"Shut up!" he cried. "You duplex--polyphase--automatic--back-action--compound-wound--multipolar _Ass_! Shut up!"
An anatomical chart on the wall preserved my head, and I retained my self-possession. When he let me down I took my station on the other side of a table and looked him in the eye, strongly willing that he quiet down.
"Forgive me, Oc," said he humbly, "I promised myself eight years ago not to lick you any more! Pardon me."
I forgave him, and we have ever since remained reconciled. He explained that he wanted to consult as to methods of concealing from Miss Frayn the nature of the suit.
"Am I to understand," said I, "that she does not know that the relief sought is her expulsion from the school?"
"Of course she don't!" replied Chester. "Do you think I'd let her know?
She thinks everybody loves her. Nobody ever dared tell her anything else, either here or down where she was raised. The boys down there always were in love with her. She don't see anything strange in it--and there isn't."
"A change," said I, "would be wholesome for her."
"She wouldn't know what to do," replied Chester. "And if she were to hear these charges--against herself! Why, I don't know what she might not do! She'd be absolutely desperate. She'd think she had no one to defend her--and you know the Frayn way."
"I shall not endeavor," said I, after consideration, "to reconcile medieval notions of honor and personal dignity with proceedings under the Iowa Code. Neither do I feel it prudent for me to see this person."
For a few minutes Chester sat grinding his teeth and gripping the desk, and then rushed from the office calling me a white-livered dub, and telling me to go plumb to some place the name of which was cut off by the door's slamming. I sat in the office feeling a sense of unrest, until the time for going to court, where I found Judge Worthington on the bench, Chester sitting at the defendant's table, and no Miss Frayn.
"Are both sides ready in the next case?" asked the judge, without looking at the calendar.
"We wish to put the defendant on the stand for a few questions," said Beasley, Middlekauff's lawyer. "I don't see her in court, your Honor."
"Call the witness!" said the judge; and the bailiff shouted three times: "Robert Lefrayne!"
"Has this man Lefrayne been subpoenaed?" asked the judge; "as he is defendant, I don't suppose you thought it necessary, Mr. Beasley."
We could all see that the mispronunciation of the name had misled the judge as to the identity of the defendant.
"To make sure," said Beasley, "we subpoenaed the party. Here is the writ, your Honor, with proof of service."
"Mr. Clerk," said the judge, frowning sternly, "issue a bench warrant!
Mr. Sheriff, attach this witness, and produce him at two. Some of these tardy witnesses will go to jail for contempt if this is repeated! Call your next!"
Chester was pale as a ghost, and accosted the bailiff as he went out with the warrant. Then he came back and listened with flushes of anger and clenched teeth to the reading of the pleadings, to which the judge seemed to pay no attention. At two, after the intermission, the bailiff, Captain Winfield, an old G. A. R. man, appeared with Miss Frayn on his arm. He was blushing and fumbling his bronze button, while she smiled up at him in a charming, daughterly way that brought back dangerous symptoms of relapse in my psychic nature.
"Call the witness Lefrayne!" cried the judge.
Light, airy, daintily flushed, she floated up to the bench. The fine for contempt died in Forceythe Worthington's breast, as he stared in a sort of delighted embarrassment.
"It was raght kahnd of you, Judge Wo'thin'ton," she said, looking up into his face, "to send Captain Winfield to remahnd me of mah engagement hyah. Why, he was at Franklin, and Chickamauga, and knows Tennessee! And now, gentlemen, what can Ah do foh you-all?"
The judge stepped down from the bench and handed Miss Frayn to the witness chair like a lord chancellor placing a queen on her throne.
Beasley looked at the witness as if fascinated. Middlekauff seized him by the lapel of his coat.
"Don't look at her, Beasley, more'n yeh c'n help!" he whispered. "I tell yeh, it's dangerous!"
And yet _I_ am selected to bear blame for a momentary weakness of the prevailing sort!
"Proceed, gentlemen!" said Judge Worthington.
Beasley gathered up his papers. "Are you the defendant?" asked he.
"Ah don't quite gathah youah meanin' suh," said she, "but Ah think not, suh."
"You're the teacher of the Boggs School, in Teal Lake Township?"
"Oh, yes, suh!" said she. "Pahdon me! I thought you inquiahed about something else."
Judge Worthington started as if struck by a dart.
"Let me see the papers in the case," said he excitedly.
Beasley handed them up, and the judge examined them carefully. Then he handed them down, turned his back on Miss Frayn, and spoke in a low tone, like one greatly shocked.
"Proceed!" said he.
Something in his tone or in the turning of his back seemed to strike upon the senses of Miss Frayn as unpleasant or hostile. The few questions put to her by the lawyer to lay the foundation for some other bit of evidence did not appear to affect her at all; and when she took her seat between Chester and my mother, and was reassured by their whispered communications, she looked serene, save when she noted the judge's averted face. Chester's lawyer spoke insinuatingly of spite, prejudice, and unreasonable provincialism as being at the bottom of the case.
"And," he added, "I may add jealousy--jealousy, your Honor, of the defendant's charms of person, which, as a part of the _res gestae_, are evidence in this case, if your honor only would observe them."
The judge started and blushed, but still looked steadily away. Mr.
Middlekauff looked relieved. Miss Frayn fretted the linoleum with little taps of her toe, and her delicate nostrils fluttered. There was a mystic tension in the air.
"Mr. Chestah," said the girl, in a low voice, "he seems to be alludin'
to--what does he mean?"
Judge Worthington rapped for silence. Miss Frayn's eyes grew bright, and her cheek showed a spot of crimson which deepened as the reading of the affidavit went on. As the legal verbiage droned through the story of the boys' infatuation, I looked at her, and knew that her indignation was swelling fiercely at she scarcely knew what. I began repeating to myself a passage from Seneca.
"Objected to," roared Chester's lawyer, "as incompetent, irrelevant, immaterial, impertinent, and grossly scandalous!"
Miss Frayn clenched her hands and held her breath as if at the realization of her worst fears. Then the judge spoke. "The affidavit,"
said he, "attributes to Miss Frayn a malign and corrupting influence over the whole neighborhood, and--"
"Suh!" she gasped.
Again did the judge rap for order.
"Ruling reserved," said he. "Proceed."
Triumphantly Beasley went on with the resolutions. At last Miss Frayn seemed to understand. She rose, stilled Beasley with a gesture, and in frozen dignity addressed the court.
"Judge Wo'thin'ton," said she, "Ah'm not quite ce'tain Ah get the full meanin' of this, but Ah feel that Ah cain't pe'mit it to go fu'thah. Ah desiah to say to you as a gentleman and an acquaintance, if not a friend, that these ah things that can not be said of a lady, suh!"
"The defendant," said the judge, after two or three ineffectual attempts to speak, "will be heard through her counsel--proceed!"
She was hurt and desperate as she sat down, and in a cold and livid fury. With her eyes level and shining like knife-points, she put off, with a look like a blow, Chester's efforts to comfort her. She sat, an alien in an inhospitable land, hedged about by a wall of displeasure at some formless insult, and at friends without chivalry. The judge began stating his decision, giving the argument for the one side and then for the other, as judges do.