It was not long before the bare rooms of the Academy School--owing to the political situation, which necessitated the exercise of economies in every direction--began to suffer.
One night the students found the gas turned out and a small card tacked on the door of the outer hall.
It read--SCHOOL CLOSED FOR WANT OF FUNDS. WILL PERHAPS BE OPENED IN THE AUTUMN.
Signs of like character were not unusual in the history of the school. The wonder was, considering the vicissitudes through which the Academy had passed, that it was opened at all. From the institution's earlier beginnings in the old house on Bond Street, to its flight from the loft close to Grace Church and then to the abandoned building opposite the old hotel near Washington Square, where Amos Cobb always stayed when he came to New York, and so on down to its own home on Broadway, its history had been one long struggle for recognition and support.
This announcement, bitter enough as it was to Oliver, was followed by another even more startling, when he reached the office next day, and Mr. Slade called him into his private room.
"Mr. Horn," said his employer, motioning Oliver to a seat and drawing his chair close beside him so that he could lay his hand upon the young man's knee, "I am very sorry to tell you that after the first of June we shall be obliged to lay you off. It is not because we are dissatisfied with your services, for you have been a faithful clerk, and we all like you and wish you could stay, but the fact is if this repudiation goes on we will all be ruined. I am not going to discharge you; I'm only going to give you a holiday for a few months. Then, if the war-scare blows over we want you back again. I appreciate that this has come as suddenly upon you as it has upon us, and I hope you will not feel offended when, in addition to your salary, I hand you the firm's check for an extra amount. You must not look upon it as a gift, for you have earned every cent of it."
These two calamities were duly reported in a ten-page letter to his mother by our young hero, sitting alone, as he wrote, up in his sky-parlor, crooning over his dismal coke fire. "Was he, then, to begin over again the weary tramping of the streets?" he said to himself. "And the future! What did that hold in store for him? Would the time ever come when he could follow the bent of his tastes? He was getting on so well--even Miss Grant had said so--and it had not interfered with his work at the store, either. The check in his pocket proved that."
His mother's answer made his heart bound with joy.
"Take Mr. Slade at his word. He is your friend and means what he says. Find a place for the summer where you can live cheaply and where the little money which you now have will pay your way. In the fall you can return to your work. Don't think of coming home, much as I should like to put my arms around you. I cannot spare the money to bring you here now, as I have just paid the interest on the mortgage.
Moreover, the whole of Kennedy Square is upset and our house seems to be the centre of disturbance.
Your father's views on slavery are well known, and he is already being looked upon with disfavor by some of our neighbors. At the club the other night he and Judge Bowman had some words which were very distressing to me. Mr. Cobb was present, and was the only one who took your father's part. Your father, as you may imagine, is very anxious over the political situation, but I cannot think our people are going to fight and kill each other, as Colonel Clayton predicts they will before another year has passed."
Oliver's heart bounded like a loosened balloon as he laid down his mother's letter and began pacing the room. Neither the political outlook, nor club discussions, nor even his mother's hopes and fears, concerned him. It was the sudden loosening of all his bonds that thrilled him. Four months to do as he pleased in; the dreadful mortgage out of the way for six months; his mother willing, and he with money enough in his pocket to pay his way without calling upon her for a penny! Was there ever such luck!
All care rolled from his shoulders--even the desire to see his mother and Sue and those whom he loved at home was forgotten in the rosy prospect before him.
The next day he told Mr. Slade of his plans, and read him part of his mother's letter.
"Very sensible woman, your mother," his employer answered, with his bluff heartiness. "Just the thing for you to do; and I've got the very spot.
Go to Ezra Pollard's. He lives up in the mountains at a little place called East Branch, on the edge of a wilderness. I fish there every spring, and I'll give you a letter to him."
Long before his day of departure came he had dusted out his old hair trunk--there were other and more modern trunks to be had, but Oliver loved this one because it had been his father's--gathered his painting materials together -- his easel, brushes, leather case, and old slouch hat that he wore to fish in at home--and spent his time counting the days and hours when he could leave the world behind him and, as he wrote Fred, "begin to live."
He was not alone in this planning for a summer exodus. The other students had indeed all cut their tether-strings and disappeared long before his own freedom came. Jack Bedford had gone to the coast to live with a fisherman and paint the surf, and Fred was with his people away up near the lakes. As for the lithographers, sign-painters, and beginners, they were spending their evenings somewhere else than in the old room under the shaded gas-jets. Even Margaret, so Mother Mulligan told him, was up "wid her folks, somewheres."
"And she was that broken-hearted," she added, "whin they shut up the school--bad cess to 'em!
Oh, ye would a-nigh kilt yerself wid grief to a-seen her, poor darlint."
"Where is her home?" asked Oliver, ignoring the tribute to his sympathetic tendencies. He had no reason for asking, except that she had been the only woman among them, and he accordingly felt that a certain courtesy was due her even in her absence.
