The magistrate conceived of Boyne’s case with a readiness that gave the
judge a high opinion of his personal and national intelligence. He even
smiled a little, in accepting the explanation which Breckon was able to
make him from Boyne, but he thought his duty to give the boy a fatherly
warning for the future. He remarked to Breckon that it was well for
Boyne that the affair had not happened in Germany, where it would have
been found a much more serious matter, though, indeed, he added, it
had to be seriously regarded anywhere in these times, when the lives
of sovereigns were so much at the mercy of all sorts of madmen and
miscreants. He relaxed a little from his severity in his admonition to
say directly to Boyne that queens, even when they wished to speak with
people, did not beckon them in the public streets. When this speech
translated to Boyne by Breckon, whom the magistrate complimented on the
perfection of his Dutch, Boyne hung his head sheepishly, and could not
be restored to his characteristic dignity again in the magistrate’s
presence. The judge gratefully shook hands with the friendly justice,
and made him a little speech of thanks, which Breckon interpreted, and
then the justice shook hand with the judge, and gracefully accepted the
introduction which he offered him to Ellen. They parted with reciprocal
praises and obeisances, which included even the detectives. The judge
had some question, which he submitted to Breckon, whether he ought not
to offer them something, but Breckon thought not.
Breckon found it hard to abdicate the sort of authority in which his
knowledge of Dutch had placed him, and when he protested that he had
done nothing but act as interpreter, Ellen said, “Yes, but we couldn’t
have done anything without you,” and this was the view that Mrs. Kenton
took of the matter in the family conclave which took place later in the
evening. Breckon was not allowed to withdraw from it, in spite of many
modest efforts, before she had bashfully expressed her sense of his
service to him, and made Boyne share her thanksgiving. She had her arm
about the boy’s shoulder in giving Breckon her hand, and when Breckon
had got away she pulled Boyne to her in a more peremptory embrace.
“Now, Boyne,” she said, “I am not going to have any more nonsense. I
want to know why you did it.”
The judge and Ellen had already conjectured clearly enough, and Boyne
did not fear them. But he looked at his younger sister as he sulkily
answered, “I am not going to tell you before Lottie.”
“Come in here, then,” said his mother, and she led him into the next
room and closed the door. She quickly returned without him. “Yes,” she
began, “it’s just as I supposed; it was that worthless fellow who
put him up to it. Of course, it began with those fool books he’s been
reading, and the notions that Miss Rasmith put into his head. But he
never would have done anything if it hadn’t been for Mr. Trannel.”
Lottie had listened in silent scorn to the whole proceedings up to this
point, and had refused a part in the general recognition of Breckon as
a special providence. Now she flashed out with a terrible volubility:
“What did I tell you? What else could you expect of a Cook’s tourist?
And mom--mother wanted to make me go with you, after I told her what
he was! Well, if I had have gone, I’ll bet I could have kept him from
playing his tricks. I’ll bet he wouldn’t have taken any liberties,
with me along. I’ll bet if he had, it wouldn’t have been Boyne that
got arrested. I’ll bet he wouldn’t have got off so easily with the
magistrate, either! But I suppose you’ll all let him come bowing and
smiling round in the morning, like butter wouldn’t melt in your mouths.
That seems to be the Kenton way. Anybody can pull our noses, or get us
arrested that wants to, and we never squeak.” She went on a long time
to this purpose, Mrs. Kenton listening with an air almost of conviction,
and Ellen patiently bearing it as a right that Lottie had in a matter
where she had been otherwise ignored.
The judge broke out, not upon Lottie, but upon his wife. “Good heavens,
Sarah, can’t you make the child hush?”
Lottie answered for her mother, with a crash of nerves and a gush of
furious tears: “Oh, I’ve got to hush, I suppose. It’s always the way
when I’m trying to keep up the dignity of the family. I suppose it will
be cabled to America, and by tomorrow it will be all over Tuskingum how
Boyne was made a fool of and got arrested. But I bet there’s one person
in Tuskingum that won’t have any remarks to make, and that’s Bittridge.
Not, as long as Dick’s there he won’t.”
“Lottie!” cried her mother, and her father started towards her, while
Ellen still sat patiently quiet.
“Oh, well!” Lottie submitted. “But if Dick was here I know this Trannel
wouldn’t get off so smoothly. Dick would give him a worse cowhiding than
he did Bittridge.”
Half the last word was lost in the bang of the door which Lottie slammed
behind her, leaving her father and mother to a silence which Ellen did
not offer to break. The judge had no heart to speak, in his dismay, and
it was Mrs. Kenton who took the word.
“Ellen,” she began, with compassionate gentleness, “we tried to keep it
from you. We knew how you would feel. But now we have got to tell you.
Dick did cowhide him when he got back to Tuskingum. Lottie wrote out to
Dick about it, how Mr. Bittridge had behaved in New York. Your father
and I didn’t approve of it, and Dick didn’t afterwards; but, yes, he did
do it.”
“I knew it, momma,” said Ellen, sadly.
“You knew it! How?”
“That other letter I got when we first came--it was from his mother.”
“Did she tell--”
“Yes. It was terrible she seemed to feel so. And I was sorry for her. I
thought I ought to answer it, and I did. I told her I was sorry, too.
I tried not to blame Richard. I don’t believe I did. And I tried not to
blame him. She was feeling badly enough without that.”
Her father and mother looked at each other; they did not speak, and she
asked, “Do you think I oughtn’t to have written?”
Her father answered, a little tremulously: “You did right, Ellen. And I
am sure that you did it in just the right way.”
“I tried to. I thought I wouldn’t worry you about it.”
She rose, and now her mother thought she was going to say that it put
an end to everything; that she must go back and offer herself as a
sacrifice to the injured Bittridges. Her mind had reverted to that
moment on the steamer when Ellen told her that nothing had reconciled
her to what had happened with Bittridge but the fact that all the wrong
done had been done to themselves; that this freed her. In her despair
she could not forbear asking, “What did you write to her, Ellen?”
“Nothing. I just said that I was very sorry, and that I knew how she
felt. I don’t remember exactly.”
She went up and kissed her mother. She seemed rather fatigued than
distressed, and her father asked her. “Are you going to bed, my dear?”
“Yes, I’m pretty tired, and I should think you would be, too, poppa.
I’ll speak to poor Boyne. Don’t mind Lottie. I suppose she couldn’t
help saying it.” She kissed her father, and slipped quietly into Boyne’s
room, from which they could hear her passing on to her own before they
ventured to say anything to each other in the hopeful bewilderment to
which she had left them.
“Well?” said the judge.
“Well?” Mrs. Kenton returned, in a note of exasperation, as if she were
not going to let herself be forced to the initiative.
“I thought you thought--”
“I did think that. Now I don’t know what to think. We have got to wait.”
“I’m willing to wait for Ellen!”
“She seems,” said Mrs. Kenton, “to have more sense than both the other
children put together, and I was afraid--”
“She might easily have more sense than Boyne, or Lottie, either.”
“Well, I don’t know,” Mrs. Kenton began. But she did not go on to resent
the disparagement which she had invited. “What I was afraid of was her
goodness. It was her goodness that got her into the trouble, to begin
with. If she hadn’t been so good, that fellow could never have fooled
her as he did. She was too innocent.”
The judge could not forbear the humorous view. “Perhaps she’s getting
wickeder, or not so innocent. At any rate, she doesn’t seem to have been
take in by Trannel.”
“He didn’t pay any attention to her. He was all taken up with Lottie.”
“Well, that was lucky. Sarah,” said the judge, “do you think he is like
Bittridge?”
“He’s made me think of him all the time.”
“It’s curious,” the judge mused. “I have always noticed how our faults
repeat themselves, but I didn’t suppose our fates would always take the
same shape, or something like it.” Mrs. Kenton stared at him. “When this
other one first made up to us on the boat my heart went down. I thought
of Bittridge so.”
“Mr. Breckon?”
“Yes, the same lightness; the same sort of trifling--Didn’t you notice
it?”
“No--yes, I noticed it. But I wasn’t afraid for an instant. I saw that
he was good.”
“Oh!”
“What I’m afraid of now is that Ellen doesn’t care anything about him.”
“He isn’t wicked enough?”
“I don’t say that. But it would be too much happiness to expect in one
short life.”
The judge could not deny the reasonableness of her position. He could
only oppose it. “Well, I don’t think we’ve had any more than our share
of happiness lately.”
No one except Boyne could have made Trannel’s behavior a cause of
quarrel, but the other Kentons made it a cause of coldness which was
quite as effective. In Lottie this took the form of something so active,
so positive, that it was something more than a mere absence of warmth.
Before she came clown to breakfast the next morning she studied a stare
in her mirror, and practised it upon Trannel so successfully when he
came up to speak to her that it must have made him doubt whether he had
ever had her acquaintance. In his doubt he ventured to address her,
and then Lottie turned her back upon him in a manner that was perfectly
convincing. He attempted a smiling ease with Mrs. Kenton and the judge,
but they shared neither his smile nor his ease, and his jocose questions
about the end of yesterday’s adventures, which he had not been privy to,
did not seem to appeal to the American sense of humor in them. Ellen was
not with them, nor Boyne, but Trannel was not asked to take either of
the vacant places at the table, even when Breckon took one of them,
after a decent exchange of civilities with him. He could only saunter
away and leave Mrs. Kenton to a little pang.
“Tchk!” she made. “I’m sorry for him!”
“So am I,” said the judge. “But he will get over it--only too soon, I’m
afraid. I don’t believe he’s very sorry for himself.”
They had not advised with Breckon, and he did not feel authorized to
make any comment. He seemed preoccupied, to Mrs. Kenton’s eye, when she
turned it upon him from Trannel’s discomfited back, lessening in the
perspective, and he answered vaguely to her overture about his night’s
rest. Lottie never made any conversation with Breckon, and she now left
him to himself, with some remnants of the disapproval which she found on
her hands after crushing Trannel. It could not be said that Breckon was
aware of her disapproval, and the judge had no apparent consciousness
of it. He and Breckon tried to make something of each other, but failed,
and it all seemed a very defeating sequel to Mrs. Kenton after the
triumphal glow of the evening before. When Lottie rose, she went with
her, alleging her wish to see if Boyne had eaten his breakfast. She
confessed, to Breckon’s kind inquiry, that Boyne did not seem very well,
and that she had made him take his breakfast in his room, and she did
not think it necessary to own, even to so friendly a witness as Mr.
Breckon, that Boyne was ashamed to come down, and dreaded meeting
Trannel so much that she was giving him time to recover his self-respect
and courage.