Keeping up with Lizzie Part 6

scrambled up the bank to find Aleck. He had aimed too low an' hit the wall, an' was stunned, an' apparently, for the time, dead as a herrin' on the farther side of it. I removed the ten one-thousand-dollar bills from his person to prevent complications an' tenderly laid him down. Then he came to very sudden.

"'Stop!' he murmured. 'You're robbin' me.'

"'Well, you begun it,' I says. 'Don't judge me hastily. I'm a philanthropist. I'm goin' to leave you yer liberty an' a hundred dollars. You take it an' get. If you ever return to Connecticut I'll arrest you at sight.'

"I gave him the money an' called the officer, who had just come up.

A traveller in a large tourin'-car had halted near us.

"'Put him into that car an' take him to Chesterville,' I said.

"He limped to the car an' left without a word.

"I returned to my friends an' gently broke the news.

"Sam blubbered 'Education done it,' says he, as he mournfully shook his head.

"'Yes,' I says. 'Education is responsible for a d.a.m.ned lot of ignorance.'

"'An' some foolishness,' says Sam, as he sc.r.a.ped the mud out of his hair. 'Think of our goin' like that. We ought to have known better.' "'We knew better,' I says, 'but we had to keep up with Lizzie.'

"Sam turned toward Lizzie an' moaned in a broken voice, 'I wish it had killed me.'

"'Why so?' I asked.

"'It costs so much to live,' Sam sobbed, in a half-hysterical way.

'I've got an expensive family on my hands.'

"'You needn't be afraid o' havin' Lizzie on your hands,' says Dan, who held the girl in his arms.

"'What do you mean?^ Sam inquired.

"'She's on my hands an' she's goin' to stay there,' says the young man. 'I'm in love with Lizzie myself. I've always been in love with Lizzie.'

"'Your confession is ill-timed,' says Lizzie, as she pulled away an' tried to smooth her hair. She began to cry again, an' added, between sobs: 'My heart is about broken, and I must go home and get help for my poor father.'

"'I'll attend to that,' says Dan; 'but I warn you that I'm goin' to offer a Pettigrew for a Henshaw even. If I had a million dollars I'd give it all to boot.'

"Sam turned toward me, his face red as a beet.

"'The money!' he shouted. 'Get it, quick!'

"'Here it is!' I said, as I put the roll o' bills in his hand.

"'Did you take it off him?'

"'I took it off him.'

"'Poor Aleck!' he says, mournfully, as he counted the money. 'It's kind o' hard on him.'

"Soon we halted a pa.s.sin' automobile an' got Sam up the bank an'

over the wall. It was like movin' a piano with somebody playin' on it, but we managed to seat him on the front floor o' the car, which took us all home.

"So the affair ended without disgrace to any one, if not without violence, and no one knows of the cablegram save the few persons directly concerned. But the price of Alecks took a big slump in Pointview. No han'some foreign gent could marry any one in this village, unless it was a chambermaid in a hotel.

"That was the end of the first heat of the race with Lizzie in Pointview. Aleck had folded up his bluff an' silently sneaked away. I heard no more of him save from a lady with blond, curly hair an' a face done in water-colors, who called at my office one day to ask about him, an' who proved to my satisfaction that she was his wife, an' who remarked with real, patrician accent when I told her the truth about him: 'Ah, g'wan, yer kiddin' me.'

"I began to explore the mind of Lizzie, an' she acted as my guide in the matter. For her troubles the girl was about equally indebted to her parents an' the Smythe school. Now the Smythe school had been founded by the Reverend Hopkins Smythe, an Englishman who for years had been pastor of the First Congregational Church--a soothin' man an' a favorite of the rich New-Yorkers. People who hadn't slept for weeks found repose in the First Congregational Church an' Sanitarium of Pointview. They slept an' snored while the Reverend Hopkins wept an' roared. His rhetoric was better than bromide or sulphonal. In grateful recollection of their slumbers, they set him up in business.

"Now I'm agoin' to talk as mean as I feel. Sometimes I get tired o' bein' a gentleman an' knock off for a season o' rest an'

refreshment. Here goes! The school has some good girls in it, but most of 'em are indolent candy-eaters. Their life is one long, sweet dream broken by nightmares of indigestion. Their study is mainly a bluff; their books a merry jest; their teachers a b.u.t.t of ridicule. They're the veriest little pagans. Their religion is, in fact, a kind of Smythology. Its High Priest is the Reverend Hopkins. Its Jupiter is self. Its lesser G.o.ds are princes, dukes, earls, counts, an' barons. Its angels are actors an' tenors. Its baptism is flattery. Poverty an' work are its twin h.e.l.ls.

Matrimony is its heaven, an' a slippery place it is. They revel in the best sellers an' the worst smellers. They gossip of intrigue an' scandal. They get their lessons if they have time. They cheat in their examinations. If the teacher objects she is promptly an'

generally insulted. She has to submit or go--for the girls stand together. It's a sort of school-girls' union. They'd quit in a body if their fun were seriously interrupted, an' Mr. Smythe couldn't afford that, you know. He wouldn't admit it, but they've got him buffaloed.

"Lizzie no sooner got through than she set out with her mother to find the prince. She struck Aleck in Italy."

Socrates leaned back and laughed.

"Now, if you please, I'll climb back on my pedestal," he said.

"Thank G.o.d! Lizzie began to rise above her education. She went to work in her father's store, an' the whole gang o' Lizzie-chasers had to change their gait again. She organized our prosperous young ladies' club--a model of its kind--the purpose of which is the promotion of simple livin' an' a taste for useful work. They have fairs in the churches, an' I distribute a hundred dollars in cash prizes--five dollars each for the best exhibits o' pumpkin-pie, chicken-pie, bread, rolls, coffee, roast turkey, plain an' fancy sewin', an' so on. One by one the girls are takin' hold with us an' lettin' go o' the grand life. They've begun to take hold o'

the broom an' the dish-cloth, an' the boys seem to be takin' hold o' them with more vigor an' determination. The boys are concluding that it's cheaper to buy a piano-player than to marry one, that canned prima-donnas are better than the home-grown article, that women are more to be desired than playthings.

IV

IN WHICH THE HAM WAR HAS ITS BEGINNING

"One day in the old time a couple of industrious Yankees were hard at work in a field," Socrates continued. "Suddenly one said to the other:

"'I wish I was worth ten thousand dollars.'

"An' the other asked:

"'What would ye do with it?'

"The wisher rested on his shovel an' gave his friend a look of utter contempt.

"'What would I do with it?' he said. 'Why, you cussed fool, I'd set down--an' without blamin' myself.'

"By-and-by the Yankee got to settin' down without blamin' himself, an' also without the ten thousand. Here in Pointview we're learnin' how to stand up again, an' Lizzie is responsible. You shall hear how it happened.

"First I must tell you that Dan had been makin' little progress in the wooin' o' Lizzie. Now she was inclined to go slow. Lizzie was fond o' Dan. She put on her best clothes when he came to see her of a Sunday. She sang to him, she walked him about the place with her arm in his, but she tenderly refused to agree to marry him.

When he grew sentimental she took him out among the cuc.u.mbers in the garden. She permitted no sudden rise in his temperature.

"'I will not marry,' she said, 'until I have done what I can to repay my father for all that he has tried to do for me. I must be uneducated and re-educated. It may take a long time. Meanwhile you may meet some one you like better. I'm not going to pledge you to wait for me. Of course I shall be awfully proud and pleased if you do wait, but, Dan, I want you to be free. Let's both be free until we're ready.'

"It was bully. Dan pleaded with the eloquence of an old-fas.h.i.+oned lawyer. Lizzie stood firm behind this high fence, an' she was right. With Dan in debt an' babies comin', what could she have done for her father? Suddenly it seemed as if all the young men had begun to take an interest in Lizzie, an', to tell the truth, she was about the neatest, sweetest little myrmidon of commerce that ever wore a white ap.r.o.n. The light of true womanhood had begun to s.h.i.+ne in her face. She kept the store in apple-pie order, an' everybody was well treated. The business grew. Sam bought a small farm outside the village with crops in, an' moved there for the summer. Soon he began to let down his prices. The combine was broken. It was the thing we had been waitin' for. People flocked to his store. The others came down, but too late. Sam held his gain, an' Lizzie was the power behind the fat. Dan finished his course in agriculture an' I bought him a farm, an' he went to work there, but he spent half his time in the store of his father tryin'