Professor Boggs was in a brown study from the time his name emerged from
the hat on starting from the Upper Geyser Basin, until the equipage of
the Seven Wonderers, as the Poet called the party, reached the Thumb
Lunch Station on Yellowstone Lake, nineteen miles to the east--which
drive they made between breakfast and luncheon. The Colonel had
telephoned ahead for a special banquet for the eight that night, at
which Professor Boggs was to tell his story, and civilized life was to
be resumed for the nonce--"To prevent," as the Colonel explained, "our
running wild so that we'll have to be blindfolded and backed onto the
cars when we get back to Gardiner." All up the pleasant Firehole Valley,
the Professor worked at a packet of papers which he took from his bag.
"I'll bet he gives us an essay on some phase of rural education,"
challenged the Artist, with no takers.
Past the exquisite Kepler Cascade they went, after a stop which filled
all except the Hired Man and the Professor with delight. When the party
alighted for the walk of half a mile to the Lone Star Geyser, these two
remained with the surrey--the Professor busy, the Hired Man lazily
smoking. His mental film-pack was exhausted. Spring Creek Cañon proved
another of those comforting features which relieve the strain of
constant astonishment in the Park--the narrow and winding cañon, with
its homelike rocks and cliffs, topped by inky evergreens, shut them in
like some comforting shelter against the tempest of the marvelous. Down
this wild glen tumbled a clear stream of cold water, bordered with
ferns, willows and alders. The Bride scooped up a little of the water in
her hand and drank it.
"Isn't it funny?" she asked.
"Isn't what funny?" asked the Groom.
"To find water actually cool and clear, and flowing down a glen of just
rocks, with no steam, or rainbow colors, or anything but good earth and
stones? I feel like one just out of some sort of inferno."
"The first feller to roam these here hollers," said Aconite, "was a guy
named John Colter. He came out with the Lewis and Clark expedition, and
stopped on the way back to trap. That was about 1807. He got into the
Park some way, and when he emerged he told of it. And there was where
the fust reppytation for truth an' veracity was blighted by the
p'isenous exhalations of this region of wonders."
"Was he Jimbridgered?" asked the Artist.
"Was he whiched?"
"Jimbridgered; Marcopoloed; Münchhausened; Mandevilled; Driscolled;
placed in the Ananias Club?"
"He shore was," replied Aconite. "W'y this place was called Colter's
Hell from Saint Joe to Salt Lake by them as didn't believe in it.
'Whar'd this eventuate?' a puncher'd say to a feller that had seen
something. 'In Colter's Hell' another would say, meanin' that it never
did occur--an' if he didn't smile when he said it, there'd be gun play.
An' hyar was all them marvels that Colter'd seen, and more, all the
time!"
At Craig Pass, the cayuses were stopped so that all might feast their
eyes on the little Isa Lake, frowned on by stern precipices, but smiling
up into the blue, its surface flecked with water-lilies.
"An' hyar," said Aconite, "we hev a body of water that at one end
empties into the Atlantic Ocean's tributaries, an' at the other waters
the Pacific slope."
"Which is which?" asked the Colonel.
"The east end runs into the Pacific, and the west into the Atlantic,"
replied Aconite, quite truthfully.
"What's that!" exclaimed the Hired Man. "Do yeh mean to say we've got
over on the coast by drivin' east--toward Ioway?"
"You've said 'er," said Aconite.
"I tell you," said the Hired Man, as the others began studying their
maps to clear up this geographic anomaly, "I tell you that there ain't
no way of understandin' the 'tother-end-toness of this place, except by
sayin' that the hull thing is a gigantic streak of nature."
"The most rational explanation," said the Groom, "that I've heard. Mr.
Hired Man sets us all right. Drive on, Aconite!"
Down Corkscrew Hill they volplaned, thrilled and somewhat scared by the
speed of the cayuses, which flew downward in joyful relief at the
cessation of the uphill pull to the pass. At the bottom there was a
halt to afford a glimpse of Shoshone Lake, and far off to the south the
exquisite Tetons, their summits capped with pearl. The visit to Shoshone
Lake with its gorgeous geysers was to be postponed until after they
should arrive at the thumb of Yellowstone Lake, and make camp.
An hour of steady driving succeeded. They drowsed in their seats, torpid
from the early start and the days of strenuous sight-seeing. The road
ran through a quiet forest, and there was something not unpleasant in
the fact that the curtain of trees shut off the view--until suddenly at
a turn in the highway, there burst upon their sight that most marvelous
of inland seas, Yellowstone Lake. Straight away extended its waters, for
twenty miles, to the dim shores of Elk Point, where the pines carried
the wonderful landscape upward, their gloom cutting straight across the
view, between the mirror-like sheen of the lake, to timber-line on the
azure Absarokas, standing serenely across the eastern sky, their
serrated summits picked out with snow against the blue.
A huge chalice lay the lake, reared to a height of a mile and a half
above the dusty and furrowed earth where folk plow and dig and make
their livings, the crown jewel of the continent's diadem, unutterably,
indescribably lovely, filled with crystalline dew. The tourists caught
their breaths. Aconite said nothing. For a long time they stood, until
the horses began to move backward and forward, uneasy at the unwonted
stay. The Bride was holding the Groom's hand, her eyes glistening with
tears.
They passed the lovely little Duck Lake, unmindful of its prettiness,
and drew up at the lunch station, where they remained unconscious of
their hunger until the memory of the splendors of the lake were first
dulled, and then obliterated by the scent of the bacon which Aconite was
frying. The Hired Man ate valiantly, lighted his pipe, and sighed.
"That was all right," said he.
"Thanks," said Aconite. "It cost forty cents a pound, an' orto be good."
"I meant," said the Hired Man, "that view o' the lake from back yonder."
* * * * *
Night brought dinner, and that appetite for it which outdoors gives to
healthy folk, at eight thousand feet above the sea. After the eating was
well and thoroughly done, the Professor responded to the call for his
story. He rose solemnly, bowed to the assemblage, arranged his papers,
cleared his throat, and began.
A BELATED REBEL INVASION
THE PROFESSOR'S STORY
Unlike the rest of you, I am no mere seeker after pleasure. I am an
outcast from my native Iowa. I have held high and honorable office, and
I have been treated as was Coriolanus of old. I am the victim of the
ingratitude of republics, as expressed in a direct primary in Stevens
County, Iowa. I am on my way to the great new West, where I shall seek
to serve newer communities where perfidy may not be so ingrained in the
nature of the body politic. And I shall shun relations other than
professional ones, with persons of youth, beauty, charm, and feminine
gender. For by these I am a sufferer. I have with me my notes, and to
you is given the first hearing of my side of a case which may become
historic.
"The contest is unequal," says Epictetus, "between a charming young girl
and a beginner in philosophy." Let this be remembered when I am blamed
for the havoc wrought upon my political educational career in Stevens
County, Iowa, by Miss Roberta Lee Frayn of Tennessee. Not that I am a
beginner in philosophy. The man who, at my age, has been elected county
superintendent of schools is no mere tyro in the field wherein Epictetus
so distinguished himself. But neither does the word "charming"
adequately describe Miss Frayn, unless one trace back the word "charm"
to its more diabolically significant root. I expect to write this, my
_apologia_, and leave the verdict to posterity.
No citizen of Stevens County is likely to be ignorant of the manner in
which Miss Frayn was deposited in my mother's farmyard by the wrecking
of a railway train, or how her grandfather, Colonel Kenton Yell Frayn,
died there in her arms and left the young girl penniless. Judge
Worthington, hereafter to be mentioned, was on the train and doubtless
assisted in extricating Miss Frayn and her grandfather from the
wreckage, but I feel that my own efforts were more effective than was
reported. We left the young woman in the care of my mother, and I took
the judge with me in my buggy.
He was much distraught as we rode along. I tried to say something in the
way of furthering my candidacy for the office I now hold; but he
repulsed me.
"For God's sake, Oscar," I remember him to have said, "don't try to
electioneer me until I can get out of my mind the image of that poor
young girl and her dying grandfather!"
I do not care to criticize the judiciary, but will say that Judge
Worthington's early promotion to the bench and his undeniable comeliness
of person have in a measure induced in him a certain arrogance.
I was triumphantly elected. I went to Boston and won recognition so far
as to be placed on the sub-committee for the investigation of
Tone-Deafness in the rural schools, in the superintendents' section of
the National Teachers' Association.
"Gee!" ejaculated the Hired Man.
Feeling the growing breadth and fullness of life I returned and assumed
my office. Then it was that the Frayn episode may be said to have begun,
in a letter from my brother Chester, which I have here, and which runs,
using an undignified diminutive:
"DEAR OC:
"We would like to see you. Mother and all are well, and glad you
pulled through, even if you did run behind the ticket so. Am
feeding three loads of steers, and they are making a fine gain.
Middlekauff's look rough, and all the feeders think he'll lose
money on them. He paid four cents for them. This is about all the
news. Can't you appoint me your deputy down here to examine Miss
Frayn, whose grandfather got killed in that wreck? She wants to
teach. She is a Southerner, but an awful nice lady, and just as
smart as one of us. She dreads to go to Pacific City to be
examined, as she won't let ma get her hardly any clothes. She is
very sensitive about money matters, and I had to lie to her about
the funds to bury her grandfather with, and tried to slip in $250
more, but she caught me at it and cried. I will be strict and make
her write out the examination properly; so send along the
questions, and the appointment.
"Yours truly, CHET.
"P. S.--Judge Worthington's office is so near yours, you might
leave the appointment and the questions in there. The judge will
bring them down. He comes down quite often now, because he says
that the Boggses and the Worthingtons moved into Iowa in the same
wagon train in an early day, and he thinks it strange that that
accident that killed Colonel Frayn should have brought the families
together again. He thinks that Miss Frayn will make a first-rate
teacher, so you need not be backward about the appointment and the
questions."
Not abating one jot or tittle of my official strictness, I informed
Chester that Miss Frayn must appear and be examined as did others in the
same situation. Chester is an Ames man, and a fine judger and feeder of
cattle, but not fitted for responsibility in _belles-lettres_.
Professor Dustin, an elderly and myopic educator and the author of a
monograph on the Grübe method, had charge of the examination when Miss
Frayn appeared. I found Chester smoking a vile pipe in my lodgings when
I came home.
"Say, Oc," said he, "this four-eyed old trilobite won't do. You've got
to get in here and do business yourself."
Conjecturing that he meant Professor Dustin, I inferred that Miss
Frayn's papers had been rejected. A glance justified the professor. She
had given Richmond as the capital of the United States. A question in
physiology called for a description of the iris, and Miss Frayn had
answered that, further than that, "she" was a naiad, a dryad, or a
nymph, and was pursued by Boreas, or Eolus, or Zephyrus until, turned
into a flower, she could say nothing about Iris. The handwriting and
drawing were beautiful; but the pages of mathematics were mostly blank,
save for certain splashy discolorations presumably of lachrymatory
origin, denoting lack of self-control and scholastic weakness.
"It is absurd," said I, "to think of certifying her. While she has a
certain measure of intelligence--"
"A certain measure!" shouted Chester. "If you weren't a natural-born
saphead, I'd--! Come up to Aunt Judith's!"
I went with him, firm in that solid self-control which gives fixity of
character to my nature. I saw in its true light the amiable weakness of
my relatives which made them slaves to this girl. I felt as stern and
austere as a public officer should, and looked it, I believe, for mother
was quite in a flutter as she asked me to read a clipping from an
eastern Tennessee paper describing the departure from that region of the
Frayns.
From this I learned that Miss Frayn and the colonel had been the last of
the Frayns, the family having been exterminated in the Frayn-Harrod
feud. The colonel had been an engineer in Lee's army. He had given
public notice on leaving that at noon he would nail to the front door of
the court-house, with the revolver of Boone Harrod, the last enemy shot
by the colonel, his version of the origin of the feud. He had carried
out this parting piece of bravado with no disturbance except an exchange
of shots as the train moved away from the station. I was horrified. Was
a person in this barbarous state of culture asking me, Oscar Boggs,
member of the National Sub-Committee on Tone-Deafness--!
"Okky," said my mother, from behind, "this is Miss Frayn!"
I looked at her, and was suddenly impressed with the non-existence of
the material universe, except as centered in and consisting of eyes of a
ruddy brown like those of fine horses, rufous hair surrounding the small
head like a nimbus, and a fused mass of impressions made up of the
abstract concepts of trimness, fire, elegance, and unconquerability. I
have reported the matter to the society for psychical research, but have
received no answer as yet. It was clearly abnormal.
She placed her arm about my mother's waist and looked most respectfully
at me.
"You ah the great man," said she, "of the family Ah have so much cause
to love." Here she stopped as if to regain self-control. "Ah wish mah
po' papahs," she went on, "had--"
"There, there!" said my mother, patting her arm. "It'll be all right
anyway, dear!"
I was considering what to say. Her skin was clear, white, daintily
transparent, and of a delicacy our western girls seldom display (owing,
I surmise, to climatic influences); she stood there on Aunt Judith's
Persian rug, her petite figure with its rounded curves, half-levitated,
like Atalanta upon the oat-heads--and there returned upon me the mental
vertigo, the lack of cerebral coördination, and the obliteration of the
material universe.
"Am Ah so igno'ant, really?" said she. "Ah'm fond of children; and Ah
_must_ find wohk!"
Why did I hate Dustin? Why could I not command my speech? I always rally
at the crises, however, and did so in this instance.
"As for ignorance," said I, "Sir John Lubbock says: 'Studies are a
means, not an end.' And Lord Bacon hath it: 'To spend too much time in
studies is sloth.' I see that you have acted on these maxims. Professor
Dustin's astigmatism and myopia rendered it impossible for him to see
you."
I stopped in some returning confusion.
"Those dreadful cube roots and quadratics--" said she.
"The personality of the teacher," said I, "controls the matter."
I heard her laugh, a little delighted laugh, and found myself agreeing
to the heresy that, after all, the chief thing is to train the girls to
be gentle, and the boys brave! Then I gave her my arm in to dinner.
Chester, who had never offered a girl his arm except at a dance or
after dark, glared at me. Mother was uneasy at the stirring of the old
brotherly antagonisms. I expanded, and told Miss Frayn that if all
southern women were like the only one I had met, I didn't wonder at the
feuds. Then seeing whither I was drifting, I asked her plans as to the
school she would take, when I sent her her certificate. She said that
"Mistah Chestah" was going to let her have the home school.
"A boy like Chester," said I, "will have little influence with Mr.
Middlekauff, the director."
"Oh, cut it out, Oc!" burst in Chester. "I've got it all framed up to be
elected director!"
"My political plans," said I, "will not allow of a breach between my
family and Mr. Middlekauff."
"Well, mine do," retorted Chester. "You'll take your chances with the
Middlekauffs, just as I do!"
It was not the occult influence, but a desire to benefit educational
conditions, that led me to visit Miss Frayn's school the week Chester's
insurgency placed her in it. My memory is hazy as to the matter, but my
notes show that her weakness was in the matter of organization.
"Oh," said she, when I mentioned this, "do you all prefeh things so
regulah and poky? It's so much mo' pleasant foh the little things to be
free!" She called most of the little ones "Honey," and allowed much
latitude in whispering and moving about. They crowded around her like
ants to a lump of sugar. Some of them were beginning to evince a laxity
of pronunciation, sounding the personal pronoun "I" like the
interjection "Ah."
In a few days I went back--Chester sneered at me as I went by--to tell
Miss Frayn of the necessity of teaching the effects of stimulants and
narcotics according to the Iowa law. She was greatly surprised when I
told her of this requirement.
"What, _daily_, Mr. Supe'intendent!" she exclaimed.
"Daily teaching," said I. "Our law requires it."
"It seems _so_ unnecessa'y," she said in perplexity. "The young
gentlemen will find out all about it in due time: and is it raght to
expe'iment with the littlest ones? And wheiah shall I obtain the liquoh
foh the demonstrations?"
I felt strangely overcome at this astounding speech, by an indescribable
mixture of tender solicitude for her welfare, and horror at her fearful
mistake; but I reproved her for jesting at the vice of drinking.
"Vice!" said she, with a bubbling laugh. "Why, down home we-all regyahd
it as an accomplishment! But Ah reckon you ah jokin' about teachin' it.
Youah jokes and use of the lettah 'ah' ah things Ah shall nevah get used
to, Ah'm afraid; but Ah'm glad you don't mean that about the drinkin'."
Despairing of making her understand, I left her, again conscious of
being under occult and abnormal control. I was astonished to see in the
school several large boys who must have been greatly needed in the
fields. They looked at each other sheepishly as I came in, but most of
the time they gazed at the teacher, rather than at their books. Not
having the gift of prophecy, I could not see in their presence the cloud
that would soon overshadow my official life. I took their attendance as
proof of the popularity of the school. I studied the philosophers, and
sought calm of spirit. Learning from Epictetus that the earthen pitcher
and the rock do not agree, and from Lubbock that love at first sight is
thought by great minds actually to occur, I reëxamined my abnormal
psychic symptoms in Miss Frayn's presence, and prudently refrained from
seeking her society. Poise alone makes possible a consistent career, and
this I had in large measure reconquered, when, like a bolt from the
blue--or at least with much abruptness--into my quiet office burst a
committee from the Teal Lake Township School Board, accompanied by a
number of patrons of the Boggs school--all old neighbors of ours--headed
by the defeated Mr. Elizur Middlekauff. This could mean but one
thing--Miss Frayn! The rebel invasion was at the door.
"Mr. Middlekauff," said one, "is the spokesman."
"We've got a grievyance," said Mr. Middlekauff, "a whale of a grievyance
in our deestrict; and we've come right to the power-house to fix it."
"It shall command my most careful consideration," said I. "Please state
the case."
"That 'ere railroad wreck," said Mr. Middlekauff, who was a very
forcible speaker at caucuses, "let loose on our people a scourge in
caliker more pestilential than the Huns and Vandals. We come to you as
clothed with a little brief authority, an' accessory after the fact to
this scourge business."
"I fail," said I, "to catch your meaning."
"I mean," said he, growing loud, "that peaches-an'-cream invader from
the states lately in rebellion that you've give a stiffkit, an' your
brother Chet by stratagems an' spiles has got himself elected an' put
into our school. That's what I mean!"
"I infer," said I, "some implied strictures upon the character or school
management or educational qualifications of Miss Roberta Lee Frayn."
"W'l you infer surprisin'ly clus to the truth!" replied Mr. Middlekauff
offensively. "We're a-complainin' of this schoolma'am with the rebil
name; and of her onrivaled facilities f'r spreadin' treason an'
emotional insanity! Try to git that through your hair!"
Like lightning a course of policy occurred to me.
"Are the defendant," said I, looking them over, "and Mr. Boggs, the
director, among your numbers?"
"No," said Mr. Middlekauff. "This is kinder informal. An' besides, we'd
crawl out right where we went in if she was here. I tell you she's
a--a--irresistible force."
"It is elementary," said I, "that no _ex parte_ investigation can have
any validity."
"Now, see here, Oc Boggs!" hissed he, "I don't take any high-an'-mighty
stand-off from a lunkhead that's stole my melons when he was a kid!
You'll hear this complaint, see?"
I did not weaken, but I allowed his standing in the community and party
to outweigh offensive orthoepy, rhetoric, and manners. Unofficially, I
took down the complaint, reserving my ruling. As the horrid tale was
told I grew sick at the problem before me. I glean the details of the
situation from my notes:
Miss Frayn (all these things are set down as _asserted_) had assigned
William Middlekauff, whose father was a member of the G. A. R., the
Confederate side of a debate on the comparative greatness of Washington
and Robert E. Lee, and had said: "She reckoned Mr. William ought to have
won, as he had the strong side." Complained of as against public policy,
adhering to armed insurrection, and giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
_Quoere_ (per O. B.): Is complaint good after forty years of peace,
and Reconstruction?
All members of the committee said that every boy in the district of more
than sixteen years of age was irresistibly attracted to her (exact
language, "be-daddled over her," O. B.). Hence, her character must be
"wrong" somehow. Two boys, each claiming an exclusive franchise to sweep
out for her, had met in Allen's feed-lot to fight a duel, and been
discovered in the act of firing and tied to the feed-rack by Allen's
hired man, and spanked with the end-gate of his wagon. Clarence Skeen
was poorly, and had been found kneeling before a bench calling it his
darling Roberta and begging it to be his. Columbus Smith had turned
somnambulist, and his father had lost ten tons of timothy which "Clumb"
had failed to put up in cock. When sleep-walking Clumb had been heard by
Vespucci, his brother (known as "Spootch"), to protest with sighs and
groans that his heart was broken and to ask "Roberta" to shed one tear
over his grave. Twitted of this by his young sister, Semiramis, Clumb
had slapped her and, cursing profanely, had assaulted Spootch, who
reproved him, and had fled to the Wiggly Creek woods with no subsistence
but a loaf of salt-rising bread, a box of paper collars, and a book of
poems. Letter from Mrs. Smith asking that this Jezebel's certificate be
revoked before all should be lost.
Whipple Cavanaugh had been idle and "lawless" since attending school.
Refused nourishment. Pillow wet with tears. Kissed Cavanaugh's mare,
"Old Flora," on nose after Miss Frayn had patted her on said spot. Had
written a poem to Roberta, and rather than have it read publicly by the
hired girl, who had found it under his pillow, had eaten it, paper, ink,
and all. Doctor Dilworthy called in; pronounced him in danger of
gastritis and love-sickness with grave prognosis.
Names of fifteen boys given, known as "Frayn Mooners," who haunted the
shrubbery about the home of Mrs. Jane D. Boggs, where the teacher
boarded. Six fights were known to have occurred among them. Tension in
the neighborhood was unbearable because of the loosing by Chester Boggs,
"in violation of his official oath," of a bulldog which had bitten
Albert Boyer, and thrown his mother into nervous prostration.
This epidemic of "worthlessness and sentimentality" was spreading
outside the district, as evidenced by an excerpt found in the dog's
possession, from the upper rear elevation of the Sunday trousers of
Boliver Fromme, living in District No. 4. Progress in the studies of the
boys confined to amatory poetry and pugilism, both unrelated to their
life work. _Iowa, My Iowa_, Major Byers' stirring lyric, had been
supplanted by _Maryland, My Maryland_, in school singing. Chester Boggs,
the director, refused to receive complaints, and was condemned as
equally affected with the disease, and probably a "Mooner" himself.
There was a certificate of Doctor Dilworthy of Teal Lake as to the
existence of many cases of "extreme mental exaltation accompanied by
explosive and fulminant cerebral disturbances traceable to mediate or
immediate association with one Roberta Lee Frayn, an individual
seemingly possessed of an abnormal power in the way of causing
obsessions, fixed ideas, aberrant cranio-spinal functionings, and
cranial tempests, in those of her associates resembling her in the
matter of age, and differing from her in social habits, hereditary
constitution, and sex."
I sank back in my chair horrified, with a sinking in the region of the
epigastric plexus.
"We kind o' thought, Oc," said Mr. Middlekauff, "that thet would hold
yeh f'r a while."
I saw the muddled political relations with which this imbroglio teemed,
and clung to delay as my sole hope.
"I am inexpressibly shocked," said I, "and as soon as we can meet with
the defendant and the director--"
"What!" shrieked Mr. Middlekauff. "_Her_ present! Arter what them papers
says? And everybody follerin' her, if she jest smiles, like a caff arter
salt! Why, dad ding me, if I'd trust _myself_ f'r more'n a smile or two.
She'll bamboozle the hull thing if she's there. I b'lieve _you've_ got
it, you conceited young sprout! No, sir; decide this thing now!"
"I regret the necessity," said I, "of asking time to get the opinion of
the county attorney, and to--to--"
"Not by a dum sight!" roared Mr. Middlekauff. "We'll see what the court
has to say on this. An' when you're up f'r election ag'in, come round,
an' we'll consider it f'r a while--an' then you won't know you're
runnin'!"
I was torn by conflicting emotions when they went away. I knew that
Middlekauff was a man of influence. I was not averse to seeing Chester
rebuked for his fatuous behavior, and for tempting me to a deviation
from strict duty. I felt that in taking my stand with the "Mooners" I
might be siding with the heaviest body of voters after all. By these
whiffling winds of the mind was I baffled, finding no rest in my works
on didactics and pedagogics, wondering what Middlekauff would do--until
all doubts were settled by the filing of the case of The School Board of
Teal Lake versus Frayn; and in a few days it came on for trial before
Judge Worthington.
Chester telephoned, asking to see me. He came in looking thinner than I
had ever seen him.
"Do you know," said he, "that this case old Middlekauff's got plugged up
comes off this morning?"
"Having been summonsed by writ of subpoena," said I severely, "I am
aware that your wilfulness in placing an untried importation in charge
of our school, regardless of her unfitness, or of my political
well-being, is this morning bearing its legitimate fruit in the hearing
which comes _on_--not _off_! And I hope your lack of consideration for
the welfare of the school system, so largely wrapped up in my career,
will--"
That Chester was temporarily insane is clear. He flew at me, seized my
trachea in his iron hands, compressed it so as greatly to impede
respiration, and knocked my head against the wall, using incoherently
certain technical terms he had learned at Ames.
"Shut up!" he cried. "You
duplex--polyphase--automatic--back-action--compound-wound--multipolar
_Ass_! Shut up!"
An anatomical chart on the wall preserved my head, and I retained my
self-possession. When he let me down I took my station on the other side
of a table and looked him in the eye, strongly willing that he quiet
down.
"Forgive me, Oc," said he humbly, "I promised myself eight years ago
not to lick you any more! Pardon me."
I forgave him, and we have ever since remained reconciled. He explained
that he wanted to consult as to methods of concealing from Miss Frayn
the nature of the suit.
"Am I to understand," said I, "that she does not know that the relief
sought is her expulsion from the school?"
"Of course she don't!" replied Chester. "Do you think I'd let her know?
She thinks everybody loves her. Nobody ever dared tell her anything
else, either here or down where she was raised. The boys down there
always were in love with her. She don't see anything strange in it--and
there isn't."
"A change," said I, "would be wholesome for her."
"She wouldn't know what to do," replied Chester. "And if she were to
hear these charges--against herself! Why, I don't know what she might
not do! She'd be absolutely desperate. She'd think she had no one to
defend her--and you know the Frayn way."
"I shall not endeavor," said I, after consideration, "to reconcile
medieval notions of honor and personal dignity with proceedings under
the Iowa Code. Neither do I feel it prudent for me to see this person."
For a few minutes Chester sat grinding his teeth and gripping the desk,
and then rushed from the office calling me a white-livered dub, and
telling me to go plumb to some place the name of which was cut off by
the door's slamming. I sat in the office feeling a sense of unrest,
until the time for going to court, where I found Judge Worthington on
the bench, Chester sitting at the defendant's table, and no Miss Frayn.
"Are both sides ready in the next case?" asked the judge, without
looking at the calendar.
"We wish to put the defendant on the stand for a few questions," said
Beasley, Middlekauff's lawyer. "I don't see her in court, your Honor."
"Call the witness!" said the judge; and the bailiff shouted three times:
"Robert Lefrayne!"
"Has this man Lefrayne been subpoenaed?" asked the judge; "as he is
defendant, I don't suppose you thought it necessary, Mr. Beasley."
We could all see that the mispronunciation of the name had misled the
judge as to the identity of the defendant.
"To make sure," said Beasley, "we subpoenaed the party. Here is the
writ, your Honor, with proof of service."
"Mr. Clerk," said the judge, frowning sternly, "issue a bench warrant!
Mr. Sheriff, attach this witness, and produce him at two. Some of these
tardy witnesses will go to jail for contempt if this is repeated! Call
your next!"
Chester was pale as a ghost, and accosted the bailiff as he went out
with the warrant. Then he came back and listened with flushes of anger
and clenched teeth to the reading of the pleadings, to which the judge
seemed to pay no attention. At two, after the intermission, the bailiff,
Captain Winfield, an old G. A. R. man, appeared with Miss Frayn on his
arm. He was blushing and fumbling his bronze button, while she smiled up
at him in a charming, daughterly way that brought back dangerous
symptoms of relapse in my psychic nature.
"Call the witness Lefrayne!" cried the judge.
Light, airy, daintily flushed, she floated up to the bench. The fine for
contempt died in Forceythe Worthington's breast, as he stared in a sort
of delighted embarrassment.
"It was raght kahnd of you, Judge Wo'thin'ton," she said, looking up
into his face, "to send Captain Winfield to remahnd me of mah
engagement hyah. Why, he was at Franklin, and Chickamauga, and knows
Tennessee! And now, gentlemen, what can Ah do foh you-all?"
The judge stepped down from the bench and handed Miss Frayn to the
witness chair like a lord chancellor placing a queen on her throne.
Beasley looked at the witness as if fascinated. Middlekauff seized him
by the lapel of his coat.
"Don't look at her, Beasley, more'n yeh c'n help!" he whispered. "I tell
yeh, it's dangerous!"
And yet _I_ am selected to bear blame for a momentary weakness of the
prevailing sort!
"Proceed, gentlemen!" said Judge Worthington.
Beasley gathered up his papers. "Are you the defendant?" asked he.
"Ah don't quite gathah youah meanin' suh," said she, "but Ah think not,
suh."
"You're the teacher of the Boggs School, in Teal Lake Township?"
"Oh, yes, suh!" said she. "Pahdon me! I thought you inquiahed about
something else."
Judge Worthington started as if struck by a dart.
"Let me see the papers in the case," said he excitedly.
Beasley handed them up, and the judge examined them carefully. Then he
handed them down, turned his back on Miss Frayn, and spoke in a low
tone, like one greatly shocked.
"Proceed!" said he.
Something in his tone or in the turning of his back seemed to strike
upon the senses of Miss Frayn as unpleasant or hostile. The few
questions put to her by the lawyer to lay the foundation for some other
bit of evidence did not appear to affect her at all; and when she took
her seat between Chester and my mother, and was reassured by their
whispered communications, she looked serene, save when she noted the
judge's averted face. Chester's lawyer spoke insinuatingly of spite,
prejudice, and unreasonable provincialism as being at the bottom of the
case.
"And," he added, "I may add jealousy--jealousy, your Honor, of the
defendant's charms of person, which, as a part of the _res gestæ_, are
evidence in this case, if your honor only would observe them."
The judge started and blushed, but still looked steadily away. Mr.
Middlekauff looked relieved. Miss Frayn fretted the linoleum with little
taps of her toe, and her delicate nostrils fluttered. There was a mystic
tension in the air.
"Mr. Chestah," said the girl, in a low voice, "he seems to be alludin'
to--what does he mean?"
Judge Worthington rapped for silence. Miss Frayn's eyes grew bright, and
her cheek showed a spot of crimson which deepened as the reading of the
affidavit went on. As the legal verbiage droned through the story of the
boys' infatuation, I looked at her, and knew that her indignation was
swelling fiercely at she scarcely knew what. I began repeating to myself
a passage from Seneca.
"Objected to," roared Chester's lawyer, "as incompetent, irrelevant,
immaterial, impertinent, and grossly scandalous!"
Miss Frayn clenched her hands and held her breath as if at the
realization of her worst fears. Then the judge spoke. "The affidavit,"
said he, "attributes to Miss Frayn a malign and corrupting influence
over the whole neighborhood, and--"
"Suh!" she gasped.
Again did the judge rap for order.
"Ruling reserved," said he. "Proceed."
Triumphantly Beasley went on with the resolutions. At last Miss Frayn
seemed to understand. She rose, stilled Beasley with a gesture, and in
frozen dignity addressed the court.
"Judge Wo'thin'ton," said she, "Ah'm not quite ce'tain Ah get the full
meanin' of this, but Ah feel that Ah cain't pe'mit it to go fu'thah. Ah
desiah to say to you as a gentleman and an acquaintance, if not a
friend, that these ah things that can not be said of a lady, suh!"
"The defendant," said the judge, after two or three ineffectual attempts
to speak, "will be heard through her counsel--proceed!"
She was hurt and desperate as she sat down, and in a cold and livid
fury. With her eyes level and shining like knife-points, she put off,
with a look like a blow, Chester's efforts to comfort her. She sat, an
alien in an inhospitable land, hedged about by a wall of displeasure at
some formless insult, and at friends without chivalry. The judge began
stating his decision, giving the argument for the one side and then for
the other, as judges do.
"The evidence tends to prove," said he, "that Roberta Lee Frayn has a
malign fascination over her pupils--the larger boys especially; that she
has lured them into personal attendance upon her rather than to study;
that she has incited young men to duels, brawls, breaches of the peace,
and--"
I could see that she thought the phrase "it tends to prove" an
expression of his belief in the charges; and as he went on her face
flamed red once more, and then went white as snow. She stepped back from
the table as if to clear for action, one little hand lifted, the other
in the folds of her dress.
"Suh!" she cried, in a passion of indignation which was splendid and
terrible. "This must stop! If mah false friends lack the chivalry to
protect me and mah good name, Ah'll defend mahself, suh!"
Chester half rose, as if to throw himself into the hopeless contest.
"The defendant does not understand," said the judge. "The defendant will
resume her seat! The evidence tends to prove that--"
But the decision was never finished; for the girl drew a short, small
pistol and aimed at him. We were frozen in horror. Judge Worthington
looked unwaveringly into the muzzle.
"Roberta!" said he.
I then saw a rush by Captain Winfield to strike her arm; the pistol
roared out in the court-room like a cannon; and as Miss Frayn sank back
into my mother's arms, Judge Worthington stepped down with a rent across
his shoulder, from which he withdrew his fingers stained red. From under
the table, where irresistible force had thrown me, I saw him take her
unresisting hand, and heard him whisper to her.
"Darling!" said he. "You don't understand! Let me explain, sweetheart,
and then if you want the pistol back I'll give it to you, loaded!"
Then he stood up and took command.
"The bailiff," said he, "will remove the defendant and Mrs. Boggs to my
chambers. I shall investigate this _in camera_. I am not hurt,
gentlemen, more than a pin's prick, and am able to go on and take such
measures as are necessary to protect the court. Remain here until I
resume the trial!"
"I tell you," said Middlekauff, "we'll crawl out where we went in.
Nobody can stand ag'in her at clus range like that!"
Captain Winfield's face bore a puzzled and mysterious smile as he
emerged from the chambers.
"You can't subdue these Southerners, Oc," said he.
"The verdict of history," said I, "is otherwise."
"We just reconstructed and absorbed 'em," said he. "I was there, an' I
know. The judge thinks we've got to handle this Frayn invasion the same
way."
"I fail to get your meaning," said I.
"The way to absorb this rebel host," said the captain, "is to marry it.
It's the only way to ground her wire and demagnetize her. I can't
undertake the job, for reasons known to all. You're sort of responsible
for her devastatin' course, an' I think it'll cipher itself down to
Oscar Boggs as a bridegroom for the good of Teal Lake Township, and the
welfare of the Boggs School."
My emotions were tumultuous. No such marriage could be forced on me, of
course; but duty, duty! Marriage had been to me an asset to be used in
my career, some time after my doctor's degree, like casting in chess. I
thought of Miss Frayn's untamable nature; and then of her sweetly tender
way with the little ones, how they clambered over her while she called
them "honey."
"On the main point," said the captain, "the court had its mind made up
when I came out. This marryin' has got to be did. Who's to do it is what
they're figgerin' on!"
"Captain Winfield," said I, "if the public interests require it, if my
constituents demand it, I will make the sacrifice! Doctor Johnson said
that marriages might well be arranged by the Lord Chancellor, and Judge
Worthington is now sitting in chancery. I will marry the defendant, _pro
bono publico_!"
"Oc," said the captain, in a properly serious manner, though some
tittered, "you're a livin' marvel! I'll go back and report."
Almost immediately, as my heart-beats stifled me, they emerged from the
chambers. My mother was in tears. Worthington bore Miss Frayn on his
arm, and both looked exaltedly happy. Roberta, as I called her in my
thoughts, shrank back bashfully, more beautiful than I had ever seen
her. It was a great, a momentous hour for me. I felt that I had settled
the case.
"I shall ask the plaintiff," said the judge, "to dismiss this case!"
"On what grounds?" interrogated Beasley sharply.
"Don't tell, Forceythe!" said Roberta, hiding her face on the judge's
arm as I approached.
"Because the defendant," the judge replied to Beasley, "has resigned.
She is about to be married!"
"Didn't I tell you, Oc," said Winfield, slapping me on the back--which
in the delightful embarrassment of the occasion I did not resent--"that
it was up to you?"
A boy in the audience--I think it was William Middlekauff--caught the
judge's statement, and ungrammatically shouted: "Who to?"
"The lucky man?" shouted the crowd. "Name him!"
As it seemed proper for me to do under the circumstances, I went forward
to take Roberta's hand in anticipation of the announcement. Then all
went dark before my eyes.
"I am happy," said Judge Worthington, "happy and inexpressibly honored
to say that the defendant is to be married to me!"
* * * * *
The Hired Man was asleep as the Professor concluded his tale, and some
of the rest were nodding. They rose to retire.
"I suppose," said the Groom, "that the only safe way is to let them
entirely alone, Professor?"
The Professor, embarrassed by the presence of the Bride, could only bow.
"Gad!" said Colonel Baggs, taking his hand. "Your case goes into the
hard-luck file with that of the Nez Percè victim, Mr. Cowan of
Radersburg."