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The Law Breakers and Other Stories

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Jimmy did not know what had happened. For a moment he thought,
perhaps, that he had been introduced to some new game. But the jeers
of the children checked the rising smile and led him to pluck at his
forehead. As he gazed at the fool's-cap in his hand a roar of
merciless laughter greeted his discovery. Miss Willis had realized the
fairy's deed too late to prevent the catastrophe. The sharp tap of her
ruler on the desk produced a silence interjected with giggles. The
fairy was a successful scholar, and would not have harmed a fly
willingly. It was a case of fun--the rough expression of an
indisputable fact. Jimmy was such a dunce that he ought really to wear
the brand as a notice to the world. What Miss Willis said by way of
reproof to the fairy is immaterial. If Jimmy heard it he gave no sign.
He dropped his head upon his desk and was sobbing audibly. The
bewildered children hearkened to the protest against cruelty with that
elfin look which mischievous youth dares assume, while the culprit
stood with a finger in her mouth, not quite understanding the enormity
of her conduct. In a moment more they were in the school-yard, and
Miss Willis was beside Jimmy's desk patting his tangled head. He wept
as though his heart would break.

"No matter, Jimmy; it was only a thoughtless jest. She didn't mean to
hurt your feelings."

Her words and variations on the same theme called forth successive
bursts of sobs. Only silence diminished their intensity. When at last
they had become only quiverings of his shoulders he looked up and
said, with a wail of fierce despair, but with a grasp upon self which
was a fresh revelation:

"It's true; it's true! She did it because I'm so stupid!"

Thereupon his shoulders shook again convulsively, and he burst into
fresh grief.

Marion's arms were about him in an instant. "Jimmy, Jimmy, it is not
true! You are not stupid! You and I will fight it out together! Will
you trust me, Jimmy?"

He sobbed, but she could perceive that he was listening. Had her hope
become his? Surely they were words he had never heard before.

"Jimmy, listen to me. I have found out something, and all owing to
that ridiculous dunce-cap. It is I who have been stupid. I never knew
until now how much you wish to learn and to improve. You are not
stupid, Jimmy. I am sure of it. You are slow, but you and I will put
our heads together and make the best of that. Will you try with me,
Jimmy?"

The curly head was raised again. His tear-stained eyes looked out at
her shyly, but with a beam of astonished gratitude. From his quivering
lips fell a low but resolute "Yes, ma'am!"

"We will begin to-day. We need each other, Jimmy."

As a work of art grows slowly from confusion and lack of form to
coherence and symmetry to the moral joy of its maker, so her
experience in human plastic enterprise filled the heart of Miss Willis
with a vital happiness. For two years--day in and day out--she never
flagged in her task of giving sight to the eyes and ears to the mind
of the unshaped clay which fate had put into her hands for making or
marring. How patient she had to be! How ingenious, vigilant, and
sympathetic! Through working upon the souls of Jimmy's father and
mother by pathetic appeal she obtained permission to keep him an hour
after school each day and drill him step by step, inch by inch. She
brought her midday meal and shared it with him. In the evening she
framed cunning devices to lure his budding intelligence. And from the
very first she beheld her figure of human ignorance respond to her
gentle moulding. Jimmy's soul was first of all a hot-spring of
ambition; the evidences of which, when once recognized, were ever
paramount. But how blocked and intricate were the passages through
which this yearning for fame sought to express itself! Sometimes it
seemed even to her as though she would never dissipate the fog-bank
which tortured his intelligence. But Jimmy was patient, too, and his
bull-dog features were but the reflex of a grim tenacity of purpose.
At the end of the first year she reported that he was unfit to be
promoted, in order that she need not lose him just when he needed her
most. She was able to make clear to Jimmy that this was not a
disgrace, but a sign of progress. But when the end of the second year
came she passed him on with only the qualm of love parting with its
own. Her task was done. The dull, clouded brow was clear with the
light of eager reason; the still struggling faculties had begun to
understand that in slowness there was the compensation of power, and
were resolute with hope.

"Good-by, Miss Willis. I'm going to be at the head of my class next
year; see if I'm not!"

So said Jimmy as he left her. She hesitated a moment, then stooped and
kissed him. It made her blush, for she had never kissed a pupil
before, nor any one but her mother since Sir Galahad. It made Jimmy
blush, too, for he did not know exactly what to make of it. So they
parted, and Jimmy went up the ladder of knowledge for two years more
at that school. He was not the head of his class; he was number five
the first year and number three the second. When he graduated he
promised to write; but, boylike, he never did, so he vanished into the
open polar world, and was lost to the eyes of the woman who had grown
gray in his service.

Yes, Miss Willis had grown gray. That is, there were more or less
becoming threads of silver in her maiden tresses, and the dignity of
middle age had added inches to her waist and a few interesting lines
to her forehead. There was no new Sir Galahad on the horizon even of
her day-dreams, and her mother was in failing health. Mrs. Willis
continued now to fail for five years--years which taxed her daughter's
strength, though not her affection. Pupils came and went--pupils to
whom she gave herself with the faithfulness of her New England
conscience--but no one exactly like Jimmy. He remained unique, yet
lost in the maze of life. When her mother died she settled down as an
incorrigible old maid, and her daydreams knew no more the vision of a
love coming from the clouds to possess her. Nor did the years bring
with them realization of that other vision--herself enthroned in the
public mind as a wonderful educator to whom the world should bow. She
was only Miss Marion Willis, the next to the oldest and the most
respected teacher of the Glendale grammar-school. So she found herself
at the end of twenty-five years of continuous service. It did occur to
her as a delightful possibility that the authorities or scholars or
somebody would observe this quarter-centennial anniversary in a
suitable manner, and a vision danced before her mind's eye of a
surprise-party bearing a pretty piece of silver or a clock as a
memorial of her life-work. But the date came and passed without
comment from any source, and Marion's sense of humor made the best of
it by drinking her own health on the evening of the day in question,
and congratulating herself that she loved her work and was happy. At
that supper there was no guest save Jimmy's tintype, which she fetched
from the mantelpiece and leaned against the cake-basket on the table.
Jimmy stood now not only for himself, but for a little army of
struggling souls upon whom her patient intelligence had been freely
lavished.

Of course, Jimmy was found. Miss Willis had always felt sure that he
would be. But ten years more had slipped away before he was brought to
light. One day she discovered his name in the newspaper as a rising
political constellation, and she was convinced, without the least
particle of evidence to support her credulity, that the James in
question was her Jimmy. His name had suddenly become prominent in the
political firmament on account of his resolute conduct as the mayor of
a Western city. The public had been impressed by his strength and
pluck and executive ability, working successfully against a gang of
municipal cutthroats, and his name was being paraded over the country.

"I've half a mind to write to him and discover if it's he," Miss
Willis said to herself. "How surprised he would be to receive a postal
card 'Are you my Jimmy?'" But somehow she refrained. She did not wish
to run the risk of disappointment, though she was sure it was he. She
preferred to wait and to watch him now that she had him under her eye
again. This was an easy thing to do, for Jimmy the mayor became Jimmy
the governor before two years had passed, and one morning Miss Willis
found facing her in the Daily Dispatch a newspaper cut of large
dimensions which set her heart beating as it had not throbbed since
the days of Sir Galahad. It was a portrait of her Jimmy; Jimmy
magnified and grown into a hirsute man, but the same old Jimmy with
the tangled hair, serious brow, and large, pathetic eyes. Miss Willis
laughed and Miss Willis cried, and presently, after she had time to
realize the full meaning of what had happened, she had a vision of
Jimmy in the White House, and herself, a venerable yet hale old woman,
standing beside him in a famous company, and Jimmy was saying before
them all, "I wish to make you acquainted with my dear teacher--the
woman to whom I owe my start in life." The idea tickled her
imagination, and she said to herself that she would keep the secret
until that happy day arrived. What a delightful secret it was, and how
surprised he would be when she said to him, "I suppose you don't
recognize me, Jimmy?" Then, perhaps, he would embrace her before
everybody, and the newspapers would have her picture and give the
particulars of her life.

* * * * *

Jimmy was not elected President until four years later, and in the
meantime Miss Willis kept her secret. When he was nominated, and the
details of his career were eagerly sought for, it was announced by the
press that in early life he had attended the Glendale grammar-school,
and the fact was regarded by the authorities as a feather in the
school's cap, and was commemorated during the campaign by the display
in the exhibition hall of a large picture of the candidate festooned
with an American flag. It was vaguely remembered that he had been
under Miss Willis, among other teachers, but the whole truth was
unknown to anybody, and Marion's New England conscience shrank from
obtaining glory and sympathy through brag. She hugged her secret, and
bore it with her intact when she took her departure for Washington to
attend the inauguration ceremonies. She did not tell the authorities
where she was going when she asked for a short leave of absence--the
first she had ever requested in all her years of service. She was
setting forth on the spree of her life, and her spirit was jubilant at
the thought of Jimmy's amazement when he found out who she was.

A day came at last, after the new chief magistrate had taken the oaths
of office and was in possession of the White House, when the American
public was at liberty to file past their President and shake his hand
in their might as free men and free women. Miss Willis had not been
able to obtain a location near enough to the inauguration proceedings
to distinguish more than the portly figure of a man, or to hear
anything except the roar of the multitude. But now she was to have the
chance to meet Jimmy face to face and overwhelm him with her secret.
Little by little the file of visitors advanced on its passage toward
the nation's representative, and presently Miss Willis caught her
first glimpse of Sir Galahad--her real Sir Galahad. Her heart throbbed
tumultuously. It was he--her Jimmy; he, beyond the shadow of a doubt;
a strong, grave, resolute man; the prototype of human power and
American intelligence.

Her Jimmy! She let her eyes fall, for it would soon be her turn, and
her nerves were all tingling with a happy mixture of pride and
diffidence. Her vision, her dearest vision, was about to be realized.
There was no chance for delusion or disappointment now. So it seemed.
Yet, as she stood there waiting, with her New England conscience and
her sense of humor still active, of a sudden her imagination was
seized by a new prospect. Why should she tell her secret? What was the
use? There he stood--her Jimmy--good, great, and successful, and she
had helped to make him so. Nothing could ever deprive her of that. The
truth was hers forever. She was only an elderly spinster. Perhaps he
would have forgotten. He was but fifteen when he left her, and he had
never written to her during all these years. Very likely he did not
realize at all what she had done for him. Nothing which he could do
for her now would add to the joy of her heart. Secret? To share it
with him might spoil all. The chances were it was her secret only;
that only she could understand it.

She was close to the President now, and some one at her ear was asking
her name. Suddenly she heard her name called, and stepping forward she
was face to face with her soul's knight, and he was holding her hand.

"I am very glad to see you, Miss Willis," she heard him say.

She had been stepping shyly, with her eyes lowered. At his words,
spoken in a voice which for all its manliness was still the same, she
looked up into his face and murmured, as she pressed his fingers:

"God bless you, sir!"

She did not even say "Jimmy." Then she passed, and--and her secret was
safe.

Six months later Miss Willis was found one morning dead in her bed.
She had died peacefully in her sleep. When her personal effects were
administered there was noticed on the mantelpiece in her sitting-room
a mounted tintype, on the paper back of which were two inscriptions.
Of these the upper, in faded ink, was dated forty years before and
read "From Jimmy." The other, recent and written with the pen of an
elderly person, ran as follows: "Portrait of the President of the
United States as a school-boy."




AN EXCHANGE OF COURTESIES


I


In the opinion of many persons competent to judge, "The Beaches" was
suffering from an invasion of wealth. Unquestionably it had been
fashionable for a generation; but the people who had established
summer homes there were inhabitants of the large neighboring city
which they forsook during five months in the year to enjoy the ocean
breezes and sylvan scenery, for The Beaches afforded both. Well-to-do
New England families of refinement and taste, they enjoyed in comfort,
without ostentation, their picturesque surroundings. Their cottages
were simple; but each had its charming outlook to sea and a sufficient
number of more or less wooded acres to command privacy and breathing
space. In the early days the land had sold for a song, but it had
risen steadily with the times, as more and more people coveted a
foothold. The last ten years had introduced many changes; the older
houses had been pulled down and replaced by lordly structures with all
the modern conveniences, including spacious stables and farm
buildings. Two clubs had been organized along the six miles of coast
to provide golf and tennis, afternoon teas and bridge whist for the
entertainment of the colony. The scale of living had become more
elaborate, and there had been many newcomers--people of large means
who offered for the finest sites sums which the owners could not
afford to refuse. The prices paid in several instances represented ten
times the original outlay. All the desirable locations were held by
proprietors fully aware of their value, and those bent on purchase
must pay what was asked or go without.

Then had occurred the invasion referred to--the coming to The Beaches
of the foreign contingent, so called: people of fabulous means,
multi-millionaires who were captains in one or another form of
industry and who sought this resort as a Mecca for the social
uplifting of their families and protection against summer heat. At
their advent prices made another jump--one which took the breath away.
Several of the most conservative owners parted with their estates
after naming a figure which they supposed beyond the danger point, and
half a dozen second-rate situations, affording but a paltry glimpse of
the ocean, were snapped up in eager competition by wealthy capitalists
from Chicago, Pittsburg, and St. Louis who had set their hearts on
securing the best there was remaining.

Among the late comers was Daniel Anderson, known as the furniture king
in the jargon of trade, many times a millionaire, and comparatively a
person of leisure through the sale of his large plants to a trust. He
hired for the season, by long-distance telephone, at an amazing
rental, one of the more desirable places which was to let on account
of the purpose of its owners to spend the summer abroad. It was one of
the newer houses, large and commodious; yet its facilities were
severely taxed by the Anderson establishment, which fairly bristled
with complexity. Horses by the score, vehicles manifold, a steam
yacht, and three automobiles were the more striking symbols of a
manifest design to curry favor by force of outdoing the neighborhood.

The family consisted of Mrs. Anderson, who was nominally an invalid,
and a son and daughter of marriageable age. If it be stated that they
were chips of the old block, meaning their father, it must not be
understood that he had reached the moribund stage. On the contrary, he
was still in the prime of his energy, and, with the exception of the
housekeeping details, set in motion and directed the machinery of the
establishment.

It had been his idea to come to The Beaches; and having found a
foothold there he was determined to make the most of the opportunity
not only for his children but himself. With his private secretary and
typewriter at his elbow he matured his scheme of carrying everything
before him socially as he had done in business. The passport to
success in this new direction he assumed to be lavish expenditure. It
was a favorite maxim of his--trite yet shrewdly entertained--that
money will buy anything, and every man has his price. So he began by
subscribing to everything, when asked, twice as much as any one else,
and seeming to regard it as a privilege. Whoever along The Beaches was
interested in charity had merely to present a subscription list to Mr.
Anderson to obtain a liberal donation. The equivalent was
acquaintance. The man or woman who asked him for money could not very
well neglect to bow the next time they met, and so by the end of the
first summer he was on speaking terms with most of the men and many of
the women. Owing to his generosity, the fund for the building of a new
Episcopal church was completed, although he belonged to a different
denomination. He gave a drinking fountain for horses and dogs, and
when the selectmen begrudged to the summer residents the cost of
rebuilding two miles of road, Daniel Anderson defrayed the expense
from his own pocket. An ardent devotee of golf, and daily on the
links, he presented toward the end of the season superb trophies for
the competition of both men and women, with the promise of others in
succeeding years. In short, he gave the society whose favor he coveted
to understand that it had merely "to press the button" and he would do
the rest.

Mr. Andersen's nearest neighbors were the Misses Ripley--Miss Rebecca
and Miss Caroline, or Carry, as she was invariably called. They were
among the oldest summer residents, for their father had been among the
first to recognize the attractions of The Beaches, and their childhood
had been passed there. Now they were middle-aged women and their
father was dead; but they continued to occupy season after season
their cottage, the location of which was one of the most picturesque
on the whole shore. The estate commanded a wide ocean view and
included some charming woods on one side and a small, sandy, curving
beach on the other. The only view of the water which the Andersons
possessed was at an angle across this beach. The house they occupied,
though twice the size of the Ripley cottage, was virtually in the rear
of the Ripley domain, which lay tantalizingly between them and a free
sweep of the landscape.

One morning, early in October of the year of Mr. Anderson's advent to
The Beaches, the Ripley sisters, who were sitting on the piazza
enjoying the mellow haze of the autumn sunshine, saw, with some
surprise, Mr. David Walker, the real-estate broker, approaching across
the lawn--surprise because it was late in the year for holidays, and
Mr. Walker invariably went to town by the half-past eight train. Yet a
visit from one of their neighbors was always agreeable to them, and
the one in question lived not more than a quarter of a mile away and
sometimes did drop in at afternoon tea-time. Certain women might have
attempted an apology for their appearance, but Miss Rebecca seemed
rather to glory in the shears which dangled down from her
apron-strings as she rose to greet her visitor; they told so
unmistakably that she had been enjoying herself trimming vines. Miss
Carry--who was still kittenish in spite of her forty years--as she
gave one of her hands to Mr. Walker held out with the other a basket
of seckel pears she had been gathering, and said:

"Have one--do."

Mr. Walker complied, and, having completed the preliminary
commonplaces, said, as he hurled the core with an energetic sweep of
his arm into the ocean at the base of the little bluff on which the
cottage stood:

"There is no place on the shore which quite compares with this."

"We agree with you," said Miss Rebecca with dogged urbanity. "Is any
one of a different opinion?"

"On the contrary, I have come to make you an offer for it. It isn't
usual for real-estate men to crack up the properties they wish to
purchase, but I am not afraid of doing so in this case." He spoke
buoyantly, as though he felt confident that he was in a position to
carry his point.

"An offer?" said Miss Rebecca. "For our place? You know that we have
no wish to sell. We have been invited several times to part with it,
and declined. It was you yourself who brought the last invitation. We
are still in the same frame of mind, aren't we, Carry?"

"Yes, indeed. Where should we get another which we like so well?"

"My principal invites you to name your own figure."

"That is very good of him, I'm sure. Who is he, by the way?"

"I don't mind telling you; it's your neighbor, Daniel Anderson." David
Walker smiled significantly. "He is ready to pay whatever you choose
to ask."

"Our horses are afraid of his automobiles, and his liveried grooms
have turned the head of one of our maids. Our little place is not in
the market, thank you, Mr. Walker."

The broker's beaming countenance showed no sign of discouragement. He
rearranged the gay blue flower which had almost detached itself from
the lapel of his coat, then said laconically:

"I am authorized by Mr. Anderson to offer you $500,000 for your
property."

"What?" exclaimed Miss Rebecca.

"Half a million dollars for six acres," he added.

"The man must be crazy." Miss Rebecca stepped to the honeysuckle vine
with a detached air and snipped off a straggling tendril with her
shears. "That is a large sum of money," she added.

David Walker enjoyed the effect of his announcement; it was clear that
he had produced an impression.

"Money is no object to him. I told him that you did not wish to sell,
and he said that he would make it worth your while."

"Half a million dollars! We should be nearly rich," let fall Miss
Carry, upon whom the full import of the offer was breaking.

"Yes; and think what good you two ladies could do with all that
money--practical good," continued the broker, pressing his opportunity
and availing himself of his knowledge of their aspirations. "You could
buy elsewhere and have enough left over to endow a professorship at
Bryn Mawr, Miss Rebecca; and you, Miss Carry, would be able to revel
in charitable donations."

Those who knew the Ripley sisters well were aware that plain speaking
never vexed them. Beating about the bush from artificiality or
ignoring a plain issue was the sort of thing they resented.
Consequently, the directness of David Walker's sally did not appear to
them a liberty, but merely a legitimate summing up of the situation.
Miss Rebecca was the spokesman as usual, though her choice was always
governed by what she conceived to be the welfare of her sister, whom
she still looked on as almost a very young person. Sitting upright and
clasping her elbows, as she was apt to do in moments of stress, she
replied:

"Money is money, Mr. Walker, and half a million dollars is not to be
discarded lightly. We should be able, as you suggest, to do some good
with so much wealth. But, on the other hand, we don't need it, and we
have no one dependent on us for support. My brother is doing well and
is likely to leave his only child all that is good for her. We love
this place. Caroline may marry some day" (Miss Carry laughed
protestingly at the suggestion and ejaculated, "Not very likely"),
"but I never shall. I expect to come here as long as I live. We love
every inch of the place--the woods, the beach, the sea. Our garden,
which we made ourselves, is our delight. Why should we give up all
this because some one offers us five times what we supposed it to be
worth? My sister is here to speak for herself, but so far as I am
concerned you may tell Mr. Anderson that if our place is worth so much
as that we cannot afford to part with it."

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