The Dulcimer Boy Page 6
William looked curiously from the candlelit message to his brother’s face. The answer was plain, but he dared not speak for fear of waking his aunt and uncle. He reached into the pocket of the astrakhan coat and brought out the old linden leaves. Although brittle, they were still legible. He arranged them for his brother.
Jules stared curiously at the candlelit leaves. He shook his head, and as he did, a few flecks of soot fell from his shaved skull. He rearranged the old brown leaves.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE CANDLE FLAME began to dance. The draft grew stronger, rustling the brittle leaves. They swirled together like playing cards being gathered up after a hand, then the candle went out.
The darkness seeped into William’s soul. Although still conscious of his brother at his side, he felt alone. One of the old leaves blew against his hand. He picked it up in the dark, closing his hand around it. It disintegrated into a dry powder.
Mrs. Jones shook him awake. A mouse-colored light had crept in under the door of the shack. The others were still asleep. She supplied him with a brush and bag and informed him that he was to learn chimney sweeping by cleaning out the stovepipe over the wood stove.
“Being small has some advantages,” she said. “You’ve got a couple hours before I’ll have to be warming Morris’s porridge.”
She opened the square cast-iron door and helped him into the stove, shutting the door behind him.
The bowels of the stove were in utter darkness. He felt around the foul bed of ashes, then groped overhead for the opening into the stovepipe. It was clogged. He took the handle of the brush and began to poke at it. Cakes of soot began to fall on him. The air began to taste like ashes; he choked. He beat his fist on the side of the stove. Then he collapsed in the heap of ashes.
He sputtered and opened his eyes. He was lying on his back on the floor of the shack; Jules was pouring water on his face from the bucket. Mrs. Jones was standing over him, her arms crossed.
“How are you going to do chimneys if you can’t even manage a little stovepipe?” she asked.
She turned to fixing breakfast. Jules pulled him back onto their corner rug and brought him a glass of water. William felt decidedly weak, but after drinking he could at least speak again.
“Uncle Eustace’s pen,” he whispered.
While Mrs. Jones stirred porridge, Jules sneaked over to the mahogany secretary and slipped a pen out of the top drawer. He gave this to William, who then pulled out the card he had found in his hand the morning before. William reread it dubiously. It had an embossed crest on it, below which were scrawled the words:
If I can ever be the slightest use,
I beg of you to get in touch with
Below which, in embossed lettering:
THE HONORABLE HENRY GILDENSTERN
MAYOR
THE CITY OF NEW YORK
William took the pen and wrote on the back of the card:
Please come to the shack by the river in
Rigglemore, the one with the birds on the roof.
He slipped the card to Jules, telling him to give it to the grocer if he passed the grocery during the day.
“It probably won’t come to anything, but his son goes all the way down there every couple of weeks,” he said quietly, and then fell asleep on the rug.
Inhaling the ashes made William ill for five days.
“Just what I needed,” Mrs. Jones said. “Another invalid.”
Lying on the corner rug, William watched his brother come in every evening, covered with soot, handing his aunt the money he had made. The loneliness he had felt upon realizing that his brother was not utterly dependent on him began to disperse. Late one night he leaned up on an elbow and looked at his sleeping brother’s shaved skull. It was faintly illuminated in the light of the quarter moon coming through the oilcloth, and he contemplated it without feeling pity.
He recuperated. His aunt insisted he finish the stovepipe before going out on a real job. In a leaf message Jules offered to do it for him late one night, but William refused. His next attempt, however, resulted in a relapse. He was ill for two more days.
Early on the morning of the third day he made yet another attempt, this time his aunt allowing the stove door to remain open for the sake of ventilation. He had worked his way about a foot up the clogged stovepipe when he heard the sound of horses in the lane outside. He crouched down into the stove itself, peering out the open grate.
There was a knock on the door of the shack. Mr. Jones, awakening with a start, shrank down in his easy chair.
“Someone we knew?” he said, horror-struck.
Mrs. Jones went and cracked open the door, letting a sheet of light into the dim room.
“Yes?”
“I’m looking for a Mr. Drake,” a man’s voice said from outside.
“Drake? There’s no Drake here.”
Mrs. Jones opened the door a little wider.
“The auctioneer didn’t send you down to look at the dulcimer?”
“Dulcimer? You have a dulcimer?”
Pulling off her apron, Mrs. Jones opened the door all the way. A withered old gentleman hobbled in on a silver-headed cane.
Mr. Jones, struck by the man’s respectable attire, got up from his chair.
“Good morning, my good sir. My name is Jones.”
“And you’ve never heard of Mr. Drake?” the old gentleman said, looking around the dim room. “This is the shack with the birds on the roof.”
“We come down here for the sport, every fall, to fish in the river,” said Mr. Jones. “Our estate, of course, is on the hill above town.”
The old gentleman hobbled up and took the dulcimer from his hands. Mr. Jones smiled.
“A fine example, isn’t it?”
“Indeed.”
“I believe it’s valued in excess of six hundred dollars.”
“Oh, no. Far more than that.”
“More!” Mr. Jones contained himself. “My clumsy way of testing you.” He stroked his bald head. “Out of curiosity, what would you call a fair price?”
“Price? Do you play, Mr. Jones?”
“Good heavens, no!” he exclaimed with dignity.
“Nor I,” the old gentleman said sadly. “So in our hands I don’t suppose it’s worth much of anything.”
Mr. Jones echoed the alarming words: “Not worth much of anything?”
William, at this moment, squeezed himself out of the stove.
“Finished?” Mrs. Jones asked.
William shook his head. Soot sprinkled down onto the floor.
“Mr. Jones,” she said, “you’re really going to have to do something about this mop of his.”
Mr. Jones eyed the thick mass of sooty curls, a just perceptible gleam of relish in his eye. William wiped some of the soot from around his eyes and looked at the guest uncertainly.
“You won’t let them sell it, will you, Your Honor?” he ventured after a while.
“Uneducated,” said Mr. Jones. “Don’t mind him calling you ‘Your Honor.’ He doesn’t know any better.”
“It’s quite all right,” said the old gentleman. “Is the dulcimer yours, son?”
“It came with me, Your Honor. Me and Jules.” William looked around and pointed into the corner. “That’s Jules.”
You won’t let them sell it, will you, Your Honor?
The old gentleman reached out curiously and touched William’s face. He began to wipe some of the soot from the boy’s cheeks and forehead. His old eyes widened. Suddenly he looked rather angry.
“But good heavens! You’re the lad who played in the inn!”
William nodded.
“But how could you be so careless with your hands?”
William looked down at his hands, encrusted with soot.
“I’m sorry, Your Honor, I was sweeping the stovepipe.”
“Sweeping the stovepipe? With those hands?”
The old man had a surprisingly commanding voice, and as he spoke, Mrs. Jones shrank
back a little toward the stove.
“Oh, are you responsible, madam? You have the good fortune, I take it, to be his mother.”
“Only…only his aunt,” she said in a voice not at all piercing.
Mr. Jones, however, drew himself up with dignity.
“Just who, sir, do you think you are,” he demanded, “coming in here and cross-examining my household?”
The old gentleman gave him his card. As he read it, the pinkness drained from Mr. Jones’s face. He stared aghast at the withered, distinguished features of the guest and then sank into his easy chair.
“You won’t let them sell it, will you, Your Honor?” William said, repeating his original question.
“Have your aunt and uncle formally adopted you into the family?” asked the Mayor.
William shook his head.
“We’re not real Carbuncles, Your Honor.”
“Then they haven’t any claim on you.” The Mayor smiled. “That being the case, I don’t suppose I could tempt you to make a trip to New York?”
“Your Honor?”
“Every year we give a series of free concerts, in different parts of the city, at different times of the year. The next is supposed to be the week before Christmas at the Opera House.” The Mayor laughed. “Of course, you wouldn’t be on the free end of things. We would pay you, say, a thousand dollars.”
“A thousand dollars?” William looked inquiringly around the shack, from his cousin to his aunt to his uncle. “Don’t you think that sounds like rather too much?” he asked them. “I mean, especially at Christmas?”
Morris was still sound asleep and made no reply. Mrs. Jones opened her mouth but was now unable to raise her voice to so much as an audible level. Mr. Jones, shrunken down in his easy chair, stared off at the empty wicker chest in the corner of the room, muttering something about a golden opportunity.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A FEW MINUTES LATER the old gentleman led William and Jules out of the shack into the morning light. Waiting for them in the mucky lane was a number of uniformed attendants, holding horses by their reins. Another attendant stood beside a gleaming carriage. The morning was sunny but crisp, and the Mayor quickly removed his greatcoat and draped it over Jules’s shoulders. For a moment Jules was at a loss about what to make of such strange behavior. He took the coat off and tried to hand it back.
“No, no, you keep it,” said the Mayor.
He then smiled at William, who was wrapped in his own coat.
“After your first concert,” the Mayor said, “I’ve no doubt astrakhan will be back in fashion.”
He walked to the carriage.
“Shall we be off?”
Jules, who had begun to stare at the Mayor with shining eyes, leaped immediately to his side, taking his cane for him and helping him up.
“There’s room for two,” the Mayor said, “if you’ll do me the honor.”
It took no more than this for Jules to climb up and sit beside him.
“Thank goodness!” the Mayor cried, delighted. “I have such a lot of room at home, and I’ve just lost my only grandchild to the university! Your aunt and uncle seem so attached to you I was afraid you might want to stay here with them and fish.”
At the prospect of losing their sole source of income, the Joneses had demonstrated a deep, last-minute affection for Jules. But neither Jules in the carriage nor William, who had climbed onto a horse behind one of the attendants, gave the shack so much as a last look as they paraded off down the mucky lane.
The town chimney sweep was sharing the carriage
The party attracted considerable attention as it rode through Rigglemore. Even the old people sitting out on the shady side of the street—even they, who had seen so much—could hardly credit their senses. Never had they laid eyes on such fine horses, such noble equipage, such splendid uniforms. There could not be the slightest doubt that the gentleman in the carriage that led the procession, carrying himself so well for a man of his age, was some great personage. But if this was so, how could it be that the town chimney sweep was sharing the carriage with him?
The party proceeded out of town along the stagnant river and then, after skirting a vast pine forest, entered the rolling countryside of woods and meadows. In a couple of hours, they came to a fork in the road where the horses naturally took the turning southward toward home. To the astonishment of all the others, however, William at this point slipped off his horse and bade them farewell.
Taken off his guard, the Mayor acted spontaneously. He stood on his authority and forbade William to leave them. But in spite of all the gratitude he owed the old gentleman, William only shook his head solemnly. He pointed to a flat blue cloud that had appeared on the eastern horizon and explained that with the help of a certain fisherman he hoped to find the man who had given him the Mayor’s card.
“Ah, Drake,” the Mayor said slowly, thoughtfully. “If I could take the time off, I’d like to look for that man myself. I owe him my life.”
“Me, too, Your Honor,” William murmured.
For just as William had known that the dulcimer was a dulcimer, and that the flat blue cloud was the sea, so he had known from the first that the scruffy seaman was more than a scruffy seaman.
“When you come,” the Mayor said, relenting, “will you bring him for a visit? And do you promise we’ll see you inside of the month?”
William nodded. But even so, as he set off down the road with the dulcimer under his arm and the coat dragging behind him, a sadness came into the eyes of Jules and the Mayor.
“I don’t like to see him going off alone.” The Mayor sighed.
It was Jules, with his sensitive ears, who heard the faint songs first. He lifted his eyes, and then the Mayor lifted his. Accompanying William, singing as they wheeled high over his head, was a great flock of birds, dark birds from the forest, white birds from the sea.
About the Author and the Illustrator
TOR SEIDLER is the celebrated author of the National Book Award finalist MEAN MARGARET. He has also written numerous children’s classics, including TERPIN, A RAT’S TALE, THE REVENGE OF RANDAL REESE-RAT, THE WAINSCOTT WEASEL, THE TAR PIT, THE SILENT SPILLBILLS, BROTHERS BELOW ZERO, BRAINBOY AND THE DEATHMASTER, and TOES. He lives in New York City.
BRIAN SELZNICK is the illustrator of many books for children, among them the Caldecott Honor Book THE DINOSAURS OF WATERHOUSE HAWKINS, as well as his own THE BOY OF A THOUSAND FACES and THE HOUDINI BOX. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
Credits
Cover art © 2003 by Brian Selznick
Cover design by Brian Selznick
Cover © 2004 by HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
Copyright
THE DULCIMER BOY. Text copyright © 1979 by Tor Seidler. Illustrations copyright © 2003 by Brian Selznick. First published in 1979 by The Viking Press. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Seidler, Tor.
The dulcimer boy / Tor Seidler; illustrations by Brian Selznick.
p. cm.
Summary: Twin brothers are abandoned on their uncle’s doorstep in early twentieth-century New England with nothing but a silver-stringed dulcimer.
ISBN 0-06-623609-6—ISBN 0-06-623610-X (lib. bdg.)—ISBN 0-06-441048-X (pbk.)
[1. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 2. Dulcimer—Fiction. 3. Orphans—Fiction. 4. New England—Fiction.] I. Selzni
ck, Brian, ill. II. Title.
PZ7.S45526 Du 2003 2001023875
[Fic]—dc21 CIP
AC
First Harper Trophy edition, 2004
EPub Edition © January 2011 ISBN: 978-0-06-203341-3
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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