XXIVTHE HOLD-UP
ALLEN BLYNN’S smile at breakfast that morning was quite Pestalozzian. The mother looked across at him with much the same seraphic glow, simply reflected.
“Just listen to this from Gorgas, mother. It’s a perfect little bit of satire. Oh, this is rich!” He read with outright joy.
“I like thee, master, for thy fingers pinkThat never once hath honest labor smeared;I like thee for thy nose’s Roman kink,But Zooks! Ilovethat waggle, waggle beard!”
“I like thee, master, for thy fingers pinkThat never once hath honest labor smeared;I like thee for thy nose’s Roman kink,But Zooks! Ilovethat waggle, waggle beard!”
“I like thee, master, for thy fingers pink
That never once hath honest labor smeared;
I like thee for thy nose’s Roman kink,
But Zooks! Ilovethat waggle, waggle beard!”
The mother was keen enough to see the cleverness and as well the poet’s criticism of her son’s tuft of beard.
“It is rather rough, my dear,” she looked over mildly.
“Do you think so?” he was surprised. “That’s remarkably smooth verse, mother. It just flows straight to the point. And the sonnet structure! It’s perfect. I don’t think it a bit rough, mother.”
“I was not considering the verse, my dear,” she managed to say. “Motherlike, I was thinking only of my son’s ornamented chin. Itisrather rough and bristly—thechin, not the sonnet. And it does—uh—waggle when you talk, my dear.”
“It goes today, mother,” he eyed the postscript carefully. “I’ve pledged my word.” But his mind went out to the little girl who was ever tossing odd rhymes at him. “I didn’t suspect she could put anything into such shape as this. We’ve been reading a lot of verse together; it has counted; no doubt, it has counted.” The Pestalozzian smile of triumph was still on his face.
“What wonders you have done with Gorgas,” the mother shared his pride.
That brought him down like a shot.
“Nonsense!” he exploded. “She’s the only one of all my children who has baffled me. Everything she has is her own. I try to teach her one thing, she comes forth with something different and unexpected—like this,” flourishing the sonnet. “She picks her own way about. Some children will bloom in spite of teachers; but we teachers have a habit of taking credit for all our smart ones. Did you ever try to stop a dandelion from thriving?”
Another letter of his small packet was not so consoling.
“Schmuhl is in town!” he ejaculated. “Diccon says I must have luncheon with him at the Union League.”
“And pray, who is Schmuhl?”
“A trustee and a big wig,” he explained, but without enthusiasm. “He’s a corporation lawyer; never seems to work; but he does work, like a rat, in the dark. He’s the ‘legislative man’ at Holden. He can do anythingwith law-makers. He seems thoroughly gentle and harmless. But ... I will not meet him.”
“Why, my dear?” the mother asked.
“I shall resign from Holden College and demand that my name shall not be considered for the presidency,” he went on sternly.
“If it worries you, my dear,” the mother spoke complacently; she had enormous confidence that anything her boy should decide to do would be therefore exactly right.
“Without an atom of proof I sense this Schmuhl. He makes laws—how, I do not know, but I strongly suspect the method. Laws are essential to colleges that depend partly on state appropriations. Therefore I would need Schmuhl. And I decline to need him! It would be a continuous ‘hold-up’ and I decline to be ‘held up’ by the Schmuhls of this world. They call him respectable; I call him infamous, and I refuse to link my life with his!”
Almost abruptly he left for his writing desk. In a short while he was trudging down the street with letters in his hand. He strode forward indignantly, and he dropped the letters in the corner mail box with something of the thrust of a righteous man spurning evil. “Top-o’-the Hill” began to loom up as a blessed certainty.
He strode into a barbershop and had the offending beard removed; and still striding, he went on to the Leverings. On the lawn he met Bardek, Kate, and Gorgas; they had not ceased discussing the fortunes ofAllen. “I have resigned from Holden; I will not be a candidate,” he announced bluntly. Briefly he sketched his reasons.
Gorgas and Kate received the news with amazement. Already they had begun to feel some of the pride of their friend’s success. As Bardek had hinted, the “little place” was being called a big name by the world; some of the world’s valuation was slowly changing their own. It would seem almost like a defeat to back out now. They even forgot to notice the absence of the beard.
“It would mean machination and continual intrigue,” Blynn shook his head firmly. “And I’m not the man for that. Good old Galt. Somehow I begin to see his side of the thing. A fine, old sport he was, too; he never ‘peached.’ No matter how hard they ran him he never whimpered. I wonder what he thought of me—a tricky politician, I guess, shouting for ‘the youth of America’ and secretly pulling wires for the presidency. Ugh! What a job!”
“My dear good friend,” Bardek interposed. “This President Galt, I know him; he is good sport, yes; and he twist about and turn and you cannot catch him—yes; I know him. But also! He know you. That is the business of wise old Galts to know peoples. Oh, he know you. From the day he first see you he know you. Your face, it is all on the outside—”
“Gracious! I hope so,” he stroked his face thoughtfully.
“Yes,” Bardek continued. “You will always bethat way. You let your thinkings grow right up, so they show in your eyes and around the corners of your mouth. You would never make little diplomat—great statesman? Yes? Perhaps; for you would fool all the little liars and gamblers—they would look on your face and see what is to them an unknown t’ing, the truth. It is vairy confusing to little statesmen—the truth, m’sieu’. When the big Bismarck was in corner he quick tell the truth so’s nobody would believe and all go the wrong way. Sometime, I, too, have tol’ t’ truth.”
“Well, I hope so!” laughed Blynn. “But we’re all forgetting the main business in hand. Top-o’-the-Hill is emerging out of dreamland into reality. Come, Miss Manager, let’s discuss plans. Holden will find my resignation in tomorrow’s mail.”
The plans were even better matured than Blynn had hoped for. Kate had kept at work—“To keep my mind off Petruchio”—she had told him. Mac had already cleaned paths and had made a rough estimate of the building needs. There was much to be done there; but with some outside hired help, and everybody joining in, September should see a school-house prepared for those parents who had courage to trust their children to the experimenters. Blynn’s work was already mapped out on a card. First was the writing of the “prospectus.” He could do that “trick” with the proper sense and style. It wasn’t to be a pedagogical document, but a thriller to win parents over.
Blynn agreed, but insisted upon one further condition.The property must be assessed at a marketable figure and a proper rental paid.
“Trust your manager,” advised Kate. “I don’t intend to give anything away. A stock-company is to be formed, which will buy the land and house. I will take 51 per cent. of the shares as security and to control you reckless ones. The stock-company pays taxes and improvements; but I insist upon the wild rose and all the literary ceremonies.”
“Right!” agreed Allen. “The first wild rose of spring shall be yours; but this is something more than poetry; it is almost my only means of livelihood. I should be needlessly worried if I felt for a single minute that the thing did not pay for itself entirely. I cannot live on your property, Kate.”
“Now, that is vairy strange,” Bardek commented when the matter had been made clear to him. “You cannot take the ol’ house and little earth.”—He said something like “leetle airt,” but it was perfectly clear as he spoke it.—“Oh, no! You would have such shame! But you would take it quick if I be fool and sell it cheap! You cannot take money! But you take rent from poor peoples who cannot pay! And you not take my ol’, good coat which is now too little for me! Ach! you would be beggar! But you take present from me of my best workmanship which give me much labor and a big pain in t’ back! And you take my dinner at my table wit’ no shame at all; and my laughter and all my good talk and my friendliness, which take all my life to make and cost me—everyt’ing! It is strange! Asfor me—poof!—I have not the shame. When you give and I want, I jus’ take and forget, like wind and rain.”
For the next few days they toiled like slaves on the “property.” They dug, planted, cut weeds, sawed and even plastered. Bardek secured the help of one or two Italians to do the heavy hauling. “Work is good,” he argued, “it is the only medicine; but a broken back, it is not good. The little men of Italy? Ah! They are built so. See how they laugh! I talk to them of Garibaldi and zoop! they carry like demons.”
As they trudged home one weary afternoon, full of exultant hopes, a newspaper fell into their hands. Blynn’s picture had caught Kate’s quick eye. “Blynn, Holden’s Chief,” ran the headlines. It told of a special meeting of the board of trustees, and reviewed Blynn’s history with the accuracy of a fond parent. The vote was 7 to 2.
“Never you mind,” Blynn grew rigid as he turned to his friends. “That won’t go! I told Diccon to withdraw my name; I see he didn’t. It’s all right, Kate. I’ll get out of this somehow. I’ve been to the top of Pisgah; there’ll be no turning back until we reach the Promised Land.”
“Not when I have worked like a coal miner,” implored Bardek. “Who would give me my ol’ back back?—Oof!wass für eine Sprache!What a language!—give a back back! Ho!”
“That’s good business,” Kate nodded her head, satisfied. “I’m glad they elected you. It will boom Top-o’-the-Hillimmensely. I’ll have it easy financing this job. The trouble will be to keep the money from swamping us.”
“‘The President of Holden College resigns to become a kindergartner,’” exclaimed Gorgas. “Allen Blynn, that’stoofunny. It’s almost as funny as the waggle-waggle beard!”
“You minx!” he shook a finger at her. “Are you cogitating another sonnet?”
“Imayget on my poet-bonnet!” she smiled at him.