A GOOD NAME
The Judge had come in to dinner in a bad temper. For one thing he had
been badly beaten at golf by a man who could not speak good English.
This thing seemed to the Judge insufferable, a thing that should not be
allowed. Fancy being beaten by the long drives and careful calculation
of a hooked-nose oaf who shambled in his walk and said "acrost" and
"bee-hind" and "I was to New York."
The Judge was beginning to feel his age in many ways. His complete
absorption in his calling made him sometimes aghast at how differently
life went from what he stipulated. A nightmarish sense of suddenly
awaking in an unfamiliar milieu, in surroundings peopled with beings he
did not understand, who did nothing he had willed, oppressed him.
The very weather was more progressive than the Judge wanted it to be.
The late June, lush and rich with vegetation, seemed to impinge on his
conception of a world neatly outlined in flower borders and garden
paths. The weeds around his rose gardens had accumulated! Colter had
not yet removed them. The man was clearly a shirker, endeavoring to
impress people with his superiority to work. Where was he at this
moment? The Judge had not been able to locate him on the place. Then
the whole attitude of the immediate world toward the Terence O'Brien
affair affected the Judge. "In the good old days," thought that
gentleman, "men committed crime and we hung 'em and that was the end of
it. Nowadays a man does wrong, and what happens? First, the women all
over the country begin howling; then the newspapers run amuck because
some smart politician sees capital in it; then the fool letter writers,
E Pluribus Unum, Veritas, and Uncle Felix, begin gassing; then some
lawyer sees a chance for notoriety and takes the defense, first thing
you know"--the Judge was almost awed at it,--"the Bench itself, the
Bench itself, is put into the wrong!"
Miss Aurelia, amid accustomed twitters about hot water, the instability
of cooking gas, the fact that the cream wasn't good and her other daily
anguishes, yet found time for soft demurring.
"But Mr. Shipman, brother, surely he couldn't need notoriety. Why
he--they--I remember the Ledyard affair. Mr. Shipman got George Ledyard
completely exonerated, at least it was said so, though he did commit
suicide afterward. The thing ran through the country like wild-fire.
Mr. Shipman must be very well known. Not that I quite understand, but
there was a famous scientist, brother to Mr. Ledyard, I believe, whom
they scoured the country for----"
The Judge moved prohibitively and Miss Aurelia ran down. "Women's
clack," came the judicial sentence on her remarks. "Women's clack,
Shipman's game is to take some mucker and put him on top; it gets him
well known and keeps the people for him. He'll run for something some
day. Don't like the man, never did." The Judge, having passed sentence
on Shipman, looked around in a manner of swelled grandeur. Then his
hard-boiled eyes becoming suddenly conscious of the two empty seats at
the table, he asked abruptly, "Where are the girls? Hey? What? What did
you say? Where are they?"
Miss Aurelia, when cornered this sudden way by the bushy brows of
concentrated inquiry, invariably straightened things on the table while
her remarks became more tangled and confused. The setting to rights
movement invariably gave her away. When she accurately replaced a
salt-cellar the Judge, perfectly aware what uneasiness this connoted,
followed her up as a dog would a scared rabbit. He stopped chewing to
corner her.
"Hey? What! Why don't you want to tell? Hey? Where are the girls? Can
you answer a straight question? Yes or no?" The Judge was sarcastic.
Miss Aurelia, taking up a tumbler, looked at it reproachfully, then put
it down with an air of gentle resignation. "Why, brother, of course I
can. Do I ever do anything else?" The smoky, soft eyes had an air of
surprise and inquiry. "When you think of all the questions that are
asked me in the house and the pains that I am put to in order to answer
them fully and plainly--that is"--Miss Aurelia caught her brother's
eye--"if I understand, or they, you--I--er--why do you ask?"
The magistrate, now being sure of deceit and evasion in the stammering
lady opposite, played what was usually a very strong card with her.
In fact, the Judge almost loved Miss Aurelia because she was the only
person of his household who regarded this as a strong card. With an air
of majesty, a thing that in his young days he had practised until he
believed in it, a thing that would have made him a marvelous model for
a moving-picture photographer, he brought down his fist until the lunch
table rattled. Miss Aurelia, well trained in her part, jumped. It was
the thing to do. Dora, bringing in the custards, looked nervous, quite
proper of Dora. The hard-boiled eyes seeing all this took on a curious
top film of complacency. The Judge leaned forward.
"Now, if you can speak the truth," the Judge shook impressively that
thick forefinger which had so long been unwittingly the little coffin
nail of dead oratory, "if you are capable of speaking the truth, where
are the girls? Did they ask your permission to go? Did they take the
depot car without my permission? Did they ask that sneak Colter to go
with them, also without my permission?"
The curious something that sleeps in the frailest and feeblest woman
now rose in Miss Aurelia. She seized a pepper-pot and violently shook
it. "Stopped up again," said she with a sepulchral voice. The lady
faced her magistrate brother. "I'm sure you have no right to address
me as if I were a shoplifter, for I presume that is the way you do
address shoplifters, though it is true that I might be, that is, that
you, anyone, might be a shoplifter." Suddenly the poor lady paused, for
the hard-boiled gooseberry eyes, steadily fixed upon her, at last had
their wonted effect. Miss Aurelia felt guilty, and that was what the
Judge wanted. It was his great pride that he could make anyone feel
guilty; he exulted.
"They've gone off somewhere," burst out Miss Aurelia defiantly. "Why
didn't you ask me before? I'm sure you can't see anything wrong in
that. Dunstan had gone with--with some other girls. I presume Sard and
Minga have joined them. Dora and Maggie say that Colter drove them in
the depot car."
The lady made as if to rise and leave the table. Her knees trembled,
her stiffly starched white skirts rustled, she was the old-time picture
of femininity swimming on the seas of its own emotions and expecting
to be rescued by the very man who had stirred up the storm. But Miss
Aurelia, with her flutter of defiance and tears, had to pass the
inexorable judicial eyes.
"You are sure the man Colter accompanied them?" asked the Judge in the
low tones he reserved for hardened offenders.
But now that screeching, protesting thing that is intrenched in the
soul and body of every woman burst forth. Miss Aurelia was no longer
early Victorian. She was late--Margot-Tennant, the pent-up protester,
the savage that sleeps under the threshold. She rose and shrieked
defiance.
"Sure?" demanded Miss Aurelia, ruffling, "sure? That's what you wanted
to know all along! Well then, why didn't you forbid it, if you were
afraid? You know how Sard does things. How could I help it? Have you
ever told Sard not to be seen with this man? I have worried about it
all day. Not that I fear for Sard," poor Miss Aurelia saw too late
the curious gleam in the Judge's eyes, "only she doesn't realize that
people will talk. The men in the Morris bank--and all--why, only
yesterday----" but the reminiscence trailed off like a whiff of smoke
in the blue haze of Miss Aurelia's mind. "Why should you ask me such
a thing?" she said. Her inflection was enough to damn the entire
expedition.
Judge Bogart sat back in his chair. He raised his eyes to the ceiling
with the air of registering an important bit of evidence. "Umph," he
said slowly, "just what I thought." He pulled down his lower lip, and
looked at his sister. "Precisely what I thought. It seems that I,"
repeated the Judge, staring, "must take my own daughter in hand."
"Now, now," said Miss Aurelia, with a frightened attempt to palliate;
"nobody needs to take Sard in hand. Why, she, they----" But her brother
waved her to some strange dungeon existing in his own mind.
"You are acting in the capacity of Sard's mother," he said
grandiloquently; "you have failed. It was for you to have watched over
her and to have kept her from entangling matters, the sort of thing
a hot-headed girl gets into. You ought to know----" The Judge grimly
paused.
But Miss Reely felt that it was not entirely discreet to understand
this inference that she "ought to know."
"How should I know?" She tossed her head. "I never thought about such
things, but," suddenly her old manner returned, "you are mistaken
about Sard. It is only the under-dog she is interested in. Look at her
about Terence O'Brien, and she has never even seen him. She's been
interested in under-dogs ever since she came home from college. I never
realized it," confessed Miss Aurelia with a nervous cough, "until
Dunstan gave her that box at Christmas labeled 'Under-dog Biscuits,'
and it had twenty-five dollars in it for Sard to give to tramps." Miss
Aurelia, in spite of her perturbation, could not help the slight tremor
of a smile, but she sought to propitiate her brother. "Of course," she
confessed, "Sard isn't exactly my idea of a lady, not a bit like her
mother. But she may grow more like her."
The man and woman in the Bogart dining-room instinctively conjured up
this possible resemblance to Sard's mother, to the little curls and
rows of buttons, the little rings and chains and bracelets, the tiny
web of handkerchief and the sweet smell of scented lace over a tightly
corseted little bosom. Poor Miss Aurelia, standing timidly back of
her brother's chair, tried faithfully to see her niece formed on this
pattern and utterly failed.
"The girls seem different nowadays. I don't know what it is," she
complained, "they take long steps. They are--um--healthier. Don't you
know how they shake hands with you as if they said, 'Well, what are
you good for?'" Miss Aurelia pondered. "I was so different in my own
youth," she sighed; "you remember, brother, I spent much of my time in
bed taking medicine."
"Well, it kept you a lady, and a fool," snapped Judge Bogart. Now he
rose from his luncheon chair with the effect of charging the jury.
"You can tell Sard if you don't want me to; my time--my time,"
emphasized Judge Bogart impressively, "may come later, that she is to
drop all association with this Gentleman-John tramp of hers. Make her
ashamed. Make her see the vulgarity of the thing. If she rebels, why
then----" said Judge Bogart darkly, as he stood there pulling down his
lip, looking at his sister. "There's just one thing I won't have," he
said emphatically, "a taste for low company. Sard has that." He turned,
surveying his relative narrowly. "Even that little poll-parrot Minga
has more pride. The girl will have to learn that she's my daughter, not
the friend of Tom, Dick and Harry, but my daughter. Tell her that, do
you understand, _my daughter_!" The Judge stood staring; he finished
in the voice he used so successfully in the court-room. "If she can't
take your advice, she'll take my orders." At some thoughts of the girl,
clear, steady, the Judge's lower lip snarled. His legs seemed not to
hold him up well. He became a curious, insecure mass of anger.
Somehow after that the whole house looked different to Miss Aurelia.
She suddenly saw things through the eyes of youth, youth trying to lift
itself up and away on broad paths of sympathy and justice. She saw a
common condition of things where the parent forgets to grow but stands
stiffly like a mile-post, pointing proudly to a road that has long been
choked with weeds.
The tall, thin lady went slowly up the stairs feeling somehow curiously
young and chastened, like one sent to bed on bread and water, as if she
herself were found guilty before this narrow tribunal.
"Oh!" she panted. "Oh, how did he ever grow to be like this, so
terrible? He was such a good young man--such a good young man." Then
the thought that had once come to Dunstan came to his aunt. Perhaps no
one human being ought to have power of life and death over other human
beings; for this was what happened to them. This hardness and cold
self-sufficiency, this was what happened to men who condemned other
men to everlasting dooms. So when the hours waxed late and the young
people had not returned the good lady wandered from room to room like a
banshee. At last she went rather desperately to the kitchen.
"Maggie, it seems late for the girls, doesn't it? You saw them go. Were
they--er--warmly dressed?"
"Yes," grinned Maggie. She turned from bread mixing, a dab of flour on
her red, kind face. "I seen 'em in their pants and all."
"Their camp costumes," observed Miss Aurelia, with dignity.
"Camp or no camp," observed Maggie, with the privilege of a good cook
who knows her value, "them pants is something terrible. That Minga!
such things will bring one doom or another onto her."
Maggie turned to Dora. "Look at them actresses," she observed, "and
where do they end? It ain't no way for a lady to dress, them pants."
But the waitress, with some sense of her mistress' anxiety, tried to
soothe. "It ain't so late, Miss Bogart, and they had their steamer
rugs. The girls is always careful; at least, Miss Sard is, drivin' the
car and all. And then, too, they've took that there Colter with them."
Both women were evidently curious, and Cook paused, anxious to see
how Miss Aurelia would receive this bit of news. Birth and breeding,
however, still accomplish certain reserves with the observing ones of
the kitchen. There was no further inquiry on Miss Aurelia's part.
"It must be tire trouble," concluded that lady worriedly.
"I--they--that little depot car is rather uncertain. I have often heard
Miss Sard speak of it. I wish----" But what she wished Miss Aurelia
forbore to say. She started to go out of the kitchen, hesitated and
turned back again. "Have plenty of hot water for chocolate, and the
electric toaster and jam. They might be hungry."
As the lady of the house departed, the two serving-women looked
significantly at each other.
"So, she's begun to worry already?" said Maggie, her own red face
troubled. "She's seen what we seen. Oh, my! Wouldn't it be awful if
Miss Sard was to take up with such a one, poor, motherless child?
Wouldn't it be terrible, the Judge and all?"
But Dora shook her head. The girl, deepened by her own worries, read
things more clearly in the great Human Book of which she was part.
Mechanically she drifted around the kitchen in her absent-minded way
of the last month. "It ain't that, it ain't that," she said doggedly.
"It's that she's the New Kind of girl. Look how she's treated me. Look
how she's cared about my Terry. It's the New Way, and now if that
Colter feller is anything to her, it's that she's all caught up with
pity for him. Down on his luck and all. She ain't thinking of nothing.
It's the New Kind of girl! They don't keep thinkin' of fellers for
marriage and all."
At a sound on the driveway, Dora went to the window.
"Automobiles," she announced. "That's them! My! but I'm glad." Both
women breathed dramatic sighs of relief, and opened the kitchen door
gladly to see Sard's hatless flying figure.
"Maggie--Dora," Sard was breathless, "don't fuss or make any noise, but
run up and turn down Miss Minga's bed and get hot-water bottles and hot
drinks. You see, she got into a bog and fainted. She may still be a
little chilled. Anyway, she might have drowned, but for Colter. Here,
this way, Colter."
Down the garden path from the garage came the little group: Colter, the
man on the place, bearing the small figure, eyes languidly fluttering,
drenched in clammy camping things. Dunstan, stony and snappish, was
carrying the picnic impedimenta. Shipman, an amused look in his
eyes, stood about wondering whether he hadn't better get out, yet
taking curious pleasure in watching Sard's selfless efficiency. On
encountering Miss Aurelia in the dim hall, he pulled himself together.
"Oh!" gasped the rabbity mouth, "you will tell me, perhaps. There is no
danger. You are a doctor?" Sard had brushed by her aunt, refusing to
answer the torrents of questions. Miss Aurelia was now almost in tears.
"No danger." Shipman's voice, full of his controlled human tenderness,
always influenced people at once. It surrounded Miss Aurelia like a
wall against which the shaky lady leaned like a slender wandering vine
of femininity. She now leaned some more, and inquired, "I thought
they--you see, we know very little about the man Colter--was it--did he
attack her?" Miss Aurelia, with sick tremulousness, put the question
and Shipman's eyes half gleamed with amusement. The lawyer knew what
a curious charnel house the mind of a good country woman could be. He
knew the horrors this poor lady had visualized and tried to relieve her
anxiety. His polished concern soothed her enormously.
"Your man Colter was very clever," he observed quietly, "and
resourceful. Quite a superior person, I should say. He got to Miss
Gerould first. The rest of us had not heard her screams. She had
floundered into a deep bog and then fainted from fear, so that the
thing might have been pretty nasty. Then Colter got stuck himself and
we had to pry them both out. Rather muddy work." Shipman held out his
hands, on which the swamp muck still left traces. His clothes were
stained with boggy ooze.
"You--you are telling me the truth?" gasped Miss Aurelia excitedly.
"The Judge will demand the exact truth, and you--you are a stranger. I
can't be sure." She was shaking quite pitifully.
Shipman looked soberly down on her. "H'm!" he breathed. "H'm, hysteria,
and not all from the anxiety, either." What had gotten this flabby
little soul with the pretty complexion and hair into this state? Surely
not five hours' absence on the part of two strong, independent girls.
Had the Judge been fulminating? Suddenly the lawyer grasped something,
something that he thought might become serious trouble for Sard.
Shipman stood silent for a moment thinking. He asked, "By the way, is
Judge Bogart in? Would this be a stupidly inconvenient time to see him?
He is to try the case, I believe, in the O'Brien matter. I am counsel
for the boy. I wonder----"
Miss Aurelia, enjoying her vine-like repose on the strength of the
personality of the "strange man," quivered a little. "I could find
out," she said. She faltered. "I assume that you are telling me the
truth, that you have no--no dreadful news to give my brother?"
Shipman's tenderness was a natural and beautiful thing. It went out
instinctively to troubled men and women. He took the thin, fluttering
hands in his.
"Miss Bogart, it has been jolly to meet you in this informal way. I
want to know you better. Please don't be troubled, please! Let me find
Judge Bogart myself. You go to bed and rest."
"But--I--you--he--they," began Miss Aurelia, her color glowing, her
hysteria vanishing. She was fairly thrilled with flutters.
He stood over her, and shook a warning finger.
"You go to bed," he commanded sternly, "you go to bed."
With a sigh of relief, Miss Aurelia obeyed him. She led him first to
the door of the Judge's study and Shipman stood watching her slender
figure mount the stairs. Then he knocked. The "Come in" was snapped
in the voice the Judge kept for his family, and Watts Shipman, with a
shrug, entered.
Dunstan was standing on the hearth rug. The boy had rings under his
eyes; his mouth was eager and breathless, as he had evidently felt the
failure of some protest to his father.
"All I say is," concluded the Judge drily, "is that I want no more of
this Colter rot. When your sister wants to go on expeditions similar to
to-day, you accompany her!"
The lad stood there silent. The Judge recognized the famous lawyer with
a curt gesture. "Sit down, sit down. I'm trying to make this young
man understand that he is responsible for his sister's character and
behavior; that they both live under one law, the law of a good name."
Dunstan's face was afire. He stood facing his father. "You call it a
good name to suggest that my sister needs my protection?" asked the
lad ironically. "Ah, a good name," the boy choked. "A name that means
finicking and fussing and being afraid and continually thinking of
evil. Well, I don't believe either Sard or I want that kind of good
name."
He finished with a curious gesture of despair, a gesture that Shipman,
standing soberly by, understood at once. He loved the young fellow for
it, for it was Sard's own gesture. "Give us realities, realities of
sympathy and help and cleanness and good will. Do not ask us to bow our
heads under your standards of what appears well." That was what the
gesture said.
"Leave the room," commanded the Judge, "leave the room." Dunstan, with
a strange little look at the lawyer, went out. Judge Bogart turned; in
his hand was a box of cigars. "I don't know what's come over the young
people of to-day." His voice was brassy with anger.
Shipman took a cigar, held it lightly, then with a gleam of eyes,
half closed, to watch the match. "Young people," he said, "must often
wonder what has come over us." The two men deliberately measured each
other. Then the talk turned to the O'Brien case. What they said was
purely superficial, but the lawyer, raising interesting questions of
technicality, wondered if he was not perhaps the means of saving Sard a
lecture. A Winged Victory must have gotten to bed by this time. Watts
smiled. When at last he rose to go he gestured toward the disheveled
condition of his walking things.
"I ought to have apologized. We got caught in a bog looking for pink
pearls." He was mirthful at his own share in the escapade. "Quite a
youthful time," he laughed.
"Humph!" Judge Bogart eyed the other man curiously. "You found some
fine pearls?"
"Your man Colter picked up one. Seemed to know how to look; he seems
rather well informed." The lawyer paused. Perhaps this was an opening.
Judge Bogart reached up to snap out the light. "If you're going to
walk up the mountain," he remarked curtly, "the back door is your best
exit."