# Ernest and the Case of Old Mudguards

Extracted from American Magazine, vol 70, 1910, pp. 21–31. Accompanying illustrations may be omitted.
Ernest AND THE CASE OF OLD MUDGUARDS
By
Inez Haynes Gillmore AUTHOR OF “PHOEBE AND THE HOUSEHOLD GODS,” ETC.
ILLUSTRATIONS BY К, Е. SHABELITZ
MRS. MARTIN enjoyed a theory common with mothers that Ernest was always obedient in school. To be sure, she knew that Ernest entertained for the master a hatred that could know no mitigation. On the other hand, she always suspected that Ernest's devouring desire to make the football team had rendered him immune from any temptation to work havoc in Mr. Ballington's discipline. This year Ernest had achieved his highest athletic honor. As captain, he had brought the football season to a triumphant close. It was December now. Mrs. Martin was placidly anticipating his graduation in the spring.
And so she betrayed a visible shock when one morning she received a note from Mr. Ballington, asking her to come up to the school at her earliest convenience, that they might talk over “Ernest's case.”
“'Ernest's case!'” Mrs. Martin repeated. “What does he mean by 'Ernest's case'? It sounds as if Ernie had been up to something.”
Phoebe stood at the mirror, bunching a long, white automobile veil into little knots above her ears. She accepted with sisterly fortitude this pessimistic translation of the dubious phrase. “I think it more than likely,” she made baleful comment as her mother paused, dumbly demanding reassurance.
“I don't know why you talk like that, Phoebe,” Mrs. Martin returned, “I'm sure it's only now and then that Ernie's report-cards——”
“Ern Martin is simply the limit in school, mother,” Phoebe broke in with characteristic racy candor, “and you might as well know it. He got awfully scared that time in his freshman year when Mr. Ballington sent him home. And the rest of the term he was pretty good for him. But Molly Tate says it's something dreadful the way Ern carries on now. I don't know that I blame Ern so much,” Phoebe went on analytically. “Its that gang of his.”
Ernest's gang! The lines on Mrs. Martin's forehead deepened slightly. The problem of Ernest's gang had always been perplexing. Mrs. Martin liked each member individually but the combination——
First came “Sig” Lathrop, who was christened Sigismund.
Sig inherited from his gifted Polish mother a passion for music. Ernest had made generous compact with himself to ignore this despicable, girly weakness, because Sig had inherited equally from his able American father a passion for athletics. Sig was as pretty as a girl—a slender, olive, liquid-eyed lad with a temperamental look. He seemed running over with a spasmodic nervous energy, and yet he could sit at the piano in the Martin living-room and improvise by the hour, so long as only Mrs. Martin or Phoebe were present. Ernest had trained his face so that it no longer twitched when his mother referred to Sigismund's “pretty manners.” Only Ernest knew that Sigismund was grand past master in the delicate art of harrying policemen, Chinamen, muckers, owners of fecund orchards and the itinerant merchants of small wares.
Next came Horace Tate, alias “Red.”
Horace was “Red” because he was carrot-topped. But beyond that——
“My goodness!” Phoebe often said, “I would like to know what Horace Tate really looks like.”
For Red resembled nothing so much as a back-yard cat who has had to defend fence-rights. He nursed a succession of black eyes, swollen noses, puffed lips, scalp-rips and impartially distributed lamenesses. For, more than any transient pleasure this life affords, Red loved a fight. It was this passion, followed in public and in private, with or without animosity, practised on friend and on foe, on whites, blacks, Ginnies and Swedes, that proved his eligibility to Ernest's gang.
Illustration: “PHOEBE STOOD AT THE MIRROR, BUNCHING A LONG, WHITE AUTOMOBILE VEIL INTO LITTLE KNOTS ABOVE HER EARS”
Third came “Bud” Donovan, who was christened Brian.
Bud's father had so much money that, in the Maywood phrases, he was “round-shouldered” and “hump-backed” with it. Mr. Donovan had brought up a large family, of which Bud was the youngest boy, on the theory that you could keep any child out of mischief if you gave him interesting toys. Bud had everything a boy could desire, from jackstraws to an amateur wireless station. But nothing could keep his mind permanently off his favorite pastime, which was to abet Jack Johnson, his white bull-terrier, in ridding Maywood of every member of the cat and dog species. Bud had a non-committal, freckled face—a perfect blend of Celt and Anglo-Saxon. New teachers and substitutes, whose bane he was, always mistakenly picked him out for the best boy in the room, and immediately presented him with a Position of Trust. But Bud was perfectly fair with them—he never held it longer than fifteen minutes. His father had once remarked of him, “You can put your hand on his shoulder any time, day or night, and say, 'It's all up, Bud, I'm on!' and that cagey young devil will begin to stall.”
Last there was “Dutch” Pugh, whose mother called him Adolph.
Half German, half American, Dutch was just boy—a stocky little lad with a round wooden head into whose eye-sockets two glass agates had apparently just been stuck, on to whose skull a wig of stiff yellow hair had just been glued. Dutch's specialty was doing what he was told. And once a command was planted in that solid, stolid German mind, nothing short of the police reserves could pry him from the performance thereof.
It was this quartette who tri-weekly presented itself, solemn-eyed and whispering, at the Martin door, who, after asking respectfully if Ernest were in, walked up the first flight of stairs, bounded up the second and, apparently, fell up the third flight. On striking the play-room, the quartette expanded, as if by magic, into a troop of infantry breaking ranks. Promptly at ten, the troop of infantry, diminished to a quartette again, fell down the top flight of stairs, leaped down the middle flight and tip-toed down the lower flight, departing once more solemn-eyed and whispering.
By some miracle of personality, Ernest had fused these conflicting elements, had welded them, had fashioned from the composition a machine so perfect that it was the terror of teachers. Mrs. Martin, who had an awed admiration for Sig Lathrop's natural gifts, and a profound respect for Bud Donovan's natural abilities, never deceived herself as to Ernest's inferiority in those lines. She explained her son's leadership on the principle that his smaller, straighter mind supplied the balance-wheel for much that was exotic and alien, for more that was erratic and undirected.
“Well,” Mrs. Martin said, “I'll see Ernest first and hear what he's got to say. I'll go up to the school tomorrow morning. Now, Phoebe, I don't want that you should say anything about this to your father yet. You know he's a little inclined to be severe with Ernie.”
This profound truth, so obvious to the mother of the abused one, was received with disheartening skepticism by his sister. “Oh, Ern's a terrible martyr. I guess you'll probably have to tell father in the end, though. I know that Ern's done something serious this time.”
Perhaps this was Mrs. Martin's own intuition. For though she resolutely turned the conversation to other things, her gaze, after the clock struck two, kept straying to the window. With that unconscious reading of her mother's mind which marked all their intercourse, Phoebe once said absent-mindedly, apropos of nothing, “Ern may not be home until dinner-time, mother—you know he took his skates with him.” So it proved. Mrs. Martin felt glad when Phoebe decided to make a round of calls. If was long after dark before the cheerful strains of “Villikins and His Dinah” came whistled to her from the front path.
“”Ernie,” Mrs. Martin said the moment he appeared at the living-room door, “what does this note of Mr. Ballington's mean?”
Ernest drank the letter down in one gulp. “Why, you cute Stealthy Steve, you!” he ejaculated, throwing it angrily down. “Ain't he the gumshoe marvel? Thought he'd creep on me, did he? Well, he's got another guess coming to him! Why, it's about this frat business, mother.”
“What frat business?” Mrs. Martin asked in a nonplussed tone.
“Why, I belong to a frat,” Ernest explained. “A frat's a fraternity and a fraternity's a kind of secret society—a sort of club. Old Mudguards doesn't believe we boys ought to have them. But I'd like to know how it's any of his funeral! He says he's going to break it up, and I want to see him do it—that's all. Old stuffed shirt!”
For a moment, Mrs. Martin permitted herself to ignore the manner of this for the sake of the matter. “What do these fraternities do?”
“Oh, just meet,” Ernest said in an offhand way.
“Who belongs?”
“Well, that's a secret for the present. You see,” Ernest was employing the patience which a fellow may exercise with honor in the single case of mothers, “I can't tell you anything about it now, because they're kicking up such a row at school. We'll make a big noise some day,” his enthusiasm kindling. “We're only local now, but as soon as this fuss blows over, we are going to get a charter from Alpha Omicron Tau. Well,” as his mother's face continued not to clear, “it's like the Masons that father belongs to—I can't tell about it any more than he can.”
“Oh, I see.” Mrs. Martin's tone was a little dry. Even Ernest could see that his choice of illustration had been far from happy.
“It would be a fierce thing to tell all about it—honest——” Ernest wriggled a little under the steady gaze of his mother's soft eyes.
“Oh, of course, I don't want to interfere with what does not concern me,” Mrs. Martin said, employing a characteristic asteism, unconscious as it was delicate. “Perhaps Mr. Ballington will feel more free to talk.”
Mr. Ballington did.
When Mrs. Martin reached the school, the next morning, he was in the midst of a conversation with Mr. Wilbur, the head of the English department.
Mr. Ballington had been christened “Old Mudguards” by Ernest, “Mudguards” because of a preponderance of side-whisker, “Old” because he was obviously young. Young in years, that is to say, for Mr. Ballington was one of those men who begin to grow old once adolescence is passed. As a matter of fact, he was about thirty-five or thirty-six.
Mr. Wilbur, on the other hand, although he was well over fifty, and already gray and wrinkled, would never succeed in achieving a respectable age. Everybody in the school called him “Sammy,” and Sammy he would always be.
“I intend to stamp out this fraternity business in the beginning,” Old Mudguards was saying, in the tones which everybody who knew him recognized as his I'll-fight-it-out-on-these-lines-if-it-takes-all-summer state of mind. “I had it out with the School Board Friday night, and at last they've given me written permission to take what measures I choose. What do you think they've been doing in the West? Why, one fraternity has actually hired clubrooms. They go there nights. It was discovered that they spent the last meeting drinking and smoking.”
“One box of cigarettes for the crowd and a bowl of pale pink punch,” Mr. Wilbur suggested. “Shades of Tiberius! Nero must have turned in his grave. I suppose,” he went on musingly, “that in a way I can sympathize with the youngsters. When you come down to it, there's nothing so romantic as the secret organization.”
Mr. Ballington's lips set until his mouth was horizontal with determination. “These boys will be up to all kinds of monkey capers before we know it,” he continued. “Besides, it interferes with the discipline of the school. No, by the end of the month, I intend to have stamped it all out. Martin is the toughest customer to handle, but if I break him I get Donovan, Tate, Lathrop and Pugh. They're the ringleaders.”
And just then Mrs. Martin entered. For an hour she remained closeted with Mr. Ballington. Her face was grave when she left the office. Ernest studied that look furtively all through dinner. He hung about the house for half the evening. Then, guessing that nothing would break, after all, he dashed jubilantly outdoors.
But something broke within five minutes of his exit. Mrs. Martin turned to her husband.
Illustration: “ERN” MARTIN, “SIG” LATHROP, “RED” TATE, “BUD” DONOVAN AND “DUTCH” PUGH
“Edward,” she began, relentlessly, dragging him from the maw of his favorite muckraker, “Ernie's in trouble at school. I went up to-day and saw Mr. Ballington about it. You see, he wrote me a note yesterday, but I didn't say anything about it to you last night—because—because——”'
“——because you hoped to settle it out of court,” Mr. Martin translated his wife to herself. “Well, fire away, mother! I think I may be able to stand the shock. You know I have never entirely shared your theory that Ernest was eligible to the angel throng.”
“They don't say one word against Ernie's scholarship.” Mrs. Martin plunged to her son's defense along the only line open.
“Well, I have examined his report-cards and I must say he deserves credit”—Mr. Martin had a meretricious effect of agreeing with his wife—“for the way he manages to just slide through with the narrowest possible margin.”
“Edward, I wish you wouldn't take that sarcastic tone about Ernie. I guess he studies just about as much as any other boy. And, besides, I'd rather most anything would happen than that he would strain his eyes. But about this fraternity business. This is serious, Edward—you must listen. It seems that all over the country the boys have been forming themselves into secret societies—'frats,' they call them. They're simply dreadful for the discipline of the school, and, besides, the boys get together and sometimes,” Mrs. Martin's voice lowered a little, “they hire rooms and go there to drink and smoke.”
She stopped expectantly. The film of horror which she anticipated had not descended on Mr. Martin's face.
“And—and—and,” she went on, playing her trump-card, “Mr. Ballington hinted”—Mrs. Martin blushed slightly—“that sometimes they had women there——” Mrs. Martin stopped.
“Well,” Mr. Martin said after a pause. His tone was that of a man trying vainly to sympathize with a feminine perplexity. “I've told Ernest that when he wants to smoke, he can, and when he wants to drink, he can—provided he'll drink his first drinks with me. When it comes to this woman-proposition—well, now frankly, mother, do you think that gold could bribe or wild horses drive Ernest into the presence of a painted female?”
Mrs. Martin laughed in spite of herself. “Well, of course he hates girls. But I guess if you were that boy's mother, maybe you'd worry about some things.”
“Perhaps I would,” Mr. Martin answered. “But also I think I'd reflect that there were some things I'd leave to him. He's no longer a boy.”
Mrs. Martin considered this easy masculine view, a thimbled finger on her lip. “Well, anyway,” she came futilely out of her meditations, “I agree with Mr. Ballington that this fraternity business ought to be stopped. And I'm going to help him. What do you think Ernie did, Edward?”
“What?” Mr. Martin asked, his eye seeking his magazine.
“When Ernie was suggested for captain of the football team, Mr. Ballington asked him to sign a paper that he didn't belong to any frat. Ernest signed it willingly enough, and he was elected captain. Mr. Ballington was perfectly delighted, because everything looked all right. But the master of another school told him the trick those boys were playing. This is what they do. The day before they were elected, Ernest resigned from the frat. The day after he was elected, he joined it again. What do you think of that?”
What Mr. Martin thoughts was evident. He laughed.
Mrs. Martin contemplated him for a disapproving second. “Edward Martin,” she said and she tapped every word out with an emphasizing thimble on the table, “sometimes I think men haven't any moral sense.”
“I'm sure they haven't,” Mr. Martin admitted equably.
“Mr. Ballington is going to make every boy sign a paper that he will not belong to any frat while he's in school. I'm going to back him in this matter, and I expect you to stand behind me, Edward.”
“Go as far as you like, mother!” Mr. Martin gave his whole attention to his magazine.
Mrs. Martin was a natural disciplinarian. Under her gentleness lurked a keen perception of values, an unexpected firmness. And yet she was a diplomat, a strategician. She ruled by love; and above all things she hated noise or violence. Her instinct was to temporize, to let things take their course. In the present tangle, she left everything to Mr. Ballington. No immediate word came from him, and she rested serene, convinced that the matter had been settled. But three days later, the mail rendered her this terse message.
“Ernest refuses absolutely to sign the paper I have prepared. I am sorry to say that, in those circumstances, I cannot allow him to play on the basket-ball team.”
“Ernie,” she said that night, “I have just heard from Mr. Ballington. I shouldn't think you'd want to give up playing basket-ball.”
“I don't care enough about it to sign that paper,” Ernest said hotly. “I've talked it over with Sig and Red and Bud and Dutch, and they all feel the same way.”
“Well, of course, if you're willing to pay the price——” Mrs. Martin said after a moment's reflection. She dropped the subject.
There it rested. Mrs. Martin's peace of mind came back and stayed two days. Another letter shattered it rudely on the third.
“I regret to say that Ernest seems to be ringleader in this business of the fraternities. He must choose between his fraternity and his diploma. I am sorry to seem severe, but I have talked with every member of the School Board and they uphold me to a man.”
“Ernie,” Mrs. Martin began the instant the door opened on her son—and it was indicative of her excited condition that she started a conversation leading to the rebuke of Ernest in the presence of Phoebe—“Ernie, Mr. Ballington has written me again. Now I've said nothing, as long as the punishment for such disobedience fell on yourself. But when it comes back on your father and me— Now don't let me hear any more of this foolishness. Mr. Ballington has had bother enough.”
“Well, I guess he'll be pickled in bother before he gets through,” Ernest prophesied wrathfully. “Mother, I don't intend to sign that paper and I might as well tell you so now.”
Mrs. Martin did not speak for a moment. And that moment was a quiet one. Ernest sat rigidly, moveless. Phoebe had stopped an interminable letter to Sylvia Gordon, and was listening. With uncompromising cheerfulness, the clock sentenced second after second to eternity. When Mrs. Martin spoke, her voice did not deepen or shake. Neither Phoebe nor Ernest guessed that she had made one of those inevitable maternal adjustments, bloodless however revolutionary, which sometimes make mothers young and sometimes old.
The Ernest of now was the Ernest of a moment ago, strong-looking, sulkily handsome. And yet he had said, “I might as well tell you so now!” One half of her leaped with a thrill to welcome the man. The other half grieved for the boy that was dead.
“Ernie, it's your duty to sign that paper,” Mrs. Martin said at last. But, by some psychological twist, connected with that bloodless maternal adjustment, she could not for the life of her put conviction into her voice.
“Duty or no duty, I'm not a-going to sign it,” Ernest persisted doggedly.
No fitting rebuke presented itself to his mother. Instead, “Will you tell me why you won't?” she asked patiently.
“No, mother,” Ernest replied with the superior air native ever to masculinity when hard-pressed by femininity. “I can't explain it to you. This is something a woman couldn't understand.”
“Well, can you beat that?” Phoebe inquired, in the tones of pure exasperation. “Do you mean to tell me that you're going to stand for that, mother? Why, if when I get married and I have a son, and he grows up, and he joins a frat, and he tells me there's anything about him that I can't understand, I'll—I'll—I'll have him arrested!”
“Well, probably your sweet little Percy will be too busy playing bean-bag with baby-sister to know anything about frats,” Ernest suggested.
“Phoebe, leave the room,” Mrs. Martin ordered.
But, “Well, Ern Martin needn't think he can tell you, in my presence, that you can't understand a kid frat,” Phoebe got in before she swept upstairs.
And, “Oh, you Mrs. Pankhurst!” Ernest slipped in before the bang of Phoebe's door could shut it out.
Mrs. Martin wrote Mr. Ballington that she was finding Ernest far from amenable, but that her opinion in regard to the fraternities had not changed. She would continue to give him her cordial support. She felt sure that after the coming interview with Mr. Ballington, Ernest would give in.
Perhaps Mr. Ballington distrusted so gentle-seeming an ally. Perhaps he felt that he could not afford to await the results of so long-distance a system. At any rate, “Bertha, what does this mean?” Mr. Martin said after dinner, a day or two later. He tossed a letter into her lap. “I thought that business had been settled long ago.”
Mr. Ballington had written Mr. Martin fully and firmly in regard to Ernest. He closed with the statement that every boy in school had been brought into line except Horace Tate, Brian Donovan, Sigismund Lathrop, Adolph Pugh and Ernest. He was sorry to have to say that Ernest was influencing the other boys not to yield. In conclusion, Ernest must sign that paper or suffer suspension. Suspension might end in expulsion.
“Where is Ernest?” Mr. Martin concluded. “I want to see him at once.”
“Now, Edward,” Mrs. Martin said a little tremulously, “I don't want that you should be hard on Ernie. Ernie's a child you can't drive. He's as sweet as honey up to a certain point. He'll go just so far and no farther. I'm sure he'll ——”
“Bertha,” Mr. Martin said, with a slight acrimony, “I think you can trust our offspring alone with me. I have no intention of putting him to the torture. In fact, I rather admire his spunk. But I guess I'll have to put a stop to this business now.”
Mrs. Martin said nothing more. But in her eyes shone the pathetic envy which the sex that must always wheedle holds for the sex that need only command.
“You ought not to have let this run on so long, Bertha,” Mr. Martin reproached her later when they were alone together. “I had the worst time bringing Ernest to terms! He's got an idea he's doing an individual Boston tea-party stunt. But I'm glad it hasn't gone any further——”
“Ernie's going to sign that paper then?” Mrs. Martin broke in eagerly.
“Of course he's going to sign it,” Mr. Martin answered querulously. “How you talk, Bertha! I told him that his allowance stopped and the auto stayed in the barn until he obeyed Mr. Ballington's orders.”
“Did he say that he would sign that paper?” Mrs. Martin interrupted again.
“Do you suppose I asked him what he intended to do? I just told him what he'd got to do.”.
Mrs. Martin contemplated her husband for a second. And in her manner lay that exasperation that only wives may know. But she managed to hold her peace by keeping it back of her clenched teeth.
Three days later Mr. Martin came home early. His wife's first glance discovered in him all the symptoms of incipient storm. “Where's Ernest?” he asked without preliminary. And his voice reinforced his look.
“Skating,” Mrs. Martin said with a catch of her breath.
“I've had another letter from Mr. Ballington. Ernest hasn't signed that paper yet. He'll sign it to-morrow, or I'll know the reason why.”
Mrs. Martin waited until Mr. Martin went upstairs. Then she threw on her things and stole out of the house. A little way up the street, she met her son.
“Ernie,” she said, “your father's come home mad. Mr. Ballington has sent him another letter. Oh, Ernie-boy, why can't you be good?”
“Mother,” Ernest said in an insulted tone, “this hasn't anything to do with being good, and you know it.”
For over a week, Mrs. Martin had been dangling before her own eyes a temptation so luscious that she wondered how she resisted it. Now she fell, as perhaps from the beginning it was predestined that the mothers of men would fall.
“Ernie,” she said, and her voice quavered—“if you will go back to school to-morrow and do as Mr. Ballington says, I'll get father to sell the runabout in the spring and buy you a touring-car. Not one of those biggest ones,” she added conscientiously, “but a good-sized one.”
Ernest did not hesitate a moment. “Mother,”he said nobly, “I wouldn't sign that paper for a whole garageful of automobiles. It's a matter of principle.”
And if Mrs. Martin had had the feeling of a Delilah practising her arts on an untried Samson, Ernest certainly had the look of a Cæsar refusing the crown.
They walked home in silence.
“What did he say, father?” Mrs. Martin asked. breathlessly, the instant this second interview was over.
“Say!” Mr. Martin repeated. “He didn't get a chance to say anything. I told him to come back to-morrow with a note from Ballington testifying that he'd signed that paper or I'd——”
Mr. Martin took up his book. Mrs. Martin could see that he felt quite sure of the outcome.
Mrs. Martin herself was not at all sure. Her brow furrowed at intervals the rest of the evening.
When Ernest returned from school the next day his mother met him at the door. She did not speak, but her face asked her question. Ernest's look answered it. “I'm suspended, mother,” he said in a tone at once jaunty and businesslike. I thought I was going to give in—honest, mother—when I started this morning. But when I got in the office alone with Old Mudguards—I don't know how it was, but I couldn't any more have signed that paper than cut my head off. Mother, you don't know how I hate that man. Father can do anything he wants.”
Something in Ernest's attitude crushed back Mrs. Martin's last appeal. It was, “Do it for my sake, my son.” She had been leaving that to the end. She knew that she would never make that plea now. The matter had slipped past any healing by her gentle arts. It was now not even an affair between father and son. It was between man and man.
Mr. Martin heard through his wife of Ernest's decision.
“Very well,” he said, “let him stay home a day or two. He can make up his mind to go back to school at the end of the week, or he can come into the office. Hours, eight to six. Pay, three dollars per.”
Mrs. Martin translated this message into the language of mothers and bore it to her son.
Ernest smiled.
“Gee, a whole lot that frightens me,” he said scornfully to Phoebe. “I'd rather drive an ash-cart than give in to Old Mudguards.”
“And if by the end of the month, he has not gone back to school,” Mr. Martin vouchsafed, still with the lofty, unattached manner of him who holds the whip-hand, “tell him he can give up any idea of going to Harvard.”
This decree, similarly translated, was brought to Ernest's notice.
Ernest smiled.
“I'm from Missouri on that,” he confided to Phoebe. “Father'll keep me out till the end of the year. Then he'll send me to a prep-school. Anyway, I'm going to college if I have to work my way through.”
In this crisis, Phoebe developed unexpected hen-mindedness. She had a lively sense of the social glory of having a football brother in college. And yet, all that was youth in her sympathized with rebellion against teacherdom. Each of her many explosive comments left her perched high and dry on a new point of view. As:
“Ern Martin, you needn't pretend to me that this is all a matter of principle with you. If it had happened last September, you'd have signed that paper rather than not be captain of the football team—sure! And you know just as well as you know your name that if anybody offered you a position on the Harvard Varsity, you'd sign forty billion papers.”
And, “Ern Martin, if you ever give in to Henry Marcy Ballington—well, you're a quitter—that's all.”
And, “Ern Martin, when you look at Mother Martin's face, and see what she's going through, I should think you'd be so ashamed that you'd squizzle all up.”
And, “I suppose, Father Martin, that you never did anything out of the way when you were a boy. Sort of cross between smarty-cat and teacher's pet.”
And, most surprising of all, for this was rank treason in Phoebe, “”Mother Martin, if Father Martin puts Ern to work, I never will forgive him as long as I live.”
A strange quiet fell on the Martin household. Mr. Martin never addressed his son. Ernest seemed comfortably able to ignore his father. Mrs. Martin experienced all the discomforts of having an idle boy in the house all day long. In secret, she regretted the embargo laid on the automobile. At night, Ernest's gang met, but these sessions, though apparently distinguished by unanimity of opinion, seemed to have lost some of their former hilarity. But never had Mrs. Martin seen Ernest more kind, lovable—angelic, even. Some of his boisterousness went forever—his very foot on the stair seemed softer. Mrs. Martin thought he was changing even in appearance. His eyes kept the clearness that she loved, but they had a new look in them. The faint shadowing of a line appeared here and there in his face. And each day his lips seemed to lose some of their boyish contour.
Mrs. Martin brooded over the situation until it got on her nerves. Her irritation showed itself in an inhibition of her instinctive diplomacy. For instance, not perceiving its flaw in logic, she unwisely delivered one of Ernest's messages.
Illustration: “BUT WHEN I GOT IN THE OFFICE ALONE WITH OLD MUDGUARDS—I DON'T KNOW HOW IT WAS, BUT I COULDN'T ANY MORE HAVE SIGNED THAT PAPER THAN CUT MY HEAD OFF”
“Tell father,” Ernest said with an effect of scathing sarcasm, “that when he resigns from the Masons, I'll resign from my frat.”
At this, Mr. Martin achieved in its perfection an appearance of suspended animation. Then, “Well, I'll be damned!” he said, and before Mrs. Martin could stay such verbal rigors, “Well, I will be damned! Bertha, I think I can stand this about a week longer, and then I'll—I'll—Bertha, I'll take a strap to that young pup.”
“Edward Martin,” his wife said, in a voice which he had never heard from her, “don't you lay a finger on that child.” And then, irritation foaming to rage, the wrongs of long ago found vent. “You have never appreciated Ernie from his babyhood, never. You have always been partial to Phoebe. If there's any choice between the two, you've alwavs favored her. And Ernie is a good child—as good as— Now I'm going to tell you one thing—” She paused to give full breath to the horror she was revealing, “I consider that Phoebe Martin was a very troublesome baby. Furthermore, she was a very naughty little girl!” Having fired this poisoned shaft, Mrs. Martin took up a book, indicating that the hearing was over.
Mr. Martin gave her one astounded look. Then he roared so heartily and so persistently that after a minute, Mrs. Martin, perforce, began to shake.
“Of course I did not mean that about Phoebe, father,” she said humbly.
Matters stood at this domestic deadlock, when one evening Mr. Martin brought Gerris Twombly, a young and brilliant business friend, home to dinner.
It was a quiet evening that they passed. Phoebe had gone to a dance. At ten, Mrs. Martin, using a headache as a pretext, left the men to their business. Ernest curled himself up in one of the big arm-chairs, intent on “Lorna Doone,” which he read twice a year. Mr. Twombly's pleasant, smooth voice mingled with his father's deeper, abrupter tones to make an undercurrent of sound which helped rather than hindered concentration. Out of that undercurrent suddenly flashed a name that made a blank of the printed page for Ernest.
“Henry Ballington. Teaching in the High School here, isn't he? Classmate of mine at Harvard.”
Ernest's lip went scornful-wise. He had a vision of Old Mudguards at Harvard.
“Know him?” Mr. Twombly was asking.
“Oh, sure! Everybody knows everybody else in Maywood,” Mr. Martin answered.
“Like him?”
“He's a good teacher and makes a fine principal. Of course school teachers aren't much in my line——”
“Ballington's a queer cuss. Played halfback. He was some player too.”
Something ran cool along Ernest's veins. Old Mudguards—football! Football—Old Mudguards! And still the heavens held. His book slipped to his lap.
“He was a wonder,” Twombly went on, between the puffs which seemed to knock off all the subjects of his verbs. “Didn't come out until his sophomore year, and developed when he was a senior. Was a cinch for the Varsity before the season was half over. One of those silent, concentrated, furious players. Mixture of dynamo and catapult. Rather forbidding on his personal side. No magnetism. Nothing whatever of what you might call charm. Something of a grind. And religious, I always suspected. But after he saw his chance he lived for but one thing—to beat Yale. Good Lord, Ed, you must remember the Ballington affair!?
“Yes. I had the inside of it. Happiest beggar on earth—Ballington—when it became a certainty. It came near the end of the season—the big game was to be pulled off in Cambridge. The Yale lists had been sent to us. We protested Graham. Proved it on him that he'd held down a job as gymnasium instructor one summer.”
Mr. Twombly indulged himself in a few wordless puffs. Ernest sat motionless, waiting.
“The game's on Saturday. Tuesday comes a letter from Ballington to the Athletic Committee. 'Gentlemen, I have just recalled that I was paid once for three weeks' instruction at a gymnasium. I am handing in my suit!' Well, that was all, but Barrows, the captain, said to me once, 'My God, Twombly, you ought to have seen his face when he told me?'”
The room was quiet again except that the book slipped a little between Ernest's knees.
“You know, Ed,” Twombly went on, “men are made or marred by such curious little things. Ballington had it in him somewhere to be a John Brown or an Oliver Cromwell if the right chance offered—I mean one of those big, one-idea, humorless men who do things. But it all took the wrong twist. Queer, isn't it? The biggest thing Ballington ever did broke him. It seems that everybody who knew about that money transaction was dead. It was all up to Ballington. Of course he was very unpopular with the class for a while—boys of that age are such unthinking brutes—and the men thought— Well, Yale won, and that didn't help any, you bet. And after that Ballington just naturally closed up. Makes me think of an iron chest crammed with valuable documents. The stuff's there, but nobody's got the key. That's why he's pedagogue in this little place.”
For a long interval there was not a sound in the room. Then from Ernest's corner came a quick indrawn breath. A book crashed to the floor. Ernest made one of his quick leaps out of his chair and a dash, almost as quick, out of the house.
“What's the matter with Ernest?” Twombly asked in amazement, looking after him.
“Oh, nothing, I guess. Young pup—we're having one deuce of a time with him. He's almost worn his mother to a frazzle in the last month.”
Ernest flew to Red's house, from there to Bud's, to Sig's, to Dutch's, emitting the signal which, whistled at any hour of day or night, brought his gang to his heels. In an incredibly brief time, the five had assembled at the regular meeting-place on Maywood Common, Bud picking a delicate way from the Donovan house through a back window.
“Say, fellers,” Ernest came to the point at once, “this frat row is all off. I'm going back to school to-morrow.”
Illustration: “ERNEST MADE ONE OF HIS QUICK LEAPS OUT OF HIS CHAIR”
“What the——” Sig began.
And, “Got cold feet?” Red took it up.
And, “See here—I was counting on being expelled,” Bud remonstrated.
And, “What for?” Dutch asked placidly.
“Aw, I'm tired of the whole business. We cut it out. See!” Ernest's command was final. The gang gazed open-mouthed after him before they fell to discussion.
Ernest, streaking home at his highest speed, still showed signs of a tremendous mental concentration. He opened the door without looking at key or key-hole. He ran up two flights of stairs to his room without pausing for breath. There, he dropped into a chair, his hands hanging limp over its sides. In his eyes dwelt a pathetic perplexity, a look almost of outrage, that look which comes to youth with its first flashlight glimpse into spiritual heroism.
“Gee!” Ernest said aloud, and again “Gee!”
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1930.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1970, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 54 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse