Part 5

Suddenly _Mère_ strode forward, dropped to her knees and put her hand on Pop's heart. It was not still--far from that. She placed her cold palm on his forehead. His brow was clammy, hot and cold and wet.

"He has a high fever!" she said.

Then, with a curious emotion, she brushed back the scant wet hair; closed her eyes and felt in her bosom a sudden ache like the turning of a rusty iron. She felt young and afraid--a young wife who finds her man wounded.

She looked up and saw standing about her a number of tall ladies and gentlemen--important-looking strangers. Then she remembered that they had once been nobodies. She felt ashamed before them and she said, quickly:

"He's going to be ill. Telephone for the doctor to come right away. And you girls get his bed ready. No, you'd better put him in my room--it gets the sunlight. And you boys fill the ice-cap--and the hot-water bag and--hurry! Hurry!"

The specters vanished. She was alone with her lover. She was drying his forehead with her best lace handkerchief and murmuring:

"John honey, what's the matter! Why, honey--why didn't you tell me?"

Then a tall gentleman or two returned and one of them said:

"Better let us get him off the floor, Mère."

And the big sons of the frail little man picked him up and carried him into the room and pulled off his elastic congress gaiters, and his coat and vest, and his detached cuffs, and his permanently tied tie, and his ridiculous collar.

Then _Mère_ put them out, and when the doctor arrived Pop was in bed in his best nightshirt.

The doctor made his way up through the little mob of terrified children. He found Mrs. Grout vastly agitated and much ashamed of herself. She did not wish to look sentimental. She had reached the Indian-summer modesty of old married couples.

The doctor went through the usual ritual of pulse-feeling and tongue-examining and question-asking, while Pop lay inert, with a little thermometer protruding from his mouth like a most inappropriate cigarette.

The doctor was uncertain yet whether it were one of the big fevers or pneumonia or just a bilious attack. Blood-tests would show; and he scraped the lobe of the ear of the unresisting, indifferent old man, and took a drop of thin pink fluid on a bit of glass. The doctor tried to reassure the panicky family, but his voice was low and important.

IV

The brilliant receptions and displays that _Mère_ and the children had planned were abandoned without regret. All minor regrets were lost in the one big regret for the poor old, worn-out man up-stairs.

There was a dignity about Pop now. The lowliest peasant takes on majesty when he is battling for his life and his home.

There was dismay in all the hearts now--dismay at the things they had said and the thoughts and sneers; dismay at the future without this shabby but unfailing provider.

The proofs of the family photograph lay scattered about the living-room. Pop was not there. They had smiled about it before. Now it looked ominous! What would become of this family if Pop were not there?

The house was filled with a thick sense of hush like a heavy fog; but thoughts seemed to be all the louder in the silence--jumbled thoughts of selfish alarm; filial terror; remorse; tenderness; mutual rebuke; dread of death, of the future, of the past.

The day nurse and the night nurse were in command of the house. The only events were the arrivals of the doctor, his long stops, his whispered conferences with the nurses, and the unsatisfactory, evasive answers he gave as the family ambushed him at the foot of the stairs on his way out.

Meanwhile they could not help Pop in his long wrestle. They had drained his strength and bruised his heart while he had his power, and now that he needed their help and their youth they could not lend him anything; they could not pay a single instalment on the mortgages they had incurred.

They could only stand at the door now and then and look in at him. They could not beat off one of the invisible vultures of fever and pain that hovered over him, swooped, and tore him.

They could not even get word to him--not a message of love or of repentance or of hope. His brain was in a turmoil of its own. His white lips were muttering delirious nonsense; his soul was fluttering from scene to scene and year to year, like a restless dragon-fly. He was young; he was old; he was married; he was a bachelor; he was at home; he was in his store; he was pondering campaigns of business, slicing pennies or making daring purchases; he was retrenching; he was advertising; but he was afraid always that he might sink in the bog of competition with rival merchants, with creditors, debtors, bankers, with his wife, his children, his neighbors, his ideals, his business axioms----

"Ain't the moon pirty to-night, honey! Gee! I'm scared of that preacher! What do I say when he says, 'Do you take this woman for your'--The pay-roll? I can't meet it Saturday. How am I going to meet the pay-roll? I don't see how we can sell those goods any cheaper, but we got to get rid of 'em. My premium! My premium! I haven't paid my premium! What'll become of the children? Three cents a yard--it's robbery! Eight cents a yard--that's givin' it away! Don't misunderstand me, Sally. It's my way of making love. I can't say pirty things like some folks can, but I can think 'em. My premium--the pay-roll--so many children! Couldn't they do without that? I ain't a millionaire, you know. Every time I begin to get ahead a little seems like one of the children gets sick or in trouble--the pay-roll! Three cents a yard--the new invoice--I can't buy myself a noo soot. The doctor's bills! I ain't complaining of 'em; but I've got to pay 'em! Let me stay home--I'd rather. I've had a hard day. My premium! Don't put false notions in their heads! The pay-roll! Don't scold me, honey! I got feelings, too. You haven't said a word of love to me in years! I'll raise the money somehow. I know I'm close; but somebody's got to be--the pay-roll--so many people depending on me. So many mouths to feed--the children--all the clerks--the delivery-wagon drivers--the advertising bills--the pay-roll--the children! I ain't as young as I was--honey, don't scold me!"

The ceaseless babbling grew intolerable. Then it ceased; and the stupor that succeeded was worse, for it meant exhaustion. The doctor grew more grave. He ceased to talk of hope. He looked ashamed. He tried to throw the blame from himself.

And one dreadful day he called the family together in the living-room. Once more they were all there--all those expensively shod feet; those well-clothed, well-fed bodies. In the chair where Pop had slumped the doctor sat upright. He was saying:

"Of course there's always hope. While there's life there's always hope. The fever is pretty well gone, but so is the patient. The crisis left him drained. You see he has lived this American business man's life--no exercise, no vacations, no change. The worst of it is that he seems to have given up the fight. You know we doctors can only stand guard outside. The patient has to fight it out inside himself. It's a very serious sign when the sick man loses interest in the battle. Mr. Grout does not rally. His powerful mind has given up."

In spite of themselves there was a general lifting of the brows of surprise at the allusion to Pop's poor little footling brain as a powerful mind. Perhaps the doctor saw it. He said:

"For it was a powerful mind! Mr. Grout has carried that store of his from a little shop to a big institution; he has kept it afloat in a dull town through hard times. He has kept his credit good and he has given his family wonderful advantages. Look where he has placed you all! He was a great man."

When the doctor had gone they began to understand that the town had looked upon Pop as a giant of industry, a prodigal of vicarious extravagance. They began to feel more keenly still how good a man he was. While they were flourishing like orchids in the sun and air, he had grubbed in the earth, sinking roots everywhere in search of moisture and of sustenance. Through him, things that were lowly and ugly and cheap were gathered and transformed and sent aloft as sap to make flowers of and color them and give them velvet petals and exquisite perfume.

They gathered silently in his room to watch him. He was white and still, hardly breathing, already the overdue chattel of the grave.

They talked of him in whispers, for he did not answer when they praised him. He did not move when they caressed him. He was very far away and drifting farther.

They spoke of how much they missed him, of how perfect a father he had been, competing with one another in regrets and in praise. Back of all this belated tribute there was a silent dismay they did not give voice to--the keen, immediately personal reasons for regret.

"What will become of us?" they were thinking, each in his or her own terrified soul.

"I can't go back to school!"

"This means no college for me!"

"I'll have to stay in this awful town the rest of my life!"

"I can't go to San Francisco! The greatest honor of my life is taken from me just as I grasped it."

"I had a commission to paint the portrait of an ambassador at Washington--it would have been the making of me! It meant a lot of money, too. I came home to ask Pop to stake me to money enough to live on until it was finished."

"My business will go to smash! I'll be saddled with debts for the rest of my life. If I could have hung on a little longer I'd have reached the shore; but the bank wouldn't lend me a cent. Nobody would. I came home to ask Pop to raise me some cash. I counted on him. He never failed me before."

"What will become of us all?"

There was a stir on the pillow. The still head began to rock, the throat to swell, the lips to twitch.

_Mère_ ran to the bedside and knelt by it, laying her hand on the forehead. A miracle had been wrought in the very texture of his brow. He was whispering something. She put her ear to his lips.

"Yes, honey. What is it? I'm here."

She caught the faint rustling of words. It was as if his hovering soul had been eavesdropping on their thoughts. Perhaps it was merely that he had learned so well in all these years just what each of them would be thinking. For he murmured:

"I've been figuring out--how much the--funeral will cost--you know they're awful expensive--funerals are--of course I wouldn't want anything fancy--but--well--besides--and I've been thinking the children have got to have so many things--I can't afford to--be away from the store any longer. I ain't got time to die! I've had vacation enough! Where's my clothes at?"

They held him back. But not for long. He was the most irritatingly impatient of convalescents. In due course of time the family was redistributed about the face of the earth. Ethelwolf was at preparatory school; Beatrice and Consuelo were acquiring and lending luster at Wellesley and Vassar; Gerald was painting a portrait at Washington; and J. Pennock was like a returned Napoleon in Wall Street.

Pop was at his desk in the store. All his employees had gone home. He was fretfully twiddling a telegram from San Francisco:

Julie's address sublime please telegraph two hundred more love

MERE.

Pop was remembering the words of the address: "Woman has been for ages man's mere beast of burden.... Being a wife has meant being a slave."

Pop could not understand it yet. But he told everybody he met about the first three words of the telegram, and added:

"I got the smartest children that ever was and they owe it all to their mother, every bit."

BABY TALK

I

The wisest thing Prof. Stuart Litton was ever caught at was the thing he was most ashamed of. He had begun to accumulate knowledge at an age when most boys are learning to fight and to explain at home how they got their clothes torn. He wore out spectacles almost as fast as his brothers wore out copper-toed boots; but he did not begin to acquire wisdom until he was just making forty. Up to that time, if the serpent is the standard, Professor Litton was about as wise as an angleworm.

He submerged himself in books for nearly forty years; and then--in the words of Leonard Teed--then he "came up for air." This man Teed was the complete opposite of Litton. For one thing he was the liveliest young student in the university where Litton was the solemnest old professor. Teed had scientific ambitions and hated Greek and Latin, which Litton felt almost necessary to salvation. Teed regarded Litton and his Latin as the sole obstacles to his success in college; and, though Litton was too much of a gentle heart to hate anybody, if he could have hated anybody it would have been Teed. A girl was concerned in one of their earliest encounters, though Litton's share in it was as unromantic as possible.

Teed, it seems, had violated one of the rules at Webster University. He had chatted with Miss Fannie Newman--a pretty student in the Woman's College--after nine o'clock; nay, more, he had sat on a campus bench bidding her good night for half an hour, and, with that brilliant mathematical mind of his, had selected the bench at the greatest possible distance from the smallest cluster of lampposts.

On this account he was haled before the disciplinary committee of the faculty. Litton happened to be on that committee. Teed made the best fight he could. He showed himself a Greek--in argument at least--and, like an old sophist, he tried to prove, first, that he was not on the campus with the girl and never had spooned with her; second, that if he had been there and had spooned with her it was too dark for them to be seen; and third, that he was engaged to the girl, anyway, and had a right to spoon with her.

The accusing witness was a janitor whom Teed had played various jokes on and had neglected to appease with tips. Teed submitted him to a fierce cross-examination; forced him to admit that he could not see the loving couple and had identified them solely by their voices. Teed demanded the exact words overheard; and, as often happens to the too-ardent cross-examiner, he got what he asked for and wished he had not. The janitor, blushing at what he remembered, pleaded:

"You don't vant I should say it exectly vat I heered?"

"Exactly!" Teed answered in his iciest tone.

"Vell," the janitor mumbled, "it vas such a foolish talk as--but--vell, ven I come by I hear voman's voice says, 'Me loafs oo besser as oo loafs me!'"

Teed flushed and the faculty sat forward.

"Den I hear man's voice says,'Oozie-voozie, mezie-vezie--' Must I got to tell it all?"

"Go on!" said Teed, grimly; and the old German mopped his brow with anguish and snorted with rage: "'Mezie-vezie loafs oozie-voozie bestest!'"

The purple-faced members of the faculty were hanging on to their own safety-valves to keep from exploding--all save Professor Litton, who felt that his hearing must be defective. Teed, fighting in the last ditch, said:

"But such language does not prove the identity of the--er--participants. You said you knew positively."

The janitor, writhing with disgust and indignation, went on:

"Ven I hear such nonsunse I stop and listen if it is two people escapet from de loonatic-houze. And den young voman says, 'It doesn't loaf its Fannie-vannie one teeny-veeny mite!' And young man says, 'So sure my name is Lennie Teedie-veedie, little Fannie Newman iss de onliest gerl I ever loafed!'"

The cross-examiner crumpled up in a chair, while the members of the faculty behaved like children bursting with giggles in church--all save Litton, who had listened with increasing amazement and now leaned forward to demand of the janitor:

"Mr. Kraus, you don't mean to say that two of our students actually disgraced this institution with conversation that would be appropriate only to a nursery?"

Mr. Kraus thundered: "De talk of dose stoodents vould disgrace de nursery! It vas so sickenink I can't forget ut. I try to, but I keep rememberink Oozie-voozie! Mezie-vezie!"

Mr. Kraus was excused in a state of hydrophobic rage and Teed withdrew in all meekness.

Litton had fallen into a stupor of despair at the futility of learning. He remained in a state of coma while the rest of the committee laughed over the familiar idiocies and debated a verdict. Two of the professors, touched by some reminiscence of romance, voted to ignore the incident as a trivial commonplace of youth. Two others, though full of sympathy for Teed--Miss Fannie was very pretty--voted for his suspension as a necessary example, lest the campus be overrun by duets in lovers' Latin. The result was a tie and Litton was roused from his trance to cast the deciding vote.

Now Professor Litton had read a vast amount about love. The classics are full of its every imaginable version or perversion; but Litton had seen it expressed only in the polished phrases of Anacreon, Bion, Propertius, and the others. He had not guessed that, however these men polished their verses, they doubtless addressed their sweethearts with all the imbecility of sincerity.

Litton's own experience gave him little help. In his late youth he had thought himself in love twice and had expressed his fiery emotions in a Latin epistle, an elegy, and a number of very correct Alcaics. They pleased his teacher, but frightened the spectacles off one bookish young woman, and drove the other to the arms of a prescription clerk, who knew no Latin except what was on his drug bottles.

Litton had thenceforward been wedded to knowledge. He had read nearly everything ancient, but he must have forgotten the sentence of Publilius Syrus: "Even a god could hardly love and be wise." He felt no mercy in his soft heart for the soft-headed Teed. He was a worshiper of language for its own sake and cast a vote accordingly.

"I do not question the propriety of the conduct of these young people," he said. "Mr. Teed claims to be engaged to the estimable young woman."

"Ah!" said Professor Mackail, delightedly.

Teed was the brightest pupil in his laboratory and he had voted for acquittal. His joy vanished as Professor Litton went on:

"But"--he spoke the word with emphasis--"but waiving all questions of propriety, I do feel that we should administer a stinging rebuke to the use of such appallingly infantile language by one of our students. Surely a man's culture should show itself, above all, in the addresses he pays to the young lady of his choice. What vanity to build and conduct a great institution of learning, such as this aims to be, and then permit one of its pupils to express his regard for a student from the Annex in such language as even Mr. Kraus was reluctant to quote: 'Mezie-wezie loves oozie-woozie bestest!'--if I remember rightly. Really, gentlemen, if this is permitted we might as well change the university to a kindergarten. For his own sake I vote that Mr. Teed be given six months of meditation at home; and I trust that the faculty of the Woman's College will have a similar regard for its ideals and the welfare of the misguided young woman."

Professor Mackail protested furiously, but his advocacy only embittered Litton--for Mackail was the leader of the faction that had tried for years to place Webster University in line with others by removing Latin and Greek from the position of required studies.

Mackail and his crew pretended that French and German, or science, were appropriate substitutes for the classic languages in the case of those whose tastes were not scholastic; but to Litton it was a religion that no man should be allowed to spend four years in college without at least rubbing up against Homer, Æschylos, Vergil, and Horace.

As Litton put it: "No man has a right to an Alma Mater who doesn't know what the words mean; and nobody has a right to graduate without knowing at least enough Latin to read his own diploma."

This old war had been fought with all the bitterness and professional jealousies of scholarship, which rival those of religion and exceed those of the stage. For yet a while Litton and his followers had vanquished opposition. He little dreamed what he was preparing for himself in punishing Teed.

Teed accepted his banishment with poor grace, but a magnificent determination to come back and graduate. The effect of his punishment was shown when, after six months of rustic meditation, he set out for the university, leaving behind him his Fannie, who had been too timid to return to the scene of her discomfiture. Teed's good-by words ran something like this:

"Bess its ickle heartums! Don't se care! Soonie as Teedle-weedle gets graduated he'll get fine job and marry his Fansy-pansy very first sing." Then he kissed her "Goo'byjums"--and went back with the face of a Regulus returning to be tortured by the enemy.

II

Teed had a splendid mind for everything material and modern, but he could not and would not master the languages he called dead. His mistranslations of the classics were themselves classics. They sent the other students into uproars; but Litton saw nothing funny in them. When he received Teed's examination papers he marked them with a pitiless exactitude.

Teed reached the end of his junior year with a heap of conditions in the classics. Litton insisted that he should not be allowed to graduate until he cleaned them up. This meant that Teed must tutor all through his last vacation or carry double work throughout his senior year--when he expected to play some patriotic or Alma-Matriotic football.

Teed had no intention of enduring either of these inconveniences; he trusted to fate to inspire him somehow with some scheme for attaining his diploma without delay. His future job depended on his diploma--and his girl depended on his job.

He did not intend to be kept from either by any ancient authors. He had not the faintest idea how he was going to bridge that chasm--but, as he wrote his Fansy-pansy, "Love will find the way."

While Teed was taking thought for the beginning of his life-work Litton was completing his--or at least he thought he was. With the splendid devotion of the scholar he had selected for his contribution to human welfare the best possible edition of the work least likely to be read by anybody. A firm of publishers had kindly consented to print it--at Litton's expense.

Litton would donate a copy to his own university; two or three college libraries would purchase copies out of respect to the learned professor; and Litton would give away a few more. The rest would stand in an undisturbed stack of increasing dust, there to remain unread as long perhaps as the myriads of Babylonian classics that Assurbani-pal had copied in brick volumes for his great library at Nineveh.