From the moment that he went out upon the little stage of his theatre
until he came wearily into his own apartment at five o'clock, Henry
lived upon a mental plane so far removed from his usual existence that
he was hardly aware of any bodily sensations at all. A brand-new group
of emotions had picked him out for their play-ground, and Henry had no
time to be self-conscious.
In the first place, he was too stunned to remember that he hated to be
conspicuous, and that he had never made a public speech in all his
life. He was paralyzed by the contrast between last night and today.
Consequently, he made a very good speech indeed, and it had some acrid
humour in it, too, and the audience actually cheered him--although
later, when he reviewed the incident in his mind, he had to admit that
the cheers were loudest just after he had told the audience to keep
the souvenirs.
Then, when in the custody of the patrolman, he went out to the street,
his mood was still so concentrated, his anger and depression so acute,
that he was transported out of the very circumstances which caused him
to be angry and depressed. He realized, with a hazy sort of
perception, that a tail of small boys had attached itself to the
lodestar of the policeman's uniform; but even at this indignity, his
reaction was curiously impersonal. It was as though the spiritual part
of him and the material part had got a divorce; and the spiritual
part, which was the plaintiff, stood coldly aloof, watching the
material part tramping down Main Street, with a flat-footed policeman
beside it, a voluntary escort behind, and rumour flying on ahead to
all the newspapers. He was actually too humiliated to suffer from the
humiliation.
To be sure, this wasn't by any means his first entanglement with the
law, but heretofore his occasions had been marked by a very different
ritual. He recalled, phlegmatically, that whenever, in the old days, a
member of the motorcycle squad had shot past him, and signalled to
him to stop, the man had always treated him more or less fraternally,
in recognition of the fellowship of high speed. The traffic officers
had cheerfully delivered a summons with one hand, and accepted a cigar
with the other. There was a sort of sporting code about it; and even
in Court, a gentleman who had been arrested for speeding was given the
consideration which belonged to his rank, and the fine was usually
doubled on the assumption that a gentleman could afford it. But this
was different. A Devereux--which was almost the same thing as a
Starkweather--was haled along the highway like a common prisoner. And
if the Devereux hadn't been engaged in that two-for-a-cent, low-class,
revolting business,--and if Aunt Mirabelle hadn't been Aunt
Mirabelle--it couldn't have happened. The spiritual part of him looked
down at the material part, and wondered how Henry Devereux could be so
white-hot with passion, and yet so calm.
What would his friends say now? What would Bob Standish say, and Mr.
Archer and Judge Barklay? And what would Aunt Mirabelle _not_ say?
This was a grim reflection.
During the journey he spoke only once, and that was to say, brusquely,
to his captor: "Court isn't open today, is it?"
"Nope. But we're goin' to a Justice o' the Peace. Might save you a
night in the hoosegow. Can't tell. Orders, anyway."
The Justice of the Peace (or, as he took some pains to inform Henry,
the Most Honourable Court of Special Sessions) was a grizzled
dyspeptic who held forth in the back room of a shoemaker's shop, while
the rabble waited outside, flattening their noses against the
window-glass. The dyspeptic had evidently been coached for the
proceeding; on his desk he had a copy of the ordinance, and as soon as
he had heard the charge, he delivered a lecture which he seemed to
have by heart, and fined Henry twenty-five dollars and costs. Henry
paid the fine, and turning to go, stumbled against two more policemen,
each with his quarry. "Just out of curiosity," said Henry, speaking to
no one in particular, and in a voice which came so faintly to his
ears that he barely heard it, "Just out of idle curiosity, when the
justice gets half the fine, isn't this court open on Sunday for
godless profit, too?" And in the same, enduring haze of unreality, he
paid an additional twenty dollars for contempt, and went out to the
sidewalk.
He emerged as the focus of interest for a large, exuberant crowd of
loiterers. A camera clicked, and Henry saw that the man at the shutter
was one of the _Herald's_ staff photographers. A youthful reporter
caught up with him, and asked him what he had to say for publication.
"Say for publication?" repeated Henry, dully. "Why, you can say--" He
walked half a block before he completed the sentence. "You can say if
I said it, you couldn't print it anyway."
And although the reporter paced him for a quarter of a mile, Henry
never opened his mouth again. He was curiously obsessed, as men under
heavy mental pressure are so often obsessed, by a ridiculously trivial
detail. How was he going to enter that forty-five dollars on his
books?
He had intended to go straight home to Anna, but automatically his
steps led him to the Orpheum, where he went into his tiny office and
sat down at his desk. There were two envelopes on his blotter; he slit
them, diffidently, and found a bill from the novelty house which had
supplied the souvenirs, and a supplementary statement from the
decorator.
He opened a fat ledger, took up a pencil, and began to jot down
figures on the back of one of the envelopes. Already, by remodelling
the the theatre, he had lost two month's headway, and spent three
times too much money, and if Sunday performances were to be
eliminated.... He threw down the pencil, and sat back spiritless. The
good-wishes of all his friends, last night, had turned sour in his
possession. To reach his goal, he should have to contrive, somehow, to
fill nearly every seat at nearly every performance for the balance of
the year. It was all well enough to have self-confidence, and courage,
but it was better to look facts in the face. He had come to an
impasse. Not only that, but overnight his property, by virtue of this
Sunday enforcement and its effect upon the trade, had seriously
depreciated in value. If it had been worth thirty-seven thousand five
hundred yesterday, it wasn't worth a penny more than twenty today. And
he could have had Standish's certified check, and got out from under.
And he had thrown away in improvements almost every cent that he had
borrowed against the original value. He was hardly better off, today,
than if he had carried through his first bargain with Mr. Mix.
He would have to go home to Anna, and confess that he was beaten by
default. He would have to explain to her, as gently as he could, that
the road which led to the end of the rainbow was closed to traffic. He
would have to admit to her that as far as he could see, he was
destined to go on living indefinitely in a jerry-built apartment, with
the odour of fried onions below, and the four children and the
phonograph overhead. And Anna would have to go on pinch-hitting for
cook, and waitress, and chambermaid, and bottle-washer--she would have
to go on with the desecration of her beautiful hands in dish-water,
and the ruin of her complexion over the kitchen-stove. The clothes
that he had planned to buy for her, the jewels, the splendid car--the
cohort of servants he had planned for her--the social prestige! And
instead of that, he was nothing but a fragment of commercial
driftwood, and he couldn't afford, now, to buy her so much as a new
hat, without a corresponding sacrifice.
And yet--involuntarily, he stiffened--and yet he'd be hanged if he
went back and acted like a whipped pup. No, he was supposed to be a
man, and his friends and Anna believed in him, an he'd be hanged if he
went back and confessed anything at all, admitted anything. It was all
well enough to look facts in the face, but it was better still to keep
on fighting until the gong rang. And when he was fighting against the
cant purity and goodness of Mr. Mix, and the cold astigmatism of Aunt
Mirabelle, he'd be hanged if he quit in the first round. No, even if
Henry himself knew that he was beaten, nobody else was going to know
it, and Anna least of all.
At five o'clock, he came blithely into his living-room: and as he saw
Anna's expression, his own changed suddenly. He had thought to find
her in tears; but she was coming to him with her usual welcome, her
usual smile.
Henry didn't quite understand himself, but he was just the least bit
offended, regardless of his relief. You simply couldn't tell from one
minute to the next what a woman was going to do. By all precedent,
Anna should have been enjoying hysterics, which Henry had come
prepared to treat.
"Well," he said, "you'd better cancel that order for golden pheasants,
old dear." She stopped short, and stared at him curiously, as though
the remark had come from a stranger.
"We've got lamb chops tonight," said Anna, with whimsical relevance,
"and fresh strawberry ice-cream. And pheasants are awfully indigestible,
anyway."
Henry returned her stare. "What have you been doing all the
afternoon--reading Marcus Aurelius?"
"No, I haven't been reading anything at all. I tidied up the kitchen.
What happened to _you_?"
There were two different ways of presenting the narrative, and Henry
chose the second. He made it a travesty: and all the time that he was
talking, Anna continued to gaze at him in that same curious,
thoughtful fashion, as if she were noting, for the first time, a
subtle variation in his character.
"And--aren't you even _mad_?" she demanded. "I thought you'd be
furious. I thought you'd be tearing your hair and--and _every_thing."
Henry laughed explosively. "Impatience, as I've pointed out so often
to Aunt Mirabelle, dries the blood more than age or sorrow. Yes, I'm
mad, but I've put it on ice. I'm trying to work out some scheme to
keep us in the running, and not give Mix too good an excuse to hoot at
us. No--they say it's darkest just before the dawn, so I'm trying to
fix it so we'll be sitting on the front steps to see the sunrise. Only
so far I haven't had a mortal thought."
"As a matter of fact," she confided, "I loathed the idea of our
running the Orpheum on Sundays. Didn't you?"
"Naturally. Also on Thursdays, Saturdays, Mondays, Fridays,
Wednesdays and Tuesdays. But Sundays did sort of burrow a little
further under my tough hide. And you know that's quite an admission
for anybody that was brought up by Aunt Mirabelle." He smiled in
reminiscence. "She used to make virtue so darned scaly and repulsive
that it's a wonder I've got a moral left. As it is, my conscience
may be all corrugated like a raisin, but I'm almost glad we
_can't_ run Sundays. That is, I would be if my last remaining moral
weren't going to be so expensive."
"Don't you think they'll probably change that ordinance now, though?
Don't you think people will insist on it? After today?"
"Guess work," said Henry. "Pure guesswork. But _my_ guess is that
we're ditched."
"Well, why don't you join the Exhibitors Association, and fight?"
He shook his head. "No, because that's just what Mix and Aunt
Mirabelle expect me to do. This campaign of theirs is impersonal
towards everybody else, but it's slightly personal towards me. I mean,
Aunt Mirabelle's sore on general principles, and Mix is sore because I
wouldn't come up and eat out of his hand and get myself sheared. We
won't fight. We'll outwit 'em."
"But _how_?"
"Now that question," he said reproachfully, "was mighty tactless. _I_
don't know how. But I know I'm not going to stick my head over the
ramparts for 'em to shoot at. I'm no African Dodger--I'm an
impresario. Maybe they'll hit me in the eye, all right, but I'm not
going to give 'em a good cigar for it."
"I know, dear, but how are we going to make up all that tremendous
loss?"
"Sheer brilliance," said Henry, easily. "Which is what I haven't got
nothing but, of. So I'm banking on you.... And in the meantime, let's
go ahead with the orgy of lamb chops you were talking about. I'm
hungry."
They spent the evening in a cheerful discussion of ways and means,
during which she was continually impressed by Henry's attitude. From
earlier circumstances she had gathered that when he was under fire,
his rash impulsiveness would remain constant, and that only his
jocular manner would disappear; furthermore, she knew that in spite of
that manner, he was a borrower of trouble. And yet Henry, who had a
pretty legitimate reason to be bristling with rancour, sat and talked
away as assuredly as though this hadn't been his doomsday.
She left him, once, to answer the telephone, and when she came back,
she caught him off guard, and saw his face in repose. Henry wasn't
aware of it; and when he heard her footsteps, he looked up with an
instantaneous re-arrangement of his features. But Anna had seen, and
Anna had understood; she sensed that Henry, for a generous purpose,
had merely adopted a pose. Secretly, he was quite as tormented, quite
as desperate, as she had expected him to be.
Her heart contracted, but for Henry's sake, she closed her eyes to the
revelation, and resumed the discourse in the same key which Henry had
set for it. Far into the night they exchanged ideas, and half-blown
inspirations, but when Henry finally arose, with the remark that it
was time to wind the clock and put out the cat, they had come to no
conclusion except that something would certainly have to be done about
it. "Oh, well," said Henry, indulgently, "a pleasant evening was
reported as having been had by all, and nothing was settled--so it was
just as valuable as a Cabinet Meeting."
The sight of the silver tea-service, however, sent him to bed with
renewed determination.
In the morning, he dreaded to open his newspaper, but when he had read
through the story twice, he conceded that it wasn't half as yellow as
he feared. No, it was really rather conservative, and the photograph
of him wasn't printed at all; he read, with grim satisfaction, that
another culprit, somewhat more impetuous, had smashed the camera, and
attempted to stage a revival of his success upon the photographer.
He had been fully prepared to find himself singled out for publicity,
and he was greatly relieved. To be sure, there was a somewhat
flippant mention of his relationship to Mirabelle, but it wasn't
over-emphasized, and altogether, he had no justification for
resentment--that is, at the _Herald_. The _Herald_ had merely
printed the news; what Henry resented was the fact.
He turned to the editorial page and found, as he had imagined, a solid
column of opinion; but to his amazement, it made no protest of
yesterday's event--on the contrary, it echoed Judge Barklay. It said
half a dozen times, in half a dozen different ways, that a bad law
ought to be repealed, a good law ought to be preserved, and that all
laws, good or bad, as long as they were written on the books, ought to
be enforced. Henry was mystified; for the _Herald_ had always
professed to be in utter sympathy with the workingman.
Later in the day, however, he saw the leading exhibitor in town, who
winked at him. "Clever stuff, Devereux, clever stuff. 'Course, if we
put up a roar, they'll say it's because we've got an ax to grind. Sure
we have. But the _Herald_ wants the _people_--the people that come to
our shows--to get up and blat. Then it wouldn't be the League against
the Association--it'd be the people against the League, and the
laugh'd be on the other foot."
"What's the betting?"
"Search _me_. But Mayor Rowland told me if we got up a monster
petition with a thousand or two names on it, he'll bring it up to the
Council. We're puttin' up posters in the lobby."
Henry's heart jumped. "But suppose the people don't sign?"
"Well then we'd be out o' luck. But there's other ways o' goin' at
that damn League, and we're goin' to use _all_ of 'em. And that
reminds me, Devereux--ain't it about time for you to join the
Association?"
"I'm afraid not. I ought to, but--you see, you're going to make things
as hot as you can for the League--personalities, and all that, and
when my aunt is president of it--"
"But great guns! What's she done to _you_?"
"I know, but I can't help that. You go ahead and rip things up any way
you want to, but I'd better stay out. It may be foolish, but that's
how I feel about it."
"It's your own affair. _I_ think you're too blamed easy, but you suit
yourself.... And about the big noise, why I guess all we can do is
wait and see what happens."
Miss Starkweather, who met him on the street that morning, told him
the same thing. "_Some_ people," she remarked, altitudinously, "are
always getting their toes stepped on, aren't they? Well, there's
another way to look at it--the toes oughtn't to have been there."
"Oh, give us time," said Henry, pleasantly. "Even the worm turns, you
know."
"Humph!" said Aunt Mirabelle. "Let a dozen worms do a _dozen_ turns! I
never thought I'd see the day when a Devereux--almost the same thing
as a Starkweather--'d figure in a disgrace such as yours. You've
heaped muck on your uncle's parlour-carpet. But some day you'll see
the writing on the wall, Henry."
He was tempted to remind her of another city ordinance against
bill-posting, but he refrained, and saved it up for Anna.
"I'll watch for it," he said.
"Well, you better. All _I_'ve got to say is this: you just wait and
see what happens."
And then, to complete the record, he got identically the same
suggestion from Bob Standish.
"I suppose," said Standish, "maybe you're wishing you'd taken that
check."
"Not that, exactly--but I've thought about it."
"Strikes me that you're in the best position of anybody in town,
Henry. You've got a following that'll see you through, if it's humanly
possible."
"Sounds like passing the hat, doesn't it?"
"Oh, no. And the side that scores first doesn't always win the game,
either--I dare say you've noticed it. It'll come out all right--you
just wait and see what happens."
Henry waited, and he saw. And to Henry's dismay, and to the Mayor's
chagrin, and to Miss Mirabelle Starkweather's exceeding complacence,
nothing happened at all.
The public petition, which had been advertised as "monstrous," caught
hardly five hundred names, and two thirds of them were Mr. A. Mutt,
Mr. O. Howe Wise, Mr. O. U. Kidd, and similar patronymics, scribbled
by giggling small boys. The blue-law was universally unpopular, and no
doubt of it, but the citizenry hesitated to attack it; the recent
landslide for prohibition showed an apparent sentiment which nobody
wanted to oppose--Why, if a man admitted that he was in favour of
Sunday tolerance, his friends (who of course were going through
exactly the same mental rapids) might put him down in the same class
with those who still mourned for saloons. Each man waited for his
neighbour to sign first, and the small boys giggled, and filled up the
lists. Besides, there was a large amusement park just beyond the city
line, and the honest workingman proceeded to pay his ten-cent fare,
and double the profit of the park.
The Exhibitors Association put up its fists to the Mayor, and the
Mayor proposed a public hearing, with the Council in attendance. At
this juncture the Reform League sent a questionnaire to each
Councillor, and to each member of the Association. The phraseology was
Socratic (it was the product of Mr. Mix's genius) and if any one
answered Yes, he was snared: if he said No, he was ambushed, and if he
said nothing he was cooked. It reminded the Mayor of the man who
claimed that in a debate, he would answer every question of his
adversary with a simple No or Yes--and the first question was: "Have
you stopped beating your wife?"
The Exhibitors held a meeting behind closed doors, and gave out the
statement that nothing was to be gained by a public hearing. But they
launched a flank attack on the Council only to discover that the
Council was wide awake, and knew that its bread was buttered on one
side only.
"We are listening," said the Chairman, with statesmanlike dignity,
"for the voice of the people, and so far we haven't heard a peep. It
looks as if they don't _want_ you fellows to run Sunday's, don't it?"
The spokesman of the Exhibitors cleared his throat. "Statistics prove
that every Sunday, an average of six thousand people--"
"That's all right. We've seen your petition. And Mr. Mutt and Mr. Kid
and most of the rest of your patrons don't seem to be registered
voters. How about it?"
The Council burst into a loud laugh, and the spokesman retreated in
discomfiture.
For several days, Henry was fairly besieged by his friends, who joked
him about his arrest, and then, out of genuine concern, wanted to know
if his prospects were seriously damaged. To each interrogatory, Henry
waved his hand with absolute nonchalance. As far as he knew, only six
people were in the secret--himself, his wife, Judge Barklay, Standish,
Mr. Archer and Aunt Mirabelle--and he wasn't anxious to increase the
number. His aunt might not have believed it, but this was more on her
account than on his own.
"Lord, no," said Henry, casually. "Don't worry about _me_. I'm only
glad there's some news for the _Herald_. It was getting so dry you had
to put cold cream on it or it'd crack."
By the time that Judge Barklay returned from his vacation, the subject
had even slipped away from the front page of the newspapers. The
flurry was over. And out of a population of fifty thousand,
ninety-nine per cent of whom were normal-minded citizens, neither
ultra-conservative nor ultra-revolutionary, that tiny fraction which
composed the Ethical Reform League had stowed its propaganda down the
throats of the overwhelming majority.
The Judge shrugged his shoulders. "Organization," he said. "They've
got a leader, and speakers, and a publicity bureau. That's all. I hear
they're going to use it to boom Mix for a political job. But you
wait--wait, and keep on paying out the rope."
"That's all I've got left to pay out," said Henry, amiably.
"Aren't you doing pretty well, considering?"
Henry nodded. "We're doing great business--I mean, anybody else would
think so. About a hundred and fifty a week net, for the first three
weeks. And Anna's salting away a hundred and ten of it. Every morning
I draw a clean handkerchief, and a dime for dissipation, and she keeps
a clutch on the rest."
"Hm! A hundred and fifty. That's good money, Henry."
"Well, that's the only kind we take. But you can see for yourself what
this thing's done to us. We ought to be averaging two twenty-five. And
we'd have done it, too."
The Judge appeared contrite. "I'm afraid you're blaming me for bad
advice, Henry."
"No, sir. If I blamed anybody, I'd just blame myself for taking it.
But I don't. You see, even if I fall down on the first prize, I've got
a pretty good business under way. Eight thousand a year."
"Would you keep on with it?"
"I'd think it over. It isn't particularly joyous, but it sure does pay
the rent. Oh, I suppose I'd try to sell it, if I could get a price for
it, but Bob says I couldn't expect a big one, because so much of the
trade sort of belongs to _us_--and wouldn't necessarily patronize the
chap that bought me out. He tells me it was worth twenty when I took
it, and thirty now, and if it weren't for this law, it would be worth
fifty. That's all due to the improvements, and you advised me to put
'em in, and you engineered the mortgage. So I'm not huffy at you.
Hardly."
"Still, you want the big prize if you can get it.... Notice what Mix
is giving out to the papers? He'll hang himself yet, and if he does,
you won't be too far behind to catch up. That's a prophecy. But by
George, I can't help feeling that Mix isn't in that outfit for his
health. It just don't smell right, somehow."
The Reform League had jubilantly explained to Mr. Mix that he was a
liberator and a saviour of humanity from itself, and Mr. Mix had
deftly caught whatever bouquets were batted up to him. He had allowed
the fragrance of them to waft even as far as the _Herald_ office, to
which he sent a bulletin every forty-eight hours. Mr. Mix's salary was
comforting, his expense accounts were paid as soon as vouchers were
submitted, he was steadily advancing in Miss Starkweather's good
books, and he considered himself to be a very clever man indeed.
At the very least, he was clever enough to realize that his position
was now strategically favourable, and that as long as he moved neither
forward nor backward, he was in no danger from any source. He had a
living salary, and he was saving enough out of it to reduce his
indebtedness; in a year he could snap his fingers at the world.
Furthermore, he could see no possibility of legislating himself out of
his job before that time--certainly not if he played his cards
craftily, and didn't push his success too far. And by the end of the
year, he could select a future to fit the circumstances.
For the time being, however, it seemed advisable to Mr. Mix to make
haste slowly; he had turned an impending personal catastrophe into a
personal triumph, but the triumph could be spoiled unless he kept it
carefully on ice. The failure of the public to rise up and flay the
League had lifted Mr. Mix into a position of much prominence, and
conveyed the very reasonable supposition that he was individually
powerful. When a man is supposed to possess power, he can travel a
long distance on the effect of a flashing eye, and an expanded chest;
also, it is a foolhardy man who, regardless of his reputation, engages
to meet all-comers in their own bailiwick.
He had committed himself to the preparation of an amendment to the
ordinance, which should be more definite, and more cerulean, than the
original, but he knew that if he pressed it too soon, it might topple
back and crush him. The people could be led, but they couldn't be
driven. And therefore Mr. Mix, who had naturally made himself solid
with the reactionaries and the church-going element (except those
liberals who regarded him as an officious meddler), and who had
actually succeeded in being mentioned as the type of man who would
make a good Mayor, or President of Council, followed out a path which,
unless his geography of common-sense was wrong, could hardly end at a
precipice.
He became, overnight, a terror to the boys and young men who rolled
dice in the city parks, and on the alley sidewalks in the business
district; and this was held commendable even by the church-goers who
played bridge at the Citizens Club for penny points. He headed a
violent onslaught upon the tobacconists who sold cigarettes to minors,
and this again was applauded by those who in their youth had avoided
tobacco--because it was too expensive--and smoked sweet-fern and
cornsilk behind the barn. He nagged the School Board until there went
forth an edict prohibiting certain styles of dress; and the mothers of
several unattractive maidens wrote letters to him, and called him a
Christian. The parents of other girls also wrote to him, but he
didn't save the letters. He made a great stir about the Sanitary Code,
and the Pure Food regulations, and although the marketmen began to
murmur discontentedly--and why, indeed, should the grocery cat not
sleep in a bed of her own choosing; and why should not the busy,
curious, thirsty fly have equal right of access with any other
insect?--yet Mr. Mix contrived to hold himself up to the public as a
live reformer, but not a radical, and to the League as a radical but
not a rusher-in where angels fear to tread. It required the
equilibrium of a tight-rope walker, but Mr. Mix had it. Indeed, he
felt as pleased with himself as though he had invented it. And he
observed, with boundless satisfaction, that the membership of the
League was steadily increasing, and that the Mayoralty was mentioned
more frequently. He was aware, of course, that a reform candidate is
always politically anemic, but he was hoping that by the injection of
good-government virus, he might be strong enough to catch a regular
nomination, to boot, and to run on a fusion ticket. From present
indications, it wasn't impossible. And Mr. Mix smirked in his
mirror.
Mirabelle said, with a rolling-up of her mental shirt-sleeves: "Well,
now let's get after something _drastic_. I've heard lots of people say
you ought to get elected to office; well, show 'em what you can do. Of
course, what we've been doing is all _right_, but it's kind of small
potatoes."
Mr. Mix looked executive. "Mustn't go too fast, Miss Starkweather.
Can't afford to make people nervous."
"Humph! People that don't feel guilty, don't feel nervous. I say it's
about time to launch something drastic. Next thing for us to do is to
make the League a state-wide organization, and put through a Sunday
law with teeth in it. That amusement park's got to go. Maybe we'd
better run over to the capital and talk to the Governor."
Mr. Mix was decisively opposed, but he couldn't withstand her. He had
a number of plausible arguments, but she talked them into jelly, and
eventually dragged him to an interview with the Governor. When it was
over, she beamed victoriously.
"There! Didn't I tell you so? He's with us."
Mr. Mix repressed a smile. "Yes, he said if we draft a bill, and get
it introduced and passed, he'll sign it."
"Well, what more could he say?"
He wanted to ask, in turn, what less could be said, but he contained
himself. "You know," he warned her, "as soon as we put out any really
violent propaganda, we're going to lose some of our new members, and
some of our prestige."
"Good! Weed out the dead-wood."
"That's all right, but after what we've done with the food laws and
stopping the sale of cigarettes to boys, and so on, people are looking
at us as a switch to chastise the city. But we don't want them to look
at us as a cudgel. And this state law you've got in mind hits too many
people."
"Let it hit 'em."
"Well, anyway," he pleaded, "there's no sense in going out and waving
the club so everybody's scared off. We ought to take six months or a
year, and do it gradually. And we ought to pass a model ordinance here
first, before we talk about statutes. I'd suggest a series of public
lectures, and a lot of educational pamphlets for a start. I'll write
them myself."
She was impatient, but she finally yielded. "Well, we'll see how it
works. Go ahead and do it."
"I will--I'll have the whole thing done by late this spring."
"Not 'till _then_?" she protested, vigorously.
Mr. Mix shook his head. "Perfect the organization first, and begin to
fight when we've got all our ammunition. It'll take me three months to
get that ready. So far, all we've had is a battle, but now we're
planning a war. I want to be prepared in every detail before we fire a
single more shot."
She regarded him admiringly. "Sounds reasonable at that. You do it
your own way."
He was feeling a warm sense of power, and yet he had his moments of
uncertainty, did Mr. Mix, for even with his genius for hypocrisy, he
sometimes found it difficult to be a hypocrite on both sides of the
same proposition. His status was satisfactory, at the moment, but he
mustn't let Mirabelle get the bit in her teeth, and run away with him.
As soon as ever she got him on record as favouring the sort of
legislation which she herself wanted, Mr. Mix's power was going to
dwindle. And Mr. Mix adored his power, and he hated to think of losing
it by too extravagant propaganda.
There were moments when he wished that Henry were more belligerent, so
that special measures could be taken against him, or that Mirabelle
were more seductive, so that Mr. Mix could be more spontaneous. He
knew that he was personally responsible for the present enforcement;
he believed that because of it, Henry Devereux didn't have a
Chinaman's chance; he knew that if Mirabelle got her legacy, she would
have Mr. Mix to thank for it. But Henry was too cheerful, and
Mirabelle was too coy, and the two facts didn't co-ordinate.
Certainly there was no finesse in hailing Mirabelle as an heiress
until Henry's failure was more definitely placarded. To be sure, she
had plenty of money now, and she was spending it like water, but he
knew that it included the income from the whole Starkweather estate.
She probably had--oh, a hundred thousand or more of her own. And that
wasn't enough. Yes, it was time for Mr. Mix to think ahead; he had
identified himself so thoroughly with the League that he couldn't
easily withdraw, and Mirabelle still held his note. Of course, if the
League could furnish him with a stepping-stone to the Mayoralty, or
the presidency of Council, Mr. Mix didn't care to withdraw from it
anyway; nor would he falter in his allegiance as long as he had a
chance at an heiress. He wished that Henry would show fight, but Henry
hadn't even joined the Exhibitors Association. It was so much easier
to fight when the other fellow offered resistance. Henry merely
smiled; you couldn't tell whether he were despondent or not. But if he
wouldn't fight, there was always the thin possibility that he might be
satisfied with his progress. And that would be unfortunate for Mr.
Mix.
There was something else; suppose Mirabelle got her legacy, and Mr.
Mix volunteered to share it with her. He was reasonably confident that
she would consent; her symptoms were already on the surface. But how,
in such event, could Mr. Mix regulate the habits which were so
precious to him? How could he hide his fondness for his cigar, and his
night-cap, his predilection for burlesque shows and boxing bouts and
blonde stenographers? It was difficult enough, even now, and he had
eaten enough trochees and coffee beans to sink a frigate, and he had
been able only once to get away to New York--"to clean up his
affairs." How could he manage his alternative self when Mirabelle had
him under constant and intimate supervision?
Still, all that could be arranged. For twenty years he had gone to New
York, regularly, on irregular business and not a soul in town was any
the wiser; it was simply necessary to discover what "business" could
summon him if he were married, independent, and a professional
reformer. Mr. Mix, who was always a few lengths ahead of the
calendar, procured the addresses of a metropolitan anti-cigarette
conference, and a watch-and-ward society, and humbly applied by mail
for membership. An alibi is exactly the opposite of an egg; the older
it is, the better.