A SHORT HORSE SOON CURRIED
Sylvia sat beside Bassett at dinner that night, and it was on the whole
a cheerful party. Mrs. Bassett was restored to tranquillity, and before
her aunt she always strove to hide her ills, from a feeling that that
lady, who enjoyed perfect health, and carried on the most prodigious
undertakings, had little patience with her less fortunate sisters whom
the doctors never fully discharge. Mrs. Owen had returned so late that
Bassett was unable to dispose of the lawsuit before dinner; she had
greeted her niece's husband with her usual cordiality. She always called
him Morton, and she was Aunt Sally to him as to many hundreds of her
fellow citizens. She discussed crops, markets, rumors of foreign wars,
prospective changes in the President's Cabinet, the price of ice, and
the automobile invasion. Talk at Sally Owen's table was always likely to
be spirited. Bassett's anxiety as to his relations with her passed; he
had never felt more comfortable in her house.
Only the most temerarious ever ventured to ask a forecast of Mrs. Owen's
plans. Marian, who had found a school friend with an automobile and had
enjoyed a run into the country, did not share the common fear of her
great-aunt. Mrs. Owen liked Marian's straightforward ways even when
they approached rashness. It had occurred to her sometimes that there
was a good deal of Singleton in Marian; she, Sally Owen, was a Singleton
herself, and admired the traits of that side of her family. Marian
amused her now by plunging into a description of a new flat she had
passed that afternoon which would provide admirably a winter home for
the Bassetts. Mrs. Bassett shuddered, expecting her aunt to sound a
warning against the extravagance of maintaining two homes; but Mrs. Owen
rallied promptly to her grandniece's support.
"If you've got tired of my house, you couldn't do better than to take an
apartment in the Verona. I saw the plans before they began it, and it's
first-class and up-to-date. My house is open to you and always has been,
but I notice you go to the hotel about half the time. You'd better try a
flat for a winter, Hallie, and let Marian see how we do things in town."
Instantly Mrs. Bassett was alert. This could only be covert notice that
Sylvia was to be installed in the Delaware Street house. Marian was
engaging her father in debate upon the merits of her plan, fortified by
Mrs. Owen's unexpected approval. Mrs. Bassett raised her eyes to Sylvia.
Sylvia, in one of the white gowns with which she relieved her mourning,
tranquilly unconscious of the dark terror she awakened in Mrs. Bassett,
seemed to be sympathetically interested in the Bassetts' transfer to the
capital.
Sylvia was guilty of the deplorable sin of making herself agreeable to
every one. She had paused on the way to her room before dinner to
proffer assistance to Mrs. Bassett. With a light, soothing touch she had
brushed the invalid's hair and dressed it; and she had produced a new
kind of salts that proved delightfully refreshing. Since coming to the
table Mrs. Bassett had several times detected her husband in an exchange
of smiles with the young woman, and Marian and the usurper got on
famously.
Mrs. Bassett had observed that Sylvia's appetite was excellent, and this
had weakened her belief in the girl's genius; there was a good deal of
Early-Victorian superstition touching women in Hallie Bassett! But Mrs.
Owen was speaking.
"I suppose I'd see less of you all if you moved to town. Marian used to
run off from Miss Waring's to cheer me up, mostly when her lessons were
bad, wasn't it, Marian?"
"I love this house, Aunt Sally, but you can't have us all on your hands
all the time."
"Well," Mrs. Owen remarked, glancing round the table quizzically, "I
might do worse. But even Sylvia scorns me; she's going to move out
to-morrow."
Mrs. Bassett with difficulty concealed her immeasurable relief. Mrs.
Owen left explanations to Sylvia, who promptly supplied them.
"That sounds as though I were about to take leave without settling my
bill, doesn't it? But I thought it wise not to let it get too big; I'm
going to move to Elizabeth House."
"Elizabeth House! Why, Sylvia!" cried Marian.
Mrs. Bassett smothered a sigh of satisfaction. If Aunt Sally was
transferring her protégée to the home she had established for working
girls (and it was inconceivable that the removal could be upon Sylvia's
own initiative), the Bassett prospects brightened at once. Aunt Sally
was, in her way, an aristocrat; she was rich and her eccentricities were
due largely to her kindness of heart; but Mrs. Bassett was satisfied now
that she was not a woman to harbor in her home a girl who labored in a
public school-house. Not only did Mrs. Bassett's confidence in her aunt
rise, but she felt a thrill of admiration for Sylvia, who was
unmistakably a girl who knew her place, and her place as a wage-earner
was not in the home of one of the richest women in the state, but in a
house provided through that lady's beneficence for the shelter of young
women occupied in earning a livelihood.
"It's very nice there," Sylvia was saying. "I stopped on my way home
this afternoon and found that they could give me a room. It's all
arranged."
"But it's only for office girls and department store clerks and
dressmakers, Sylvia. I should think you would hate it. Why, my manicure
lives there!"
Marian desisted, warned by her mother, who wished no jarring note to mar
her satisfaction in the situation.
"That manicure girl is a circus," said Mrs. Owen, quite oblivious of the
undercurrent of her niece's thoughts. "When they had a vaudeville show
last winter she did the best stunts of any of 'em. You didn't mention
those Jewesses that I had such a row to get in? Smart girls. One of 'em
is the fastest typewriter in town; she's a credit to Jerusalem, that
girl. And a born banker. They've started a savings club and Miriam runs
it. They won't lose any money." Mrs. Owen chuckled; and the rest
laughed. There was no question of Mrs. Owen's pride in Elizabeth House.
"Did you see any plumbers around the place?" she demanded of Sylvia.
"I've been a month trying to get another bathroom put in on the third
floor, and plumbers do try the soul."
"That's all done," replied Sylvia. "The matron told me to tell you so."
"I'm about due to go over there and look over the linen," remarked Mrs.
Owen, with an air of making a memorandum of a duty neglected.
"Well, I guess it's comfortable enough," said Marian. "But I should
think you could do better than that, Sylvia. You'll have to eat at the
same table with some typewriter pounder. With all your education I
should think it would bore you."
"Sylvia will have to learn about it for herself, Marian," said Mrs.
Bassett. "I've always understood that the executive board is very
careful not to admit girls whose character isn't above reproach."
Mrs. Owen turned the key of her old-fashioned coffee urn sharply upon
the cup she was filling and looked her niece in the eye.
"Oh, we're careful, Hallie; we're careful; but I tell 'em not to be
_too_ careful!"
"Well, of course the aim is to protect girls," Mrs. Bassett replied,
conscious of a disconcerting acidity in her aunt's remark.
"I'm not afraid of contamination," observed Sylvia.
"Of course not _that_," rejoined Mrs. Bassett hastily. "I think it's
fine that with your culture you will go and live in such a place; it
shows a beautiful spirit of self-sacrifice."
"Oh, please don't say that! I'm going there just because I want to go!"
And then, smiling to ease the moment's tension, "I expect to have the
best of times at Elizabeth House."
"Sylvia"--remarked Mrs. Owen, drawling the name a trifle more than
usual--"Sylvia can do what she pleases anywhere."
"I think," said Bassett, who had not before entered into the discussion,
"that Aunt Sally has struck the right word there. In these days a girl
can do as she likes; and we haven't any business to discuss Miss
Garrison's right to live at Elizabeth House."
"Of course, Sylvia, we didn't mean to seem to criticize you. You know
that," said Mrs. Bassett, flushing.
"You are my friends," said Sylvia, glancing round the table, "and if
there's criticizing to be done, you have the first right."
"If Sylvia is to be criticized,--and I don't understand that any one has
tried it," remarked Mrs. Owen,--"I want the first chance at her myself."
And with the snapping of her spectacle case they rose from the table.
They had barely settled themselves in the parlor when Harwood and Allen
arrived in Allen's motor. Dan had expected his friend to resent his
part in the convention, and he had sought Allen at Lüders's shop to
satisfy himself that their personal relations had not been disturbed. He
had found Allen, at the end of a day's work, perched upon a bench
discoursing to the workmen on the Great Experiment. Allen had, it
seemed, watched the convention from an obscure corner of the gallery. He
pronounced Dan's speech "immense"; "perfectly bully"; he was extravagant
in his praise of it. His father's success in naming the ticket had
seemed to him a great triumph. Allen viewed the whole matter with a kind
of detachment, as a spectator whose interest is wholly impersonal. He
thought there would be a great fight between the combatants; his dad
hadn't finished yet, he declared, sententiously. The incidents of the
convention had convinced him that the Great Experiment was progressing
according to some predestined formula. He and Harwood had dined together
at the University Club and he was quite in the humor to call on the
Bassetts at Mrs. Owen's; and the coming of Sylvia, as to whom Mrs. Owen
had piqued his curiosity, was not to be overlooked.
He cleared the air by brushing away the convention with a word,
addressed daringly to Bassett:--
"Papa's come back from fishing! _My_ papa is digging bait," and they all
laughed.
"Miss Garrison, you must be the greatest of girls, for you have my own
ideas! Our invincible young orator here has been telling me so!"
"That was a grand speech; many happy returns of the day!" was Marian's
greeting to Dan.
"You certainly have a great voice, Daniel," remarked Mrs. Owen, "and you
had your nerve with you."
"You were effective from the first moment, Mr. Harwood. You ought to
consider going on the lecture platform," said Mrs. Bassett.
"Oh, Dan hasn't come to that yet; its only defeated statesmen who spout
in the Chautauquas," Bassett remarked.
Harwood was in fine fettle. Many men had expressed their approval of
him; at the club he had enjoyed the chaffing of the young gentlemen with
whom he ate luncheon daily, and whose tolerance of the universe was
tinged with a certain cynicism. They liked Harwood; they knew he was a
"smart" fellow; and because they liked and admired him they rallied him
freely. The president of a manufacturing company had called at the
Boordman Building to retain him in a damage suit; a tribute to his
growing fame. Dan was a victim of that error to which young men yield in
exultant moments, when, after a first brush with the pickets, they are
confident of making their own terms with life. Dan's attitude toward the
world was receptive; here in the Bassett domestic circle he felt no
shame at being a Bassett man. All but Sylvia had spoken to him of his
part in the convention, and she turned to him now after a passage with
Allen that had left the young man radiant.
"You have a devoted admirer in Mr. Thatcher. He must be a difficult
friend to satisfy," said Sylvia.
"Then do you think I don't satisfy him?"
"Oh, perfectly! He's a combination of optimist and fatalist, I judge. He
thinks nothing matters much, for everything is coming out all right in
the end."
"Then where do you place me in his scheme of things?"
"That depends, doesn't it," she replied carelessly, "on whether you are
the master of the ship or only a prisoner under the hatches."
He reddened, and she added nothing to relieve his embarrassment.
"You think, then--?" And he stopped, uneasy under her gaze.
"Some of the time I don't think; I just wonder. And that's very
different, isn't it?"
He realized now how much he had counted on the kind things he had
expected her to say. He had plainly lost ground with her since their
talk on the Madison campus, and he wanted to justify himself, to
convince her of his rectitude, and of her failure to understand his part
in the convention, but the time and place were unpropitious.
Allen was calling attention to the moonlight and proposing an automobile
flight into the country. His car would hold them all, and he announced
himself the safest of chauffeurs. Mrs. Owen declined, on the double plea
that she had business to attend to and did not ride in motor cars even
to please Allen Thatcher; Bassett also excused himself; so the rest set
off presently under Mrs. Bassett's chaperonage.
"Are you going downtown, Morton?" asked Mrs. Owen, as they watched the
motor roll away.
"No; I'd like to see you on a business matter, Aunt Sally, if you can
give me a few minutes."
"Certainly, Morton; come right in."
She flashed on the lights in her office where Thomas A. Hendricks still
gazed benevolently at Maud S. breaking her record.
"I owe you an apology, Aunt Sally," Bassett began at once. "I'm sorry I
got you into a lawsuit, but things moved so fast that I didn't have a
chance to pull you out of the way. Thatcher and I have agreed to
disagree, as you doubtless know."
Mrs. Owen drew her spectacle case from her pocket (there were pockets
and deep ones in all her gowns), wiped her glasses and put them on.
"You and Edward do seem to be having a little trouble. When I got home I
found that summons the sheriff left here. Let me see; it was away back
in '82 that I was sued the last time. Agent for a cornplanter sued me
for a machine I never ordered and it wasn't worth a farthing anyhow.
That was on my Greene County place. Just for that I had him arrested for
trespass for going on the farm to take away the machine. He paid the
costs all right, and I hope he learned better manners."
This reminiscence, recalled with evident enjoyment, was not wholly
encouraging. It seemed darkly possible that she had cited a precedent
applicable to every case where she was haled before a court. The chairs
in Mrs. Owen's office were decidedly uncomfortable; Bassett crossed and
recrossed his legs, and pressed his hand nervously to his pocket to make
sure of his check-book; for he was prepared to pay his wife's aunt for
her shares in the "Courier" newspaper to facilitate her elimination as a
co-defendant in the suit at bar.
"It was contemptible of Thatcher to drag you into this, for he knew you
took those shares merely to help me out. I'm sorry it has turned out
this way, but I'm anxious to make it right with you, and I'm ready to
buy your shares--at your own price, of course."
She chose a letter from the afternoon's mail, and opened it with a
horn-handled paper-cutter, crumpling the envelope and dropping it over
her shoulder into a big waste-paper basket. She was not apparently
overcome by his magnanimity.
"Well, well," she said, glancing over the letter; "that man I've got at
Waupegan is turning out better than I expected when I put him there; or
else he's the greatest living liar. You never can tell about these
people. Well, well!--Oh, yes, Morton; about that lawsuit. I saw Edward
this afternoon and had a little talk with him about it."
"You saw Thatcher about the suit!"
"I most certainly did, Morton. I had him go down to the bank to talk to
me."
"I'm sorry you took the trouble to do that. If you'd told me--"
"Oh, I'm not afraid of Edward Thatcher. If a man brings a lawsuit
against me, the sooner I see him the better. I sent word to Edward and
he was waiting at the bank when I got there."
"I'd given Thatcher credit for being above dragging a woman who had
always been his friend into a lawsuit. He certainly owed you an
apology."
"I didn't see it just that way, Morton, and he didn't apologize. I
wouldn't have let him!"
She looked at him over her glasses disconcertingly, and he could think
of no reply. It was possible that Thatcher had bought her stock or that
she had made him bid for it. She had a reputation for driving hard
bargains, and he judged from her manner that her conference with
Thatcher, whatever its nature, had not been unsatisfactory. He recalled
with exasperation his wife's displeasure over this whole affair; it was
incumbent upon him not only to reëstablish himself with Mrs. Owen, but
to do it in a way to satisfy Mrs. Bassett.
"You needn't worry about that lawsuit, Morton; there ain't going to be
any lawsuit."
She gave this time to "soak in," as she would have expressed it, and
then concluded:--
"It's all off; I persuaded Edward to drop the suit. The case will be
dismissed in the morning."
"Dismissed? How dismissed, Aunt Sally?"
"Just dismissed; that's all there is of it. I went to see Fitch, too,
and gave him a piece of my mind. He wrote me a letter I found here
saying that in my absence he'd taken the liberty of entering an
appearance for me, along with you, in the case. I told him I'd attend to
my own lawsuits, and that he could just scratch his appearance off the
docket."
The presumption of her lawyer seemed to obscure all other issues for the
moment. Morton Bassett was annoyed to be kept waiting for an explanation
that was clearly due him as her co-defendant; he controlled his
irritation with difficulty. Her imprudence in having approached his
enemy filled him with forebodings; there was no telling what compromises
she might have negotiated with Edward G. Thatcher.
"I suppose you shamed him out of it?" he suggested.
"Shamed him? I _scared_ him out of it! He owns a lot of property in this
town that's rented for unlawful purposes, and I told him I'd prosecute
him; that, and a few other things. He offered to buy me out at a good
price, but he didn't get very far with that. It was a good figure,
though," she added reflectively.
His spirits rose at this proof of her loyalty and he hastened to
manifest his appreciation. His wife's fears would be dispelled by this
evidence of her aunt's good will toward the family.
"I rather imagined that he'd be glad to quit if he saw an easy way out,
and I guess you gave it to him. Now about your stock, Aunt Sally. I
don't want you to be brought into my troubles with Thatcher any further.
I appreciate your help so far, and I'm able now to pay for your shares.
I don't doubt that Ed offered you a generous price to get a controlling
interest. I'll write a check for any sum you name, and you'll have my
gratitude besides."
He drew out his check-book and laid it on the table, with a feeling that
money, which according to tradition is a talkative commodity, might now
conclude the conversation. Mrs. Owen saw the check-book--looked at it
over her glasses, apparently without emotion.
"I'm not going to sell those shares, Morton; not to you or anybody
else."
"But as a matter of maintaining my own dignity--"
"Your own dignity is something I want to speak to you about, Morton.
I've been watching you ever since you married Hallie, and wondering just
where you'd bump. You and Edward Thatcher have been pretty thick and
you've had a lot of fun out of politics. This row you've got into with
him was bound to come. I know Edward better--just a little better than I
know you. He's not a beautiful character, but he's not as bad as they
make out. But you've given him a hard rub the wrong way and he's going
to get even with you. He's mighty bitter--bitterer than it's healthy for
one man to be against another. If it hadn't been for this newspaper fuss
I shouldn't ever have said a word to you about it; but I advise you to
straighten things up with Edward. You'd better do it for your own
good--for Hallie and the children. You've insulted him and held him up
to the whole state of Indiana as a fool. You needn't think he doesn't
know just where you gripped that convention tight, and just where you
let him have it to play with. He's got more money than you have, and
he's going to spend it to give you some of your own medicine or worse,
if he can. He's like a mule that lays for the nigger that put burrs
under his collar. You're that particular nigger just now. You've made a
mistake, Morton."
"But Aunt Sally--I didn't--"
"About that newspaper, Morton," she continued, ignoring him. "I've
decided that I'll just hang on to my stock. You've built up the
'Courier' better than I expected, and that last statement showed it to
be doing fine. I don't know any place right now where I can do as well
with the money. You see I've got about all the farms I can handle at my
age, and it will be some fun to have a hand in running a newspaper. I
want you to tell 'em down at the 'Courier' office--what's his name?
Atwill? Well, you tell him I want this 'Stop, Look, Listen' business
stopped. If you can't think of anything smarter to do than that, you 'd
better quit. You had no business to turn a newspaper against a man who
owns half of it without giving him a chance to get off the track. You
whistled, Morton, after you had pitched him and his side-bar buggy into
the ditch and killed his horse."
"But who had put him on the track? I hadn't! He'd been running over the
state for two years, to my knowledge, trying to undermine me. I was only
giving him in broad daylight what he was giving me in the dark. You
don't understand this, Aunt Sally; he's been playing on your feelings."
"Morton Bassett, there ain't a man on earth that can play on my
feelings. I didn't let him jump on you; and I don't intend to let you
abuse him. I've told you to stop nagging him, but I haven't any idea
you'll do it. That's your business. If you want a big bump, you go on
and get it. About this newspaper, I'm going to keep my shares, and I've
told Edward that you wouldn't use the paper as a club on him while I was
interested in it. You can print all the politics you want, but it must
be clean politics, straight out from the shoulder."
He had lapsed into sullen silence, too stunned to interrupt the placid
flow of her speech. She had not only meddled in his affairs in a fashion
that would afford comfort to his enemy, but she was now dictating
terms--this old woman whose mild tone was in itself maddening. The fear
of incurring his wife's wrath alone checked an outburst of indignation.
In all his life no one had ever warned him to his face that he was
pursuing a course that led to destruction. He had always enjoyed her
capriciousness, her whimsical humor, but there was certainly nothing for
him to smile at in this interview. She had so plied the lash that it cut
to the quick. His pride and self-confidence were deeply wounded;--his
wife's elderly aunt did not believe in his omnipotence! This was a shock
in itself; but what fantastic nonsense was she uttering now?
"Since I bought that stock, Morton, I've been reading the 'Courier'
clean through every day, and there are some things about that paper I
don't like. I guess you and Edward Thatcher ain't so particularly
religious, and when you took hold of it you cut out that religious page
they used to print every Sunday. You better tell Atwill to start that up
again. I notice, too, that the 'Courier' sneaks in little stingers at
the Jews occasionally--they may just get in by mistake, but you ought to
have a rule at the office against printing stories as old as the hills
about Jews burning down their clothing-stores to get the insurance. I've
known a few Gentiles that did that. The only man I know that I'd lend
money to without security is a Jew. Let's not jump on people just to
hurt their feelings. And besides, we don't any of us know much more
these days than old Moses knew. And that fellow who writes the little
two-line pieces under the regular editorials--he's too smart, and he
ain't always as funny as he thinks he is. There's no use in popping
bird-shot at things if they ain't right, and that fellow's always trying
to hurt somebody's feelings without doing anybody any good."
She opened a drawer of her desk and drew out a memorandum to refresh her
memory.
"You've got a whole page and on Sundays two pages about baseball and
automobiles, and the horse is getting crowded down into a corner.
We"--he was not unmindful of the plural--"we must print more horse news.
You tell Atwill to send his young man that does the 'Horse and Track'
around to see me occasionally and I'll be glad to help him get some
horse news that is news. I wouldn't want to have you bounce a young man
who's doing the best he can, but it doesn't do a newspaper any good to
speak of Dan Patch as a trotting-horse or give the record of my
two-year-old filly Penelope O as 2:09-1/4 when she made a clean 2:09.
You've got to print facts in a newspaper if you want people to respect
it. How about that, Morton?"
"You're right, Aunt Sally. I'll speak to Atwill about his horse news."
He began to wonder whether she were not amusing herself at his expense;
but she gave him no reason for doubting her seriousness. They might
have been partners from the beginning of time from her businesslike
manner of criticizing the paper. She had not only flatly refused to sell
her shares, but she was taking advantage of the opportunity (for which
she seemed to be prepared) to tell him how the "Courier" should be
conducted!
"About farming, Morton," she continued deliberately, "the 'Courier' has
fun every now and then over the poor but honest farmer, and prints
pictures of him when he comes to town for the State Fair that make him
look like a scarecrow. Farming, Morton, is a profession, nowadays, and
those poor yaps Eggleston wrote about in 'The Hoosier Schoolmaster' were
all dead and buried before you were born. Farmers are up and coming I
can tell you, and I wouldn't lose their business by poking fun at 'em.
That Saturday column of farm news, by the way, is a fraud--all stolen
out of the 'Western Farmers' Weekly' and no credit. They must keep that
column in cold storage to run it the way they do. They're usually about
a season behind time--telling how to plant corn along in August and
planting winter wheat about Christmas. Our farm editor must have been
raised on a New York roof-garden. Another thing I want to speak of is
the space they give to farmers' and stockmen's societies when they meet
here. The last time the Hoosier State Mulefoot Hog Association met right
here in town at the Horticultural Society's room at the State House--all
the notice they got in the 'Courier' was five lines in 'Minor Mention.'
The same day the State Bankers' Association filled three columns, and
most of that was a speech by Tom Adams on currency reform. You might
tell that funny editorial man to give Adams a poke now and then, and
stop throwing chestnuts about gold bricks and green goods at farmers.
And he needn't show the bad state of his liver by sarcastically speaking
of farmers as honest husbandmen either; a farmer is a farmer, unless,
for lack of God's grace, he's a fool! I guess the folks are coming now.
I hope Allen won't knock down the house with that threshing-machine of
his. That's all this time. Let me see--you'd better tell your editor to
call on me now and then. What did you say his name was, Morton?"
"Atwill--Arthur P."
"Is he a son of that Ebenezer Atwill who used to be a professor in
Asbury College?"
"I'm afraid not, Aunt Sally; I don't think he ever heard of Ebenezer,"
replied Bassett, with all the irony he dared.