A Son of the City

H >> Herman Gastrell Seely >> A Son of the City

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Over the railroad tracks he went as usual to the big, weed-grown,
rubbish-littered field north of the dairy farm, which served as baseball
grounds, athletic field, and football gridiron, according to the season.
There he found a baker's dozen of boys of his own age, who greeted him
joyously.

"Sid DuPree's gone to get his football," Silvey explained. "We'll be
practicing in a minute."

They were a ragged lot. Silvey boasted of a grimy, oft-patched pair of
football pants, which were a relic of his brother's high-school career;
Albert, the older Harrison boy, who did not seem very ill in spite of
the physician's dismissal, owned half of an old football casing, which
had been padded to make a head guard, and there was a scattering of
sweaters among them. Sid DuPree, thanks to parental affluence, was the
only boy who laid claim to a complete uniform, and presently he
sauntered over the tracks in shining headgear, heavy jersey, padded knee
trousers, and legs encased in shin-guards far too large for him. A new
collegiate ball was tucked securely under one arm.

"Here she is, fellows," he called, as he clambered into the field and
sent the pigskin spinning erratically through the air. "Isn't she a
peach?"

Last year, their combats had been fought with a light, cheap, dollar
toy, but here was one in their midst of the same weight, brand, and size
as that which the big university team used, and which cost as much as,
or more, than a new suit of clothes, according to the individual. They
gathered around it, poking at the staunchly sewn seams and thumping the
stony sides with a feeling akin to reverence.

Presently Silvey produced a frayed, dog-eared treatise _How to Play
Football_, which had survived two years of thumbing and tugging and
lying on the attic floor between seasons, and proceeded to lay down the
fundamental laws to the neophytes in the great American sport. Positions
were tentatively assigned, and the squad raced over weeds and stones in
an effort to master the rudimentary plays, while Silvey strutted and
blustered and administered corrective lectures in a manner that was a
ludicrous imitation of a certain high-school coach. Let John excel at
baseball if he would; he was the master of the hour now, and he marched
the boys back and forth until they panted and sweated and finally broke
into vociferous protest. Thus the "Tigers," whose name that season was
to spell certain defeat to similar ten-year-old teams, concluded their
first football practice.

[Illustration: _The "Tigers."_]

John dropped behind to talk to the elder Harrison boy as the team
sauntered noisily homeward. He wanted to learn the details of the
accommodating illness. Albert chuckled.

"Nothing the matter. Only the school doctor thought there was."

That official was a recent acquisition to the school personnel whose
duties, according to the school board's orders, were to "Make daily
visits, morning and afternoon, to examine all cases of suspected
illness, and prescribe, if poverty makes it necessary, that epidemics be
safeguarded against."

"What do you mean?" asked John.

"Well, my throat felt funny and I told Miss Brown. She sent me up to the
office to see him. 'Stay home a day, my boy, until we see if it gets
worse,'" Albert quoted. "Was I glad?"

So that was what the new school doctor did. Thumped you around and
looked down your throat and prescribed a day's holiday as a cure. He
wished he'd been Albert. He'd a' stayed on the pier all morning and
hooked the big carp again. Some folks seemed to be born lucky, anyway.
Couldn't he fall sick too, not badly enough to go to bed, but just
nicely sick as Al was?

He startled his parents at supper that evening by a sudden and seemingly
morbid thirst for information about diseases.

"Mother," he queried, between mouthfuls of bread and homemade marmalade,
"what's measles and scarlet fever and diphtheria start out like?"

His father chortled with amusement. Mother, after the manner of women,
remembered his actions that noon and grew anxious.

"You're not feeling sick, are you, dear?"

He didn't feel exactly well. Could she tell him about any of the
foregoing? Perhaps he had one of them.

"Put that marmalade right down, then. It'll upset your stomach. Here,
let me look at your tongue!"

He demurred. Jam wouldn't hurt him. There was nothing really wrong,
anyway. Only one of the boys at school had gone home with the measles
and he was wondering what it was like. Then he subsided into silence.

Late that evening, Mr. Fletcher found the library gas burning and
discovered his son sitting beside the desk, his eyes glued to the
portly, green-bound _Family Doctor_. Beside him on a pad were scribbled
copious notes. Nor would he even hint, as his father ordered him to bed,
what he wanted them for.

[Illustration: Johnny and Louise]

CHAPTER III

HE PLAYS A TRICK ON THE DOCTOR

In the morning, John sneaked from the table as soon as the last forkfull
of fried potatoes had been devoured. When Mrs. Fletcher brought the
breakfast plates out to the kitchen sink, she found him on tiptoe, with
one hand fumbling among the spice tins and bottles in the top bureau
drawer. He turned guiltily, and yawned to hide his embarrassment.

"I was looking for a piece of cinnamon to chew," he explained. "Guess
I'll be going to school now."

His mother glanced at the alarm clock which ticked noisily in its place
on the wall over the sink.

"Only twenty-five minutes to nine, son. Isn't it a bit early?"

He explained that he had to be up at school at first bell. A geography
notebook had been left in his desk, and entries must be made in it
before the class began. He was gathering his scattered belongings
together in the hall when the maternal voice called him back to the
kitchen.

"Yes, Mother?" with his head in the doorway.

"Will you ever learn to shut a drawer when you're through with it?"

He shoved it back with a sulky bang. "Where's my hat?"

"Did you look in the front hall?"

"'Tain't on the floor by the big chair. That's where I most always leave
it."

"How about the closet hat rack?"

A moment later, a surprised shout told that the lost had been found. The
front door slammed noisily and he was off to school.

The dishes were washed and dried, the plates and saucers stacked on the
pantry shelves, the cups hung neatly on the appointed hooks in the
cupboard, and the silver put away in the sideboard drawer. Then Mrs.
Fletcher turned her attention to the tidying of the house. She made
innumerable circles and criss-crosses with the carpet sweeper over the
parlor rug, and was dusting the big rocker by the bay window when a
chance glance up the street revealed two small figures playing far at
one end of the strip of macadam. Her son, without doubt, was one of
them. No one else wore a cap tilted back at quite so ridiculous an
angle. The other stocky figure looked and acted like Bill Silvey.

Why weren't they at school? Hookey? No, for truants never allowed
themselves within sight of home and easy detection. And there was a
certain brazen righteousness about their actions. At the big, green
house, Silvey challenged John to a game of tag. A lamppost nearer, they
ceased the mad, dodging chase and engaged in earnest conversation. A
hundred yards from the Fletcher house, footsteps lagged to an
astonishing degree and an air of lassitude overcame them that was
inexplicable in view of recent activities. The boys mounted the front
steps wearily. John pressed the bell as if the act consumed the last
atom of strength in his arm.

His mother swung back the door anxiously. "What on earth's the matter?"

"School doctor sent me home," her son explained. "Think's I've got the
measles."

"Nonsense! Let me take a look at you." His eyes were reddened to an
alarming degree, but there seemed little else the matter.

"He did," John insisted. "Told me to stay home today to see if they got
worse. Silvey and I are going fishing."

"Fishing! And coming down with the measles?"

He protested volubly. His head felt heavy and kind of funny, but he
didn't think that lazying around on the pier would be harmful. The
sunshine might do him good.

"Nonsense!" exclaimed Mrs. Fletcher a second time and with increased
emphasis. She turned to Silvey. "You can go home, Bill. John can't come
out. He's going to stay in bed until he gets better."

John trudged wearily up the interminable stairs to his little tan-walled
room.

Shucks, it was just his luck! Look at Al Harrison. He came home with a
sore throat and was allowed to play football and fool around as he
pleased, while he, John Fletcher, was ordered to bed because the school
doctor feared measles.

A fellow had returned from the pier with a string of perch a yard long
dangling from his pole. "Fishing good? Say, kid, this ain't nothing to
what some of 'em have caught!" And he was condemned to a day's
imprisonment while they were biting that way. It was a shame, tyranny,
oppression worse than the old slaves labored under in _Uncle Tom's
Cabin_. He'd run away from home, he would. Perhaps his uncle would give
him a job on the Michigan farm if he worked his way up there. Or else he
could commit suicide. There was the long, shiny, carving knife in the
kitchen table drawer. He'd just bet his mother would be sorry if he used
it.

Instead, he threw his clothes sulkily over the back of the wicker chair
and, after some deliberation, drew a well-thumbed, red-covered book from
his library shelves. Sherlock Holmes was a far better panacea for his
troubles than the big carving knife.

He had read and reread the tale until the episodes were known almost by
heart, but still _The Sign of the Four_ held powerful sway over his
imagination. Thaddeus Sholto lived again to tell his nervous, halting
tale to the astute Baker Street detective. Tobey took the two eager
sleuths through the episode of the trail which led to the creosote
barrels. Holmes appeared and reappeared on his fruitless expeditions as
the boy's eyes narrowed with excitement, and his figure straightened and
his breathing quickened as he followed the police boat in the thrilling
pursuit of Tonga and Jonathan Small on the tortuous, traffic-blocked
Thames.

He found himself reading the love passages with a sudden and sympathetic
insight. No longer did he feel tempted to skim those pages hastily that
he might resume the thread of the main and more engrossing plot. Didn't
Louise live almost across the street from him? Wasn't his interest in
her explained by that paragraph, "A wondrous and subtle thing is love,
for here were we two who had never seen each other before that day--"

"John!" His mother stood in the doorway, stern disapproval in her gaze.
He looked at her blankly.

"Put up that book this minute. Don't you know that reading is the worst
thing possible for inflamed eyes?"

The treasure was surrendered regretfully. His mother replaced it on the
shelf.

"Where's the key to your bookcase?" He shrugged his shoulders. "It
doesn't matter. Mine fits your door, anyway."

The squeak of the lock sounded the death knell to the one course of
amusement that had lain open to him. His mother pulled down the window
shades and stooped over in the darkened room to kiss him.

"Sleep a little, son," she counseled. "Mother wants you to feel better
in the morning."

He undressed and threw himself into bed angrily. Even books were denied
him. What was the fun in being sick, anyway, if a fellow's mother
insisted on taking that sickness seriously. Why wasn't she as easy going
as Mrs. DuPree who allowed that privileged youngster to stay up as late
as he wanted and to indulge in other liberties not usually granted to a
boy of ten?

Sid and the class must be finishing arithmetic now. He wished he were
there. Anything--even school--was better than staying in bed in a
darkened room. Did Louise enjoy his back seat? Had she found the big wad
of chewing gum he'd left on the bottom of the desk? Was Silvey having
the same unfortunate time as he?

The room was warm and close in spite of the open east exposure. He
yawned dismally. A fly lighted on his nose. He brushed it away in drowsy
irritation. In a moment his eyes closed.

He was awakened by the buzz of the egg beater in a china bowl in the
kitchen below him. Must be 'most dinner time. He felt hungry enough.
What was his mother cooking? A fragrant hissing from the hot pan hinted
of an omelet. Just let him sink his teeth into one. Wouldn't be long
before he was ready for another.

He roused himself and went into the hall.

"Moth-a-ar," he called down the stairway.

"Yes, John?"

"I'm hu-u-ngry."

"Lie still. I'll be up with your dinner in a few moments."

He hoped it would be something good. Beefsteak and mashed potatoes and
peas would be about right. Omelet would do, if there were enough. He
could devour the house, he felt so ravenous.

Shortly his mother appeared with the big brown tray, drew up a
straight-backed chair to the bed, and lowered the feast to it before his
expectant eyes.

"Milk toast!" disgustedly.

"Why not?"

[Illustration: _"Milk toast!"_]

"That isn't enough for a fellow. Aren't there any potatoes or meat?"

"They'd make your temperature rise," Mrs. Fletcher explained gently.
"Perhaps, though, you can have some tomorrow, if you're better."

He waited until she left the room and attacked the mushy stuff hungrily.
Everything is grist which comes to a small boy's digestive mill, anyway,
and the food wasn't really distasteful. Then he lay back and, for the
first time in his active life, realized what a refined torture complete
and enforced idleness can be.

The shadows played incessantly on the brown wallpaper as the window
curtains swung back and forth with the air currents and lightened and
plunged his prison into oppressive twilight alternately. A fly made a
complete toilette on the bed cover before his interested eyes, now
brushing the gauzy wings, now twisting its head this way and that way,
as if indulging in a form of calisthenics. He stretched forth a cautious
hand to capture the insect, only to watch it buzz merrily away before
his arm was in striking distance.

A suburban train puffed noisily past and slowed down at the adjacent
station. Only twenty minutes elapsed! And an afternoon of this awful
monotony faced him.

He blinked idly at the ceiling. This was Thursday. Played properly, his
malady should be sufficient to keep him out of school on the morrow; but
was the game worth the candle?

John dressed himself hurriedly and bounced down the stairs. Mrs.
Fletcher was in the parlor, glancing for a brief moment at a newly
arrived magazine. He presented himself sheepishly.

No, he didn't want to stay in bed. He felt all right--honest!

She examined the invalid carefully. The inflammation had left his eyes
and they were now as clear as her own. His skin felt cool to the touch,
without a trace of fever, and his tongue was an even, healthy pink.

"There doesn't seem much the matter with you now," she admitted. "It
won't hurt you to stay up if you don't play too hard. There are lots and
lots of things to do to help me."

First, the potatoes were to be washed for tomorrow's dinner. He filled
the dishpan full of water, dumped the sand-laden tubers in, and attacked
them with a brush in vigorous relief at the change from deadening
inactivity. Next, there were a hundred and one little errands to do
about the house, for his mother began sewing on his negligee blouses,
and the button-hole scissors, the missing "60" thread, and other mislaid
implements must be found for her. Lastly, he announced that it might be
well to go up to school and get the lessons for tomorrow.

"Then I won't miss anything," he explained.

Mrs. Fletcher nodded assent. "But come right back. I don't want you to
be sick again."

The afternoon passed without sign of John. At supper time, he approached
the house warily. His face was flushed, his school clothes begrimed and
rumpled, and a bruise on his right shin forced a perceptible limp as he
walked. He had been practicing with the "Tigers," and the scrimmage had
been most exciting. Silvey--who had not been put to bed--had bumped into
Red Brown in a manner which the latter regarded as unnecessarily rough.
There had been a fight between the two, while the other aspirants for
positions on the team stood around and yelled "Fi-i-i-ight" at the top
of their lungs.

Yes, everyone seemed to be inside the Fletcher house. The outlook was
reasonably safe. He tiptoed up on the porch and stretched out on the
swinging lounge. There his mother found him feigning a deep and
overwhelming sleep.

"John!"

Sleeping boys never wakened at the first summons. That wasn't natural.
So he waited until a maternal hand shook him vigorously.

"Yes, Mother?" With a doleful yawn.

"Is this the way you come straight home from school?"

He protested. There were some lessons to get from Miss Brown after,
dismissal and that had delayed him. "And I've been here ever so long."

"Nonsense!" she ejaculated. "Just look at the state of your clothing.
You've been playing football. Come into the house this instant!"

He obeyed meekly. The period of invalidism was over.

But to the harassed school doctor, it seemed on the following morning
that John Fletcher's case was but the beginning of a long and startling
outbreak of illness in the school.

Hardly had Miss Brown finished roll call before dark-haired Perry
Alford, her brightest and most guileless scholar, waved his hand
excitedly to attract attention. His eyes hurt terribly as teacher could
see. Wouldn't it be well for him to go to the school physician? Miss
Brown thought that it would.

Room Ten's door closed upon the prospective invalid. But a few moments
passed before towheaded, lethargic Olaf Johnson voiced his complaint.

"Please, ma'm, my throat, it feels funny here." He placed a pudgy hand
on each side of his jaw. "And this morning when I get up, my head feels
hot."

He, too, was sent to see the school physician.

"Does your nose run?" asked the man of medicines when Perry finished the
catalog of his ailments.

Perry sneezed and admitted that it did.

"Anything else wrong with you?"

"Not exactly, sir;" then with a sudden glibness, "but I don't feel like
doing much. Only loafing around--and my head feels queer."

"Home," ordered the doctor, emphatically. "At least four days. Tell your
mother you've a first-class case of measles developing."

As Perry made his exit, Olaf appeared.

"Another?" exclaimed the physician, as he exchanged a glance with the
gray-haired principal. "Well, what's the matter with you?"

Olaf elaborated upon the symptoms which he had described to Miss Brown.
The young medic was puzzled.

"There are aspects which are not quite consistent," he said to the
principal, "but the soreness suggests mumps. Shall we send him home?"

"As you think best," nodded Mr. Downer. Olaf went the way of the
measles-smitten Perry.

The doctor was picking up his hat and medicine case to leave when the
office door opened again. Two more boys appeared.

"Good heavens!" said he, as he sat down heavily. "Is it an epidemic?"

The principal shrugged his shoulders in bewilderment.

"More mumps." He beckoned to the larger of the two boys. "Now it's your
turn."

The older urchin was sturdily built, with a deep coat of tan on his face
that no city sun had ever bred.

"What's wrong with you?"

The situation was beginning to pall. The position of school doctor,
newly created by the Board of Education at the close of the spring term,
carried no munificent salary. The young practitioner had grasped at the
opening because the routine work offered golden opportunities for
acquiring a clientele among the parents of the various pupils. Now,
almost at the outset, a whole morning had been consumed, and there was
promise of a great deal more work in the future.

There didn't seem to be anything seriously the matter with the boy. He
felt bruised all over, that was all.

"Where does it hurt the most?"

"Around my back."

"Here?" The doctor placed his hands firmly on either side of the
patient's spine.

"O-o-oh, don't!" he waited.

The physician straightened up and regarded the pupil gravely.

"Anything else?"

"My stomach feels queer and it hurts like the dickens every once in a
while. I lost my breakfast, this morning, too!"

A tense note crept into the inquisitor's voice. "Have you ever been
vaccinated?"

"No sir. We just moved to the city this summer."

"Smallpox!" The principal turned a little pale.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"The pain in the back and the vomiting are almost certain indications."
He turned to the boy. "Tell your mother to notify the health department
the very minute you get home. Your house must be quarantined
immediately."

Much more was said regarding precautions, and measures, and medicines,
to which the patient listened stolidly. A disinterested observer might
have said that he was waiting solely for the order to leave school.

As the door closed, the authorities exchanged worried glances.

"The health record of the school has always been remarkably good," began
the principal.

"But it's an epidemic," cut in the worried physician. "And what an
epidemic. Four cases this morning, and two yesterday, ranging all the
way from mumps to smallpox. Downer, the school ought to be closed and
thoroughly disinfected."

"Doesn't it strike you as peculiar that the cases are confined to one
room, Ten, and that boys are the only victims?"

"Did you ever hear of a germ carrier. A person who, through some source
of exposure, carries germs here and there on his or her clothes, and is
perfectly immune to them. That's what you must have in that room. As for
your last question, merely a coincidence. The boys happened to be the
most susceptible to exposure, that's all."

A bell clanged noisily. Mr. Downer stood up and looked thoughtfully from
his window upon the orderly lines of pupils that no sooner passed from
the school threshold than they became a howling, shouting mass of
seeming infant maniacs.

"Seems to me," he said, "Miss Brown was telling about a girl named
Margaret, Margaret Moran, whose mother took in washing for a living.
Spoke of it as a great joke. Said the girl wore a new dress every day,
sometimes too long, sometimes too short, but never a fit. An ingenious
way to reduce one item of the present high cost of living. She might be
the one," he admitted.

"Always the way," his companion said sharply. "There are more epidemics
and near epidemics started by these itinerant washerwomen than the
medical journals can keep track of. They ought to be regulated."

"At any rate," said the principal, "I think it would be wise to question
her a little before steps are taken to close the school. She may be able
to shed some light on matters."

"As you wish." The physician shrugged his shoulders. "I'll be back, this
afternoon, to help with the inquisition."

Next to children, the gray-haired man loved flowers, and he had planted
the barren strip of land adjoining the fence separating the school yard
from the alley with cannas and elephant's ears. He was puttering among
them, now seeking voracious parasites, now examining a leaf which hinted
in its faded coloring of fast approaching frosts, when boys' voices
coming from the alley, held his attention.

"So you want a holiday?" John Fletcher was the speaker beyond doubt; and
his case had been the forerunner of the epidemic.

"Uhu."

"Got your nickel?"

"Show me how, first."

A moment's silence. John was examining the seeker after advice.

"Just want this afternoon?"

The boy assented.

"Better have the measles, then. That's only good for one day, 'cause you
can't fake it much longer. The disease comes on too fast. Doctor's book
says so. Now pay attention."

"Yes."

"Just before you go to school, shake some red pepper into your hand and
go into a small closet. Shut the door so's none of the stuff can get
out, and blow on it. Stay there until your eyes begin to smart. You'll
find they're all red. That's the first symptom. Now repeat what I told
you."

His pupil obeyed.

"Let Miss Brown take a good look and she'll send you to the doctor right
away. When you come into the office, give a little cough as if your
throat hurt. Let's hear you."

The urchin hacked vigorously.

"No, no, not so loud! You couldn't do that if your throat hurt as much
as you must pretend it does. Try again."

This time, the effort satisfied even the teacher's critical ear.

"Then, when the doctor asks what's the matter, tell him you don't
exactly know; that your head feels sort of queer, and you were all hot
when you woke up this morning. He'll say 'Measles' and order you 'home
until the case develops,'" quoting the physician's words at his own
dismissal. "Now give me the nickel."

"Shucks, is that all?"

"Yes."

"That ain't worth no nickel."

"Aren't you going to give me that nickel?" threateningly.

"That ain't worth more'n a penny. How do I know whether it'll work?"

"Perry Alford's worked, and so did mine, and Bill Silvey's, Olaf's,
Carl's, and the country kid's."

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