THE MEDE AND THE PERSIAN
The handsome man and woman that drove up to the great door of the
Bogarts' home got out with a leisureliness that seemed the result of
good nerve structure rather than deliberate intention. Whatever the
anxiety in their hearts they did not show it in gestures or voices.
Mrs. Gerould, however, kept rather intent eyes upon the electric bell;
her gloved finger pushed; she pulled the scarf around her shoulders
with a little nervous twitch. Her husband flicked some dust from his
shoes. The two talked in low voices until the Bogarts' cook opened the
door; as they realized the absence of pretty Dora, their grave faces
grew more apprehensive.
Cook was expansive; she smoothed the sleeve of Mrs. Gerould's silk
motor coat. "Ye ain't been worried about Minga, Mrs. Gerould? There's
nothing the matter with her, Praise be God!--only the fright, and
they've given her somethin' to sleep on. But him! Oh, it seems that I
can hear him callin' me now--Mr. Dunstan--our bye--it was me he was
always teasin' and raisin' the divil wit." The cook trembled; she burst
out again:
"Gawd love him, the poor child wanted to save our Terry, poor bye--now
that wasn't no way to help, was it? Now, Mr. Dunstan's gone and got
the law onto himself, he's under arrest! But them two," the cook wiped
her streaming eyes, "their little hearts was broke over Terry bein'
in the jug, and now look at it--Terry's dead! Yes'm," cook's motherly
heart broke over it, her head went down into her red hands. "The guards
was after them when they got him in the car, and fired. Yes'm, the poor
boy's gorn. Well, he's better aff, that's what I tell Dora, he's better
aff! I keep tellin' her that," blubbered cook.
The Mede and Persian looked increasingly grave. The telegram had been
telephoned to them and they had stepped into a car and driven out
at once without much sense of tragedy--before this the two had been
hurried to scenes of Minga's dénouements, expecting some result of
physical rashness, of too much dancing, or a bad sore throat and fever,
some predicament of finance easy of rescue, but here was a prank with
more serious development and one tragic result. Minga and Dunce had
played for high stakes this time; perhaps their playing was forever
over!
"Where's her room?" the two parents were at the door before cook could
get the directions out of her mouth. On the way they encountered Miss
Aurelia carrying a hot-water bottle in her hand, a flask of aromatic
spirits of ammonia in the other. The lady had been wandering about
with these for hours; now like a fountain of tears with fireworks of
explanations round it, she began sending up hysterical rockets.
"Oh, Mrs. Gerould, Minga will be glad--I don't suppose I--you should
talk to her now ... and Mr. Gerould, how do you do? Sard will know;
she is with Minga--but our Dunstan, did you know? Had you heard the--er
particulars?--he--they, under arrest!" Sobbing, Miss Aurelia, with
that superb power of tears that some people possess, talked through
a steady sliding of drops that ran down sluices of pale cheeks until
the two Geroulds in spite of anxiety looked on admiringly--"the
poor--er--criminal, Terry--is dead--one can--er"--sniff,--"hardly
grieve--but our boy, our Dunstan"--sob--"is gravely injured--the
shoulders and head--fractures--they fear for his life----" To the
gentle soothing of the Mede and Persian, Miss Aurelia leaned like a
wind-blown branch, but the gusts of weeping came anew and the branch
merely swayed; the two newcomers after a while detached themselves;
with a sense of relief they stepped into Minga's room.
Sard rose swiftly out of the dark; Mrs. Gerould caught her two hands.
"Minga's all right," the girl whispered. "They gave her something
quieting because she was so horrified--Terry, you see--Terry is dead."
The young form straightened; Sard spoke with grave calmness.
"Terry's troubles are over."
The Geroulds took her hands--together they spoke encouragingly to her.
"Dear, you've been such a brick, we're proud of you; Eleanor Ledyard
has told us how you worked to save Terry, and you've done our little
Minga so much good." The big-hearted man and woman longed to take the
strained look of tragedy from this young face. There were other things
they knew that had turned Sard grave and old in this one summer. They
scanned her anxiously, wishing she were not so set and stern. "When
Dunstan gets out of the woods,"--they patted her hands--"you come to us
for a while and--and--well, we want to help."
This kind man and woman, understanding her, standing by her, shook the
girl to her depths. Sard's lips trembled.
"I'd like to," she said, her eyes thrilled--"I'd like," Sard said
simply, "to earn my own living; maybe you would help me do that." Her
eyes deepened and thrilled, and in them the Geroulds read the old
story, Youth at bay, yet they heard her words, "But I mustn't leave my
father now--not now." Sard, with a curious little gesture, motioned in
the direction of Dunstan's room.
"Of course not." Mrs. Gerould looked at her understandingly; the tall,
graceful woman went softly over to the little bed and turned the
night-light to see her daughter's sleeping face. The little bobbed
head was deep in the pillows. Minga opened her eyes slightly and
drowsily closed them. "Sard," she spoke with the curious distinctness
of a person speaking under a drug, "I thought the Mede and the Persian
were here--they are so dear--if they were here, you know"--Minga spoke
drowsily, "Dunstan would get all right and Terry would come alive, the
Mede and the Persian would fix it. They--they are hummers."
The man and the woman looked long and lovingly at her; then they looked
at each other, shaking their heads, the little figure on the bed was
so dear to them, yet they, absorbed in their love for each other,
seemed to have so little power, so little direction over her. This was
their only child; she had had all the care and love they could lavish
on her, yet she seemed as remote as an alien to all they believed and
felt. They, the Mede and Persian, were deliberate, slow-thinking people
of the agricultural age; Minga, the one child of their union, was the
strange electric vivacious spirit of a machine age. It was this simple
fact that the couple hardly realized that made it impossible for them
to train their little daughter in the way they thought she should
go. Minga must train herself in the way she would go. Somehow, they
believed, she would train herself right.
Sard, at last, remembered her duties as daughter of the house. "Your
room is all ready," she whispered; "there's a nurse coming in here at
about four and then I shall go to bed." She led them down the hall,
halting ever so slightly outside Dunstan's door, half pausing to hear
the footsteps of the nurse on guard there, explaining:
"The fracture isn't fatal, but it's a horrid splintered one, and they
must torture him some more to-morrow, the car upset; it threw Minga
free, but it fell on him--and Terry's body----" Sard drew a long
shuddering sigh.
Somewhat bewildered the two parents waited to hear more. "But Terry,"
asked Mr. Gerould rather desperately, "how was it he was with Dunstan
and Minga?"
"They had stolen him from a prison gang working on the highway." It was
curious that these three desperately anxious people half smiled with
appreciation of Dunstan's and Minga's method, while they realized its
deadly solemnity. The two Geroulds looked aghast.
"The prison guard shot him like a rabbit." The girl turned a look of
intense bitterness on the kindly man and woman standing there. "You
see," said Sard, and her face and eyes were a mask of hardness, "Terry
was sentenced to twenty years in prison at hard labor; it was thought
to be a kind sentence; he was under the law, and the law must not be
cheated." The girl's face was bitter in a way not good to see. The Mede
and the Persian did not, however, meet it with cold logic. This was not
a time for that.
When they were alone in their room the Geroulds locked the door and
commenced talking to each other. As the Persian slipped into a frilly
dressing-robe and groped in her bag for a flashlight, she cautioned the
Mede, "You turn in and sleep a lot, dear; the long drive tired you.
I'll come back in a few hours. I want to relieve Sard and watch Minga
and see how she comes out of this."
The Mede acquiesced. Taking off his collar, he sought for his tooth
paste. "Apparently your daughter is a body-snatcher," he remarked. "I'm
glad I sold that stock last week and that call money is improving. I
expect we'll have a lot of legal stuff on our hands. It will be Minga's
Christmas present keeping her out of jail. I'll try to see Shipman
to-morrow and find out what he thinks. Under arrest! your daughter,
Madam, is--ahem--exceptional."
"Your daughter when she is in trouble," remarked the Persian
blandly,--"I'm glad I have a permanent wave; your daughter's activities
make it necessary for me to look my best at all times."
"Your daughter when she's discreditable, you know," returned the
Mede with decision. They laughed. The Persian went over and rested
her head against the Mede's arm. "No wonder I want Minga to be happy
always," she said; "no wonder I've spoiled her so. I've always been so
ridiculously happy and spoiled by you."
"You've been ridiculous, all right," said the Mede with conviction.
"I've been the happy one--well," he kissed her, then bit off the end of
a cigar, "we've got to pull Minga out of this scrape and read her the
riot act and make her sit up and face her iniquities, by Jove!"
"You," the Persian looked back at him from the door, "must scold her
terribly, cut half her allowance and forbid her to accept any more
invitations for a year. You remember, I always wanted you to punish her
when she was little."
"Oh, you did?" The Mede rummaged in the bathroom for his safety razor;
he now fitted this instrument together, standing in dressing-gown
surveying a blue chin. "I am to put on the thumbscrews, am I? Madam, I
do not interfere with your peculiar offspring----" The Mede, looking in
the glass, drew a ruminative thumb over his chin. "I am for helping
that poor child, Sard; she's a tigress in a crate here--I'm going to
help uncrate her."
The Persian, lingering by the door, laughed a little helplessly.
"Sard," she said in a low voice, "gives me the shivers; that fearful
kind of girl who wants to reform the whole world before six o'clock,
get life laundered before dinner, you know."
"I do know," said the thoughtful Mede, "and it's the kind I like; the
kind that gets busy and doesn't wait for George to do it. I was like
that myself. I mean, at Sard's age I wanted to reform the world. I
began by marrying you."
"You didn't let George do that! Do you want to be pinched?" asked the
Persian viciously.
"Come--come," said the Mede, "where are the matches? After I have a
smoke--Patty," he looked toward the pretty rose-frilled figure at
the door--"you can't suppose our little duck is hurt anyway, do you?
They're not fooling us?" Mr. Gerould paused, turning a rather worried
face on his wife. He waved the safety razor solemnly. That lady, to
allay his fears, came close up to him.
"Minga Gerould is my child," she said emphatically; "she is made of
rubber, the rest of her is steel, her mind is a duck's back. Her will
is a kite, her imagination is fireproof, her humor is Charlie Chaplin
and her heart is sound."
"I believe you." The Mede tinkered with his razor and looked about
the room. "Rather comfy here," he remarked. "Who took the car to the
garage, anybody? I didn't lock it. Well, I guess there's no need to
worry; that fellow Colter is here yet, isn't he? Eleanor Ledyard heard
a lot about him from Watts; thinks he may be her husband's brother.
What rot you women invent and you call it intuition. I keep worrying
about Sard's face. I'd like to get a look at the fellow. Did you say
you wanted to kiss me again?"
"I did not," said the Persian, her soft eyes challenging him. "But I
could give Minga another kiss for you when she wakes up. I am willing
to do that," said the Persian with an air of benevolence.
"You will do what I tell you," said the Mede belligerently. He pulled
the tall rosy lady toward him and lifted her face to his. "My life,"
said the Mede, "is a wreck between the two demons, wife and daughter."
He pressed a second kiss on a face that seemed the rosier by something
in that second kiss.
The two looked at each other with a sudden deep look of laughing
devotion. Such things do sometimes happen!