Many Kingdoms Part 22

"But you haven't taken off your hats!" she cried. "Hans, give the baby to Gretchen and take my friends' wraps and hats up to the guest-room. I don't want Miss Lawrence to climb stairs."

The professor obediently summoned the nurse, dropped the baby, burdened himself with our garments, and ambled off with the tread of a peaceful elephant. When he returned, with the eager look of a retriever waiting for another stick, his wife promptly met his hopes.

"Arrange the easy-chair for Miss Lawrence, dear," she said, comfortably, "and put an ottoman under her feet. I want her to rest while she is here."

The professor did it, while we gazed. He also inquired feelingly as to the state of Jessica's health, showed a sympathy almost human in her replies, and placed a pillow behind her back. Subsequently, during that call, he did these things:

He answered the telephone half a dozen times, faithfully repeating to his wife the messages of her various friends, and carrying hers back, as she declined to be torn from us long enough to talk to them herself.

He rounded up the remaining two children and presented them for our inspection, straightening his son's shoulders with an experienced hand, and tying with consummate skill the bow on his little girl's hair.

He went to the stable and ordered the family carriage, that we might drive later in the afternoon.

He searched for and found the morning newspaper, thoughtlessly dropped in the waste-paper basket by the maid, and he read aloud to us a paragraph to which Katrina had referred chronicling the achievements of a cla.s.smate of ours. He brought to Katrina, at different times and from remote parts of the house, one white shawl, six photographs of the children, an essay written by their son, aged ten, two books, a bib to meet a sudden need of the baby, and Katrina's address-book. He did these things, and he did them cheerfully, and with the unmistakable ease of frequent repet.i.tion. I glanced at Jessica. The expressions of incredulity and amazement to which she had freely yielded during the first half-hour of our call had given way to a look of deep reflection.

Subsequently Katrina showed us her home. The room that had been the professor's study was now part of the large general living-room. The laboratory was now Katrina's personal sitting-room. Through its French windows we saw Katrina's garden blossoming like the rose. Jessica asked the present location of the professor's study and laboratory. She subsequently admitted to me that she should not have done it, but that to leave the house without the information would have been a physical and moral impossibility. Katrina looked at her vaguely, as one seeking to recall a fleeting moment of the long-dead past; but the professor responded with gratified alacrity.

"But you shall see them!" he cried. "Surely, yes;" and like a jovial school-boy he led us up to the third floor. There, indeed, was his study--a hall bedroom, much crowded by his desk and easy-chair; and off it, in a closet, were his beloved bottles and chemicals. I felt a throb of sympathy for the professor, but he was evidently blissfully ignorant of any reason for such a sentiment.

"The _Mutterchen_ and the babies need the rest," he smiled, complacently. "They must not climb too many stairs--no;" and he led the way back to comfort with unconsciousness of the painful contrast between past and present conditions that made Jessica and me carefully refrain from meeting each other's eyes. The children, when they espied him upon our return, uttered shrieks of joy. The baby sprang to his arms, the little boy swarmed up his leg. The picture of Professor von h.e.l.ler as a perfectly trained husband and father was complete.

In silence, after our prolonged farewells, Jessica and I left the house. In silence we entered the trolley-car; in silence we rode home.

At last I voiced a sudden suspicion.

"Do you think," I asked, hopefully, "that it was all a--a--well, that she persuaded him to do it just this once, for our edification?"

Jessica shook her head.

"I thought so, at first," she conceded, slowly. "That in itself would have been a miracle--one I'd never believe if I hadn't seen it with these eyes. But everything disproves the theory. Do you think she could have trained those children to advance and retreat like a Casino ballet? On the contrary, it's evident that they literally live on him.

They've worn the creases off his trousers! Didn't you notice where the creases left off and the sliding-place of the babies began?"

I reluctantly admitted that this detail had escaped my observation.

Jessica sighed.

"Incredible as it is," she summed up, "it's all true. It's the real thing."

"It opens quite a vista," I observed, thoughtfully. "If you would like Professor Adams's present address, I can give it to you. He is in the Adirondacks with his sister Mollie, and I had a letter from her this morning."

Jessica looked at me and urged me not to be vulgar. Her thoughtful expression did not lift.

"If Katrina can do _that_ with _that_ man," I murmured, reflectively, as we entered the house, "I really believe you could work wonders with Adams. He would probably do the cooking and marketing--"

"If you're so impressed," remarked Jessica, in incisive tones, "I wonder you don't yield to the prayers and tears of your editor man."

My reply made Jessica sink into a hall chair which was fortunately at hand.

"I am going to," I said, placidly. And I did.

Jessica's nature being less womanly and yielding than mine, her surrender was a matter of longer time. In the interval I quite forgot her unimportant affairs, being wholly absorbed in the really extraordinary values of my own. Two weeks before the reopening of college, my reformed yellow journalist, who had come West to spend his brief vacation with me, was seated by my side one evening studying the admirable effect of a ring he had just placed on my finger. It is singular how fraught with human interest such moments can be, and Edward and I failed to hear Jessica as she opened the door. She looked over our heads as she spoke to me, Her face was rather red, but her voice and manner expressed a degree of indifference which I am convinced no human being has ever really felt on any subject.

"Did you say that you could give me Mollie Adams's address?" asked Jessica.

XI

BART HARRINGTON, GENIUS

The a.s.sistant Sunday editor of the New York "Searchlight" was busy.

This was not an unusual condition, but it frequently included unusually irritating features. His superior, Wilson, the Sunday editor, was a gentleman with a high brow and a large salary, who, having won a reputation as "a Napoleon of Journalism," had successfully cultivated a distaste for what he called "details." His specialty was the making of suggestions in editorial council, in cheery expectation that they would be carried out by his a.s.sociates--an expectation so rarely realized that Mr. Wilson's visage had almost a habit of hurt wonder. "Details"

continued to absorb the activity of the Sunday "Searchlight" office, and Maxwell, the a.s.sistant editor, attended to them all, murmuring bitterly against his chief as he labored.

On this special morning, moreover, he was receiving telephoned bulletins of the gradual disintegration of his biggest "special,"

scheduled for the coming Sunday edition, which was to tell with sympathetic amplitude of a beautiful French maiden who had drowned herself because some young man no longer loved her. The active reporter a.s.signed to the case had telephoned first his discovery that the girl never had a lover, but cheerily suggested that this explained her suicide as well as the earlier theory, and wasn't so hackneyed, sagely adding that he would get the story anyhow. Subsequently he had rung up the office to report, with no slight disgust, that there was no suicide to explain, as the girl was not dead. She had merely gone to visit friends in the country, and the people in the house, missing her, had decided that the peaceful waters of the Hudson--

Maxwell hung up the receiver with a few crisp remarks addressed to s.p.a.ce, and absorbed in awestruck silence by a young woman at the other end of the room who eased her type-writing labor by pausing to hear them fully. It was at this inauspicious moment that the card of Mr.

Bart Harrington was brought in by an office boy. Maxwell surveyed it with strong disfavor.

"Who is he?" he asked, regarding the office boy severely.

The office boy avowed deprecatingly that he didn't know.

"He 'ain't never been here before," he submitted, in extenuation. "He says he's got a Sunday story."

Maxwell resigned himself to the waste of five minutes of precious time.

"Show 'm in," he commanded, testily. He sat down at his desk and turned toward the door an expression that reminded callers of the value of time and the brevity of life. Mr. Harrington, who had followed the boy through the door with conviction of these two things, dropped into a chair beside the editor's desk and surveyed Maxwell with a smile so young, so trustful, and withal so engaging, that unconsciously the stern features of that functionary relaxed. Nevertheless, he was not jarred out of his routine.

"Got your story with you, Mr. Harrington?" he asked, briskly, holding out his hand for the ma.n.u.script. "If you'll leave it, I'll read--"

Harrington interrupted him with an impressive shake of his head. Then he settled back in his chair, crossed one leg comfortably over the other, plunged his hands deep in the pockets of his very shabby overcoat, and continued to regard the editor with his singularly boyish, dimpling smile. With one swift glance Maxwell took him in, from the broken boot on the foot he was gently swinging to and fro to the thick, curly locks on his handsome head. He had a complexion like a girl's, a dimple in each cheek, and a jaw like a bull-dog's. He was all of six feet tall, and his badly made clothes could not wholly conceal the perfect lines of his figure. He was about twenty-two years old, Maxwell decided, and, notwithstanding his dimples, his complexion, his youth, and his smile, he conveyed a vivid impression of masculinity and strength. He was wholly self-possessed, and his manner suggested that the business which had brought him where he was was of such urgent value and importance that the busy world itself might well hush its noisy activities long enough to hear of it. To his own great surprise, Maxwell waited until his caller was prepared to speak.

Harrington shook his head again slowly. Then he tapped his forehead with the second finger of his right hand.

"I have it heah," he said, slowly, referring evidently to the brow he had indicated, and speaking with a slight drawl and the strongly marked accent of the Southern mountaineer. "I 'lowed I wouldn't write it till I knew you-all wanted it. I'd like to tell it. Then if--"

Maxwell nodded, and glanced at his watch.

"Fire away," he said, elegantly. "But be as quick as you can, please.

This is closing day and every minute counts."

Harrington smiled his ingenuous smile. It was a wistful smile--not a happy one--but it seemed, somehow, to illumine the office. Maxwell reflected irritably that there was something unusually likable about the fellow, but he wished he'd hurry up and get out. From force of habit his fingers grasped a blue pencil on his desk, and he began to fumble nervously among the ma.n.u.scripts that lay before him. Harrington settled back more firmly in his chair, and the swinging of his torn boot was accelerated a trifle, but his voice when he spoke was full of quiet confidence.

"It's a good thing, suh," he said, "and I can tell you-all about it in a sentence. I'm goin' to commit suicide to-day, an' I agree to write the experience foh you, up to the last minute, if you-all will have me buried decently. I don't cayah to be shovelled into the Pottah's Field."

Maxwell dropped the blue pencil and wheeled to look at him. Then his face hardened.