_ CHAPTER X. AN AMBUSCADE
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--when
he secluded 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 done
you any good," remarked her brother, who, having heard the tale twenty times, began to look upon the event almost as a matter of course.
"You'd better 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 she
is advanced. 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.
He didn'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 people
don't see 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'll
know Abbott is all right, just as I've always known."
"Get Miss Grace to come," Bob said sheepishly. "She doesn't like Fran, 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 are
you doing here, hey?"
"Waitin' to be whirped," was the defiant rejoinder.
"Tell the professor you're sorry for what you've done, so you can run along," 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 accumulated
h's and
r'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 like
a-b-c and
d-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."
"And
you!" cried Fran to Abbott, beginning to give way to high pressure, "I thought you were a school-teacher, not
just, but
also--a something very nice, also a teacher. But not you. Teacher's all you are, just rules and regulations and authority and chalk and
a-b-c and
d-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 be
then! 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 about
a-b-c and
d-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.
"Lem
me!" 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't make 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." _