_ CHAPTER XXXIV. THE WAY OF THE TRANSGRESSOR
MISS JENNIE TUPPER at the end of a week acknowledged to herself with an uneasy sense of her own shortcomings that the task of keeping Mr. Skippy Bedelle in the straight and narrow path was one beyond her limited experience. It was not that she had lost confidence in her own efficiency, but that she anxiously asked herself if she could afford the time and the effort. Skippy was all for the better life and yielded at once to her suggestions. The trouble was in his staying put, as it is colloquially expressed. Each evening the cure was complete, but each morning the conversation had to begin all over. The hold that his past life had taken upon him was simply staggering and the hankering for the excitement of the gambling table or the struggle against the narcotic tyranny of the demon cigarette was such that at times she had to sit long moments holding his storm-racked and shaking hand while he fought bravely against the maddening appetite! And after a week of the closest personal attention he had only cut down the allowance of cigarettes to seven a day!
Now Miss Tupper was upright and God-fearing and self-respecting, and though there was a difference of three years all in her favor, she, unlike some of her sex, scorned the use of her personal attractions, simply for the sake of a personal vanity, nor was she a collector of male scalps. She was in a moral quandary of the most metaphysical complexity. What should she do: shirk her evident moral responsibility and allow a bravely battling human soul to sink into iniquity or continue and permit a most susceptible youngster to immerse himself deeper and deeper into a hopeless passion?
Each day she came to the task of regenerating Mr. Skippy Bedelle resolved to conduct the proceedings on the grounds of the strictest formality, and each evening she admitted to herself the failure. Yet could she honestly blame herself? She gave him her female sewing-society pin to wear not as a personal token but solely as a daily reminder of the promises he had made to himself. She gave him a tie, a colored handkerchief and the sweater she had just finished for another destination. But each was given as a reward and marked a triumphant progress in his fight to acquire a final mastery over himself. When, however, Skippy brought up the question of a photograph, a crisis was reached.
"I have never never given my picture to any man," she said firmly, and the absence of sibilants made it doubly impressive. "And I never never will. Bethideth, you know I would have to tell my mother."
They were sitting in the summer house at that romantic hour when the first day stars arrive with the mosquitoes. It was always at such moments that the craving was strongest. She had begun by holding his wrist in a strong encircling clasp but the sight of his twitching contorted fingers had been too much for her sensibilities and her hand had slipped into a more intimate clasp.
"After all he's only a boy," she had said to herself.
"Jennie! how can you--don't you--do you realize all I'm doing--just for you?" said Skippy, whose voice at such moments was not under control.
"No, no, you ought to do it for yourself, becauth it ith the right thing to do, becauth it will make you feel stwonger and finer."
"Nope, it's you or nothing."
"Jack, you muthn't thay thuch thingth. I muthn't let you!"
"It is the first time I've ever cared what became of me," said Skippy lugubriously. "You don't know what that pin means to me."
"But--"
"Do you realize what I'm going back to? Old associations, old habits and a long, long, fight! And then there's Snorky. I've got to save him too."
"But Jack--"
"I'm not asking for anything more than just your picture, nothing more,--nothing that commits you to anything! But I do want that, I must have that! I want to rise up every morning and remember and, and I want to come back every night and know that I can face your eyes," said Skippy warming up. "I say it must be a full face, not a profile, you know."
"I haven't thaid I would," said Miss Jennie in dreadful perplexity.
"But you will."
There was a long silence.
"You will, won't you!"
"I--I will think it over," said Miss Tupper finally, remembering the terrific report which her sister had brought her via Snorky Green. "I will give you my dethition after thupper."
That evening, Skippy, excusing himself from Snorky, who was taking Margarita to a lecture on the fauna and flora of Yucatan, set out for the parsonage with a thumping heart. If the truth be told he was not altogether convinced of the durability of his attraction for Miss Jennie, but he was quite certain of one thing, if there was even a sporting chance of Snorky's adding the blonde sister to his photographic gallery in the communal room in the Kennedy House, he could never confess failure! The state of his own emotion perplexed him. When he was away, he could look on with a certain amused calm as though the whole thing were but a fascinating game. Indeed, at times he felt gorgeously, terrifically guilty, the gayest and blackest of black Lotharios. Yet no sooner had he looked into the soft velvety eyes and felt the touch of her warm fingers than he was certain, absolutely certain that his life's decision had been made, that he wanted to stand forth as a man of the strongest character, and slowly and patiently struggle upward to those heights where serenely she would wait for him.
He consumed three cigarettes--rapidly and faithfully, to make up the seven of the daily quota, mutually agreed upon; flicked the dust off his shoes with his handkerchief, tightened his belt and his tie, and, having fanned himself with his hat, found at last the courage to tread the noisy gravel and ring the bell. On his way he had built up a dozen eloquent conversations, but all memory of things tender and convincing were forgotten as he ventured over the slippery floor of the parlor and beheld at the side of Jennie a large blown-up, thin-haired male visitor in ecclesiastical black, who was introduced to him as the Rev. Percy Tuptale.
Intuition is a strange thing that fortunately returns to lovers, drunkards and children in their hour of need. From the first touch of her hand and the first look into her face Skippy knew that a crisis had arrived. Mr. Tuptale was so placidly and professionally at ease and Miss Tupper so nervously and unsibilantly conversational that the conversation bubbled on like a kettle steaming in a distant room. He nodded once or twice, Mr. Tuptale fingered a magazine while Jennie ran on softening the s's.
"Something awful is going to happen," thought Skippy, staring at the biblical engravings on the wall. "They're going to try to make me give back that pin."
Miss Tupper stood up. Skippy stood up. Mr. Tuptale stood up.
"Jack, I have taken a therious, a vewy therious thep," said Miss Tupper flushing. "I do want to help you tho much but, but I have thought, that ith, I am afwaid I know tho little how. You may think it dweadful of me--"
She paused and Skippy frozen to the marrow said icily,
"Yes, what is it?"
"I have gone to Mr. Tuptale--to Perthy for advithe. I, I had to."
"Excuse me," said Skippy loftily. "Is Mr. Tuptale, are you,--is he?"
"Well, yeth," said Jennie, blushing, while a smile spread enormously over Mr. Tuptale's features.
"Oh!"
"You thee that ith why," said Jennie hastily, "and, oh Jack, I do want you to talk to him, juth ath you talked to me. Tell him evwything. He ith tho helpful and tho underthanding."
She swayed from one foot to another and glanced from the boy to the man, undecided.
"Jennie, dear," said Mr. Tuptale with surgical ease, "I think ahem--suppose you let us talk this over together. It would be easier, wouldn't it?"
"Oh yeth, indeed!"
The next moment they were alone.
"And now my boy," said Mr. Tuptale blandly. "Come, sit down. Let's have it out like man to man."
Skippy did not at once comply. He walked slowly around the red plush rocker and then back to the bamboo fire-screen and rested his elbows lightly upon it and glowered at the all-unconscious curate, murder in his heart.
"Jennie is very fond of you, Jack," said Mr. Tuptale, caging his fingers. "She has a warm and sympathetic nature, a big heart, and I can quite understand how deeply concerned she is in the brave fight you are making. I want you to accept me as a friend, a real friend. I know men and I know what temptations are, early associations, acquired habits. Jack, my boy, there is nothing really wrong in you. I saw that the moment you came into the room."
"Who said there was--pray?" said Skippy, whose hands were trembling with rage.
Mr. Tuptale looked up quickly, frowned and said:
"Jennie has told me all--naturally."
"She told you I gambled."
"She did."
"She told you I drank, and she told you I smoked."
"She did, of course, and I consider it was her duty to do so."
"Well is there anything wrong in that, I ask you?"
"Anything wrong in gambling, drunkenness, steeping oneself with tobacco until your hand shakes like a leaf?" said Mr. Tuptale, rising.
"Exactly. Do you know your ten commandments, sir?"
"Are you insulting me, sir?" said the curate, yielding to a perfectly natural irritation.
"Kindly point out to me in the ten commandments where any habit of mine is forbidden," said Skippy with the most impressive of declamatory attitudes.
Mr. Tuptale's jaw dropped, twice he tried to answer and twice remained inarticulate.
Skippy possessed himself of his hat and bowed in scorn.
"You will kindly restore to Miss Tupper this pin," he said, producing it after a struggle with his tie. "Also inform her that I shall immediately send back to her other articles I need not now specify. Thank you for your interest in my case but it is quite unnecessary--quite. I can stand by the ten commandments. Good night."
He went down the scrunching gravel and slammed the gate.
"And there is more, sir," he exclaimed aloud, forgetting that he was now alone. "One thing more. You can tell Miss Tupper that even among the lowest of my associates, gamblers and drunkards and race-track sharks though they be, a promise given is sacred, sacred, sir, and the man who breaks it is, is, is--"
But here rage quite overtook him and he picked up a stone and flung it at an inoffensive tree.
"It's all Snorky!" he said in the swift progress of moods. "I knew he'd overdo it! Holy Mike, what in Sam Hill did he tell Margarita! He must have--he--" But again imagination failed him and he proceeded on his way, fists sunk in his pockets, sliding along gloomy lanes.
"And I believed I had met a good woman!" he said bitterly. "Faugh, they're all alike. Well, I don't care what does become of me. Serve her right if I went plump to the bad. And by jingo, I'll do it too!"
Whereupon, having resolved upon a life of crime, he plunged his hand into his pocket and cast from him the now unnecessary cigarettes! _