THE hyphen editorial spent the following morning on the hook. Its
author gave it an affectionate and yearning glance as he passed early
to his desk to touch up his substitute leader on the State Council of
Defense. Once fully determined upon the casting of his verbal bomb, he
was eager for the explosion and the resultant battle which should end
the armed truce. But, as Andrew Galpin had said, fair play demanded that
he hold off now, lest he hamper the development of the Governor’s new
plan. Any time was suitable for his challenge. Meanwhile copies of
it from the stolen galleys had been circulated among the elect of
Deutschtum, and a synopsis taken to Governor Embree. He had bidden his
informants not to worry. There would be no occasion for the publication
of that screed. A plan was already completed which would take care
of Mr. Robson. It was observed that the Governor looked weary but
optimistic.
Short though the notice had been, the invited conferees responded to
the official call for a meeting upon the State Council of Defense
plan, almost unanimously. It was a curiously assorted gathering that
surrounded the long table in the council room, when Jeremy Robson
arrived, a trifle late from his work of re-casting the day’s page. That
it was broadly representative was beyond denial. Yet as the newcomer
reckoned it up, he felt a more than vague uneasiness.
Appropriating the nearest vacant chair he found himself between a
down-state lawyer and politician named Lerch on one side, and Cassius
Kimball, of The Bellair Journal, on the other. Next to Kimball sat State
Senator Bredle from Embree’s county, beyond him a lake-district dairyman
of indeterminate political sympathies, and then Gordon Fliess, of
the Fliess Brewing Company, the Lieutenant-Governor, an imposing and
obsequious puppet of the Governor’s, and Ernst Bauer of the Marlittstown
Herold und Zeitung. Bunched at the upper end of the table were an
ill-assorted trio of The Guardian’s enemies, Montrose Clark, Judge Dana,
and that anomaly of Teutonic type-reversion, Robert Wanser, grandson of
the Young Germany of ’48.
In the other direction, the prospect was no less puzzling nor more
reassuring. Half a dozen men from the Southern Tier, a section
unfamiliar to Jeremy, suggested a predominance of the Swedish type,
which, in Centralia, meant anti-war sentiment. Concerning the next
figure, tall, plethoric, ceremonially garbed, there was at least
no uncertainty. Emil Bausch’s local letter-writing bureau of German
propaganda was at that moment represented in The Guardian’s
waste-basket by half a dozen grossly pro-German and subtly anti-American
communications to the editor. Bausch had for neighbor that fire-eating
Seminarian, the Reverend Theo Gunst, next to whom, in turn, sat Arthur
Betts, of Kelter & Betts, looking uncomfortable but flattered. Milliken,
presumptively representing the Socialist element, flanked him on the far
side with Girdner, appearing for Labor, on his left.
But when Jeremy’s anxious glance finally reached the Governor’s high
chair he breathed a temporary sigh of relief. In the place of honor, on
the right of the gubernatorial smile, sat Magnus Laurens. Surely that
indicated an acceptance by Embree of Jeremy’s argument; Laurens was to
be appointed chairman of the council, after all. The Governor’s left was
occupied by Ensign, the millionaire absentee owner of The Record. In a
less crowded moment Jeremy would have given some thought to this curious
preferment. Directly across the table from the central group there
protruded loftily from between a pursy judge and a northwestern
corn-raiser, a figure tall, stiff, and meager, a lean, hard-wood lath of
a man lost in the dim, untroubled contemplation of an awful example of
political portraiture on the far wall. Why Professor Rappelje should
have been included, Jeremy could not surmise, unless it was that
Governor Embree could count upon him as an unquestioning follower
through thick and thin. In fact the whole composition of the meeting
suggested that the summons had been apportioned with a view to safe
control by the Governor.
To the watchful Jeremy it seemed that Governor Embree was nervous. The
smile at the corners of the conciliatory lips was disturbed by a restless
twitching. After an anxiously calculating glance over the assemblage he
began to read from a typed sheet a preamble, concluding: “Therefore, I
present for the consideration of this honorable body the following names
to constitute the Centralia State Council of Defense.”
The first nomination fell upon Jeremy’s ears like a burst of thunder. It
was that of Emil Bausch, chairman.
The second nomination fell upon his brain like a bludgeon. It was that
of Jeremy Robson, vice-chairman.
From down the table he caught the confirmatory sneer of Montrose Clark.
His eyes darted to Magnus Laurens, squarest and most honorable of
enemies, and met in his face a wrathful contempt. Cassius Kimball leaned
to him and whispered:
“First you knew of it?”
“Yes.”
“He’s put it over on you.”
Jeremy sat in a daze. His mind was confused by the suddenness of the
thrust; his will was blurred. Instinctively he felt that he must do
something. But what? Protest? Decline to serve? Announce his attitude?
And already his time was past! The monotonous, fateful reading had gone
beyond him.
Wanser and Fliess, Kimball, Laurens, ex-Governor Scudder, Montrose Clark,
the Reverend Theo Gunst, Lieutenant-Governor Maxwell, Ensign, Bredle,
Girdner, Ivanson, the Swede, and so on with the German and pacifist
element always slightly but safely in the majority. Not a word was
spoken, except once when in a brief breathing-pause some one shot out,
like an arrow through the tense quiet, the contemptuous monosyllable:
“Packed!”
Jeremy thought that he identified the voice as that of Judge Selden
Dana. Then the reader pronounced the name of Professor Harvey Rappelje.
“Wait!” said that gentleman.
“Order! Order!” protested Wanser and Bausch with suspicious readiness.
“I am in order,” retorted the economist, rising in his place to confront
the Governor opposite.
The Governor smiled, but thrust out a nervous tongue and licked the
corners of the smile. The professor’s face was as set and still as
a frozen river, and much the same color. Embree, motioning with a
placating hand for silence, resumed: “The Honorable Carter N. Rock--”
“Wait!” The scholar’s keener voice cut off the reading. “I rise to a
point of order, sir.”
“State the point.”
“Governor Embree, is that your honest conception of a council to fight
this war?”
“Out of order!” cried Bausch again, and was reinforced by Girdner,
Fliess, and others. “Who said fight?”
“We are not making war.”
“Keep to the point.”
“Discussion is not in order.”
“Sit down.”
But the hard challenge of the professor’s glare compelled the Governor.
“It is my carefully considered selection,” said he with a suggestion of
sulkiness.
There leapt from Rappelje’s lips a blasting oath. From any mouth in that
environment it would have been startling. From the lean dry, silent,
repressed scholar it had something of the shock of nature’s forces in
outbreak. Not less appalling was the single word to follow:
“Treason!”
Embree’s smile did not fade; but it shriveled into a masklike grimace,
the rictus of a child before the convulsion racks it.
“You--you will retract--” he began chokingly.
Two astounding tears welled from the scholar’s pale eyes, tears of a
still man’s uttermost fury.
“I will demonstrate to you,” said he precisely, “what it is to fight.”
He launched himself across the table at the Governor’s throat.
The steel-framed Laurens seized and forced him back; but not before
Embree had collapsed into his chair. From his place, up the table,
the Lieutenant-Governor, quite beside himself, squealed for a totally
imaginary sergeant-at-arms. The corn-belt farmer, in thunderous tones
with a wailing inflection besought any and all not to forget that they
were gentlemen. Girdner, huge and formidable, had jumped to his feet.
The white-haired, alert Milliken caught up a heavy paper-weight. Bausch
was solemnly, almost sacrificially taking off his coat. A medley of
voices demanded “Order!”
“Throw him out!”
“Arrest him!” There were all the elements of a lively and scandalous
mêlée, waiting only the fusing act.
Laurens checked it with one sufficient threat. Brandishing the
weighty official gavel of lignum vitæ, he stood, a modern Thor, in
the unconscious pose and with the menace of the Berseker, and, in a
full-throated bellow proclaimed:
“I’ll brain the first man that strikes a blow.”
Before that intimidation they dropped into their chairs. There was a
ripple of the shamed and foolish laughter of self-realization as the
strain eased. The warrior-scholar’s neighbors, who had been holding him
in his chair, felt his limbs relax, and mistakenly thinking his effort
spent, released him. Instantly he rose.
“I apologize to this honorable body,” he said with quiet courtesy, “and
to the State of Centralia as represented by its chief executive. And, as
a question of privilege preliminary to my resignation, I ask whether the
list as read is to stand.”
“I will not submit to be bulldozed or intimidated,” declared the
Governor huskily.
“The list stands?” persisted the other.
“It stands, subject to the approval of this body.”
“Doubtless you can carry it,” conceded the objector, ranging the
assemblage with his clear and contemptuous glance.
“Vote,” piped up an uncertain and tentative voice.
“But you would be well advised not to make the attempt.”
Martin Embree conceived that the proper course now was to ignore this
unforeseen assailant of his plan. “I will proceed with the reading,” he
announced.
“I beg your pardon,” said the relentless and polite voice. “One moment.
You will have until this evening to withdraw your list.”
“And vot then? Vot then?” broke in Emil Bausch, thrusting upward a
truculent face.
“Do you want civil war in this State?” challenged Fliess.
“If necessary,” retorted Rappelje, and stared him down with a steady and
intolerable eye. He turned again to the Governor. “Unless that list is
withdrawn before night, Martin Embree,” said he solemnly, “so help me
the God of my country, I will raise the University and hang you to the
highest tree on the campus.”
[Illustration: 0351]
He made a stiff, formal, absurd little jerk of a bow and marched from
the room.
“By gosh! He’s the boy could do it,” confirmed Milliken in an
unexpectedly cheerful chirp.
“Finish the reading,” said somebody weakly.
“Vote! Vote!” came a mutter of several voices.
No vote was taken. Under the corroding acid of the professor’s passion
the fabric of that meeting’s purpose dissolved. The session did not
adjourn. It disintegrated. Jeremy Robson stood irresolute as the groups
edged past him.
“Congratulations, Mr. Vice-Chairman,” purred Montrose Clark. It was the
first time since the interview about the note that he had conceded the
fact of the editor’s existence.
“Bad politics, my boy! Bad politics!” said Judge Dana, his head wagging
with reprehension, but a malicious twinkle in his somnolent eyes.
Cassius Kimball set a friendly hand on Jeremy’s shoulder. “Pretty shrewd
of old Martin, eh?” he observed. “But we can square that, among us. Let
me know what you want The Journal to do.”
Jeremy nodded his gratitude, but did not move. Laurens was the man he
wanted to see, to set himself right before. Moreover, with him as leader
a counter-stroke could be planned to bring Embree to his senses. The
viking form strode toward him.
“Mr. Laurens,” began Jeremy, “I want--”
“Stand out of my way!” warned the magnate, and swerving not an inch
from his stride, he jostled the other aside. But for Kimball’s quick
interposition Jeremy’s fury would have launched him upon the insulter.
“Steady!” soothed that experienced diplomat. “You come outside with me,
and cool off.”
“No,” said Jeremy, mastering himself. “I’ve got to wait. I’ve got to see
the Governor.”
“But has he got to see you?” inquired the other suggestively.
“He has,” said Jeremy with grim positiveness. Governor Embree had
closeted himself with Wanser, Bausch, and Fliess. He sent out word that
he would see Mr. Robson in half an hour.
Jeremy telephoned to Andrew Galpin to hold the editorial page make-up
open. He strolled to the window and got an unpleasant shock. Montrose
Clark, Judge Dana, and Nicholas Milliken were standing in earnest
conference, near one of the park benches. The Socialist, the public
utilitarian grafter, and the legal manipulator! It came back to Jeremy’s
mind that, according to Galpin, there was a leak of information from The
Guardian office to the Fenchester Public Utilities Corporation. Milliken
was perhaps the go-between, unlikely though such an association might
seem, at first thought. He would speak to Galpin about it. Meantime he
had another editorial to outline, and set about it, seated at the table
across which the first real action of the war in Centralia had just been
fought to an indeterminate result.
A buzz of guttural voices inside the door interrupted him. Glancing at
the clock he was astonished to see that it marked twenty minutes of one.
The half-hour had grown into more than an hour. An inner door opened and
the waiting man heard Smiling Mart Embree’s weary but clear-toned “That
can wait, gentlemen.” The Germans passed Jeremy, Wanser giving him
a civil word and Bausch nodding sardonically, as one might to a
none-too-welcome accomplice by compulsion.
“Come in, Jem,” summoned the Governor, and the editor of The Guardian
advanced to confront his longtime friend, aide, and ally.