They heard aghast. The whole school turned to them. The Past rose dreadfully before their startled vision, yet for once, it seems, they could find no blemish there.
Down-stairs, quaking, they slipped together through the office door. The Professor had not arrived. They took their stations farthest from his chair, and leaned, wondering, for support against the wall. There was a murmur of a.s.sembling cla.s.ses overhead, a hurry of belated feet, and then--that well-known, awful tread. Peter gulped; Bertram shifted his feet, his heart thumping against his ribs, but they squared their shoulders as the door flew open and the Professor, his face grave, his eyes flashing, swooped down upon them in the little room.
"Bertram!"
"Yes, sir."
"Peter!"
"Yes, sir."
"I have sent for you to answer a most serious charge--most serious, indeed. I am surprised. I am astonished. Two of my best pupils, two whom I have praised, not once but many times, here in this very room--two, I may say, of my favorite boys found violating, wilfully violating, the rules of this school. I could not believe the charge till I saw the evidence with my own eyes. I could not believe that boys like you--boys of good families, boys with minds far above the average of their age, would despoil, openly despoil--yes, I may say, ruthlessly despoil--the property of this school, descending--"
"Why, sir, what prop--"
"Descending," cried the Professor, "to vandalism--to a vandalism which I have again and again proscribed. Over and over I have said, and within your hearing, that I _would not countenance the defacing of desks_!"
Bertram Weatherby glanced furtively at Peter Wynne. Peter had sighed.
"Over and over," said the Professor, "I have told you that they were not your property or mine, but the property of the people whose representative I am. Yet here I find you marring their tops with jack-knives, carving great, sprawling letters--"
"But, sir, at Rug--"
"Great, ugly letters, I say, sprawling and slashed so deeply that the polished surface can never be restored."
"At Rug--"
"What will visitors say? What will your parents say if they come, as parents should, to see the property for which they pay a tribute to the state?"
"But, sir, at Rug--"
"Bertram, I am grieved. I am grieved, Peter, that boys reared to care for the neatness of their persons should prove so slovenly in the matter of the property a great republic intrusts to their use and care."
"But, sir, at Rug--"
"I am astonished."
"At Rug--"
"I am astounded."
"At Rug--"
"Astounded, I repeat."
"At Rugby, sir--"
"_Rugby!_" thundered the Professor. "_Rugby!_ And what of Rugby?"
"Why, at Rugby, sir--"
"And what, pray, has Rugby, or a thousand Rugbys, to do with your wilful disobedience?"
"They cut, sir--"
"_Cut_, sir!" repeated the Professor. "_Cut_, sir!"
"Yes, sir--their desks, sir."
"And if they do--what then?"
"Well, sir, you said, you know--".
"Said? What did I say? I asked you to imitate the manliness of Rugby cricketers. I did not ask you to carve your desks like the totem-poles of savage tribes!"
His face was pale, his eyes dark, his words ground fine.
"Young gentlemen, I will have you know that rules must be obeyed. I will have you know that I am here not only as a teacher, but as a guardian of the public property intrusted to my care. Under the rules which I am placed here to enforce, I can suspend you both--dismiss you from the privileges of the school. This once I will act with lenience. This once, young gentlemen, you may think yourselves lucky to escape with demerit marks, but if I hear again of conduct so unbecoming, so disgraceful, of vandalism so ruthless and absurd, I shall punish you as you deserve. Now go."
Softly they shut the office door behind them. Arm in arm they went together, tiptoe, down the empty hall.
"Well?"
The gloom of a great disappointment was in their voices.
"He"s not an Arnold, after all," they said.
III
A POET OF GRa.s.sY FORD
The lesser Primrose was a poet. It was believed in Gra.s.sy Ford, though the grounds seem vague enough now that I come to think of them, that he published widely in the literary journals of the day. Let.i.tia was seen to post large envelopes, and anon to draw large envelopes from the post-office and hasten home with them. The former were supposed to contain poems; the latter, checks. Be that as it may, I never saw the Primrose name in print save in our _Gra.s.sy Ford Weekly Gazette_. There, when gossip lagged, you would find it frequently in a quiet upper corner, set "solid," under the caption "Gems"--a terse distinction from the other bright matters with which our journal shone, and further emphasized by the Gothic capitals set in a scroll of stars. Thus modestly, I believe, were published for the first time--and I fear the last--David Buckleton Primrose"s "Agamemnon," "Ode to Jupiter,"
"Ulysses"s Farewell," "Lines on Rereading Dante," "November: an Elegy Written in the Autumn of Life," as well as those stirring bugle-calls, "To Arms!" "John Brown," and "The Guns of Sumter," and those souvenirs of more playful tender moods, "To a Lady," "When I was a Rugby Lad,"
"Thanksgiving Pies," and "Lines Written in a Young Lady"s Alb.u.m on her Fifteenth Birthday." Now that young lady was Let.i.tia, I chance to know, for I have seen the verses in her school-girl alb.u.m, a little leathern Christmas thing stamped with forget-me-nots now faded, and there they stand just opposite some school-mate"s doggerel of "roses red and violets blue" signed Johnny Gray. The lines begin, I remember:
"Virtue is in thy modest glance, sweet child,"
and they are written in a flourished, old-fashioned hand. These and every other line her father dreamed there in his chair Let.i.tia treasures in a yellow sc.r.a.p-book made of an odd volume of Rhode Island statutes for 18--. There, one by one, as he wrote them, or cut them with trembling fingers from the fresh, ink-scented _Gazette_--"Gems," scroll and all, and with date attached--she set them neatly in with home-made paste, pressing flat each precious flower of his muse with her loving fingers.
Editor b.u.t.ters used to tell me of the soft-eyed girl, "with virtue in her modest glance," slipping suddenly into his print-shop, preferably after dusk had fallen, and of the well-known envelope rising from some sacred folds, he never quite knew where, to be laid tremblingly upon his desk.
"Something from father, sir."
It was a faint voice, often a little husky, and then a smile, a bow, and she had fled.