CHAPTER FOUR
Theodora Farrington's saving grace lay in her sense of humor. It had saved her from many dangers, from none more insidious than that lurking in five years' experience as a successful author. It had rescued her from the slough of despond when unappreciative publishers rejected her most ambitious attempts; it had come to her aid also when a southern admirer whose intentions were better than his rhetoric, sent her a manuscript ode constructed in her honor. She had won success in her profession; but she had won it at the expense of some hard knocks. But, however much the world might be awry, two people had never lost faith in her talent. To her father and her husband, to their encouragement and their belief in her future, Theodora owed her best inspiration.
For the past year, she had forsaken her inky way and given herself up to a well-earned rest, wandering from Mexico to Alaska and back again to Helena. Now that she was settled in her home once more, the spirit of work was lacking. Theodora was domestic, and she found it good to take up her household cares again, so for a month after her return she turned a deaf ear to her publisher while she and her husband revelled in their coming back to humdrum ways much as a pair of children play at housekeeping. Then Theodora's conscience asserted itself, with the discouraging result that she became undeniably cross and, over his paper of an evening, Billy watched her in respectful silence. Past experience had taught him what this portended.
Two days later, Theodora came to luncheon with unruffled brow. Across the table, her husband looked at her inquiringly.
"Under way, Teddy?"
"Yes, at last."
"I'm glad. I do hope nothing will interrupt you."
"Something will; it always does. Fortunately it is Lent and not much is stirring. Anyway, I mean to have my mornings free, whatever comes."
"I'll mount guard on the threshold, if you want," he responded.
Only a week afterward, Theodora was in her writing-room, hard at work. Her desk, surmounted by a shabby photograph of her husband in his boyhood, was orderly and deserted; but the broad couch across the western window was strewn with sheets of manuscript which overflowed to the floor, while in the midst of them Theodora sat enthroned, a book on her knee and her ink insecurely poised on one of the cushions beside her. Across the lawn she could see The Savins among the tall, bare trees, and she paused now and then to watch the yellow sunshine as it sifted down through the branches. All at once she stopped, with a frown.
"But I must see her," Allyn was saying sharply.
"She is busy."
"Never mind; she will see me."
There was a word or two more; then a silence, and Theodora returned to her interrupted sentence. The next minute, she started abruptly, as she heard a boyish fist descend on the panels of her door.
"Go away! Oh, my ink!" she exclaimed. "Please let me alone. It's all tipped over."
"I'm sorry, Ted; but I must come." And Allyn stalked into the room.
"Oh, what do you want?" she asked despairingly, as she took up the dripping pillow by the corners and looked about for a suitable place to deposit it.
"Throw it out of the window," he suggested briefly. "I didn't mean to,
Teddy; but there's a row, and I must tell you."
She shut down the window sharply. Then she turned to look at him, and of a sudden the annoyance vanished from her face and in its place there came a new expression gentler and of a great protecting love. Years before, in his invalid boyhood, her husband had known that look. Of late, no one but Allyn had called it forth. To-day there was need for it, for Allyn was in evident want of sympathy. His cheeks were flushed; but there was a white line around his lips, and his hands, like his voice, were unsteady. He was short and slight, with a mass of smooth brown hair and brown eyes that for the moment had lost all their merriment and were sternly sombre under their straight brows. His chin was firm; but his lips were not so full of decision.
Swiftly Mrs. Farrington gathered up her papers and shut them into her Desk. Then she turned abruptly, laid her hands on the boy's shoulders and looked straight down into his eyes.
"What is it, Allyn?" she asked gravely.
For an instant his lips quivered. Then he said briefly,—
"I'm expelled, Teddy."
"Allyn!"
"Yes, I know."
"Not really?"
She read confirmation in his eyes.
"What for?" she demanded.
"For insulting Mr. Mitchell."
"What did you say?"
"I told him what I thought of him, and he didn't like it."
Theodora frowned at the tone of boyish bravado.
"Allyn," she said steadily; "tell me, what you have done."
"I told him he was a great deacon," the boy said hotly; "and I'm glad I did it, too. He ought to know what we think of him. He goes to church every Sunday, with a long face on him; and, all the rest of the week, he bullies the fellows."
"At least, you think he does," Theodora amended.
"He does," Allyn returned fiercely. "He is a coward, too, and never goes for our crowd; but takes boys like Jamie Lyman, stupid, shabby little milksops that don't dare stand up to him. It isn't their fault that they are dunces, and he ought to know it. I told him so."
Theodora looked perplexed.
"Sit down, Allyn," she said. "I want to talk this over quietly. Does papa know?"
"No; it's only just now, and I came straight to you. I thought perhaps you would help me tell him. I'm sorry, Ted, honestly sorry; but there wasn't anything else to do."
Up to this moment, Theodora had been trying to hold on to the threads of her interrupted chapter. Now she dropped them entirely, as she rested her arm on Allyn's shoulder.
"I am glad to have you tell me things," she said. "Now make a clean breast of it, Allyn."
And Allyn did make a clean breast of it, sparing nothing of the detail of weeks of petty tyranny. It was a story which fortunately is rare in these latter days, a story of a nervous, toadying teacher who vented his bad temper in those directions where there was least chance of its rousing a just resentment.
"I couldn't help it, Ted," he said at length. "I've no sort of use for Jamie Lyman; he lisps and he has warts, and he hasn't the pluck of a white rat. He looks like one, anyhow, with his tow head and his little pinky eyes. I told Mr. Mitchell it was a shame. He talked a good deal, and I suppose I did. We both were pretty mad, and then he told me I must take it back, or else get out. I couldn't take it back, so I walked off."
In the boy's excitement, the words came tumbling over each other and his brown eyes lighted. Then they grew dull again, as his sister spoke.
"I am sorry about it, Allyn," she said slowly; "sorry for you, because you must go back and apologize."
"I won't."
"I think you'll have to. There isn't any other way."
"But it was all true."
"Perhaps so. I am not sure. I know you meant to stand up for the right side; still, you must apologize to Mr. Mitchell, all the same."
The boy stared at her reproachfully.
"But I thought you would understand, Ted."
"I do, dear. If I didn't understand quite so well, I shouldn't be so sure what you ought to do. When I was your age, I was always getting into just such scrapes as this, simply because I used to burn up all my powder without taking aim. All the good it did, was to show up the weak spots of my position. Go slow, Allyn, and don't be so ready to fight. It never does any good."
"But I wasn't going to sit still and let him bully that little baby,"
Allyn argued.
"No; but you needn't have tried to bully him in your turn," his sister answered promptly, though in her heart of hearts she was in perfect sympathy with her young brother. She gloried in his fearlessness, even while she told herself that he must submit to discipline. "It wasn't your place to tell Mr. Mitchell what he ought to do. He is an older man, and he may have reasons that you don't know. He is not accountable to you, Allyn, and his judgment may be better than yours. Moreover, you owe him obedience, and the McAlisters always pay their debts."
"Have I got to eat humble pie and go back, Teddy?"
"You've got to eat humble pie," she said, as a laughing note crept into her voice when she thought of Jamie Lyman, insignificant and warty cause of such a storm. "About your going back, that is for papa to say, dear. I think you ought to do it."
"I hate that school!" he muttered restively.
"Why?"
"Don't like the fellows."
"What is the matter with them?"
"Foolish."
"Try the girls, then."
"They're worse."
"Hm." Theodora mused aloud. "Given ten boys: if nine of them all like each other, and the tenth doesn't like any of them, where does the trouble lie? Allyn you are getting cranky."
"Maybe so; but I can't help it."
"Yes, you can, too. Do you know, you need a chum."
A sudden flash of fun came into Allyn's eyes.
"What's the matter with you, Ted?"
"Me? I'm too old. Besides, I am producing literature."
"And I interrupted," he said penitently, for he took much satisfaction in his sister's work.
"No; at least, not much. I want you to tell me things, Allyn. We have always been chums, and I should be a good deal jealous of any one else."
"But I don't want any one else. What's the use?"
"Yes, you want somebody to antic with, while I am busy, just as I have Billy, somebody of your own age, only you must always like me best. Now come over to see if papa is in his office and talk things over with him. He can advise you a good deal better than I can, Allyn; but, this time, I think I know about what he will say." And she did.
It took more than an hour for Dr. McAlister to explain to his young son the difference between independence and anarchy. There was a fearlessness in the boy's point of view that roused his father's admiration, and more than once he was forced to turn away to hide his amusement at Allyn's disclaimers of anything like personal affection for Jamie.
"Jamie!" he said, in one final outburst. "Jamie! Fifteen years old, and calls himself Jamie! If he'd only brace up and be Jim, there'd be some sort of hope for him."
The result of the discussion was the doctor's sending Allyn back to apologize and take his old place in the school once more, while he sat himself down to write a plain note to the master. Theodora, meanwhile, went in search of Mrs. McAlister. She found her in her own room, humming contentedly to herself over the family mending. Forgetful of her years and her inches, Theodora cast herself down on the floor at her stepmother's feet.
"Whatever made you do it?" she asked without preface.
"Do what?"
"Marry papa."
"Because—well, because he asked me."
"You never would have done it, if you had seen us first," Theodora responded half whimsically, half discontentedly. "Hope and Hubert are all right; but the rest of us are enough to turn your hair white. I was bad enough; and now Phebe is forsaking the world and taking to skeletons, and Allyn is at war with the whole human race, including Mr. Mitchell. Well, Phebe, what now?"
"I heard my name and thought I'd come and take a hand in the discussion," Phebe announced, as she strolled into the room. "Have I done anything you don't like? If I have, just mention it."
"Nothing more than usual," Theodora said, laughing. "Goodness me, Babe!
What's that?"
"What's what?" Phebe cast an apprehensive glance behind her.
"In your hand?"
"That? Oh, that's my tibia. I was studying where it articulates into the fibula. It's ever so nice. Just see the cunning little grooves."
"Booh!" Theodora laughed, even in her disgust. "I am not weak-minded,
Babe, but those things do not appeal to me."
"Every one to his taste," Phebe said loftily. "I like bones better than
Browning, myself. Isabel St. John thinks she will be a nurse."
"Then you can hunt in pairs," Theodora commented irreverently. "I pity the patient. Do you really like this sort of thing, Babe?"
Phebe rested her cheek meditatively against the upper end of her tibia.
"Yes, of course; or else I shouldn't be doing it. Bones, that is, dead ones, are nice and neat; and I don't think I should mind setting live ones. Of course it isn't going to be all bones; but I suppose even literature has its disagreeable sides."
"Yes," Theodora assented, with a passing memory of the pillow reposing on the lawn outside her window. "After all, Babe, I think you lack the real artist's devotion to your work. Even mumps ought to be beautiful in your eyes and meningitis a delight to your soul. The day will come that you will give up medicine and take a course in plain cooking, now mark my words."
"Thanks; but I prefer tibias to tomatoes," Phebe responded. "When I am the great Dr. McAlister, you will change your tune."
"There will never be but one great Dr. McAlister," Theodora answered loyally. "No, mother, I must not stay to lunch, not even if Babe would grill her tibia for me. Billy gets very grumpy, if I leave him alone at his meals. Good-bye, Babe. Don't let anything happen to your grooves."
She went away with a laugh on her lips; but the laugh vanished, as she went up to her writing-room once more and paused for a moment before her closed desk. Then her face cleared, as she hurriedly put herself into Billy's favorite gown and ran down the stairs to meet him in the hall. The woes of book-making and the worries of her family never clouded Theodora's welcome to her husband.