The April morning was brimming with golden sunshine when Fran looked from the window of her second-story room. Between two black streamers left from last night's rain-clouds, she found the sun making its way up an aisle of intense blue. Below, the lawn stretched in level greenness from Hamilton Gregory's residence to the street, and the grass, fresh from the care of the lawn-mower, mixed yellow tints of light with its emerald hue. Shadows from the tender young leaves decorated the whiteness of the smooth village road in dainty tracery, and splashed the ribbons of rain-drenched granitoid walks with warm shadow-spray.
Fran, eager for the first morning's view of her new home, stared at the half-dozen cottages across the street, standing back in picket- fenced yards with screens of trees before their window-eyes. They showed only as bits of weather-boarding, or gleaming fragments of glass, peeping through the boughs. At one place, nothing was to be seen but stone steps and a chimney; at another, there was an open door and a flashing broom; or a curl of smoke and a face at a window. She thought everything homelike, neighborly. These houses seemed to her closer to the earth than those of New York, or, at any rate, closer in the sense of brotherhood. She drew a deep breath of pungent April essence and murmured: "What a world to live in!"
Fran had spoken in all sincerity when declaring that she wanted nothing but a home; and when she went down to breakfast it was with the expectation that every member of the family would pursue his accustomed routine, undeflected by her presence. She was willing that they should remain what they were, just as she expected to continue without change; however, not many days passed before she found herself seeking to modify her surroundings. If a strange mouse be imprisoned in a cage of mice, those already inured to captivity will seek to destroy the new-comer. Fran, suddenly thrust into the bosom of a family already fixed in their modes of thought and action, found adjustment exceedingly difficult.
She did not care to mingle with the people of the village—which was fortunate, since her laughing in the tent had scandalized the neighborhood; she would have been content never to cross the boundaries of the homestead, had it not been for Abbott Ashton. It was because of him that she acquiesced in the general plan to send her to school. In the unanimous conviction of the need of change in Fran, and because there were still two months of school, she must pass through this two-months' wringer—she might not acquire polish, but the family hoped some crudities might be squeezed out. It was on the fifth day of her stay, following her startling admission that she had never been to school a day in her life, that unanimous opinion was fused into expressed command—
"You must go to school!"
Fran thought of the young superintendent, and said she was willing.
When Mr. Gregory and the secretary had retired to the library for the day's work, Mrs. Gregory told Fran, "I really, think, dear, that your dresses are much too short. You are small, but your face and manners and even your voice, sometimes, seem old—quiteold."
Fran showed the gentle lady a soft docility. "Well," she said, "my legs are there, all the time, you know, and I'll show just as much of them, or just as little, as you please."
Simon Jefferson spoke up—"I like to see children wear short dresses— " and he looked at this particular child with approval. That day, she was really pretty. The triangle had been broadened to an oval brow, the chin was held slightly lowered, and there was something in her general aspect, possibly due to the arrangement of folds or colors— heaven knows what, for Simon Jefferson was but a poor male observer— that made a merit of her very thinness. The weak heart of the burly bachelor tingled with pleasure in nice proportions, while his mind attained the aesthetic outlook of a classic age. To be sure, the skirts did show a good deal of Fran; very good—they could not show too much.
"I like," Simon persisted, "to see young girls of fourteen or fifteen, dressed, so to say, in low necks and high stockings in—er—in the airy way such as they are by nature…" It was hard to express.
"Yes," Fran said impartially, "it pleases others, and it doesn't hurt me."
"Fran!" Mrs. Gregory exclaimed, gazing helplessly at the girl with something of a child's awe inspired by venerable years. It was a pathetic appeal to a spirit altogether beyond her comprehension.
Fran's quick eye caught the expression of baffled reaching-forth, of uncertain striving after sympathetic understanding. "You darling lady!" she cried, clasping her hands to keep her arms from flying about the other's neck, "don't you be troubled about me. Bless your heart, I can take care of myself—and you, too! Do you think I'd add a straw to your…Now you hear me: if you want to do it, just put me in long trains with Pullman sleepers, for I'm the little girl for you, dear heart, and I'll do whatever you say. If you want to show people how tame I am, just hold up your hand, and I'll crawl into my cage."
The laughter of Mrs. Gregory sounded wholesome and deep-throated—the child was so deliciously ridiculous. "Come, then," she cried, with a lightness she had not felt for months, "come, crawl into your cage!" And she opened her arms.
With a flash of her lithe body, Fran was in her cage, and, for a time, rested there, while the fire in her dark eyes burned tears to all sorts of rainbow colors. It seemed to her that of all the people in the world, Mrs. Gregory was the last to hold her in affectionate embrace. She cried out with a sob, as if in answer to her dark misgivings—"Oh, but I want to belong to somebody!"
"You shall belong to me!" exclaimed Mrs. Gregory, folding her closer.
"To you?" Fran sobbed, overcome by the wonder of it. "Toyou,dear heart?" With a desperate effort she crowded back intruding thoughts, and grew calm. Looking over her shoulder at Simon Jefferson—"No more short dresses, Mr. Simon," she called, "you know your heart mustn't be excited."
"Fran!" gasped Mrs. Gregory in dismay, "hush!"
But Simon Jefferson beamed with pleasure at the girl's artless ways. He knew what was bad for his heart, and Fran wasn't. Her smiles made him feel himself a monopolist in sunshine. Simon Jefferson might be fifty, but he still had a nose for roses.
Old Mrs. Jefferson was present, and from her wheel-chair bright eyes read much that dull ears missed. "How gay Simon is!" smiled the mother—he was always her spoiled boy.
Mrs. Gregory called through the trumpet, "I believe Fran has given brother a fresh interest in life."
Simon nodded; he didn't care who knew it. Since his sister's marriage to the millionaire philanthropist, Simon had found life appallingly dull; how could he have found interest in the passing years without his heart-complaint? Hamilton Gregory's perennial absorption in the miseries of folk beyond the horizon, and lack of sympathy with those who sat at his table, set him apart as a model; Simon hated models.
Old Mrs. Jefferson beamed upon Fran and added her commendation: "She pushes me when I want to be pushed, and pulls me when I want to be pulled."
Fran clapped her hands like a child, indeed. "Oh, what a gay old world!" she cried. "There are so many people in it that like me." She danced before the old lady, then wheeled about with such energy that her skirts threatened to level to the breeze.
"Don't, don't!" cried Mrs. Gregory precipitately."Fran!"
"Bravo!" shouted Simon Jefferson."Encore!"
Fran widened her fingers to push down the rebellious dress. "If I don't put leads on me," she said with contrition, "I'll be floating away. When I feel good, I always want to do something wrong—it's awfully dangerous for a person to feel good, I guess. Mrs. Gregory, you say I can belong to you,—when I think about that, I want to dance…I guess you hardly know what it means for Fran to belong to a person. You're going to find out. Come on," she shouted to Mrs. Jefferson, without using the trumpet—always a subtle compliment to those nearly stone-deaf, "I mustn't wheel myself about, so I'm going to wheel you."
As she passed with her charge into the garden, her mind was busy with thoughts of Grace Noir. Belonging to Mrs. Gregory naturally suggested getting rid of the secretary. It would be exceedingly difficult. "But two months ought to settleher," Fran mused.
In the meantime, Grace Noir and Gregory sat in the library, silently turning out an immense amount of work, feeding the hungry and consoling the weak with stroke of pen and click of typewriter. If conversation sometimes trickled across the dry expanse of statistical benevolence, it was never, on Grace's part, for pastime. Beneath her words was always an underflowing current, tugging at the listener to bear him away to her chosen haven. As an expert player of checkers knows his moves in advance, so her conversations, however brief, were built up with a unity of purpose which her consciousness of purest motives saved from artificiality.
"About this case, number one hundred forty-three," she said, looking up from her work as copyist, "the girl whose father wouldn't acknowledge her…"
"Write to the matron to give her good clothing and good schooling." He spoke softly. There prevailed an atmosphere of subtle tenderness; on this island—the library—blossomed love of mankind and devotion to lofty ideals. These two mariners found themselves ever surrounded by a sea of indifference; there was not a sail in sight. "It is a sadcase," he murmured.
"You think number one hundred forty-three a sad case?" she repeated, always, when possible, building her next step out of the material furnished by her companion. "But suppose sheisan impostor. He says she's not his daughter, this number one hundred forty-three. Maybe she isn't. Would you call her conductsad?"
Gregory took exquisite pleasure in arguing with Grace, because her serene assumption of "being in the right gave to her beautiful face a touch of the angelic. "I should call it impossible."
"Impossible? Do you think it's impossible that Fran's deceiving you?How can you know that she is the daughter of your friend?"
He grew pale. Oh, if he could have denied Fran—if he could have joined Grace in declaring her an impostor! But she possessed proofs so irrefutable that safety lay in admitting her claim, lest she prove more than he had already admitted. "I know it, absolutely. She is the daughter of one who was my most—my most intimate friend."
Grace repeated with delicate reproof—"Your intimate friend!"
"I know it was wrong for him to desert his wife."
"Wrong!" How inadequate seemed that word from her pure lips!
"But," he faltered, "we must make allowances. My friend married Fran's mother in secret because she was utterly worldly—frivolous—a butterfly. Her own uncle was unable to control her—to make her go to church. Soon after the marriage he found out his mistake—it broke his heart, the tragedy of it. I don't excuse him for going away to Europe—"
"I am glad you don't. He was no true man, but a weakling. I am glad I have never been thrown with such a—a degenerate."
"But, Miss Grace," he urged pleadingly, "do you think my friend, when he went back to find her and she was gone—do you think he should have kept on hunting? Do you think, Grace, that he should have remained yoked to an unbeliever, after he realized his folly?"
There was heavenly compassion in her eyes, for suddenly she had divined his purpose in defending Fran's father. He was thinking of his own wife, and of his wife's mother and brother—how they had ceased to show sympathy in what he regarded as the essentials of life. Her silence suggested that as she could not speak without casting reflection upon Mrs. Gregory, she would say nothing, and this tact was grateful to his grieved heart.
To the degree that Grace Noir took solemn satisfaction in attending every service of the Walnut Street church, no matter what the weather, she had grown to regard non-attendants as untrue soldiers, bivouacking amidst scenes of feasting and dancing. She made nothing of Mrs. Gregory's excuse that she stayed at home with her mother—the old lady should be wheeled to the meeting-house, even if against her inclinations. As for the services being bad for Simon Jefferson's weak heart,—she did not think they would hurt his heart or that it would matter if they did. Visible, flesh-and-blood presence was needful to uphold the institution, and Grace would have given more for one body resting upright in a pew, than for a hundred members who were there only "in the spirit".
"I have been thinking of something very strange," Grace said, with a marked effort to avoid the issue lest she commit the indiscretion of blaming her employer's wife. "I remember having heard you say that when you were a young man, you left your father's home to live with a cousin in a distant town who happened to be a teacher in a college, and that you were graduated from his college. Don't you think it marvelous, this claim of Fran, who says that her father, when a young man, went to live with a cousin who was a college professor, and that he was graduated from that college? And she says that her father's father was a rich man—just as yours was—and that the cousin is dead —just as yours is."
At these piercing words, Gregory bowed his head to conceal his agitation. Could it be possible that she had guessed all and yet, in spite of all, could use that tone of kindness? It burst upon him that if he and she could hold this fatal secret in common, they might, in sweetest comradeship, form an alliance against fate itself.
She persisted: "The account that Fran gives of her father is really your own history. What does that show?"
He spoke almost in a whisper. "My friend and I were much alike." Then he looked up swiftly to catch a look of comprehension by surprise, if such a look were there.
Grace smiled coolly. "But hardly identical, I presume. Don't you see that Fran has invented her whole story, and that she didn't have enough imagination to keep from copying after your biographical sketch in the newspaper? I don't believe she is your friend's daughter. I don't believe you could ever have liked the father of a girl like Fran,—that he could have been your intimate friend."
"Well—" faltered Gregory. But why should he defend Fran?
"Mr. Gregory," she asked, as if what she was about to say belonged to what had gone before, "would it greatly inconvenience you for me to leave your employment?"
He was electrified. "Grace! Inconvenience me!—would you—could…"
"I have not decided—not yet. Speaking of being yoked with unbelievers—I have never told you that Mr. Robert Clinton has wanted me to marry him. As long as he was outside of the church, of course it was impossible. But now that he is converted—"
"Grace!" groaned the pallid listener.
"He would like me to go with him to Chicago."
"But you couldn't love Bob Clinton—he isn't worthy of you, Grace. It's impossible. Heaven knows I've had disappointments enough—" He started up and came toward her, his eyes glowing. "Will you make my life a complete failure, after all?"
"Love him?" Grace repeated calmly. "This is merely a question of doing the most good."
"But, Grace, love must be considered—if it comes too late, it overturns the purest purposes. Don't wait until it's too late as I— as—I repeat, until it's too late."
"I know nothing about love."
"Then let me teach you, Grace, let—"
"Shall we not discuss it?" she said gently. "That is best, I think. IfI decide to marry Mr. Clinton, I will tell you even before I tell him.I don't know what I shall choose as my best course."
"But, Grace! What could I do—without—"
"Shall we just agree to say no more about it?" she softly interposed. "That is wisest until my decision is made. We were talking about Fran —do you not think this a good opportunity for Mrs. Gregory to attend services? Fran can stay with Mrs. Jefferson."
"I have no doubt," he said, still agitated, "that my wife would find it easy enough to go to church, if she really wanted to go."
"Mr. Gregory!" she reproved him.
"Well," he cried, somewhat defiantly, "don't you think she could go, if she wanted to?"
"Well," Grace answered slowly, "this girl will leave her without any— any excuse."
"Oh, Miss Grace, if my wife were only—like you—I mean, about going to church!"
"I consider it," she responded, "the most important thing in the world." Her emphatic tone proved her sincerity. The church on Walnut Street stood, for her, as the ark; those who remained outside, at the call of the bell, were in danger of engulfment.
After a long silence, Grace looked up from her typewriter. "Mr.Gregory," she said pausingly, "you are unhappy."
Nothing could have been sweeter to him than her sympathy, except happiness itself. "Yes," he admitted, with a great sigh, "I am very unhappy, but you understand me, and that is a little comfort. If you should marry Bob Clinton—Grace, tell me you'll not think of it again."
"And you are unhappy," said Grace, steadfastly ruling Bob Clinton out of the discussion, "on account of Fran."
He burst forth impulsively—"Ever since she came to town!" He checked himself. "But I owe it to my friend to shelter her. She wants to stay and—and she'll have to, if she demands it."
"You are unhappy," Grace quietly pursued, "because her character is already formed, because she is a girl who laughs at sacred things, and mocks the only true objects of life. You know it is too late to change her, and you know her influence is bad for—for everybody in this house."
"But it can't be helped," he insisted disconsolately. "If she wants to stay, I can't help it. But, Grace, you are right about her influence. Even my wife finds new strength to resist what she knows to be her duty, because the girl likes her."
"Do you owe more to your dead friend," Grace asked, with passionate solemnity, "than to the living God?"
He shrank back. "But I can't send her away," he persisted in nervous haste. "I can't. But heaven bless you, Grace, for your dear thought of me."
"You will bless me with more reason," said Grace softly, "when Fran decides to go away. She'll tire of this house—I promise it. She'll go—just wait!—she'll go, as unceremoniously as she came. Leave it to me, Mr. Gregory." In her earnestness she started up, and then, as if to conceal her growing resolution, she walked swiftly to the window as if to hold her manuscript to the light. Gregory followed her.
"If she would only go!" he groaned. "Grace! Do you think you could?—Yes, I will leave everything to you."
"She'll go," Grace repeated fixedly.
The window at which they stood overlooked the garden into which Fran had wheeled old Mrs. Jefferson.
Fran, speaking through the ear-trumpet with as much caution as deafness would tolerate, said, "Dear old lady, look up at the library window, if you please, for the muezzin has climbed his minaret to call to prayers."
Very little of this reached its destination—muezzin was in great danger of complicating matters, but the old lady caught "library window", and held it securely. She looked up. Hamilton Gregory and Grace Noir were standing at the tower window, to catch the last rays of the sun. The flag of truce between them was only a typewritten sheet of manuscript. Grace held the paper obliquely toward the west; Hamilton leaned nearer and, with his delicate white finger, pointed out a word. Grace nodded her head in gentle acquiescence.
"Amen," muttered Fran. "Now let everybody sing!"
The choir leader and his secretary vanished from sight.
"Just like the play in Hamlet," Fran said half-aloud. "And now that the inside play is over, I guess it's time for old Ham to be doing something."
Mrs. Jefferson gripped the arms of her wheel-chair and resumed her tale, as if she had not been interrupted. It was of no interest as a story, yet possessed a sentimental value from the fact that all the characters save the raconteur were dead, and possibly all but her forgotten. Fran loved to hear the old lady evoke the shades of long ago, shades who would never again assume even the palest manifestation to mortals, when this old lady had gone to join them.
There was "Cousin Sarah Tom", who had been present at the great ball in Lexington. "Even Cousin Sarah Tom was there," said Mrs. Jefferson, thus for ever stamping this ghostly outline with greatness. And there was "Aunt Mandy" hovering on the outskirts of the general theme—"Aunt Mandy was there, as full of fun and mischief as ever." The old lady's stories bristled with such subsidiary characters concerning whom it was sufficient to say that they were "there". Sometimes so many were "there" that the historian forgot her original intention and wandered aimlessly among irrelevant acquaintances.
Usually Fran brought her back, with gentle hand, but to-day she divined subterfuge; the tale was meant to hide Mrs. Jefferson's real feelings. Fran ventured through the trumpet:
"I wish there was a man-secretary on this place, instead of a woman."
Mrs. Jefferson snatched away the instrument with indignation. "What is that you say?" she asked, glaring. "In bed with a woman? Who? What woman? "Then she clapped the trumpet to her ear as if defying a French romance to do its worst.
Fran called, "Your grandmother-goosey, and not so loud, if you please!"
The other drew herself up, while her black lace cap quivered at every ribbon-end. What was this? How dare this chit?
Fran took the tube with sudden decisiveness. "All right," she called, "you can take it that way, if you want to. But let me tell youonething, dear old soldier—there's going to be a big fight put up on these grounds. I guess you ought to stay out of it. But either I or the secretary has got togit."
Fran was not unmindful of grammar, even of rhetoric, on occasion. She knew there was no such word as "git", but she was seeking to symbolize her idea in sound. As she closed her teeth, each little pearl meeting a pearly rival, her "git" had something of the force of physical ejectment.
Behind large spectacle lenses, sparks flashed from Mrs. Jefferson's eyes. She sniffed battle. But her tightly compressed lips showed that she lacked both Fran's teeth and Fran's intrepidity. One steps cautiously at seventy-odd.
Fran comprehended. The old lady must not let it be suspected that she was aware of Gregory's need of cotton in straining ears, such as had saved Ulysses from siren voices. The pretense of observing no danger kept the fine old face uncommonly grim.
"Little girls shouldn't fight," was her discreet rejoinder. Then leaning over the wheel, she advanced her snow-white head to the head of coal-black. "Better not stir updragons."
Fran threw back her head and laughed defiantly. "Bring on your dragons," she cried boastfully. "There's not one of 'em that I'm afraid of." She extended one leg and stretched forth her arm. "I'll say to the Dragon, 'Stand up'—and she'll stand: I'll say 'Lie down'— and down she'll lie. I'll sayGit—and she'll—" Fran waved her dragon to annihilation.
"Goodness," the old lady exclaimed, getting nothing of this except the pantomime; that, however, was eloquent. She recalled the picture of David in her girlhood's Sunday-school book. "Are you defying the Man of Gath?" She broke into a delicious smile which seemed to flood the wrinkles of her face with the sunshine of many dear old easy-going years.
[Illustration with caption: "'Lie down'—and down she'll lie."]
Fran smote her forehead. "I have a few pebbles here," she called through the trumpet.
Mrs. Jefferson grasped the other's thin arm, and said, with zestful energy, "Let her have 'em, David, let her have 'em!"
Fran made no delay in planning her campaign against Grace Noir. Now that her position in Hamilton Gregory's household was assured, she resolved to seek support from Abbott Ashton. That is why, one afternoon, Abbott met her in the lower hall of the public school, after the other pupils had gone, and supposed he was meeting her by accident.
Since their parting in the moonlight, Abbott had lost his vivid impression of Fran. As superintendent, school hours were fully occupied in teaching special classes, overlooking his staff of teachers, and punishing such refractory children as were relegated to his authority. The rest of the time was spent in pursuing higher education; and in the sunburst of splendid ideals, the mote-beam of a Fran had floated and danced almost unperceived.
"Good evening, Nonpareil," he said, pleased that her name should have come to him at once. His attentive look found her different from the night of their meeting; she had lost her elfish smile and with it the romance of the unknown and unexpected. Was it because, at half-past four, one's charm is at lowest ebb? The janitor was sweeping down the hall stairs. The very air was filled with dusty realism—Fran was no longer pretty; he had thought—
"Then you haven't forgotten me," murmured Fran.
"No," he answered, proud of the fact. "You have made your home with Mr. Gregory. You are in Miss Bull's class-room. I knew Mr. Gregory would befriend you—he's one of the best men living. You should be very happy there."
"No," said Fran, shaking her head decidedly, "not happy."
He was rather glad the janitor was sweeping them out of the house. "You must find it pretty hard," he remarked, with covert reproach, "to keep from being happy."
"It isn't at all hard for me," Fran assured him, as she paused on the front steps. "Really, it's easy to be unhappy where Miss Grace Noir is."
It happened that just then the name Grace Noir was a sort of talisman opening to the young man's vision the interior of wonderful treasure- caves; it was like crying "Sesame!" to the very rocks, for though he was not in love with Gregory's secretary, he fancied the day of fate was not far ahead.
He had no time to seek fair and romantic ladies. Five years ago, Grace Noir had come from Chicago as if to spare him the trouble of a search. Fate seemed to thrust her between his eyes and the pages of his text- books. At church, which he attended regularly, Grace was always present, and to gaze at her angelic face was, in itself, almost a religious exercise. Abbott never felt so unworthy as when in her presence; an unerring instinct seemed to have provided her with an absolute standard of right and wrong, and she was so invariably right that no human affection was worthy of her unless refined seven times. Within himself, Abbott discovered dross.
"Try to be a good girl, Fran," he counseled. "Be good, and your association with Miss Noir will prove the happiest experience of your life."
"Be good," she returned mockingly, "and you will be Miss Noir." Then she twisted her mouth. "She makes me feel like tearing up things. I don't like her. I hoped you'd be on my side."
He came down the steps gravely. "She is my friend."
"I'm a good deal like you," Fran declared, following. "I can like most anything and anybody; but I can't gothatfar. Well, I don't like Miss Noir and she doesn't like me—isn't that fair?"
"Examine yourself," he advised, "and find out what it is in you that she doesn't like; then get rid of what you find."
"Huh!" Fran exclaimed, "I'm going to get rid of her, all right."
He saw the old elfish smile now when he least wanted to see it, for it threatened the secretary, mocked the grave superintendent, and asserted the girl's right to like whom she pleased. Self-respect and loyalty to Grace hastened Abbott's departure, leaving the spirit of mockery to escape the janitor's broom as best it might.
Fran escaped, recognizing defeat; but on her homeward way, she was already preparing herself for the next move. So intent was she in estimating the forces on both sides, that she gave no heed to the watchful faces at cottage windows, she did not recognize the infrequent passers-by, nor observe the occasional buggies that creaked along the rutted road. With Grace stood, of course, Hamilton Gregory; and, judging from Bob Clinton's regular visits, and his particular attentions to Grace, Fran classed him also as a victim of the enemy. It now seemed that Abbott Ashton followed the flag Noir; and behind these three leaders, massed the congregation of Walnut Street church, and presumably the town of Littleburg.
Fran could count for her support an old bachelor with a weak heart, and an old lady with an ear-trumpet. The odds were terribly against her.
Absolutely neutral stood the one most vitally concerned in the struggle about to take place. Like the king of a chess-board, Mrs. Gregory was resolved, it would appear, to take not even the one step within royal prerogative. Fran wondered, her brow creasing in baffled perplexity, if it ever occurred to Mrs. Gregory that her husband might, say at some far, far distant day, grow too much interested in his secretary? Did the wife perceive his present rate of interest, and fancy, at that rate, that he might not reach a point beyond prudence? Surely she must realize that, in the family economy, the secretary might be spared; but if so, she made no sign.
The first light skirmish between Fran and Grace took place on Sunday. All the Gregory household were at a late breakfast. Sunday-school bells were ringing their first call, and there was not a cloud in the heavens as big as a man's hand, to furnish excuse for non-attendance.
The secretary fired the first shot. Apropos of nothing that had gone before, but as if it were an integral part of the conversation, she offered—"And, Mrs. Gregory, it is so nice that you can go to church now, since, if Fran doesn't want to go, herself—"
"Which she doesn't, herself," Fran interjected.
"So I presumed," Grace remarked significantly. "Mrs. Gregory, Fran can stay with your mother—since she doesn't care for church—and you can attend services as you did when I first came to Littleburg."
"I am sure," Mrs. Gregory said quietly, "that it would be much better for Fran to go to church. She ought to go—I don't like to think of her staying away from the services—and my duty is with mother."
Grace said nothing, but the expression of her mouth seemed to cry aloud. Duty, indeed! What did Mrs. Gregory know about duty, neglecting the God who had made her, to stay with an old lady who ought to be wheeled to church! Mrs. Gregory was willing for her husband to fight his Christian warfare alone. But alone? No! not while Grace could go with him. If all the rest of Walnut Street church should remain in tents of indifference, she and Hamilton Gregory would be found on the field.
Gregory coldly addressed Fran: "Then, willyougo to church?" It was as if he complained, "Since my wife won't—"
"I might laugh," said Fran. "I don't understand religion."
Grace felt her purest ideals insulted. She rose, a little pale, but without rudeness. "Will you please excuse me?" she asked with admirable restraint.
"Miss Grace!" Hamilton Gregory exclaimed, distressed. That she should be driven from his table by an insult to their religion was intolerable. "Miss Grace—forgive her."
Mrs. Gregory was pale, for she, too, had felt the blow."Fran!"she exclaimed reproachfully.
Old Mrs. Jefferson stared from the girl seated at the table to the erect secretary, and her eyes kindled with admiration. Had Fran commanded the "dragon" to "stand"?
Simon Jefferson held his head close to his plate, as if hoping the storm might pass over his head.
"Don't go away!" Fran cried, overcome at sight of Mrs. Gregory's distress. "Sit down, Miss Noir. Let me be the one to leave the room, since it isn't big enough for both of us." She darted up, and ran to the head of the table.
Mrs. Gregory buried her face in her hands.
"Don't you bother about me," Fran coaxed; "to think of givingyoupain, dear lady! I wouldn't hurt you for anything in the world, and the person who would isn't worthy of being touched by my foot," and Fran stamped her foot. "If it'll make you a mite happier, I'll go to church, and Sunday-school, and prayer meeting, and the young people's society, and the Ladies' Aid, and the missionary society, and the choir practice, and the night service and—and—"
Hamilton Gregory felt that he should take some part in this small drama, but he did not know exactly what part: "It would make us all happier for you to go. And what is far more important, child, it would make you happier; you'd be learning how to do right, and be good."
"Oh, and would it?" she flashed at him, somewhat incoherently. "Yes, I know some folks think it makes 'em good just to sit in meeting-houses, while somebody's talking about religion. But look at me. Why! the people who ought to have loved me, and cared for my mother—the people that didn't know but what we were starving—they wouldn't have missed a service any sooner than you would; no, sir. I want to tell you," Fran cried, her face flaming, her voice vibrating with emotion long pent-up, "just the reason that religion's nothing to me. It's because the only kind I've known is going to the church, dressed up, and sitting in the church feeling pious—and then, on the outside, and between times, being just as grasping, and as anxious to overreach everybody else, and trying just as hard to get even with their enemies, as if there wasn't a church on the ground."
"This is sacrilege!" gasped Hamilton Gregory. "You show me a little religion," Fran cried, carried beyond herself, "that means doing something besides ringing bells and hiring preachers; you show me a little religion that means making people happy—not people clear out of sight, but those living in your own house—and maybe I'll like it and want some of it. Got any of that kind? But if I stay here, I'll say too much—I'll go, so you can all be good together—" She darted from the room.
Grace looked at Gregory, seeming to ask him if, after this outrageous behavior, he would suffer Fran to dwell under his roof. Of course, Mrs. Gregory did not count; Grace made no attempt to understand this woman who, while seemingly of a yielding nature, could show such hardness, such a fixed purpose in separating herself from her husband's spiritual adventures. It made Grace feel so sorry for the husband that she quietly resumed her place at the table.
Grace was now more than ever resolved that she would drive Fran away— it had become a religious duty. How could it be accomplished? The way was already prepared; the secretary was convinced that Fran was an impostor. It was merely needful to prove that the girl was not the daughter of Gregory's dead friend. Grace would have to delve into the past, possibly visit the scenes of Gregory's youth—but it would pay. She looked at her employer with an air suggesting protection.
Gregory's face relaxed on finding himself once more near her. Fortunately for his peace of mind, he could not read the purposehidden behind those beautiful eyes.
"I wonder," Simon Jefferson growled, "why somebody doesn't badgermeto go to church!" Indignant because Fran had fled the pleasing fields of his interested vision, he paused, as if to invite antagonism; but all avoided the anticlimax.
He announced, "This talk has excited me. If we can't live and let live, I'll go and take my meals at Miss Sapphira Clinton's."
No one dared to answer him, not even Grace. He marched into the garden where Fran sat huddled upon a rustic bench. "I was just saying," Simon told her ingratiatingly, "that if all this to-do over religion isn't put a stop to, I'll takemymeals at the Clintons'!"
Fran looked up at him without moving her chin from her palms, and asked as she tried, apparently, to tie her feet into a knot, "Isn't that where Abbott Ashton boards?"
"Do you mean Professor Ashton?" he returned, with subtle reproof.
Fran, still dejected, nodded carelessly. "We're both after the same man."
Simon lit the pipe which his physician had warned him was bad for his heart. "Yes, Professor Ash-ton boards at the Clintons'."
"Must be awfully jolly at the Clintons'," Fran said wistfully.
Fran's conception of the Clinton Boarding-House, the home of jollity, was not warranted by its real atmosphere. Since there were not many inhabitants of Littleburg detached from housekeeping, Miss Sapphira Clinton depended for the most part on "transients"; and, to hold such in subjection, preventing them from indulging in that noisy gaiety to which "transients" are naturally inclined—just because they are transitory—the elderly spinster had developed an abnormal solemnity.
This solemnity was not only beneficial to "drummers" and "court men" acutely conscious of being away from home, but it helped her brother Bob. Before the charms of Grace Noir had penetrated his thick skin, the popular Littleburg merchant was as unmanageable as the worst. Before he grew accustomed to fall into a semi-comatose condition at the approach of Grace Noir, and, therefore, before his famous attempt to "get religion", the bachelor merchant often swore—not from aroused wrath, but from his peculiar sense of humor. In those Anti-Grace and heathen days, Bob, sitting on the long veranda of the green frame building, one leg swinging over the other knee, would say, "Yes, damn it," or, "No, damn it," as the case might be. It was then that the reproving protest of his sister's face would jelly in the fat folds of her double chin, helping, somewhat, to cover profanity with a prudent veil.
Miss Sapphira liked a joke—or at least she thought so—as well as anybody; but like a too-humorous author, she found that to be as funny as possible was bad for business. Goodness knows there was enough in Littleburg to be solemn over, what with the funerals, and widowers marrying again, yes, and widows, too; and there wasn't always as much rejoicing over babies as the county paper would have you believe! The "traveling men" were bad enough, needing to be reminded of their wives whom they'd left at home, and, she'd be bound, had forgotten. But when one man, whether a traveler or not—even a staid young teacher like Abbott Ashton, for instance—a young man who was almost like a son to her—whenhesecluded himself in the night-time—by himself? with another male? oh, dear, no!—with a Fran, for example— what was the world coming to?
"There they stood," she told Bob, "the two of them, all alone on the foot-bridge, and it was after nine o'clock. If I hadn't been in a hurry to get home to see that the roomers didn't set the house afire, not a soul would have seen the two colloguing."
"And it don't seem to have doneyouany good," remarked her brother, who, having heard the tale twenty times, began to look upon the event almost as a matter of course."You'dbetter not have saw them,"—at an early age Bob had cut off his education, and it had stopped growing at that very place. Perhaps he had been elected president of the school-board on the principle that we best appreciate what does not belong to us.
"My home has been Abbott Ashton's home," said Miss Sapphira, "since the death of his last living relation, and her a step, and it a mercy, for nobody could get along with her, and she wouldn't let people leave her alone. You know how fond I am of Abbott, but your position is very responsible. You could get rid of him by lifting your finger, and people are making lots of talk; it's going to injure you. People don't want to send their tender young innocent girls—they're a mighty hardened and knowing set, nowadays, though, I must say—to a superintendent that stands on bridges of nights, holding hands, and her a young slip of a thing. All alone, Robert, all alone; there's going to be a complaint of the school-board, that's what there's going to be, and you'll have to look out for your own interests. You must talk to Abbott. Him a-standing on that bridge—"
"He ain't stood there as often as I've been worried to death a-hearing of it," growled the ungrateful Bob, who was immensely fond of Abbott.
Miss Sapphira spoke with amazingly significant double nods between each word—"And…I…saw…only…four…days…ago—"
She pointed at the school-house which was almost directly across the street, its stone steps facing the long veranda. "They were the last to come out of that door. You may say she's a mere child. Mere children are not in Miss Bull's classes."
"But Abbott says the girl is far advanced."
"Far advanced! You may well say! I'll be bound she is—and carrying on with Abbott on the very school-house steps. Yes, I venture sheisadvanced. You make me ashamed to hear you."
Bob tugged at his straw-colored mustache; he would not swear, for whatever happened, he was resolved to lead the spiritual life. "See here, Sapphira, I'm going to tell you something. I had quite a talk with Abbott about that bridge-business—after you'd spread it all over town, sis—and if you'll believe me, she waylaid him on those school- steps.Hedidn't want to talk with her. Why, he left her standing there. She made him mad, finding fault with the very folks that have taken her up. He's disgusted. That night at the camp-meeting, he had to take her out of the tent—he was asked to do it—"
"He didn't have to stand, a-holding her hand."
"—And as soon as he'd shown her the way to Brother Gregory's, he came on back to the tent, I saw him in the aisle."
"And she whistled at me," cried Miss Sapphira—"the limb!"
"Now, listen, Sapphira, and quit goading. Abbott says that Miss Bull is having lots of trouble with Fran—"
"See that, now!"
"—Because Fran won't get her lessons, being contrary—"
"I wish you could have seen her whistling at me, that night."
"Hold on. So this very evening Miss Bull is going to send her down to Abbott's office to be punished, or dismissed. This very evening he wants me to be over there while he takes her in hand."
"Abbott is going to punish that girl?" cried Miss Sapphira; "going to take her in hand? What do you mean by 'taking her in hand'? She is too old! Robert, you make me blush."
"You ain't a-blushing, Sapphira," her brother assured her, good- naturedly, "you're suffering from the hot weather. Yes, he's to punish her at four o'clock, and I'm to be present, to stop all this confoun— I mean this ungodly gossip."
"You'd better wear your spectacles, Bob, so you'll look old and settled. I'm not always sure of you, either."
"Sapphira, if I hadn't joined the church, I'd say—" He threw up his hand and clenched his fist as if he had caught an oath and meant to hold it tight. Then his honest face beamed. "See here, I've got an idea. Suppose you make it a point to be sitting out here on the veranda at about half-past four, or five. You'll see Fran come sneaking out of that door like a whipped kitten. She'll look everlastingly wilted. I don't know whether Abbott will stuff her full of fractions and geography, or make her stand in a corner—but you'll see her wilted."
Miss Sapphira was highly gratified. "I wish you'd talked this reasonable at first. It's always what peopledon'tsee that the most harm comes of. I'll give a little tea out here on the veranda, and the worst talkers in town will be in these chairs when you bring Fran away from Abbott's office. And I'll explain it all to 'em, and they'llknowAbbott is all right, just as I've always known."
"Get Miss Grace to come," Bob said sheepishly. "She doesn't likeFran, and she'll be glad to know Abbott is doing his duty by her.Later, I'll drop in and have a bite with you."
This, then, was Bob's "idea", that no stone might be left unturned to hide the perfect innocence of the superintendent. He had known Abbott Ashton as a bare-legged urchin running on errands for his widowed mother. He had watched him through studious years, had believed in his future career—and now, no bold adventuress, though adopted into Hamilton Gregory's home, should be allowed to spoil Abbott's chances of success.
The chairman of the school-board had talked confidentially with Grace Noir, and found her as convinced that Fran was a degenerate as was Bob that Grace was an angel. As he went to the appointment, he was thinking not so much of the culprit Fran, as of Grace—what a mouth, what a foot! If all saints were as beautiful as she, religion would surely be the most popular thing on earth.
In his official character as chairman of the board, Robert Clinton marched with dignity into the superintendent's office, meaning to bear away the wilted Fran before the eyes of woman. Abbott Ashton saw him enter with a sense of relief. The young man could not understand why he had held Fran's hand, that night on the foot-bridge. Not only had the sentiment of that hour passed away, but the interview Fran had forced upon him at the close of a recent school-day, had inspired him with actual hostility. It seemed the irony of fate that a mere child, a stranger, should, because of senseless gossip, endanger his chances of reappointment—a reappointment which he felt certain was the best possible means of advancement. Why had he held Fran's little hand? He had never dreamed of holding Grace's—ah, there was a hand, indeed!
"Has she been sent down?" Bob asked, in the hoarse undertone of a fellow-conspirator.
"No." Abbott was eager to prove his innocence. "I haven't seen a sign of her, but I'm looking every minute—glad you're here."
Confidences were impracticable, because of a tousled-headed, ink- stained pupil who gloomed in a corner.
"Why, hello there, Jakey!" cried Clinton, disconcerted; he had hoped that Fran's subjugation might take place without witnesses. "What areyoudoing here, hey?"
"Waitin' to be whirped," was the defiant rejoinder.
"Tell the professor you're sorry for what you've done, so you can runalong," said the chairman of the board persuasively.
"Naw, I ain't sorry," returned Jakey, hands in pockets. Then bethinking himself—"But I ain't done nothin'."
Abbott said regretfully, "He'll have to be whipped."
Clinton nodded, and sat down solemnly, breathing hard. Abbott was restlessly pacing the floor, and Bob was staring at him unwinkingly, when the door opened and in came Fran.
Abbott frowned heavily, but the wrinkles in his brow could not mar the attractiveness of his handsome young face. He was too fine looking, the chairman reflected uneasily, for his duties. His figure was too athletic, his features too suggestive of aristocratic tastes and traditions. Clinton wished he would thrust a pen behind his ear. As for himself, after one brief glance at Fran, he fumbled for his spectacles.
Fran walked up to Abbott hesitatingly, and spoke with the indistinctness of awed humility. "You are to punish me," she explained, "by making me work out this original proposition"—showing the book—"and you are to keep me here till I get it."
Abbott asked sternly, "Did Miss Bull send me this message?"
"She is named that," Fran murmured, her eyes fastened on the open page.
From the yard came the shouts of children, breaking the bonds of learning for a wider freedom. Abbott, gazing severely on this slip of a girl, found her decidedly commonplace in appearance. How the moonlight must have bewitched him! Her rebellious hair hung over her face like a shaggy mane—what a small creature to be dressed as a woman, and how ridiculous that the skirts should reach even to her ankles! It had not been so, on the night of destiny. He preferred the shorter dress, but neither she nor her attire was anything to him. He rejoiced that Robert Clinton was there to witness his indifference.
"This is the problem," Fran said, with exceeding primness, pronouncing the word as if it were too large for her, and holding up the book with a slender finger placed upon certain italicized words.
"Let me see it," said Abbott, with professional dryness. He grasped the book to read the proposition. His hand was against hers, but she did not draw away, for had she done so, how could he have found the place?
Fran, with uplifted eyes, spoke in the plaintive accents of a five- year-old child: "Right there, sir…it's awful hard."
Robert Clinton cleared his throat and produced a sound bursting with accumulatedh'sandr's—his warning passed unheeded.
Never before had Abbott had so much of Fran. The capillaries of his skin, as her hand quivered warmly against his, seemed drawing her in; and as she escaped from her splendid black orbs, she entered his brain by the avenue of his own thirsty eyes. What was the use to tell himself that she was commonplace, that his position was in danger because of her? Suddenly her hair no longer reminded him of the flying mane of a Shetland pony; it fell slantwise past the corners of her eyes, making a triangle of smooth white skin to the roots of the hair, and it seemed good, just because it was Fran's way and not after a machine-turned fashion; Fran was done by hand, there was no doubt of that.
"Sit there," Abbott said, gravely pointing. She obeyed without a word, leaving the geometry as hostage in the teacher's hand. When seated at a discreet distance, she looked over at Bob Clinton. He hastily drew on his spectacles, that he might look old.
Abbott volunteered, "This is Mr. Clinton, President of the Board."
"I know," said Fran, staring at her pencil and paper, "he's at the head of the show, and watches when the wild animals are tamed."
Clinton drew forth a newspaper, and opened it deliberately.
Fran scribbled for some time, then looked over at him again. "Did you get it?" she asked, with mild interest.
"Did I get—what?"he returned, with puzzled frown.
"Oh, I don't know what it is," said Fran with humility; "the name of it's 'Religion'."
"If I were you," Clinton returned, flushing, "I'd be ashamed to refer to the night you disgraced yourself by laughing in the tent."
"Fran," Abbott interposed severely, "attend to your work."
Fran bent her head over the desk, but was not long silent. "I don't likea-b-candd-e-f," she observed with more energy than she had hitherto displayed. "They're equal to each other, but I don't know why, and I don't care, because it doesn't seem to matter. Nothing interests me unless it has something to do with living. I don't care how far Mars is from the earth—if it was next door, I wouldn't want to leave home. These angles and lines are nothing to me; what I care for is this time I'm wasting, sitting in a stuffy old room, while the good big world is enjoying itself just outside the window." She started up impetuously.
"Sit down!" Abbott commanded.
"Fran!" exclaimed Robert Clinton, stamping his foot,"sit down!"
Fran sank back upon the bench.
"I suspect," said Abbott mildly, "that they have put you in classes too far advanced. We must try you in another room—"
"But I don't want to be tried in rooms," Fran explained, "I want to be tried in acts—deeds. Until I came here, I'd never been to school a day in my life," she went on in a confidential tone." I agreed to attend because I imagined school ought to have some connection with life—something in it mixed up with love and friendship and justice and mercy. Wasn't I silly! I even believed—just fancy!—that you might really teach me something about religion. But, no! it's all books, nothing but books."
"Fran," Abbott reasoned, "if we put you in a room where you can understand the things we try to teach, if we make you thorough—"
"I don't want to be thorough," she explained, "I want to be happy. I guess all that schools were meant to do is to teach folks what's in books, and how to stand in a straight line. The children in Class A, or Class B have their minds sheared and pruned to look alike; but I don't want my brain after anybody's pattern."
"You'll regret this, Miss," declared Clinton, in a threatening tone."You sit down. Do you want the name of being expelled?"
"I don't care very much about the names of things," said Fran coolly; "there are lots of respectable names that hide wickedness." Her tone changed: "But yonder's another wild animal for you to train; did you come to see him beaten?" She darted to the corner, and seated herself beside Jakey.
"Say, now," Bob remonstrated, pulling his mustache deprecatingly, "everybody knows I wouldn't see a dog hurt if it could be helped. I'm Jakey's friend, and I'd be yours, Fran—honestly—if I could. But how's a school to be run without authority? You ain't reasonable. All we want of you is to be biddable."
"Andyou!"cried Fran to Abbott, beginning to give way to high pressure, "I thought you were a school-teacher, notjust, butalso—a something very nice, also a teacher. But not you. Teacher's all you are, just rules and regulations and authority and chalk anda-b-candd-e-f."
Abbott crimsoned. Was she right? Was he not something very nice plus his vocation? He found himself desperately wishing that she might think so.
Fran, after one long glowing look at him, turned to the lad in disgrace, and placed her hand upon his stubborn arm. "Have you a mother?" she asked wistfully.
"Yeh," mumbled the lad, astonished at finding himself addressed, not as an ink-stained husk of humanity, but as an understanding soul.
"I haven't," said Fran softly, talking to him as if unconscious of the presence of two listening men, "but I had one, a few years ago—and, oh, it seems so long since she died, Jakey—three years is a pretty long time to be without a mother. And you can't think what a fault- blindest, spoilingest, candiest mother she was. I'm glad yours is living, for you still have the chance to make her proud and happy,… No matter how fine I may turn out—do you reckon I'll ever be admired by anybody, Jakey? Huh! I guess not. But if I were, mother wouldn't be here to enjoy it. Won't you tell Professor Ashton that you are sorry? "
"Fran—" Abbott began.
Fran made a mouth at him. "I don't belong to your school any more," she informed him. "Mr. School-Director can tell you the name of what he can do to me; he'll find it classified under the E's."
After this explosion, she turned again to the lad: "I saw you punch that boy, Jakey, and I heard you say you didn't, and yet it was a good punch. What made you deny it? Punches aren't bad ideas. If I could strike out like you did, I'd wait till I saw a man bullying a weaker one, and I'd stand up to him—" Fran leaped impulsively to her feet, and doubled her arm—"and I'd let her land! Punching's a good thing, and, oh, how it's needed….Except at school—you mustn't do anything human here, you must be an oyster at school."
"Aw-right," said Jakey, with a glimmering of comprehension. He seemed coming to life, as if sap were trickling from winter-congealment.
Bob Clinton, too, felt the fresh breeze of early spring in his face.He removed his spectacles.
"The first thing I knew," Fran said, resuming her private conversation with Jakey, "I had a mother, but no father—not that he was dead, oh, bless you, he was alive enough—but before my birth he deserted mother. Uncle turned us out of the house. Did we starve, that deserted mother and her little baby? I don't look starved, do I? Pshaw! If a woman without a cent to her name, and ten pounds in her arms can make good, what about a big strong boy like you with a mother to smile every time he hits the mark? And you'd better believe we got more than a living out of life. Mother taught me geography and history and the Revolutionary War—you know history's one thing, and the Revolutionary War is another—and every lesson she gave me was soaked with love till it was nearly as sweet as her own brave eyes. Maybe I wouldn't have liked it, if I'd had to study on a hard bench in a stuffy room with the world shut out, and a lid put on my voice—but anything's good that's got a mother in it. And tell these gentlemen you're sorry for punching that boy."
"Sorr'," muttered Jakey shamefacedly.
"I am glad to hear it," Abbott exclaimed heartily. "You can take your cap to go, Jakey."
"Lemme stay," Jakey pleaded, not budging an inch. Fran lifted her face above the tousled head to look at Abbott; she sucked in her cheeks and made a triumphant oval of her mouth. Then she seemed to forget the young man's presence.
"But when mother died, real trouble began. It was always hard work, while she lived, but hard work isn't trouble, la, no, trouble's just an empty heart! Well, sir, when I read about how good Mr. Hamilton Gregory is, and how much he gives away—to folks he never sees—here I came. But I don't seem to belong to anybody, Jakey, I'm outside of everything. People wouldn't care if I blew away with the dead leaves, and maybe I will, some fine morning—maybe they'll go up to my room and call, 'Fran! Fran!'—and there'll be no Fran. Oh, oh, how happy they'll bethen!But you have a home and a mother, Jakey, and a place in the world, so I say 'Hurrah!' because you belong to somebody, and, best of all, you're not a girl, but a boy to strike out straight from the shoulder."
Jakey was dissolved; tears burst their confines.
One may shout oneself hoarse at the delivery of a speech which, if served upon printed page, would never prompt the reader to cast his hat to the ceiling. No mere print under bold head-lines did Abbott read, but rather the changing lights and shadows in great black eyes. It was marvelous how Fran could project past experiences upon the screen of the listener's perception. At her, "When mother died," Abbott saw the girl weeping beside the death-bed. When she sighed, "I don't belong to anybody," the school-director felt like crying, "Then belong to me!" But it was when she spoke of blowing away with the dead leaves—looking so pathetic and so full of elfish witchery—that the impression was deepest. It almost seemed possible that she might fade and fade to an autumn leaf, and float out the window, and be lost— Clinton had an odd impulse to hold her, lest she vanish.
Fran now completed her work. She rose from the immovable Jakey and came over to Abbott Ashton, with meekly folded hands.
He found the magic of the moonlight-hour returning. She had mellowed— glowed—softened—womanized—Abbott could not find the word for it. She quivered with an exquisiteness not to be defined—a something in hair, or flesh, or glory of eye, or softness of lips, altogether lacking in his physical being, but eagerly desired.
"Professor Ashton," she spoke seriously, "I have been horrid. I might have known that school is merely a place where young people crawl into books to worm themselves from lid to lid, swallowing all that comes in the way. But I'd never been to school, and I imagined it a place where a child was helped to develop itself. I thought teachers were trying to show the pupils the best way to be what they were going to be. I've been disappointed, but that's not your fault; you are just a system. If a boy is to be a blacksmith after he's grown, and if a girl in the same class is to be a music-teacher, or a milliner, both must learn abouta-b-candd-e-f. So I'm going away for good, because, of course, I couldn't afford to waste my time in this house. I know the names of the bones and the distances of the planets are awfully nice, but I'm more interested in Fran."
"But, Fran," Abbott exclaimed impulsively, "don't you see that you are holding up ignorance as a virtue? Can you afford to despise knowledge in this civilized age? You should want to know facts just because— well, just because they are facts."
"But I don't seem to, at all," Fran responded mildly. "No, I'm not making fun of education when I find fault with your school, any more than I show irreverence to my mother's God when I question what some people call 'religion'. I want to find the connection—looks like it's lost—the connection between life and—everything else. It's the connection to life that makes facts of any value to me; and it's only in its connection to life that I'd give a pin for all the religion on earth."
"I don't understand," Abbott faltered.
She unfolded her hands, and held them up in a quaint little gesture of aspiration. "No, because it isn't in a book. I feel lost—so out in space. I only ask for a place in the universe—to belong to somebody…"
"But," said Abbott, "you already belong to somebody, since Mr. Gregory has taken you into his home and he is one of the best men that ever—"
"Oh, let's go home," cried Fran impatiently. "Let's all of us skip out of this chalky old basement-smelly place, and breathe the pure air of life."
She darted toward the door, then looked back. Sadness had vanished from her face, to give place to a sudden glow. The late afternoon sun shone full upon her, and she held her lashes apart, quite unblinded by its intensity. She seemed suddenly illumined, not only from without, but from within.
Abbott seized his hat. Robert Clinton had already snatched up his. Jakey squeezed his cap in an agitated hand. All four hurried out into the hall as if moved by the same spring.
Unluckily, as they passed the hall window, Fran looked out. Her eyes were caught by a group seated on the veranda of the Clinton boarding- house. There were Miss Sapphira Clinton, Miss Grace Noir, and several mothers, sipping afternoon tea. In an instant, Fran had grasped the plot. That cloud of witnesses was banked against the green weather- boarding, to behold her ignominy.
"Mr. Clinton," said Fran, all sweetness, all allurement, "I am going to ask of you a first favor. I left my hat up in Miss Bull's room and—"
"I will get it," said Abbott promptly.
"Lemme!"Jakey pleaded, with fine admiration.
"Well, I rather guess not!" cried Bob. "Think I'll refuse Fran's first request?" He sped upstairs, uncommonly light of foot.
"Now," whispered Fran wickedly, "let's run off and leave him."
"I'm with you!" Abbott whispered boyishly.
They burst from the building like a storm, Fran laughing musically, Abbott laughing joyously, Jakey laughing loudest of all. They sallied down the front walk under the artillery fire of hostile eyes from the green veranda. They continued merry. Jakey even swaggered, fancying himself a part of it; he regretted his short trousers.
When Robert Clinton overtook them, he was red and breathless, but Fran's beribboned hat was clutched triumphantly in his hand. It was he who first discovered the ambuscade. He suddenly remembered, looked across the street, then fell, desperately wounded. The shots would have passed unheeded over Abbott's head, had not Fran called his attention to the ambuscade.
"It's a good thing," she said innocently, "that you're not holding my hand—" and she nodded toward the boarding-house. Abbott looked, and turned for one despairing glance at Bob; the latter was without sign of life.
"What shall we do?" inquired Fran, as they halted ridiculously. "If we run for it, it'll make things worse."
"Oh, Lord, yes!" groaned Bob;"don'tmake a bolt!"
Abbott pretended not to understand. "Come on, Fran, I shall go home with you." His fighting blood was up. In his face was no surrender, no, not even to Grace Noir. "Come," he persisted, with dignity.
"How jolly!" Fran exclaimed. "Shall we go through the grove?—that's the longest way."
"Then let us go that way," responded Abbott stubbornly.
"Abbott," the school-director warned, "you'd better come on over to my place—I'm going there this instant to—to get a cup of tea. It'll be best for you, old fellow, you listen to me, now—you need a little er—a—some—a little stimulant."
"No," Abbott returned definitely. He had done nothing wrong, and he resented the accusing glances from across the way. "No, I'm going with Fran."
"And don't you bother about him," Fran called after the retreating chairman of the board, "he'll have stimulant enough."