Kitabı oku: «The Reclaimers», sayfa 15

XVI
A POSTLUDE IN "EDEN"

Cornelius Darby had lain in his beautifully decorated grave for three years, and a graceful white shaft pointing heavenward amid the shrubbery had become a landmark for the bunch of grubs who rode the Winnowoc local.

"Must be getting close to the deppo. Yonder is old Corn Darby's gravestone over on the bluff," they would say, as the train chuffed up out of the valley on either side of the station. That was all the memory of him that remained, save as now and then a girl in a far-away Kansas town remembered a June evening when a discus shied out from its course and rolled to the door of a rose-arbor.

But "Eden," as a country estate, lost nothing by the passing of the husband of its lady and mistress, who spared none of the Darby dollars to make both the town and country home delightful in all appointments, hoping and believing that in her policy of stubbornness and force she could have her way, and bring back to the East the girl whom she would never invite to return, the girl whose future she had determined to control. The three years had found Jerusha Darby's will to have Jerry Swaim become her heir under her own terms – mistaking dependence for appreciation, and idleness for happiness – had ceased to be will and become a mania, the ruling passion of her years of old age. She never dreamed that she was being adroitly managed by her husband's relative, Eugene Wellington, but she did recognize, and, strangely enough, resent, the fact that the Darby strain in his blood was proving itself in his ability, not to earn dollars, but to make dollars earn dollars once they were put plentifully into his hands.

Since Mrs. Darby had only one life-purpose – to leave her property to Jerry Swaim under her own terms – it galled her to think of it passing to the hands of the relatives of the late Cornelius. She believed that love of Eugene would bring Jerry back, for she was Lesa's own romance-loving child – even if the luxuries that wealth can offer should fail; and she had coddled Eugene Wellington for this very purpose. But after three years he had failed to satisfy her. She was becoming slowly but everlastingly set on one thing. She would put her property elsewhere by will – when she was through with it. She could not do without Eugene as long as she lived – which would be indefinitely, of course. But she would have her say – and (in a whisper) it would not be a Darby nor kin of a Darby who might be sitting around now, waiting for her to pass to her fathers, who would possess it.

In this intense state of mind she called Eugene out to "Eden" in the late May of the third year of Jerry Swaim's stay in Kansas. The rose-arbor was aglow with the same blossoming beauty as of old, and all the grounds were a dream of May-time verdure.

Eugene Wellington, driving out from the city in a big limousine car, found them more to his taste than ever before, and he took in the premises leisurely before going to the arbor to meet Mrs. Darby.

"If I could only persuade Jerry to come now, all would be well," he meditated. "And I have hopes. The last news of her tells me a few things. She hasn't fallen in love with York Macpherson. He'd hate me less if she had, and he detests me. I saw that, all right, when he was here last month. And she's pretty tired of the life of the wilderness. I know that. If she would come right now it would settle things forever. I'd go after her if the old lady would permit it. I'd go, anyhow, if I dared. But I must keep an eye on Uncle Cornie's widow day and night, and, hungry as I am for one glimpse of Jerry's sweet face, I couldn't meet Jerusha D. in her wrath if I disobeyed her."

Eugene had the chauffeur pause while he surveyed the lilac-walk and the big maples and the lotus-pond.

"If Jerry would come now," he began again, with himself, "she would be heir to all this. If she doesn't come soon, there's trouble ahead for Eugene of the soft snaps. To the rose-arbor, Henderson."

So Henderson whirled the splendid young product to the doorway of the pretty retreat.

Mrs. Darby met her nephew with a sterner face even than she was accustomed to wear.

"I want to see you at once," she said, as the young man loitered a moment outside.

"Yes, Aunt Jerry," he responded, dutifully enough – as to form.

"What have you heard from Jerry recently?" she demanded.

"What York Macpherson told us – that she has had a hard year's work in a school-room," Eugene replied.

"Humph! I knew that. What are you doing to bring her back to me?" Mrs. Darby snapped off the words.

"Nothing now!" the young man answered her.

"'Nothing now!' Why not?" Mrs. Darby was in her worst of humors.

"Because there is positively nothing to do but to wait," Eugene said, calmly. "She is not in love anywhere else. She is getting tired and disgusted with her plebeian surroundings, and as to her estate – "

"What of her estate? I refused to let York Macpherson say a word, although he tried to over-rule me. I told him two things: I'd never forgive Jerry if she didn't come back uninvited by me; and I'd never listen to him blow a big Kansas story of her wonderful possessions. What do you know? You'd be unprejudiced." The old woman had never seemed quite so imperious before.

"I have here a paper describing it. York Macpherson sent it to Uncle Cornelius the very week he died. I found it among some other papers shortly after his death and after Jerry left. When York was here he confirmed the report at my insistent request. Read it."

Jerusha Darby read, realizing, as she did so, that neither her husband nor York Macpherson had succeeded in doing what Eugene Wellington had done easily. Each had tried in vain to have her read that paper.

"You knew the condition of this estate for three years, and never told me. Why?" The old woman's face was very pale.

"I did not dare to do so," Eugene replied, that line of weakness in his face which Jerry had noted three years before revealing itself for the first time to her aunt.

"This is sufficient," she said, in a quiet sort of way. "To-morrow I make my will – just to be sure. I shall probably outlive many younger people than myself. Write and tell Jerry I have done it. This time to-morrow night will see my estate settled so far as the next generation is concerned. If I do not do it, Eugene, some distant and improvident relatives of Cornelius will claim it. Send the lawyer out in the morning."

"All right, Aunt Jerry. I must go now. I have a club meeting in the city and I can make it easily. The car runs like the wind with Henderson at the wheel. Good-by."

And Eugene Wellington was gone.

"Three years ago I'd have left everything to him if I had been ready to make a will then. I'm ready now, and any time in the next ten years I can change it if I want to. But this will bring things my way, after all. I told York I'd never forgive Jerry!"

Mrs. Darby paused, and a smile lighted her wrinkled face.

"To think of that girl just shouldering her burden and walking off with it. If she isn't Brother Jim over again! Never writing a word of complaint. Oh, Jerry! Jerry! I'll make it up to you to-morrow."

To Jerusha Darby money made up for everything. She sat long in the rose-arbor, thinking, maybe, of the years when Jerry's children and her children's children would dominate the Winnowoc countryside as they of the Swaim blood had always done. And then, because she was tired, and the afternoon sunshine was warm, and her willow rocking-chair was very comfortable – she fell asleep.

"Went just like her brother, the late Jeremiah Swaim," the papers said, the next evening.

Instead of the lawyer, it was the undertaker who came to officiate. And the last will and testament, and the too-late evidence of a forgiving good-will, all were impossible henceforth and forever.

The estate of the late Jerusha Darby, relict of the late Cornelius Darby, no will of hers having been found, passed, by agreement under law, to a distant relative of the late Cornelius, which relative being Eugene Wellington, whose knowledge of the said possible conditions of inheritance he had held in his possession for three years, since the day he accidentally found them among the private papers of his late uncle, knowing the while that any sudden notion of the late Jerusha might result in putting her possessions, by her own signature, where neither Jerry, as her favorite and heir apparent, nor himself, as heir-in-law without a will, could inherit anything. Truly Gene had had a bothersome time of it for three years, and he congratulated himself on having done well – excellently well, indeed. Truly only the good little snakes ever entered that "Eden" in the Winnowoc Valley in Pennsylvania.

XVII
THE FLESH-POTS OF THE WINNOWOC

The glory of that third springtime was on the Kansas prairies and in the heart of a man and a maid, the best of good fellows each to the other, who rode together far along their blossomy trails. The eyes of the man were on the future and in his heart there was only one wish – that the good-fellowship would soon end in the realization of his heart's desire. The eyes of the maid were closed to the future. For her, too, there was only one wish – that this kind of comradeship might go on unchanged indefinitely. To Jerry no trouble seemed quite so big when Joe was with her, and little foxes sought their holes when he came near. If the spring work had not grown so heavy late in May, and Joe could have come to town oftener, and one teacher had not fallen sick, and Clare Lenwell hadn't been so stubborn, and if Stellar Bahrr had held her tongue – But why go on with ifs? All these conditions did exist. What might have been without them no man knoweth.

One of the humanest traits of human beings is to believe what is pleasant to believe, and to doubt and question what would be an undesirable fact. Jerry Swaim, clinging ever to a memory of what might have been, building a pretty love dream, it is true, to be acted out some far-away time by a young farmer and his neighbor in the Sage Brush Valley, listened to Stellar Bahrr's version of Thelma Ekblad's shopping mission, held back the tears that burned her eyeballs for a moment, and then, being human, voted the whole thing as impossible, if not as malicious as any of Stellar Bahrr's stories. Indeed, Thelma Ekblad was now, as she had always been, the very least of Jerry's troubles.

The school row, that had become the community fuss, culminated in the superintendent putting upon his teachers the responsibility of settlement.

If they were willing to concede to the foolish demands of the class, led by Clare Lenwell, and grant full credits in their branches of study, he would abide by their decision. The easiest way, after all, to quiet the thing, he said, might be to let the young folks have their way this time, and do better with the class next year. They could begin in time with them. As if Solomon himself could ever foresee what trivial demand and stubborn claim will be the author and finisher of the disturbance from year to year in the town's pride and glory – the high-school Senior class, and its Commencement affairs. The final vote to break the tie and make the verdict was purposely put on Jerry Swaim, who had more influence in the high school than the superintendent himself. Jerry protested, and asked for a more just agreement, finally spending a whole afternoon with Clare Lenwell in an effort to induce him to be a gentleman, offering, in return, all fairness and courtesy.

Young Lenwell's head was now too large for his body. He was the hero of the hour. Rule or ruin rested on this young Napoleon of the Sage Brush, divinely ordained to free the downtrodden youths of America from the iron heel and galling chains with which the faculty of the average American high school enthralls and degrades – and so forth, world without end.

This at least was Clare Lenwell's attitude from one o'clock P.M. to five o'clock P.M. of an unusually hot June day. At the stroke of five Jerry rose, with calm face, but a dangerously square chin, saying, in an untroubled tone:

"You may as well go. Good afternoon."

Young Lenwell walked out, the cock of the hour – until the next morning. Then all of the Seniors were recorded as having received full credits for graduation from all of the faculty – except one pupil, who lacked one teacher's signature. Clare Lenwell was held back by Miss Swaim, teacher of the mathematics department.

The earthquake followed.

In the session of the school board on the afternoon of Commencement Day Junius Brutus Ponk, who presided over the meeting, sat "as firm as Mount Olympus, or Montpelier, Vermont," he said, afterward; "the uncle Lenwell suffered eruption, Vesuviously; and the third man of us just cowed down, and shriveled up, and tried to slip out in the hole where the electric-light wire comes through the wall. But I fetched him back with a button-hook, knowin' he'd get lost in that wide passageway and his remains never be recovered to his family."

It was not, however, just a family matter now among the Lenwells. In the presence of the superintendent and Mrs. Bahrr, Miss Swaim was called to trial by her peers – the board of education. In this executive session, whose proceedings were not ever to be breathed – for York Macpherson would have the last man of them put in jail, he was that influential —Other Things Were Made Known– Things that, after the final settlement, became in time common property, and so forgotten.

Herein Stellar Bahrr's three years of pent-up anger at last found vent. She had been preparing for this event. She had adroitly set the trap for the first difficulty, that had its start in the Lenwell family, while she was doing their spring sewing. Incessantly and insidiously she laid her mines and strung her wires and stored her munitions, determined to settle once for all with the pretty, stuck-up girl who had held a whip over her for three whole years.

Charges were to be brought against Miss Swaim of a serious character, and she was to be tried and condemned in secret session and allowed to leave the town quietly. Nothing would be said aloud until she was gone.

In despair, Ponk sought York Macpherson two hours before the trial began.

"There's two against me. And no matter what I say, they'll outvote me. It's the durned infernal ballot-box that's a curse to a free government. If it wasn't for that, republics would flourish. Bein' an uncrowned king don't keep a man from bein' a plain short-eared jackass – and they's three of us of the same breed – two against one."

York's face was gray with anger, and he clutched his fingers in his wavy hair as if to get back the hold on himself.

"You will have your trial, of course. Demand two things – that the accused and the accusers meet face to face. It will be hard on Jerry."

"Has she flinched or fell down once in three years, York Macpherson? Ain't she stronger and handsomer to-day than she was the day I had the honor to bring her up from the depot in that new gadabout of mine? If I could I'd have had it framed and hung on the wall and kept, for what it done for her."

The two men looked into each other's eyes, and what each read there made a sacred, unbreakable bond between them for all the years to come.

The trial was held in the hotel parlor, behind closed doors. The charges were vague and poorly supported by evidence, but the venom back of them was definite. Plainly stated, a pretty, incompetent girl had come West for some reason never made clear to New Eden. Come as an heiress in "style and stuckuppitude of manner" (that was Stellar Bahrr's phrasing); had suddenly become poor and dependent on the good-will of J. B. Ponk, who had fought to the bitter end to give her "a place on the town pay-roll and keep her there" (that was the jealous superintendent's phrasing); and on the patronage of York Macpherson, who had really took her in, he and his honorable sister, even if they really were the worse "took in" of the two. At this point Ponk rapped for a better expression of terms. The young person had tried to "run things" in the church and schools and society. Even the superintendent himself had to be sure of her approval before he dared to start any movement in the high school. And no one of the preachers would invite her to unite with his church.

But to the charges now:

First: She had refused to let Clare Lenwell graduate who wasn't any worse than the rest of the class.

Secondly: She had a way of riding around over the country with young men on moonlight nights on horseback. Of going, the Lord knows where, with young men, joy-riding in cars, or of going alone wherever she pleased in hired livery cars. And some thought she met strange men and was acquainted with rough characters, and the moral influence of that was awfully bad; and there was something even worse, if that were possible, WORSE!

Things had disappeared around town often, but in the last three years especially. If folks were poor, they needed money.

Then Stellar Bahrr came into the ring.

Jerry had sat and listened to the proceedings as an indifferent spectator to what could in no wise concern her. With the entrance of Mrs. Bahrr to the witness-stand, the girl's big, dreamy eyes grew brighter and her firm mouth was set, but no mark of anxiety showed itself in her face or manner.

Mrs. Bahrr whined a bit as to wishing only to do the right thing, but her steel-pointed eyes, as she fixed them in Jerry, wrote as with a stylus across the girl's understanding:

"You are hopelessly in the minority. Now I can say what I please."

What Mrs. Bahrr really knew, of course, she couldn't swear to in any court, because of Laura and York Macpherson. She wouldn't shame them, because they had befriended a fraud, all with good intentions. She only came now because she'd been promised protection by the board from what folks would say, and she was speaking what must never be repeated.

"Most of us need that kind of protection when you are around," Ponk declared, vehemently, knowing that, while the school board would keep her words sacred, nothing said or done in that trial would be held sacred by her as soon as the decision she wished for was reached.

Stellar, feeling herself safe, paid no heed to Ponk. What she really knew was that a certain young lady had been known to take money from her hostess and, being caught, had been forced to give it up. Stellar herself saw and heard the whole thing when it happened. Laura had told her about the matter, and then, when she was just leaving, Jerry had returned the money. She was right outside of the vines on the porch, and she knew. Stellar knew that dollars and dollars, jewelry, silverware, and other valuables had been taken, and some of them never restored; but some was sneaked back when the pressure got too strong. In a word, through much talk and little sense, Miss Geraldine Swaim was branded a high-toned thief. And worse than that. For three years strange men had slipped to the Macpherson home when the folks were away, and been let out by the side door. Real low-down-looking fellows. Stellar had seen them herself. She had a way of running 'cross lots up to Laury's evenings, and she knew what she was talking about. Stellar dropped her eyes now, not caring to look at Jerry. Her blow had hit home and she was exultant.

"Has the young lady anything to say?" Lenwell of the school board asked, feeling a twinge of pity, after all, because the case was even stronger than he had hoped it could be made.

Jerry looked over at Stellar Bahrr until she was forced to lift her eyes to the girl's face.

"I cannot understand the degree of hate that can be developed in a human mind," she said, calmly. "That is all I have to say."

Junius Brutus Ponk's round face seemed to blacken like a Kansas sky before the coming of a hail-storm. Lenwell gave a snort of triumph, and the third member of the board grinned.

At that moment the door of the hotel parlor opened. Jerry, who sat opposite to it, caught sight of York Macpherson in the hall. And York saw her, calm and brave, in what he read, in the instant, was defeat for her. Before her were dismissal, failure, and homelessness. But neither he nor any one else dreamed how far the influence of those Sunday afternoons of "calling on mother," with the fat little hotel-keeper, had led this girl into a "trust in every time of trouble," and she faced her future bravely.

It was not York Macpherson, but the little, fuzzy, shabby figure of old Fishin' Teddy who shuffled inside and closed the door, demanding in a quavering squeak to be heard.

Ponk gave a start of surprise; Lenwell was annoyed; the third man was indifferent now, being safe, anyhow. Stellar Bahrr and the superintendent stared in amazement, but Jerry's face was wonderful to see.

"'Ain't I got a right to say a word here, gentlemen?" old Teddy asked, looking at Ponk.

"If it's on the subject of this meeting, yes. If it's anything about fish, either in the Sage Brush or in Kingussie Creek, no. This really ain't no place for fish stories. We're overstocked with 'em right now, till this hotel and gurrage will have a 'ancient and a fishlike smell' as the Good Book says, for a generation."

"I just got wind of what was on up here. A man from your town come down to see me on business, an' he bringed me up."

"York Macpherson's the only man I ever knew had business with old Teddy. Lord be praised!" Ponk thought.

"I got a little testimony myself to offer here, for the one that's bein' blackmailed. I'll tell it fast as I can," Teddy declared.

"Take your time an' get it straight. None of us is in a hurry now," Ponk assured him.

Then the Teddy Bear, without looking at Jerry, gave testimony:

"Back in Pennsylvany, where I come from, in the Winnowoc country, I knowed Jim Swaim, this young lady's father. I wasn't no fisherman then. I was a hard-workin', well-meanin', honest man. My name was Hans Theodore – and somethin' else I have no use for since I come to the Sage Brush in Kansas."

He hesitated and looked down at his scaly brown paws and shabby clothes.

"I ain't telling this 'cause I want to, but 'cause I want to do justice to Jim Swaim's girl. Jim was my friend an' helped me a lot of ways. He was a hard-fisted business man, but awfully human with human bein's; an' his daughter's jes' like him, seems to me."

Jerry's cheeks were swept with the bloom of "Eden" roses as she sat with her eyes fixed on the old man. To her in that moment came a vision of Uncle Cornie in the rose-arbor when the colorless old man had pleaded with her to become as her father had been.

"I got into trouble back there. This is a secret session, hain't it?" The old man hesitated again.

"Yes, dead secret," Ponk assured him. "Nothin' told outside of here before it's first told inside, which is unusual in such secret proceedings, so you are among friends. Go on."

Stellar Bahrr sat with her eyes piercing the old man like daggers, while his own faded yellow-brown eyes drooped with a sorrowful expression.

"I won't say how it happened, but I got mixed up in some stealin' scrape – that's why I changed my name or, ruther, left off the last of it. I'd gone to the Pen – though ever' scrap I ever stole, or its money value, was actually returned to them that had lost it. Jim Swaim stood by me, helpin' me through, an' I paid him as I earnt it. Then he give me money to get started here, an' befriended me every way, just 'cause it was in him. I've lived out here on the Sage Brush alone 'cause I ain't fit to live with folks. But when the old mainy, as you say of crazy folk, comes, why, things is missin' up in town. They land in my shack sometimes, an' sometimes I'm honest enough to bring 'em back when I can do it. I'm the one that hangs around in the shadders, an' if you ketch sight of strange men at side doors, Mrs. Bahrr, it's me. An' when this Jerry Swaim (I knowed her when she was a baby; I carried her in my arms 'cross the Winnowoc once, time of a big flood up in Pennsylvany) – when her purseful of money was stole, three years ago, an' she comes down to my shack and finds it all there, why, she done by me then jus' like her own daddy 'd 'a' done, she never told on me at all. An' she hain't told all these years, and wa'n't goin' to tell on me now. I don't know what you mean 'bout these stories on her. She never done nothin' to be ashamed of in her life. 'Tain't in her family to be ashamed. They dunno how. If they's blame for stealin' in New Eden, though, jus' lay it on old Fishin' Teddy. You 'quit her now."

The old man's voice quavered as he squeaked out his words, and he shuffled aside, to be less in evidence in the parlor, where he had for the one time in his life been briefly the central figure.

The silence that followed his words was broken by Jerry's clear, low voice. Her face was beautiful in the soft light there. To Ponk she had never seemed so adorable before, not even on still Sabbath afternoons in the quiet corner of the cemetery where they talked as friends of mother-love and God, and Life after life.

"Friends, this old hermit fisherman is telling you a falsehood to try to shield me because of some favor my father showed him in the years gone by. If he is not willing to say more, to tell you the real truth, he will force me to say to you that I am the guilty one after all. I cannot let him make such a sacrifice for me."

She spoke as though she were explaining the necessity for changing cars in Chicago in order to reach Montreal. Old Fishin' Teddy lifted his clubby brown hands in protest.

"'Tain't so, an' 'tain't right," he managed to make the words come out – thin and trembling words, shaking like palsied things.

"No, it isn't so, and it isn't right, and he must not bear a disgrace he doesn't deserve. I'll do it for him," Jerry said, smiling upon the shabby old man – a common grub of the Sage Brush Valley.

There is nothing grander in human history, nothing which can more deeply touch the common human heart of us all, than the lesson of self-sacrifice taught on Mount Calvary. From the thief on the cross, down through all the centuries, has the blessed power of that Spirit softened the hearts of evil-doers, great or small. Jerry had not once turned toward Stellar Bahrr since the entrance of Fishin' Teddy. When she had ceased speaking, the silence of the room was broken by the town busybody's whining tone:

"They ain't neither one of 'em a thief, Mr. Ponk. It's me. They sha'n't do no such sacrificing thing."

The silence of the moment before was a shout compared to the dead silence now.

"Yes, it's me. I was born that way, an' it just seems I can't help it. I've done all the liftin', I guess, that's been done in this town a'most – 'tain't so much, of course; but I ain't mean clear through, an' I jus' wouldn't ever rest in my grave if I don't speak now. I thought I'd always hide it, but I know I never will."

Old Teddy shrank back in a heap on his chair, while all of the rest except Jerry Swaim sat as if thunderstruck.

"I'm goin' clear through with it, now I've begun. Maybe I'll be a better woman if I am disgraced forever by it." Mrs. Bahrr's voice grew steadier and her eyes were fixed on the ground.

"Hans Theodore – the last part of his name is Bahrr – he's my husband. It was for my sins that he left Pennsylvany. Jim Swaim saved us from a lot of disgrace, and persuaded us to come West an' start over, an' helped us a lot. I couldn't break myself of wrong-doing just by changing climate, though. We tried Indiany first an' failed, then we come to S'liny, Kansas, next an' then we come on here. An' at last Theodore give me up an' went off alone an' changed his name. Mr. Lenwell's folks here is distant relatives, but they never would 'a' knowed Theodore. Didn't know he'd never got a divorce, and never stop supportin' me; like he'd said when we was married, he'd 'keep me unto death,' you know; and he'd come to see me once in a while, to be sure I wasn't needin' nothin'. I jus' worked along at one thing or another, an' Teddy earnt money an' paid it in to York Macpherson, like a pension, an' he paid me, York did. But Teddy wouldn't never live with me, though he never told York why. An' when I took things – "

Mrs. Bahrr paused and looked at Jerry deprecatingly.

"Like that silver cup I saw down at the deep hole?" Jerry asked, encouragingly.

"Yes, like that. I seen you down there that day. I was the woman that passed your car – "

"I know it," Jerry said, "I remember your sunbonnet and gray-green dress. I've often seen both since."

"Yes, an' you remember, too, the time I come out on the porch sudden when you first come here, an' made you promise not to tell." Mrs. Bahrr's voice quavered now.

"An' 'cause I knowed Teddy'd bring that right back to Macpherson's and you'd remember it, an' 'cause you were Jim Swaim's child that knowed my fault an' made me do what I didn't want to do, even if I was in the wrong, I hated you an' vowed to myself I'd fix you. It was me slipped into your room an' stuck Laury's purse into your beaded hand-bag, an' it was me took your roll of money from your own purse. Teddy took it away, though, that very night. Teddy he'd take whatever I picked up an' pretend he'd sell it, but he'd git it back to 'em some way if he could; an' he's saved an' sold fish an' lived a hermit life an' never told on me. He's slipped up to town to git me to put back or let him put back what I was tempted to pilfer, 'cause it seemed I just couldn't help it. York's been awful patient with me, too. But I can't set here an' be a woman and see Teddy shieldin' me, a hypocrite, an' her shieldin' him, an' not tellin' on me, like wimmen does on wimmen generally, an' not make a clean breast of it. An' if you'll not tell on me, an' all help me, I'll jus' try once more – "

"Won't anything go out of this room except what you tell yourself, Stellar Bahrr," Ponk said, gravely. "Now you go home an' begin to act better and think better, an' this'll be a heap cleaner town forever after. An' if you live right the rest of your days you 'll keep on livin' after you're dead, like mother does. The charges of this case is all settled. I congratulate you, Miss Fair Defendant. You are a Joan of Arc, an' a Hannah Dustin, an Boaz's Ruth, an' Barbara Fritchie, all in one."