THE GREAT ACCIDENT
THE GREAT ACCIDENT
BY
BEN AMES WILLIAMS
Author of “The Sea Bride,” “All the Brothers
Were Valiant,” etc.
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1920
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1919,
BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1920,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1920.
TO
MOTHER
CONTENTS
BOOK I
THE GREAT ACCIDENT
CHAPTER PAGE
I HARDISTON 3
II AMOS CARETALL 7
III WINT CHASE 16
IV JACK ROUTT 22
V COUNCIL OF WAR 27
VI WINTHROP CHASE, SENIOR 36
VII V. R. KITE 45
VIII THE RALLY 50
IX HETTY MORFEE 56
X THE ELECTION 60
XI THE NOTIFICATION 69
BOOK II
I MULDOON 81
II JOAN 90
III THE STRATEGY OF AMOS 100
IV INTERLUDE 112
V ALLIANCE 119
VI THE WHISTLE BLOWS 127
BOOK III
INTO HARNESS
I ON HIS OWN FEET 135
II JOAN TO WINT 146
III ROUTT TO KITE 154
IV WINT TO JOAN 164
V WINT GOES HOME 170
VI A WORD AS TO HETTY 176
VII ORDERS FOR RADABAUGH 186
BOOK IV
LINE OF BATTLE
I MARSHAL JIM RADABAUGH 197
II THE BREWING STORM 207
III A HARD DAY FOR KITE 213
IV CHASE CHANGES SIDES 222
V THE TRIUMVIRATE 229
VI EVERY MAN HAS HIS PRICE 233
VII ANOTHER WORD AS TO HETTY 243
VIII AGNES TAKES A HAND 247
IX A WORD FROM JOAN 256
X THE STREET CARNIVAL 262
XI FIRST BLOOD 267
XII POOR HETTY 275
XIII THE MERCY OF THE COURT 281
BOOK V
DEFEAT
I SUNNY SKIES 291
II A FRIENDLY RIVALRY 298
III POLITICS 308
IV A CLOUD ON THE MOON 315
V A LOST ALLY 325
VI KITE TAKES A HAND 334
VII A FEW WORDS TO THE WISE 343
VIII POOR HETTY AGAIN 353
BOOK VI
VICTORY
I THE WEAVER HOUSE AGAIN 367
II A BRIGHTER CHAPTER 375
III HETTY HAS HER DAY 384
IV WINT’S RALLY 393
V SEEING JOAN HOME 404
BOOK I
THE GREAT ACCIDENT
CHAPTER I
HARDISTON
There are two kinds of people: small-town folks, and others. The others
are inclined to think of the people of the small towns as men and women
of narrow horizons and narrow interests and a vast ignorance of such
important things as cocktails. But, as a matter of fact, the people who
dwell in the little mid-western cities and towns are your real
cosmopolites. They know their own country, east, west, north and south,
at firsthand. The reason for this is simple. When a city dweller goes to
the country, he is careful to remain a city dweller; but when a
small-town man goes to the city, he becomes a city man for as long as he
is within the city’s gates. Your Bostonian knows Boston, has a
smattering of New York, and a talking acquaintance with London. Your New
Yorker knows New York--perhaps; and he desires to know nothing else. But
the men and women of Hardiston, for example, know New York, and they
know Boston--and they prefer Hardiston with a steadfast and unshakable
preference.
This little town of Hardiston--it is really no town at all, since the
last census showed it with a population above the five thousand mark,
and so entitled it to be called a city--stands on a plateau above Salt
Creek, and it is overlooked by a circle of hills, and at three corners
of the town the gaunt, black iron furnaces stand sentry at the gates.
The hills, of clay and iron ore and conglomerate rock, are pink with
apple blossoms in the spring; and in the fall the hardwood growth which
clothes them where the orchards have not yet spread presents a dazzle of
reds and yellows that blind the eye with their splendor. It is a rich
and fertile country, with well-watered bottom lands; and Hardiston town
and Hardiston county have a past, a present and a future.
The past goes back to the Indians and beyond. Salt Creek won its name by
no mere chance. There have always been traces of salt in its water; and
in the ancient days, the Indians used to come to a riffle below where
Hardiston now stands and boil the water for this salt. There was a big
encampment here; and the tribes came from all over Ohio, and from
Kentucky, and farther, too, to boil salt and take it home with them.
They brought Daniel Boone here once; and you may still see, to the north
of Hardiston, a crumbling precipice of sand conglomerate over which
Boone is said to have jumped in making his escape. Also, at the foot of
that sandy bluff, you may dig in an ash bed twenty feet deep, and find
the skeletons of Indian braves, buried there beneath the campfires, with
perhaps an arrow head of flint between their ribs.
When the whites came in, they took up the making of salt where the
Indians left off. The state recognized the industry, and chartered it.
But at last cheaper salt came in, and the salt boilers found themselves
with their occupation gone. So, seeking about them for work for their
hands to do, they discovered black coal in the hills, and rusty brown
ore; and they digged the coal and the ore and made iron. It was good
iron; none better in the world; and it commanded the highest prices in
any market.
The county was all undershot with coal; the hills were crowned with
iron. Twenty years ago, every valley in the county had its gaunt tipple
and its pile of crumbling slack; and every road was dotted with the
creaking, rusty wagons that hauled the ores to the furnaces in
Hardiston. To-day, much of the coal is gone; and the ore has vanished.
But the furnaces fetch ore from Superior, and smelt it into heavy pigs
of iron; and their roar is eternal about the comfortable little town.
A stranger, coming to Hardiston, is inclined to think the place is dead;
but the town has a deceptive vitality. It is true the brick yard is
gone, and the occasional imported industry usually dies after a brief
and uneventful life. It is true the big hotel that was, ten years ago,
the finest in a dozen counties, goes now from bankruptcy to bankruptcy
without a struggle. And Morgan & Robinson’s dry-goods store has shrunk
from three floors to one; and the interurban traction that used to run
half-hourly between Hardiston and the B. & O. main line has given place
to a dirty, jerky train that makes two trips a day. The car tracks along
Broadway and Main have been ripped up, and the fine brick paving on
these streets bids fair to endure forever, for lack of traffic that
would give it wholesome wear and tear.
But the town is not dead; it is only sleeping. You may see signs of the
awakening in the apple blossoms on the hills. These Hardiston hills
produce apples of a surprising excellence, and some day the Hardiston
apple will be as famous as the Hardiston iron was in the past. But for
the present the town sleeps, a gorged slumber. For Hardiston is rich.
There are three banks, and each has more than a million in deposits.
Hardiston folk have made money; they have built themselves homes, they
have bought themselves automobiles, they have sent their boys and girls
to college, and now--save for an occasional trip into the outer world,
there is little more for them to do. But the money is there; it feeds
the prosperity of three or four moving-picture houses, half a dozen soda
fountains, and two sporadic theaters; it fattens the purses of a street
carnival or so every year, and it delights the heart of every circus
that comes to Hardiston County.
It is a friendly town, a gay little town. People make their own good
times, and many of them. And the stranger is always made welcome within
their gates. Every one is quite honestly fond of Hardiston and proud of
it. When you go there, the Chamber of Commerce does not buttonhole you
and demand a factory. That is not Hardiston’s way; and besides, there is
no Chamber of Commerce. No, when you go there, Hardiston does not ask
you to do something for Hardiston; Hardiston tries to do something for
you. For instance, it invites you out to the house for supper. And you
go, and are glad you went.
Perhaps it is because of this taste for friendliness that Hardiston
loves politics so ardently. Politics, after all, corrupt it as you will,
is the art of making and keeping friends. Hardiston County, and the
Congressional district of which it is the heart, form one of the prime
political battle grounds of the state. Summer and winter, year in, year
out, politics in Hardiston goes on. The county officials in the Court
House, when their work is out of the way, tilt back their chairs about
the most capacious cuspidor and talk politics; the men of the town
gather at the Smoke House, or on the hotel corner, and talk politics;
the farmers, driving to town, stop every man they meet upon the road and
canvass the political situation. Even the women, at their bridge clubs
and their sewing circles and their reading clubs--Hardiston is full of
clubs--talk politics over their cards or their sewing, or after the
paper on Browning has been read.
Hardiston politics is very like politics everywhere; it has not much to
do with platforms and principles, and it has a great deal to do with
men. In a political way, Congressman Amos Caretall was the biggest man
in Hardiston County. And so the home-coming of Congressman Caretall, on
the eve of the mayoralty election, was a matter that furnished talk for
all the town.
CHAPTER II
AMOS CARETALL
Peter Gergue is a public figure in Hardiston. Every one knows him,
and--what is more to the point--he knows every one. Not only in
Hardiston town, but in Hardiston County is Gergue known. He is an
attorney, a notary, a justice of the peace. But his business under these
heads is very small. It has always been small; and he has never made any
great effort to increase it.
He is a man of medium height, thin and rusty to the eye, with a drooping
black mustache and black hair that is too long, always too long, even
when he has just emerged from the barber’s chair. This long, black hair
is Gergue’s sole affectation. It is his custom, when the barber has
finished his ministrations, to rumple the hair on the back of his head
and rub it with his fingers until it is matted and tangled in a fashion
to defy the comb. He is conscious of doing this, and has been known to
explain the action. And his explanation is always the same.
“When I was a boy,” he says, “I used to comb the top of my head and
slick it down, but I never got at the back much. So I got used to having
it tangled; and now I don’t feel right if it’s smooth.”
So he keeps it religiously tangled; and at moments of deep thought, his
fingers stray into this maze as though searching for his medulla
oblongata in the hope of finding some idea there.
Gergue’s office is above that of the Building and Loan Company, on Main
Street, opposite the Court House. There are spider webs in the corners
and on the windows; there is dust on everything. The floor of soft wood
has been worn till every knot stands up like a wart, and every nail
protrudes its shining head. Against one wall, there is a wardrobe of
walnut, higher than a man. Within this piece some law books are piled,
and a few rusty garments hang. In the summer, moths nest here; in the
winter they hibernate in their nests. The garments have not been
disturbed for years, and now their fabric looks more like mosquito
netting than honest broadcloth and serge.
Gergue has an old kitchen table, covered with oilcloth, near the windows
that overlook the street. There is an iron inkwell on this table, a pen,
and a miscellaneous litter of papers, while at one side of the table, on
the window sill, stands his notary’s seal and a disused letter press.
The oilcloth top of the table has worn through in many places, and the
soft wood beneath is polished to a not unlovely luster by constant
usage.
Toward train time of the day Congressman Caretall was to come home,
Gergue was in this office of his. James T. Hollow was with him, sitting
stiffly in a chair that was too narrow for his pudgy bulk. James T.
Hollow was a candidate for Mayor. Amos Caretall was supporting him. And
Gergue, as Caretall’s first lieutenant, had asked Hollow to go with him
to the train to meet the Congressman. Hollow had obeyed the summons, and
now waited Gergue’s pleasure. He was smiling with a determined, though
tremulous, amiability.
“I’ve always aimed to do what was right,” he explained hurriedly. They
had been discussing the chance of his election.
Gergue nodded his head. “That’s what you always do,” he agreed. “Trouble
is, Chase has aimed to do what wa’n’t right, and looks like he’d get
away with it.”
The other flushed painfully, and his mouth opened as though he would
like to speak, but it was some time before he managed to ask: “Is
that--the reason Congressman Caretall is coming home?”
The Court House clock, across the street, struck four. The train was due
at four-twenty-two. Gergue rose slowly. “Well, now, let’s go down and
ask him,” he invited.
Hollow assented weakly. “Yes, I guess that’s the right thing to do.”
Gergue looked at him with faint impatience. “Why do you guess it’s the
right thing to do?” he inquired.
The other hesitated, lifted his hands, spread them helplessly.
“Well--isn’t it?” he asked.
“Oh, dear!” said Gergue sweetly. “Well--come on.”
Hollow was a man with very short legs. This gave him an unfortunate,
pattering appearance when he walked with a taller man; and as he and
Gergue turned down Main Street toward the station, this fact was
commented upon. Some of the comments were direct, some subtle. For
example, one of a group of four men at the hotel corner, when the two
approached, looked all about him and whistled shrilly.
“Hey, doggie! Hey, doggie! Heel!” he called.
James T. Hollow was not without perception. He blushed painfully. But
Gergue took no notice of the jest, for as they approached the group, one
of the men detached himself and came to meet them.
This was Winthrop Chase--Winthrop Chase, Senior--the candidate opposing
Hollow for the mayoralty. Hardiston felt that it was gracious of Chase
to offer himself for the office, for he was a man of affairs, chief
owner of the biggest furnace, a coal operator of importance in other
fields, and not unknown in state political circles. He was an erect man,
so erect that he leaned backward, and with a peculiarly healthy look
about him. He had a strong jaw and a small, governed mouth. His manner
was courtly and gracious. Some considered it condescending.
“Good morning, Gergue,” he said now. “Good morning, Mr. Hollow.”
“Howdo,” Gergue returned. Hollow was more loquacious. “How do you do,
Mr. Chase.”
“The Congressman comes back to-day?” Chase asked.
“Yep,” said Gergue.
“We ought to have a reception for him at the station. He has made a name
for himself at this session.”
“Always had a name,” Gergue commented, and spat carelessly, so close to
Winthrop Chase, Senior’s polished shoes that the great man moved
uneasily to one side.
“I suppose he is coming to take a hand in the mayoralty campaign,” said
Chase urbanely. He could afford to be urbane.
“He didn’t say,” Gergue declared.
“I’m sorry we’re on opposite sides of the fence in this squabble. Tell
him he and I must work together hereafter.”
“You tell him.”
Chase laughed. “I believe he will see it--without being told,” he said
loudly, and the three men at his back smiled. “He will, no doubt, find
some change in Hardiston affairs.”
“He will if there is any.”
“Perhaps even in the district. Though of course he does not have to seek
reëlection this fall.”
“No.”
“Still--”
Gergue interrupted maliciously: “By th’ way, how’s Wint?”
The question had a curious effect upon Chase. It surprised him, it
seemed to embarrass him, and it certainly angered him. He opened his
mouth to speak. “He--”
But before he could go on, Gergue interposed: “I hear Columbus would’ve
gone dry in spite of itself, if they hadn’t sent him home from State
when they did.” And he departed with the honors of war, leaving Chase to
sputter angrily into the sympathetic ears of his companions. When he and
Hollow were half a block away, Gergue permitted himself to smile. Then
he frowned and looked at Hollow. “Why don’t you talk up to him, Jim?” he
asked disgustedly.
“I--always try to do what is right, Peter. I’d like to, I really would.”
“Would you, now?” Gergue echoed mockingly.
“Yes, I really would,” insisted James T. Hollow.
“Well, all right then,” said Gergue affably. “Le’s go along.”
They went along, down shaded lower Main Street, and took at length the
left-hand turn that led toward the station. Gergue walked in silence,
and Hollow, after a few futile efforts at conversation, gave it up and
pattered at the taller man’s side without speaking. Gergue seemed to be
thinking, thinking hard.
A branch line connects Hardiston with the main line of the B. & O. to
Washington. Two trains a day traverse this branch in each direction. One
of these trains is called the Mail; the other the Accommodation; but the
source of these titles is not apparent, for both trains carry mail, and
both are most accommodating. Perhaps the Accommodation is more so than
the Mail, for at times it has a freight car attached between tender and
baggage car, and this is an indignity which the Mail never suffers.
The station at Hardiston is a three-room structure of imitation hollow
tiles. That is to say, it is built of wood sheathed with tin which is
stamped in the likeness of tiles. These tin walls have an uncanny
faculty for keeping the rooms inside the station at fever heat, summer
and winter.
One of these rooms is the Men’s Waiting Room; another is for feminine
patrons of the road; and between the two is the ticket office and
dispatcher’s room, with telegraph instruments clattering on a table in
the bay window at the front.
The station agent is a busy man, with three or four hard-worked
assistants; for all the supplies for one of the big furnaces come in
over this branch, and the furnace’s product goes out by the same route.
The furnace itself towers above the very station, great ore piles
spraddling over acres of ground waiting for the traveling crane that
scoops them and carries the ore to the fires.
On the other side of the station, across the street, there are two
buildings with ornate fronts--and locked doors. They proclaim themselves
as buildings with a past--a bibulous past. County local option was their
ruin, county local option locked their doors and stripped their shelves
and spread dust upon their bars. They are ugly things, eyesores,
specters of shame. Whatever may be said for the wares they dispense,
there is nothing more hideous than a saloon.
Gergue and Hollow crossed the street at a diagonal, past these locked
saloons, to the station platform. They found on the platform a familiar
throng. Hardiston was the county seat, and served as market place for
the southern half of the county. Many people came and went daily on the
dirty, rattling, uncomfortable trains; and this, the afternoon train,
always picked up a score or so of passengers southward bound.
In addition to these travelers, there were folk at the station to meet
every incoming passenger; for Hardiston still meets people at the train.
Guests, home-comers, even the commercial travelers find a welcome
waiting. Every one in the neighborhood stops at the station at train
time to pick up matters for gossip.
Gergue made it his custom to meet a train whenever no more important
matter occupied his time; for by so doing he saw many men of the county
whom he would not otherwise have seen, and renewed acquaintances that
would otherwise have languished. He was, as it were, a professional
meeter of trains, like the editors of the three weekly papers, and the
bus men from the hotels. He left Hollow at one end of the platform,
while he traversed its length, exchanging a word with every one,
observing, inquiring, cultivating.
On this business, he was fifty yards away from Hollow when the Caretall
touring car whirled down the street and stopped beside the platform.
Hollow took off his hat in greeting, and the four young people in the
car acknowledged the salutation carelessly.
Agnes Caretall was driving, with Jack Routt beside her in the front
seat, and Wint Chase and Joan Arnold in the tonneau. They remained in
the car, the two in front turning half around in their seats to talk
with those behind. Agnes Caretall did most of the talking. She was a gay
little thing, with fair hair and laughing eyes and flying tongue. Joan
Arnold was darker, brown hair, eyes almost black. She was quiet, with a
poise in sharp contrast to Agnes’ vivacity. Routt and Wint Chase were
just average young men, pleasant enough in appearance. Routt was dark;
Wint had a fair skin, his father’s strong jaw, eyes that inclined at
times to sulky anger, and a head of crisp hair that was brown, with
golden flashes when the sun touched it. There was a healthy color in his
cheeks, but his eyes were reddened, and there were faint pouches beneath
them. While they waited for the train, he rolled a cigarette, fizzling
his first attempt because his hands were faintly tremulous. Routt
laughed at him for this.
“You’re shaky, Wint,” he jested. “Better take a tailor-made one.”
And he offered the other his cigarette case; but Wint shook his head
stubbornly, tried again, and this time succeeded in rolling a passable
cigarette, which he lighted eagerly.
Peter Gergue, coming back along the platform, saw the four in the car
and came toward them. He caught Joan Arnold’s eyes and took off his hat,
and she smiled a greeting; and he came and stood beside the car,
exchanging sallies awkwardly with Agnes Caretall and with Routt.
When the attention of these two was concentrated, for a moment, upon
each other, he asked Joan: “Is anything wrong, Miss Arnold? You look
worried. You hadn’t ought to look worried, ever.”
She laughed. “Why, no, of course not. I--must have been thinking. I
didn’t know.”
“Thinking about what?”
“I don’t remember.”
Wint had climbed out of the car and was talking to some one on the
platform a dozen feet away. Gergue looked toward him, then back to Joan.
But he said no more.
“Isn’t the train late?” Agnes asked, forsaking Routt abruptly.
Gergue nodded. “Ten minutes. Dan says they got a hot box, or something,
up above the Crossroads.”
Agnes pouted. “They’re always late.”
“They’re whistling now,” Gergue assured her, and a moment later every
one heard the distant blast. “At the crossing beyond the cemetery,”
Gergue supplemented. “Be here right away.” And he turned back to the
crowd.
A moment later, they heard the whistle again, this time where the B. &
O. and D. T. & I. crossed; and after a further interval, the train came
in sight, rounding the last curve into the station. Agnes jumped out of
the car, touching Routt’s extended hand when he sought to assist her;
and then the engine roared and racketed past, vomiting sparks and
cinders over them all.
The rear end of the last car was opposite the automobile when the train
stopped; and Agnes and Gergue pushed that way; for Amos Caretall always
got off at the rear end of a train. “If you do that you can’t get run
over--unless she backs,” he was accustomed to explain. The two reached
the steps just as the Congressman emerged from the car, and Agnes flew
up to meet him so that her arms were around his neck when he stepped
down to the platform. He was a stocky man of middle height with sandy
hair, shrewd, squinting eyes, and a habit of holding his head on one
side as though he suffered from that malady called stiff neck.
He hugged Agnes close, affectionately, for an instant, then held her
away from him with both hands and surveyed her. “You sure look good,
Agnes,” he told her, and hugged her again.
She slipped her hand through his arm. “We came down to get you,” she
explained. “Come along--quick. These cinders are awful.”
He laughed. “In a minute. Hello, Peter. Hello, Jim.” He shook hands with
Gergue and with Hollow. “Looking for somebody, Peter?”
“Just come down to see you come in.”
“Well--” The Congressman grinned amiably. “I’m in.”
“We wish to welcome you home, Congressman,” said James T. Hollow.
“Thanks, Jim.”
The three men were silent for a moment. The situation had its
interesting side. When Gergue and Hollow had been alone together, Gergue
was the dominant figure of the two. Gergue seemed then like a superman,
calm, assured, at ease; and Hollow, beside Gergue, had been almost
pathetically docile.
Now, however, in the presence of the Congressman, Gergue seemed to
shrink to Hollow’s stature. He and Hollow were both mere creatures,
Hollow if anything the stronger of the two. And Amos Caretall towered
head and shoulders above them both.
It was the Congressman who broke the silence. “All right,” he said.
“Drop in any time--both of you.” And with his grip in one hand and Agnes
on the other arm, he crossed the platform to the car.
Routt and Joan and Wint were there. He greeted them with comfortable
affection, and surveyed them with keen and appraising eyes. “Climb in,”
he invited. “Glad to see everybody.”
Agnes and Routt took the front seat again, and Joan sat between Wint and
the Congressman behind. Just before the car started, Amos Caretall
leaned across to ask Wint:
“Well, young man--how’s your father?”
Wint’s eyes burned sulkily. “About as usual,” he said.
The engine roared, they turned up the street; and the Congressman turned
to wave his hand to Gergue and Hollow on the platform.
CHAPTER III
WINT CHASE
Amos Caretall’s home was not a pretentious affair. He lived in a house
that had not been built as other houses are; it had, like Topsy, “just
growed.” It began as a one-story, four-room brick structure, and spread
in wings and “ells” and upper stories until now it numbered ten rooms
and was a thing fearful and wonderful to behold. In these ten rooms,
Agnes and her father and old Maria Hale, the darky who cooked for them
and looked after them, rattled around in a somewhat lonely fashion. For
Mrs. Caretall was ten years dead, and the two Caretall boys had gone
away to college and afterward had builded homes of their own in other
regions.
Amos Caretall was not rich; but he was well off. He had made his money
in coal, and when the visible supply of coal began to peter out, he had
looked into politics, gone to the state legislature for two terms, and
then to Congress. In Congress he had done well. The Hardiston district
forgot, where he was concerned, the old rule that a Congressman shall
have but two terms. They sent him back again and again. He was now in
his fifth term, and his power at home and abroad was growing.
His most valuable quality was imagination. He was not an able man; he
knew little about political economy, national finance, sociology, the
science of government. He knew little and cared less. For by virtue of a
keen imagination, he was able to construct in his own mind hypothetical
situations, and then hire experts to meet them for him. Peter Gergue was
one of these experts. Gergue’s field was human nature and Hardiston
County. He knew every one in the county, and he had an uncanny faculty
for predicting how a man would react to given circumstances. This
faculty extended to men in the mass, and enabled him to predict the
political effect of a given course of action with surprising accuracy.
Amos Caretall had learned to take Gergue’s advice blindly. His
home-coming at this time, for example, was in response to Gergue’s
message of a week previous. That message had been brief.
“If Chase is elected Mayor, he’ll beat you for the House next year,”
Gergue had written.
Caretall wired: “I’m coming home.” And he came.
But there was no trace of concern in his amiable countenance as they
rode to his home now. He joked Joan Arnold into gayety, laughed Wint
Chase out of his sulkiness, and pinched his daughter’s cheek until she
threatened to ditch the car if he kept it up. Thus, when they stopped
before the house, every one was in good humor.
They stopped, and Wint Chase was the first to alight. A muffled bark
greeted him from the house, and he laughed and ran up the walk and
opened the door. A wiry, tan-colored dog rushed out and engulfed him;
Muldoon, an Irish terrier of parts, who had been left behind because he
would neither ride in an automobile nor calmly suffer his master to do
so. Muldoon was one creature whom Wint unreservedly loved; and Muldoon
returned the affection. Master and dog, the first transports over, came
down the walk again as the others climbed from the car.
Amos Caretall was urging them all to come in. Jack Routt said he would;
but Joan shook her head. “I can’t,” she laughed. “I promised mother to
bring home some bread.”
“I’ll take it out in the car,” Agnes pleaded. “Please....”
Joan stuck to her guns. Agnes pouted. Wint did not commit himself; he
seemed to take it for granted that he would go with Joan. She turned to
him. “You stay, Wint!”
The old sulky light flamed in his eyes again. “No--I’m going with you.”
They left the others, amid a little flurry of farewells from Agnes, and
turned uptown. Muldoon circled them madly, running at top speed in a
desperate effort to work off the spirits generated during his
confinement. Joan laughed at the dog, whistled him to her, stooped to
tug at his ears affectionately. “You’re full of it, aren’t you,
Muldoon?”
He whined aloud in his desperate desire to answer her, then darted away
again. She straightened and they went on, the girl still smiling. Wint
looked at her once, and then again, and then he, too, smiled--at her and
at the dog.
“He’s a clown,” he said.
She nodded. “He’s a fine dog, Wint.”
“He’s a dog of sense. He thinks well of you.” He laughed. “I’ll give him
to you some day.”
She looked up at him seriously, understanding in her eyes. “I hope so,
Wint,” she said.
There was something besides understanding in her eyes, something faintly
accusing; and he flushed and said hotly: “Don’t look at me like that.
Please. I’m--I mean to--make it come true.”
“I hope so, Wint,” she said again.
They spoke no more for a time. Presently she stopped at the bakery and
they went in together. The sweet odor of hot bread and sugar and spice
clouded about them as he opened the door. A round little woman greeted
them.
“Is your cream bread all gone, Mrs. Mueller?” Joan asked.
“No. Not yet. How many loaves?”
“Two, please.”
The little woman brought two loaves, still soft from the great ovens and
still warm, and wrapped them gently, careful not to bruise them. She
handed the package to Joan. Wint tried to take it, but Joan shook her
head, laughing at him. “Last time you mashed them flat,” she said; “I’ll
carry them.”
“I’ll be careful,” he promised, and took the package from her with calm
mastery, a mastery to which she yielded with a faint tremor of
happiness. They continued more swiftly on their way.
Presently she asked: “How does the work go?”
He shook his head. “Badly. I’ve no--knack for it. And father and I
weren’t meant to pull in double harness.”
“You must learn to, Wint. Give him a chance.”
He nodded. “But we--grate on each other. He fires up at the least
mistake.”
“You’ve been hard on his patience.”
He stiffened faintly. “Possibly.”
She laid her hand on his arm. “Now don’t sulk, Wint. Please.”
“I’m not sulking.”
“You’re too quick on the trigger. You get angry at the least thing.” She
laughed softly, in a way that robbed her words of sting. “Wint, you’re
as proud as a peacock, and as stubborn as a mule. As soon as any one
criticizes you for doing a thing--you go right off and do it again.
That’s no way to do, Wint.”
He made no comment, and when she looked at him, she saw that his face
was set and hard, and she laid a hand on his arm. “Wint--don’t you think
I’m a--good friend of yours?”
“If you’re not more than that, Joan--I’m through.” His eyes searched
hers; she met his bravely.
“I am--more than that, Wint. So you must let me tell you things frankly.
Wint, you must learn to see that when people criticize you, or advise
you, it’s more often than not because they really wish you well. Most
people wish other people well, Wint.”
“That has not been my experience.”
She shook his arm, laughing. “Wint! Don’t be silly! You talk like a
disappointed man--when you ought to talk like a fine, strong, hopeful
one.”
He laid his hand on hers, where it rested in the crook of his arm.
“You’re a big-heart, Joan. You like every one, and trust them and every
one is good to you. You--can’t get my viewpoint.”
“I can too, Wint. For you haven’t any viewpoint. You’re just the
plaything of a little devil of perversity that makes you do things you
know you--oughtn’t to do--just to prove that you can.”
They came, abruptly, to her gate. She paused to say good-by. His eyes
were angry; but he said quietly: “May I come to-night?”
She shook her head. “Not every night, Wint. To-morrow?”
“Please?”
“I--no, Wint.”
He straightened stiffly. “Very well. Good night.” He lifted his hat and
stalked away.
Joan looked after him for a moment, her eyes disturbed, unhappy; then
she smiled a tender little smile, as a mother smiles at a wayward boy,
and turned into the house.
At the corner, Wint looked back. She was gone. He went on toward his own
home, Muldoon at his heels, in a hot surge of rebellion. Halfway home,
he asked himself what it was that made him rebellious, angry; and when
he could find no reasonable answer to this question, he became more
angry than ever. He was angry at himself; but he convinced himself that
he was angry at others....
Winthrop Chase, Senior, had built a home for himself a dozen years
before, in the first rush of great wealth from the furnace. It was a
monumental house, of red, pressed brick, with a slate roof and a fence
of iron pickets around the yard. It had been, when he built it, the
finest house in town. Now, however, its supremacy was challenged by a
dozen others, and the elder Chase had half decided to tear it down and
build another that would defy competition. Mrs. Chase opposed this,
gently and half-heartedly. She thought they were very comfortable.
But it was a losing fight, and she knew it. Her husband was accustomed
to have his way. He would have it in the end.
Wint pushed open the iron gate--it dragged on its hinges so that it had
worn a deep groove in the stone paving that led to the porch--and closed
it behind him, and went up to the door. He opened it and went in; and in
the dim light of the hall he encountered a girl. For an instant, he
failed to recognize her; then:
“Why, hello--Hetty,” he said.
“Hello, Wint.”
“What are you doing here?” He dropped his hat on the hall bench.
“I’ve come to work for your mother.” She hesitated. “Supper’s ready.
They’re sitting down.”
“Oh!” He looked at Hetty again. They had been schoolmates. Her seat had
been just in front of his one year. He remembered, with sudden
vividness, the day he stuck chewing gum in her hair. Her hair was red; a
pleasant, dark red; and it was very luxuriant. “Oh--all right,” he said,
and went into the dining room. His father and mother were at the table.
“I see you’ve got a girl, mother,” he said.
“Yes--I’ve got Hetty Morfee.” Mrs. Chase sighed. “I’ve had the most
awful time, Wint. I do hope she stays. Girls are terrible hard to get,
in this town. They--”
Mrs. Chase was loquacious. Her speeches were never finished. She was
always interrupted in mid-career. Otherwise, she would have talked on
endlessly.
“That steak looks as though she could cook,” said Wint. “Give me some.”
CHAPTER IV
JACK ROUTT
One of Mrs. Chase’s difficulties with hired girls was that Winthrop
Chase, Senior, liked style with his meals.
Mr. Chase was no provincial. He had traveled; he had lived at good
hotels; he knew New York, Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati. He had been a
guest at fine homes. He knew what was what.
“It adds tone to a repast,” he would tell his wife, over and over. “It
adds tone to a repast. A neatly dressed maidservant, in apron and cap,
handing your dishes around. I tell you, Margaret, it gives
that--that--that style....”
“I know it, Winthrop,” Mrs. Chase always agreed. “I’d like to have it
so, as much as you would. Land knows I’ve tried. I’ve trained, and I’ve
trained; but you can’t expect a girl to do everything for two dollars a
week, or even three. Why, Mrs. Hullis had--”
“Well, pay more, then. Pay more. Five, or ten dollars. I make money
enough. I surely make money enough, Margaret, to have comfort and--and
style in my own home.”
“You can’t get a girl in Hardiston that’s worth more than three
dollars,” Mrs. Chase insisted. “They come and they go, and they’re
always getting married, and--”
Mr. Chase always carved the meats at his own table. He took pride in his
carving. When Wint appeared now, he looked up with a hostile eye, at the
same time lifting the carving knife and fork. “You’re late, young man.”
“Am I?” said Wint stiffly.
“The dinner hour in this house is five-thirty. If you wish to have your
meals here, you would do well to observe that fact and regulate your
movements in accordance.”
“Oh, give the boy his supper,” Mrs. Chase urged. “You get me all mixed
up, calling supper dinner and dinner lunch that way, Winthrop. Wint,
don’t you mind what your father says. He--”
“Margaret,” said Mr. Chase sternly, “I wish you would--”
“I went to the station to meet Caretall,” said Wint slowly. “Sorry to be
late. But--”
“Caretall?” his father echoed sharply. “You--”
“Now, Wint--don’t aggravate your father,” Mrs. Chase urged. “You will
drive me to--”
“Hetty, pass my son’s plate,” directed the elder Chase, discovering the
girl in the doorway. “Your place is in the kitchen while the meals are
being served, not in the hall.”
“All right,” said Hetty cheerfully, and she took Wint’s plate and went
around the table to his father’s side. Thus relieved of the elder
Chase’s scrutiny, she winked lightly at Wint and smiled. He made no
response. A moment later, she set his plate before him, and departed
toward the kitchen.
Mrs. Chase began at once to talk. Her eating did not seem to interfere
with the gently querulous stream of her conversation. She spoke of many
things. Housekeeping cares, the perplexities and annoyances of the day,
the acquisition of Hetty, her hope that Hetty would prove a good girl, a
good cook, a good housemaid. “She’s not going to go home at night,
either,” she explained. “When girls go home at night, they’re never here
in time to get breakfast. When I have a girl, I want her in the house,
so’s I can see she gets up. She--”
The elder Chase interrupted obliviously. He had been studying his son.
“Wint, have you been drinking to-day?” he demanded.
Wint looked up quickly, a retort on his lips. But he checked it, and
instead said quietly:
“No.”
“Oh, Wint,” Mrs. Chase exclaimed, “you ain’t going to do any more of
that, are you, son? You--”
“I’m keeping my eye on you, young man,” interrupted her husband. “You
left the office early to-day. Who gave you permission?”
“The work was done.”
“The work is never done.”
“You left before I did.”
The elder Chase’s eyes flashed. “My movements have nothing to do with
it. Your place is at the office till four-thirty every day. Don’t
imagine, because you’re my son, you’ll receive any favoritism.”
“It seems to work the other way,” said Wint.
“It does work the other way. You’re on trial, guilty till proved
innocent, worthless till proved otherwise. Some fathers.... A boy
expelled from college for drunkenness.... You’re lucky that I am so
lenient with you, young man.”
“Am I?”
“Now, Wint,” his mother interjected. “Don’t you aggravate your father.
Goodness knows it’s hard enough to get along with him--”
“Margaret!”
“Well, I mean, you oughtn’t to--”
Wint rose abruptly. “Nagging never did any good,” he said. “I mean
to--do my part.” He flamed suddenly. “But--for Heaven’s sake--don’t talk
me to death.”
He went out, up to his room. He was trembling with humiliated
resentment. In his room he stood for a moment before the mirror, looking
at his image in the glass, frowning sullenly. “Talk! Talk! Talk!” he
exclaimed hotly. “Always talk!” He went into the bathroom, splashed cold
water into his face, went out again and down the stairs. He took his
hat. His mother called, from the dining room:
“Wint--there’s ice cream! Don’t you--”
“No--thanks,” he said. “I’m going uptown.”
He closed the door upon their protests, and went down to the street and
turned toward the town.
His way led past Joan’s house. He paused at her gate for a moment,
hesitant, frowning, miserable, lonely. Then he went on.
Almost every one goes uptown in Hardiston at night. The seven-fifteen
train, bringing mail, is one excuse. The moving pictures are an
allurement. The streets are better filled in early evening than at any
other time of the day. Wint began presently to meet acquaintances. At
the hotel, he encountered Jack Routt. Routt greeted him eagerly.
“Wint! Hello there! Care for a game of billiards?”
“I’d just as soon.”
“Come along, then.”
They went through the hotel office, down three steps, and into the pool
room. There were three tables, two for pool and one for billiards. A
game of Kelly pool was in progress at one table, but the billiard table
was free. They chalked their cues.
“Half a dollar?” Routt challenged.
Wint nodded. “All right.”
Routt won the draw and shot first. The game went jerkily forward.
Neither was an expert player. A run of ten was an event. Wint played
silently, his thoughts elsewhere. Routt was cheerful, loquacious,
friendly. Wint envied him faintly. Every one liked Jack, respected
him....
Routt won the game with a run of four, and laid his cue on the table.
“I’ll be back in a minute, Wint,” he said. “You don’t mind waiting?”
“I’ll go with you,” Wint countered.
Routt shook his head. “Now, Wint--no, I won’t let you. You know--play it
safe, man. You can’t afford to monkey with this.”
“Don’t be a fool, Jack.”
“Oh, Wint, I mean it. Leave it alone. That’s the only safe way--for
you.”
Wint’s eyes flamed suddenly. “Aren’t you coming?” he asked, and started
for the door.
Routt followed, still protesting. “Wint--don’t be a darned fool.”
“Don’t be a preacher, Jack.”
“Please, Wint--leave it alone. Come on back. I won’t go either.”
Wint said nothing, but he went steadily ahead; and Routt yielded. They
left the hotel, went half a block, entered an alley, climbed a stair....
County option had closed the saloons; but Hardiston was still far from
being a dry town. When they returned to the pool room half an hour
later, Wint’s cheeks were unnaturally flushed, and he laughed more
easily than before.
CHAPTER V
COUNCIL OF WAR
Amos Caretall and his daughter had supper--dinner was at midday in the
Caretall household--alone together. Old Maria Hale cooked the supper,
and Agnes brought it to the table. It was a good supper. Fried chicken,
for example; and mashed potatoes as creamy as--cream. And afterwards,
apple tapioca pudding of a peculiar excellence. All garnished with
little, round biscuits, each no more than a crisp mouthful. The
Congressman smacked his lips over it with frank appreciation. “Maria,”
he told the old colored woman, “you could make your fortune in
Washington.”
Maria cackled delightedly. She was a shriveled little old crone, bent,
wrinkled, and suspected of being as bald as an egg. No one ever saw her
without a kerchief bound tightly around her head. She had looked a
hundred years old for twenty years, and declared she was more than that.
“I mus’ be a hundred an’ twenty, at the mos’,” she used to say, when
questioned. Now she cackled with delight at the Congressman’s praise of
her cookery.
“I don’t know ’bout Wash’n’t’n,” she declared. “But I ain’ makin’ no
great pile in Hardiston, Miste’ Caretall.”
He laughed, head tilted back, mouth full of biscuit. “You old fraud, you
could buy and sell Chase himself, twice over. You haven’t spent a cent
for a hundred years, Maria.”
She giggled like a girl, and went out to the kitchen, wagging her head
from side to side and mumbling to herself. Agnes looked after her, and
when the door was closed said, with a toss of her head: “She’s getting
awfully cranky, Dad.”
Amos chuckled. “Always was, Agnes. Just the same when I was your age.
But she can make mighty un-cranky biscuits.”
“She gets cross as a bear if I don’t help her with the dishes.”
Amos looked at his daughter with a dry smile. “Then if I was you, Agnes,
I’d help her.”
She started to reply, but thought better of it. A little restraint fell
upon them, and this continued until Amos leaned back with a sigh of
contentment and pulled a pipe from his coat pocket. It was a horny old
pipe, black, odorous, rank as a skunk cabbage. Agnes hated it; but Amos
stuck to it, year in, year out. When it caked so full that a pencil
would not go down into its cavity, Amos always whittled out the cake,
burned the pipe with alcohol, and started over again. The brier had been
in regular and constant use for half a dozen years--and it was still, as
Agnes used to say, “going strong.”
Amos cuddled this pipe lovingly in the palm of his hand. He polished the
black bowl in his palm, and then by rubbing it across his cheek and
against the side of his nose. Agnes fidgeted, and Amos watched her with
a twinkle in his eye until she rose suddenly and cried:
“Dad--that’s horrid!”
He chuckled. “What was it you said about dishes?” he asked.
She went sulkily toward the kitchen.
Amos watched her with a certain amount of speculation in his eyes. Amos
was always speculating, speculating about people, and about things. He
stared at the door that closed behind her for a long minute before the
clock on the mantel struck seven and broke the charm. Then he got up
stiffly, favoring his big body, and went into the sitting room. Only
half a dozen houses in Hardiston had living rooms in those days. Rooms
with no other appointed use were, respectively, sitting rooms and
parlors. The library and the living room were arriving together.
Amos went into the sitting room and pulled a creaky rockingchair up
before the coal fire. His feet were in carpet slippers, and he kicked
off the slippers and thrust his feet toward the blaze. He wore knitted
wool socks, gray, with white heels and toes. Maria Hale had knitted
Amos’ socks for ten years. He wriggled his toes comfortably, then
searched from one pocket a black plug of tobacco, from another a
crooked-blade pruning knife. He sliced three or four slices from the
plug with grave care, restored plug and knife to his pockets, rolled the
slices to a crumbling pile in his palm, and filled his pipe. When it was
lighted--he “primed” it by cramming into the top of the pipe some
half-burned tobacco from a previous smoking--he leaned back luxuriously
in the chair, closed his eyes, puffed hard and thought gently.
He was still in this position when the telephone rang; and he rose,
grumblingly, to answer it. Winthrop Chase, Senior, was at the other end
of the wire; and when he discovered this, Amos winked gravely at the
fire and his voice descended half an octave.
“Good evening, Congressman,” said Chase.
“Evening, Mr. Chase,” said Amos.
“Gergue told me you were coming home.”
“I guess he was right.”
“He thought you would want to see me.”
Amos’ eyes widened. “Did he say so?”
Chase laughed. “Well--you understand--Gergue has his methods.”
Amos nodded soberly. “Yes, yes. Well--you can come to-night if you
want.”
“Er--what--”
“I said you could come to-night. I’ll be home all evenin’.”
Winthrop Chase, Senior, hesitated. He hesitated for so long that Amos
asked blandly: “Er--anything else?”
“No, no-o,” Chase decided then. “No--I’ll come.”
“That’s good,” said Amos; and hung up, and came back to his chair with a
pleasant smile upon his countenance.
Almost immediately, some one knocked on the door. From the sitting room,
the door was open into the hall, so that Amos heard the knock easily.
There was a bell, and most people rang the bell; but Peter Gergue always
knocked, so Amos called out confidently:
“Come in, Pete.”
Listening, he heard the front door open. Then it closed, and Gergue came
slowly along the hall and into the room. Amos looked up and nodded.
“Evening, Peter. Glad t’see you. Take a chair. Any chair.”
Peter put his hat on the table and dragged a morris chair before the
fire. He sat down, still without speaking, and extended his feet toward
the fire in imitation of Amos. Amos’ hands were clasped across his
middle, and Gergue clasped his hands there too. Thus they remained for a
little time silent.
But such a position put Gergue under too great a handicap. He had to get
his fingers into his hair; and so presently he unclasped his hands and
began to rummage through the tangle at the nape of his neck for his
medulla, as though hunting for something. Apparently, he found it; for
after a moment he said slowly:
“Well, Amos, we’re licked.”
Amos turned his head and studied Gergue. “Do tell!” he exclaimed at
last.
Gergue nodded. “Hollow ain’t got any more chance of being Mayor
than--than young Wint Chase has.”
This seemed to startle Amos. He opened his mouth to speak, hesitated,
closed it again, then asked: “Young Wint! What makes you say that?”
“We-ell--no more chance than I got, then,” Gergue amended.
The Congressman seemed satisfied with the amendment. He wagged his head
as though deploring the situation, then asked: “Why? What’s Jim done?”
Gergue looked at Amos reproachfully. “We-ell, you know Jim.”
“Always does the right thing, don’t he?”
“They ain’t no votes in that.”
The two considered this truism for a time in thoughtful silence. In this
interval, Gergue produced and filled and lighted a pipe in a manner
painfully like that of Amos. Every detail--pipe, plug, knife,
priming--was the same. Amos watched him with interest, and when Gergue
had finished with the rites, Amos asked:
“How big a margin has Chase got?”
Gergue opened his hands as though baring every secret.
“Well,” he said, “Jim’ll get two votes. Yours and mine. He won’t vote
for himself. Says it ain’t right. So I don’t know where we can count on
anything else.” He hesitated, then: “You know, this Chase has got a holt
on Hardiston.”
“How?”
“Every way. Four-five hundred men working for him, one way or another.
The drys are all with him. The money is all with him. And the Democrats
are all with him.”
Amos pondered. “I hadn’t no notion Chase was such a popular man,” he
said.
Gergue shook his head. “He ain’t. They’d all like to see him licked,
just to see his swelling go down some. But--a man can’t vote for
Hollow.”
Amos puffed hard. “You know, Peter, I’ve a mind to vote for Chase
myself.”
Gergue was startled; but after a minute he grinned. “Whatever you say
goes for me, Amos.”
“Chase is a good man, a big man, a public-spirited man. You know, Peter,
if he was elected Mayor, things being as they is, he’d stand right in
line for Congress next fall. I don’t know as I’d even run against him,
Pete.”
Gergue leaned forward and clapped his knee and chuckled. Something
pleased him. Amos watched him with an expression of comical
bewilderment, until Gergue caught his eye and sobered abruptly. Then
Amos asked, most casually:
“How’s young Wint, Peter?”
Gergue looked sharply at the Congressman. “The boy? We-ell--he’s over
twenty-one.”
“Er--is he?”
Amos squinted at the ceiling. “Seems to me he is. He was three years
ahead of Agnes in school and high school, and she is twenty now. He must
be twenty-two or three.”
Peter considered this, but made no comment. After a moment Amos asked
again: “So--how is he, Peter?”
Gergue rummaged through his back hair. “We-ell--they kicked him out of
State for over-study of booze.”
Amos nodded. “I know. But--how is he?”
“Still at it.”
“Still at--the booze?”
“He drinks when he has a mind to; and he’s got a large and active mind.”
“What does his father think of it?”
“Various sentiments.”
“Wint is looking badly.”
Gergue nodded. “I come along the street this morning,” he said. “He was
standing in front of the Post Office. His back was to me; and when I
says, ‘Hello’ to him, he jumped a foot. Nerves on edge.”
“That’s natural.”
Peter shook his head. “Not natural; booze.”
“Oh,” said Amos; and: “But he’ll straighten up. He’ll come out all
right.”
Peter shook his head. “I’ve seen ’em go that way. By and by his face
will begin to look old, just over night. And then his clothes will get
shabby, and b’fore anybody knows different, he’ll be hanging around the
hotel corner of nights with a cigarette in his mouth.” He hesitated.
“He’s set in his way, Amos. Nothing but an accident’ll change him.”
Amos looked across at Peter curiously. “Accident?”
“Yeah.”
Gergue volunteered no explanation; but after a little time Amos said
slowly: “Well, Peter--some accidents ain’t so accidental as others.
Pete, you just make a study of Wint Chase for me.”
Gergue looked curious, and he threaded his hair for his medulla
oblongata, but he asked no questions. Before a direct instruction or
command from Amos, Peter was always silently obedient. He looked at
Amos, and then he turned back at the fire; and for a long time the two
men sat thus, staring into the coals above the smoking bowls of their
pipes.
It is one of the merits of cut-plug for smoking that a well-filled pipe
gives a long smoke. Amos Caretall’s pipe lasted three quarters of an
hour before the last embers were drowned in the moisture at the bottom
of the bowl. He knocked out the loose ashes into his palm, leaving the
half-burned cake in the bottom of the pipe to serve as priming for a
later smoke, and then stuffed the pipe affectionately away into his
pocket.
Peter was still puffing at his, and Amos watched him for a little, and
then he chuckled softly to himself. Gergue looked across at him in faint
surprise. Amos chuckled harder, began to laugh, laughed aloud--and
instantly was as sober as a judge.
“Peter,” he said slowly, “what you reckon Winthrop Chase, Senior, would
up and do if he was licked for Mayor?”
Gergue considered for a moment, then seriously judged: “He’d up and lay
him an egg.”
Amos nodded. “And eggs will be worth fifty cents a dozen, right here in
Hardiston, inside a month. It might pay to have him lay one, Pete.”
“You’ll need a political Lay-or-Bust for that, Amos.”
“I’ve got one, Peter.”
Gergue stared slowly at Amos, his eyes ponderously inquisitive. At
length he asked: “What brand?”
Amos leaned toward him quickly. “Almost any good man could beat Chase,
couldn’t he, Pete?”
“He might have--starting at the first go off. He couldn’t now.”
“Chase ain’t rightly popular.”
“No--he puts on too many airs.”
“Hardiston’d like to see a joke on him--now wouldn’t it?”
“Sure. A man always can laugh at a joke on the other fellow. Special if
it’s on old Chase.”
“Pete--I kind of like Congress.”
Gergue nodded. “Don’t blame you a speck.”
“I want to keep a-going back there.”
“Fair enough.”
“But you say, yourself, that Chase don’t agree with me on that.”
“He says so too.”
Amos tapped Gergue’s knee. “Pete, wouldn’t a good, smashing joke on
Chase put him out of the running for a spell?”
Gergue considered. “I’ll say this, Amos,” he announced at length. “A
joke on a man is all right, if it don’t go too far. If you go too far,
you’ll make ’em sorry for Chase, and then there’ll be no stopping ’em.
Politics sure does love a martyr. But--short o’ that--a joke’s good
medicine.”
Caretall sat up quickly. “That’s fine,” he said soberly. “That’s fine,”
he repeated. And he fell silent, and after a little said, half aloud and
for the third time, “Peter, that’s fine.”
Peter’s pipe smoked out, and he, too, emptied the ashes and preserved
the last charred bits of tobacco as Amos had done. Then he rose, reached
slowly for his hat. “I’ll go along, Amos,” he announced.
The Congressman lumbered up out of his chair, his broad countenance
beaming. “Fair enough, Peter. But, Pete--I want to ask you something.”
Gergue shifted his hat to his left hand; his right went to the back of
his neck. “What is it?”
“Take a man like young Wint, Peter. Suppose he was give a
job--sudden--that was right up to him. Responsibility, power, something
to do that had to be done. Nobody to boss him but himself. Him and his
heart. What would that do to a man like Wint, Pete?”
Gergue scratched his head--hard. He thought--hard. Amos said softly:
“Don’t hurry, Pete. Think it over.” Gergue nodded; and presently he
said:
“Man just like Wint--that’s what you mean?”
“Say--Wint himself.”
“It’d depend on the man.”
“Say it’s Wint.”
“Depend on whether he had any backbone--any stuff in him.”
“Has Wint got it?”
Gergue shook his head. “Ain’t sure.”
“Say he has.”
“Then--this job you mentioned would straighten him out--likely.”
“Say he hadn’t.”
“‘Twouldn’t hurt him none.”
Amos nodded. “That’s what I thought, Pete.” He laid his hand on the
other’s shoulder and propelled him gently toward the door. There he
paused, added: “You do what I asked, will you, Pete? Make a study of
Wint.”
“All right.”
“And--Pete.”
Gergue turned.
“Tell V. R. Kite I wish he’d come and see me.”
Peter’s eyes lighted slowly--and after a moment, he grinned. “All right,
Amos,” he said quietly, and went down the walk to the gate.
CHAPTER VI
WINTHROP CHASE, SENIOR
Winthrop Chase, Senior, took himself seriously.
When he walked the streets of Hardiston, bowing most affably, smiling
most genially, he was inwardly conscious of the gaze of all who passed
that way. He felt their eyes upon him; and this gave him a sense of
responsibility, a sense of duty. His duty, as he saw it, was to set an
example to the town; an example of erectness and respectability and high
ideals. And it must be said for Chase that he did his utmost along these
lines.
He was not an educated man. He had been born in Hardiston, and had
attended the Hardiston schools; but in those days the Hardiston schools
were not remarkable. Chase could read, he could write, and he could
arrange and classify more figures in his head than most men could manage
on paper. But beyond that, he did not go. There was a native honesty in
the man; and this led him to recognize his own shortcomings. For
example, when he was called upon to address his fellow citizens, he
always summoned a collaborator and arranged his speech in advance. He
made no secret of this. In the same way, the printed word was a
continual surprise and delight to him; every book he opened was a
succession of amazing revelations. And this characteristic gave him a
profound admiration for such folk as the editors of the Hardiston
papers. As business men, he had for them only a benignant contempt; as
politicians, they were pawns and nothing more; but for their ability to
say what they wished with pen and paper, Chase accorded them all honors.
The elder Chase’s sense of responsibility to the town had made him an
unsympathetic father to Wint. He expected Wint, too, to live up to the
position in which he found himself. It was not hypocrisy that made him
gloss over private errors and denounce more public aberrations; it was
a feeling that Wint owed a good example to the town. Thus he had never
objected to Wint’s drinking at home--the Chases always had liquor in the
house--but when Wint was expelled from the state university for
drinking, his father was furious; and when Wint once or twice was
brought home from town in an uncertain state of mind and body, his
father raged.
The elder Chase made many errors, most of them wellintentioned, and he
accomplished much good, most of it by accident. He was a curious
compound of harmless faults and dangerous virtues. And no one regretted
his mistakes more than Chase himself.
Five minutes after telephoning Amos Caretall, Winthrop Chase saw that
was a strategic mistake, and began regretting it. Until Amos’s
home-coming the mayoralty campaign had been going smoothly and
satisfactorily. Hollow was not a dangerous opponent, and Chase seemed
reasonably sure of election by default.
Nevertheless, the coming of Amos had disturbed him. Amos was rightly
feared by his political enemies. He had the habit of success; and no
matter how secure Chase might feel, the thought of Amos made him
secretly tremble.
He was not a man to avoid conflict; therefore he had sought to confront
the enemy forthwith, and had telephoned Amos with that end in view. He
wished to bolster his own courage by seeing Amos cower; and Amos had
disappointed him. Instead of cowering, Amos had told him carelessly that
if he, Chase, wished to do so, he might call on Amos that night. And
Chase had promised to come.
Now he was torn with regrets. He was sorry he had telephoned; and he was
sorry he had promised to come. At first he thought he would stay at
home, let Amos wait in vain; and he tried to bolster this decision with
arguments. But they were unconvincing. Sure as he was of the election,
Amos made him nervous; and eventually, with a desperate feeling that he
must know the worst, and quickly, he set out for the Caretall home.
Agnes came to admit him when he rang the bell. He liked the girl. She
was pretty and gay, and she was always flutteringly deferential in his
presence. She opened the door, and saw him, and cried delightedly:
“Why, Mr. Chase! Come in!”
He obeyed, drawing off his gloves. He was one of the four men in
Hardiston who wore kid gloves. “Good evening, Agnes,” he said, in his
tone of condescending graciousness. “Is your father at home?”
“Oh, yes--he’s in by the fire.”
Amos called from the sitting room: “Toasting my toes, Winthrop. Come
in.”
“Let me take your coat,” Agnes was begging; and he allowed her to help
him off with the garment, and then handed her his hat and gloves and
watched her bestow them on the rack. She was graceful in everything she
did, and she looked up at him in a humble little fashion, as though to
solicit his approval. He gave it.
“Thank you, Agnes,” he said gravely.
“Now!” she said, and turned toward the sitting-room door. In the doorway
she paused. “Dad, here’s Mr. Chase.”
“Come in, Chase,” Amos called again. “Take a chair. Any chair. Turning
cold, ain’t it?”
Amos did not get up; but Chase went toward him and held out his hand so
that the Congressman was forced to rise. He was in the act of filling
his pipe again, knife in one hand, slices of tobacco in the other; and
he had trouble clearing one hand for the greeting, but he managed. “Now
sit down, Chase,” he urged again, when the handshake was over. “Glad you
came in. Is it turning cold or ain’t it?”
“Yes,” said Chase seriously. “Yes, there’s a touch of cold in the air.”
“Sky looked that way to me this afternoon. Early, too.”
“I think it will pass, though,” Chase declared. “We’ll have some Indian
summer yet.”
“Had some snow, haven’t you?”
“Two or three inches, early this month. But it melted in an hour when
the sun touched it.”
Amos nodded slowly. He was lighting his pipe. Agnes had come in with
the visitor, but after a moment took herself upstairs and the two men
were left alone. This made Chase uncomfortable. Even Agnes would have
been a support in this encounter. He looked sidewise at Amos, but Amos
was studying the fire; and after a minute the Congressman got up and
poked out the ashes and put on half a bucket of fresh coal. Then he
jabbed the coals again, and so resumed his seat.
“Ain’t been over to Washington lately, Chase,” he said presently.
Chase aroused himself. “No. No. Been very busy, Amos. Affairs here, you
know....”
“I know, I know. Now, me--Washington is my business. But you have to
stick to your coal and your iron.” He paused. “I sh’d think you’d get
tired of it, Chase.”
“How are things in the Capitol?” Chase asked importantly. Amos looked at
him sidewise.
“Why--I ain’t noticed anything wrong.”
“Who will the Republicans nominate?”
Amos chuckled. “Gawd, Chase, I wish I knew.”
“They’ll need a strong man, Amos. The country’s swinging again.”
The Congressman looked at Chase, and he grinned. “Chase,” he said,
“you’re a funny Democrat.”
“Why? I--”
“I guess you’re one of these waiting Democrats--eh?”
Chase looked confused. “I.... What’s that?”
“Figuring there’s bound to be a swing some day--and when it comes,
you’ll be there and waiting,” Amos nodded. “You’re right, too. Bound to
be a swing some day.”
“I’m a Democrat from conviction, Amos. The Democratic party....”
“Fiddlesticks! Tariff has made you--iron and steel. Fiddlesticks!”
Chase fidgeted; Amos fell silent, and for a time neither man spoke. Once
Amos reached into a table drawer and produced a cigar and offered it to
the other. Chase lighted it. When it was half smoked, Amos asked
carelessly:
“Well, Chase, what was it you wanted to see me about?”
Chase put himself on the defensive. “I--why you asked me to come. I
supposed....”
Amos grinned. “Have it so, Chase. Have it so.” He puffed hard at his
pipe, looked at the other. “Well--does it look like the swing was coming
in Hardiston?”
Chase stiffened self-consciously. “The town has demanded that I run for
Mayor--and--I consented.”
“That was a public-spirited thing to do, Chase. With all your business
to hinder you--take your time....”
“I was glad to do it. A man owes it.... If there is a demand for him, he
must respond.”
“Sure! Sure thing! And you’ve responded noble, Chase.”
“I’ve made a straightforward campaign.”
“First-class campaign. You figure you’ve got a chance?”
Chase’s confidence returned. “I’m going to win, Amos. Nothing can stop
me. I’ll be the next Mayor of Hardiston--sure.”
Amos looked thoughtful. “I ain’t in touch--myself.” He puffed at his
pipe. “Gergue says you’ll win--barring an accident.”
“There will be no accident.”
“Eh?”
“I intend to see to it that there is no accident.”
Amos nodded. “Well,” he commented, “that’s your privilege.”
Chase leaned forward. “Congressman,” he said seriously, “it’s a bad plan
to stay away from home so long. You get out of touch with affairs here.
You ought to--you need some ally here to watch over your interests.”
Amos looked up quickly. “Now, I never thought of that,” he declared.
Chase clapped his hand on his knee. “It’s right. You can’t tell what the
people are thinking unless you live among them--as I do, sir.”
Amos considered this statement, and then he remarked: “Take this wet and
dry business, for instance. Now, me--I’m so far away I don’t rightly
know what the folks here are thinking. But you--” He hesitated. “How
does it strike you, Chase?”
“It’s the big issue here.”
“How? County’s dry.”
“But the town isn’t. The law is not enforced here.”
“Why not?”
Chase laughed shortly. “The present Mayor--”
Amos interrupted. “I’m a wet man, Chase. You know that. I guess you are,
too, ain’t you?”
Chase shook his head sternly. “No, indeed. Prohibition is the greatest
good for the greatest number. I want to see it sweep the
country--state-wide--nation-wide.”
Amos looked startled. “I’m surprised.”
“There’s no question about it, Congressman. Prohibition is coming. And
I’m for it.”
“You have--you ain’t a dry man, are you?”
“I believe in moderation.”
“Now that’s funny, too,” Amos commented, his head on one side in the
familiar posture that suggested he was suffering from stiff neck.
“Funny? Why?”
“You and me. Me--I’m a wet man; I believe in license. But I’m a
teetotaller. You’re a dry man--but you like moderation. I’m for a wet
state and a dry cellar--and you’re for a dry state and a wet cellar.
Ain’t that always the way?”
Chase flushed stiffly. “Many great men have held public views differing
from their private practice.”
“Who, f’r instance?”
“Why--many of them.”
Amos nodded. “Well, you’ve studied the thing. Maybe you’re right.”
“I am right.”
The Congressman looked at the other with a cold, quizzical light in his
eyes. “How ’bout Wint? He hold your views?”
Chase turned red as fire. “He has nothing to do with this.”
“I heard he was a wet man, personally. But I wondered if he was dry like
you in theory.”
The other said stiffly: “My son has disgraced me. I have been very
angry with him. But it may have been as much my fault as his. I have
tried to be patient. He understands, now, that if he continues--if he
does not mend his ways--I--” He stopped uncertainly.
“Reck’n you’d disown him.”
An unexpected and very human weakness showed in the countenance of the
elder Chase. His features worked; he said huskily, “Well--the boy--he’s
my only child, Amos.”
Amos had never liked Winthrop Chase till that moment. He was surprised
at the burst of sympathy that moved him. He nodded. “You’re right,
Chase. And--Wint’s a good boy, I figure.”
His tone encouraged the other. Chase leaned toward the Congressman.
“Amos,” he said, “there’s a new day coming in Ohio politics.”
Amos looked puzzled. “To-morrow’s always likely to be a new day.”
“Things are changing, Amos.”
“How?”
“Men are dissatisfied with the present--administration of affairs.”
“Men are always dissatisfied.”
“They’re looking around for a new--hired man--Amos.”
Amos chuckled; then he said slowly: “Well--there’s lots of folks looking
for the job.”
Chase hesitated, considering his next word; and in the end he cast
diplomacy to the winds and came out flatly: “Amos--it’s a good time to
look around for friends. To make new alliances.”
Amos looked at the other thoughtfully. “Meaning--just what?”
Chase said simply: “You and I ought to get together, Amos.”
“We’re--here together.”
“I mean--a permanent alliance--offensive and defensive. For mutual
good.”
Amos’ pipe had smoked itself to the end. He emptied it with his
accustomed care before answering. Then he said slowly: “Specify, Chase.
Specify.”
Chase proceeded to specify. “I’m going to be the next Mayor of
Hardiston, Amos.”
“Barring that accident.”
Chase brushed that suggestion aside. “My victory--in a strong Republican
town--will make me an important figure in the district.”
“Meaning--my district.”
“Meaning the Congressional district.”
Amos looked at the other. “You figuring to run against me next year.”
Chase shook his head. “I don’t want to. There’s no sense in our cutting
each other’s throats.”
“That’s against the law, anyhow.”
Chase leaned forward more earnestly. “Amos--here’s my proposition. We
ought to get together. I’m willing. I’ve got Hardiston. Sentiment in the
district is swinging. I can make a good fight against you next year--I
think I can win. But I don’t want to fight you. So--Let’s get together.
Party politics are out of date. We’re the two biggest men in the county,
Amos. You step aside and let me go to Congress--I can beat any one else
easily. And I’ll back you for--the Senate, Amos.”
For a moment Amos remained very quietly in his chair; then he coughed,
such a loud, harsh cough that Chase jumped. And then he said slowly:
“Chase--you startled me.”
Chase said condescendingly, grandly: “No reason for that, Amos.”
“But my land, man--the Senate! Me in the Senate!”
“Why not? Worse men than you are there.”
“Chase--you’re the man for the Senate--not me.”
Chase bridled like a girl. “No, no, Amos. You’ve the experience, the
wide view--”
Amos seemed to recall something. “That’s so, Chase. And you--you ain’t
Mayor yet. Something might happen.”
“It won’t.”
Amos rose. “Chase,” he said, “I’ve got to know you better to-night than
in twenty years.”
Chase grasped the Congressman’s hand firmly. This was a habit of his,
this firm clasp. “It’s high time, then, Amos.”
“Yes, yes,” Amos considered. “Tell you what, Chase,” he said at last,
“I’ll think it over.”
“It’s the thing to do, Amos.”
“I’ll think it over, Chase,” the Congressman repeated. He was ushering
the other toward the door, helping him into his coat, opening the door.
“Wait till after election, Chase,” he said then deferentially. “If
you’re elected Mayor of Hardiston--I don’t see but what we’ll have to
team up together.”
Chase grasped the Congressman’s hand again. “That’s a bargain, Amos.”
“A bargain,” Amos echoed. Then: “Good night, Chase.”
The door closed; and Amos, after a minute, began to chuckle slowly under
his breath.
CHAPTER VII
V. R. KITE
Victor Rutherford Kite was a man about half the size of his name.
Specifically, he was five feet and two inches tall with his shoes on and
his pompadour ruffed up. A saving sense of the fitness of things had led
him to abandon the long roll of names bestowed upon him by his parents
in favor of the shorter and more fitting initials. As V. R. Kite, he had
lived in Hardiston for twenty odd years; and most Hardiston people had
forgotten what his given names actually were.
He was about sixty years old; and he looked it. His eyes were small, and
they were washy blue. The eyelids fell about them in thousands of tiny
folds and wrinkles, so that the eyes themselves were almost hidden. His
eyebrows and his hair and his hints of side whiskers were gray. These
side whiskers were really not whiskers at all; they were merely a faint
downward growth of the hair before his ears; and they lay on his dry
cheeks like the stroke of a brush. His skin was parched dry; it was so
dry that it had a powdery look. He walked with a dignified little swing
of his short legs, and held his head poised upon his thin neck in a
self-contained way that indefinably suggested a turkey.
This man was a member of the session of his church; he was the
proprietor and manager of a store that would have been a five-and-ten
cent emporium in a larger town than Hardiston; and he was the
acknowledged leader of the “wet” forces in Hardiston. He himself had
come to the town in the beginning to run a saloon; but after a few
years, he submerged his own personality in this venture and opened the
little store, leaving a lieutenant to manage the saloon which he still
owned. Thereafter, he acquired other establishments of a like nature,
until he attained the dignity of a vested interest. When county option
came, he suffered in proportion.
But though town and county voted “dry,” there were any number of
Hardiston folk who still liked a drink now and then; and the city--for
the town of Hardiston was legally a city--took judicial cognizance of
the will of its citizens to this extent: the prohibition law was not
strictly enforced. The official interpretation of it was: “It’s against
the law to sell liquor if you get caught.”
V. R. Kite thought this was reasonable enough, and took care not to get
caught.
On the evening of Amos Caretall’s home-coming, Kite was not in his
store, so Peter Gergue had some difficulty in locating him. As a last
resort, he tried the little man’s home, and was frankly surprised to
find Kite there. He delivered Amos’s message, and Kite, who was at times
a fiery little man, and a sulker between whiles, agreed in a surly
fashion that he would go and see Amos that night. Gergue was satisfied.
Kite’s house was near that of Amos; but he did not set forth at once.
When he did, it was just in time to encounter Winthrop Chase, Senior, at
Amos’s gate. Kite bridled and slid past Chase as warily as a cat. The
two men did not speak. If they had spoken, they would have fought; for
each of them felt that he had borne the last bearable insult from the
other. They passed, and Kite hurried up to Amos’s door while Winthrop
Chase, looking back, watched with a calmly complacent smile. He felt
that he and Amos had come to an understanding; and he rejoiced at the
thought that this understanding meant the downfall of Kite as a
political power in Hardiston.
Kite knocked at the door while Amos was still chuckling in the hall; and
Amos let him in. Kite, once the door was open, slid inside, shoved the
door shut behind him, and exclaimed in a low, furious voice: “That Chase
met me outside. He was here. Don’t deny it, Amos! Did you aim for me to
meet him here?”
Amos chuckled and patted Kite’s shoulder. “Now, now, Kite,” he said
soothingly. “You didn’t run onto him here. You didn’t have to talk to
him. So what you mad about?”
“I hate the sight of the man. He makes me sick.”
“Come in and set down,” said Amos, still chuckling.
They went into the sitting-room, Kite still grumbling at the nearness of
his escape. When they were once settled, Amos broke in on this monologue
without hesitation: “Chase says he’s going to be the next Mayor--whe’er
or no,” he remarked.
Kite’s dry little countenance twisted with pain. Amos saw, and asked
sympathetically: “That gripe ye, does it?”
“I’ll never live in the town with him Mayor,” Kite exploded. “I won’t
live here. I’ll sell out and move away. I’ll shoot myself! Or him!
I’ll....”
He petered out, and Amos grinned. “I gather you and Chase don’t jibe.
What’s he ever done to you?”
“Grinned at me. He’s always grinning at me like a--like a--like....”
Amos smoothed the grin from his own countenance with a great hand, and
tilted his head on one side. “You and him disagree some on the liquor
issue, I take it.”
“We disagree on every issue. He’s....”
“Hardiston’s a little bit wet, ain’t it?”
“Of course! And no one objects! But this Chase wants to get in and make
it dry. He’s a....”
“This county option law’s popular, though.”
“Popular--with fools and hypocrites like Chase.”
“Chase’ll make a good Mayor,” Amos suggested. “He’s a fine,
public-spirited man. Always sacrificing himself for the
town--sacrificing his own interests--an’ all that. So he says, anyhow.
Said so to me, to-night.”
Kite waved his clenched fists above his head. He fought for words. Amos
seemed not to notice this.
“He’s a good man, a churchly man,” he mused.
Kite exploded. “Damn hypocrite!”
Amos looked across at the other in surprise. “Hypocrite? How’s that?”
Kite became fluent. “Take the liquor question. He preaches dry--talks
dry--and drinks like a fish. And his son is a common toper.”
Amos shook his head. “We-ell, a man’s private life ain’t nothing to do
with his political principles. Lots of cases like that. If a man thinks
right, and performs his office, I reckon that’s all you can ask. Out of
office hours--he’s allowed to do what he wants.”
“He’ll ruin Hardiston,” Kite declared. “Ruin it.” He whirled toward the
other. “Your fault, too, Amos. If you’d put up a man against him,
instead of a fish like Jim Hollow....”
“I figured Jim would do. He always tried to do the right thing,” Amos
protested; and Kite dismissed the protest with a grunt.
“The town don’t want Chase,” he declared vehemently, “but they can’t
take Hollow.”
“We-ell,” said Amos thoughtfully, “what’s going to be done about it?”
Kite threw up his hands. “Nothing. Too late. But I....”
The Congressman interrupted drawlingly: “Now if it was young Wint that
was going to be Mayor--you wouldn’t have to worry.”
Kite laughed shortly. “I guess not. But--he’s not.”
“He wouldn’t be likely to make the town so awful dry.”
“Not unless he drank it dry.”
“We-ell, he couldn’t do that.”
Kite grinned. “I’d chance it.”
They were silent for a moment; then Amos said slowly: “Funny--what a
difference one letter makes. ‘Jr.’ instead of ‘Sr.’ Eh?”
Kite nodded slowly; and Amos was silent again, and so for a time the two
men sat, thinking. Kite stared at the fire, his face working. Amos
watched the fire, but most of all he watched Kite. He studied the little
man, his head tilted on one side, his eyes narrowed. And Kite remained
oblivious of this scrutiny. In the end, Amos spoke:
“Kite--how many votes you figure will be cast at this election?”
Kite looked up, considered. “A thousand or twelve hundred, I suppose.”
Amos bestirred his great bulk and drew from a pocket a handful of
letters. He chose one, replaced the others. From another pocket he
routed a stubby pencil, moistened the lead, and set down Kite’s figures
on the envelope. “I think that’s too many,” he commented.
“Maybe,” Kite agreed. “What does it matter?”
“How many wet votes can you swing against Chase as it stands?”
Kite frowned. “I can’t do much with Hollow to work with. Maybe four
hundred.”
“Suppose you had a good man to work with?”
“He ought to get close to five hundred out of twelve.”
“Everybody so much in love with Chase as that?”
Kite shook his head. “They don’t like him. Nobody does. He thinks he
owns the town.”
“Does he own it?”
“A good part. Three or four hundred votes, anyhow.”
Amos tapped his envelope with his pencil, figuring thoughtfully. “I was
thinking some of playing a little joke on Chase,” he said at last.
“Think they’d enjoy a joke on him?”
Kite looked across at the Congressman with hope in his eye for the first
time that evening. “Any joke on Chase will find lots to laugh at it,” he
declared.
Amos nodded. “That’s what Gergue said.”
“He’s right.” Kite’s face fell. “But shucks! What chance is there?”
“There’s a chance,” said Amos.
“What is it?”
“Listen, Kite,” said the Congressman soberly. “Listen and I’ll tell
you.”
He began to speak; he talked for a long time, and as he explained,
Kite’s countenance passed from doubt to hope and then to exultant
confidence.
CHAPTER VIII
THE RALLY
The home-coming of Congressman Caretall created a momentary stir in
Hardiston; but that was all. Every one knew he had come home to take a
hand in the mayoralty election; but every one also knew that the elder
Chase was going to be elected Mayor in spite of all Caretall could do,
and so the first stir of interest soon lagged. There was no sport to be
had in an election that was a foregone conclusion.
Caretall did not seem to be worrying about the situation. He walked
uptown every morning, waited at the Post Office while the morning mail
was distributed, talked with the men that gathered there, went to the
barber shop for his shave, to the Smoke House for his plug of black
tobacco, to the hotel, or to the _Journal_ office, or some other
rallying spot for men otherwise unattached.
Now and then he was seen to drop in at Peter Gergue’s office; but the
best proof that he was doing nothing to change the election lay in the
fact that Gergue was idle. That lank gentleman seldom emerged from his
office, and when he did so, the fact that his mind was free of care was
attested by the circumstance that he left his back hair severely alone.
Gergue was a Caretall barometer; and all the signs pointed to “fair,
followed by a probable depression!”
A lull settled over Hardiston. Chase carried on his campaign regularly
but without heat. He talked with individuals on street corners and with
groups wherever he found them; he spoke most graciously to all who met
him on the street; and as the last week before election dawned, he
announced two meetings, to which all voters were invited. They would be
held in the Rink; otherwise the Crescent Opera House--and at these
meetings, numerous speakers would expound the justice of the Chase
cause. Chase himself, of course, would be the principal speaker.
The first of these meetings was held on Tuesday night, a week before the
election; the second was set for the following Saturday. On Tuesday
afternoon, Amos Caretall and Chase came face to face in the Post Office;
and half a dozen people saw them greet each other pleasantly and without
heat. Chase spoke as though he could afford to be generous, Amos like a
man willing to accept generosity.
“I hope you’ll come to my meeting to-night, Amos,” Chase invited with
grave condescension; and he laughed and added: “You might learn
something that would be of value--about municipal affairs--”
“I was figuring on coming,” said Amos, surprisingly enough. It was
surprising even to Chase; but he hid this feeling.
“Fine, fine!” he declared. “Amos, I’m glad to hear it. Partisanship has
no place in city affairs.”
“That’s right,” Amos agreed.
Chase laughed. “If you don’t look out, I’ll call on you to speak
to-night,” he threatened.
Amos grinned at that. “I reckon I wouldn’t be scared,” he declared.
“I’ve spoke before.”
They parted with no further word save laughing jests; but when Chase
turned toward his office, his eyes were thoughtful, and Amos watched his
departing figure with a faint smile. While Chase was still in sight,
Gergue came along; and he spoke to Amos in his habitual low drawl, and
received a word from Amos in reply.
Gergue nodded. “The bee’ll keep a buzzing till he does it,” he promised;
and Amos chuckled. He chuckled all that day; but his countenance was
sober enough when he presented himself at the entrance to the Rink that
night. He was alone; and he walked boldly down the aisle, responding to
greetings on every hand, and took a conspicuous seat near the front.
The curtain had been raised; and the stage was set with a stock scene
representing a farmyard, or something of the kind. There was an
impracticable well at the right, in the rear; and at the left, the
kitchen door of the farmhouse stood open beneath an arborway of
cardboard grapevines. In the center of the stage, a table had been set;
upon it a white pitcher of water and a glass; and in the semicircle
about the table, half a dozen chairs. The stage setting was not
strikingly appropriate, but no one save Amos gave it so much as a
chuckle.
When he had studied the stage, Amos turned to look about at the
audience. The Rink was half filled; but half of the people in it were
either women or boys too young to vote. The women in Hardiston were all
immensely interested in politics; and as for the boys--well, a boy loves
a meeting.
While Amos was still studying the audience, Ed Skinner, editor of the
weekly _Sun_, appeared on the stage, walked to the table, rapped on it
with a wooden mallet which had obviously been designed for the uses of
carpentry, and called the house to order. Amos settled in his seat and
the meeting began.
There were four speakers. Skinner talked first; he was followed by Davy
Morgan, a foreman in Chase’s furnace; and he in turn gave way to Will
Murchie, from up the creek, who had been elected Attorney General the
year before, and so won the honor of breaking the air-tight Republican
grip on state offices. The testimony of these men was unanimously to the
effect that Winthrop Chase, Senior, had the makings of the best Mayor
any city in the state ever saw.
After which, Chase himself appeared, to prove the case indisputably.
Chase read his speech. He always read his speeches. Murchie had written
this one for him; and it was well done, flowery, measured, resounding.
It was real oratory, even as Chase rendered it. And Amos, in a front
seat, was the loudest of all the audience in his applause. He was so
loud that at times he interrupted the speaker; but Chase forgave him,
beaming on Amos over the footlights.
Abruptly, Chase finished his speech. He finished it and folded it and
put it in his pocket; and every one applauded, either from appreciation
or relief. They applauded until they saw--by the fact that Chase still
held the stage without starting to withdraw--that he had something
further to say. Then they fell sulkily silent.
“My friends,” said Chase then, beaming on them. “My friends--I thank
you. I thank you all; and particularly I wish to thank Congressman
Caretall, down in front here, who has been loud in his applause.
“That’s a good sign. I’m glad he appreciates the fact that it is no use
to fight longer. He told me this morning that he was coming here
to-night; and in effect he dared me to invite him to speak to you
to-night.
“My friends, I have nothing to hide. He cannot frighten me. Congressman
Caretall--you have the floor!”
The listeners had been apathetic, bored; but they were so no longer.
More of them rose, some climbed on seats and craned their necks the
better to see the discomfiture of the Congressman. They yelled at him:
“Speech! Sp-e-e-ech!” They jeered at him, confident he would accept
their jeers in silence; and so they were the more delighted when he rose
lumberingly in his place.
Every one yelled at everybody else to sit down and be quiet. Chase
invited Amos up on the stage. Amos shook his head. “I can talk from
here,” he roared, “if these gentlemen will be seated so I can look at
them.” He spread his hands like one invoking a blessing. “Sit down! Sit
down!”
They sat, rustling in their seats, grinning, whispering, gazing; and
Amos waited benevolently, head on one side, until they were quiet. Then
he spoke.
“My frien-n-d-s!” he drawled. “I am honored. It is an honor to any man
to be asked to address a Hardiston audience. And especially on such an
occasion--and in such a cause.
“My friends, the name of Chase is an old one in Hardiston. A Chase was
one of the first to settle at the salt licks here; a Chase fought the
Indians during those first hot years; a Chase dug salt wells when the
riffles no longer proved profitable. And when the salt industry died, a
Chase was the first to dig coal in this county, and a Chase was the
first to establish an iron-smelting furnace here in Hardiston.
“The Chases have deserved well of Hardiston. They have been honored in
the past; they will be honored in the future. But they should also be
honored in the present.
“My friends, I came here to cast my vote in the city election. I came
home in some doubt as to how I should cast that vote. But I am in doubt
no longer, my friends.
“I shall go to the polls next Tuesday, and I shall ask for a ballot, and
I shall go into a booth; and there, my friends, I shall cast my vote for
Mayor.
“And the man I vote for, my friends, I tell you frankly; the man I vote
for will be--a Chase!”
The storm broke; and Amos bowed to it and sat down. But that would not
do. Chase climbed down from the stage to shake him by the hand and thank
him; and others crowded around to do the same thing; and still others
came crowding to storm at him for a traitor. And to them all Amos
presented a smiling and agreeable countenance.
But this small tumult ended, as such things will. The crowd dispersed;
the Rink emptied; and in the end, Chase and Amos walked up the street as
far as the hotel together, separating there to go to their respective
homes.
Next morning, Hardiston buzzed with the news. Strangely enough, Amos did
not show himself in town. He hid at home, said his enemies--those who
had been his friends. He hid at home to escape the storm. That was what
they said; but it was observed, in the course of the day, that those who
went to Amos’s home to accuse him, came away apparently reconciled to
the Congressman’s course of action. They made no more complaint.
One of these was Jack Routt. Routt was an attorney, picking up the
beginnings of a practice. He had ambitions. Other men had been
prosecuting attorney, and there was no reason why a man named Routt
should not hold that office. To this end, he had hitched his wagon to
Amos’s star; and he was one of the Congressman’s first lieutenants.
Routt had not attended the meeting at the Rink. He and Wint Chase spent
the evening together. But when he heard what had happened, he uttered
one red-hot ejaculation, then clamped tight his lips and marched off to
find Amos and demand an explanation.
He got it. It silenced him. It was observed that he came away from the
Caretall home with a puzzled frown twisting his brow above the smile on
his lips. But he spoke not, neither could word be enticed from him.
Instead, he seemed to put politics off his shoulders, and attached
himself, like a guardian angel, to Wint.
That was Wednesday. Wednesday evening, Wint and Routt and Agnes Caretall
spent at Joan Arnold’s home, playing cards. Thursday, the four were
again together, but this time at the Caretall home. Friday evening,
Routt and Wint played pool at the hotel. Saturday evening they went
together to the Chase rally at the Rink. It was a jubilant gathering;
the speakers were exultant; and the elder Chase, again the speaker of
the evening, was calm and paternally promising.
Sunday, the four went picnicking in Agnes Caretall’s car. And it was not
until Monday evening that Wint broke away from Routt’s chaperonage. He
spent that evening--it was the eve of election day--with Joan.
They were very happy together.
CHAPTER IX
HETTY MORFEE
In the meanwhile, a single incident. An incident concerning itself with
Hetty Morfee, Mrs. Chase’s newly acquired handmaiden.
Hetty was a girl Wint’s own age. She had been born in Hardiston, had
lived in Hardiston all her life. She and Wint had gone to school
together; they had played together; they had been friends all their
lives.
Such things happen in a small town. Wint was the son of Hardiston’s big
man; Hetty was the daughter of a man whom nobody remembered. He had come
to town, married Hetty’s mother, and gone away. Thereafter, Hetty had
been born.
Hetty’s mother was the fifth daughter of a coal miner. She was an honest
woman, a woman of sense and sensibility; and Hetty received from her a
worthy heritage. But most of Hetty was not mother but father; and all
Hardiston knew about Hetty’s father was that he had come and had gone.
It was assumed, fairly enough, that he had a roving, rascally, and
irresponsible disposition. Hetty, it had been predicted, would not turn
out well.
This prediction had not wholly justified itself. Hetty, in the first
place, was unnaturally acute of mind. In school, she had mastered the
lessons given her with careless ease. The effect was to give her an
unwholesome amount of leisure. She occupied this leisure in bedeviling
her teachers and inciting to riot the hardier spirits in the
school--among whom number Wint.
She was, in those days, a wiry little thing, as hard as nails, as active
as a boy, and fully as daring. She had whipped one or two boys in fair,
stand-up fight, for Hetty had a temper that went with her hair. Her
hair, as has been said, was a pleasant and interesting red.
As a child, she had been freckled. When she approached womanhood, these
freckles disappeared and left her with a skin creamy and delicious. Her
eyes were large, and warm, and merry. They were probably brown; it was
hard to be sure. All in all, she was--give her a chance--a beauty.
Some men of science assert that all healthy children start life with an
equal heritage. They attribute to environment the developing differences
between men and between women. Hetty might have served them as an
illuminating example. In school, she had mastered her lessons quickly,
had led her classes as of right; while her schoolmates--including Wint,
who was not good at books--lagged woefully behind.
This ascendancy persisted through the first half dozen years of
schooling; and then it began, gradually, to disappear. In high school,
it was not so marked; and at graduation, she and Wint--for example--were
fairly on a par.
Then Wint went to college while Hetty went to work. She worked first in
a store and lost that place for swearing at her employer. Then she took
up housework, and so gravitated to the Chase household. There Wint
encountered her; and within a day or so he discovered that the years
since high school had borne him far ahead of Hetty. She now was
beginning to recede; her wave had reached its height and was subsiding.
He still bore on.
These things may be observed more intimately in a small town; for there,
social differences do not so strictly herd the sheep apart from the
goats. Thus, while Hetty was his mother’s handmaid, neither Wint nor any
one else outspokenly considered her his inferior. She called him Wint,
he called her Hetty, and his mother likewise.
Wint found her presence vaguely disturbing. That first night at supper,
she had winked at him behind his father’s back. The wink somewhat
chilled him. It savored of hardness--And there were other incidents.
Wint perceived that Hetty was no longer a schoolgirl; she was, vaguely,
sophisticated. Her old recklessness and daring remained; but they were
inspired now not by ebullient spirits but by indifference, by bravado.
He remembered ugly rumors....
Wint and Hetty had been, to some extent, comrades in their school days.
Once or twice he had defended her against aggression; once he had fought
a boy who had told tales on her to the teacher. Hetty had never thanked
him; she had even scolded and abused him for this knight-errantry,
declaring her ability to take care of herself. Nevertheless, there was
gratitude in her. She brought him apples, hiding them secretly in his
desk.
On the Friday evening before election, as has been said, Wint and Jack
Routt played pool together at the hotel. Afterwards, in spite of Routt’s
protests, they went together to the stairway in the alley; and when
eventually Wint reached home, he was unsteady on his feet.
His father and mother were abed. The door was never locked, so that he
entered the hall without difficulty; but the only light was an electric
bulb in the rear of the hall, near the kitchen door, and when he went
back to extinguish this, he tripped over a rug and barely saved a fall.
While he was still tottering, the kitchen door opened and Hetty looked
out at him. She had on her hat, so that he saw she, too, had just come
in. He smiled at her amiably, holding on to the wall for support; and
she laughed softly and came and caught his arm.
“Oh, you Wint!” she chided.
He tried to be dignified. “Wha’s matter?” he asked. “I’m all right.”
She winked. “But if father could only see you now!”
He became amiable again. “Thass all right,” he declared, “I’m going to
bed. He’s sleeping th’ sleep of th’ just. Thass dad. Sleep of the just!”
“Sure,” she agreed. “But you know what he’d do to you.”
A door opened, in the hall above. A step sounded. Hetty, quick as light,
led Wint under the stair where he was invisible from above, and signed
him to be quiet. The elder Chase called down the stairs: “Who’s that?”
“Me, Mr. Chase,” said Hetty. “I tripped. I’m sorry if I woke you up.”
She heard Chase say something under his breath; but when he answered,
his tone was affable. “All right. Time you were abed, Hetty.”
“Uh-huh! I went to see my mother.”
“That’s all right. Good night!”
“Good night!”
They heard him go back to his room, heard the door close behind him.
Hetty crossed to Wint. She was trembling a little, and she spoke very
gently. “Come up the back stairs, Wint. He won’t hear you. I’ll help
you....”
Wint took her arm. “You’re a good girl, Hetty,” he told her.
“You come along.”
They went through the kitchen to the back stairs, and up, Hetty
steadying him and encouraging him in a whisper. Wint’s room was at the
back of the house, on the second floor; his father’s at the front.
Hetty’s was on the third floor. She helped him to the door of his room,
and in, and turned on the light. He sat down and grinned amiably at her.
She started to go, hesitated, came back and knelt before him. While he
watched, not fully understanding, she loosened his shoes. Then she rose.
“Now you go to bed, Wint--and be quiet,” she warned him in a whisper.
“Good night!”
He waved his hand. “Thass all right now. G’night!”
She closed the door behind her and went swiftly along the hall to the
stair that led upward to her room. But there, with her foot on the lower
step, her hand on the rail, she paused.
She paused, and looked back at Wint’s door, and pressed one hand against
her mouth, thinking. And slowly her eyes misted with a wistful light.
She turned a little, as though to go back....
Then, eyes still misty, she went up the stairs to her own room; and in
her own room, with no one to see, Hetty lay down on her face on the bed
and cried.
CHAPTER X
THE ELECTION
The people of Hardiston are early risers, and their hours of labor are
long and strenuous. The coal miners--what few still find tasks to do in
the ravaged hills--are up and about before day in the fall and winter
months; the furnace workmen change shifts at unearthly hours; and the
glass factory and the pipe works both begin their day when most folks
are still abed.
To accommodate these early risers, the polls at Hardiston open at six.
They stay open until four or five or six in the afternoon. The hour is
left somewhat to the discretion of the election officials. If a heavy
vote is cast early, so that an extra hour would mean only half a dozen
votes added to the totals, they close the polls and begin their counting
in time to get home to supper.
But if there is prospect of a close contest, the polls remain open till
the last voter has been given his opportunity.
On this election day, the polls opened at six; and the election
officials, particularly those representing the supporters of the elder
Chase, went about their duties with a careless confidence. In the second
precinct, the polling place was an unoccupied store on the second floor
of a two-story building at the corner of Pearl Street and Broadway. The
lower floor of this building was occupied by a dealer in monuments; and
throughout the day the chink and tap of his chisel and maul never ceased
their song. These sounds came up in a muffled fashion through the floor
of the room where the votes were being cast.
The early voting here was light. Jim Thomas and Ed Howe were the
principal election officers; and they sat with their chairs tilted back
and their feet on the railing around a red-hot little iron stove while
the trickle of voters came and went. Jim Thomas chewed tobacco, and Ed
smoked. He smoked a pipe; and he whittled his tobacco from a black plug,
thus identifying himself with the Caretall factions. Aside from the
stove and their two chairs, the room contained only the voting
paraphernalia. Three booths against the wall, with cloth curtains to
divide them; two flat tables, each containing a list of the registered
voters; and the ballot box itself, on the floor near the door where each
voter deposited his ballot as he departed.
At seven o’clock--the little stove, by this time, had raised the
temperature of the room to a stifling mark--Jim Thomas spat in a box of
sawdust and grinned at Ed Howe. “Slow, Ed,” he said.
Ed puffed hard. He had a weakness of one eye, a weakness which allowed
the lid to droop so that he seemed to be perpetually winking. He turned
this winking eye to Jim. “Yeah,” he said.
“I guess Caretall is due to get his.”
“You reckon?” Ed inquired listlessly.
“I reckon.”
Ed grunted and smoked harder than ever.
At half past seven, the elder Chase himself dropped in. “Good morning,
boys,” he called from the door. “Splendid day, now isn’t it?”
“Fine,” said Jim Thomas.
Chase produced cigars; he dispensed them graciously. Only Ed Howe
refused the proffered smoke.
“Oh, come, Ed,” Chase insisted. “Don’t be afraid of hurting my
feelings.”
“Never smoke ’em,” said Ed shortly.
“Want to vote once or twice?” Jim Thomas asked, grinning.
Chase chuckled. “I’ve cast my vote. Second ballot in my precinct, Jim.”
“Better chuck in a few more,” Jim advised. “Hollow’s running strong.” He
said this seriously, but every one knew it was a joke. Even Ed Howe
grinned.
Chase presently departed, still amiable and gracious. His visit had
stimulated the imagination of Jim Thomas; and after a little while he
rose and took his hat and went down to a group of men in the street
outside. Ed looked out of the window curiously. He saw Jim go among the
group, hat in hand, obviously taking up a collection. The man seemed to
take the matter as a joke. But Jim was grave.
He came back up presently, hat in hand, and approached Ed. “Give up,
Ed,” he invited. “A penny, a nickel, any little thing.”
Ed looked in the hat. He saw a button, a burnt match, a pebble, and a
slice of tobacco. He grunted and puffed at his pipe. “Set down, Jim,” he
invited. “Heat’s touched your head.”
Jim explained, in a hurt tone: “No, Ed, not a bit. Only--some of the
boys thought we’d take up a collection and send downstairs for a
tombstone for Hollow.”
Ed swung his head slowly and looked at Jim; and a slow grin broke across
his countenance. “I declare,” he commented, “you’re a real joker, Jim.”
Then he laughed a cackling laugh, wagged his head, and fell into silence
again.
The second precinct was the most important in Hardiston. Its voters
numbered half as many again as its next rival. And so the candidates
gave it more than its share of attention that day. Chase came early and
often. Each time he disseminated cigars and amiability. This was his day
of glory; and he ate it with a relish, visibly smacking his lips.
Caretall and Gergue came together about eight o’clock in the morning.
Amos had very little to say. He glanced at the voting lists, nodded to
Ed Howe, called a greeting to Jim Thomas and departed. Peter Gergue
remained for a time, scratching the back of his head and talking with
those who came to vote.
Amos came back at noon, and as it happened, he met V. R. Kite at the
voting place. Kite voted in this precinct, and he had just deposited his
ballot when Amos arrived. The two men greeted each other amiably. Amos
said: “Morning, Mr. Kite.”
“Good morning, Congressman.”
“Just voting?”
“Yes. Overslept.”
Amos winked. “I trust you voted right, V. R.”
Kite nodded briskly. “Right as rain, Congressman. You too?”
“Sure.”
Jim Thomas listened with frank interest. Now he found an opening for his
joke. “You’d better drop in a few votes here, Congressman. Chase is
running strong.”
Amos looked at him with interest. “You don’t say, Jim?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Well--how do you know, Jim?”
Thomas became faintly confused. “Oh, I can tell.”
“You ain’t been looking at the ballots, have you, Jim?”
Jim blustered. “Look-a-here--who you accusing?”
“You ain’t? Then you must be one of these mediums that can read a folded
paper.”
“Oh, sugar! You go....”
Amos grinned. “Matter of fact, Jim, I wish I knowed you was right. I’m
frank to say, Jim, that I got a bet on a horse named Chase to win.” Jim
gasped, and Amos nodded soberly. “Yes, sir, Jim. You just hear me.”
Jim took a plug of tobacco from his pocket and tore at it with his teeth
and stuffed it away again. The operation restored his composure. “Well,
Congressman, you’d ought not to bet--and you a lawmaker.”
“It ain’t rightly a bet, Jim,” said Amos. “It’s a sure thing.” He turned
toward the door. “Good aft’noon, Jim.”
The voting, beginning slow, had picked up during the noon hour. A steady
stream of men came in throughout that period and when this stream
subsided, four-fifths of the registered voters had cast their ballots.
Ed Howe suggested: “Might as well close up shop at four, hadn’t we,
Jim?”
“Sure,” said Jim. “They ain’t no real contest to-day anyway.”
“I reckon that’s right,” Ed agreed.
This was a quarter before two o’clock in the afternoon. At two o’clock,
Caretall and Chase came face to face at the door of the voting room.
They came in arm in arm; and Chase asked graciously: “Well, boys, how
are things going?”
Jim Thomas reported briskly, “Fine, Mr. Chase. Most of the votes in. Ed
and me’s figuring to close at four.”
Chase nodded. “I guess that’s safe. Don’t you think so, Amos?”
“Whatever you say, Chase,” Amos agreed. “Looks to me like the fight’s
all over.”
It was observed at that time, however, that Congressman Caretall was
strangely buoyant for a beaten man.
Chase and Caretall separated at the door, and Jim Thomas called to Ed
Howe: “I’m going uptown and get me some dinner. I ain’t ate yet.”
“Go along,” Ed agreed.
Jim went along, overtaking the elder Chase, and they walked together
along Pearl Street and up Main to the restaurant. Chase was quietly
contented and exceedingly courteous and gracious to those whom they
encountered; and for the first half of the journey, Jim basked in the
great man’s smile.
It was at the corner of Main Street that the first fly dropped into
Jim’s ointment. As they turned the corner, they encountered three men.
One was V. R. Kite; another was old Thompson, crippled with rheumatism
but fat with wealth, and a lifelong enemy of Chase; and the third was
Thompson’s son, the shoe man.
Chase said: “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” to these men. Kite responded:
“Afternoon!” Old Thompson grunted; and young Thompson said: “How do you
do, Mr. Chase?” with entirely too much sweet deference in his tones.
They passed the group, but when they had gone twenty yards, something
prompted Jim Thomas to look around, and he detected the elder Thompson
in the act of smiting his knee in a paroxysm of silent and malignant
mirth.
Right then, Jim Thomas smelled a rat. He looked up at Chase, but Chase
was blind and deaf. Jim started to speak, then thought better of it; and
at the next corner, he left his chieftain and turned aside to the
restaurant.
It seemed to him that Sam O’Brien, the fat proprietor of the place,
grinned at him when he entered. He ordered a veal sandwich, and when it
was ready for him, he doused it with mustard and ate it with sips of
cold water between each mouthful. It was delicious, but his stomach was
uneasy under it.
Sam was frankly grinning at him; and so Jim asked at length, in some
desperation: “What’s the joke, Sam?”
Sam shook his head. “How’s the election going, Jim?”
“All Chase.”
Sam threw back his head. He was a fat man, and the mirth billowed out of
him. He rocked, he slapped his knee. “All Chase!” he gasped. “All Chase!
Oh, Jim! Oh, Jimmy man! All Chase!” He wiped tears from his eyes. “Jim,
you’ll kill me!”
Jim snorted. He was thoroughly disturbed. Sam was a man whose finger
touched the public pulse. Obviously, he knew something. Jim leaned
across the counter. “What’s the joke, Sam? Come on--let me laugh, too.”
Sam waved his fat hands at his customer. “You go away, Jim. You go ’way.
You’ll kill me.”
His chortles pursued Jim to the street. There Thomas paused, irresolute.
What was he going to do? Warn Chase? Warn Chase’s cohorts? But what
should he warn them about? He remembered suddenly that his place was
beside the ballot box, and he turned and fairly ran down the street to
the voting rooms. And it seemed to him that, as he sped, mirth pursued
him.
But he found everything as he left it. Ed Howe still sat by the stove,
still smoked. He looked up as Jim entered, and shifted his pipe in his
mouth.
“Why, Jim!” he exclaimed in pretended dismay. “You’re all het up! You’re
all of a stew! Jim--have you gone and seen a ghost?”
Jim Thomas glared at him. He had gone away from this place confident and
calm; he returned in a turmoil of fear; and the worst of this fear was
that he did not know what it was he feared. He glared at Howe.
“What you been up to whilst I was gone, Ed Howe?” he demanded.
Ed looked at him in surprise. “We-ell--I’ve smoked two pipes.”
Jim strode to the ballot box, shook it, stared into its slot as though
to read its secret.
Ned Bentley came in. He wished to cast his vote, and proceeded to do so.
As he was about to go, he paused for a moment on the threshold.
“Has anybody here seen Wint?” he asked.
It was the stressing of his words that startled Jim. This stress, the
emphasis of the verb, suggested that they had been discussing Wint, or
that Wint must be in all their thoughts. And Jim had not thought of Wint
Chase for days.
“Why should we have seen Wint?” he demanded, and looked at Ed Howe. Ed
was grinning.
Of a sudden, light burst on Jim Thomas. It was not all the truth that he
guessed. But it was enough of it to make his head swim. Without a word,
he leaped for the street and ran across to the hotel--where there was a
telephone.
Ed Howe watched him go--and grinned. “I declare--Jim acts right crazy,”
he drawled.
Jim came back presently, a grim set about his jaw. He had no word for
any of them. But he went to the voting list and copied the names of
those citizens who had not yet voted, and went to the telephone again.
When he returned this time, it was five minutes to four o’clock.
Ed lounged up from his chair. “Well--we’ve ’greed to close the polls
now. Go to counting....” He started for the door, as though to bolt it.
Jim Thomas sprang in front of him. Jim was mad. “Git back there, Ed
Howe.”
Ed looked puzzled. “Why--what--”
“Yo’re tricky; but you ain’t won yet. Set down. Legal hour for closing
is six. We’ll have some law here.”
“But we ’greed on four....”
“Shut up!”
Ed lounged back in his chair. “Well--in that case--I got time for
another smoke.” He filled his pipe and began it.
There followed a hectic two hours. Hardiston had never seen anything
like it, anything even approaching it.
Every automobile that could be mustered by the Chase forces was
mustered. Every livery stable in town hitched up its most ramshackle
team. Even the funeral hacks were pressed into service. Fenney’s motor
truck brought two loads of men from the glass factory. Even Bob Dyer’s
old tandem bicycle came into use.
And when the elder Chase met Congressman Caretall in front of the Post
Office at half past five, he refused to speak to him.
It was open war, with no quarter asked or given. The joke was out, and
the Congressman’s men were enjoying it in anticipation. They exulted
openly; they gathered at the polling places to watch the voters whom the
Chase workers dragged thither. They cheered these workers on, praised
them, encouraged them, made bets on their success.
It was a hectic two hours, and it lived long in Hardiston annals. But it
had to end.
When the town clock struck six, the polls closed. And at every precinct
in town, the strain relaxed and took, forthwith, the form of hunger.
Unanimously, the election officials sat down with the unopened ballot
boxes on a table, in plain view of the world, and sent out for supper.
Around the ballot boxes, they ate their sandwiches. Jim Thomas ate in
grim silence, iron-jawed and moody. Ed Howe had recovered his spirits.
He was urbane, gracious. He even gave a fair imitation of the manner of
the elder Chase, at which all but Jim Thomas managed to smile.
In the morning, Jim had been jubilant and Ed had been moody and still;
but now the rôles were reversed. It was remarked afterward that no one
had guessed Ed Howe had it in him; and his imitation of the elder Chase
distributing cigars was destined to make him famous.
But this had to end, too. There came a time when the ballot boxes had to
be opened. The tally sheets were prepared, pencils were sharpened, the
boxes were unlocked; and at a quarter past eight o’clock, Jim Thomas
lifted the first ballot from the box and unfolded it.
He looked at it; and a red flood poured over his face, and his jaw
stiffened. But it was his duty to call the vote, and he called it:
“For Mayor--Chase!”
He was still staring at the ballot, and it did not need Ed Howe’s mild
question to confirm his guess at Congressman Caretall’s coup.
What Ed asked was simply: “Which Chase, Jim?”
CHAPTER XI
THE NOTIFICATION
Where was Wint? Others beside Bentley were asking that question, as the
afternoon of election wore along. Where was Wint?
No one had seen him. Every one was asking the question. No one was
answering. But the inquirers, casting back and forth along the trail, at
length hit upon one fact. Wint, for days past, had been consistently in
the company of Jack Routt.
Where, then, was Routt?
On the morning after Amos Caretall’s announcement at the Rink that he
would vote for a Chase for Mayor, Jack Routt had gone to the Congressman
with questions on his lips. He had come away with instructions,
instructions to keep much in Wint’s company and to keep the young man
out of harm’s way till election day.
He had done this zealously. Until Monday evening, he and Wint were
almost constantly together. That evening, Wint went to Joan’s house, and
bluntly rebuffed Jack’s offer to accompany him. But when Wint came
out--and he came out in a sulky and defiant manner--Jack was waiting for
him at the gate.
Jack did not appear to be waiting. He seemed to be merely passing, on
his way downtown; and Wint hailed him.
“Hello--you!”
“Hello, Wint! Just going home?”
“Home? It’s early yet. Going uptown?”
“Yes.” Routt hesitated, as though confused. “I--we--I’m going up to get
a prescription filled.”
Wint laughed. “For snake bite?”
“Oh, no. A real prescription.”
“You don’t say!”
Jack protested. “Sure. So--good night.”
Wint thrust his arm through the other’s. “What do you want to get rid of
me for? I’ll walk up with you.”
Jack balked. “Oh, now, Wint--you--your father will be down on you. You
ought to cut it out, Wint. There’s nothing in it for you. You never know
when to stop!”
Wint stiffened sulkily, but his voice was gentle. “That’s tough! Too bad
about me! And it’s a shame what dad will do to me, now isn’t it?” He
took a step forward. “Coming, Jack?”
So they departed together.
At daylight, the elder Chase, arising early to go to the polls, met
Routt. Jack was homeward bound; and he was a weary young man. Wint was
not with him. They exchanged greetings, but no more.
Routt did not again appear in public until something after noon,
election day. When he came downtown then, he was as spruce as ever, his
eyes clear, and his cheeks pink with health. He showed no signs of
the--fatigue that the elder Chase had remarked in him.
Forthwith, men began to ask him: “Where is Wint?”
The first man that put the question was Peter Gergue. This was a big day
for Peter. He had been busy, whispering and advising and suggesting and
laughing a little behind the back of the elder Chase. He had been too
busy getting out the votes and directing the voters to think much about
Wint until Jack appeared; but the sight of Jack reminded him of Wint;
and so he asked:
“Where is Wint, anyway?”
Jack looked to right and left. “I don’t know,” he said.
Gergue drawled: “It’s your job to know.”
“I know it is. But--he got away from me.”
“Got away from you?”
“Yes. Last night. I couldn’t stop him.”
Gergue frowned and ran his fingers through his back hair.
“It was your job to stop him.”
Jack threw out his hands. “You never saw him when he’s going good.”
Peter nodded and spat. “No,” he said slowly. “No--that’s right. Where
d’you say you left him?”
Routt shook his head. “I wish I knew. He dodged me....”
Gergue shook his head. “Go along. Don’t let ’em see you talking--too
much.”
As the afternoon passed and especially after that final two hours of
scurry and effort began, the inquiries for Wint increased in volume. But
at six o’clock Wint was still listed as missing, and he was still
missing at eight, and he was still missing when the count of the ballots
was completed.
But fifteen minutes later, Skinny Marsh, a man without visible means of
support, met V. R. Kite on the street and drew him into the dark mouth
of an alleyway.
“Kite,” he said huskily, “I got something to tell you.”
“What is it?” V. R. asked crisply.
“You know where Wint is?”
“No. Do you?”
“Yes.”
Kite was interested enough now. “Where?”
Marsh told him; and ten seconds later, Kite was walking briskly up the
street, gathering his clans.
* * * * *
In the valley on the northeast side of Hardiston, there is a network of
railway tracks, the freight and coal yards of the D. T. & I. Acres of
ground are covered with slack, deposited through many years, and
sprinkled over with the cinders from a thousand puffing engines.
This is low land. At one spot, a stagnant pool forms every year, and
furnishes some ragged skating for the children of the locality. The ice
factory is on a hill above this pool. At the other end of the yards,
there is a gaunt and ruined brick structure that was once a nail mill;
and this mill gives its name to the section.
Across the tracks, there are half a dozen streets, lined for the most
part with well-kept little cottages of workingmen. But in one street
there is a larger structure that was once a hotel.
This hotel is called the Weaver House. It fronts on the street, is
flanked on one side by a railway track, and is backed by the creek whose
muddy waters lap its sills at flood time. This was, in its days of
glory, a railroad hotel, catering to the train crews in the days before
the roads frowned on drink among the men. When the road threatened to
discharge any man seen in the place, its business languished. But
prohibition brought the Weaver House a measure of prosperity. There was
strategic merit in its situation. A rear room overhung the creek; and a
section of the floor of this room was so arranged that when a bolt was
pulled the floor would swing downward and drop whatever it bore into the
concealing waters.
This was a simple and effective way of destroying evidence; and the
owner of the place made good use of it.
The office of this hostelry was a square room at one corner in front. At
eleven o’clock on the night of election day, there were five creatures
in this room.
Four were human; one was a dog.
The office was lighted by a single oil lamp. The chimney of this lamp
had once been badly smoked, and subsequently cleaned by a masculine
hand. It was, to put it gently, dingy. Also, its wick needed trimming.
As a result of these defects, the light it gave was not blinding.
This lamp stood on a square table in one corner of the room. A wall
bench ran along two sides of the table. At the corner, a checkerboard
was set on the table, and over this board two old men leaned. They were
engrossed in their game. Both were gray, both were unclean, both were
ragged. Both were bearded, and the beards of both were stained, below
the mouth, with tobacco. Nevertheless, they played keenly, and at the
conclusion of each game broke into bitter, cackling arguments. These
arguments lasted only so long as it took them to rearrange the men, when
the one whose turn it was made the first move, and silence instantly
descended on them again.
These gusts of debate which broke from the old men now and then were the
only sounds in the room.
Beside one of the men, and leaning forward over the table in a strained
and awkward position, was the boy. He may have been fourteen years old.
But it was strange and pitiful to see in his face, in his eyes, an air
of age and grim experience almost equaling that of his two old
companions. This boy was dressed in clothes too small for him, so that
his wrists stuck out from his sleeves, his neck reared itself bare and
gaunt above his coat collar, and his pale ankles and shins were exposed
above the shoes he wore.
This boy was reading. He was reading a copy of the bulletin of the Ohio
Brewers’ Association. He was spelling it out word by word, with the
closest attention. When the old men burst into argument, the boy shook
his head a little as though annoyed by their outcries. But for the rest,
he read steadily, passing his fingers along the lines as he read.
The dog slept on the floor at his feet. The dog was just a dog.
The other person in the room was the manager of the Weaver House. The
manager was a woman. The manager was also the owner. She sat in a chair
beside what had been the bar, at one side of the room. Her hands were
folded in her lap, her head lolled on one shoulder, her mouth was open,
and she was asleep.
This woman was a virago. In the old days, she once hit a brakeman with a
rubber bung starter, and he died. She was acquitted because the brakeman
was drunk and she pleaded self-defense. She was feared and respected by
the men among whom she lived. In Paris, in ’93, she would have been a
commanding figure. In the Nail Mill Addition of Hardiston she was a
plague. But as she sat here now, asleep, her old hands folded in her
lap, she invited not fear nor disgust but just compassion.
She was merely a tired old woman, asleep.
She was still asleep when the street door opened and four men came in.
The floor of the office was a foot below the level of the street. The
first of the four men tripped and stumbled over this descent; and this
slight sound woke the woman. She got to her feet with scrambling
quickness, and from behind the breastwork of the dusty bar, surveyed
her visitors. Her eyes were failing, and she thrust her head forward and
twisted it on one side that she might see the better.
When she saw who the leader of the four men was, she straightened up
with relief and said, her voice openly contemptuous:
“Oh, it’s you, Kite?”
It was. V. R. Kite, Jack Routt, and two of Kite’s satellites. Kite
glanced at the men over the checkerboard, and at the boy. The old men,
at their entrance, had looked up in fretful hostility, surrendered to
the inevitable, and returned to their game. The boy continued to read.
“Hello, Mrs. Moody!” said Kite to the woman; and he stepped toward her
and lowered his voice. “Is there a man--Wint Chase--staying here?”
Mrs. Moody grinned. The grin revealed a startlingly perfect set of false
teeth, as beautiful as those of a girl of twenty. Their very beauty made
them hideous in Mrs. Moody’s mouth. She nodded.
“I want to see him.”
“He’s upstairs. I’ll show you.”
She turned around and took a lamp from a shelf behind her and lighted
it. Then, with this in her right hand, and her petticoats gathered up in
her left, she emerged from behind the bar and led the way to the stairs.
The four men followed in silence. Kite led, and Routt was on his heels.
The stairs were uncertain; but they made the ascent without disaster.
Mrs. Moody led the way along a narrow hall to an open door, and stood
aside here so that the others might enter. She was enjoying herself.
The four men went into the dark room, and the woman followed and set the
lamp on the mantel. This lamp illumined the place.
The room contained a bed, a chair, and a wardrobe. On the chair were set
two shoes. On the floor lay a hat and a coat and one sock. In the bed,
sprawling on his back upon the dirty coverlet, was Wint.
The woman crossed and shook him by the shoulder. She screamed at him:
“Wake up, deary! Here’s gentlemen to see you!”
Routt crossed quickly to her side, his face working. “Here. Let me!”
She pushed him scornfully. “And don’t I know the ways of a drunk, at my
age? Get back with you. It’s me that has a right to bring him out of
it.”
She shook Wint again; and this time he came slowly back to
consciousness. He gasped, flung out his arms, stirred. His mouth twisted
as though at a bad taste on his tongue. They waited for his eyes to
open, but after a moment he settled back into sleep again.
The woman looked up over her shoulder. “He’s had a full dose. Since noon
he’s been so.” She shook Wint again, yelled into his ear, cuffed him.
Thus presently he woke.
His eyes opened, though he still lay on his back. His eyes opened, and
they wandered idly about the room, fixing a dull gaze now on this face
and now on that. Wint was usually amiable when he was drunk, and so when
he discovered Routt, he grinned and tried to sit up.
“Good ol’ Jack,” he said thickly. “Tried be a guardian t’ me. I fooled
’m. No hard feelin’s, Jack. Shake, ol’ man.”
He leaned on one elbow and thrust out an unsteady hand. V. R. Kite
grinned wickedly, and Routt stepped forward and sat down on the bed and
put his arms about Wint’s shoulders.
“Wint,” he begged. “Stiffen up! We’ve got to get you out of here.”
Wint shook his head. “I’m comf’ble here. My hostess--” He waved a hand
toward Mrs. Moody. “She’s a lady. I’ll stay right here. I’m always go’n’
stay here, Jack.”
Routt shook him gently, cuffed his cheeks smartly. “Wint! Wint! Come out
of it! Come on. Let’s go to my house. Let’s go home.”
Wint recognized the others. “H’lo, V. R.,” he said amiably. “V. R., why
this sudd’n s’lic’tude?”
V. R. Kite was not a bashful man. He was enjoying himself. “I came to
take you home--take you to some respectable house,” he declared. “This
is no place for you.”
Mrs. Moody broke into objurgations. But one of Kite’s companions deftly
hustled her into the hall, and silenced her there. Wint persisted:
“Why don’ this place suit me all right? I wanna know, V. R.”
Routt looked at Kite, and Kite said oracularly: “Because, my friend, the
voters of Hardiston have elected you their next Mayor.”
Wint was swaying a little in Routt’s arms; and for a time his face
remained blank. Then it assumed a puzzled look. In the end he asked, his
voice less unsteady: “What’s--that?”
“You’re elected Mayor, Wint,” Routt told him. “Brace up.”
Wint sat up slowly, pushing Routt’s arms aside. “You mean--my father,
don’t you?”
Routt shook his head; and Kite said pompously: “No, not your father.
Yourself. The voters wrote in your name on the ballots....”
They saw a slow sweep of red flood Wint’s face; and for an instant his
eyes closed as though he were fainting. The flush passed and left him
pale. He got up, stood erect, unsteady, then firm. He shed drunkenness
as though it were a cloak, throwing it off with a backward movement of
his shoulders.
They watched him, waiting; and V. R. Kite suddenly moved a little toward
the door, half afraid.
Then Wint burst out on them. He waved his hands furiously. “Routt!” he
shouted. “This is a poor joke. It’s a damn poor joke. You Kite, you old
whited sepulchre. You panderer, you worse than a prostitute--get out of
here! Jack--I counted you my friend. You’re all dogs, cowards, rascals!
Get out! If I choose to lie drunk in this shack--I’ll lie here. None of
you shall stop me. It’s not your affair. It’s mine. Mine! Get out! The
last one of you! Get out!”
He was so furious that they obeyed him. Routt tried to protest, but Wint
gripped him by the shoulders and whirled him and thrust him toward the
door.
They tumbled over each other into the hall. Even V. R. Kite lost his
dignity. Wint pursued them, cursing them. He drove them to the stairs,
down, stood above them with brandished fists. And when they had gone he
still stood there for a space, trembling and alone.
Then he turned and went haltingly back into the room. He was no longer
drunk. He was as sober as hell. He went into the room, stood at the
door, frozen, ghastly white.
The lamp still stood on the mantel, and he crossed to it without knowing
what he did. He stood before it.
There was a cracked mirror behind the lamp, above the mantel. Wint saw
himself in it.
He looked into his own eyes for a long instant; and then his face
twitched into a terrible, shamed, disgusted grimace. He lifted the lamp
in both hands and sent it crashing into the grate in the fireplace. It
splintered and shivered into fragments. The flame of the wick still
burned, however, and the oil that had spilled caught fire, so that for a
time the hearth and the grate were wreathed in blue flame.
Then the oil burned itself out. The room was left in darkness.
Wint went slowly across to the miserable bed and sat down on it. He
gripped his head in his hands. After a little he lay down on his back on
the bed.
Presently his misery and shame became so poignant that tears filled his
eyes and welled over and flowed down his cheeks to the pillow. He
ignored them.
Eventually, the silence in the room was torn by a single, racking sob.
END OF BOOK ONE
BOOK II
CHAPTER I
MULDOON
The sun woke Wint in the morning; and the awakening was cruel. Level,
white-hot rays burned through his eyelids as though they would char to
cinders his aching eyes. He threw his arm fretfully across his face to
keep off the glare and lay quietly on the shabby bed, groping back into
the night and into the hours of the preceding day in a terrible effort
to remember.
There was no more drunkenness in him. The shock of what they had told
him had banished that. He was sober. Too sober, in all conscience, for
any peace of mind. It was his loneliness that was most torturing. If
there had been some one near, some one else in the room, for whose
benefit it was necessary to play a part, Wint would have stiffened his
resolution and laughed at the situation. But he could not play a part
that would deceive himself. Alone in the dingy bedroom in that
disreputable place, he burned with shame and tortured pride.
He began to fit together the pieces of the puzzle. He never doubted that
it was true the voters had elected him. There had been truth in Jack
Routt’s eyes the night before, truth and a sort of triumph. Routt was a
good fellow and a true friend; and he rejoiced, no doubt, that Wint had
been so honored. Wint, thinking this, grimaced. He knew, without
explanations, that his election was a joke; a colossal joke in the first
place upon his father, and a grim jest at his own expense. He could
imagine the cackling mirth of those who had engineered the thing; and
this laughter that he seemed to hear lashed his ears.
He flung himself over on his face and buried his head in his arms and
tried to think. He was full of rebellion. He would go away, leave this
place, never return....
After a time, he lifted his head and moved his body and sat up on the
bed, his feet on the floor. He sat up and looked about him and shuddered
in a sick way.
The light of day made this room more hideous than it had been by
lamplight. The shattered lamp lay in the grate, and there was a charred
place on the floor near the hearth, where the oil had burned itself out,
when Wint threw down the lamp the night before. Above the mantel hung
the cracked mirror. In it from where he sat, Wint could see a distorted
reflection of the ceiling of the room, and an angle of the wall. There
had once been paper on this wall, and it had been cracked by the
shrinking of the plaster, and picked away by casual fingers, and here
and there it hung in short, ragged strips. The bare floor was unclean;
the chair near the bed where Wint’s two shoes now reposed was decrepit
and lacked paint. One door of the big wardrobe hung awkwardly from
weakened hinges. It was a little ajar, and Wint could see a disorder of
rubbish inside. On the floor near the chair lay his hat and coat and one
sock, where he had dropped them when he had come here and stumbled
drunkenly to bed.
He held his head in his hands, and his fingers clenched in his crisp
hair.
For some time, his senses had been catching hints of life in the
building below him. The smell of burning grease had come up the stairs
from the kitchen; and the grumble of voices now and then upraised in
protest or abuse had reached his ears. Once he heard, from a distance
and muffled by intervening doors and walls, the clamor of quarreling
dogs. But these things did not penetrate his consciousness until a new
and louder disturbance broke out somewhere below.
A dog barked, snarling and angry; another yelped. The two joined their
voices in an angry tumult of sound. Then a woman’s voice, the voice of
Mrs. Moody, shouted abuse, and a door opened and cries and barks and
snarls redoubled.
Wint lifted his head, in sudden recognition. He heard the thud of some
missile that had missed its mark and clattered against the floor; and
then he heard the scramble of hard-toed feet racing up the stairs, and
the snuffing of eager nostrils. His eyes lighted softly; and he called:
“Muldoon!”
There was a yelp of delight and a new scuffle of feet, and Muldoon
plunged in through the open door and was all over Wint in a delirious
joy at this reunion. The dog leaped up on Wint’s knees; it tried to
climb on his shoulders; its tongue sought to caress his cheeks; it
nipped his hands lovingly; and all the time it whined a low whine of
happiness. Wint, cuffing the hard and eager head, smiled in spite of
himself at the dog’s caresses; he smiled, and caught Muldoon by the ears
and held him away and shook him affectionately.
“You, dog!” he scolded. “How did you come here? Eh, you?”
Muldoon wriggled in a desperate effort to explain; and then he stiffened
in Wint’s arms, and turned toward the door with hackles rising. Wint
looked that way and saw Mrs. Moody, panting with the zeal of her
pursuit. The virago came in; she bore a stick of firewood in one harsh
hand; she made for Muldoon, and her old lips dripped blistering abuse.
Wint drew Muldoon close in his arms and held up a protesting hand. “Wait
a minute, wait a minute!” he warned her. “What’s the matter?”
She smiled mirthlessly, brandishing her billet and reaching for
Muldoon’s scruff. “I’m a-goin’ to whale that pup, deary,” she told Wint.
“He’s been around here all morning.”
Wint hugged Muldoon closer. “Of course,” he said, “he knew I was here.”
She looked puzzled. “He ain’t your’n, is he?”
“Sure,” Wint told her. “He’s some dog, too.”
The woman’s anger vanished. “Well, say now, if I’d a knowed that....”
She laughed, her desolately beautiful false teeth glistening between her
wrinkled lips. “He’s drove my dog crazy. He come around here before day,
and Jim heard him and tried to get out. Woke me up. I drove this one
away; but he came back. Jim got out once, and they had it till I broke
’em up. And then a minute ago, Jim got out again, and when I went after
’em with this stove wood, that’n of your’n slipped by me and in and up
th’ stairs.”
Wint rubbed Muldoon’s head proudly. “He must have tracked me, found me
out somehow,” he explained. “I left him locked up. Hope he didn’t hurt
your....”
“Oh, Jim c’n take care of hisself. If he can’t, he’ll have t’ look out.”
She looked around the room curiously. “You had callers last night. D’ye
remember?”
Wint nodded, bending over the dog. “Yes--I remember.”
The woman studied him. “Thought mebbe you was too far gone to know
anythin’....” She waited for Wint to speak; but Wint volunteered
nothing, so she remarked: “I see th’ lamp got broke.”
“I’ll pay for it,” Wint told her. She nodded.
“That’s all right. All in the bill. You must’ve been tickled to hear
about bein’ elected.”
Wint said nothing. The woman laughed harshly. “Never had a Mayor of
Hardiston in my hotel before. Had some sheriffs, and a marshal now ’nd
then. But no Mayor!” She shook with mirth at the thought. “I d’clare,
I’ll have t’ raise my rates.”
Wint looked at her steadily, with expressionless eyes. He was fighting
to hide the humiliation which was stinging him; and he succeeded. His
silence at last frightened the woman; she backed toward the door,
babbling broken sentences. Only when she was in the hall, with an avenue
of flight open to her, did she recover herself. “But I s’pose you’ll
forgit old friends, now that you’re Mayor, deary,” she told him.
Wint smiled bleakly. “Don’t count on it,” he said.
She seemed uncertain whether to take this as a threat or reassurance. “I
was always a good friend to you,” she reminded him.
He nodded. “Yes--you’ve been consistent, at least.”
She wagged her old head, comforted and grinning. “I guess you won’t
forgit,” she told herself. And after a moment: “Will you be wanting some
breakfast?”
Wint stroked the ears of Muldoon. “No,” he said. “No.” And he added
thoughtfully: “Thank you very much.”
“That’s all right, deary,” she assured him, and so turned at last and
went haltingly down the stairs.
When the woman was gone, Wint sat very still for a space, staring at the
empty doorway, thinking. Muldoon was on his lap, and Wint forgot the
dog, although his hand still played automatically with Muldoon’s ears.
The dog was for a time content with this, moving its head now and then
under Wint’s hand to get full value from his caresses; but by and by it
became conscious of his abstraction, and looked up into his face, and
wriggled, and at last muzzled a cold nose under his chin and nudged
upward against Wint’s jaw until Wint emerged from his absorption and
laughed and caught Muldoon’s head in his hands and shook it. “There,
boy,” he whispered. “D’you think I’d forgotten you? No fear, Muldoon.”
Having aroused his master, Muldoon in his turn decided to feign
abstraction. He lay down, ostentatiously, across Wint’s knees, and he
pillowed his muzzle on his forepaws and lay there with eyes rolling up
in spite of himself to watch Wint’s face. Wint cupped the dog’s lower
jaw in his right hand and shook it gently. “What are they saying about
me uptown, Muldoon?” he asked.
The dog moved its head, then fell into a motionless pose again. Wint
bent over it, whispering, half to Muldoon and half to himself.
“Laughing, of course,” he said softly. “Laughing! The joke of years!” He
smiled grimly. “Tough on dad. He’d set his heart on this Mayor
business.”
He looked across to the window, and his eyes hardened. “They meant it as
much as a joke on me as on father,” he reminded himself, and his eyes
burned. He wondered how the plan had been carried through. Caretall and
Gergue must have had their hand in it; they had probably united with V.
R. Kite. It would be reasonably easy, he knew. His father had had no
real popularity. Winthrop Chase, Senior, was not a likable man. He was
not a vote getter. There was a self-conscious condescension about his
good-fellowship.
Wint had never paid any great attention to local politics. He wondered
idly what a Mayor had to do. He tried to remember some of the things
Mayors had done in the past; and he found his only knowledge of the
subject concerned with a Hallowe’en prank as a result of which he and
two others had been haled before the Mayor’s court and badly frightened.
“He must do something besides that,” he assured himself. “But Lord--I
couldn’t even do that.”
What was he to do? That was the thing he had to decide, and he must
decide at once. What could he do? Was there any way by which he could
nullify the election; resign; abdicate; get himself impeached? He
thought of these projects wistfully. They took no concrete form in his
mind. He knew nothing of the machinery of local government, knew nothing
of the avenues of escape which might be open to him.
He only knew that he would not be made thus the butt of the town’s
mirth. His face flushed at the thought; and he got up abruptly and
walked to the window, Muldoon pacing at his side and looking up
wistfully at his master. He would not do it. They should have their
trouble for their pains. They were fools. Impudent fools....
One thing he could do; one thing at least. He could go away. Hide. If he
were not here, they could not force him to serve. So much was sure. He
would go away....
This decision, Wint told himself, had cleared the air. He tried to
believe that it solved all his perplexities; and he bent over Muldoon
and cuffed the dog and romped with it across the room, to Muldoon’s
delirious delight. Then he began to whistle to himself, and so looked
about and sat down on the bed, and drew on the sock which still lay on
the floor. He had difficulty in fastening the sock supporter about his
leg. The leg of the trousers obstructed him. He fussed over the thing
until he was fuming again, and his face flushed with stooping. But at
last the trick was done, and he took his shoes from the chair and put
them on. He found that one of the laces was broken, no doubt by his
drunken fingers when he had unlaced the shoes before removing them. This
discovery whetted his resentment and disgust. He knotted the lace and
hid the knot under an eyelet of the shoe, where it pressed on his instep
and irked him. He kicked the shoe on the floor until it gave him some
measure of comfort.
His hat and coat were on the floor. He put them on, brushing the dust
from the coat with his hands, and afterwards with a flicker of his
handkerchief. Then he crossed reluctantly to the speckled mirror and
looked into it.
He saw that his face was dirty, and his collar soiled and crushed. He
took the collar off and turned it inside out and replaced it, and it
gave him some faint satisfaction to see the improvement thus effected in
his appearance. But he was still ghastly. There was no water in the
room; and he knew that the bathroom at the end of this upper hall was
not made for cleanliness, so he wet his handkerchief with his tongue and
scrubbed his face clean with that. The result had a forced and unnatural
look, but he was constrained to be content.
He started slowly for the door, but his feet lagged. It was hard for him
to make up his mind to face the world again. He thought, uneasily, of
remaining here through the day and catching a night freight out of town;
and he turned irresolutely back toward the bed, but Muldoon, at his
knee, barked softly in remonstrance, and Wint bent and patted the dog’s
head and said softly: “Right you are, pup. We’re not afraid of them. But
Heaven help the man that laughs, Muldoon!”
The dog wagged its whole body, and barked again, as though in approval;
and Wint smiled faintly and went again toward the door. He looked down
and saw that his trousers were wrinkled, and he smoothed and tugged at
them in an effort to give them some appearance of respectability. When
he had done his best for them, he went toward the door again, and this
time he did not stop. He went out into the hall, and to the stair head,
and so down into the office of the hotel.
Like the bedroom, the office of the Weaver House suffered by daylight.
Even the dingy and unwashed window panes could not keep out the pitiless
sun; and the room’s ugliness was exposed in hideous nakedness.
The room, save for the fact that the sun instead of a lamp lighted it,
was as it had been the night before. The smoky lamp, still standing on
the table, gave forth a smell of dirty oil which filled the place and
fought with the reek of bad tobacco and the pungent smell of alcohol.
Doors and windows were tight shut. At their corner of the table, above
their checkerboard, still leaned the two old men. It was as though they
had not stirred, the long night through. As Wint came down the stairs, a
game ended, and their cackling voices broke into the familiar argument,
while their stained old fingers swiftly rearranged the pieces for a new
beginning. Then one moved a piece, and both fell silent, and the new
game began.
Mrs. Moody sat at her place behind what had been the bar. The only
change in the room since the night before was that instead of the
reading boy, a man sat by the table. This man was unshaven, trembling,
shrunken within his rumpled and baggy garments. His eyes were open, and
his head wagged from side to side as he sat, and his lips moved in an
interminable, mumbling argument with some one invisible.
Jim, the dog that was just a dog, was not to be seen.
Wint, with Muldoon at his heels, came down the stairs and stopped in
front of the bar and nodded to Mrs. Moody. He reached into his pocket,
and the old woman got up briskly and grinned at him, the enamel of her
teeth a blinding white flash in her wrinkled old face. Her eyes puckered
when she grinned; and she laid her hands, palms down, upon the bar.
“Going away, deary?” she asked.
Wint nodded. “What do I owe you?”
“Sorry I ain’t got a bite to offer ye,” she apologized. Then, with a sly
glance at the men across the room. “Less’n you wanted to come out by the
kitchen in back. A little drop....”
Wint shook his head. “Not to-day. How much?”
She told him and he selected a bill and gave it to her. She took it, and
tucked up her apron and delved into the pocket of her loose skirt and
produced a dirty, cloth bag. This bag was tied with a string at the top;
and she untied the string, and rummaged inside, and found his change,
and gave it to him. He took it from her; and as he did so, he turned at
a shuffling step and saw the drunken man at his elbow.
This man peered at him; and Wint moved a little away from him. The man
followed a lurching step, and grinned placatingly, and mumbled: “Wint
Chase, ain’t it?”
Wint nodded. “Yes.” He tried to pass the man and get to the door; but
the man thrust out a shaking hand.
“Shake!” he invited thickly. “Wanna shake hands with new Mayor. Voted
f’r you, voted f’r you three times.”
Mrs. Moody was leaning across the bar and watching and grinning. Wint
hesitated, and then he took the man’s hand and shook it, and tried to
release it; but the man clung to it, and lunged closer, and put his
other hand on Wint’s shoulder. His weight fell against Wint’s chest.
“New Mayor,” he repeated uncertainly. “Good, nice new Mayor.” He
chuckled loosely and wiped his wet mouth with the back of his hand and
gripped Wint’s shoulder again, and regarded Wint seriously, studying
him. “Good little man,” he applauded. “Make dam’ good Mayor f’r this
little town.”
He rocked on his feet, and Wint tried to put the man away without
offending him, but the man staggered and clasped his arms around Wint’s
neck and giggled weakly on Wint’s breast.
“This’ll be a nice, wet li’l town now, eh, boy!” he exulted. “Eh, boy?
Nice, wet li’l town....”
Wint, with a sudden revulsion that sickened him and stiffened his angry
pride, thrust the man away and stepped quickly out into the street. He
felt Muldoon brush against his legs, and he looked down at the dog and
set his jaw.
“You, dog,” he whispered. “They’ve tried one joke too many. Eh, pup?
We’ll stay and turn the joke on them, Muldoon. What say?”
Muldoon whined approvingly, fidgeting on eager feet; and Wint bent and
clapped him on the shoulder. “Come on, you,” he said softly. “Come on.
Let’s go home.”
CHAPTER II
JOAN
Wint left the Weaver House at a little before noon, Muldoon trotting
sedately at his heels. The street outside the hotel was empty; and Wint
was glad of this. He followed it to the railroad tracks, intending to
cross the yards and take a back street toward his home. But at the end
of the street, he encountered Peter Gergue.
Gergue saw him coming, and stopped, and fumbled in the tangle of hair at
the back of his head until Wint came near. Wint would have avoided him,
but there was no way to do this, and so he said coldly:
“Good morning, Pete.”
Gergue grinned slowly. “Why--right fair,” he agreed. “Yes’r, it’s a
right fair morning--if you look at it that way.”
Wint nodded. He would have passed by, but Gergue stopped him. “I was
coming down after you,” he said.
“Why?” Wint asked.
“Oh--I thought you might want company. Heard you was here.”
“Want anything special?”
“We-ell--I did think of congratulating you.”
Wint smiled coldly. “Thanks. That all?”
Gergue rummaged through his hair. “Thought you might have things to
inquire about.”
Wint started to say “No” to this, then changed his mind and looked
steadily. “You--you mix in politics, don’t you, Pete?”
Gergue looked startled. “Why--some,” he admitted. “Why, yes, I might
say--some.”
“Friend of Congressman Caretall’s, aren’t you?”
Gergue spat, and nodded slowly. “I like to help him out--when I c’n
manage,” he agreed.
Wint smiled again. “Then you know how this thing happened.”
“Some,” said Peter.
“Explain it to me,” Wint invited. “How was it worked? And--why?”
Gergue grinned slyly. Then he laughed, a shrill burst of merriment of a
sort unusual in this man. When this mirth passed, he touched Wint’s
lapel. “Cleanest piece of work I ever see,” he declared.
“How was it done?”
“Word o’ mouth! Word o’ mouth! Cong’essman knew folks was expecting
something f’om him. He kept ’em expecting. Told everybody he was going
to vote for a man named Chase. Got ’em worked up, sittin’ on needles and
pins and cockle burrs to know where the trick come in. Everybody knowed
they was some trick. Then--last minute--he passed the word to V. R.
Kite, and him and Kite passed the word around. Everybody figured it
would be a joke on your paw. Whole town took it laughing, and went and
done what Cong’essman told ’em t’ do. Writ in your name....”
Wint smiled frostily. “Great joke, wasn’t it?”
Gergue chuckled. “Fine. Take V. R. Kite. Tickled him half t’ death. Like
t’ killed Kite.”
“Caretall and my father are against each other, of course.”
“Sure. Your paw comes to the Cong’essman, high and mighty, offering him
this ’nd that. That wa’n’t no way to go at the Cong’essman. Amos ain’t
used to it.”
Wint nodded. “But why me?” he asked. “Why pick on me?”
Gergue waved his hand. “That made it more like a joke on your paw.
Everybuddy knowed what your paw thinks of you. Figured it’d pupplex him.
It did, too, Wint. It certainly did pupplex your paw.”
“It would,” Wint agreed. “But--I should think Caretall would as soon see
my father elected as me.”
“Yo’r paw had a little too much wind in his sails. Needed a little
coolin’ off. Amos gave it to him.”
“But how about Kite?” Wint asked. “Why was he so ready to fall in with
it?”
Gergue looked at Wint sidewise. “Why, he don’t like yo’r paw so very
much,” he explained, with an appearance of frankness, “and besides that,
Kite’s wet, and your paw’s dry. That stands t’ reason.”
“He figured I would be wet, of course.”
Gergue nodded emphatically. “Natural,” he said. “Natural, he figured
that way.”
“Did Caretall have that idea, too?”
Gergue wagged his head. “We-ell, now,” he parried, “Amos don’t lay so
much on that end of it. He’s a wet man, in politics; but he don’t touch
it hisself. I guess he just wanted t’ give you a leg up--see what you’d
do. Amos keeps his eye on the young fellows, that way.”
They had crossed the tracks while they were talking, and now they met
two men. Wint knew these men casually; they knew him. They were workmen;
and they saw Wint and Gergue together, and grinned, and one of them
called: “Morning, Mr. Mayor.”
Wint smiled at them amiably. “Good morning.”
“Congratulations!”
“Thanks.” Wint’s cheeks were burning. The men passed by, and he and
Gergue started up the hill by a back street that led toward his home.
Neither of them spoke. Presently they began to meet other men. One or
two men scowled at Gergue, stared angrily at Wint; but for the most part
they smiled covertly, and voiced congratulations. Their words seemed to
Wint to mark covert jibes.
After a time the two came to a cross street that led toward town; and
here Gergue halted and looked at Wint curiously. “Was there anything
else?” he asked.
Wint shook his head.
“You wasn’t thinking, maybe, of walking uptown?”
“Not now.”
“Going on home, I guess.”
“Yes.”
Gergue nodded. “All right. When you come uptown, you might stop in and
see me.”
“I’ll see,” Wint told him.
“Amos aims to do right by you,” said Gergue.
“Much obliged.”
“You don’t want to hold this against him.”
Wint smiled slowly. “Good-by,” he said.
Gergue nodded. “By-by,” he responded. “I’ll see you again.”
He turned toward town, and Wint watched him for a moment, and then went
on toward his home. Muldoon trotted sedately before him, ranging now and
then across the street or into a yard to investigate some affair of his
own. Wint walked swiftly, for he had an uneasy feeling of nakedness in
the light of open day, as though every one he encountered must see the
shame that was torturing him. He came to his home through a short cut
that brought him by way of an alley to the kitchen door; and when he
opened the door and stepped into the kitchen, he saw Hetty Morfee there.
Hetty was rolling biscuits on a board, her sleeves rolled to the elbows
on her creamy arms; and she turned at the sound of his entrance and
stood with the rolling pin in one hand, brushing back the hair from her
eyes with the other, and laughing at him softly.
“Oh, you Wint!” she said.
Wint closed the kitchen door behind him and faced the girl. “Is mother
here?” he asked.
“She’s in next door.” She nodded her head reproachfully. “You certainly
have started something, Wint.”
“Where’s father?”
“Uptown. He telephoned just now to know if you had come home. He ain’t
coming home for dinner.”
Wint dropped his eyes for a moment, then lifted his head. “All right,”
he said. “I--I suppose he’s mad as a hatter.”
Hetty chuckled softly. “Mad as two of ’em,” she declared. “You certainly
have started something this time, Wint.”
He looked toward the biscuit board. “Are those for lunch?”
“Uh-huh.”
“How soon will they be ready?”
“Half an hour. You hungry?” She studied him, solicitude lurking in her
eyes.
“Yes. I didn’t have any breakfast.”
The girl moved toward him with the quick instinct of woman. “You poor
kid! I’ll get you something now.”
He lifted his hand impatiently. “Never mind. Or--just a glass of milk.”
She laughed, crossing the room toward the pantry. “You just sit down and
see.” And while he still stood irresolutely in the middle of the floor,
she was back with bread and butter and a glass of jelly and a bowl of
milk. She spread these things upon the table, and cut the bread for him,
and made him sit down and eat while she hovered over him, her eyes never
leaving the brown head as he bent above his plate. Now and then she
laughed softly, and more than once she repeated: “You surely have
started something this time.”
He ate ravenously. He had not realized his own hunger. But after the
second slice, she stopped him. “Now that’s enough,” she declared.
“You’ll spoil your dinner.”
He laughed, the first time he had laughed that day. “I guess not,” he
declared. “I could eat a house.”
She smiled, carrying the viands back to their places. “Where was you
last night?” she asked curiously.
He looked up at her, half resentful, half glad of her friendship and
understanding. “Weaver House,” he said.
She made a little grimace. “Golly! You must’ve been pie-eyed for fair.”
He flushed, but he nodded. “Yes.”
“And look what they’ve done to you. It don’t pay, does it, Wint?”
He laughed. “I suppose not.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Your paw’s awful mad.”
He got up stiffly. “I suppose so. Well--he’s been mad before.”
“And your maw’s upset.”
“I’ll be up in my room,” he said. “Call me when dinner’s ready.”
She was back at her biscuits, laying them delicately in the pan. “Sure.
Go ahead.” The door closed behind him. When she heard the click of a
latch, the girl stopped her work for an instant, and looked over her
shoulder at the closed door. She remained thus for a space; then brushed
her arm across her forehead as though a lock of hair distressed her, and
went on with her task.
Wint went to his room, and threw aside his soiled garments, and bathed
and was half dressed when Hetty called up the stairs that dinner was
ready. He came down into the hall as his mother entered the front door.
When she saw him, she lifted her hands, and ran at him, and poured out
upon him a torrent of querulous complaint. “Wint, where have you been
all this time? Your father is so mad. He’s terrible mad at you. I never
saw your father so worked up, Wint. I don’t see what you had to go and
do a thing like that for anyhow, Wint. I told Mrs. Hullis this morning I
just couldn’t see how you could do it. Your father was so set on getting
elected, and everything; and he’d made so many plans, and when he came
home last night I said to him--”
Hetty called from the dining-room door: “Dinner’s ready, ma’am.”
“All right, Hetty, I’m a-coming,” Mrs. Chase assured her. “Wint, you
come along. I want to talk to you. I don’t see what you’re going to do
about it. I don’t see--I said to your father last night that I just
couldn’t see how you could--”
Wint broke in: “Mother--please! It wasn’t my doing. I had nothing to do
with it.”
“I said to your father last night, when he came home,” she insisted. “He
came home so mad, and everything. He was in a terrible state, Wint. He
ramped and tore around here like he was a crazy man; and I said to him
that I didn’t see how a son could do a thing like that to him. He was
tramping up and down, and he kept talking about you, and I said to him
that I--”
“I tell you I had nothing to do with it, mother.”
“I think Congressman Caretall ought to have something better to do than
to come home here and stir up a son against his father. I told your
father so; and I said--”
“He didn’t stir me up against father, mother. It was a trick, a
political game. I didn’t know anything about it till they told me I’d
been elected.”
“I said to him that I just couldn’t believe it. And he said if it wasn’t
true why weren’t you here at home where you belonged? He said you were
probably down at Caretall’s, laughing at your father. And I said I just
couldn’t see how a son could do a thing like that to a father like him.
Because your father has been good to you, Wint. He’s been mighty good to
you; and he’s stood a lot. I said to him that he’d stood a lot, and he
said you were probably off drinking again somewhere, and that you’d--”
Hetty came in from the kitchen with the plate of biscuits, and set them
before Mrs. Chase, and looked at Wint and laughed and pressed her hands
to her ears and grimaced at Mrs. Chase’s unconscious head. Wint
protested:
“Mother, I--”
Mrs. Chase broke in. “Hetty, those biscuits are just fine. I declare,
your things always seem to come out better than mine. I wish I could do
it that way. I wish your father was at home, Wint. He likes hot biscuits
so. But goodness knows, he wouldn’t have any appetite to eat anything
to-day. Hetty told me when she called me to come home that he’d
telephoned he wasn’t coming. She told me you had come, and I came right
over to tell you that I just didn’t see how you could--”
Wint was glad at last to finish and escape. He went up to his room, his
mother’s words pursuing him. The reaction had set in; and he was
terribly tired, and sick and full of sleep. He flung himself on his face
on the bed, and he tossed there for a space, thinking miserably, and so
at last he fell asleep.
He was awakened by a thrumming knock on his door, and sat up and called
huskily: “Who’s that?” The door opened, and his father came in.
His father came in, and shut the door behind him. Outside, Wint saw his
mother. She was saying something; and the closing door cut off her
words. His father ignored her; he slowly turned and faced Wint.
It was late afternoon, almost dusk. Shadows had begun to fill the room.
Wint saw that his father’s face was black; and he got up from the bed
and stood there for a moment, and he saw that his father was trembling.
He took a step forward. “Father,” he said unsteadily, “I want to tell
you I had nothing to do with this. I’m sorry. And I’ll do whatever you
say to make things right.”
The restraint which the elder Chase had imposed upon himself fled before
the wind of passion. He lifted his clenched hands as though he would
bring them down upon Wint’s head. “You! You!” he cried. “You’re my
son--and you join with drunkards and vagabonds and thieves to make a
laughingstock of me.”
Wint protested. “I did not! I knew nothing.”
“Don’t lie to me, Wint,” his father cried. The elder man’s anger was
terrible. It swept away the poise with which he faced the world, it left
him nothing but his wrongs; and these wrongs and his own rage somehow
transfigured and ennobled him. In spite of himself, Wint had never
respected and loved his father so much as then. He cried again, almost
pleadingly:
“Dad....”
“Be quiet!” his father cried. “Don’t speak. It is my time to speak. I
have kept silent too long. You have disgraced me with your drunkenness;
and now you make a joke of me before the world. You....”
“I tell you, I knew nothing of this till it was done.”
“You lie. You lie, Wint! And even if it were true, you have made it
possible by--by your debaucheries. You have given them the chance--you
have made me the laughingstock--” he flung his arms wide. “Why even the
Cincinnati papers have the story, Wint. They--the whole damned country
knows....” His voice broke suddenly; his hands dropped at his side.
Resentment fought with affection in Wint; and pride stiffened his voice
as he said again:
“I told you I’d do anything, dad.”
“Anything? What good will that do? You and Caretall--laughing at me! I
won’t stand it! I’ll break Caretall if it kills me. Caretall is a
scoundrel, a crook. He’s debauched the town....”
He stopped suddenly, he became cold and still. “Come down to supper,
Wint,” he said shortly. “After that, you can get out. I’ve warned you
enough--the last time. I’m through.”
Wint stiffened. “Dad....” he said softly.
His father made a fierce gesture. “Be quiet! I tell you I am through.”
He whirled to the door, and opened it, and was gone before Wint could
speak again. But while Wint still stood quiet, he returned and called:
“I know where you were last night. That was enough. That alone. I’m
through. Through!”
This time he did not return. And Wint waited for a space, and then,
mechanically and automatically, he picked up his hat, and put it on, and
went down the stairs. His mother and father were in the dining-room. He
heard his mother’s voice. But he did not go in.
He went to the door and out, and down the walk to the street. As he
reached the pavement, the door opened behind him, and he looked back and
saw his father standing there. For a moment, the two looked at each
other; then the elder man turned his head, and went back into the house
and closed the door.
Wint walked steadily down the street. He did not know where he was to
go; he did not think of this. And so it was without his own volition
that he came to Joan’s home, and saw the girl sitting in a chair upon
the veranda, a book in her lap.
Her eyes met his. Her eyes were very serious and sad; but Wint turned
in, and came to the steps, and stood there before her. She smiled a
little wistfully; and he said, under his breath: “Joan.”
She made no move to answer him. He said again: “Joan....” And then:
“Joan....”
She bent her head a little, but her eyes held his. “Wint,” she said, so
softly he could scarce hear her words. “Wint--I’m sorry. But--I can’t go
on. I can’t--trust you, Wint. This is good-by.”
He felt himself shrink a little at the word; and he stood still for a
moment till his senses steadied. Then he lifted his head a little.
“I don’t blame you,” he told her.
She said again: “Good-by!” And he nodded and echoed quietly:
“Good-by, Joan.”
For another moment, their eyes held each other. Then his dropped, and he
turned and went down to the street again.
* * * * *
Half an hour later, Mrs. Moody was lighting the smoky-lamp in the office
of the Weaver House when Wint came in. She saw him and grinned, and her
teeth reflected the lamp’s light like pearls. “Why, hello, deary! Back
again?” she called.
He nodded. “The same room, please,” he told her.
She bustled across to the stairs, and paused there and looked at him
wisely “A little drop first, in the kitchen?” she invited.
He shook his head. “No--nothing.”
And so presently he found himself in the place where he had slept that
sodden sleep the night before.
CHAPTER III
THE STRATEGY OF AMOS
Wint had returned to the Weaver House in a numb revulsion of feeling. He
was hurt and angry at the whole world; and he was wholly at sea as to
what he should do. His instinct was to fight, to fight the thing out, to
fight his father and to prove to Joan that she was mistaken in her
condemnation. It was this instinct, with an unspoken thought that he
would face the thing honestly, that sent him back to the hovel where he
had spent the night before. That was where he belonged, he told himself.
It was to such places that his father and Joan had consigned him. So be
it. He found a grim sort of satisfaction in flaunting the stigma of his
shame.
The greatest single force in Wint’s life had always been his resentment
of dictation. A devil of contrariness possessed him; a devil of false
pride that made him go counter to all warnings for the sheer joy of
opposition. Thus his best friends became his enemies; for their good
advice and counsel thrust him into evil paths; and by the same token,
those who thought themselves his enemies were as often as not his best
and truest friends. There was a stubborn streak in Wint that ruled him;
it was rare that the gentler side of him had the ascendancy. One of
those rare moments had come when he faced his father on this day. He had
been humble, shamed, regretful, ready to make any amends. But the elder
Chase, writhing under the ridicule to which the day had subjected him,
had been in no mood for gentleness; and the result of the interview of
father and son had been a parting which left them both sore and
resentful.
The first faint anger in Wint’s heart grew swiftly. When he had seen
Joan, and she had sent him away, he coupled her with his father in his
thoughts. They were both against him; both thought him nothing better
than a drunkard; both thought him a treacherous and ribald fool. And the
consciousness of this lifted his head in anger, and stiffened his heart,
so that he swore he would fight out the battle and prove to them they
were wrong, and then throw his newly won victory in their faces. They
thought him a drunken sot; very well, he would fight the fight on that
basis. They thought the Weaver House was the place where he belonged;
very well, he would fight his fight from that brothel. And it was in
such fashion as this, wearing his own disgrace like a plume, that he
returned to Mrs. Moody’s disreputable hostelry.
When he was alone in his room, he sat down on the edge of the bed and
lighted a cigarette. He rested his elbows on his knees, the cigarette
dangling from his clasped fingers, and considered. And as he thought,
his face hardened, hardened with the effort to control his own pity for
himself. He was immensely sorry for his own plight, immensely resentful
of the misunderstandings of which he was a victim. And he was terribly
lonely. He missed companionship--Jack Routt, Gergue, even Muldoon.
Muldoon would have been the most welcome of them all, but he had left
Muldoon at home. He regretted this; and his regret at last became so
keen that he could not bear it. With a sudden resolution, he tossed the
half-burned cigarette into the grate, and went down the stairs and
crossed the railroad and bent his steps toward home. Muldoon, at least,
would not condemn him. Muldoon was a faithful sort; a good pup....
He took alleyways and unfrequented streets, and avoided chance
encounters. Thus he came near his home without meeting any one, and he
went in through the alley and halted under a cherry tree that shaded
Muldoon’s kennel, beside the coal house, and whistled softly. The dog
might be in his kennel; he might be in the house; he might be roaming
abroad in search of his master.
He whistled three times, and got no response. Muldoon was somewhere
beyond hearing. He might be in the house; and if he were and heard
Wint’s whistle, Wint knew he would bark a demand that he be allowed to
come out.
So Wint whistled more shrilly; a long, familiar call.
For a time he got no answer to this. He tried again, and this time he
heard the faint sound of a muffled bark from inside the house. This bark
came nearer, became clamorous, located itself at the kitchen door, where
Wint could hear Muldoon’s claws rattling on the panels.
He started toward the kitchen, then halted. For the windows were
lighted; and at one of them Hetty Morfee appeared. She was wiping
dishes, and when she came to the window she held a plate, gripped in a
dishcloth, in her left hand, and shaded her eyes with her right as she
tried to peer out into the night.
Muldoon’s close-cropped head appeared beside her at the window for an
instant, and he barked again. Wint shrank back into the shadow. He did
not wish to be discovered and he was unwilling to risk encountering his
father or his mother by going to the house. He shrank back into the
darkness; but he whistled again, and this time Hetty left the window and
opened the door, and Muldoon came out like a projectile, and found Wint
under the cherry tree, and slavered over him.
Wint was so absorbed in the dog that he did not see, until too late,
that Hetty had followed Muldoon. She came on him, under the tree,
laughing softly. “It’s you, is it?” she called.
“Yes.”
“What’s the matter?”
“I came for Muldoon. He’s mine.”
She chuckled lightly. “You’re the original Mister Trouble, Wint. Your
paw says he never wants to see you again, and your maw’s gone over to
tell the neighbors all about it.”
“Where’s father?”
“He stomped off uptown after supper.”
Wint fumbled with the dog’s head. “Thanks for letting Muldoon out,” he
said.
“That’s all right. Don’t you want some supper? Come on in.”
“No.”
“Where are you going to spend the night?
“The Weaver House.”
She gave an exclamation of disgust. “That dirty joint!”
“They say that’s where I belong. I can stand it if they can.”
“Oh, don’t be a nut!”
He turned away into the alley, Muldoon at his heels. She called after
him: “What’s your hurry?”
“Good night.”
“Your paw’ll come around.”
Wint said nothing. He was moving away. She ran after him and caught his
arm. “Wint! Don’t be a nut! Come on back! He’ll come around.”
He released his arm and shook his head. “That’s up to him,” he said.
“I’ve eaten dirt. All I intend to.”
She lifted her shoulders, laughed. “Oh--all right. If there’s anything
you want from here, let me know and I’ll get it for you.”
“Thanks. And--good night!”
“Good night,” she said; and moved back into the shadow of the coal shed
and watched him disappear. Leaning there, one hand fumbling at her
throat, she was a wistful and unhappy figure. But when Wint was gone,
she laughed harshly, and turned back to her work in the kitchen.
* * * * *
If Hetty had wished to confirm Wint in his resolution to go his stubborn
way, she could have taken no better means than to repeat her warning:
“Don’t be a nut!” He took a certain delight in being thus unreasonable.
What he did was his own affair; it concerned no one else. And he
returned to the Weaver House in a surprisingly peaceful frame of mind
and climbed to his room and went to bed with Muldoon curled on the floor
beside him, and slept soundly and healthfully.
He woke in the morning to find Muldoon sitting by the bed, watching him
and waiting for him to stir. When he opened his eyes, Muldoon wriggled
and yawned and licked his hand, and Wint chuckled, and got up briskly,
and dressed himself and went downstairs. The office was empty when he
came down, for the hour was early; and he went out without seeing any
one, and followed the railroad tracks to the station. There was a lunch
cart near the station; and he crowded in among the toil-grimed crew of
the night freight and ate a Hamburg steak sandwich garnished with a
biting slice of onion, and drank a great mug of steaming coffee. Some of
the men recognized him, and they talked to him with an unwilling respect
in their manner. He liked this. They did not seem to be laughing at him,
although they professed interest in the manner of his election, and
asked him how he had worked it, and what he was going to do now. He told
them, honestly enough, that he had known nothing about it beforehand;
and he told them, with equal honesty, that he was asleep in the Weaver
House when the word was brought to him. They seemed surprised that he
should state these things without attempt at palliation; and they seemed
to approve of him for doing so. Their attitude gave him renewed
confidence, so that he went up toward town with his head high, ready to
look men in the eye.
He began to meet people at once. They were for the most part men going
to their work; and some of them eyed him angrily, and some seemed
inclined to laugh at him; but most of them, like the railroad men, gave
evidence of a certain new respect. They hailed him with effusive
cordiality as “Mr. Mayor,” but they seemed a little afraid of the sound
of their own words, a little afraid of what his attitude might be.
Wint had made his plans. He must get some clothes from his home, must
cut himself off completely from his father. To this end he sought Jack
Routt. Routt, like every one in town, went to the Post Office each
morning for his mail; and Wint found him there.
Routt shook his hand heartily. “Wint, congratulations!” he said, under
his breath. “This’ll be a great thing for you. It will steady you,
Wint.”
Wint shook his head, some of the sullen anger of the night before
returning. He had no wish to be steadied, and he said so. “I can take
care of myself,” he told Routt.
Jack nodded. “So you can. But you need something to hold you down. And
this’ll do it.” He nudged Wint in the ribs, smiling slyly. “Y’ know,
you’ve been hitting it too strong lately. You don’t know when to stop,
Wint. This will put the brakes on. Make you tend to business.”
Wint brushed his hand across Routt’s face abruptly. “Cut it,” he said.
“Say, Jack, I want you to do something for me.”
“Anything in the world.”
“My father is sore. He thinks I was in on this. So he kicked me out last
night.”
“Kicked you out?” Routt was startled and indignant. “Why, say,
that’s--Where did you go? Why didn’t you come over to my place?”
Wint said consciously: “No--I went to the Weaver House. They know me
there.”
Routt looked quickly around to see if any one had heard. “Sh-h-h!” he
warned. “Say, that was a fool thing to do. Don’t let any one find it
out. You want to walk straight now--”
Wint cut in. “I want you to go out home and get my steamer trunk and
pack it with some things. There’s a blue suit in my closet. And shirts,
and so on. Get my overcoat, too. Mother will show you--or Hetty.”
Routt looked at him quickly. “Hetty who?”
“Hetty Morfee.”
Routt looked at Wint and laughed softly. “Oh--she’s working for you?”
“Yes.”
“Nice kid, isn’t she?”
“Yes. And--as I said--she’ll help you if mother won’t.”
Routt nodded. “All right,” he agreed. “I’ll go out this morning.
Where’ll I send the trunk? Weaver House?”
“I’ll send for it. You just pack it.”
Routt touched Wint’s arm. “I’ll do it,” he said again. “But Wint,--for
the love of Mike, don’t make a fool of yourself! Thing for you to do is
to take hold, run the town right, and make a name for yourself. It’s a
great chance, Wint. Make everybody see what you’ve got in you. And it’ll
be the making of you, Wint.”
The distribution of the morning’s mail to the boxes was ended just then,
and the windows opened. Routt broke off and went to get his mail, and
Wint, still resentful at Routt’s insistence on the moral advantages of
his situation, went to the window. Dave Howells, one of the postal
clerks, was there; and before Wint could speak, he had offered his
congratulations. These continual good wishes were beginning to irk Wint.
He nodded impatiently. “Dave,” he said, “I want you to hold my mail
hereafter. Don’t send it to the house.”
“Oh, we always put it in your father’s box,” Howells told him.
“Well, don’t do that. Hold it. I’ll call for it.”
The clerk wanted to ask questions, but decided not to do so. He took out
a card and wrote something on it. “I think there’s a letter for you in
the box now,” he said. “I’ll give it to you.”
Wint nodded; and a moment later the man handed him an envelope, and Wint
turned away from the window. He met his father, face to face, at the
door of the Post Office. Neither of them spoke.
Wint had dropped the letter into his pocket without looking at it. When
he reached the hotel on the corner, he turned in, and sat down on one of
the deep, leather chairs in the lobby, and drew out the envelope. The
address, he saw, was typewritten. The letter had been mailed in town.
The envelope was plain; and when he opened it he saw that the paper it
contained bore no distinguishing mark.
The letter, like the address, was typewritten, and Wint read it once,
and read it again with slowly kindling resentment. It said:
“_Dear Wint_:--
“You have made ducks and drakes of your life. And you have made
yourself the butt of the town’s jokes. And you have made those who
loved you the objects of derision.
“But your election as Mayor gives you the finest chance a man ever
had to retrieve those old mistakes, to make a man of yourself, and
to make a fine town of Hardiston.
“Take hold. Work hard. Live straight. And be sure that there are
some true friends who will watch you lovingly and sympathetically,
and hope and pray for your success.”
This letter was unsigned. Wint read it a second time, and then with
tense, stiff fingers he tore it into little bits and dropped these bits
into a wide, brass cuspidor beside his chair. As the scraps of paper
fluttered from his hand, he clenched his fists; and he looked about to
see if any one had been watching.
He hated this preaching, this morality, this harping on the hope of his
redemption. He was all right; no harm in him. But they would not leave
him alone. They nagged at him; nagged.... He hated it.
He wondered, as an undercurrent to this rage, who had written the
letter. It might have been his father, or his mother, or Routt. Routt
was a sanctimonious ass about some things. Or it might have been.... He
thought it was probably the minister of his father’s church; and he
grinned with dry relish at the thought. The old man must have been sadly
shocked at Wint more than once; and this letter sounded just like him.
Blithering, self-righteous....
He lunged up from his chair, boiling furiously. All his determination to
stick it out was gone. He would not do it, would not make a righteous
spectacle of himself for the edification of these old women. He went out
and turned up the street past the Court House, walking blindly, storming
inwardly. He would get out of town, shake the dust of the place off his
feet. Let them find a new Mayor.
He was still fuming thus when, in front of the Court House, he met Peter
Gergue. Peter rummaged through his back hair and grinned at Wint. “Saw
you coming,” he explained. “Thought you might be looking f’r me. So I
came down.”
“I’m not looking for you,” said Wint.
Gergue nodded. “All right,” he assented. “Mind if I walk along with you?
Going on this way?”
Wint halted in his tracks. “What’s up?” he asked sharply. “What do you
want?”
“Me?” Peter ejaculated. “Why--me? I don’t want nothing.”
“What are you so anxious to keep an eye on me for, then? I don’t want
you.”
Gergue hesitated, and he looked across the street toward his office; and
at last he leaned toward Wint and said slyly: “Tell you th’ truth, it
ain’t me. Amos is over at my place. He see you coming, and he was
worried f’r fear you’d come up and find him there. He knows you’re mad
at him. Don’t want to see you. Don’t want to listen to you. Knows you
got a fair kick, and he don’t like to listen to kicks.”
Wint looked across the way, and then at Peter; and then, without a word,
he started across the street. Peter went hurriedly after him. “Say,” he
begged, “you ain’t going--”
“I’m going to tell that old scamp what I think of him.”
Peter pleaded. “Oh, now, Wint--he’ll be mad at me.” He laid a
restraining hand on Wint’s arm. Wint shook it off.
“What do I care what he thinks of you?” he demanded. “Let go.”
“You don’t want t’ see him, Wint.”
Wint went stubbornly ahead. He turned into the stairs that led up to
Peter’s office; and Gergue sighed.
“Glory! Well--all right, then. I’ll trail along,” he said; and then he
smiled at Wint’s ascending back with amiable satisfaction and followed
Wint up the stairs.
Wint had never been in Peter’s office before. He halted in the doorway,
struck by the slack disorder of the place. There were spider webs in
every corner; there was dust everywhere. The soft floor had been worn by
many feet till every knot stood up like a rounded knob, and every nail
upreared a shining head. The door of the wardrobe hung open, revealing
some battered books inside. The old, oilcloth-covered table at the
window was littered with papers and rusty pens, and sagged weakly under
the weight of the books upon it. At this table, when Wint came in, sat
Congressman Amos Caretall. The Congressman saw Wint, and got up
hurriedly, eyes squinting, head on one side. He looked distinctly
apologetic; and when he saw Peter behind Wint, he eyed his satellite
reproachfully.
Wint stormed across the room to face the Congressman; but even while he
approached the older man, some of his anger died in him. Amos was so
frankly unhappy, he was so apologetic, the tilt of his head was so
plaintive. Nevertheless Wint cried: “What right had you to use my name
in this way, Congressman?”
Caretall shook his head humbly. “Not a right in the world, Wint.”
“It was a dirty trick. Underhand.”
The Congressman nodded. “I know it, Wint,” he assented. “I c’n see that
now. All the trouble it’s made and everything. If I’d knowed.... But you
see, a man gets to playing the game, and he don’t stop to think like he
oughter.”
“You hadn’t any right to do it,” Wint insisted; but he was weakening.
Nothing is so disarming as acquiescence; and when a man condemns
himself, it is human nature to wish to defend him.
“I know it,” Amos repeated. “I ain’t got a word to say, Wint. Except
that I’ll help to straighten things out so you won’t have to serve.”
Wint looked puzzled for a moment. “I--what’s that?”
“I say, I’ll help you fix things so you won’t have to take it.”
“What makes you think I don’t want to take it?”
Amos spread out his hands like a man who has nothing to conceal. “Why,
that’s common sense. I’d ought to have knowed. It’s a hard job. Prob’ly
you couldn’t swing it. Anyway, it means work, and stickin’ to the
grindstone; and you’re a young fellow. You like your good times. You
wouldn’t want to be tied down to anything this way.”
Wint laughed derisively. “You think you know a whole lot about me, don’t
you?”
Amos smiled. “Well, Wint,” he returned. “I’ve seen some of life. I know
a lively young fellow like you don’t want to take on a job that means
work. And you’re right, o’ course. It ain’t the job f’r you. You ain’t
fitted for it. You couldn’t manage it. You’re right. I hadn’t ought to
have got you into this. But I’ll help get you out. That’s th’ least I
can do.”
Wint looked at the Congressman with level eyes for a moment; and then he
turned and looked out of window, saying nothing. Amos caught Peter
Gergue’s eye, and Peter winked at him. Amos said humbly: “I sure am
sorry about this, Wint. It’s made it hard for you. You can’t stay here
now. You might go over to Washin’ton, Wint. I c’d get you somethin’
easy, there.”
Wint turned back to him abruptly; and there was a catch in his voice.
“Congressman,” he said, half laughing, “you owe me something.”
Caretall nodded. “That’s right, Wint. ’Nd I’m ready to pay.”
“All right. Here’s what I want you to do.” He hesitated, extended his
hand. “I know I’m not fit for this job, sir,” he said reluctantly.
“But--if you’ll give me a hand and help along--I’d like to tackle it.”
Amos looked doubtful. “Now, Wint--don’t you get wrong notions. No sense
you’re sticking in this mess. I’ll get you out without any--”
Wint interrupted him angrily: “You can’t get me out. Nor any one else.
I’m in and I’ll stay in. But--I’d like to have your advice and help when
I need it.”
And the Congressman yielded. He took Wint’s hand. “All right,” he
agreed. “I’ll back you. I don’t know as you’re right, and I don’t know
as you’re wrong. If you can get away with it.”
“I intend to.”
Amos nodded. “Sure you intend to. But can you? Well--we’ve got to see.”
He hesitated, seemed to be thinking. “I hear your father and you’ve
broke,” he said.
“Yes.”
“That’s too bad. Where are you living?”
“The Weaver House,” said Wint defiantly. But his defiance was misplaced.
Congressman Caretall nodded approvingly.
“That’s fine,” he said. “Old Mother Moody sets a right good table, when
she’s a mind to. I wish I c’d live down there myself. It’s a good plan.”
He looked at Wint and winked slyly. “Always a good plan to play to the
workingman,” he explained. “Good idea of yours, Wint. Living down there.
Get the workingmen and the railroad men and all to sympathizing with
you. They’ll play you for a martyr, and back you strong. You’ll make a
good politician, Wint. I c’n see that.”
Wint shook his head. “It’s not politics,” he said. “I--don’t intend to
stay there. Just till I get settled uptown. Somewhere.”
Amos studied him. “Pshaw, now! That’s too bad. It’d been a good play,
Wint.”
Wint laughed. “I’ll play the game some other way.”
The Congressman nodded. He remained silent for a moment, then said
thoughtfully, “I was thinking.... You and me has got to do a lot of
talking, planning. I wish you could come and stay with me till your paw
comes ’round.”
Wint shook his head. “Thanks,” he said, smiling. “That’s good of you.
But I’ll--” He hesitated; for through the window he had seen, across the
street, Jack Routt and Joan together. They were talking briskly; and
Joan was laughing at something Routt had said. Wint stared at them, with
slowly burning eyes; and before he could continue Gergue nudged him in
the side and told the Congressman smilingly:
“That ’uz a bad break, Amos. He can’t come live with you.”
Wint looked at him. “Why not?” he asked; and Amos said to Gergue:
“That’s right, Peter. I’d forgot.”
“Why not?” Wint repeated impatiently; he glanced again toward the two
across the street.
“Why, he means Miss Joan wouldn’t like it,” the Congressman explained.
“Why wouldn’t she?”
Gergue pointed across the street. “She’d soon teach you manners,” he
chuckled. “The Congressman here’s got a nice-looking daughter of his
own, you know.”
Wint’s hand clenched at his side. “You’re all wrong there,” he said
curtly; and then to Amos: “I think I’ll accept your invitation, after
all,” he said.
CHAPTER IV
INTERLUDE
The weeks between his election and his inauguration Wint spent as a
guest at Amos Caretall’s home. At which the townsfolk put their tongues
in their cheeks and smiled behind the back of the elder Chase. This open
alliance between Wint and the Congressman was taken as confession that
Wint’s election had been planned between them; and after a day or two
Wint perceived the hopelessness of denial, and perceived, too, that
those who believed him concerned in the trick respected him the more for
it. Therefore, Wint ceased to deny; and it was one of Amos Caretall’s
rules never to discuss a thing accomplished.
Between Amos and the young man, a strong friendship began to develop in
these weeks. Congressman Caretall was a good politician, largely through
the advice and counsel of Peter Gergue; but he was also a man of level
head and good common sense, and he found beneath Wint’s pride and
stubbornness a surprising store of good qualities. A week after Wint
went to live at his house, he said as much to Gergue.
“He’s a fine boy, Peter,” he declared. “Looks to me like a colt that
hadn’t been gentled right.”
Gergue nodded slowly and scratched the back of his head, tilting his hat
forward with his knuckles. “He has his points,” he agreed. “But--he
ain’t set in th’ traces yet, Congressman.”
Amos looked at the man. “What’s wrong?”
“Noth’n’,” said Peter. “Noth’n’. But--there will be.”
Jack Routt brought Wint’s trunk to the Caretall house and, before he
left that day, he took occasion to drop a word of warning in Wint’s ear.
“Look out for Agnes,” was his warning. “She’s the darndest little flirt
you ever saw.”
Wint lifted his head angrily. “Cut it out, Jack!”
Routt laughed. “I’m only giving you some good advice,” he insisted. “You
know--a certain young lady will not be pleased if you pay Agnes too
much attention. And Agnes loves to make trouble.”
Wint repeated: “Shut up! Drop it!” And Routt lifted his shoulders and
obeyed.
Two or three days after the election, Wint remembered that he was
supposed to be working in his father’s office at the furnace. With an
unadmitted twist of conscience, he went down to the office, half hoping
to see his father and find some common ground for a reconciliation. But
the elder Chase was not there, and the office manager greeted Wint
coldly and told him that his place had been filled. Wint had ten days’
salary due him, and the manager paid it punctiliously. Wint took the
money without thinking, thrust it in his pocket, and went back uptown.
While he was in college, he had been on an allowance; since then his
father had paid him a salary out of proportion to his deserts. This was
one of the vanities of the elder Chase. His own youth had been hard and
straitened; and he took a keen delight in lavishing upon Wint the money
he himself had lacked. He did this, not to please Wint, but to please
himself; and whenever Wint crossed him, he was accustomed to bring up
the matter, to remind Wint of his good fortune as though it were a
reproach.
“Be sure I never had money to spend, when I was your age,” he was fond
of saying. “And you roll in it. You ought to be ashamed, Wint. You ought
to be ashamed.”
Then he would give Wint twenty dollars and tell him to mend his ways;
and afterward he would complain to Mrs. Chase of Wint’s ingratitude.
Wint had always taken this money without scruple. Whenever inner doubts
perplexed him, he would say: “He’s got more than he can use. I might as
well have it as any one else.” In all honesty, he knew the falsity of
such an argument; but he used it successfully to stifle the reproaches
of his own heart.
A day or two after his visit to the office, however, Amos Caretall asked
him: “Wint, you need any money?”
Wint shook his head.
“Didn’t know but you might,” Amos insisted. “Carry you over till your
salary starts.”
“I’ve got enough,” Wint said. “Dad was always pretty liberal. Gave me
more than I could spend.”
Amos did not seem surprised at this. He nodded his head. “That’s good,”
he agreed. “If any one had told me, I wouldn’t have believed it.
Wouldn’t have believed Senior had so much sense. Keeps you in his debt,
like, don’t he? Keeps you d’pendent on him?”
Wint had never thought of it in that way, and he did not like the
thought. He looked uneasy. Amos went on, puffing at his old black pipe:
“Guess he figures to get it all back some way. ’F he sh’d come and ask
you for something, after you’re in, you’d naturally have to give it to
him. Yes, Senior’s a smart man.”
They were sitting in front of the coal fire in Amos’ sitting room; and
for a time after that, neither of them spoke. Wint was thinking hard,
and in the end he asked quietly: “Know any way I can earn a living till
I’m inaugurated?”
Amos swung his head around, tilting it on one side, and squinting
thoughtfully at Wint; and presently he smiled approvingly. “Guess you
might,” he said. “Might do some o’ my letter writing. You’d learn
things, that way. I never had no secretary. I’m allowed one. You c’n
have the job, long’s I’m here.”
Next morning Wint mailed a money order to his father without
explanation, and thereafter he drew a salary from Amos until his salary
as Mayor began.
From his work for Amos, Wint learned many things. He got for the first
time an insight into the scope of the Congressman’s work, into the
extent of his interests and influence. One of the things he learned was
a sincere respect for Caretall’s ability, and he also came to admire the
shrewdness of Gergue. Wint did a deal of thinking in those weeks.
Living, as he did, as one of Caretall’s family, he was thrown constantly
with Agnes; and the girl put herself out to please him. She and old
Maria Hale worked together in this. The girl discovered Wint’s favorite
dishes, and Maria produced them and brought them to a perfection that
Wint had never known. It was Agnes’ task to take care of the dusting and
housework; and she began, after a time, to put an occasional cluster of
flowers from the greenhouses next door in his room. When they talked
together, she deferred to him with a pretty fashion of tilting her head
and widening her serious eyes that he found exceedingly attractive. It
stimulated his self-respect; and at the same time it gave him a new
respect for her. Since she so obviously approved of him, there must be
more to her than he had supposed. She was, he decided, a person of
judgment. He had always thought her a giddy little thing with a brisk,
gay tongue and laughing eyes. He found in her an unexpected capacity for
silence and for attention. She encouraged him to talk about himself,
about his plans; she sympathized with him, and advised him when he asked
her advice. They became surprisingly good friends.
She suggested, one evening, that they telephone Jack Routt to bring Joan
for a game of cards. Wint shook his head; and the girl, without asking
questions, made her curiosity so obvious that Wint told her that Joan
had cast him off. He leaned forward, elbows on knees and fingers
intertwined, staring idly into the fire, while he told her; and the girl
leaned back in her chair and listened and studied him, and when he
finished she laid her hand lightly on his arm.
“It’s a shame, Wint,” she said.
Wint shook his head. “Oh--she was right!”
“She wasn’t right. She ought to have stuck by you, and helped you fight
it out.”
Wint thought so too, and his respect for Agnes rose. But he said
insistently: “No, she was right.”
Agnes patted his arm, and then leaned back in her chair again. “It’s
fine of you to think so,” she said.
One night Wint asked her to go uptown with him to the moving-picture
theater. She was delighted, and she was gay as a cricket on the way. At
the entrance of the theater, they came face to face with Jack Routt and
Joan.
Wint felt his cheeks burn. Agnes greeted the other two with a burst of
rapid chatter that covered the awkward moment. Routt studied Wint, and
Joan nodded to him without speaking. Then Routt and Joan went inside,
and Wint and Agnes sat three rows behind them.
While the picture was flashing on the screen, Wint watched the heads of
the two. He could not help it; and when their heads, silhouetted against
the light, leaned toward one another for a whispered word, he felt
something boil within him. His reaction was to bend more attentively
toward Agnes; and the gay little girl beside him responded to this new
mood so that when the film was done and they filed out, she and Wint
were the most obviously happy young couple in the house. They had ice
cream together at the bakery next door, and walked home in comfortable
comradeship, the girl’s hand on his arm.
That night, Wint’s sleep was disturbed and wretched; and next day when
he met Routt at the Post Office, he stiffened with resentment. But Routt
caught his arm and drew him to one side. “See here, Wint,” he said,
“Joan tells me you and she have quarreled.”
Wint nodded.
“You ought to go to her and make it up, Wint. I don’t know what it’s
about, but you ought to make it up with her.”
“I’ve nothing to make up.”
“She’s a dandy girl.”
“I’ve nothing against her.”
“It makes her sore to have you chase around with Agnes.”
“There’s no reason why it should,” Wint said stiffly. “She has no hold
on me.”
Routt hesitated. “Well, Wint,” he said uneasily, “if that’s so, you’ve
no claim on her.”
“Of course not.”
“Then you don’t mind my--showing her some attention? I don’t want
anything to come between us, Wint.”
Wint laughed. “Go as far as you like, Jack,” he said cheerfully. “You
can’t hurt my feelings.”
Routt gripped his hand. “That’s great, Wint.” He looked about them, and
then added slowly: “I think she likes me, Wint. I’m--in to win.”
“Go as far as you like,” Wint repeated.
They separated, and Wint went back to the house and remained in his room
half the morning. He was tormented by angry pride and irresolution; he
could not decide what to do. A recklessness took possession of him; he
repented of his determination to stick, and fight out this fight to the
end. He sought for some way out....
Muldoon had become a part of the Caretall household with Wint; and he
looked out of the window now and saw the dog starting toward town at
Agnes’ heels. He made a move to whistle Muldoon back, then thought
better of it. Joan might see Muldoon with Agnes; he hoped she would,
hoped it would make her miserable.... He wanted Joan to be unhappy.
As the time for his inauguration as Mayor approached, Wint became more
and more uneasy. He felt as though he were about to submit to bonds that
would pin him fast; he felt as though he were on the steps of a prison.
A fierce revolt began to brood in him and grow and boil.
He broke out once, in a talk with Caretall. He would throw the whole
thing over, leave town, go away, never to return.
Amos agreed with this project perfectly. He agreed that Wint was not the
man for the job, that it would mean hard work, and difficulties; he
thought Wint was wise not to attempt it. He offered to straighten out
any tangle and free Wint from the obligations of the office; and he
offered to lend Wint money that Wint might make a start elsewhere.
His great complaisance angered Wint, so that he stubbornly declared that
he would stick if every man in town urged him to go.
On the morning of the day before he was to take office, he met Jack
Routt uptown, and Jack took his arm. They walked together toward Jack’s
office, and went in and sat down.
It was evident that Routt had something on his mind. He talked of the
weather, of Agnes, of Joan; and Wint, watching him, saw that Routt was
holding something back, and at last asked impatiently: “Jack, what’s on
your mind?”
Routt looked surprised. “Why--nothing.”
“Yes, there is.” Wint laughed at him. “What’s the matter? Open up.”
Routt hesitated; but at last he said frankly: “Well, Wint, I was
wondering....”
“About what?”
“Have you been hitting the booze lately?” Routt asked.
Wint shook his head; his eyes hardened a little.
Routt seemed pleased. He thrust out his hand. “I’m darned glad, Wint,”
he said. “Congratulations! You ought to leave it alone. You’re right.”
Wint flushed angrily. “I haven’t sworn off,” he said shortly. “It--just
happens--” He stared at Routt. “You didn’t bring me up here to ask
that?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Why?”
Routt shifted in his chair and lighted a cigarette. “Never mind,” he
said. “Forget it, Wint.”
Wint laughed unpleasantly. “Come on. I’m a grown man. What’s eating
you?”
Routt lifted his shoulders. “Well--fact is, some of the boys wanted to
get up a little supper to-night, at the lodge rooms, in honor of
your--inaugural. I told them nothing doing. Said you were off the stuff.
They didn’t believe it; and I promised to ask you.”
Wint looked at him angrily. “You’re not my wet nurse, Jack. That supper
idea tickles me. It’s on.”
Routt protested. “No, Wint. I won’t stand for it. You’ve stayed off the
stuff this long; and it’s the best thing for you. You can’t stop when
you once start. So--leave it alone.”
Wint got up hotly. “Go to the devil!” he snapped. “Don’t be an old
woman. Who’s running the thing?”
“Dick Hoover. But you leave it alone....”
“Rats! Tell Dick I’ll be there. Or I’ll tell him myself.”
Routt lifted his hands in surrender. “Oh--I’ll tell him,” he agreed.
“But you’re a darned fool, Wint.”
“Rats!” Wint repeated; and he grinned. He was unaccountably elated, as
though he had shaken off restraining bonds. “Rats!” And he went out to
the street with his head high.
Routt picked up the telephone and called Hoover. He was smiling.
CHAPTER V
ALLIANCE
Winthrop Chase, Senior, was thrown by his son’s election to the office
he had counted as his own into a passion in which rage and humiliation
were equally commingled.
He was a man fed fat with vanity. He took himself very seriously. He
lived a decent and respectable life in the eyes of all men, and he felt
himself justly entitled to the respect of all men. He had, before this,
seen the smiles of those few who dared mock him; but he had believed
them a small minority. When three quarters of the town united in the
jest at his expense, he was outraged inexpressibly. And when the city
papers took up the story and for a time the whole state tittered over
it, Chase trembled and shuddered with his own agony.
His first reaction had been anger at his son; and when he heard Wint had
been found, sodden and stupid, in that room at the Weaver House, he cast
the boy out of his life, hiding his own honest grief and sorrow under a
mantle of resentment and accusation. For he loved Wint, and had wished
to be proud of him.
In the beginning, his chief resentment centered on Wint, and he had
toward Amos Caretall only that anger which one feels toward a
treacherously victorious opponent. But about the time Wint sent him that
money order, and stood on his own feet before the world, Chase’s heart
softened in spite of himself. He sought to make excuses for his son, and
in this effort he found Caretall a convenient scapegoat. By degrees he
convinced himself that Caretall had led Wint astray, playing on the
boy’s vanity and pride; and after that came the half conviction that
when Wint denied all knowledge of the coup, the boy had told the truth.
Then all Chase’s anger centered on Amos; and as the first sting of his
disgrace passed by, he began to look about him and seek to rebuild the
shattered structure of his plans.
He had encountered Amos more than once upon the street since the
election, though neither had carried their greetings further than a nod
or word. But there came a day when Chase met the Congressman face to
face in the Post Office at a moment when there were no others there; and
when Chase nodded, Caretall stopped and tilted his head on one side and
squinted in a friendly way at Chase.
“No hard feelings, is there, Senior?” he asked.
Chase looked at him, started to speak, flushed, checked himself; and at
last said huskily: “Congressman, I want to talk with you.”
Caretall nodded. “That’s fair.”
“Where can we talk?”
Amos scratched his head. “Tell you,” he suggested. “I’ll go along up to
Pete Gergue’s office. You go down t’ your place, ’nd then come in the
back way. Guess we don’t want it known we’re gettin’ t’gether.”
“Very well,” Chase said stiffly. “I’ll be there in half an hour.”
When he climbed the stairs, Amos had sent Gergue away and was sitting at
the oilcloth-covered table, slowly whittling a charge for his pipe. He
got up bulkily at Chase’s entrance, and motioned the other man to a
chair across the table from his own. Chase sat down and Amos, lighting
his pipe between his sentences, said slowly: “Chase....” a scratch of
the match. “You don’t want to hold this against me.” A succession of
deep puffs. “It’s politics. All in th’ game.” A puff. “You was getting
too strong for me. I had t’ lick you.” Puff, puff, puff!
Chase struck his fist with quiet vehemence on the table. “It was a dirty
trick, Amos.”
Amos shook his head, vastly pained. “Now, Senior,” he protested, “don’t
go talking that way. ’Twas all in th’ game. All in the game.”
“It was a dirty trick,” Chase insisted. “You played on my good feelings;
you pretended to agree to an alliance with me; you got me off my
guard--”
Amos held up a heavy hand. “Wait a minute,” he protested. “Wait a
minute, Senior. Let me get this here straight. You come to me with a
prop’sition. Wanted to get together. Said you had me licked. I told you
if you was elected Mayor, we’d hitch up. Ain’t that right now, Senior?”
Chase moved angrily. “Strictly true,” he confessed. “Strictly true.
That’s why I call it tricky. You came to my own meeting and said you
were going to vote for me.”
“Guess I said I was going to vote for a Chase, didn’t I? Guess I did.
And that’s the way I voted.”
“The town thought you meant me.”
“Not long, they didn’t. Word went around what I meant, all in good
time.”
Chase got to his feet, his head back, his face flushed. He leaned down
to face Amos, and he slapped his right fist into his left palm. “I tell
you it was a trick,” he insisted. “You know it. It was unworthy. And I
give you due warning, Caretall--I’m out for your scalp now. I propose to
get it. Take your measures accordingly.”
Amos puffed hard at his pipe. He, too, rose; he tilted his head
thoughtfully on one side and squinted at Chase. “I don’t like t’ hear
you talk that way, Senior,” he said slowly. “You come to me and talked
to me till you rightly showed me we ought to get together. I’m
ready--even if you did get--”
Chase flung up his hand. “Stop!” he cried. The self-control which he had
imposed upon himself was gone. “Stop! Man, man! D’you think I’m one to
lick the hand that stabs me? You lie to me, trick me, make a fool of me
and a joke of me before the state; and to cap it all you steal my own
son out of my house--”
“Heard you was the one to throw him out,” Amos interjected, but Chase
went hotly on:
“You steal my own son, take him into your own home, turn him against me,
persuade him to help destroy me....” His voice broke with his own rage
and grief. “I tell you, Amos,” he said again, leaning steadily forward,
“I’m going to get you. Fair warning. Take your measures accordingly.”
Amos looked out of the window; he puffed at his pipe; and at last he
faced the other man again, and smiled. “Well, Senior,” he said slowly,
“if the land lies so--thanks for the word. As for them measures--I’ll
take them like you say.”
For a moment longer, the eyes of the two men held each other. Then Chase
turned stiffly on his heel, and stalked to the door and went out.
As he disappeared, Amos called: “G’d day!” But Chase made no answer, and
Amos, left alone, grinned slowly to himself and shook his head.
After that interview with Amos, Chase began to emerge from the turmoil
of anger and shame in which he had been fighting since the election. His
head cleared and his brain cooled, and he began to plan, with a certain
newly acquired shrewdness, his next steps against Caretall. In many
matters, heretofore, the elder Chase had been as simple as a boy. Now he
was becoming crafty. In the past he had honestly believed that the life
of self-conscious rectitude which he had led was of a sort to inspire
respect and affection. Now he knew that he was wrong, knew that he must
always have been disliked or despised by half the town. He had always
been benignly courteous; and this courtesy, which was more than half
condescension, had made more enemies than friends. He had played a
straightforward game; and he had lost.
Like other men before him, in the determination to change his tactics,
he went too far. He threw himself into the fight to injure Caretall with
an utter disregard for the conventions he had once observed; he sought
allies where he might find them; and for the first time in his life, he
tried to put himself in another man’s place and guess what the other man
would do.
The man into whose place he sought to put himself was Amos Caretall; and
the result of his considerations of Amos’s possible future plans threw
Chase into the arms of his ancient enemy, into the shrunken arms of V.
R. Kite.
The feud between Kite and Chase had never been a concrete thing. It was
based upon a thousand minor incidents, none of them important in itself.
Kite, as the leader of the “wet” forces in the town, and as the
proprietor of half the liquor-peddling establishments, was a man very
quick to resent “dry” activities. Chase had always been actively “dry.”
And Kite, curiously enough for one of his vocation, was a very
thin-skinned man. He found offenses in words that were meant for
kindness; he found a sneer in an honest smile.
It was a part of the manner of the elder Chase to smile and nod
benevolently upon those whom he encountered. This was automatic with
him; and he smiled at Kite with the rest. Kite, a man of fierce and
violent temperament, knew that Chase had no kindly feeling toward him;
and so he saw in these smiles only sneers. He had complained to Amos
Caretall: “He’s always grinning at me,” when Amos asked why he hated
Chase; and this was an old grievance with the liquor man.
Kite had been one of those who rejoiced most highly in Chase’s
humiliation; and for a week or two after the election, he went out of
his way to meet Chase upon the street. On such occasions, he paid back
with interest those grins he had resented; he spoke to Chase with
exaggerated courtesy and extreme solicitude. He inquired after the
other’s health end spirits; he sympathized with Chase in his defeat.
These sports palled upon him only when he perceived the growing change
in Chase. For Wint’s father was in many ways at this time like a child
that has been punished for a fault it does not understand. The elder
Chase was groping for friendliness; he sought it wherever it could be
found; and he took some of Kite’s satiric inquiries in good faith and
responded to them with such honest confidence that Kite was touched and
faintly uneasy.
A few days after Chase’s talk with Amos, he sought out Kite in the
little Bazaar which the latter conducted. It was an institution like a
five and ten cent store, and did a flourishing business. Next door to it
was a restaurant, also owned by Kite, and reached by a communicating
passage. In a room behind this restaurant, knowing ones might be served
with anything in reason. But Kite went there only for his meals, and
most of the hours of business found him at his desk in the rear of the
Bazaar.
Chase frankly sought him there. He drew a chair up to face the wrinkled
little man; and Kite was surprised, and cocked his head on his thin neck
and tugged at his drooping side whiskers until he looked more like a
doubtful turkey than ever. “Howdo, Chase?” he said.
Chase nodded. “Kite,” he began frankly, “I want to talk to you.”
Kite tried to grin derisively; he tried to reawaken the old enmity in
his breast. But there was something appealing about Chase, and so he
said nothing, only waited.
“Kite,” said Chase, “Amos Caretall played a good trick on me.”
Kite looked startled; then he grinned. “Yes, Chase, he did that,” he
said.
“You helped him.”
Kite frankly admitted it.
“You helped him,” said Chase, “because you thought with Wint in as
Mayor, the town would stay as wet as you want it.”
Kite hesitated, then he nodded. “Yes,” he agreed. “Yes, that’s so,
Chase. What about it?”
Chase leaned back. “Amos made a fool of you,” he said. “He’s going to
turn this town dry, with the man you helped elect.”
Kite flushed; he leaned toward Chase with narrowed eyes peering out from
an ambush of wrinkles; and then suddenly he threw back his head with his
long, turkey neck rising raw and red from his collar, and he laughed
cacklingly, so that customers in the front of his store looked that way
to share the joke. Chase frowned angrily. “Well?” he snapped, “what’s
funny about that?”
Kite dropped a dry old hand on Chase’s arm. “Oh, Chase,” he choked
through his mirth, “the notion of Wint making this town dry....”
Chase flushed. He started to speak. Kite interrupted: “Now don’t get
mad. Course, he’s your son, but he does like his drop now and then,
Chase.”
“I tell you, Amos is planning to do it.”
There was something so deadly sure in Chase’s tone that Kite sobered and
looked toward him. “Say, what makes you say that?” he demanded. “How do
you know?”
“Amos has sense. He sees this question is the big one in this state.
He’s out for Congress again. He’s not going to have it thrown at him
that his man let this town soak itself illegally.”
For the first time, Kite began to look worried. “Amos wouldn’t do that.
He told me--”
“Told you? He told me many things, too. But none of them were true.”
Kite, suddenly, burst into flame like an oily rag. He threw up a
clenched fist. “By God, Chase, he don’t dare try it!”
“Dare? He’ll dare anything.”
Kite stammered with the heat of his own anger. “He don’t dare!” he
insisted. “Why, Chase--if he tries that--I’ll--I’ll--” With no sense
that his words had been said before, he exclaimed: “I won’t live in the
town, Chase. I’ll get out! I’ll shoot him! Or myself.”
Chase leaned forward. “I tell you, he’s aiming to do it,” he said
steadily. “So sit down.”
Kite gripped his arm. “Chase, you got to drill some sense into that son
of yours. You got to tell him--”
“He’s not my son now; he’s Amos’s. Living with Amos, doing what Amos
says. Don’t forget that.”
There was a bitterness in Chase’s voice which silenced Kite for a
moment. Then the little man touched Chase on the arm. “See here,” he
said softly, “you don’t like Amos any better’n I do.”
Chase smiled mirthlessly. “I’m out for his hide,” he declared.
Kite nodded, chuckling grimly. “He thinks he’s a big man,” he said. “He
thinks he can run over us, play with us, use us and then give us the
brad. But I tell you right now, Chase....” He lifted his open hand as
one who takes an oath. “I tell you right now, Chase, if he tries that
little trick--you and me’ll get together, and we’ll hang his old hide
in the sun to dry.”
“He’ll try it,” said Chase steadily.
Kite stuck out his hand. “Then we’ll skin him.”
“That’s a bargain,” Chase declared, and gripped the other’s dry and
skinny fingers.
It was in this fashion that these two enemies joined hands against the
common foe.
CHAPTER VI
THE WHISTLE BLOWS
The festivities in Wint’s honor on the night before his inaugural were a
great success, from every point of view.
There was nothing formal about them. They occurred in an upper room in
one of the newer business blocks on Main Street. Only half a dozen young
fellows attended them; but these were all chosen spirits, and congenial.
At half past nine, they were all pleasantly illuminated by their
libations and the general good cheer of the occasion. At eleven, two of
them were asleep quite peacefully in each other’s arms upon a couch at
one side of the room. These two snored as they slept. The others were
playing cards, and the refreshments which had been provided were in easy
reach. Wint and Jack Routt were among those playing cards. Routt never
passed a certain stage of intoxication, no matter how much he drank. He
reached this stage with the first swallow.
With Wint, it was otherwise. In such matters, he progressed steadily
toward a dismal end. As eleven o’clock struck, he had just passed the
quarrelsome stage and was beginning to pity himself. He opened a hand
with three queens, but when Routt raised his bet, Wint threw down his
cards and put his head on his arms and wept because he could not win.
Then he took another drink.
After a little, he cried himself to sleep.
Toward one o’clock, Routt and Hoover took Wint home to Amos Caretall’s.
The streets, at that hour of the night, were utterly deserted. There was
a moon, and the street lamps were unlighted as an economical consequence
of this heavenly illumination. Wint was between Routt and Hoover. At
times he took a sodden step or two; at other times he dragged to his
knees upon the ground, wagging his head from side to side and singing
huskily.
Hoover was almost as badly off as Wint; and now and then he joined in
this song. Jack Routt was cold sober, and coldly exultant. His eyes
shone in the moonlight; and he handled Wint with rough tenderness.
When they were about half a block from the Caretall home, Wint became
very sick; and Hoover sat down in the middle of the sidewalk and giggled
at him while Routt, leaning against a tree above the sprawling body of
his friend, waited until the paroxysms were past and then caught Wint’s
shoulders again and dragged him to his feet.
Wint had thrown off some of the poison; he was able now to help himself
a little more than before; and they got him to their destination. There
Routt propped him against a tree before the house and shook him and
tried to impress upon him the necessity of silence.
“Don’t you sing, now, Wint,” he warned. “Brace up. Have some sense. Keep
quiet.”
Wint pettishly protested that he liked to sing, and that he was a good
singer; and he tried to prove it on the spot, but Routt gagged him with
the flat of his hand until Wint surrendered.
“Cut it out, Wint,” he insisted. “You’ve got to be quiet while we get
you to bed.”
Then Routt felt a hand on his shoulder, and some one drawled: “You’ve
done your share, Routt. Go along. I’ll tuck him in.”
He turned and saw Amos Caretall. Amos was in a bath robe of rough
toweling over his nightshirt; and his feet were in carpet slippers.
Routt was tongue-tied for a moment; then he found his voice. “I’m mighty
sorry about this, sir,” he said. “I tried to keep him from drinking too
much. But you can’t stop him. He’s such a darned fool.”
Amos grinned at him in a way that somehow frightened Routt. “He sure is
the darndest fool I ever see,” he agreed. “But don’t you mind, Jack.
Boys will be boys. You and--who is it?--oh, Hoover. You and Hoover run
along home. I’ll tend to him.”
“Don’t you want me to help get him in the house?”
“I’ll get him in. I’ve handled ’em before.”
Routt hesitated: but there was nothing to do but obey, and he obeyed.
Congressman Amos Caretall, in carpet slippers, nightshirt, and faded
bath robe, watched them go; and then he turned to where Wint had
slouched down against the tree and said kindly:
“Well, Wint--come on in.”
Wint wagged his head and began to sing. The Congressman bent over him
and slapped him expertly upon the cheeks with his open hands, one hand
and then the other. The sting and smart of the blows seemed to dispel
some of the clouds that fuddled Wint, and he grinned sheepishly, and got
to his feet. Amos put his arm around him. “Come on, Wint,” he said
again.
They went thus slowly up the walk and into the house. Amos shut the
front door behind them, and led Wint to the stairs and up them.
In the upper hall, one electric bulb was burning; and as they came into
its light, Agnes came out of her room. Her soft, fair hair was down her
back; her eyes were dewy with sleep; and a flaming, silken garment was
drawn close about her. “What is it, dad?” she asked: and then saw Wint
lurching along on her father’s arm with nodding head and dull and
drunken eyes, and she laughed softly and stepped toward him and shook
her finger in his face. “Oh, you Wint! Naughty boy!” she chided.
Her father said sharply: “Get into your room, Agnes!” The girl looked at
him, and at the anger in his eyes she turned a little pale and slipped
silently away.
Amos took Wint to his room, where Wint fell helplessly across his bed
and began instantly to snore. The Congressman looked down at him for an
instant with a grim sort of pity mingled with the anger in his eyes.
Then he bent and loosened Wint’s shoes and drew them off; and afterward
he took off the boy’s collar, and unbuttoned his garments at the
throat, and unbuckled his belt so that his sodden body should nowhere
be constricted.
“I guess that’ll do, Wint,” he said slowly then. “You’re too heavy for
me to handle. Besides, Wint--you ain’t right clean.” He stood for a
moment longer, then turned toward the door. At the door he looked back
once, snapped out the light, and so was gone.
Wint’s snores were unbroken.
* * * * *
The Caretall home stood in that end of town where the largest of the
furnaces is located. A railroad siding passes this furnace, and a
switching engine is busy here twenty-four hours of the day. The engine
occasionally finds occasion to whistle; and the furnace itself has a
whistle of enormous proportions; a siren whose blast carries for miles
across the hills. This siren blows at every change of shift, it blows at
casting time, and it blows at the whim of the engineer who may wish to
startle some casual visitor or friend.
Persons who have lived long in this part of Hardiston grow accustomed to
this great whistle. They sleep undisturbed when it rouses the night
echoes; and they talk undisturbed when it shatters the peace of the day.
It is even told of some of them that when the furnace went out of blast
and its whistle was stilled, they used to be awakened in the middle of
the night by the failure of the siren to sound at the accustomed time.
Wint’s own home was in the other end of town. He had not lived long
enough near the furnace to accustom himself to its noises; and they
disturbed him. They penetrated his stupefied sleep on the night of this
debauch. The steady roar of the great fires, which could be heard three
or four miles on a still night, played on his worn nerves and tortured
them; the sharp toots of the switching engine made him jump and quiver
in his sleep like a dreaming child; and when he woke in the morning to
find Amos shaking him by the shoulder, he was miserable and sick and his
head throbbed with the beat of a thousand drums, and seemed like to
split with agony. He wished, weakly, that it would split and be done.
When he opened his bloodshot eyes, Amos laughed and jerked him upright
and shook some of the slumber out of him. “Come, Wint,” he commanded
heartily. “I’ve got a cold tub all ready. Jump in it. Got to get in
shape, y’know. Inaugurated t’day.”
Wint groaned and held his head in both hands. “Hell with it,” he
scowled. “Inaugural. Whole damn business. I’m not goin’ to do it. Goin’
sleep. Hell with it, I say.”
He tried to drop back on the bed, but Amos laughed and caught him and
dragged him to his feet. “Come out of it,” he enjoined. “You’ll be all
right.”
Wint shook his head stubbornly; then cried out with pain at the shaking.
The fumes of the liquor were gone out of him; he was only dreadfully
sleepy and dreadfully sick. He felt as though he were pulled and
tortured by pricking wires that tore his flesh, and his eyelids were as
heavy as lead and as hot as coals upon his bloodshot eyes. But he opened
them, and said heavily: “No, Congressman Caretall. It’s off. I won’t do
it. I’m through.”
It was as Amos groped for a next word that the siren began to blow. This
was the signal for the morning’s casting. The engineer must have been in
good spirits that morning, for he gave more than full measure on the
blast. The whistle shrieked and roared till the very windows rattled and
shivered in their places; and Wint, at the first sound, whipped up his
hands to shield his agonized ears, and dropped on the bed and held his
head and groaned until his groan became almost a shriek with the pain.
Then, when the siren died into silence, he got dully to his feet, and
glared at Amos, who said huskily: “I’d like t’ kill man that did that.
Like to dynamite that whistle. Anything--make it keep quiet.”
Amos suddenly smiled; then he chuckled. “Well, Wint,” he said quickly,
“there’s ways to make it keep quiet.”
Wint looked at him with torpid interest. “I’ll bite,” he said. “Tell me
one.”
Amos waved his hands. “Why, f’r instance, the Mayor has power to enforce
the abatement of a nuisance. Make them shut off that whistle, if it’s a
nuisance. Anything like that.”
Wint swayed on his feet, and steadied himself with a hand on the foot
of the bed. “Can the Mayor do a thing like that--on the square?”
“Why, sure,” said Amos.
Wint grinned; a cracked and painful grin, but mirthful too; and he took
a step forward. “Then say,” he exclaimed. “Then say! There’s something
in this Mayor job, after all....”
“Sure there is!”
Wint gripped Amos’ arm. “Lead me to that cold, cold tub,” he enjoined.
END OF BOOK II
BOOK III
INTO HARNESS
CHAPTER I
ON HIS OWN FEET
The inauguration of a small-town Mayor is no great matter for
excitement. But Hardiston was interested in Wint, and wanted to have a
look at him, so everybody came to see him step into his new
responsibilities.
The Hardiston council chamber was on the second floor of the fire house.
This was a three-story building of red brick, and a place of awe and
wonder for the small boys of the town. The fire engine and the hose cart
were kept on the ground floor, in front. Behind them were the stalls for
the four sleek horses; behind the stalls again, a number of iron-barred
stalls for human beings. Here were housed the minor criminals, arrested
by Marshal Jim Radabaugh for petty peculations or disorders, and waiting
for their hearings before the Mayor. These little cells were not
designed to house prisoners for any length of time, and for the most
part they were furnished simply with heaps of straw pilfered from the
supply that was kept for the fire horses. The town drunkard, when the
marshal got him, was treated as well as the fire horses; and this is
more than may be said in larger towns than Hardiston.
At the left-hand side of the building there was an entrance hall,
through which one passed to reach the stairs that led up to the council
chamber. In the middle of this square hallway hung a rope, with a knot
on the end. This rope disappeared through a hole in the ceiling. If you
pulled it in the proper fashion, the bell in the steeple began a
chattering, staccato beat like the clanging of a gong. This was the fire
bell; and when it rang the fire chief came from his feed store across
the street, and the firemen came from the bakery, and the hardware
store, and the blacksmith shop where they worked; and the fat fire
horses--they doubled in the street-cleaning department--came on the
gallop from their abandoned wagons in the streets. Then everybody got
into harness of one kind or another and went to the fire.
Everybody in town wanted to ring that fire bell. Any one who discovered
a fire and reached the fire house with the news was privileged to do it.
There was a tradition that a boy once tried to ring the bell and was
jerked clear off the floor by the rebound after his first tug at the
rope. This added to the wonder and the mystery of it. The boys used to
hang around the doorway, watching this rope, and occasionally fingering
it in a gingerly way, and wishing a fire would start somewhere so that
they might see the bell rung.
It was through this hall where the rope hung that the people of
Hardiston crowded to see Wint inaugurated. They went up the worn, wooden
stairs into the council chamber, and they packed themselves in on the
benches in the rear of the room. This was not only the council chamber;
it was the seat of the Mayor’s court. There was an enclosure, surrounded
by a railing. When some of the bigger, or perhaps it was only the
braver, men of the town came in, they sat inside this railing, tilting
their chairs back against it, with a spittoon drawn within easy range.
The crowd came early; and they talked in cheerfully loud tones while
they waited. One by one the aldermen drifted in, the new ones and the
old. And Marshal Jim Radabaugh was there; and the clerk and the other
officials arrived and took their places within the enclosure. They were
carelessly matter of fact, as though the inauguration of a new Mayor was
an everyday matter. The boys, perched on the window sills, whistled, and
giggled, and then subsided into frightened silence to watch with staring
eyes.
Amos Caretall had let Wint sleep as late as possible this morning. Wint
needed the sleep, and Congressman Caretall made it his business to study
the needs of his fellow men. His Congressional creed, which he
summarized upon occasion, was as simple as that. “If a bill’s aimed to
make you folks at home here more comfo’table, I’m for it,” he would
say. “If it ain’t, I’m against it; and that’s all the way of it with
me.” So he let Wint sleep this morning until the last minute, then shook
him into wakefulness.
Even then, Wint might have thrown the whole thing over but for that
whistle. He was sick and sore, his head hurt, and his eyes could not
bear even the dim light of his bedroom. He told Amos he would not go
through with it, that he would not be inaugurated. Then the whistle
blew, and when Amos said it would be a part of his powers as Mayor to
stop that plagued whistle if he wanted to, the idea struck Wint’s sense
of humor. He grinned, and decided there was something in being Mayor,
after all, and climbed unsteadily out of bed.
After the tub of cold water which Amos had waiting for him, he felt
better. After old Maria Hale’s breakfast--fried eggs, and country-cured
ham, and three cups of strong coffee--he felt better still. But he was
not yet himself. Physically, he was acutely comfortable, blissfully
comfortable. His legs and his arms felt warm; they tingled. His head did
not hurt; it was merely numb. It was true that his tongue was furry and
thick, so that he had to talk very carefully when he talked at all; but
save for this precision of speech, there was no mark on him of the night
before. He was young enough to recover quickly, his cheeks were red, his
eyes were lazily clear.
But it was not to be denied that his head was numb. He was in something
like a daze when he went out with Amos and started toward the
fire-engine house. The day was bright and warm for the season, and the
sun was cheerful. Wint enjoyed the walk. But he had to keep his eyes
shut much of the time. The light hurt them. When he heard Amos speak to
some one they passed, he also spoke. When Amos talked to him, he
answered. But his answers were idle and unconsidered; he was too
comfortable to think.
They went up some stairs after a while, and Wint understood that they
had arrived. He heard people talking all together, and then one at a
time. Men said things, and Amos nudged him, and he made replies. He
could hear what others said to him. They mumbled hurriedly, as though
over some too-familiar formula. There was nothing particularly
impressive, or dignified, in the proceedings. The light from the windows
at the back of the room hurt Wint’s eyes, so he still kept them half
shut. The people before him were merely black shadows, silhouetted
against this glare. He could not see who any of them were.
After a time, some one--it sounded like a small boy--yelled: “Speech!”
And others took up the cry, and Amos nudged Wint. So Wint stood up again
and said with that careful precision which the condition of his tongue
demanded: “I’ve nothing to say. I’ll let what I do, do the talking for
me.”
That seemed to be satisfactory. Every one cheered, so that the noise
hurt his ears. Then he sat down. A moment later, every one got up, and
he got up, and they all began to crowd around him, and to crowd toward
the door. Somebody came up and shook hands with Wint, and he recognized
the voice of V. R. Kite. He had never liked Kite; the man was like a
foul bird. A buzzard. The idea pleased Wint. He said cheerfully:
“To hell with you, you old buzzard.”
He heard Amos chuckle, somewhere near him. Every one else stood very
still. So Wint strode past Kite to the stairs, and Amos followed him,
and Peter Gergue followed Amos. They went back home to Amos’s house.
Once, on the way, Wint asked:
“That all there is to it?”
Amos said: “Land, no, that’s just the beginning.”
Wint chuckled. He was beginning to enjoy himself. But he was very
sleepy. When they got home, he went to bed and slept till dinner was
ready, and he slept all the afternoon, and he went to bed for the night
as soon as supper was done.
* * * * *
Amos had been thinking he ought to get back to Washington. He was glad
Wint went off to bed, because there were two or three matters he wanted
to attend to. One of these matters had to do with Jack Routt. Amos was
not sure of his ground in that direction, but he had his suspicions. He
sent for Peter Gergue after supper, and Gergue came quickly at the
summons. They sat down before the coal fire, and Peter filled his pipe
in careful imitation of Amos, and the two men smoked together in silence
for a space, while Amos considered what to say.
Peter was one of those unfortunate men who do not like silences. This
put him at a disadvantage before Amos, who could be silent indefinitely.
It was Amos’s chief superiority over Peter, and it gave the Congressman
his mastery over the man. This night as always, it was Peter who spoke
first. He puffed at his pipe, and he said:
“Well, Amos, you’ll be gittin’ back to Washin’ton.”
Amos turned his head, tilted it on one side, and squinted at Peter. “I
guess so,” he agreed.
“Thought you’d be going,” said Peter. “Wint’ll miss you.”
“Do you think he’ll know he misses me?” Amos asked.
“If he did,” said Peter, “he wouldn’t admit it.”
The Congressman nodded. “Wint’s a cur’ous cuss. Peter.”
“Yeah.”
“He’s a nice boy--give him a chance.”
“We-ell, he’s got his chance.”
“What’s he going to do with it, Peter?”
Gergue rummaged through his black hair thoughtfully. “Guess that depends
on what he’s let do with it. Somebody come along and tell him he ought
to make a good Mayor, and he’ll make a bad one, just to show he can’t be
bossed.”
“That’s right.” Amos agreed. He considered, grinned to himself. “You
know, Pete, if we could get Kite to sign on as Wint’s guide,
philosopher, and friend. Wint’d do all right.”
Gergue considered, and he chuckled. “Sure. If he went contrary to what
Kite said. And he would. Wint’s always on the contrary-minded side of a
thing.”
“Now why is that?” Caretall asked.
“That’s because he’s who he is, I sh’d say.”
Amos puffed deep at his black pipe. “Trouble is,” he commented, “Kite
wouldn’t take the job. Not after what Wint handed him to-day. You heard
that?”
Gergue grinned widely. “Yeah. The old buzzard. Say, that surely does
hit Kite. The way he holds his head. I’d always thought of a turkey, but
I guess a buzzard does it too. Like he was always looking over a wall.”
“What I’d like to see,” said Amos, “is some one that would guarantee to
give Wint bad advice.”
“We-ell,” Peter told him, “I can do some of that.”
“Trouble is, there’s others will tell him to do the right thing.”
“You talk like James T. Hollow,” said Gergue. “Always trying to do
what’s right.”
“I wonder,” said Amos casually, “whether them that tell him to keep
straight figure he’ll do what they say?”
Peter understood that there was something back of the question; he
studied Amos’s impassive face. Then he thought for a minute, and nodded
his head.
“You mean Jack Routt,” he said.
“Yes,” the Congressman agreed.
Peter considered. “I don’t quite know about Jack,” he said. “He lets on
to be Wint’s friend. But he don’t help Wint any. Jack’s got a way of
telling Wint to do a thing that works the opposite every darned time.”
“I’ve a notion,” said Caretall, “that if Routt was to tell Wint to take
care of his health, say, Wint’d go shoot himself, just to be different.”
“That’s right,” Gergue agreed; and the two men sat for a time without
speaking, their pipes bubbling, the smoke drifting upward lazily.
“Question is,” said Caretall at last, “what are we going to do about
it?” Gergue made no comment, and Amos asked: “What do you think, Peter?”
“I don’t see through Routt,” said Gergue. “I don’t see what he’s got on
his mind.”
“Looks to me that he’s plain ornery,” Amos suggested.
“I guess that’s right.”
“But that don’t get us anywheres. I’d like to have him let Wint alone.”
“He’d ought to.”
“How can we make him let Wint alone?” Amos asked.
Peter considered that, fingers rummaging about the back of his head.
“Routt’s looking for something,” he said. “Maybe he wants to be
prosecuting attorney. Or something. I don’t know.”
“He never will be,” said Amos.
“I guess that’s right.”
“Not as long as I can swing any votes here.”
“Question is,” said Peter, “whether he knows you feel that way.”
“No,” Amos told him. “He don’t know.”
Peter looked sidewise at Amos. “He might be bought,” he suggested. “Or
he might be scared. I don’t know. He may be yellow. If he is, you could
scare him.”
Amos’s pipe went out, and he rapped it into his palm and treasured the
charred crumbs to prime his next smoke. “Peter,” he said thoughtfully,
“I’d like to see Jack. To-night.”
Gergue was a good servant. He got up at once. “All right, Amos,” he
said.
Caretall went with him to the door. “I’m taking the noon train,
to-morrow,” he told Gergue.
“I’ll be there,” said Peter.
Amos shut the door behind him and went back to the fire. He sat there
for a while, considering. Then he went out into the hall and called
Agnes. She was in her room; and she came running down, very gay and
pretty in a blue-flowered kimono, her hair down her back in a golden
braid. Amos looked at her thoughtfully. There was always a wistful
question in his eyes when he looked at Agnes. He met her at the foot of
the stairs, and he asked:
“Agnes, how’d you like to go to Washington?”
Now the girl had gone to Washington one winter with Amos. And she had
not liked it. Amos was just a small-town Congressman, one of scores. And
his daughter was just a pretty girl, and nothing more. Amos was a small
toad in that big puddle; Agnes had found herself not even a tadpole.
And--that did not please Agnes. Here in Hardiston, she was the daughter
of the biggest man in town; and she was the prettiest girl in town,
some said. At least, they told her so. Jack Routt, and some of the other
boys.
“I wouldn’t like it at all, dad,” she told Amos laughingly. “Washington
is a dead old place beside Hardiston.”
“I’m thinking of taking you,” Amos said, watching her with something
like sorrow in his eyes.
“I haven’t any clothes,” she protested. “I’m not ready, at all. I’d
rather not go, dad.”
“I’d rather you would,” he repeated gently.
She pouted. “Why? You’re always away. I’d never see you. I’d have
nothing to do at all. I--”
“I’d rather not leave you and Wint alone here. Wouldn’t be just the
thing,” her father insisted gently.
She laughed. “You funny old daddy. We’d have Maria for chaperon.”
“Wouldn’t be just the thing,” Amos said again.
“I’m not going to eat Wint,” she protested, half angry. “We get along
beautifully.”
“Guess you’d better go along with me,” Amos told her.
She stamped her foot. “Dad, I don’t want to.”
Amos jerked a forefinger up the stair, head on one side, eyes steady.
“Run along and pack, Agnes,” he said. “Won’t be much time in the
morning.”
Agnes began to cry. Amos watched her for a moment, watched her bowed
head, and a load seemed to settle on the man’s big shoulders. He turned
back to the sitting room without a word. After a while, he heard her run
up the stairs, every pound of her little feet scolding him, as a bird
scolds.
Amos filled his pipe and began to smoke again.
* * * * *
Jack Routt came late. While he waited, Amos had smoked two pipes to the
last bubble. When Jack knocked, he got up lumberingly and went to the
door to let the young man in. “Come in,” he said curtly. “Hang up your
things.”
He went back and sat down before the fire, and Jack Routt joined him
there. Amos looked up at him sidewise. “Sit down, Routt,” he said. “Take
a chair. Any chair.”
Routt sat down. “Gergue said you wanted to see me,” he reminded Amos.
“Yes,” Amos agreed. “I told him to tell you.”
“Came as soon as I could,” said Routt.
“That’s all right,” said Amos. “I wasn’t in a hurry. I’m hardly ever in
any hurry. Things come, give them time.” The colloquialisms had fallen
from his speech. Amos talked as well as any one when he chose; when he
was with Hardiston folks, he talked as they talked. Routt was a college
man.
Routt fidgeted in his chair. He had always been somewhat afraid of Amos.
He wondered what the Congressman wanted now, but Amos did not tell him.
He just sat, staring at the fire, smoking. Like Gergue, Routt was driven
to break the silence.
“What did you want with me, Amos?” he asked.
Amos spat into the fire. “Wanted to talk things over, Jack,” he said.
“I’m going to Washington to-morrow.”
“I’ve been expecting you’d go back.”
“Well, I’m going.”
Another silence, while Routt moved uneasily. At last he said: “You put
Wint over, all right.”
“Yes,” Amos agreed. “I put him over.” He looked at Routt then, with eyes
unexpectedly keen. “Think he’ll make a good Mayor, do you?”
“Well,” said Routt slowly, “he’ll be all right if he lets the booze
alone.”
Amos caught Routt’s eyes and held them commandingly. “Jack,” he said, “I
want you to let Wint alone.”
Routt asked angrily: “Me? What do you mean?”
“I don’t want you giving him any advice, and I don’t want you getting
him drunk. I want you to let him alone. Is that clear?”
Routt protested: “I’m the best friend Wint’s got.”
“You’re the worst enemy he’s got,” said Amos. “And you know it.”
“You can’t say that,” Routt pleaded.
Amos did not let go the other man’s eyes. “You got Wint drunk, day
before election,” he said. “You got him drunk last night. Routt, don’t
you do that again.”
“I got him drunk? Good Lord, Congressman, Wint’s a grown man. I’m not
his keeper.”
“I made you his keeper, before election,” said Amos. “I told you to keep
him straight. You didn’t do it. You got him drunk. Now I tell you, let
him alone.”
“I tried to keep him from drinking,” Routt urged.
“You said to him, ‘Don’t you drink, Wint. It ain’t good for you. You
can’t stand it.’ So he drank, to show you he could stand it. Just as you
knew he would.” Amos got up with a swiftness surprising in that
slow-moving man. He said harshly: “Routt, get your hat and get out. And
mind what I say. You let Wint alone.”
Some men would have sworn at Amos, some would have defied him. Routt was
the sort to promise anything. He said, with an assumption of
straightforward frankness:
“Why, of course, if you say so, I’ll keep away from him.”
“See that you do,” said Amos. “Now--good night.”
When the door closed behind Routt, Amos stood for a minute in the hall,
thinking. “Now I wonder,” he asked himself. “Will he do it? Was he
scared enough to keep hands off? I wonder, now.”
Routt, half a block away, was grinning without mirth. “Damn him,” he
said to himself. “Him and Wint too. I’ll....”
He wondered just what he had best do; and before he reached home, he had
decided to go and see V. R. Kite.
* * * * *
Congressman Caretall and Agnes took the noon train, next day. Wint went
with them to the station, and Amos had a last word for him.
“Don’t you get the idea I’ve left you on your own, Wint,” he said.
“You’ll need help. Things’ll come up. When they do, don’t you try to
stand on your own feet. Just write me--or telegraph. And I’ll come, or
tell you what to do.
“You’ll run into trouble. Don’t you try to fight it alone. Just you call
on me.”
Then the train pulled out. Wint watched it go; and when it rounded the
curve and disappeared beyond the electric-light plant, he grinned.
“Run to you when I need help, will I, Amos?” he asked good-naturedly,
under his breath. “I guess not. You’ve left me alone. And I’m going to
stand on my own hind legs. On my own two feet, by God!”
He turned and went swiftly back uptown.
CHAPTER II
JOAN TO WINT
The months of that winter passed quietly in Hardiston. The excitement of
the election was not forgotten; the drama of Wint’s choice as Mayor
became one of the stories to be told about the stoves on cold
home-keeping days. But Wint himself was no longer an object of curious
interest; he was just the Mayor. An inconsiderable figure in the town.
There had been Mayors in the past, and there would be again. Never
amounted to much, one way or another. Hardiston went along just the
same; the winters were just as cold, the summers just as hot, the rains
just as wet, the sun just as warm.
Hardiston is infamous for its winters and for its summers. In the spring
or in the fall there is no lovelier spot. In the spring, apple blossoms
clothe the hills; in the fall the woods are great splashes of flame
against the dull green of the fields. But in winter the mercury drops
far below zero, and climbs forty degrees in half a day. The snow comes
tempestuously, eight, ten, twelve inches of it; and it melts as quickly
as it comes. The roads turn into mud at the first snow; they remain mud
till the increasing heat of the northing sun bakes them to dust. On
Monday, every water pipe in town freezes tight; on Tuesday, violets
bloom in sheltered corners about the houses. On a cold morning,
adventurous boys skate on the film of ice that forms on streams and
ponds; but by noon the ice is unsafe, and some one has broken through,
and by mid-afternoon, it is freezing hard again.
This winter in Hardiston was like all others. The new Mayor stuck
strictly to business. Jack Routt let him alone. When boys were arrested
for misdemeanor, or children of a larger growth for more pretentious
wrongs, they were brought before Wint and he passed sentence upon them,
marveling that he, Wint Chase, should be passing judgment on his fellow
man. At first, this feature of his work shamed him; later it awed him,
and made him look into his own heart and ask whether he were fit for
such a rôle. He tried to make himself fit.
To act as judge of the Mayor’s court and to preside at council meetings
comprised the bulk of Wint’s official duties. They took only a fraction
of his time. When the electric-light plant went out of commission with a
broken cylinder head, Wint had to do the explaining; when a sewer became
stopped up, he had to see that it was opened; when the old project for a
sewage-disposal plant came up on its annual burst of life, he had to
consider it. When Ned Howell filed his regular yearly suit for damages
done to his pasture by overflow from the sewage-filled creek, Wint had
to attend court and testify. But--there was time on his hands and to
spare. He did not know what to do with himself.
He did not undertake any crusades. A certain diffidence, in these first
months, restrained him. He was not sure of his ground; he was not sure
of himself. V.R. Kite’s underlings continued to peddle their wares, and
the Mayor’s court had to deal, now and then, with one of Kite’s bibulous
customers. Wint dealt with them, but he did not dig for the root of the
evil, to tear it out. Matters in Hardiston went on much as they had in
the past. Men rose, did their day’s work, ate, and went to bed again.
Women likewise. The annual Chautauqua lecture course began and was
finished; Number Four theatrical companies came to town with Broadway
attractions, played one-night stands, and departed as they had come. The
moving-picture houses had new films every day, and the same audiences
day after day. The dramatic teacher in the high school organized a
pageant, and it was presented to the eyes of admiring parents in the
Rink. The high school played basket ball, the women played bridge, the
men played poker of a night. Now and then the Masons or the Knights of
Pythias gave a dance. The preachers preached sermons in which they tried
to prove there was nothing the matter with the churches. The schools
developed their annual scandal over the discharge of a school-teacher.
There were the regular rumors of a new factory that was to come to town;
and the rumors fell through in the regular way. Now and then a baby was
born, now and then there was a wedding, now and then there was a
funeral.
Wint stuck to his guns, and the world rolled majestically and
interminably on.
When Wint took hold of his job, he wondered what there was for him to
do. Dick Hoover told him. Dick was a lawyer, in with his father, who had
the biggest practice in town. He showed Wint where to look, in the
statute books, for the duties of a Mayor. Wint was surprised to discover
that laws were simple, everyday things, having to do with life as it was
lived. One day when he went to Dick’s office to look up a statute, the
book he sought was in use. To kill time, he took down a volume of
Blackstone and peered into it curiously. He discovered that Blackstone
said water was a “movable, wandering thing,” and the description
fascinated him. He read on....
The more law he read, the more interested he became. In January, he
asked Dick Hoover if it were possible to study law in leisure hours.
Hoover told him it was not only possible, it was easy. The end of
January saw Wint putting in his spare time on calfskin-bound volumes of
which each page was one-third reading matter and two-thirds footnotes.
The first day he picked up a book of cases was marked with a red letter
on his mental calendar. He found these cases as interesting as fiction.
He began to read law systematically. Dick Hoover’s father was
interested, helped him. The elder Hoover told Wint’s father one day:
“Chase, your boy is going to make a lawyer before he’s through.”
The senior Chase looked at Hoover, half minded to resent the fact that
his son had been mentioned in his presence. But--the old wound was
healing. Men no longer took occasion to remind him of last fall’s
election with a jeer in their eyes. His conditional alliance with Kite
had languished, because Wint had made no move to make the town dry.
Chase hated Amos Caretall as ardently as ever; but he could not hate his
son. That is not the way with fathers. He loved Wint; he had been, for
some time, secretly proud of him.
He said to Hoover: “He’s smart enough, if he sticks to it.”
“He’s sticking,” Hoover told Wint’s father.
Winthrop Chase, Senior, nodded indifferently, hiding the light in his
eyes. “He never stuck to anything before,” he said, and turned away.
He thought of telling Wint’s mother, that night, but did not do so. When
he spoke of Wint to her, it precipitated one of her endless remarks.
They wearied him. But he had to tell some one, so he told Hetty Morfee,
when he went to the kitchen for a drink of water. Hetty was washing
dishes at the time, and she stopped with a plate in one hand and a
dish-rag in the other, and listened, and said with a cheerful
wistfulness in her voice:
“Wint’s smart, sir. You’ll be proud of him.”
Chase was proud of him, but he would not admit it to himself, much less
to Hetty.
“He’s smart enough,” he told her. “But he’s ... He’s....”
He turned abruptly and went out of the kitchen without saying what Wint
was, and Hetty looked after him with understanding in her smile. Then
her face became still and somber again. There was growing in Hetty’s
eyes a certain unhappy light. A desperate fashion of unhappiness, which
no one was sufficiently interested to notice. She was not so cheerful as
she used to be. And there was a helplessness about her.
Word of Wint’s new industry spread slowly through Hardiston. It was Dick
Hoover himself who told Joan of it. Dick was a Mason, and he took Joan
to a Masonic dance one night. She spoke of Wint. “I have heard that he
is studying law,” she said. “Is it true?”
So Dick told her. “True as Gospel,” he said. “And he’s darned quick to
pick it up, too. The principles.... Of course, it will take time. But
I’d just as soon have him try a case for me now, as some of these....”
He went on enthusiastically. Hoover was always enthusiastic about
things. He was an extremist. His friends were the finest chaps in the
world, his enemies were the least of created things. But he had few
enemies. People liked him, and he liked people. Joan liked him; liked
him particularly this evening because he talked to her of Wint.
Joan Arnold was, in a way of speaking, a girl to tie to. There was a
peculiar steadfastness in her. She was a little taller than Wint, and
she was habitually grave and quiet, especially when she was with him. In
his presence she had always been faintly abashed and reticent as a girl
is apt to be in the presence of a man she cares for. Joan had always
cared for Wint. In spite of the fact that she was a year or two his
junior, they had played together as children: and they had grown up
together. When they were little children, they fought as only good
friends can fight. When they were a little older, Wint scorned her
because she was a girl. A year or so later, she scorned Wint because she
was at the age when girls resolve to have a career and never marry at
all. But in their late teens, they were devoted to each other, so that
the mothers of the town smiled when they passed by, and nodded to each
other, and whispered, with the delight women take in such matters, that
they were a nice-looking couple together. Wint’s short, sturdy strength
matched well the girl’s slightly larger stature and her quiet poise.
The first passage of affection between them had come when she was
eighteen, when he went away to college. Before that they had been much
together, but none save the most casual words had passed between them.
The night before Wint went away, he went to see her. He was feeling
adventurous and heroic and important as a boy does feel when he leaves
home for the first time. He talked vastly, of big things he meant to do,
of his dreams. She thrilled to his dreams with the half of her that was
still child; she smiled at his enthusiasm with the half that was already
woman. They were sitting on the porch of her home. There were locust
trees about the veranda. They sat in a two-seated swing, facing each
other, Wint leaning toward her earnestly.
He became melancholy, and she comforted him softly. He did not want to
go away, he said. She told him he would be happy. The movement of the
swing made him lean toward her. There was a moon, and the September
evening was warm, and the very air seemed trembling in a rhythm that
beat upon them both.
When he got up to go, she got up at the same time, and the swing lurched
and threw them together. Ineptly, he kissed her, fumblingly, on the
cheek. She did not move, she trembled where she stood. He took her
awkwardly in his arms, as though afraid she would break, and kissed her
cheek again. He rubbed his cheek against hers. She looked at him with
wide eyes, lips a little parted, and he kissed her lips. They were cool,
unused to kisses.
The months thereafter, till Wint was expelled from college, passed
smoothly with them. Too smoothly, too placidly. They wrote short, broken
letters; they saw each other when Wint came home. They thought they were
very happy; yet each was conscious of a lack in their happiness. There
was no fire in it, none of the exquisite anguish of love. They missed
this, without knowing what they missed. All went too well with them.
Joan wept on her pillow when he was expelled, but she did not let him
see her weep. She reassured him. There was an unsuspected strength in
her. Women are full of these surprises. They are indescribably dainty
creatures, habitually clad in fabrics like gossamer, seeming light as
air and fit to vanish at a breath, who reveal--in a bathing suit, for
instance--a surprising physical solidity. It was so, spiritually, with
Joan. She was so quiet and so still that Wint, if he had thought at all,
would have supposed she was a simple girl and nothing more; but in the
revelations of his disaster, she showed a poise and a power which
heartened him immensely, and made him a little afraid of her. She was a
tower of strength for him to lean upon, a miracle of understanding and
of sympathy.
He had expected her to be shocked and revolted at the shame of his
expulsion; she was simply sorry for him, and loved him none the less.
Wint knew, then, how much he loved her. There is nothing that so
inspires love in a man as to find himself beloved. This is the conceit
of the creature!
Joan had told Wint that she was done with him, when the story of his
drunken sleep in the Weaver House went abroad through Hardiston.
But--she had done it for his sake. She thought there was good in him.
How could she love him else? She thought it might come out if he had to
fight; she thought his very stubbornness might save him. Joan had no
illusions about Wint. She knew he was prideful and stubborn. But--she
loved him. And so had told him she would have no more of him. With a
reservation in her heart....
Thus what Dick Hoover told her made Joan happy; happier than Hoover
could possibly guess. Another girl would have cried herself to sleep
with happiness that night, but Joan was not given to tears. She lay
awake for a long time, thinking....
Three or four days later, she met Wint on the street. They had met thus,
often, for Hardiston is a small place. But heretofore they passed with a
word, unsmiling. This time, Wint would have passed her in that fashion;
but Joan stopped and spoke to him.
“Wint,” she said.
He had been sick with hunger for a word from her for weeks. He stopped
as though she had struck him, and his cheeks burned red as fire. He
could not have spoken, for his life. He stood, hat in hand, face
crimson, staring at her.
Joan knew what she wished to say. “I want you to know that I am proud of
you, Wint,” she said.
His impulse was to laugh, to reject her friendliness. The old Wint,
stiff with pride, would have done this. But the old Wint was gone; or at
least, he was going. This Wint who stood before Joan tried to find
something to say, but all he found to say to her was:
“Oh!”
Joan smiled at him. “There was a time when I wouldn’t have dared say
this, Wint,” she said. “But I do dare now. Stick to the fight, Wint.
This is what I want to say.”
He said, sullen in his embarrassment: “I’m going to.”
“There was a time when you were not going to--just because I--your
friends--told you to stick.”
Wint looked away from her. “Well, that’s all right,” he told her
uncomfortably.
“There’s never any harm in having friends, Wint, and taking their
advice,” she said.
The old impatience burst out for a moment. “Don’t preach,” he said
harshly.
“I’m not going to preach.” She was afraid she had spoiled it all. But he
reassured her, hot with shame at his own decency.
“It’s all right, Joan,” he said. “I know you mean to help. I’ll try.”
“Do try,” she echoed softly.
He nodded, and she watched him, and at last added:
“I’d like to have you come to see me some time.”
He hesitated, then he said swiftly: “All right. Some time. Good-by!”
He jerked his head in farewell and hurried away as though he were afraid
of her. Joan watched him go, and she pressed her hand to her lips as
though to still them.
CHAPTER III
ROUTT TO KITE
When Wint left Joan, after their encounter on the street, he was walking
in a daze. He stumbled, his head was down, his eyes were blank. He was
stunned and humbled; and after he had left her, he began to feel
defiant. He thought of words with which he could have crushed her and
silenced her. Presuming to forgive him, to praise him. What right had
she to do that anyway? He ought to have laughed at her.
Not that Wint did not love Joan. He did; but he was still, at this time,
a boy and nothing more. And he had rather more than a boy’s usual
measure of stubborn contrariness in him. When his father, and his
mother, and Joan, and every one else he cared for had bade him mend his
ways, he had refused to mend them, and the thing had been a scandal on
every tongue in Hardiston. When, in like fashion, father and mother and
Joan bade him go to the dogs, whither he seemed surely bound, he had
braced himself, fought a good fight, begun to make good. Now Joan was
telling him he had made good, that he was all right. He had a reckless
desire to go to the devil, forthwith, to prove her wrong.
He had met Joan at the corner by the Star Company’s furniture store, an
institution that was always holding fire sales and closing-out sales
without either fires before or actual closings after. Their talk there
together had not gone unremarked. Every one in town would know of it
within the day. When they separated, Joan went away from town toward her
home, and Wint went up Broadway toward the Court House. Not that he knew
where he was going. But he had to go somewhere.
There were only one or two places in Hardiston to go to when you did not
know where to go. You might go to the Smoke House, and shake dice for a
cigar, or drop a nickel in the slot machine and see how your luck was
running. Or you might drop in at the Post Office in the idle hope that a
special train had come along with a letter for you since the last
regular mail was sorted into the boxes. Or you might stop at one of the
newspaper offices. The editors were always willing to talk, and there
were usually two or three others there before you.
Wint headed, somewhat aimlessly, for the Post Office. But when he passed
down Main Street, B. B. Beecham, editor of the _Journal_, called Wint in
to look at proofs of some city printing. Wint always got on well with B.
B. The editor never preached, he never seemed to have any particular
interest in the wrong-doings of other people, he attended to his own
business and let you attend to yours. A square-built man, with a big
barrel of a chest and stocky shoulders, and a strong, amiable
countenance. Wint went in at his hail; and B. B. got the proofs for him,
and Wint began to look them over. B. B. chunked up the fire in the
little round iron stove that had seen so many years of service it was
disintegrating. It was bound together with wire to hold it together; and
there were holes in the front of it through which the fire could be
seen. The stovepipe went up at an angle like that of the leaning tower
of Pisa, then made a back-handed elbow turn and ran along in a hammock
of wire braces to disappear into the wall. B. B. thrust a bit of wood in
through the door, down into the fire, twisted it upward, breaking up the
clotted coals and ashes. Then he put on more coal, and shut the door,
and the fire roared up the chimney. Wint was going over the proofs,
figure by figure. They had to do with bids on a sewer contract. B. B.
sat down at his desk with his back to Wint and busied himself with
something.
B. B.’s desk was a roll top, its pigeonholes frazzly with letters and
papers jammed into them to the bursting point. The desk itself was
littered with newspapers and notes and notebooks and scratch pads made
out of old order blanks. There was an old iron inkwell, a tin box full
of pins, a pencil or two. In a little hexagonal glass bottle at one
side, a newly hatched humming bird which had fallen from the nest and
been killed was preserved in alcohol. Not so large as a bumblebee, and
not nearly so impressive. For paper weight, B. B. used a witch ball,
taken from the stomach of a steer that Ned Howell had butchered. A
round, smooth, yellowish thing, with a hole picked in to show the hair
inside. It was as big as a small orange, and looked not unlike one, save
that the yellow was dull and muddy. On top of the desk were books, a big
hornet’s nest, an ear of corn. There was a curiously marked squash on
the open iron safe in the corner; and in the rear of the office a
stand-up desk and a smaller one at which a person might sit were
littered with the miscellany of B. B.’s business.
While Wint was looking over the proofs, an old darky came in from the
street. A ragged old man.... Wint knew him. He lived down the creek in a
log cabin, and caught catfish, and farmed a plot of ground. His hat was
battered, his coat was too big for him, his trousers slumped about his
slumping shoes. His name was John Marshum. He took off his hat and
looked around the ceiling of the office uneasily, as though he expected
it to fall, and Wint and B. B. said hello to him, and he said:
“Howdy.”
B. B. asked: “Is there anything I can do for you?”
The old negro gulped, and said: “I’d like tuh borry a paper and a
pencil, ef you please.”
B. B. gave him what he asked for, and the old man sat down at the desk
in the back of the room, and bit his tongue, and gnawed the pencil, and
began to write with infinite pains, slowly, the sweat bursting out of
him with the effort. Wint and B. B. went on with their affairs.
After a while, the old fellow got up and crossed to B. B. and held out
the product of his effort. “Heah’s a paper for you, suh,” he said. When
B. B. took it, the old man hurried awkwardly out of the door and
disappeared.
B. B. read the paper and chuckled, and Wint asked: “What is it?” The
editor handed it to him, and he read the scrawl aloud:
“‘John Marshum was a very plesint vister at this office Thursdy.’”
Wint laughed good-naturedly. “The poor old clown. Wants his name in the
paper. You ought to put it in, just to make him feel good.”
“I’m going to,” said B. B. “Old John’s one of my best friends in the
county. He’s been a subscriber twelve years, and always paid up. You’d
be surprised to know how many don’t pay up. And you’d be surprised how
many people come in, just as he did, to get their names in the paper. I
don’t suppose you ever thought of that.”
Wint passed the corrected proofs over to B. B. “One or two mistakes,” he
said, and the editor sent the proofs up for correction. “What do you do
with the darned fools?” Wint asked. “Tell them advertising space costs
money?”
B. B. looked surprised. “No, I print their names. That’s what the
paper’s for--to print people’s names. It makes them feel proud of
themselves, and that’s good for them. It’s one way of helping them
along, doing them good.”
Wint grinned. “Never did me any particular good to see my name in
print,” he said. “Usually made me mad.”
“It wasn’t the fact that they printed your name that made you mad. It
was what they printed about you.”
“Maybe so,” Wint admitted. “I didn’t see that it was any of their
business.”
“That’s the way the city dailies are run,” B. B. agreed. “But a country
weekly is a different proposition. I never print anything that will make
any one mad. Not if I can help it. Not even a joke. A joke on a man’s no
good unless he can appreciate it himself.”
Wint eyed B. B. and remarked thoughtfully: “I remember, when they stuck
me in as Mayor, you didn’t print the fact that my father was a
candidate.”
“No,” B. B. agreed.
“I supposed that was because you and my father are--allies in politics
and such things.”
“No,” said B. B. “I try not to print things that will hurt people. Mr.
Chase felt badly about that.”
“I don’t blame him,” said Wint slowly. “You know I had nothing to do
with it.” He had never talked so freely to any one as he was accustomed
to talk to B. B. There was some strain in the editor that invited
confidences. He knew as many secrets as a doctor.
“Yes, I know,” he said.
“You know,” Wint went on, abruptly, “people are funny, B. B.”
“Yes.”
“I’m funny, myself.”
B. B. laughed in a friendly way. “Like the old Quaker who said to his
wife: ‘All the world is a little queer save thee and me, my dear; and
even thee are at times a little queer.’”
“No,” said Wint, smiling. “I include myself. I’m queer.”
B. B. said nothing. Wint started to go on, but the words were not in
him. He had a curious, sudden impulse to ask B. B. about his father;
this impulse was like homesickness. But he fought it back. His jaw set
stubbornly. His father had thrown him out. That was enough; he didn’t
ask to be kicked twice.
When B. B. saw that Wint was not going on, he spoke of something else.
Then Ed Howe, one of Caretall’s men, dropped in and cut a slice from a
plug and filled his pipe in the Caretall fashion: and Wint listened to
Ed and B. B. talk for a while before he got up and took himself away. He
had found some measure of reassurance in his talk with B. B., not
because of anything that had been said, but simply because B. B. was a
reassuring man. A strong man. A strong man, and a wise man, with open
eyes--and an optimist. Not all men who seem to see clearly are
optimists.
In front of the Post Office, Wint ran into Jack Routt. Routt had been
out of town for a month or so on a business trip, and Wint had seen
little of him since Amos went away. He was glad to see Jack, and said
so. They shook hands, and Wint bought Routt a cigar. Routt studied Wint
curiously. He wondered if it were true that Wint was keeping straight
and doing well. And to find out, he asked laughingly:
“Been over to see Mrs. Moody lately, old man?”
Mrs. Moody was that virago who managed the Weaver House, that woman of
the hideously beautiful false teeth. Wint flushed uncomfortably at
mention of her. “No-o,” he said hesitantly.
“That’s the boy,” said Routt. “You keep away from her. You let the stuff
alone. You can’t monkey with it, the way some fellows can, old man.”
And he watched Wint. There had been a time when this word would have
acted as a challenge, when Wint would have snapped at the bait.
But--Wint hesitated, he considered, he shook himself a little and said
quietly:
“I guess you’re right, Jack.”
“You bet I’m right,” said Routt.
Wint nodded. “Yes,” he agreed.
When they separated, Routt went to his office and sat down with his feet
on his desk to consider. And--he scowled. Matters were not going well
with him. It did not suit him for Wint to keep straight. It did not suit
him to lie supine under Amos Caretall’s injunction to let Wint alone.
The Congressman’s command had irked him more than once, and more than
once he had thought of V. R. Kite in that connection, and thought of
going to Kite. He had a fairly definite idea that Amos would never help
him along politically, and Kite might be able to. And--he remembered the
word Wint had fastened on Kite on the day of his inauguration. He had
called Kite a buzzard, and others had taken it up. The name seemed to
fit; it tickled the sense of humor of Hardiston folks. But it did not
tickle V. R. Kite. Kite ought to be ready to take means to crush Wint.
And--that would please Routt. He had held off thus long in the belief
that Wint would be his own ruin. He began to doubt this, now. It might
be necessary to do something.
Routt was of mean stuff, small and tawdry. He had been what Hardiston
called a mean boy, a trouble-maker. He had an infinite capacity for
hate, a curious shrewdness that enabled him to fasten on another’s
weakest point. As boys, he and Wint had fought once. They fought over
Joan, because Routt teased her till she cried. Wint had whipped him,
though Routt was the taller and the heavier of the two. Routt had never
forgotten that; but Wint forgot it as soon as the incident was over.
Wint forgot, and Routt remembered. Circumstances threw them much
together; they grew up as friends; Routt behaved himself; people decided
that he had outgrown his meanness. Wint liked him, did not distrust him,
accepted him for what he seemed--a friend.
But Jack Routt was nobody’s friend. Sometimes, when he was alone, you
might have seen this in his face. It was so now, as he thought of Wint;
his countenance was twisted and distorted and malignant. In later years,
it was to bear the marks of these secret and rancorous moments for any
eye to see. Indelible and unmistakable. But just now Routt knew how to
smile, how to be a good fellow....
He brought his feet down from the desk with a bang. He got up and
reached for his hat. He had made up his mind; he would go and see Kite.
Kite was in town. Routt knew he would find the man in the Bazaar, the
town’s five and ten cent store. He went that way, but as he reached the
place, Peter Gergue came along the street and Routt went past without
entering. Just as well Gergue should not know that he was seeing Kite.
Gergue would tell Amos. When Gergue had disappeared, Routt went back and
turned into the Bazaar. Kite’s desk was in the back of the store, but
Kite was not in sight. The little man might be hidden behind the desk.
One of the girls who clerked in the store--her name was Mary Dale, and
she was a pretty, simple little thing--asked Routt what he wanted, and
he stopped to talk to her for a moment. Routt liked pretty girls. He
asked her if Kite was in, and she said he was at his desk, so Routt went
back that way. He drew up a chair to face the little man, and Kite
cocked his head on his thin neck, and tugged at his side whiskers.
“Howdo, Routt,” he said.
“Morning,” Routt rejoined. “How’s tricks, Kite?”
“All right.” Kite looked suspicious. Routt offered him a cigar, which
Kite declined. Jack lighted it himself, then said idly:
“Well, I just got back.”
“Been away?”
“Yes. Columbus.”
“Oh!”
“I see Wint hasn’t closed down on you yet,” Routt drawled.
Kite flushed angrily. “Of course not. Why should he? He’s no fool.”
“I said he hadn’t shut down on you--yet,” Routt repeated, and he
emphasized the last word.
“He likes his drop now and then, same as another man.”
“Hasn’t been taking many drops lately, has he?”
“I’m not his guardian. How do I know? Long as he lets me alone.”
Routt grinned. “I heard he didn’t let you alone, day he was inaugurated.
Called you a buzzard, didn’t he?”
“The man was drunk.”
“Name’s kind of stuck, though. A darned, rotten thing like that will
stick.”
Kite was trying to keep calm, but he was an irascible little man. He
snapped at Routt: “What do I care for names? They break no bones.”
“Well, that’s so,” Routt agreed good-naturedly.
“Long as he lets me alone, I’m satisfied,” Kite said again.
Routt nodded. “How long do you figure he’ll let you alone?” he asked.
Kite’s temper got away from him. “By God, he’d better let me alone!” He
banged a clenched fist on the table. Routt drawled:
“Don’t get excited.”
“I’m n-not excited,” Kite stammered. “But he’ll let me alone. He don’t
dare to bother me. Why, Routt, if he tries anything, I’ll--I’ll get out
of town. I won’t live in the place. I’ll take my money out of the dirty
little hole.”
“We-ell,” said Routt, “you could do that, of course. That would suit
him. He’d get his own way, then. You could get out. Or you might fight
him.”
“Fight him?” Kite snapped. “I’ll fight him to the last dollar.” He
controlled himself with an effort. “But he’s not going to start
anything. I know him. He’s inoffensive. A boy.”
“Amos Caretall is no boy,” Routt reminded him. “And Amos is backing
him.”
Kite remembered that Winthrop Chase, Senior, had told him this same
thing; had warned him that Amos meant to use Wint to clean up the town.
He and Chase had made an alliance on that basis. If Wint tried a
crusade, they would go after Amos together, and hang his hide on the
fence. They had sworn that together.... Now Routt was saying the same
thing. He had been feeling fairly secure; he and Chase had made no move.
Chase had wanted him to start a back fire against Amos, but Kite had
been ready to let well enough alone.... Now Routt ... Routt was one of
Caretall’s men. He would be likely to know what the Congressman planned.
Kite demanded angrily:
“What makes you think Amos is planning anything? He and I understand
each other.”
Routt laughed. “Amos would double cross his best friend and call it a
joke,” he said amiably. “You know that. Didn’t he double cross Chase?”
“Sure. I helped him,” said Kite defiantly.
“Next thing,” Routt told him, “he’ll double cross you.”
Kite leaned across and gripped Routt by the arm. “What makes you say
that? You and Amos are together.”
“We were,” said Routt, “but I told him a few things he didn’t like. I’m
no particular friend of Amos.”
Kite said: “I’m not either. But as long as he plays fair with me, I’ll
play fair with him.”
“What if he don’t?”
“I’ll smash him.”
“You can’t smash Amos,” said Routt, “but you can hurt him.”
“How?”
“Smash young Wint.”
Kite snorted. “Pshaw! Wint’s a boy.”
“He’s growing up. One of these days, he’s going to send for Jim
Radabaugh and tell him to clean up the town....”
“By God, if he does,” Kite swore, “I’ll tear him all to pieces.”
Routt got up. “When you start in to do that,” he said, “send for me. I
might be able to help.”
“I won’t need any help to rip Wint Chase wide open.”
“You send for me,” said Routt insistently.
“All right. I’ll send for you.”
“I’ll be here,” Routt promised. When he went out through the store, he
stopped and told Mary Dale she was the prettiest girl in town. Mary was
pleased. She knew he didn’t mean it; she was simple enough, if you like;
but she knew there were probably other girls just as pretty as she was.
Nevertheless, she was glad Jack had told her she was pretty. She thought
it meant he was pleased with her.
As a matter of fact, it only meant that he was pleased with himself. But
that was a thing Mary Dale could not be expected to understand.
CHAPTER IV
WINT TO JOAN
Wint had lived very comfortably that winter, in Amos Caretall’s home,
with old Maria Hale to take care of him. In the beginning, when Amos
went away, he had protested at this arrangement. He told Amos he would
go to a hotel, to a boarding house, hire a room somewhere.... He said he
would not impose on Amos by living on his bounty.
Amos laughed at him and said Wint would not be living on any one’s
bounty. “I aim to charge you board and keep,” he said. “And that’s
velvet for me, because I’d keep the house going anyway. Got to, to keep
old Maria. If I ever let go of her, somebody’d grab her in a minute.”
Wint knew it was Amos’s habit to keep the house open and Maria in it,
even when he and Agnes were both away; so he accepted the proposition.
The board which Amos required him to pay was nominal; and Wint wanted to
pay more. Amos shook his head.
“First thing you want to learn, Wint, is never to pay a man more than he
asks, for anything. He’ll think you’re a blamed fool.”
So Wint had been comfortable. Maria knew how to cook, she kept the house
neat, she picked up after Wint’s disorderliness. And she mothered Wint
as her kind know how to do.
He was comfortable, but he was lonely, desperately lonely. Wint was a
convivial young man. He liked to be with people. He had never been much
in his own exclusive company. Some one said that it is not good for man
to be alone; but it is equally true that it is not good for a man never
to be alone. Solitude is good for the soul. It gives an opportunity for
a certain amount of thought, for taking stock of one’s self. If every
one could be persuaded to an hour’s solitary self-consideration each
day, the world would be bettered thereby. It is hard to deceive
yourself. Wint found out the truth of this in his solitary evenings that
winter. He found himself forced to face facts, and face them squarely;
he found himself forced to recognize his own mistakes.
Thus his loneliness did him no harm; but it did make him uncomfortable.
The fact that he was much alone resulted from two or three circumstances
and causes. His father had cast him out; so he saw his father and mother
not at all. And he had been accustomed to see them every day, all his
life. It is true there had usually been little pleasure for him in these
encounters. His father’s harshness, his mother’s garrulous tongue had
irked and angered him. They had worked at cross-purposes, as families
are apt to do. There had been little obvious sympathy and understanding
between them. Nevertheless, Wint found that he missed them; that he
missed his father’s overbearing accusations, and he missed his mother’s
interminable talk. Once or twice, when he met her on the street, he
stopped to talk with her; and he took a certain comfort from the flow of
breathless reproaches which poured out upon him at these times. Mrs.
Chase was as unhappy that winter as a mother must be when her son is set
apart from her; but she was loyal to her husband, and reproached Wint
for his disloyalty.
Wint missed Joan, too. He missed her enormously. There was never any
doubt that Joan was half the world to him. He had longed for her
desperately at times; he had wanted to go and abase himself before her.
But he would not; he was strong enough to keep to his own path. And Joan
kept to hers.
The fact that Wint and Joan were thus at odds made Wint an awkward
figure in any group of young people, because Joan was almost sure to be
there. He knew this as well as any one. So when Dick Hoover asked him to
go to the dances, he refused because Joan would be there; and when Elsie
Jenkins asked him to a card party, he refused again, and for the same
reason. But he did not tell Dick and Elsie what this reason was. As a
consequence, people stopped asking him to the festivities of Hardiston,
and Wint was left solitary.
Solitary, and lonely. He was so lonely, that night of Elsie’s party,
that he walked past her house for the sheer, hungry joy of looking in
through her windows at the throng inside. He often walked about the town
in the evenings, thus. Sometimes it was to pass Joan’s home.... And he
did a deal of thinking, and of wondering; and he made a resolution or
two....
When Joan spoke to him, asked him to come and see her, Wint experienced
a strange revulsion of feeling. He was unhappy, and he told himself he
would never go; and he went uptown and dropped in on B. B. Beecham and
had that innocuous and idle talk with the editor, which never touched on
his troubles at all. Nevertheless, Wint emerged from the _Journal_
office in a more cheerful frame of mind. People were apt to be more
cheerful, and more optimistic, and more resolved, after talking with B.
B. This was one of the virtues of the man.
Wint decided, after leaving B. B., that he would go and see Joan. Some
time.... He decided he would not be in any hurry about it. Next month,
perhaps, or next week, or in a day or two....
As might have been expected, the end of it was that he went to see her
that night. For Wint was still half boy, with a boy’s impatience; and he
had been lonely for Joan for so long. After supper, with the long
evening before him, and nothing to do, he thought of going to Joan. He
swore he wouldn’t go; but he wanted to, so badly. Why shouldn’t he? She
had asked him. He wouldn’t and he would, and he wouldn’t and he
would....
In the end, he decided to walk out to her home and see if he could see
her, through the window. There was snow on the ground, it was fairly
cold. He bundled up in overcoat and cap and filled a pipe and lighted
it, and set out. He would just walk past the house, come back another
way, go to bed.... That would do no harm.
But even while he tried to tell himself this was what he meant to do, he
knew that he would not come back without seeing Joan--if the thing were
possible. And when he got to the house, he saw that it was possible.
The shades were up at the sitting-room window; he could see her, reading
before the fire. She was alone.
So Wint went reluctantly up the walk from the street, and he hesitated
at the steps, and then he went up the steps, stamping, and knocked at
the door. He heard Joan stirring, inside. Then the door opened, and Joan
was there before him. The light behind her shone through her hair; her
eyes were dark and steady.
The light fell on his face, and she said quietly: “Hello, Wint.
I’m--glad you came.”
Wint took off his cap, and held it in his hand. She thought he looked
very like a boy. He said nothing; and Joan moved a little to one side
and bade him come in. He went in, like a man walking in his sleep, and
she shut the door behind him. Wint stood in the hall as though he did
not know what to do. He wanted to run; but the door was shut.
She said: “Take off your coat.” So he did, and laid it on a chair in the
hall, and put his cap on top of it. Joan told him to come into the
sitting room; and he said huskily:
“All right.”
So they went in and sat down together before the fire. And Wint wished
he had not come. He crossed his legs one way, then he crossed them the
other. He folded his arms, he folded his hands in his lap, he cleared
his throat, he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. He did not
look at Joan; but Joan watched him, and by and by she smiled a little,
and her smile seemed like a caress upon his bent head.
Wint said abruptly: “Your people all right?”
“Yes,” Joan told him.
He muttered angrily that that was good; and silence fell upon them
again. He twisted in this silence, like a caterpillar on a pin. He was
immensely relieved when Joan spoke at last.
“What shall we talk about, Wint?” she asked steadily. “Do you want to
talk about your--fight? What are you doing?”
“No,” he said dourly, staring at the fire.
Joan watched him, not resenting his sullenness, because she had
understanding. After a little, she said gently: “I saw your mother the
other day.”
Wint shot a quick glance at her. He could not help it. “That so?” he
asked.
Joan nodded, and she smiled a little wistfully. “Yes. She misses you.
She and your father....”
“They haven’t told me so,” said Wint morosely.
“Have you talked with them?” she asked.
“No. My father--” For the life of him, he could not stifle the choke in
his voice. “No, I haven’t,” he said.
“You couldn’t, of course,” she agreed, and she looked at him sidewise.
“Of course, if you went to them, your father would think you were trying
to make up. You couldn’t do that.” There was an anxiety in her eyes; the
anxiety of the experimenter. Wint went by contraries. Joan knew quite
clearly what she wanted; she wanted him to go to his father. Was this
the way to lead him to make the first move?
She was frightened at what she had done when he looked at her angrily.
“See here,” he said, “do you want me to go to him? Do you think I ought
to?” She was so frightened that she could not speak; but she nodded.
Wint barked at her:
“Then why don’t you say so? I’m sick of having people make me do things
by telling me not to.”
“I wasn’t trying to--make you do it, Wint,” she said; and she was almost
pleading.
“You were; and you know it,” he told her flatly. “Weren’t you, now?
Secretly trying to make me....”
Joan could not lie to him. “Y-Yes,” she said.
“Then come out with it,” Wint demanded; and he got up and stamped about
the room, and words burst from him. “Joan,” he exclaimed, “I’ve been a
fool, and I know it. Am one still, I suppose. Hate to be preached to and
told what I must do, and mustn’t. You know that. Result is, I’m always
in trouble. Jack Routt, best friend I’ve got, does me more harm than my
worst enemy--just trying to keep me straight. I’ve always known it, in
a way. Knew I was a fool. But I’ve been just contrary enough to refuse
to be preached to. That’s the way I’m made. Only, for God’s sake, don’t
you start trying to manage me.” He hesitated, groping for words, and his
voice was suddenly weary and lonely as he said: “You ought to be able to
talk straight to me, Joan.”
She did not answer for a moment; then she said simply: “I’m sorry, Wint.
I was wrong.”
That took the wind out of him. He had hoped she would argue with him. He
wanted an argument, wanted a hot combat of words; he was full of things
that he wanted to say. To show her.... Justify himself to her. But you
can’t argue with a person who agrees with you. He sat down as abruptly
as he had risen, and stared again at the fire.
Joan asked, after a time: “Are you sure Jack Routt is really your
friend, Wint?”
“Of course,” he said, looking at her. “Why not? What do you mean?”
“I don’t like him.”
He laughed. “A girl never likes a man’s friends. Jack’s all right. He’s
a prince.”
“Is he?”
“Sure he is.”
Joan said no more about Routt. She spoke of other things, trivial
things; and for an hour she and Wint managed to talk easily enough
without touching on forbidden ground. It was not till he got up to go
that they spoke seriously again. She had helped him on with his coat. At
the door, he faced her; and he asked:
“Joan, d’you really think I ought to--patch things up at home?”
She answered him straightforwardly: “Yes, Wint.”
He looked past her, eyes thoughtful; and at last he held out his hand.
“Well, good night,” he said. “Maybe I will.”
They shook hands, and he went out and tramped swiftly back to Amos’s
house. There was a bounding elation in him; his head was among the
stars.
CHAPTER V
WINT GOES HOME
Wint had thought of going to his father before he talked with Joan. He
had tried advances now and then. Once he met the elder Chase on the
street and stopped to talk with him, but his father passed by with a
curt word of greeting. Another time, he saw Chase in the _Journal_
office and went in. Chase and B. B. Beecham were talking together; but
when Wint came in, his father got up and departed. Wint had said:
“Don’t let me drive you away. I just happened in.”
But the senior Chase said: “I was going, anyway,” and he went.
These incidents had roused the old resentment in Wint, but they had hurt
him more than they had angered him. And the hurt persisted, while the
resentment died. He found excuses for his father. He blamed himself; and
he thought of ways of approaching the older man with some hope of
success, and discarded them one by one.
Seeing Joan gave him new confidence in himself. She had let him come to
see her; his father could do no less. Wint had no illusions as to Joan.
He understood that she wanted to help him, wanted to be proud of him;
but he understood also that he was on probation. He had not proved
himself, in her eyes. That must come with time. They had talked frankly
enough together; but--they had merely shaken hands at parting. That was
all; that was all he had any right to expect. He could wait--and
work--for the rest.
It was much that she had asked him to come to her. It meant that he was
no longer outcast in her eyes; and the realization of this gave him new
self-respect. It was this very self-respect that enabled him to humble
himself to his father. A man can be servile without being
self-respecting; but self-respect and true humility are synonyms. Each
implies a true self-appraisal. Wint was a man, doing his work among men.
He was also his father’s son; and it was as a son that he went to his
father at last.
He found the elder Chase at home one evening. He had made sure that his
father would be at home; but he was glad, when he got there, to find
that his mother had gone next door. His mother could not understand; and
no one else could talk much when she was about. Wint smiled when he
thought of her; then his lips steadied. There was need for talk between
his father and himself.
His father came to the door; and when he saw Wint, he stared at him
coldly, and did not invite him to come in. Wint, with a sudden twinge of
sorrow, saw that his father had changed and grown older in these last
months. It seemed to Wint that his hair was thinner; there were new
lines in his face; and his old benevolent condescension toward the world
at large was gone. Wint said quietly:
“I want to come in and talk with you if I may.”
Chase hesitated, even then; but--he had been lonely as Wint had been
lonely. He stepped to one side and said: “Very well.” Wint went in, and
his father shut the door, and bade Wint come into the room off the hall
that served him as library, and office, and den. He did not tell Wint to
take off his coat, so Wint kept it on. Chase sat down at his desk, Wint
took a chair facing him. He did not know how to begin.
Chase said: “Well, what is it you want?”
Wint hesitated, then he smiled a little wistfully; and he said: “I want
to be--friends with you again.”
His father abruptly looked away from him. Without looking at Wint, he
asked:
“Why?”
Wint’s right hand moved in a curious, appealing way. “Isn’t it natural
for a son to--want to be friends with his father, sir?” he suggested.
Chase said harshly: “I told you, once, that I no longer counted you my
son.”
“Those things don’t go by what we want, sir,” Wint urged. “I--am your
son. And you’re my father.”
“Have you acted as a son should?” Chase asked coldly.
“No,” said Wint, without palliation of the finality of the word, and
Chase looked--and was surprised.
“You’ve realized it, have you?”
“Yes, sir.”
There was one thing Chase wanted to do; and it made him feel ridiculous
and ashamed of himself to want to do it. What he wanted to do was to
take Wint in his arms. And both of them grown men! He shook his head, as
though to brush this sentimental desire away. Foolishness! The young rip
had made a laughingstock out of him. Yet here he was, ready to give in
at a word.
He said: “I suppose Amos sent you.”
Wint bit his lips, and his face set faintly; but his voice was quiet
enough when he answered. “No, sir,” he said.
“You tell Amos,” Chase exclaimed, “that you can’t pull his chestnuts out
of the fire for him. And he’ll be more anxious to get around me later on
than he is now. Tell him that for me.”
Wint shook his head slowly. “Amos didn’t send me,” he said again.
“Thought Amos told you everything to do?” his father asked. “Haven’t got
a mind of your own, have you?”
“Yes,” Wint told him. “Yes, I think I have.”
Chase considered, not looking at his son. He could not look at Wint and
still hold himself together. After a while he asked:
“Well, what do you want? You haven’t told me what you want.”
“I want to be friends.”
Chase flung that aside with a swift gesture. “I mean, what do you want
to get out of me?”
“Nothing.”
His father got up, glared down at Wint angrily. “Don’t think I’m a fool,
Wint,” he said, in a rush of words. “You made me look like one, but I’m
not. You linked up with Caretall to make a jackass out of me; you went
out of your way to shame me by your own shamelessness. I kicked you out
with your tail between your legs, as I should have done long before. Now
you come whining home again. Don’t try to tell me you’re not after
something. I know you are. If you don’t want to say what it is, don’t.
That’s your business. But don’t try to make me a fool.”
Wint had sworn to keep his temper; and he did. But he got to his feet
with a swift, silent movement that startled his father. And when Chase
broke off, Wint said steadily:
“I’ve told you the truth. It’s true I misbehaved--badly. You have a
right to be angry with me. It’s true I did not know Caretall planned to
stick me in over your head. You know that’s true. As far as the rest of
it goes ... I came here to-night just to tell you that I’m sorry
for--the things I did. And I want you to know I’m sorry. You’re my
father. I’d like to have the right to come to you for advice; and I’d
like to come to you for friendship, if nothing more. That’s all. I’ve
come.” He turned toward the door. “I’ve come, and I’ll go.”
When Wint turned toward the door, his father’s heart leaped as though it
would choke him. He wanted to cry out to Wint not to go; he did cry out:
“Wait!”
Wint stopped and looked at him.
“Haven’t you given me a right to think--to mistrust you?” the older man
challenged.
“Yes,” said Wint.
“You’ve shamed me; and you’ve come near breaking your mother’s heart.”
Wint found it hard to speak; and when he did speak, he said more than he
had meant to say. “I want to make amends, sir,” he told his father.
“There are some hurts that can’t be mended,” said Chase inexorably.
Wint nodded; his shoulders slumped a little, and he would have turned
again to the door. “I’ve said all I can say,” he explained, “so I guess
I’d better go.”
Chase shook his head. “See here, Wint,” he said. “Listen.” There was not
yet friendliness in his voice; but there was a neutral quality that held
Wint. “Listen,” said Chase. “I’ve learned some things, too, Wint. It’s
only fair to say that I can see, now, I was a--bumptious father. And
I’ve not changed. I’m too old to change. Probably there were ways where
I wronged you. I don’t doubt it.”
“No,” said Wint. “You were always decent to me.”
“A father can be--decent to his son, without playing fair with him,”
said his father. “A father can--give things to his son, and at the same
time rob him of better things by the giving.”
“You did your part, sir.”
Chase hesitated, eyes on the floor. “I did my best for you, Wint,” he
said. “I think I always meant to do what was--best for you. Did you
always try to do what was best for me?”
“No,” said Wint.
“I don’t like our being at outs any better than you do,” Chase went on.
“It looks bad; and it’s hard on your mother--and on me. Perhaps on you,
too.”
Wint said nothing. He was thinking that his father’s thinning hair and
lined face proved that the older man had--found it hard to be at outs
with his son. He was ready to go a long ways to make it up to Winthrop
Chase, Senior.
His father said abruptly, as though summarizing what had gone before:
“If you want to come home, Wint, I’ve no objection.”
Wint had not thought of this possibility, and he said so. “I did not
come for that,” he told the older man. “I--just came to tell you, what I
have told you.”
“I’m willing to accept what you say at face value,” said his father. “I
understand you’ve--kept sober. I understand you’re studying. I’m ready
to let you prove yourself.”
Wint smiled with quick satisfaction. “That’s a good deal for you to
offer me, sir,” he said frankly.
“If you want to come home, you can.”
“I hadn’t thought of that till you spoke. I don’t know what to--”
“Your mother would like to have you here,” said Chase huskily, “if you
care to come.” It was as near a plea as he could bring himself.
Wint nodded with quick decision. “All right, sir,” he said. “I’d like to
come. I’ll bring my stuff to-morrow.”
They shook hands abruptly, with a curt word that hid their feelings.
“Good night,” said Chase, and Wint said good night, and his father
closed the door behind him.
Wint felt, while he walked back to Amos Caretall’s house, as though he
had been stripped of a load, had been cleansed, had been made whole. The
world had never looked so clean and bright to him before.
A few minutes after he left his home, Mrs. Chase came back from the
neighbor’s. She saw at once that something had happened; there was a
change in her husband. He was flushed, and his eyes were shining. She
asked:
“Why, what’s the matter with you? Has anything happened? Is there
anything wrong? You know, I said to-night, I told Mrs. Hullis, that I
just had a feeling something was going to happen. I told Mrs. Hullis I
just knew things were going to go wrong. Oh, it does look like we have
more trouble all the time.”
“Wint is coming home, Margaret,” said her husband.
Poor, garrulous mother! For once she was shocked dumb. Her eyes widened,
and she dabbed at them with her hand, as though a cobweb had stuck
across them. She turned white, and she seemed to shrink and grow old.
And she sat down slowly in the straight, uncomfortable chair she always
used, and put her worried old head down in her arms and cried.
Chase touched her shoulder, awkwardly comforting her.
“It’s all right, mother,” he said. “He’s coming home.”
But Mrs. Chase didn’t say anything. She just sat there, quietly crying.
The tears wet through her sleeve till she felt them damp upon her arm.
CHAPTER VI
A WORD AS TO HETTY
Peter Gergue wrote to Amos that Wint had gone home; and Amos got a
letter from Wint with the same news, the same day. Wint’s letter was
straightforward, a little embarrassed. “I want you to know,” he wrote,
“that my father and I have fixed things up. I am living at home again.
That doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate your kindness. But I thought I
ought to go home if they were willing to have me, and they were.”
Peter wrote more at length. Gergue, uncouth to look upon and rude of
speech, was nevertheless an educated man, and a well-read man. There was
nothing bizarre about his letters. He wrote that Wint and his father had
come together. “From what I hear, Wint went home and told Chase he was
sorry, and so on,” Gergue continued. “I guess Chase took on some, at
that; but he came around. He’s wrapped up in Wint, you know, and always
was. This has been a good thing for him. He’s human now. He’s not such a
darned fool. Chase, I mean. If you don’t look out, Chase will give you a
run for your money yet.
“Wint’s all right, too. Hasn’t touched a drop, far as I can find out,
since you left. He’s studying law with old Hoover, and working at the
job of being Mayor. Not setting the world on fire, either. Just the
routine. Town’s as wet as ever, and looks like it will go on being. I
guess Wint is worried for fear folks will laugh at him if he starts a
clean-up. Or maybe he doesn’t want to. Or maybe he hasn’t thought about
it.
“He and Routt don’t run around together much. Jack’s been away. I wrote
you about that. He’s back now. Acts same as ever. Mary Dale told me he
was in to see old Kite one day, and Kite went up in the air. She
couldn’t hear what they were saying. She thinks Jack is made and handed
down. Maybe he is. I wonder what he wanted to go and see old V. R. Kite
for?
“Kite was sore at you, right after election. Some one told him you was
going to have Wint clean up the town. He made talk that he’d hang your
hide if you did. But he got over that. He’s lying quiet. Doing a good
business, too, I should say. There were seven drunks in Wint’s court
last week.
“I asked Chase if he figured to run against you next fall. He said he
was out of active politics. Active, he said.
“Guess you’ve seen about the new city government law. Means we’ll have
to vote for Mayor again, this fall, instead of a year from now. You
figure to run Wint? I guess he’d take it. I guess he’s just getting
rightly interested in the job.
“See the session’s likely to end along in May. You figure to come home
then?”
Amos read these letters, read Wint’s twice, and smiled at it; then
re-read Peter Gergue’s. That night at their hotel he told Agnes that
Wint had gone to his own home. “Guess you’d better go back and keep
Maria company,” he said.
He half expected her to protest. Agnes seemed to be having a good time
in Washington; she was very gay and much abroad. Jack Routt had stopped
off for three or four days, during his absence from Hardiston, and she
and Jack had been constantly together while he was in town. Also, there
had been other amiable young men, before and after Jack. So Amos thought
Agnes was enjoying herself, and hesitated to suggest her going home. But
he made up his mind, before he spoke, that she should go. Amos never got
into an argument unless he intended to win. This habit had established
for him a certain reputation for infallibility.
But--Agnes did not protest. “I’m glad,” she said. “I’m sick of this
stupid old place.”
Amos, head on one side, squinted at her humorously. “Well, there are
some stupid things done here, anyways,” he agreed. “When’ll you put out
for Hardiston?”
She planned to get some clothes. “I’ll be along in May,” Amos told her.
“Guess you and Maria can go it alone till then.”
Agnes was sure they could.
* * * * *
In Hardiston, Wint’s home-going was a nine days’ wonder. People made
comments according to their own hearts. Some were glad, some were
amused, some were caustic. The only one to whom Wint offered any
explanation was old Maria Hale. The old negress loved him like a son;
she was sorry to see him go. There were tears in her eyes when she told
him so; they ran down her black cheeks, like drops of ink upon that
blackness. It is easy to speak openly of simple, human emotions to such
folks as old Maria. Wint said to her: “I want to go home to my father
and mother. And they want me. I’m going to make it up to them for some
of the things I’ve done.” He would not have said as much as that to any
other person in the world. But there was no sense of strangeness in
saying it to the old colored woman.
She bobbed her withered head, and smiled through her tears, and cried:
“Da’s right, Miste’ Wint. Yore mammy ’nd pappy shore got to be proud o’
you, boy.”
“I hope so, Maria,” he told her, and she patted his shoulder.
“‘Deed and dey will.”
When he left the house, she came to the door and told him he must come,
now and then, and let her cook him a good supper; and he must come and
see her. She would be lonely, in that big house, without no white folks
around, she said. Wint promised to come; and she waved her blue gingham
apron after him as he went down the street.
Muldoon was with him, scampering around him and about; and old Maria,
watching Wint and the dog, said to herself as they disappeared:
“Shore will miss dat boy; but ol’ M’ria ain’t going to pester herself
about not seeing dat dog.”
She objected to Muldoon because he shed hairs on the rugs. But she had
tolerated him for Wint’s sake. Muldoon thoroughly understood her
feelings; he used to sit with his head on one side and bark at her
while she brushed up those tawny hairs and scolded at him. She declared
he was laughing at her. More than once, Wint had been forced to make
peace between them.
Muldoon did not seem surprised that they were going home; he took it
quite as a matter of course. In fact, it is doubtful whether he noticed
the change at all. Home, to Muldoon, was where Wint was. For that is the
way of the dog.
So Wint went home, and Hardiston talked it over. V. R. Kite was glad to
hear it. It meant, he decided, that Wint had shifted allegiance from
Amos to his father; and while Kite had always mistrusted the elder
Chase, he felt they had a common bond in their mutual antagonism toward
Amos. Kite, in the last few months, had conceived a new respect for
Winthrop Chase, Senior. “Chase,” he was accustomed to say, “is a man of
sense. Yes, sir; a man of sense.”
Joan was glad; she found occasion to tell Wint so, simply and without
elaboration. Wint said awkwardly: “Yes, I’m glad too. I guess it’s
better.” And they never mentioned the change again. James T. Hollow, the
little man whom Caretall had put up for Mayor against Chase, resented
Wint’s move. “It’s desertion,” he told Peter Gergue. “He is deserting
Congressman Caretall; and after all the Congressman has done for him.
It’s not the right thing to do, Peter.”
Gergue spat, and rummaged through his hair. “Can’t always do what’s
right,” he said.
“I’m afraid Amos will resent this,” Hollow went on. Peter said he
shouldn’t wonder.
“If he does object, guess he’ll know how to show it,” he remarked. And
Hollow agreed, and added admiringly that Amos always seemed to know just
the right thing to do.
The _Hardiston Sun_ and the _Journal_ were both friendly to Winthrop
Chase, Senior; so Skinner and B. B. Beecham made no comment on Wint’s
change of residence. But the semi-weekly _Herald_, which was an outcast
with its hand against every man, politically speaking, said, under a
headline: “The Prodigal Returns,” that Wint, “whose break with the elder
Chase dates from the election, when Senior was made a laughingstock
before the state, has returned to the parental rooftree. Please omit
fatted calves.”
Sam O’Brien, the fat restaurant man, told Ned Bentley it was a good
thing. “Young Wint’s a fine lad,” he said. “And he’s on the right track.
Does no good, never, to break with your blood and kin.”
Thus each took his own point of view. It was a poor citizen of Hardiston
who had nothing to say about the matter, except that those most
concerned had nothing to say at all.
The actual home-coming was simple and undramatic. Wint sent his trunk
out during the day after his talk with his father. In the late afternoon
of that day, he happened to drop in at the Post Office for the late
mail, and met his father there. They greeted each other casually; and
Wint asked:
“On your way home?”
“I have to stop at the bakery.”
“I’ll go along,” said Wint. And he did, while people stared with all
their eyes. Old Mrs. Mueller, the comfortable little woman who owned the
bakery, and who was always associated in Wint’s mind with the delicious
fragrance of newly baked bread, lifted both hands at sight of them
together, then dropped her hands abruptly and wiped them on her apron
and served them without a word. Before the door closed behind them, they
heard her, behind the screen in the rear of the shop, volubly telling
some one the news.
Wint and his father walked home without speaking once upon the way. They
were both acutely embarrassed and uncomfortable. It was a relief to them
both when they got to the house and Mrs. Chase met them in the hall.
Chase dropped his hand on his son’s shoulder--the involuntary touch,
like a caress, brought the tears to Wint’s eyes--and he said:
“Here’s Wint, mother.”
So Wint took his mother in his arms, and she hugged him, hard. “I knew
you’d c-c-c-come home, Wint,” she told him, through her sobs. “I was
telling Mrs. Hullis, only the other day, that I’d--that I was just sure
you’d come home some--”
“I’ve come, mother,” said Wint.
“I knew you’d come, too. I told father there wasn’t anything in you that
would--I told him you’d be sorry, that you’d come and tell him so. Your
father’s a good man, Wint. He’s tried to--”
Chase broke in. People who wished to say anything to her always had to
break in on Mrs. Chase. He said: “Is supper ready, mother? Wint’s
hungry, and so am I.”
“Yes, yes,” she said. “It’s all ready. Hetty’s made two big pies, Wint.
Apples, with cinnamon in them. Thick, the way you like them. Some of our
apples, from the big Sheep’s Nose tree in the back yard. They’ve kept
wonderful this winter. We haven’t lost hardly any; and they’re as
juicy--”
“Lead me to ’em,” said Wint cheerfully. “Is Hetty a good cook?”
“She’s fine,” his mother assured him. “Hetty’s a fine girl. I never had
a harder worker. She don’t seem right happy, sometimes; but she does her
work, and that’s all a body has a right to ask. She--”
Hetty herself came to the dining-room door, then, and told them that
supper was ready. Wint said: “Hello, Hetty,” and shook hands with her.
She said:
“Hello, Wint.” The old note of reckless courage and good nature was gone
from her voice; and when he saw her more clearly, in the lighted dining
room, he saw his mother was right. Hetty did not look happy. Her eyes
were tired; and there were shadows beneath them. Her face was thinner,
too. He thought she did not look well. During supper, while she waited
upon them, he told her so. “You’ve been working too hard, Hetty. You
don’t look like yourself.”
She said, with a twisted smile, that she was all right. There was a
harsh note in her voice. It disturbed Wint; but he said no more. During
the succeeding days and weeks, he grew accustomed to her changed
appearance. He no longer thought of it.
In mid-April, Jack Routt came out to the house one night to see Wint.
The visit seemed casual enough. He said he had thought he would drop in
for a smoke and a talk. He came early, only a few minutes after supper,
and Hetty was clearing away the supper dishes. When she heard his voice
in the hall, she stood very still for a moment, looking that way. Wint
did not see her. Routt laid aside his hat, and then he saw Hetty, and he
called to her:
“Hello, Hetty.”
She said evenly: “Hello, Jack.”
Then Routt and Wint went up to Wint’s room, and Hetty stood very still
where she was for a little time, before she went on with her work.
Upstairs, Routt was saying: “I’d forgotten Hetty was working for you.”
“Yes,” said Wint.
Routt lighted a cigarette. “She’s a beauty, isn’t she?”
Wint nodded. “Not as pretty as she was in school. Remember what a
picture she used to be, hair in a braid, and those cream-red cheeks of
hers?”
“Guess I do,” Routt agreed warmly. He looked at Wint and grinned. “Don’t
know that I’d want her living in the same house with me,” he said.
“Why not?” Wint asked.
“Damned bad for my peace of mind.”
Wint flushed. He was a curiously clean, innocent chap in some ways. He
felt a little ashamed by the mere existence of the thought which had
prompted Routt’s covert suggestion. “I’m glad you dropped in, Jack,” he
said. “Good to see you here again. Like old times.”
If he had been less busy with the work of his office, and with his
study, Wint might have thought more about Hetty during the next few
weeks. But--he didn’t. They saw each other daily, and once or twice he
realized that she was not as good-natured as she had been. There were
times when she was sullen.... For the most part, however, he did not
think of her at all.
Now and then he had short letters from Amos. Dry, friendly letters, with
some impersonal advice sprinkled through them. In the third week in May,
Amos wrote that he would come home, arriving the Thursday following.
Wint was glad he was going to see Amos again. He had gone to Amos’s
house once or twice for the suppers Maria loved to cook for him, but
when Agnes came home, he gave that up. Agnes bored him. She was too
vivacious. Joan was quieter, calmer, infinitely strengthening and
strong.... Jack Routt was seeing a good deal of Agnes, he knew. Routt
seemed no longer bent on the wooing of Joan, though he had told Wint,
months ago, that he meant to go in and win. Wint joked him, one day,
about this, and Routt said frankly:
“You and she have made up. I’m not the sort of a chap that trespasses.
When I see I’ve no chance, I know how to make the best of things.”
Wint thought that was straightforward and decent in Routt.
Amos was to come home on the afternoon train, Thursday. Wednesday
evening, Wint spent at home. Chase and Wint’s mother went upstairs early
to bed, but Wint was busy with a case book from Hoover’s office, and
remained downstairs, the book open on the table, the lamp beside him.
He did not realize that time was passing. Wint had a certain faculty for
concentration; and the dead quiet of the sleeping house allowed him to
enclose himself in the world of his thoughts. He heard nothing, saw
nothing, knew nothing but the matter he was reading. He did not hear the
clock strike midnight, and one o’clock.
But in the end he did hear some one come up on the back porch. That
would be Hetty, coming home. He knew she had gone out for the evening.
Listening to her step, he wondered what time it was, and looked at the
clock and saw that it was within twenty minutes of two in the morning.
“Great Scott!” he said, half aloud. “As late as that?” And then,
curiously, “What’s Hetty doing out this time of night?” He listened; and
he could hear no more footsteps, but he did catch the murmur of a man’s
voice. Indistinguishable.... Then Hetty’s in a harsh, mirthless laugh.
He got up abruptly and went out toward the kitchen. He could not have
told what impulse sent him.
When he opened the door, Hetty was standing on the porch, facing him.
There was no one with her. Wint said: “Alone, Hetty? Time you were
getting in.” He was good-natured.
She looked at him, and he saw that she was flushed, and her eyes were
reddened, and her mouth was open. Her hair was a little dishevelled. She
looked at him, and laughed, and said loosely:
“Oh, you Wint. Wint’s caught me. Joke on me.”
He saw that she had been drinking, and he was inexpressibly sorry and
disturbed. Not that he was a stranger to drink; not that he frowned upon
it from high, moral grounds. But--Hetty had been so beautiful, and so
youthful, and so gay. She was so hideously soiled now. He was not
disgusted; he was infinitely sorry for her.
Hetty laughed crackingly. “Poor ol’ Wint. ’Member when you came home so?
Hetty put Wint t’ bed. Now Wint’ll have to put Hetty to bed. Mus’n’t let
Chase know, Wint. He’s a moral man.”
Wint said gently: “Of course not, Hetty.” He took her arm. “Come in.”
She was unsteady on her feet; and it seemed hard for her to keep her
eyes open. He was afraid she would drop in a sodden slumber before he
could get her upstairs. This fear haunted him during the moments that
followed; it marked them in his memory. He was never going to be able to
forget this business of helping Hetty slowly up the back stairs, and up
to her third-floor room. It was only a matter of minutes; but they were
fearfully long. And he was afraid she would go to sleep; and he was
afraid she would laugh. Once he heard the laughter coming, in her
throat, in time to press his hand over her mouth; and he could never
forget the feeling of her loose, working lips beneath his hand. He was
sweating and sick.
He got her to her room without turning on the lights. He got her to the
bed and she lay down and seemed instantly asleep. He started for the
door; and she called him back.
“Shame, Wint,” she said mournfully. “Ain’t going to take off my shoes? I
took off your shoes, Wint. I took off your shoes.”
She wore low shoes, little more than pumps. He thanked his fates for
that, while his fingers fumbled for the laces. A tug loosed the knots,
the slippers came off easily. Hetty was snoring before he was done, and
he left her so.
He could hear her snoring, after he got out into the hall. It seemed to
him his father, asleep in the front of the house on the second floor,
must hear. He went down from the third floor to the second on tiptoe
with excruciating care. And on down the back stairs to put out the
lights, and put away his book, and come back up to his own bed.
He could not sleep for a long time. He was obsessed by a strange and
persistent feeling of responsibility for Hetty. It was as though he felt
himself to blame for this thing that had come to her.
Jack Routt would have laughed at such a state of mind; but it was very
real to Wint.
CHAPTER VII
ORDERS FOR RADABAUGH
Wint had a talk with his father next morning; that is to say, the
morning of the day Amos was to come home. He told the elder Chase that
Amos was coming.
Chase nodded. “I heard so,” he agreed.
“I want you to understand my relations with him,” said Wint.
There was a time when the older man would have said that a son of his
could have no relations with Amos Caretall. But Winthrop Chase, Senior,
had been learning wisdom, and a certain tolerance. Also, he had no wish
to lose Wint again. He told himself this was because Wint’s mother was
growing old, would miss him.
“Well,” he said, “what are they?”
Wint had been dreading what his father would say; he had been afraid of
anger, of abuse. He was immensely relieved at the older man’s tone.
“Simply this,” he said. “He put me where I am. That was tough on you;
but I think it has been good for me. It’s a strange thing to have the
feeling that you can give men orders which they must obey; and that you
have a--a sort of control over them. Dad, do you realize that I have to
send men to jail every little while? It’s a pretty serious thing to send
a man to jail, when you know you ought to be in jail yourself, in a way.
I’ve done some thinking about it; so you see, it’s been good for me. It
never hurts a man to think.
“The whole thing is, Amos has done me a good turn, sir. I can’t help
feeling grateful to him. Can’t help feeling he’s been a good friend to
me. And--I want to be friends with him. And I want you to know there’s
no disloyalty to you in this friendship.”
Chase considered for a little; then he said quietly: “You know, Amos
played false with me. Deceived me--deliberately. And tricked me.”
“I know it,” said Wint. “It was politics; and in a way, it was dirty
politics. But--he’s been square with me.”
“I’m not sure,” said Chase, “that the whole business has not turned out
pretty well, for you. For your sake, I’m not sorry.” His voice stirred
and quickened. “But by Heaven, Wint, Amos is no friend of mine! And some
day I mean to break him.”
Wint said: “That’s all right. It’s a fair game between you. But I don’t
want you to think I’m taking sides with him.”
“What are you going to do?” Chase asked.
“I thought of meeting his train,” Wint told him. “And--he asked me to
have supper with them to-night, to talk things over. I thought I would.”
“Suppose I tell you not to?”
Wint said wistfully: “I hope you won’t, sir, because--I’m going to.”
Chase nodded. “I suppose so,” he agreed. “Well, Wint--you’re a grown
man. I shall not try to treat you--like a boy. Not again. I’m leaving it
to you, Wint.”
Wint said quickly: “I’m glad.” He got up and, without either’s
suggestion, they shook hands, and looked into each other’s eyes for a
moment.
“All right,” said Chase. “I’ll tell your mother not to expect you for
supper.”
“Try to make her understand, will you?”
His father smiled. “Your mother doesn’t always understand,” he said.
“But--she loves you, Wint.”
“I know....”
He hesitated, wondering whether he should tell his father about Hetty.
She had been sullen, avoiding his eyes, when she served breakfast. His
father, or his mother, had a right to know.
Yet Wint could not bring himself to tell them. There would be no charity
in them for the girl. And Wint had an infinite deal of tolerance for
her. Give her a chance. He would not tell them. Not yet, at least. It
could wait for a while.
He was conscious of a need to tell some one. Not for the sake of
betraying Hetty, but to find some balm for his own soul. That sense of
responsibility persisted; he could not analyze it, but he could not
shake it off. A strangely haunting feeling, this.... It troubled him
acutely. His thoughts dwelt on it all that day.
There was a drunken man in the Mayor’s court that morning. An old man.
Wint knew him. He was that man who had embraced Wint in the office of
the Weaver House, on the morning after the election. The incident seemed
to have happened infinitely long ago; yet it was horribly vivid in
Wint’s memory still. The man had treated him like a boon companion, a
good, understanding comrade. He had assumed a fellowship between them;
the fellowship of drink. The shame of it was that his assumption had
been justified....
The man reminded Wint of the incident, this day in court. He was
miserably sober when they brought him in, miserably sober, and trembling
to be drunk again. “Don’t be hard on a fellow, your Honor,” he pleaded
with Wint. “You know how it is. You remember. That day; day after you
was elected. You’re a good pal, Mayor, your Honor. Don’t go to be too
hard on a man.”
He had been in court before; Wint had fined him, had sent him to jail.
The futility of these measures came home crushingly to Wint just now.
The man was not helped by them; he was as bad as ever. Worse, perhaps. A
revolt against this whole system of punishment boiled up in Wint. He
said, without considering:
“All right. Try to let it alone. Get out.”
Young Foster, the city solicitor, looked surprised and pained as though
Wint had insulted him. Marshal Jim Radabaugh grinned good-naturedly. The
man himself crowded up to Wint’s desk with his thanks, and poured them
out, and at last whispered humbly:
“You haven’t got a dime to give a man, have you, Mayor, your Honor? I’m
shaking for a drink. You know how that is. Just a dime, your Honor.”
Wint gave him a quarter, and Foster said: “Well, I’ll be damned!” The
man went out, calling blessings on Wint’s head. Foster demanded: “What’s
the idea, anyway, Wint? He’s a common souse.”
“I’m sick of sending him to jail,” said Wint hotly. “I’m not going to do
it any more. What good does it do?”
“Keeps him sober, anyway. You as good as told him to go and get drunk
again.”
“Well, let him,” said Wint. “What else is there for him to do?”
“Go to work.”
“He looks fit for work, doesn’t he?”
“Whose fault is that?”
“Yes,” said Wint, “whose fault is it? Whose fault that he is what he is?
Whose fault that he can buy a drink in a dry town? Whose fault is it,
Foster, anyway?”
Foster laughed. “Well, what’s the answer?”
Wint leaned back in his chair, eyes down, considering. He was thinking
of Hetty; he could not help it. And the end of his thinking was this. He
looked at Marshal Jim Radabaugh, and said evenly:
“Mister marshal, don’t arrest any more men in Hardiston for being drunk
unless they--commit other crimes.” There was a bite in the last word.
But Jim Radabaugh only grinned and said: “All right, you’re boss.”
Foster started to protest. Wint asked: “Any more cases?”
“No. But damn it all, Wint! Listen--”
“I don’t want to listen,” Wint told him. “I’m through. Court’s
adjourned. Don’t--”
“You’re turning the town over to the bums,” Foster protested.
“They can’t run it any worse,” said Wint, and took his hat and departed.
Foster swore. Marshal Jim Radabaugh strolled up to the Bazaar to tell V.
R. Kite this interesting news.
Wint met Amos at the train, and Amos shook him by the hand and looked
him in the eye and nodded with good-natured approval. “Coming home for
supper?” he asked.
“Surely. I wouldn’t miss Maria’s supper.”
“You might say you wouldn’t miss us, too,” Agnes reminded him, clinging
to her father’s arm. “Mightn’t he, dad?”
“Say it, Wint,” Amos suggested. “Only way to have peace in the family.”
So they let Agnes have her way, and she made the most of it. Peter
Gergue came for supper, too; and Agnes sat at one end of the table,
presiding over the coffee urn with a pretty assumption of the rôle of
matron. She did most of the talking. The men were too busy with Maria’s
fried chicken. But afterward, when they were done, Amos and Peter and
Wint went into the sitting room, and Agnes said she wasn’t going to sit
and listen to them talk politics. She was going to the moving-picture
show. Amos told her to run along. He and Peter shaved their plugs of
tobacco, and crumbled the slices, and filled their pipes; and Wint
grinned at the exactness with which Peter copied Amos’s procedure. He
had filled his own pipe in more conventional fashion, from his pouch,
and was smoking while they were still rubbing the sliced tobacco between
their palms.
When the pipes were all going, Amos, as was his custom, sat in silence,
waiting for some one else to speak first. Wint imitated him. And Gergue,
who did not like silences, said at last:
“Well, Amos, you’re home.”
“Looks that way,” Amos agreed.
“Hardiston ain’t changed.”
“No, Hardiston don’t change.”
“Same old town.”
“Yeah, same old town.”
Silence settled down upon them again. Wint was thinking of Hetty. She
had been in his mind all day; she and the miserable man who had faced
him in the court that morning. They were somehow linked in his thoughts;
linked in a fashion that accused him. Accused him, Wint Chase, of
responsibility for them. He groped for understanding, trying to guess
why this was so.
Amos, abruptly, looked at Peter Gergue. “Pete,” he said, “I want to talk
to Wint.”
Peter got up instantly. “Why, sure, Amos,” he agreed. “I got to see some
men, anyways.”
“Be in your office in the morning?” Amos asked.
“Guess likely.”
“I’ll drop in.”
Peter nodded, and Amos went with him to the door. When he came back,
Wint was still sitting, nursing his pipe. Amos looked at him, sat down,
looked at Wint again; and at last asked:
“We-ell, Wint, how’s tricks?”
Wint said, after a little consideration, that he guessed tricks were all
right.
“Like being Mayor?”
“It’s--sobering,” Wint told him. “It’s a good deal of a job. For me.”
“Tell you,” said Amos. “Any job’s a good deal of a job; if a man takes
it serious.”
Wint laughed. “Shouldn’t wonder if I took this too seriously,” he said.
“Can’t be done,” Amos reassured him. “Any man that has to look out for
other men has a serious job.”
Wint said nothing to that. He was wondering if it were a part of his job
to look out for Hetty, and that drunken man of the court.
“That’s what being Mayor amounts to,” Amos remarked. “Found it so,
haven’t you?”
Wint stirred in his chair. “Amos,” he said, “a thing happened last
night. I feel like telling you about it. Don’t need to ask you not to
pass it on.”
Amos tilted his head on one side, squinting at Wint wisely. “That’s all
right,” he said. “Tell on.”
The permission relieved Wint immensely; he felt as though he had been
loosed from bondage. He told, in a swift rush of words, the story of
Hetty. How she had come home last night. He went on, told about the man
in court that day. He told Amos what had happened, what he had done,
the order he had given Radabaugh.
Amos looked at him curiously. “Told Jim that, did you?”
“Yes.”
“What did Foster say?”
Wint grinned. “Said he’d be damned.”
“I reckon not,” Amos decided, after a moment’s thought. “He won’t be.
He’s all right.”
“He thought I was foolish. I suppose I was.”
Amos said slowly: “Depends on why you did it, Wint. Depends on what was
in your mind.”
That set Wint thinking again, trying to decide just what had been in his
mind. Amos smoked steadily, not looking at Wint at all. At last he said
again:
“Yes, sir, Wint. Depends what was in your mind.”
Wint assented thoughtfully. “I suppose so,” he said.
Amos tried waiting in silence for him to go on; but Wint was busy
thinking; he beat Amos at his own game without knowing it. He drove
Caretall to ask:
“What was in your mind, Wint?”
The boy groped for words; he flushed uneasily, as though afraid of being
laughed at. “Well,” he said, “I had a fool sort of a feeling that I was
to blame.”
Amos nodded slowly. “Well,” he said, “that’s what I meant--in a
way--when I said you had a job that meant taking care of folks. Hetty,
and that old rip--they’re folks, like any one else, like as not.”
“Yes, they are,” Wint agreed.
“Taking care of them; that’s your job, Wint. Maybe that just means
fining them, and sending them to jail.”
“I tell you I won’t do that again,” Wint exclaimed. “I told you the
order I gave Jim Radabaugh.”
“We-ell,” said Amos slowly. “That’s all right. Far as it goes. Might go
farther.”
“Farther? How?” Wint demanded. “What can I do?”
“I hadn’t anything pa’ticular in mind,” Amos said carelessly. “Hadn’t a
thing in mind.” He looked at Wint sidewise. Wint’s face was white with
the intensity of his thought. Amos said slowly: “Looks like a shame to
have drunk folks around in as pretty a town as Hardiston.”
“A shame?” Wint cried. “It’s damnable.”
“Guess most folks don’t like it,” Amos reminded him. “Town voted dry.
Guess that shows most folks wanted it to be dry, don’t it?”
“I suppose it does,” Wint agreed. Amos looked at him; and Wint moved
abruptly in his chair, and his eyes began to flame. The puzzle cleared;
he began to understand. He began to understand himself, his own
thoughts, his feeling that he was to blame for--Hetty. He began to
understand, and his lips set. He said, half aloud: “By God, it means a
fight! A hell of a fight in Hardiston.”
“Fight?” Amos asked casually, as though he were thinking of something
else. “I like a fight, I’d like to see a good one.” And he added, after
a moment: “I might take a hand; if it weren’t a private fight, or
something.”
Wint sat forward in his chair, looked around the room. “Where’s the
telephone?” he asked.
“Telephone?” said Amos. “Why, in the hall.”
Wint got up and went swiftly out into the hall. Amos listened; and he
smiled, with a twinkling anticipation in his eyes. He heard Wint ask the
operator to locate Jim Radabaugh and get him on the ’phone. Then Wint
came back and stood in the doorway, waiting while she signaled for the
marshal with the red light that was set on a pole in the heart of the
town. Amos did not turn around to look at Wint. Wint did not move.
After a while, the ’phone rang twice. “That’s us,” said Amos, still
without turning. “Our ring is two.”
Wint went to the ’phone. Radabaugh, at the other end, said: “This is the
marshal. Who’s talking?”
“Wint. Mayor Chase.”
“Oh! All right, Mister Mayor. What’s on your mind?”
Wint said evenly: “I’ve instructions for you. If you are willing to
carry them out, all right. If not, resign, and I’ll fill your place
to-morrow.”
“You’re the boss,” said Radabaugh amiably. “I do what you say.”
“Either do what I say or resign,” said Wint again. “I want you to get
busy and break up the liquor business in Hardiston.”
There was a long silence, and Wint heard the marshal whistle softly
under his breath. Then Radabaugh asked:
“In earnest?”
“Absolutely. I want the town cleaned up. I want it bone dry. Will you
take the job? Or quit?”
“Why,” said Radabaugh, “I’ll just naturally take the job. I’ve been
a-wishing I had something to do.”
Wint spoke a word or two more, hung up, and came back to Amos. He sat
down without speaking. After a little, Amos asked, looking at Wint
sidewise:
“Going through with it?”
“Yes,” said Wint. There was more resolution in the simple word than
there would have been in lengthier protestations.
“We-ell, all I can say,” Amos drawled, “is that this here is going to
make an awful difference to V. R. Kite.”
It did: a difference to Kite, and to Wint’s father, and to Jack Routt;
and a difference to Wint himself. A difference to Hardiston, too.
When Wint went home, at ten o’clock, the word was already humming around
the town.
END OF BOOK THREE
BOOK IV
LINE OF BATTLE
CHAPTER I
MARSHAL JIM RADABAUGH
Jim Radabaugh, the city marshal, that is to say, the chief of police,
was a man not without honor in Hardiston. A good fellow, and a cool,
brave officer. That he was a good fellow, every one who knew him could
attest. He had no enemies. It was a pleasure to be arrested by him.
There was an equable good nature in the man, and a drawling humor in the
very tones of his voice which inspired good nature and good humor in
return. He was a lean man, lazily erect, as though it were too much
trouble to be stoop-shouldered. Black hair, black eyes.... A chronic
bulge in his cheek that housed the wad of tobacco which he kept there.
An intimate acquaintance with the intricacies of big-league baseball as
set forth in the public prints; a repository of racing lore; a good pool
player and a redoubtable hand at poker. All in all, a good man to keep
the peace according to his lights.
People said he was easy-going, but every one knew he was no slacker of
duty or of obligation. Three years back--that was before they elected
him marshal--he had been under fire for the first time. It was on the
interurban street-car line that ran from Hardiston “up the crick.”
Radabaugh sat in the front of the car, facing the rear; and a man in the
middle of the car ran amuck with a revolver, shooting wildly. He killed
one man, wounded another, in the seconds it took Radabaugh to charge
down the aisle and overwhelm him. The conductor of the car, at the
moment, was hiding under a rear seat; and the motorman had jammed off
his power and jumped overboard, into a ditch that had more water in it
than he had counted on. Radabaugh knocked the man over with a cuff of
his fist, and pinned him, and took his gun away.
His friends told him he ought to run for office after that. He said he
didn’t mind. His business was not an exacting one. He and his brother
were tailors, and his brother could handle the bulk of their work
anyway. So Jim ran for marshal, and was elected. Thereafter, when he was
not occupied with his official duties, he used to drop in at the tailor
shop to help things along there. It was no sight for timid customers,
trying on their new suits while Jim’s brother chalked them in mysterious
places, to see Jim come in and go to work. He always came in casually,
spat in the appointed direction, then produced from one pocket and
another his gun, his handcuffs, and his club. He was accustomed to lay
these on one of the bolts of cloth which stocked the shelves, then seat
himself cross-legged on the table, with a little cloth apron on his
knees, and pick up the first task that came to hand.
His duties as marshal were not pressing, for Hardiston folk commit few
crimes, and usually commit those away from home. When he was wanted
during the day, the telephone operator called the shop. If she wanted to
locate him after dusk, she flashed a signal light which called him to
the telephone. For the most part, his time was his own.
And this is not to say that Jim Radabaugh had nothing to do. There was
the case, for example, of the darky who was wanted for burglary in one
of the cities in the southern part of the state. Jim got word that he
was drinking in a hovel down by the creek, with two other men. So he
went down there and strolled in and told the man he was wanted. Jim’s
hands, at the moment, were in his coat pockets. The darky pulled a
revolver, jammed it against Jim’s breast, and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened; that is to say, nothing happened to Jim. The darky’s
gun did not explode, but Jim’s did. It burned a hole in his pocket, and
it bored a hole in the darky, neatly amidships, in such fashion that
there was no further occasion to trouble with that man. His body, laid
open with two slashes of the coroner’s knife that intersected on the
bullet hole, was on view for a day or two in the undertaker’s back room;
and small boys went in to see it. They thought Jim Radabaugh was rather
more than mortal, after that.
As a matter of fact, it had been a narrow squeak for Jim, as an
examination of the darky’s weapon proved. That unfortunate man had
apparently been unable to buy revolver ammunition, so he had bought
rifle cartridges of the desired caliber and whittled off the bullets to
make them fit into the cylinder of the revolver. Perhaps he had hurried
with this bit of preparation; at any rate, he left one of the bullets
too long, and when he pulled the trigger, the bullet caught and
prevented the cylinder from turning. Which undoubtedly saved Jim
Radabaugh’s life.
People agreed that was a good thing; for Jim was a good fellow. Wint’s
orders to clean up the town interested him. They meant some measure of
excitement, and he liked excitement. He told two or three people, that
night, and they spread the news. But Jim took no official step till next
day. Then he set out to serve notice on those most concerned.
One of these people most concerned was a man named Lutcher. His place of
business was on the second floor of a building that fronted on one of
the alleys in the heart of town. You climbed an outside stair from the
alley to Lutcher’s door. Wint and Jack Routt went there, that night of
Amos Caretall’s first home-coming, from their interrupted billiard game.
Lutcher’s place was perhaps the best in town; that is to say, the
surroundings were least sordid, and the wares he sold most meritorious.
He was financed, of course, by Kite.
Radabaugh went there first. He had been there before, in his personal
capacity. He had no scruples about such visits. Lutcher was a
lawbreaker, of course; but the lawbreaking was tacitly accepted. There
had been no orders against it. And Jim Radabaugh had no objection to a
drink now and then. So he climbed the stairs from the alley to Lutcher’s
door, and knocked, and Lutcher opened the door and admitted him. This
Lutcher was not a bad fellow, say what you will of his business. A big,
bald man with a husky, whispering voice, and a habit of appearing in his
shirt sleeves. He wore rather attractive silk shirts, chosen with no
mean taste; and his vests were often remarked. Also, he smoked good
cigars, instead of the well-nigh universal stogie of Hardiston; and he
gave these cigars freely to his regular customers.
Lutcher had not heard the news, the night before. So he greeted Marshal
Radabaugh good-naturedly, and told him it was pretty early in the day
for a drink, and that he would lose his reputation if he came here by
daylight in this fashion. Jim laughed at that, and asked cheerfully
whether Lutcher had a good stock on hand.
“Ice chest full, and a sawdust bin packed with bottles,” Lutcher told
him. “What’s yours? The same.”
“Any reserve supply?” Radabaugh asked. Lutcher said there was no
reserve; that he was expecting a shipment in a day or two. Radabaugh
nodded.
“Got bad news for you, Lutch,” he said.
Lutcher beamed. He was always an amiable man. “Can’t make me feel bad,
Jim,” he said. “Shoot the wad.”
“Going to close you up,” said Radabaugh.
Lutcher laughed. “Fat chance, I guess. What’re you trying to do? Work me
for a snifter. All right. Say the word.”
“Straight goods,” Radabaugh assured him. “Mayor’s orders.”
“Wint’s orders? That’s a hot one.” Lutcher chuckled, his gay vest
heaving with his mirth. “Why, Wint’s one of my regular customers.”
“Ain’t been in lately, has he?” Radabaugh suggested.
“No, not just lately. It wouldn’t look right.”
Radabaugh nodded. “He’s in earnest, I’d say,” he told Lutcher. “Anyway,
I do what he says. He didn’t say anything about confiscating the stuff,
or destroying it. Said to stop the sale. So I’ve got to seal you up,
Lutch.”
Lutcher had been losing some of his amiability. He told Radabaugh so.
“I’m a good-natured man,” he said. “But this is no joke.”
“No,” said Jim. “It’s no joke. Where’s your ice box?”
“What in time do you think you’re going to do?”
“Put a seal on it, and on that bin of yours. And drop in and look at the
seals every day or two. And I’ll take charge of shipments that come in,
unless you cancel them. If you bust the seals, I’ll have to take you
into court, and Wint will soak you.”
“You’ve got a Chinaman’s chance,” Lutcher told him scornfully. “Why,
I’ve given that pup his pap for two years. I’m not going to stand for
this. Not for a minute. You tell him so.”
“If you’d rather have it so,” Jim said mildly, “I’ll pour it all out of
the window, right now.” He said this mildly, but Lutcher knew Jim’s
mildness was apt to be deceptive. In the end, he surrendered to the
inevitable, because it was the inevitable. Jim placed his seals, and
strolled away. Lutcher boiled out after him and hurried off to see V. R.
Kite.
The marshal bent his steps toward the Weaver House, that infamous
hostelry where Wint had spent the night of his election, and where he
had been found next day. Radabaugh knew Mrs. Moody, the presiding genius
of that place, as well as he knew Lutcher. He had always made it his
business to know such folk. But Mrs. Moody did not receive him with the
good nature Lutcher had shown. She had heard some rumors of what was to
come.
The sunken office of the old hotel was little changed, when the marshal
strolled in, since that night of Wint’s election. The light of day,
fighting its way through the dingy windows, served only to make the
interior more squalid. The same old men played their interminable game
of checkers on the table in the corner. The miserable dog that bore
Marshal Jim Radabaugh’s name sprawled beneath the table, its bony legs
clattering on the floor when the creature stirred in its sleep. The boy,
that boy who had been so painfully reading the literature of brewing on
the night of the election, was not to be seen. It is to be hoped that he
was out about some wholesome play. Radabaugh had a suspicion, founded on
experience, that the boy was not in school. He never was. Mrs. Moody sat
behind the high, bar-like counter. When Radabaugh came in, she got up
with a quick, deadly movement like the stir of a coiling snake; and she
smiled at the marshal with those hideously beautiful false teeth
gleaming in her aged and distorted countenance.
“Why, good morning, deary,” she said, terribly amiable. “I don’t often
see you down here any more.”
“Morning, Mrs. Moody,” said Jim. And stalked past the counter toward the
door that led to that back room which overhung the creek. Mrs. Moody
bustled after him and caught his arm at the door.
“Where you a-going, Jim Radabaugh?” she demanded. “You say what you
want, and say it here.”
Radabaugh shook his head. He knew such measures as he had used with
Lutcher would not serve with Mrs. Moody. The patrons of the Weaver House
had little respect for such flimsy things as seals. He knew, also, that
there was no possibility of relying upon the word of Mrs. Moody. Many
women, especially such women as she, have the attitude toward promises
that the Kaiser had toward treaties. They consider them interesting only
when broken. Radabaugh meant to destroy her stock of liquor; and he told
her so.
Then she began to scream at him. The old men at the checkerboard brushed
at their ears as though her screaming were a swarm of flies, harassing
them. Jim pushed her to one side and went through to the back room. When
he set about his business there, she attacked him with a billet of wood;
and Jim subdued the old warrior as gently as might be, and told her to
mind what she did. So she began to weep and wail and scream
hysterically; and Jim emptied bottles through the trap-door into the
creek, knocking off the neck of each bottle so that there might be no
survivors. All the while, Mrs. Moody wailed behind him.
When it was done, he turned to her, brushing his hands. “Orders are, no
more selling, ma’am,” he said gently. “If you start up again, I’ll have
to take you in.”
She was trying to placate him now. “Whose orders, deary?” she wheedled.
“Who’s doing this to old Mother Moody, anyhow?”
“Mayor,” Jim told her; and she wailed:
“Wint Chase. Little Wint that I’ve put to bed here amany a time. He’d
never go and do this, now. Who was it? Honest.”
“Mayor,” Jim repeated. “Straight goods. Hardiston has gone dry. This is
serious, too. Don’t you go to start anything, ma’am. Because I always
did hate to arrest a lady.”
“You’ll just have to--you might just as well take me right off to the
poor farm, Jim Radabaugh. I’m not making ends meet, even right now.” Her
withered old hands covered her face, and she rocked and wailed: “Eh,
poor old Mother Moody! Poor old Mother Moody! You wouldn’t take me in if
I sold just a little bit, would you, now?”
He said he would; and when she saw he meant it, she dropped her attempts
to conciliate him; and she cursed him through the corridor and through
the office; and she stood in the door of her hostelry and cursed him as
long as he could hear, so that even Jim Radabaugh’s hardened ears turned
red and burned with shame. It takes a brave man to face without inward
shrinking the revilements of a thoroughly angry woman. Jim was glad to
be rid of her.
He stopped, on the way back uptown, to warn a fly-by-nighter who ran a
lunch cart near the station and served stronger drinks than coffee. This
man denied any interest in Jim’s warning; and the marshal could find no
liquor about the cart. Nevertheless he served notice, and made a mental
memorandum to see to it that the notice was obeyed.
Remained only V. R. Kite. Radabaugh grinned as he thought of Kite. Kite
would take this matter hard; and when V. R. Kite took a thing hard, the
sight was worth seeing.
But Kite was not in the Bazaar when he got there, so Jim strolled back
up street and dropped in on B. B. Beecham. The editor greeted him as
courteously as he greeted every one. “Good morning,” he said. “Have a
chair. Anything I can do for you?”
Radabaugh spat into the stove. “No,” he said, readjusting the bulge in
his cheek. “Just dropped in. Waiting to see Kite.”
B. B. nodded. “Anything new with you?” he asked, for everybody was a
source of news to B. B. Beecham. That was why the _Journal_ was popular.
“We-ell, I have got a sort of an item for you,” Jim told him. “Might be
worth printing, maybe.”
B. B. asked what it was; and Jim told him. “Wint’s give orders that the
town’s going dry.”
B. B. said: “H’m! Is that so?” And Jim said it was so.
“Guess that’ll be an item folks will read,” he remarked.
The editor shook his head. “We don’t feel we can print such things,” he
said. “You see, it’s bad for Hardiston, outside. Legally, the town is
already dry.”
“I never did have much of any use for laws,” Jim drawled.
“I suppose this means some work for you.”
“Can’t say. Don’t think so. There won’t be much of it done, except a
little, on the sly. Not after the word I’ve passed around.”
“Well, it won’t do Hardiston any harm. Even as things are, they are
better than they used to be. I can remember thirteen saloons here at one
time. How many have there been, under cover?”
“Three-four, regular,” Jim told him.
“Very few people will really miss them,” B. B. said. “People do so many
things, just because they’re in the habit, and the things are waiting to
be done. It’s surprising how much a man can give up without realizing
that he’s giving up anything. I don’t suppose you ever thought of that.”
“Can’t say I ever did,” said Jim, and spat into the stove.
“Like the horse in the story. You’ve heard about the horse?”
“What horse?”
“Oh, you haven’t heard it? The horse that was trained to live without
eating.”
Jim looked mildly interested. “I’ll say that was some horse,” he
remarked. “What happened to him?”
“Why, just as the man got him trained, the horse died,” said B. B.; and
Jim chuckled, and B. B. laughed in the silently uproarious way habitual
to him. Then Jim saw V. R. Kite pass by on the way to the Bazaar and got
up quickly.
“There’s Kite,” he said. “See you later.”
He overtook the little man just inside the Bazaar; and Kite heard his
step and turned and looked at him, and Jim saw that Kite knew. But he
only said:
“Hello, Kite. Want to talk to you a minute.”
“Come back to my desk,” said Kite, and led the way, walking stiffly,
head high, ever so much like a turkey. Jim marked this peculiarity to
himself.
“Exactly like a man looking over a high fence,” he thought. “I’ll
declare, it is.”
Kite sat down, tugged at his side whiskers, and bade Jim speak. The
marshal looked for a place to spit, saw none, swallowed hard, and said:
“Guess you’ve heard the orders.”
“What orders?” Kite asked harshly. But his face was livid, and the veins
stood out on his forehead with his effort at self-control.
“Mayor calls me up last night and tells me to stop whisky selling.
Hardiston’s gone dry.”
“What has that to do with me?” Kite demanded.
The marshal did not grin. If Kite wanted to act that way, all right. It
was the little man’s privilege. After all, he was outwardly respectable
enough, a pillar of the church, and all that.
“Thought you might be interested,” said Jim.
“I am,” said Kite. “I believe in the free sale of liquor. Every man must
have an opinion, one way or the other.”
Jim considered that. Then he got up. “Well,” he said, “I’ve passed the
word around. Don’t know any one that’s planning to keep on selling, do
you?”
“No, of course not.”
“Because if you do,” said Jim slowly, “tell ’em not to do it. Because if
there’s any turns up, any selling, I’m going to come and ask you about
it, Kite.”
Kite boiled up out of his chair and waved his fist. “Get out of here,
you rat!” he raged, holding his voice to a monotonous whisper that was
more deadly than an outcry would have been. “Get out of here, before
I....”
“Before you what?” Jim asked; and Kite checked himself, and pulled at
his side whiskers, and sat down abruptly, staring at the desk before
him.
Jim left him there. As he emerged into the street, he began to whistle.
The whistle was ragged, but the tune could be identified. Jim was
whistling:
“‘There’ll be a Hot Time in the Old Town To-night.’”