Jack the Runaway by Frank V. Webster - HTML preview

CHAPTER XXV
 LEFT BEHIND—CONCLUSION

WHEN Jack regained his senses he found himself in a soft bed, and, as his eyes roved about they did not encounter the familiar hangings of the circus sleeping-car. Instead, they saw a room neatly papered, and at a window hung with white curtains sat a young lady. Jack stirred uneasily. Perhaps he was dreaming.

The woman at the window heard him, and came over to the bed.

“So you’re awake, are you?” she asked pleasantly. “How do you feel?”

“Rather—sore—and—stiff,” replied Jack slowly. “What’s—the—matter—with—my leg?”

“Oh, nothing much. It’s broken, that’s all; but the doctor says it’s a clean break. You’ll soon be better.”

“My—head——”

“Yes, you got quite a bad blow on the head, and you’ve been unconscious for several hours, but it’s nothing serious.”

“Unconscious for several hours?” repeated Jack more quickly. “Where’s the circus?”

“It’s gone on.”

“Gone on? And—left—me—behind?”

He spoke more slowly, and he felt a queer sensation. A lump came into his throat. His eyes felt hot and heavy. Surely he couldn’t be going to cry? Of course not!

“Left—behind!” he murmured. “They left me behind!”

“Why, they couldn’t take you with them,” said the pretty young woman. “You couldn’t stand it to be moved, you know. But they felt dreadfully bad at leaving you.”

“Who did?” asked Jack dully.

“Oh, ever so many. There was one big man with a red tie, Mr. Rain, I think he said his name was.”

“Mr. Paine. That’s the manager.”

“Yes. Well, he gave orders that you should be taken good care of. Then there was a clown, I guess, for all the paint wasn’t washed off his face when he came here. He left a lot of addresses for you, where the show would be.”

“That was Sam Kyle.”

“Yes; and then there was, oh, such a fat lady! She said she once had a boy just like you, and she made me promise to give you chicken broth every day. You have a lot of friends in that circus.”

“Where am I?” asked Jack, beginning to feel a little better at these evidences of care.

“Why, you’re in a room at the hotel, and I’m a sort of nurse. Mr. Rain—I mean Mr. Paine—engaged me for you before he left. Now you’re to be quiet, for the doctor doesn’t want you to get excited.”

“How long will I have to stay here?” asked Jack.

“Oh, about a month. But don’t fret.”

“A month? Why, the show will close then, and I can’t be with it. Who’ll do my act? I must go!”

He tried to sit up, but the pain in his leg, and the ache in his head, made him fall back on the pillow. The nurse gave him some quieting medicine, and he soon fell asleep. When he awakened he felt much better, though he was almost heartbroken at the thought of being left behind. He questioned the nurse and she told him what had happened.

There had been some flaw in the umbrella he used, and it had collapsed, letting him fall almost the entire forty feet to the ground. That he had not been worse hurt was regarded as very fortunate. The show had been obliged to go on, but Mr. Paine had left a goodly sum with the hotel proprietor for Jack’s board, and had also left a note telling the boy that all his savings, including his salary to the end of the season, would be held for him, and sent wherever he requested.

So there was nothing for Jack to do but to remain in bed. How he longed to be with the show, and performing his act again, even after the accident, no one but himself knew. He said nothing about it to the nurse, but there was a great longing in his heart.

The nurse and the hotel people were kind to him, but all the while the boy was becoming more and more homesick. He was worrying and fretting about his parents, and he had about made up his mind to write to Professor Klopper. This fretting did him no good, in fact it increased his fever.

“That boy has something on his mind more than merely being left behind by the circus,” said the doctor to the nurse one day. “If he doesn’t get quieter he’ll have a relapse, and that will be bad.”

“I’ll see if I can’t find out what it is,” the nurse said. None of the circus people had told Jack’s story.

The day after this Jack asked for something to read, and while the nurse went to get him a book she handed him a newspaper, published in a town not far from where Jack lived. He looked at it idly hoping he might see some item about the circus, but the show had evidently passed farther on.

Then, as he turned the pages, he caught sight of an item that gave him a sudden start.

For, staring at him, in black type on the white page, was this notice, dated from Westville, where he lived:

“INFORMATION WANTED concerning Jack Allen, supposed to be with a traveling circus. He left his home with Professor Klopper under a misapprehension. Everything is all right. If he sees this will he please communicate at once with the undersigned? A reward will be paid for suitable information of the whereabouts of the boy.

“SYLVESTER ALLEN.”

“It’s my father! My father! He’s back from China!” cried Jack. “Hurrah! Dad’s back! Hurry, some one! Get me a pen and paper. I’ll write at once! No, I’ll telegraph! Whoop! Now I’m all right!”

The nurse came running back into the room.

“What is it?” she asked. “What has happened? You must not excite yourself. You will have a relapse.”

“I don’t care if I do,” cried Jack. “My father and mother are back from their trip around the world. They’re back from China. I must telegraph them at once.”

“Here, drink this. It will quiet you,” said the nurse, thinking Jack was out of his mind.

“I don’t want to be quiet! I want to yell and sing! Dad’s home! So’s mother! I’m all right now!”

It took him some time to convince the nurse that he knew what he was talking about, but when he had showed her the notice in the paper, and had told his story, she brought him a telegraph blank, and the happy boy sent a long message to his father.

How anxiously he waited for the answer! At last it came:

“DEAR JACK: We will be with you as soon as possible. Father and mother. The professor is coming, too.”

“I don’t know that I want to see the professor,” mused Jack, “but I guess it must be all right, or dad wouldn’t bring him.”

Three hours later Jack was being clasped in his mother’s arms, while Mr. Allen, with moisture in his eyes, was holding his son’s hand.

“My poor boy!” said his mother. “To think of you being a clown in a circus!”

“It was bully fun, while it lasted,” said Jack enthusiastically. “But I guess I’ve had enough of it. But what happened to you? Why didn’t you write?”

“We couldn’t, Jack,” replied his father. “We were detained in a province which was surrounded by warring Chinese factions, and we couldn’t get out, nor send any word. When we did, your mother and I decided we had had enough of traveling around the world and we started for home. We got here, after sending word to the professor that we were coming, but when we arrived we found that you had run away.”

“Did he—did he tell you what for?”

“Yes, Jack,” said Professor Klopper, coming forward awkwardly. “And I want to beg your pardon. I—I fear I was a bit hasty.”

“Then you know I didn’t steal the cup?” asked Jack rather coldly.

“No one stole it. It fell down behind my bureau, and slipped into a hole in the wall where the plaster was off. I found it not long after you had—er—left so unceremoniously, and I wished I could have found you.

“Then when I got word from your folks, and I managed to learn that you had joined a circus, I went to the performance, though I do not believe in such frivolous amusements. But I could not find you to tell you the good news. I suppose you were with some other amusement enterprise, Jack?”

“No, I saw you,” replied the boy, laughing now, “but I kept out of your way. I was afraid you wanted to arrest me.”

“Poor Jack!” whispered his mother. “You had a dreadful time!”

“Oh, not so bad,” was the answer. “I earned about three hundred dollars, and I’ve got most of it saved up.”

“Three hundred dollars, if put out at six per cent interest, and compounded, will double itself in eleven years, three hundred and twenty-seven days,” remarked the professor thoughtfully. “I would recommend that you do that with your money. In less than twelve years you would have six hundred dollars.”

“Not for mine,” said Jack, with a laugh. “I’m going to buy a motorcycle as soon as my leg gets well. That’s as near flying as I care to go for a while.”

Jack was taken home as soon as it was practical to move him, and he and the professor became pretty good friends afterward, for it was no small matter for the dictatorial old college teacher to admit, to a mere boy, that such wisdom as could figure out the hardest problem in trigonometry could be wrong when it came to the simple matter of a missing gold cup.

Jack got his motorcycle, and a beauty it was, for when he received his money from the circus treasurer he found it was nearer four hundred than three hundred dollars. Part of it he decided to save.

“Because you know,” said Jack, “I might some day want to buy a flying machine, and if I put some money out at interest long enough I can get it.”

With the check that represented his savings from the circus came a letter from the manager, stating that whenever he wanted an engagement he could have one. There were messages from all his friends, and a pass to the show good forever at any place where the Bower & Brewster circus held forth. And Jack often used it, taking with him some of his boy friends, and renewing acquaintance with the performers. But there was no such attraction as a clown in an imitation flying machine, though Sam Kyle and his fellows cut up some queer antics in the ring.

But if Jack ever felt any desire to go back to the circus life, he never told any one about it, for he had higher ambitions after that than to don a multi-colored suit and daub his face over with red and white paint.

THE END