Part 11

You can't expect a woman that's pretty and knows it, and ain't more'n thirty-two or three years old, and don't look it, to be interested in mummies and pickled snakes and the preservation of the criminal classes and chemical profusions, not _all_ the time. And maybe when she'd ask the perfessor if he wasn't going to take her to the opera he'd ask her did she know them Germans had invented a newfangled disease or that it was a mistake about them Austrians hiding their heads in the sand when they are scared, which any fool that's ever seen 'em working around a coal mine ought to of knowed. It wouldn't a-been so bad if the perfessor had just picked out one brand of science and stuck to it. She could a-got used to any one kind and knowed what to expect. But maybe this week the perfessor's bug would be ornithography, and he'd be chasing sparrows all over the front lawn; and next week it would be geneology and he'd be trying to grow bananas on a potato vine. Then, he'd get worried about the nigger problem in the south, and settle it all up scientific and explain how ethnology done the whole damn thing, lynchings and all, and it never could be straightened out till it was done scientific. Every new gag that come out the perfessor took up with it, Biddy says; one time he'd be fussing around with gastronomy through a telescope and the next he'd be putting astrology into William's breakfast food.

They was a row on all the time about the kids, which they hadn't been till Miss Estelle come. Mrs. Booth she said they could kill their own selves if they wanted to, but she had more right than anybody to say what went into William's digestive ornaments, and she didn't want him brought up scientific nohow, but just human. He was always making notes on William, which was how William come to take so little interest in life after a while. But Miss Estelle, she egged him on. She seen he didn't have no sense about his money, which had been left to him when he was a sure enough perfessor in a college before he quit and went nuts and everything begun to go wrong between him and Mrs. Booth, so Miss Estelle she took to running his money herself; but she seen likewise that when it come to writing articles about William's insides and intellectuals the perfessor he was a genius. Well, maybe he was; but Biddy wouldn't let him try none of them laboratory gags on her though she just as soon be hypnotized and telepathed as not just to humor him. Miss Estelle, she eat what the perfessor give her, and after a while she says she'll take charge of the children's education herself, their mother being a frivolous young thing, and it was too bad, she says, a genius like him couldn't a-mar-ried a noble woman who would a-understood his great work for humanity and sympathized with it. So while the perfessor filled William and Miss Margery up on new discovered food and weighed 'em and probed 'em and sterilized 'em and did everything else but put 'em in glass bottles, Miss Estelle she laid out courses of reading matter for them and tended to their religion and intellectuals and things like that. I reckon they never was two kids more completely educated, inside and out. It hadn't worked much on Miss Margery yet, her being younger than William. But William took it hard and serious, being more like his father's family, and it made bumps all over his head. I reckon by the time William was ten years old he knew more than a whole high school, and every time that boy cut his finger he just naturally bled science. But somehow he wasn't very chipper, and whenever the perfessor would notice that he and Miss Estelle would change treatment. But Biddy liked William just the same, they hadn't spoiled his disposition none; and she said he seen a lot of things his aunt never would a-seen, William did. One day when I first was a guest I says to his aunt, I says:

“Miss Booth, William looks kind o' pale to me like he was getting too much bringin' up to the square inch.”

She acted like she didn't care for no outsiders butting in, but I seen she'd noticed it, too, and she liked William, too, in a kind of scientific sort of a way, and she says in a minute:

“What do you suggest?”

“Why,” says I, “what a kid like that needs is to roll around and play in the dirt now and then, and yell and holler.”

She went away like she was kind o' mad about it; but about an hour later the perfessor sent word for me to come down to the labaratory, and Miss Estelle was there.

“We have decided that there is something in what you say,” says the perfessor. “Even the crudest and most untrained intellectuals has now and then a bright hunch from which us men of special knowledge may take a suggestion,” he says, or words to that effect. And they was a whole lot more, and they was more scientific than that. I didn't know I'd done nothing important like that, but when he told me all about it in science talk I seen I made a ten strike, though I should of thought anyone could of saw all William needed was just to be allowed to be a little more human.

But what do you think--I never was so jarred in my life as I was the next day. I seen Miss Estelle spreading an oilcloth on the floor, and then the butler come in and poured a lot of nice, clean, sterilized dirt on to it. And then she sent for William.

“William Dear,” she says, “we have decided that what you need is more recreation mixed in along with your intellectuals. You ought to romp and play in the dirt, close to the soil and nature, as is right for a youth of your age. For an hour each day right after you study your biology and before you take up your Euclid you will romp and play in this dirt like a child of nature, and frolic. You may now begin to frolic, William, and James will gather up the dirt again for to-morrow's frolic.” Or it was words to that effect.

But William didn't frolic none. He seen things they didn't. He just looked at that dirt, and he come the nearest to smiling I ever seen William come; and then he come the nearest to getting mad I ever seen William come. And then he says very serious:

“Aunt Estelle,” he says, “I shall _not_ frolic. I have come to that place in my discretions where my intellectuals got to work some for theirselves. It is them intellectuals which you have trained that refuses to be made ridiculous one hour each day between the biology lesson and the Euclid lesson with sand.” Those was not William's exact words, which he always had down as slick as his pa, but they was what he meant. William was a serious kid, but he seen things his aunt never had no idea of. And he never did frolic, neither, and all that nice clean dirt had to be throwed out by the stable amongst the unscientific dirt again.

That was before Biddy Malone told me about why it was that the perfessor and his wife didn't get along well, and as I was saying I didn't blame her none, Miss Estelle having finally beat her out about her own children, too; and she feeling she didn't scarcely own 'em no more, and they hardly daring to kiss their own mamma with Miss Estelle in the room because of germs, so Biddy says. Biddy, she says the perfessor is all right, he's just a fool and don't mean no harm by his scientific gags, but Miss Estelle she's a she-devil and takes that way to make herself the boss of that house. If she wasn't there Mrs. Booth would have been boss and never let the perfessor know it and things wouldn't a-been so bad. Which shows that so long as every house got to have a boss it ain't so much difference if it's a him or her so long as it ain't a relation.

The perfessor always eats his dinner in one of them coats with the open-face vest to it, and one night I thinks I will, too. When you is in Rome you does like the Dagos does, I thinks.

So I sends for James along before dinner time and I says: “Where is my dinky clothes to eat dinner in?” I says.

James he says I'm to continue to eat dinner by myself. Which is all right, I tells him, but I'll do it in style or I'll quit the job. So he goes and asks Miss Estelle, and she comes in with that lemon grin on, but looking, too, like I done something to please her.

“Is it true,” she says, “that already the effects of a refined environment has overcome defections in early training and a misfortune in ancestral hereditary?” she says. Or they was words to that effect.

“It is true,” I says. And the perfessor's being too small she made James give me his'n. But when I seen all that shirt front it made me feel kind of uncomfortable, too. So I takes them off again and puts on my old striped sweater and puts on the vest and coat over that, and the effect of them red stripes running crossways is something gorgeous with one of them open-face vests over it.

So after I eat I don't want to go to bed and I gets a box of the perfessor's cigars and goes into the library and thinks I'll see if he's got anything fit to read. I dig around for a while among them shelves, and most everything is one brand of science or other, but finally I got hold of a little book that was real interesting. That was the damndest book! It was all in rhyme, with the explanations of the rhyme printed in real talk down the sides so as you could tell where you was at and what it was about. It's about an Ancient Mariner. The nut that wrote it he's never been sailing none, I bet; but he can make you feel like you been going against the hop in one of them Chink joints. Of course, there ain't nothing real literary about it like one of them Marie Corelli stories I read once and it ain't got the excitement of a good Bill Hart movie or a Nick Carter story, but I got real interested in it. The I-man of that story he was a Jonah to the whole ship. He seen an albatross circling around, and he up with his air gun and give him his'n. It wasn't for nothing to eat, but just to be a-shooting. And from that on everybody gets as sick of living as a bunch of Chicago factory hands when another savings bank busts, and they all falls down and curses him. And the snakes wiggles all over the top of the water like I seen 'em one time when they cleaned out a reservoir where one of them prairie towns gets its drinking water from. And the Ancient Mariner he tries to die and can't make it; and their ghosts is whizzing all around that ship and they go by him in the moonlight like a puff of steam goes by you on a frosty morning out of an engine-room manhole. And there's a moral to that story, too. I bet the fellow that doped that out had been on an awful bat. I like to of talked with that nut. They was a fellow named Looney Hogan use to have them phoney hunches, and he use to tell me what he saw after he had 'em. Looney was awful good company and I use to like to hear him tell what he seen and what he thinks he seen, but he walked off of a grain barge up to Duluth when he was asleep one night and he never did wake up.

Sitting there thinking of the awful remarkable things that is, and the ones that isn't, and the ones that maybe is and maybe isn't, and the nuts that is phoney about some things and not about others, and how two guys can look at the same thing and when you ask them about it both has seen different things, I must a-went to sleep. And I must a-slept a long time there, and pretty soon in my sleep I heard two voices and then I wakes up sudden and still hears them, low and quicklike, in the room that opens right off from the library with a pair of them sliding doors like is on to a boxcar. One was a woman's voice, and not Miss Estelle's, and she says like she was choked up:

“But I _must_ see them before we go, Henry.”

And the other was a man's voice, and it wasn't no one around our house.

“But, my God!” he says, “suppose you catch it yourself, Jane!”

I set up straight then, and I would of give a good deal to see through that door, because Jane was the perfessor's wife's first name.

“You mean suppose _you_ get it,” she says. I like to of seen the look she must of give him to fit in with the way she says that _you_. He didn't say nothing, the man didn't; and then her voice softens down some, and she says, low and slow: “Henry, wouldn't you love me if I _did_ get it? Suppose it marked and pitted me all up?”

“Oh, of course,” he says, “of course I would. Nothing can change the way I feel. _You_ know that.” He said it quick enough, all right, just the way they do in a show, but it sounded _too much_ like it does on the stage to of suited me if _I'd_ been her. I seen folks overdo them little talks before this.

I listens some more, and then I see how it is. This is that musician feller Biddy Malone's been talking about. Jane's going to run off with him all right, but she's got to kiss the kids first. Women is like that. They may hate the kids' pa all right, but they's dad-burned few of 'em don't like the kids. I thinks to myself: “It must be late. I bet they was already started, or ready to start, and she made him bring her here first so's she could sneak in and see the kids. She just simply couldn't get by. But she's taking a fool risk, too. Fur how's she going to see Margery with that nurse coming and going and hanging around all night? And even if she tries just to see William Dear it's a ten to one shot he'll wake up and she'll be ketched at it.”

And then I thinks, suppose she _is_ ketched at it? What of it? Ain't a woman got a right to come into her own house with her own door key, even if they is a quarantine on to it, and see her kids? And if she is ketched seeing them, how would anyone know she was going to run off? And ain't she got a right to have a friend of hern and her husband's bring her over from her mother's house, even if it is a little late?

Then I seen she wasn't taking no great risks neither, and I thinks mebby I better go and tell that perfessor what is going on, fur he has treated me purty white. And then I thinks: “I'll be gosh-derned if I meddle. So fur as I can see that there perfessor ain't getting fur from what's coming to him, nohow. And as fur _her_, you got to let some people find out what they want fur theirselves. Anyhow, where do _I_ come in at?”

But I want to get a look at her and Henry, anyhow. So I eases off my shoes, careful-like, and I eases acrost the floor to them sliding doors, and I puts my eye down to the little crack. The talk is going backward and forward between them two, him wanting her to come away quick, and her undecided whether to risk seeing the kids. And all the time she's kind o' hoping mebby she will be ketched if she tries to see the kids, and she's begging off fur more time ginerally.

Well, sir, I didn't blame that musician feller none when I seen her. She was a peach.

And I couldn't blame her so much, either, when I thought of Miss Estelle and all them scientifics of the perfessor's strung out fur years and years world without end.

Yet, when I seen the man, I sort o' wished she wouldn't. I seen right off that Henry wouldn't do. It takes a man with a lot of gumption to keep a woman feeling good and not sorry fur doing it when he's married to her. But it takes a man with twicet as much to make her feel right when they ain't married. This feller wears one of them little, brown, pointed beards fur to hide where his chin ain't. And his eyes is too much like a woman's. Which is the kind that gets the biggest piece of pie at the lunch counter and fergits to thank the girl as cuts it big. She was setting in front of a table, twisting her fingers together, and he was walking up and down. I seen he was mad and trying not to show it, and I seen he was scared of the smallpox and trying not to show that, too. And just about that time something happened that kind o' jolted me.

They was one of them big chairs in the room where they was that has got a high back and spins around on itself. It was right acrost from me, on the other side of the room, and it was facing the front window, which was a bow window. And that there chair begins to turn, slow and easy. First I thought she wasn't turning. Then I seen she was. But Jane and Henry didn't. They was all took up with each other in the middle of the room, with their back to it.

Henry is a-begging of Jane, and she turns a little more, that chair does. Will she squeak, I wonders?

“Don't you be a fool, Jane,” says the Henry feller.

Around she comes three hull inches, that there chair, and nary a squeak.

“A fool?” asks Jane, and laughs. “And I'm not a fool to think of going with you at all, then?”

That chair, she moved six inches more and I seen the calf of a leg and part of a crumpled-up coat tail.

“But I _am_ going with you, Henry,” says Jane. And she gets up just like she is going to put her arms around him.

But Jane don't. Fur that chair swings clear around and there sets the perfessor. He's all hunched up and caved in and he's rubbing his eyes like he's just woke up recent, and he's got a grin on to his face that makes him look like his sister Estelle looks all the time.

“Excuse me,” says the perfessor.

They both swings around and faces him. I can hear my heart bumping. Jane never says a word. The man with the brown beard never says a word. But if they felt like me they both felt like laying right down there and having a fit. They looks at him and he just sets there and grins at them.

But after a while Jane, she says:

“Well, now you _know!_ What are you going to do about it?”

Henry, he starts to say something, too. But----

“Don't start anything,” says the perfessor to him. “_You_ aren't going to do anything.” Or they was words to that effect.

“Professor Booth,” he says, seeing he has got to say something or else Jane will think the worse of him, “I am----”

“Shut up,” says the perfessor, real quiet. “I'll tend to you in a minute or two. _You_ don't count for much. This thing is mostly between me and my wife.”

When he talks so decided I thinks mebby that perfessor has got something into him beside science after all. Jane, she looks kind o' surprised herself. But she says nothing, except:

“What are you going to do, Frederick?” And she laughs one of them mean kind of laughs, and looks at Henry like she wanted him to spunk up a little more, and says: “What _can_ you do, Frederick?”

Frederick, he says, not excited a bit:

“There's quite a number of things I _could_ do that would look bad when they got into the newspapers. But it's none of them, unless one of you forces it on to me.” Then he says:

“You _did_ want to see the children, Jane?”

She nodded.

“Jane,” he says, “can't you see I'm the better man?”

The perfessor, he was woke up after all them years of scientifics, and he didn't want to see her go. “Look at him,” he says, pointing to the feller with the brown beard, “he's scared stiff right now.”

Which I would of been scared myself if I'd a-been ketched that-a-way like Henry was, and the perfessor's voice sounding like you was chopping ice every time he spoke. I seen the perfessor didn't want to have no blood on the carpet without he had to have it, but I seen he was making up his mind about something, too. Jane, she says:

“_You_ a better man? _You?_ You think you've been a model husband just because you've never beaten me, don't you?”

“No,” says the perfessor, “I've been a blamed fool all right. I've been a worse fool, maybe, than if I _had_ beaten you.” Then he turns to Henry and he says:

“Duels are out of fashion, aren't they? And a plain killing looks bad in the papers, doesn't it? Well, you just wait for me.” With which he gets up and trots out, and I heard him running down stairs to his labertory.

Henry, he'd ruther go now. He don't want to wait. But with Jane a-looking at him he's shamed not to wait. It's his place to make some kind of a strong action now to show Jane he is a great man. But he don't do it. And Jane is too much of a thoroughbred to show him she expects it. And me, I'm getting the fidgets and wondering to myself, “What is that there perfessor up to now? Whatever it is, it ain't like no one else. He is looney, that perfessor is. And she is kind o' looney, too. I wonder if they is anyone that ain't looney sometimes? I been around the country a good 'eal, too, and seen and hearn of some awful remarkable things, and I never seen no one that wasn't more or less looney when the _search us the femm_ comes into the case. Which is a Dago word I got out'n a newspaper and it means: Who was the dead gent's lady friend?' And we all set and sweat and got the fidgets waiting fur that perfessor to come back.

“Which he done with that Sister Estelle grin on to his face and a pill box in his hand. They was two pills in the box. He says, placid and chilly: “Yes, sir, duels are out of fashion. This is the age of science. All the same, the one that gets her has got to fight for her. If she isn't worth fighting for, she isn't worth having. Here are two pills. I made 'em myself. One has enough poison in it to kill a regiment when it gets to working well--which it does fifteen minutes after it is taken. The other one has got nothing harmful in it. If you get the poison one, I keep her. If I get it, you can have her. Only I hope you will wait long enough after I'm dead so there won't be any scandal around town.”

Henry, he never said a word. He opened his mouth, but nothing come of it. When he done that I thought I hearn his tongue scrape agin his cheek on the inside like a piece of sandpaper. He was scared, Henry was.

“But _you_ know which is which,” Jane sings out. “The thing's not fair!”

“That is the reason my dear Jane is going to shuffle these pills around each other herself,” says the perfessor, “and then pick out one for him and one for me. _You_ don't know which is which, Jane. And as he is the favorite, he is going to get the first chance. If he gets the one I want him to get, he will have just fifteen minutes to live after taking it. In that fifteen minutes he will please to walk so far from my house that he won't die near it and make a scandal. I won't have a scandal without I have to. Everything is going to be nice and quiet and respectable. The effect of the poison is similar to heart failure. No one can tell the difference on the corpse. There's going to be no blood anywhere. I will be found dead in my house in the morning with heart failure, or else he will be picked up dead in the street, far enough away so as to make no talk.” Or they was words to that effect.

He is rubbing it in considerable, I thinks, that perfessor is. I wonder if I better jump in and stop the hull thing. Then I thinks: “No, it's between them three.” Beside, I want to see which one is going to get that there loaded pill. I always been intrusted in games of chance of all kinds, and when I seen the perfessor was such a sport, I'm sorry I been misjudging him all this time.

Jane, she looks at the box, and she breathes hard and quick.

“I won't touch 'em,” she says. “I refuse to be a party to any murder of that kind.”

“Huh? You do?” says the perfessor. “But the time when you might have refused has gone by. You have made yourself a party to it already. You're really the _main_ party to it.

“But do as you like,” he goes on. “I'm giving him more chance than I ought to with those pills. I might shoot him, and I would, and then face the music, if it wasn't for mixing the children up in the scandal, Jane. If you want to see him get a fair chance, Jane, you've got to hand out these pills, one to him and then one to me. _You_ must kill one or the other of us, or else _I'll_ kill _him_ the other way. And _you_ had better pick one out for him, because _I_ know which is which. Or else let him pick one out for himself,” he says.

Henry, he wasn't saying nothing. I thought he had fainted. But he hadn't. I seen him licking his lips. I bet Henry's mouth was all dry inside.