In a Little Town Part 13

There was that awful "oo" sound again! Litton was in an icy perspiration; but he was even more afraid for his beloved, precious sweetheart than for himself--and that was being about as much afraid as there is. Teed went on relentlessly, gloating like a satyric mask:

"Well, I had an idea, and the girls fell for it with a yip of joy. The next evening I called I carried a wire from my room across to that dormitory and n.o.body paid any attention while I brought it through a window and under the carpet to the back of the sofa. And there it waited, laying for you. And over at my digs I had it attached to a phonograph by a little invention of my own.

"Gos.h.!.+ It was wonderful! It even repeated the creak of those old, rusty springs while you waited for her. And when she came--well, anyway, I got every word you said, engraved in wax, like one of those old poets of yours used to write on."

Litton was afraid to ask evidence in verification. Teed supplied the unspoken demand:

"For instance, the first thing she says to you is: 'Oh, there you are, my little lover! I thought you'd never come!' And you says, 'Did it miss its stupid old Stookie?' And she says: 'Hideously! Sit down, honey heart.' And splung went the spring--and splung again! Then she says: 'Did it have a mis'ble day in hateful old cla.s.s-room? Put its boo'ful head on Margy-wargy's shojer.' Then you says--"

"Stop!" Litton cried, raising the only missile he could find, an inkstand. "Who knows of this infamy besides you?"

"n.o.body yet--on my word of honor."

"Honor!" sneered Litton, so savagely that Teed's shameless leer vanished in a glare of anger.

"n.o.body yet! The girls are dying to hear and some of the fellows knew what I was up to; but I was thinking that I'd tell 'em that the blamed thing didn't work, provided--provided--"

"Provided?" Litton wailed, miserably.

"Provided you could see your way clear to being a little careless with your marks on my exam-papers."

Litton sat with his head whirling and roaring like a coffee-grinder. A mult.i.tude of considerations ran through and were crushed into powder--his honor; her honor; the standards of the university; the standards of a lover; the unimportance of Teed; the all-importance of Martha; the secret disloyalty to the faculty; the open disloyalty to his best-beloved. He heard Teed's voice as from far off:

"Of course, if you can't see your way to sparing my sweetheart's feelings I don't see why I'm expected to spare yours--or to lie to the fellows and girls who are peris.h.i.+ng to hear how two professors talk when they're in love."

Another long pause. Then the artful Teed moved to the door and turned the k.n.o.b. Litton could not speak; but he threw a look that was like a grappling-iron and Teed came back.

"How do I know," Litton moaned, "how do I know that you will keep your word?"

"How do I know that you'll keep yours?" Teed replied, with the insolence of a conqueror.

"Sir!" Litton flared, but weakly, like a sick candle.

"Well," Teed drawled, "I'll bring you the cylinders. I'll have to trust you, as one gentleman to another."

"Gentleman!" Litton snarled in hydrophobic frenzy.

"Well, as one lover to another, then," Teed laughed. "Do I get my diploma?"

Litton's head was so heavy he could not nod it.

"It's my diploma in exchange for your records. Come on, Professor--be a sport! And take it from me, it's no fun having the words you whisper in a girl's ear in the dark shouted out loud in the open court. And mine were repeated in a Dutch dialect! I got yours just as they came from your lips--and hers."

That ended it. Litton surrendered, pa.s.sed himself under the yoke; pledged himself to the loathsome compact, and Teed went to fetch the price of his degree of Bachelor of Arts.

Litton hung dejected beyond feeling for a long while. His heart was whimpering _Ai, Ai!_ He felt himself crushed under a hundred different crimes. He felt that he could never look up again. Then he heard a soft tap at the door. He could not raise his eyes or his voice. He heard the door open and supposed it was Teed bringing him the wages of his shame; but he heard another voice--an unimaginably beautiful, tragically tender voice--crooning:

"Oo-oo! Stookie-tookie!"

He looked up. How radiant she was! He could only sigh. She came across to him as gracefully and lightly as Iris running down a rainbow. She was murmuring:

"I just had to slip over and tell you something."

"Well, Martha!" he sighed.

She stopped short, as if he had struck her.

"'Martha'? What's the matter? You aren't mad at me, are you, Stookie?"

"How could I be angry with you, Marg--er--Martha?"

"Then why don't you call me Margy-wargleums?"

He stared at her. Her whimsical smile, trembling to a piteously pretty hint of terror, overwhelmed him. He hesitated, then shoved back his chair and, rising, caught her to him so tightly that she gasped out, "Oo!" There it was again! He laughed like an overgrown cub as he cried:

"Why don't I call you Margy-wargleums? Well, what a darned fool I'd be not to! Margy-wargleums!"

To such ruin does love--the blind, the lawless, the illiterate child--bring the n.o.blest intelligences and the loftiest principles.

THE MOUTH OF THE GIFT HORSE

I

The town of Wakefield was--is--suffering from growing pains--from ingrowing pains, according to its rival, Gatesville.

Wakefield has long been guilty of trying to add a cubit to its stature by taking thought. Established, like thousands of other pools left in the prairies by that tidal wave of humanity sweeping westward in the middle of the last century, it pa.s.sed its tenth thousand with a rush; then something happened.

For decades the decennial census dismally tolled the same knell of fifteen thousand in round numbers. The annual censuses but echoed the reverberations. A few more cases of measles one year, and the population lapsed a little below the mark; an easy winter, and it slipped a little above. No mandragora of bad times or bad health ever quite brought it so low as fourteen thousand. No fever of prosperity ever sent the temperature quite so high as sixteen thousand.

The iteration got on people's nerves till a commercial a.s.sociation was formed under the name of the Wide-a-Wakefield Club, with a motto of "Boom or Bust." Many individuals accomplished the latter, but the town still failed of the former. The chief activity of the club was in the line of decoying manufacturers over into Macedonia by various bribes.

Its first capture was a cutlery company in another city. Though apparently prosperous, it had fallen foul of the times, and its president adroitly allowed the Wide-a-Wakefield Club to learn that, if a building of sufficient size were offered rent free for a term of years, the cutlery company might be induced to move to Wakefield and conduct its business there, employing at least a hundred laborers, year in, year out.

There was not in all Wakefield a citizen too dull to see the individual and collective advantage of this hundred increase. It meant money in the pocket of every doctor, lawyer, merchant, clothier, boarding-house-keeper, saloon-keeper, soda-water-vender--whom not?

Every establishment in town would profit, from the sanatorium to the "pantatorium"--as the inst.i.tution for the replenishment of trousers was elegantly styled.

Commercial fervor rose to such heights in Wakefield that in no time at all enough money was subscribed to build a convenient factory and to purchase as many of the shares of cutlery stock as the amiable president cared to print. In due season the manufacture of tableware and penknives began, and the pride of the town was set aglow by the trade-mark stamped on every article issued from the cutlery factory. It was an ingenious emblem--a glorious Cupid in a sash marked "Wakefield,"

stabbing a miserable Cupid in a sash marked "Sheffield."

It was Sheffield that survived. In fact, the stupid English city probably never heard of the Wakefield Cutlery Company. Nor did Wakefield hear of it long. For the emery dust soon ceased to glisten in the air and the steel died of a distemper.

It was a very real shock to Wakefield, and many a boy that had been meant for college went into his father's store instead, and many a girl who had planned to go East to be polished stayed at home and polished her mother's plates and pans, because the family funds had been invested in the steel-engravings of the cutlery stock certificates. They were very handsome engravings.