none of them passed into the yard in the rear and at the end of the house, which was separated from the lawn by a picket fence.

Boys are instinctively curious to know what is going on, and the “living room” of the squire, in which the exciting conversation was taking place, was in the rear of the house. The windows on the front were dark and uncommunicative. The boys were restless and impatient; if there was to be any fun, they wanted to see it. Thomas was as impatient as his fellows, and being more enterprising than the others, he determined, while obeying the instructions of Captain Barney in the spirit, to disobey them in the letter.

He had been a sufferer to the extent of two great wales on the calves of his legs by the treason of the squire, and no doubt he thought he ought to be regarded as an exception to those who were called on to observe the instructions of the chairman of the committee. Leaving the group of inquiring minds near the front door of the house, he walked down the driveway till he came to a rail fence, through which he crawled, and entered the field adjoining the garden of the squire. His fellow-citizens, men and boys, were too intently watching the house to heed him, and no one noticed his enterprising movement.

From the field, he entered the garden, and made his way to the rear of the house. But even here, he was doomed to disappointment, for Mrs. Pemberton had drawn her curtains. Our hero was not, however, to be utterly defeated, and as the curtains had not been fitted by an accomplished upholsterer, there were openings on either side, through which he might command a full view of the interior of the room.

Thomas proceeded slowly and cautiously to obtain a position which would enable him to gratify his curiosity, and witness the humiliation of the haughty squire. Beneath the window which, he had chosen to look through, there was a cellar door, from which a pile of seaweed, placed upon it to keep the frost out of the cellar, had just been removed. The adventurous inquirer crept up the slippery boards, and gained the coveted position. He could not only see the committee and the squire, but he could hear all they said. He was perfectly delighted with the manner in which the captain put the question to the squire; and when the latter ordered Fred to hang out the flag, he was a little disposed to imitate the masculine occupants of the hen-house, a short distance from his perch; but Tom, as we have before intimated, had a very tolerable idea of the principles of strategy, and had the self-possession to hold his tongue, and permit the triumphant scene within to pass without a crow or a cheer.

The battle had been fought and the victory won; and though Tom felt that he was one of the victors, he deemed it prudent, for strategical reasons, to commence a retreat. The cellar doors, as we have before hinted, were very slippery, having been thoroughly soaked with moisture while covered with the seaweed. When the hero of this unauthorized reconnoissance wheeled about to commence his retreat, his feet incontinently slipped up upon the inclined surface of the doors, and he came down heavily upon the rotten boards. This, in itself, would have been but an inconsiderable disaster, and he might still have withdrawn from the inconvenient locality, if circumstances had not conspired against him, as circumstances sometimes will, when they ought to be conciliatory and accommodating. The force with which Tom fell upon the decayed boards was too much for them, and the unlucky adventurer became another victim to the treachery of rotten wood, which has hurled so many thousands from time into eternity.

But Tom was not hurled so far as that on the present occasion, though for all practical purposes, for the succeeding half hour, he might as well have been a hundred fathoms under water, or beneath the wreck of a twenty-ton locomotive at the bottom of the river. That cellar door was a bad place to fall through, which may be accounted for on the supposition that it was not made to fall through. In his downward progress, Tom had unluckily struck his head against the side of the house; and when he landed at the bottom of the stairs, he was utterly oblivious to all distinctions between treason and loyalty. Tom was not killed, I need not inform the ingenious reader, or this would otherwise have been the last chapter of the story; but the poor fellow did not know whether he was dead or alive.

In fact, he had not sense enough left to consider the question at all; for there he lay, in the gloom of the traitor’s dark cellar, silent and motionless—a solemn warning to all our young readers of the folly and wickedness of indulging an illegal and sinful curiosity. It may seem cruel and inhuman in us to forsake poor Tom in this sad plight; but we must, nevertheless, go up stairs, in order that the sufferer may be duly and properly relieved in due and proper season.

When the committee of three, appointed by the indignant loyalists of Pinchbrook, had completed their mission in the house of the squire, like sensible men they proposed to leave; and they so expressed themselves, through their spokesman, to the unwilling host. They put their hats on, and moved into the front entry, whither they were followed by the discomfited traitor. They had scarcely left the room before a tremendous crash greeted the ears of that portion of the family which remained in the apartment. This was the precise moment at which poor Tom Somers found himself on the bottom of the cellar; or, to be entirely accurate, when he lost himself on the bottom of the cellar.

Mrs. Pemberton heard the crash, and she very naturally concluded that the hour of retribution had actually come; that the terrible mob had commenced the work of destruction. To her “fear-amazed” mind it seemed as though the whole side of the house had fallen in, and, for a moment, she confidently expected the chimneys would presently go by the board, and the roof come thundering down upon the devoted heads of her outraged family. Perhaps, at that terrible moment, she wished her husband had been like other women’s husbands, a true and loyal man, cheering the old flag, and hurling harmless anathemas at the graceless rebels.

But the chimney did not go by the board, nor the roof come thundering down upon her head. There was not even a sound of destruction to be heard, and the sides of the house seemed to be firm and decided in their intention to maintain their perpendicular position. A few minutes later, when the committee announced to the multitude the success of their undertaking, and Fred had displayed the flag from the window, peal upon peal of stunning huzzas saluted her ears, and the awful peril of the preceding moments appeared to be averted. The squire, having closed and barricaded the broken door as well as he could, returned to the room, with curses deep and bitter upon his lips. He was not in the habit of swearing, but the magnitude of the occasion seemed to justify the innovation, and he swore hugely, roundly, awfully. He paced the room, ground his teeth, and stamped upon the floor.

“Father, did you hear that terrible racket just now?” asked Mrs. Pemberton. “I thought the side of the house had fallen in.”

“What racket?” demanded the squire, pausing in his excited walk.

“I am sure they have broken something.”

“It sounded as though it was down cellar,” added Susan, the daughter.

“What was it?” asked the father.

“I don’t know. It sounded like breaking boards. Do go down cellar, and find out what it was.”

“The scoundrels!” roared the squire, as he rushed up and down the room again with the fury of a madman. “I’ll teach them to break into my house!”

“Be calm, father,” interposed Mrs. Pemberton, who, like most New England mothers, called her husband by the title which belonged exclusively to the children.

“Calm? How can I be calm? Don’t you hear the ruffians shout and yell?”

“They are only cheering the flag.”

The squire muttered a malediction upon the flag, which would probably have procured for him a coat of tar and feathers, if the mob had heard it. Mrs. Pemberton was silent, for she had never seen her husband so moved before. She permitted him to pace the room in his frenzy till his anger had, in some measure, subsided.

“I wish you would go down cellar and find out what that noise was,” said Mrs. Pemberton, as soon as she dared to speak again. “Perhaps some of them are down there now. Who knows but they will set the house afire.”

Squire Pemberton was startled by this suggestion, and, seizing the lamp, he rushed down cellar to prevent so dire a calamity.

Chapter V. The Attic Chamber.

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Squire Pemberton rushed down cellar. He was very much excited, and forgot that he had been troubled with the rheumatism during the preceding winter. When he opened the cellar door, he was considerably relieved to find that no brilliant light saluted his expectant gaze. It was as cold and dark in the cellar as it had been when he sorted over the last of his Warren Russets, a few days before.

It was certain, therefore, that the house was not on fire; and, invigorated by this thought, he descended the stairs. A strong current of fresh, cold air extinguished the light he carried. As this was contrary to his usual experience when he went down cellar in the evening after an apple or a mug of cider, it assured him that there was a screw loose somewhere. Returning to the room above, he procured a lantern, and proceeded to the cellar again to renew his investigations.

The squire felt the cold blast of the April air, and immediately made his way to the cellar door, holding the lantern up as high as his head, to ascertain the nature of the mischief which the fanatical abolitionists had perpetrated. He saw that the cellar door was broken through. The rotten boards lay upon the steps, and with another malediction upon the mob, he placed the lantern upon a barrel, and proceeded to repair the damage. As he stepped forward, he stumbled against the body of the enterprising hero of this volume, who lay as calm and still as a sleeping child.

The squire started back, not a little alarmed at the sight of the motionless body. He felt as though a terrible retribution had fallen upon somebody, who had been killed in the act of attempting to destroy his property. Seizing his lantern, he retreated to the cellar stairs by which he had descended, and stood there for a moment, his tongue paralyzed, and his knees smiting each other, in the agony of terror.

We do not know what he was afraid of, but we suppose that instinctive dread which some people manifest in the presence of death, had completely overcome him. Certainly there was nothing to be afraid of, for a dead man is not half so likely to do a person an injury as a living one. But in a few minutes Squire Pemberton in some measure recovered his self-possession.

“There is a dead man down here!” he called up the staircase, in quaking tones.

“Mercy on us!” exclaimed Mrs. Pemberton. “Who is he?”

“I don’t know,” replied the squire.

“Look and see who it is, father,” added Mrs. Pemberton. “Perhaps he isn’t dead.”

“Stone dead,” persisted the squire. “He fell into the cellar and broke his neck.”

“Go and see who it is—will you?”

“Well, you come down