VI

One afternoon Professor Litton, having dismissed his class--in which he

was obliged to rebuke Teed more severely than usual--fell to remembering

his last communion with Martha, the things he had said--and heard! He

wondered, as a philologist, at the strange prevalence of the "oo" sound

in his love-making. It was plainly an onomatopoeic word representing

the soul's delight. Oo! was what Ah! is to the soul in exaltation and

Oh! to the soul in surprise. If the hyacinths babbled _Ai, Ai!_ the

roses must murmur Oo! Oo!

The more he thought it over, the more nonsense it became, as all words

turn to drivel on repetition; but chiefly he was amazed that even love

could have wrought this change in him. In his distress he happened to

think of Dean Swift. Had not that fierce satirist created a dialect of

his own for his everlastingly mysterious love affairs?

Eager for the comfort of fellowship in disgrace he hurried to the

library and sought out the works of the Dean of St. Patrick's. And in

the "Journal to Stella" he found what he sought--and more. Expressions

of the most appalling coarseness alternated with the most insipid

tendernesses.

The old dean had a code of abbreviations: M.D. for "My dear," Ppt. for

"Poppet," Pdfr. for "Poor dear foolish rogue," Oo or zoo or loo stood

for "you," Deelest for "Dearest," and Rettle for "Letter," and Dallars

for "Girl," Vely for "Very," and Hele and Lele for "Here and there."

Litton copied out for his own comfort and Martha's this passage.

Do you know what? When I am writing in my own language I make up my

mouth just as if I was speaking it: "Zoo must cly Lele and Hele,

and Hele aden. Must loo mimitate Pdfr., pay? Iss, and so la shall!

And so leles fol ee rettle. Dood mollow."

And Dean Swift had written this while he was in London two hundred years

before, a great man among great men. With such authority back of him

Litton returned to his empty class-room feeling as proud as Gulliver in

Lilliput. A little later he was Gulliver in Brobdingnag.

Alone at his desk, with none of his students in the seats before him, he

took from his pocket--his left pocket--a photograph of Prof. Martha

Binley. It had been taken one day on a picnic far from the spying eyes

of pupils. Her hair was all wind-blown, her eyes frowned gleamingly into

the sun, and her mouth was curled with laughter.

He sat there alone--the learned professor--and talked to this snapshot

in a dialogue he would have recently accepted as a perfect examination

paper for matriculation in an insane-asylum.

"Well, Margy-wargy, zoo and Stookie-tookie is dust like old Dean

Swiffikins, isn't we?"

There was a rap on the door and the knob turned as he shot the

photograph into his pocket and pretended to be reading a volume of

Bacchylides--upside down. The intruder was Teed. Litton was too much

startled and too throbbing with guilt to express his indignation. He

stammered:

"We-well, Teed?" He almost called him teed-leums, his tongue had so

caught the rhythm of love.

Teed came forward with an ominous self-confidence bordering on

insolence. There was a glow in his eye that made his former tyrant

quail.

"Professor, I'd like a word with you about those conditions. I wish

you'd let me off on 'em."

"Let you off, T-Teed?"

"Yes, sir. I can't get ready for the exams. I've boned until my skull's

cracked and it lets the blamed stuff run out faster than I can cram it

in. The minute I leave college I expect to forget everything I've

learned here, anyway; so I'd be ever so much obliged if you'd just pass

me along."

"I don't think I quite comprehend," said Litton, who was beginning to

regain his pedagogical dignity.

"All you've gotta do," said Teed, "is to put a high enough mark on my

papers. You gimme a special examination and I'll make the best stab I

can at answering the questions; then you just shut one eye and mark it

just over the failure line. That'll save you a lot o' time and fix me

hunky-dory."

Litton was glaring at him, hearing the uncouth "gimme" and "gotta," and

wondering that a man could spend four years in college and scrape off

so little paint. Then he began to realize the meaning of Teed's

proposal. His own honor was in traffic. He groaned in suffocation:

"Do you dare to ask me to put false marks on examination-papers, sir?"

"Aw, Professor, what's the dif? You couldn't grind Latin and Greek into

me with a steel-rolling machine. Gimme a chance! There's a little girl

waiting for me outside and a big job. I can't get one without the

other--and I don't get either unless you folks slip me the sheepskin."

"Impossible, sir! Astounding! Insulting! Impossible!"

"Have a heart, can't you?"

"Leave the room, sir, at once!"

"All right!" Teed sighed, and turned away. At the door he paused to

murmur, "All right for you, Stookie-tookie!"

Litton's spectacles almost exploded from his nose.

"What's that?" he shrieked.

Teed turned and came back, with an intolerable smirk, straight to the

desk. He leaned on it with odious familiarity and grinned.

"Say, Prof, did you ever hear of the dictagraph?"

"No! And I don't care to now."

"You ought to read some of the modern languages, Prof! Dictagraph comes

from two perfectly good Latin words: dictum and graft--well, you'll know

'em. But the Greeks weren't wise to this little device. I got part of it

here."

He took from his pocket the earpiece of the familiar engine of

latter-day detective romance. He explained it to the horribly fascinated

Litton, whose hair stood on end and whose voice stuck in his throat in

the best Vergilian manner. Before he quite understood its black magic

Litton suspected the infernal purpose it had been put to. His wrath had

melted to a sickening fear when Teed reached the conclusion of his

uninterrupted discourse:

"The other night I was calling on a pair of girls at the dormitory where

your--where Professor Binley lives. They pointed out the sofa near the

fireplace where you and the professoress sit and hold hands and make

googoo eyes."

There was that awful "oo" sound again! Litton was in an icy

perspiration; but he was even more afraid for his beloved, precious

sweetheart than for himself--and that was being about as much afraid as

there is. Teed went on relentlessly, gloating like a satyric mask:

"Well, I had an idea, and the girls fell for it with a yip of joy. The

next evening I called I carried a wire from my room across to that

dormitory and nobody paid any attention while I brought it through a

window and under the carpet to the back of the sofa. And there it

waited, laying for you. And over at my digs I had it attached to a

phonograph by a little invention of my own.

"Gosh! It was wonderful! It even repeated the creak of those old, rusty

springs while you waited for her. And when she came--well, anyway, I

got every word you said, engraved in wax, like one of those old poets of

yours used to write on."

Litton was afraid to ask evidence in verification. Teed supplied the

unspoken demand:

"For instance, the first thing she says to you is: 'Oh, there you are,

my little lover! I thought you'd never come!' And you says, 'Did it miss

its stupid old Stookie?' And she says: 'Hideously! Sit down, honey

heart.' And splung went the spring--and splung again! Then she says:

'Did it have a mis'ble day in hateful old class-room? Put its boo'ful

head on Margy-wargy's shojer.' Then you says--"

"Stop!" Litton cried, raising the only missile he could find, an

inkstand. "Who knows of this infamy besides you?"

"Nobody yet--on my word of honor."

"Honor!" sneered Litton, so savagely that Teed's shameless leer vanished

in a glare of anger.

"Nobody yet! The girls are dying to hear and some of the fellows knew

what I was up to; but I was thinking that I'd tell 'em that the blamed

thing didn't work, provided--provided--"

"Provided?" Litton wailed, miserably.

"Provided you could see your way clear to being a little careless with

your marks on my exam-papers."

Litton sat with his head whirling and roaring like a coffee-grinder. A

multitude of considerations ran through and were crushed into

powder--his honor; her honor; the standards of the university; the

standards of a lover; the unimportance of Teed; the all-importance of

Martha; the secret disloyalty to the faculty; the open disloyalty to his

best-beloved. He heard Teed's voice as from far off:

"Of course, if you can't see your way to sparing my sweetheart's

feelings I don't see why I'm expected to spare yours--or to lie to the

fellows and girls who are perishing to hear how two professors talk when

they're in love."

Another long pause. Then the artful Teed moved to the door and turned

the knob. Litton could not speak; but he threw a look that was like a

grappling-iron and Teed came back.

"How do I know," Litton moaned, "how do I know that you will keep your

word?"

"How do I know that you'll keep yours?" Teed replied, with the insolence

of a conqueror.

"Sir!" Litton flared, but weakly, like a sick candle.

"Well," Teed drawled, "I'll bring you the cylinders. I'll have to trust

you, as one gentleman to another."

"Gentleman!" Litton snarled in hydrophobic frenzy.

"Well, as one lover to another, then," Teed laughed. "Do I get my

diploma?"

Litton's head was so heavy he could not nod it.

"It's my diploma in exchange for your records. Come on, Professor--be a

sport! And take it from me, it's no fun having the words you whisper in

a girl's ear in the dark shouted out loud in the open court. And mine

were repeated in a Dutch dialect! I got yours just as they came from

your lips--and hers."

That ended it. Litton surrendered, passed himself under the yoke;

pledged himself to the loathsome compact, and Teed went to fetch the

price of his degree of Bachelor of Arts.

Litton hung dejected beyond feeling for a long while. His heart was

whimpering _Ai, Ai!_ He felt himself crushed under a hundred different

crimes. He felt that he could never look up again. Then he heard a soft

tap at the door. He could not raise his eyes or his voice. He heard the

door open and supposed it was Teed bringing him the wages of his shame;

but he heard another voice--an unimaginably beautiful, tragically tender

voice--crooning:

"Oo-oo! Stookie-tookie!"

He looked up. How radiant she was! He could only sigh. She came across

to him as gracefully and lightly as Iris running down a rainbow. She was

murmuring:

"I just had to slip over and tell you something."

"Well, Martha!" he sighed.

She stopped short, as if he had struck her.

"'Martha'? What's the matter? You aren't mad at me, are you, Stookie?"

"How could I be angry with you, Marg--er--Martha?"

"Then why don't you call me Margy-wargleums?"

He stared at her. Her whimsical smile, trembling to a piteously pretty

hint of terror, overwhelmed him. He hesitated, then shoved back his

chair and, rising, caught her to him so tightly that she gasped out,

"Oo!" There it was again! He laughed like an overgrown cub as he cried:

"Why don't I call you Margy-wargleums? Well, what a darned fool I'd be

not to! Margy-wargleums!"

To such ruin does love--the blind, the lawless, the illiterate

child--bring the noblest intelligences and the loftiest principles.