Produced by Annie McGuire
THE CO-CITIZENS
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
_A Circuit Rider's Wife_
_Eve's Second Husband_
_The Recording Angel_
_In Search of a Husband_
[Illustration: "'_Do you know what he means, Selah, sending for the
oldest and fairest woman in Jordantown to meet him at this outrageous
hour of the afternoon?_'"]
THE
CO-CITIZENS
BY
CORRA HARRIS
_Illustrated
By Hanson Booth_
GARDEN CITY
NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1915
_Copyright, 1915, by_
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
"Do you know what he means, Selah, sending for the
oldest and ugliest, and the youngest and fairest woman in
Jordantown to meet him at this outrageous hour of the
afternoon?'" _Frontispiece_
"'I want to ask you a delicate question: where ish the
ladies? I haven't sheen a woman in four hours!'" 42
"'You may be mayor of this town before you are thirty.
A fat mayoress would never do'" 84
"'Bob! I'll make a confession to you. It's been horrid,
from first to last. When we are married I want to sit at
home and darn your socks--you do wear holes in them,
don't you?'" 216
CHAPTER I
When Sarah Hayden Mosely died, she did something. Most people do not.
They cease to do. They are forgotten. The grass that springs above their
dust is the one recurrent memory which the earth publishes of them long
after the world has been eased of their presence, the fever of their
prayers and hopes. It was the other way with this dim little old woman.
During the whole of her life she had never done anything. She was one of
those faint whispers of femininity who missed the ears of mankind and
who faded into the sigh of widowhood without attracting the least
attention. She was simply the "relic" of William J. Mosely, who at the
time of his death was the richest man in Jordantown. And by the same
token, after his death, Sarah became the richest woman. She had no
children, no relatives. She was detached in every way, even from her
own property, which was managed by the agent, Samuel Briggs, and was
still known as the "William J. Mosely Estate." She attended divine
service every Sunday morning, always wearing a black silk frock and a
black bonnet tied under her sharp little chin, always sitting erect and
alone in her pew, always staring straight in front of her, but not at
the minister. Recalling this circumstance afterward, Mabel Acres said:
"She must have been thinking of _that_ all the time, not of the sermon."
She paid one dollar a year to the Woman's Home and Foreign Missionary
Society and twenty cents extra for "incidentals." She contributed five
dollars each quarter toward the Reverend Paul Stacey's salary. And she
never, under any circumstance, gave more, no matter how urgent the
appeal. She was suspected of being a miser. There was nothing else of
which she could be suspected. So far as any one knew in Jordantown, she
permitted herself only one luxury: this was a canary bird, not yellow,
but green. It was a very old bird, as canaries go. Somebody once said:
"Old Sarah's making her canary last as long as possible!" Every night
when she retired to her room, she took the cage in with her, hung it
above her bed on a hook, and threw her petticoat over it to keep the
bird quiet during the night.
On the morning of the 6th of April Mrs. Mosely did not appear at the
usual hour, which was six o'clock. The maid waited breakfast until the
toast was cold. Then she went to the door and knocked. No reply. She
opened the door, and fell with a scream to the floor. Something soft and
swift like wings brushed her face. She could not tell what it was. She
saw nothing.
The gardener, hearing her cries, ran in. They both approached the bed.
They beheld the face of their mistress looking like the yellowed dead
petals of a rose, wrinkled, withered, awfully still on the pillow.
The woman screamed again.
"She's dead! it was her spirit that brushed my face just now!"
"No, it was the canary. The cage is empty," said the gardener.
"I tell you the thing I felt was white!" cried the woman.
"Felt! If you'd looked, you'd have seen it was that green canary!"
persisted the man.
This was the beginning of a great whispering uproar in Jordantown, of
violent curiosity and anxious speculation.
No one ever called upon Sarah, and she never made visits. Now every one
came. They listened to the maid's story. All the little boys in town
were looking for the canary. They never found it.
"I told you so!" sniffled the maid.
On the day of the funeral all the business houses in Jordantown were
closed. It was as if a Sabbath had dropped down in the middle of the
week. Pale young clerks lounged idly beneath the awnings of the stores.
Servants stared from the back doors. Sparrows rose in whirls from the
dust and screeched ribald comments from the blooming magnolia trees. The
funeral procession was a long one, and included all the finest
automobiles and all the best people in Jordantown--not that the best
people had ever known the deceased, but most of them sustained anxious,
interest-bearing relations to the William J. Mosely Estate. No one was
weeping. No one was even looking sad. Everybody was talking. One might
have said this procession was a moving dictograph of Sarah Mosely, whom
no one knew.
The Reverend Paul Stacey and Samuel Briggs occupied the car next to the
hearse. They were at least the nearest relations to the present
situation.
"She was not a progressive woman," Stacey was saying.
"No," answered Briggs, frowning. He was thinking of his own future, not
this insignificant woman's past.
"No heirs, I hear?"
"None."
"In that case she would naturally leave most, probably all, of the
estate to the church or to some charity. That kind of woman usually
does," Stacey concluded cheerfully.
"This kind of woman does not!" Briggs objected quickly. "She was the
kind who does not make a will at all. Leaves everything in a muddle. No
sense of responsibility. I have always contended that since the law
classes women with minors and children they should not be trusted with
property. They should have guardians!"
"You are sure there is no will?"
"Absolutely. If she had drawn one, I should have been consulted,"
answered the agent.
"It seems strange that she should have been so remiss," Stacey murmured.
"Not at all. Making a will is like ordering your grave clothes. Takes
nerve. Mrs. Mosely didn't have any. She was merely a little old gray
barnacle sticking to her husband's estate. She--hello! What's the
matter?"
The procession halted. Both men leaned forward and stared. An
old-fashioned brougham was being drawn slowly by a very fat old white
horse into the too narrow space between the hearse and Briggs's car.
Seated in the brougham was the erect figure of a very thin old man. His
hair showed beneath his high silk hat like a stiff white ruff on his
neck. His hands were clasped over a gold-headed cane. His whole
appearance was one of extreme dignity and reverence. The procession at
once took on the decent air of mourning.
"Judge Regis! What's he got to do with this, I'd like to know!" growled
Briggs.
After the brief service at the grave the company scattered. The men
gathered in groups talking in rumbling undertones. The women wandered
along the flowering paths.
"We must do something about that baby's grave over there. The violets
are not blooming as they should. The ground needs mulching," said Mrs.
Sasnett, who was the president of the Woman's Civic League and Cemetery
Association.
"I think we made a mistake to trim that crimson rambler so close in the
Coleman lot. It is not blooming so well this year," said Mrs. Acres.
"No place for a crimson rambler, anyhow. I told Agatha she should have
planted a white rose."
"If we are to take care of this cemetery, I think we should have
something to say about what is planted here, anyhow," added Mrs. Acres
petulantly.
"We will have. There's been a committee appointed to draw up resolutions
covering that," answered Mrs. Sasnett, who was also a firm woman.
"I hope Sarah Mosely has left something to the Civic League and Cemetery
Association," said another woman walking behind.
"I doubt it, she had no public spirit. We could never interest her in
the work. Such a pity."
"And in these days when women are taking hold and doing things. I
called on her myself when we were putting out plants along the railroad
embankment beside the station and asked her for a contribution, even if
it was only a few dozen nasturtiums. But she said she wasn't
interested."
"I wonder what she has done with her money. Nobody seems to know."
They stood staring back at the grave, which was now deserted except for
the sexton's men, who were filling it, and a tall thin old man who stood
with his head bare, leaning upon his cane with an air of reverence.
Beneath the coffin lid below Sarah Mosely lay with her hands folded,
faintly smiling like a little withered girl who has done something, left
a curious deed which was to puzzle those who were still awake when they
discovered what she had done. And it did.
It was the afternoon of the same day. The doors of all the business
houses were open. Jordantown had taken off its coat and was busy in its
shirt sleeves trying to make up for the trade lost during the morning.
Customers came and went, merchants frowned, clerks smiled. Teams passed.
Children returning from school added, by their joyous indifference,
irritation to the general situation. All the sparrows were back in the
dust of the street discussing its merits. And everywhere men were
gathered in groups talking about something--_the_ Something. The
business of the town was like a house toppling upon sand as long as no
one knew what was to be the disposition of the Mosely Estate. This was
what every one was talking about.
Jordantown is one of those old Southern communities large enough to have
"corporations," a mayor and council, but small enough for members of
"the best families" not to speak to members of other "best families."
Everybody had "feelings" and they showed them, especially if they were
not agreeable. It was not a progressive place, due, partly, to its
ante-bellum sense of dignity, but more particularly to the fact that
when a business firm was about to fail, it did not fail. It borrowed
enough to "tide over" from the agent of the William J. Mosely Estate.
This interfered with that natural law in the business world as
everywhere else, the survival of the fittest. Everybody survived, the
fit and the unfit, which is death to competition and that arterial
excitation without which trade becomes stagnation.
Three men sat in the private office of the National Bank, the windows of
which overlooked the town square. They were the tutelary deities of all
public occasions in the town. They always sat on the platform behind the
speaker on Decoration Days. They were supposed to control municipal
elections, but not one of them had ever "run" for an office. Deities
don't. They are the powers behind the throne. These men represented
Providence in Jordantown. And Providence is always behind the scenes.
The trouble now was that by an ordinary and inevitable process of nature
they had lost control of the situation. A little old woman had died who
had no sense, and who for that very reason might have done something
foolish with the William J. Mosely Estate, which was the very foundation
upon which all deities and providences rested in that place.
"The Estate owns your National Bank Building, doesn't it?" asked Martin
Acres, who knew that it did.
"Yes, and a controlling interest in the stock besides, more is the pity!
I never like to have a woman own stock in my bank," Stark Coleman
answered, throwing himself back upon the spring of his revolving chair.
"Why?" This from Acres, who did like to have women make accounts at his
store.
"Dangerous. It is well enough for women to owe--that's their nature--but
not to own. Look at the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad
scandal!"
He was a short fat man with large blue eyes beneath swollen lids, and at
the present moment some inner pressure seemed to increase their
prominence.
"What has that to do with women?"
"Proves my point. Wouldn't have been such a racket over that scandal if
half the widows and orphans in New England hadn't been pinched. Men are
good losers. They keep quiet. Know better than to destroy their credit
by squealing. Women have no credit, so they all squeal. And the
sentimental public always adds to the clamour," Coleman concluded,
mopping his face.
"Briggs collects rent from every store and business house around this
square," Acres went on.
"And he told me he handles mortgages on nineteen thousand acres of land
in this county," laughed the third man, who was young and who had been
listening with the detached air of a humourist.
"You can afford to laugh, Sasnett," retorted the banker; "you are one of
the few men in this town not affected by this--er--disaster. But a good
many of the rest of us may find ourselves in a hell of a hole if that
woman has willed everything she had to the church or to some orphan
asylum!"
"Why?" asked Sasnett, still smiling in the provoking manner of a man who
has nothing to lose.
"I couldn't do business with every loan and investment to be passed upon
by a board of directors reeking with preachers and eleemosynary
trustees. They are all damphules, with empty breeches pockets, and craws
filled with morbid scruples. How do I know there won't be a woman among
them! Good Lord! Think of a woman on the board of directors in a bank!"
snorted Coleman.
"Well, it couldn't be as bad as that," said Acres, as he pulled at the
ends of his wiry gray moustache.
"Yes, it can! It can be as bad as hell, I tell you. Nobody knows what
that woman's done. And when you don't know what a woman's done, you may
be sure it's worse than you can imagine!" Coleman insisted.
"Carter is beside himself. Briggs holds a mortgage of sixteen hundred on
the _Signal_ and he was to let Carter have four hundred more to-day. Now
the loan's called off. He tells me the _Signal_ must suspend publication
if he can't raise the money," Sasnett put in.
"At least he'll sell a few hundred copies extra Saturday if he prints
Sarah Mosely's will," said Acres.
"But if there is no will?"
"What does Briggs say?"
"Oh, Briggs!" laughed Sasnett, "he's as mad as a horsefly that's been
slapped off. He says there is no will. But he doesn't really know. He's
zooning around wondering if he'll be able to light again on the flanks
of the estate."
"Regis made himself rather conspicuous at the funeral to-day--wonder
why," remarked Coleman thoughtfully.
"Whim. Old men like to show up on such occasions. They are next of kin
to funerals, feel their dust shaking on their bones when anybody dies."
"There he comes now!" exclaimed Acres.
The Judge was indeed approaching, walking smartly up the street to the
National Bank Building. He was one of those old men who somehow recall
a cavalry sword, slightly bent, of exceedingly good metal. He retained,
you might say, merely the skin and bones of a splendid countenance. The
skin was brown as parchment, and wrinkled, but the bones were
elegant--Hamlet's skull, not Yorick's. His eyes were perfectly round,
gray below a kind of yellow brilliance, as if an old eagle within looked
out beneath the steel bars of those bristling brows. His nose belonged
to the colonial period of American history. It was an antique, and a
very fine one, well preserved, high bridge, straight, with thin nostrils
which drew up at the corners to hold the singularly patient whimsical
smile in place which his mouth made. All told, the Judge's countenance
was one of those _de luxe_ histories of a gentleman not often seen
outside of the best literature, but sometimes seen in an old Southern
town where some gentleman has also managed to retain the exceeding
honour of being a man as well.
His long black coat-tails clung as close as a scabbard to his thin legs.
He wore a high silk hat and a white carnation in his buttonhole. He
looked neither to the right nor to the left. Apparently he was the one
man in sight who was not concerned about the question of what had become
or would become of the William J. Mosely Estate.
As he approached the Bank Building, a very large red-faced old man with
a white moustache and goatee turned his head in the opposite direction,
wrinkled his nose, which was naturally Roman and cynical, and grunted.
This was Colonel Marshall Adams. He and the Judge did not "speak." They
had not spoken to one another in thirty years. This requires great
firmness of character when you live within speaking distance in a town
where talking is the chief occupation. They both had that--firmness. It
was always one of the agreeable sensations in Jordantown to see these
two old men come near enough together to exchange a word or a
salutation. The sensation consisted in the fact that they never did it.
The Judge tucked his gold-headed cane under his arm and ascended the
stairs which led to his office on the floor above the bank. The Colonel
went off, rumbling through his Roman nose, down the street. He did not
walk, he paced, as if he were stepping upon pismires, with his feet wide
apart. This was due to the fact that so much of the time walking was a
matter of carefully balancing himself against the strange unsteadiness,
the heaving and rolling of the ground beneath him. And this was due in
turn to the fact that the Colonel was never himself except when he was
"not himself," but had been exalted about four fingers in a glass above
the level of the common man--a condition which has always affected the
flat permanency of the earth, often causing it to rise unaccountably
before such persons, to meet them even more than halfway. The Colonel
had had long experience in this matter, and he walked warily from force
of habit even when he was sober.
The difference between Judge Regis and Colonel Adams was this: when the
Judge perceived that he was about to meet the Colonel face to face, he
never turned aside. But when the Colonel perceived that he was about to
meet the Judge, he always did. It was the way each of them had of
expressing his contempt for the other.
As the Colonel negotiated himself around the next corner with the rotary
motion of a slightly inebriate straddle-legged old planet, he almost
collided with another body which was more nearly spherical and which
had apparently no legs at all, only two wide-toed "Old Lady's Comforts"
showing beneath the hem of her dress. These toes were now set far apart.
The very short old lady above them seemed to have caved in above the
waistline, but below it she was globular to a remarkable degree. Her
face was wrinkled like fine script and very florid. Her upper lip was
delicately crimped and sunken. Her lower lip stuck out and reached up in
an effort to meet the situation, the situation being more and longer
teeth in the lower jaw. Her nose was that of a girl, retrousse, still
impertinent.
She stood regarding the Colonel with that contradictory uplook of her
faded blue eyes which was pathetic, and that tilt of her nose which was
offensive, with her lips primped tight after the manner of a woman who
is getting ready to wash behind the ears of a small boy. She always put
the Colonel in this class when she looked at him, and he resented it. He
resented it now by removing his Kentucky Colonel straw hat and glaring
his bow at her, as if that was a concession he made to his own dignity,
not to her.
"Good afternoon, Colonel Adams! Well, who are you running from now?"
she said by way of seizing his ears.
"Madam!" he exclaimed, puffing out his breast, "no man would dare ask
such a question! For four years the enemy of my country never saw the
back of Marshall Adams--and----"
"And you've been retreating ever since," she added.
"From what?" he demanded, slowly purpling with impotent rage.
"From the Present, from things that are," she answered.
"Madam, I'm an old man, I prefer the grandeur of the past to those
follies to which you, and women like you, would commit the present."
"But there's Selah, she at least belongs to the Present."
"Selah belongs to me, thank God!"
"She belongs to herself. You are robbing her of her own life."
"No woman ever belonged to herself, Madam, especially a young and
beautiful woman. She is an ineffable estate which all men buy with love
and hold with all the strength they have."
"For shame, sir! You are a brigand keeping your daughter in a cave."
"My house is not so fine as Selah deserves, but it is not a cave," he
retorted, flattening himself sidewise in order to pass.
"All the same you are a brigand, robbing your own flesh and blood of
life and happiness," she thrust at him as he went by, waddling on
herself after the manner of a fat old duck.
This was Susan Walton, the one celebrated character Jordantown had
produced since the Civil War, and she was a source of embarrassment
rather than pride. According to the ethics of that place no woman should
be known beyond her own church and parlour, much less celebrated. Judge
Regis was a distinguished jurist, of course, and Marshall Adams had been
a famous leader of forlorn hopes in the Confederate Army. But it is one
thing to be distinguished at the bar or famous in battle fifty years
ago, and quite another thing to be celebrated in the present. Susan was
that thing. It was said of her that she had kept her husband, an elegant
soft old gentleman, in Congress for a quarter of a century and up to the
very day of his death by being a thorn in the side of the political
life of the state. She kept scrapbooks in which she pasted dangerous and
damaging information about politicians and prominent men generally.
Whenever one of them became a candidate in opposition to her husband,
she prepared an awful obituary of him from her encyclopedia of past
records; and he usually withdrew from the race or was defeated. Few men
live who can face their former deeds in a political campaign. She made
public speeches at a time when no other woman in the South would go
further than give her "experience" in church or read a missionary report
before the Woman's District Conference. She was for temperance and
education even before the days of Local Option and when the public
school system consisted of eight weeks in the summer. She was the only
woman who had ever had the honour, if it was an honour, to address the
State Legislature when a bill was pending there concerning Child Labour;
and she did it in the high falsetto voice of a mother who calls her sons
out of a bait game in the public square. It was said that she actually
did address that dignified body as "boys," and that the "boys" liked it.
She had the brains of a man and the temper of an indignant but
tender-hearted woman. This is an exact description of her literary
style, which was not literary, but it was versatile in wit and sarcasm
and outrageous veracity. She used it as an instrument of torture and
vengeance in the public prints upon the characters of political
demagogues, liquor interests, and the state treasury. And what she said
was violently effective. Her victims might persist in the error of their
ways, but not one of them ever recovered from the face-scratching fury
of her attack.
Add to this the fact that she was a suffragist in the days when there
was only one other woman in the state who believed in citizenship for
women, and that she never ceased to "agitate" for suffrage, and you
receive a faint impression of this old termagant celebrity who had put
Jordantown "on the map" and had given it a reputation for
broadmindedness at a distance which it in no way deserved.
Susan did not herself press the point of being a celebrity in her own
appearance. She did not look the part. She did not even try. She was
sixty years old, wore black frocks which touched the pavements behind as
she walked and were raised some eight inches above it in front, owing
to that perfect frankness with which age is always willing to confess
its stomach. She had worn the same bonnet for five years, tied under her
protruding chin. Sometimes she changed the ribbons, but she never
changed the "shape."
She nodded to the three men seated near the open window in the bank.
Then she paused at the bottom of the steps which led to the second floor
and sighed.
"This staircase was built for men to climb," she grumbled as she began
the ascent. She stood on the step below and put her right foot on the
one above, but she did not alternate with the left. The gears in her
left knee were not strong enough to bear the necessary lift. Her feet
made a flat all-heel-and-toe sound as she went up, very emphatic. When
she reached the top her face was red, and she was "out of breath." But
she went on panting down the hall, looking at the lettering on the doors
of the various offices. Printed on a large ground-glass door she saw
"Mike Prim." She wrinkled her nose, adjusted her spectacles, poked out
her neck and stared at it.
"Humph! Mike Prim! Nothing else! What does he do? How does he make a
living? Every man in this town knows, and not a single woman!" she said
to herself.
She came to the door at the end of the hall upon which was printed,
"John Regis, Attorney-at-law."
She opened it without knocking and stood upon the threshold.
"Well, John Regis, you must think you are still a young man, keeping
your office at the top of this ladder staircase," she complained,
raising her handkerchief and dabbing her face.
"Come in, Susan, and take this chair by the window," said the Judge.
Rising from his desk and coming forward, he conducted her elegantly to
the chair.
"It's forty years since I was here," she said, looking about her, "and
you've not changed a thing. You are scarcely changed yourself, John."
"The man is changed, Susan. Forty years make more difference in a man
than they do in things," he answered gently.
"The same books, all so thick and awful looking. I remember that day I
thought you must be the wisest man in the world--to know all that was in
them."
"I didn't know, and I don't know yet," he put in, smiling.
"The same chairs, the same brown prints on the wall. And that little
vase, isn't it the one you had on your desk that day?" she asked,
bending forward to look at it more closely.
"The very same. You put a rose into it that day, do you remember?"
"No, but I do remember that I was in love with you, John. A woman of
sixty may admit that now!" she laughed.
"I wish you had admitted it then. I tried hard enough to win you, Susan.
We should have been a team!"
"No, we should not. We are both headstrong. We should have obstructed
each other. I married the right man."
"I suppose so. Certainly you never could have henpecked me into Congress
the way you did Jim Walton! Why did you do it?" he asked, showing the
ends of a sword smile as he regarded her.
"Well, you see I couldn't go myself," she laughed.
"So you sent your husband, next best thing."
"It wasn't so bad. I helped him, you know."
"Wrote all his speeches, kicked up all of his dust for him, didn't you?"
"Not all, but I helped."
"With your scrapbooks, for example?"
"Yes," she admitted.
"If you had been a man, Susan, you'd not have survived some of the
things you've said and done."
"If I'd had the rights you men keep from us I'd never have done them!"
she retorted quickly.
"I don't know," he replied, wagging his head and smiling. "Having
rights, including the ballot, would not change the nature of a woman!
Tell me, Susan, have I escaped the scrapbooks? I've wondered many times
if you were keeping record of me, too."
"You never did--anything I could put in. And if you had----" she
hesitated.
"Would you have pasted it down against me?" he finished.
"I don't know. I'm glad I wasn't tempted. How have you kept yourself so
aloof all these years, John--so far above the furious issues of our
times?"
"Not above, not above, my dear," he objected; "I've been busy. The law
is a legal profession, not an illegal one, like politics."
They looked at each other and laughed, then the Judge added:
"And it may be I was afraid of your famous scrapbooks!"
"You were never afraid of anything," she returned.
"Yes, I am. I'm afraid of something now," he answered, flipping the
pages of some papers which lay upon his desk. "I'm an old man holding in
my hands a fuse which I must light presently, and I dread the
consequences."
"What are you talking about?" she exclaimed, leaning forward and staring
at him in faint alarm as if she did indeed smell something burning.
"I cannot tell you yet. I'm waiting for the other party," he answered.
"The other party? Whom do you expect? What does all this mean, anyway?
Why was I summoned here? Have we not had enough excitement for one day,
with the funeral this morning, and with every man in this town holding
his breath for fear of what will happen to him when the William J.
Mosely Estate is wound up? I've heard nothing else for two days. Not a
word about the poor woman, who might as well have been a shadow on the
wall of her house for all she meant to anybody until she died," she
said, fanning herself and looking at him irritably.
"She was a great woman," he said simply.
"Well, I'm just a tired woman. I spent the whole morning tacking white
pinks on an anchor design for the funeral. Then I went to the cemetery
with the procession. And all the time I heard nothing but speculation
about what she had or had not done with her money. I was just composing
myself for a little rest before going to the Civic League and Cemetery
Association at four o'clock when your messenger appeared at the door.
Now I want to know what it's all about."
"Are you very much interested in the Woman's Civic League and Cemetery
Association, Susan?" asked the Judge, by way of avoiding an answer.
"Certainly not! It's a nuisance. But the women of this town must do
something. They have caught the public-spirit infection, and they show
it like little meddlesome girls, childishly. Have you seen the
nasturtium beds they've planted around the railroad station? That's
feminine civic enterprise! Last week they had a committee appointed to
see the mayor about keeping the cuspidors clean in the courthouse! And
the cemetery! It's the livest-looking place in Jordantown, more things
living and growing there than anywhere else. Even more women. They are
there every day, gardening above the dust of the dead!"
"Why do you belong to it?" he asked.
"In self-defence, of course! There is to be a report from a committee
about things they want changed at the cemetery this afternoon, and I'm
not on the committee because one object of it is to condemn the
arbor-vitae trees in my lot there. They want to cut them down. Now I will
not have it! And I must be there at four o'clock to tell them so!" She
began to fan herself vigorously.
"Listen to me, Susan; let the non-essential go. Don't be the occasion of
a split in your ranks for the sake of a couple of shrubs. That's what
destroys the strength of parties. If the whole Democratic party voted
for any one man or issue, we should always have a democratic government.
If the entire Republican party----"
"Listen to me, John Regis! Women are not parties. They are always
factions, little, little factions, the one working against the other,
because they have no really important issue at stake. Now, my arbor-vitae
trees----"
The door opened and a young girl stood upon the threshold hesitating, as
if she was not sure she was in the right place.
She was very tall, one of those cool, gray-eyed, ivory-skinned brunettes
who always remind the beholder of white lilies blooming in the dark. Her
lips were full, faintly pinkly purple, and affirmative, not beseeching.
She stood with one hand upon the knob behind her, bent a little forward,
the skirt of her white dress blown by the wind through the door, her
eyes showing almost black beneath the brim of her white hat.
"Selah! Is it for you we've been waiting?" This from Mrs. Walton.
"Come, Selah, you are almost late! That would have been a bad
beginning," said the Judge, rising, taking her hand and leading her to a
chair.
"You sent for me?" the girl said, as if there might still be some
mistake about that.
"Yes, yes! Sit down!"
"Mercy on us! What does the man mean? Do you know what he means, Selah,
sending for the oldest and ugliest and the youngest and fairest woman in
Jordantown to meet him in his office at this outrageous hour of the
afternoon?"
"How do you do, Mrs. Walton?" Selah greeted.
"I don't do at all, my dear; I'm tired of doing. I should be taking my
nap!"
For a moment after Selah Adams disappeared into Judge Regis's office the
hall outside was silent, a gloomy tunnel between gray walls with a
square light from the window at the end above the staircase. Then a
singular thing happened: the ground-glass door at which Susan had stared
with so much contempt opened very softly as if Silence himself was
behind it. The enormous head and face of a man appeared. His features
were concealed in fat, his nose merely protruded, a red knob with
nostrils in the end; his mouth was wide, sucked in above a great chin
covered with short black stubble; his jowls hung down, the back of his
neck rolled up, and the hair upon it stuck out like bristles.
He looked up and down the hall, listened. He opened the door wide, but
very softly, and came through it tiptoeing, a huge figure, almost
shapeless in its monstrous rotundity. He moved with astonishing
swiftness to the staircase, looked down, then fixed his black eyes with
a kind of animal ferocity upon the closed door of the Judge's office
until he reached it, and laid one of his little red ears to the keyhole.
If we were permitted to observe any man or woman of our acquaintance
when that person supposed himself or herself to be absolutely alone, we
should be astonished and often horrified at the unconscious revelations
we would receive. The woman with the Madonna face may unmask and show
the lineaments of a common shrew in her chamber. And the virago may
soften into the gentleness of a saint as she gives way to the penitence
of her own thoughts. The dignified man with the air of virtue and
authority might show himself as a nimble-motioned rascal, timid and
furtive, if he believed only God saw him. Not one of us ever acts
absolutely true to what we know we are except when the door between us
and every other man is closed. It is barely possible that sometimes in
the presence of a very young child we do play the role, but never before
any other creature, however near, neither wife nor husband nor friend.
It is the nature of the human to act before the footlights of the world
even in the broad open day, and even if there is no one to witness the
performance but a beggar who never saw him before and never will see him
again. It is only when he is alone that the best man does not practise
at least the deceit of conceit, or cast himself for some other part in
the _play of man_.
Mike Prim was alone. He was known as a jolly, blarney-tongued, slovenly
wit, who for a consideration managed the political affairs of Jordantown
and the county in a manner which was agreeable to the "deities" already
mentioned, who were not willing to do all the things in this business
that must be done. He was accustomed to call himself the "servant of the
people." And naturally they paid for his services. He managed campaign
funds and manipulated election returns in a manner which was highly
satisfactory. In short, he was a fat, good fellow, elastic morally, but
a good fellow, popular with men, and never introduced to women. This was
the role he played in the town.
But now, with his ear glued to the keyhole of the Judge's door, he was
not on the boards. He was behind the scenes acting according to the
laws which governed his nature. And judged by the changes in his
expression as he listened, one must have inferred that his personal
standards were savage beyond belief. At first he showed only amusement,
as if presently he might snort with mirth. His mouth worked like a worm,
stretching in a grin, then a sneer. But when at last the three-cornered
conversation within ended and the Judge's voice alone reached him, his
whole body seemed to stiffen. He clenched his fat fists. Amazement fled
before rage upon that furious face, perspiration streamed from every
pore. His eyes shot this way and that like black bullets. No other man
in the world can become so infuriated as the coward, for the brave man
knows that he can satisfy his anger. He reserves it as a force to use in
vengeance. He is temperate in that. But the worm-soul, which must crawl
and be satisfied with merely stinging the heel of his enemy, knows no
such temperance. He is the victim of his impotent fury.
Mike Prim was such a worm now, and it seemed that he must be consumed.
He was a hideous conflagration flaming against the door of the Judge's
office, scarcely touching it with his huge bulk, his mind leaping to
seize upon every sound from within.
Suddenly, without taking time to stand erect, he sprang back and fled,
his legs working like those of an enormous cat, with noiseless
swiftness. His door closed as gently as a feather blown in the wind, and
the next moment Prim had seized his 'phone.
"Two-five-six! yes, Acres's store! What? Not in? Well, damn him!" he
muttered, as he rattled the receiver and began again.
"Give me the National Bank, Central! What? The number? You know the
number! yes, five-two-four! What? Bank closed? I don't give a hang if it
is. Coleman's in his office. Saw him there myself."
During the next hour Mr. Michael Prim called the telephone number of
every prominent citizen in Jordantown. Treason was abroad in the air,
much treason, that was conducted by Prim. And something akin to treason
apparently was still going on in the Judge's office.
Meanwhile the streets of the town had taken on a lighter, more frivolous
aspect. Prettily dressed women were mincing along the pavements, their
parasols bobbing up and down like variegated mushrooms. They bowed,
smiled coquettishly at the men. The men swept off their hats and
smirked. All of them were lovers after the manner of lovers in the
South. That is to say, they adored all women, and these ladies were
accustomed to being loved after the manner of Southern women. They lived
for that, nothing else. Pretty goods, expensive goods, and nice,
virtuous little baggages. Speculators in love, but not deliberate moral
beings. They had nice consciences, easily satisfied. They had nice
minds, easily blinded. Some of them were little termagants, all the
dearer for that to men who like to conquer the shrew in a woman, if they
do not have to do it too often. Besides, these little doll ladies were
public spirited. They did dainty things about town, and they were
charming while they were doing them. At this very moment they were on
their way to the Woman's Civic League and Cemetery Association, which
was meeting with Mabel Acres, who was the wife of the most prominent
merchant in the town, and by the same token she always served the most
expensive refreshments. Not a single one of them as they passed beneath
the windows of the National Bank Building would or could have believed
that her whole nature and attitude toward man was to be changed before
night.
Susan Walton, strangely excited and enhanced, now happened to glance
through the window, and the sight of the fluttering feminine pageant
below reminded her of something.
"Come, Selah!" she exclaimed, rising with unexpected alacrity. "We are
due at the Civic League and Cemetery Association, and we have work to do
there!"
"If I'm not mistaken in your expression, Susan, this will be the last
meeting of that organization," said the Judge.
"I'm hopeful that it is. The women in this town only want something to
do. And we've got it at last, if only we can make them see it!" she
said, as she passed through the door which he held open for her,
accompanied by Selah, who wore the half-baptized look of a vague young
soul still in doubt.
"Not a word about her arbor-vitae trees," said the Judge as he returned
to his desk. "I doubt if they'll ever be mentioned again. The weeds will
take the cemetery, and the women will stop fussing about clean
cuspidors in the courthouse. But what a din we shall have in this town
when they really get going. Well, God help us, it had to come! They are
no longer one flesh with us."
* * * * *
A town without women in the streets is like a meadow without flowers, a
bay tree without leaves, like the air without the wings of birds in it
and the sweet sounds they make there about their feathers and affairs.
Now since four o'clock not a woman had been seen on the streets of
Jordantown, if one excepted an occasional bandanna-headed negress. Not a
fan had been purchased, not a paper of pins, nor a yard of lace. Trade
languished. Nobody knew yet what was wrong, but every man on the square
missed something. They thought they were still worried about the Mosely
will, and they were. But over and above that they had a sense of not
being entirely present. For a man to be sufficiently conscious of
himself, there must always be the possibility of a woman in sight before
whom he may magnify himself at least in his own imagination. The
Jordantown Square citizens lacked this mirror. They wandered from
corner to corner expecting to find it, to see somewhere near or far the
flutter of a woman's skirt, the sky of a woman's eyes. But they did not
know that this was what they were after. Each one pretended to himself
that he was looking for another man. And when two of them met, they went
on to the next corner together, both looking for some one else. Then
they separated, excused themselves, each hurrying in the opposite
direction.
The afternoon passed. Clerks were idle; they stood in doorways looking
up and down the street. Prominent citizens left their chairs beneath the
courthouse awning to avoid other prominent citizens whom they saw
approaching. Still they could not avoid one another.
"Any news?" asked Acres of Coleman, whom he met coming out of the
courthouse.
"Not a thing. Clerk says no will has been probated there to-day. Briggs
was right. There isn't any. He thinks the court will appoint him
administrator."
"And he looks his thought," sneered Acres; "been strutting around all
the afternoon, swelled fit to burst."
"Well, he may, nobody can tell. See you later," said Coleman, hastening
his steps.
"Wait! hold on! I thought you were going in my direction. I wanted to
ask you something," exclaimed Acres, detaining him.
"No, I'm going back to the bank. What?"
"Have you seen Mike?"
"Yes, just from his office. Sent for me. No, he says he's in the dark,
too," answered Coleman, still struggling against this companionship.
"He's always in the dark. Would be if he knew all about it," Acres
grumbled.
At this moment the huge amorphous figure of a man emerged sidewise from
the staircase of the National Bank Building. He looked back up the
stairs, shot a glance up and down the street, then he moved like a blur
around the corner into the darkening shadows. This was a habit he had
which the innocent people of the town had not sufficient experience to
interpret. He never started forth without looking both ways. He never
walked any distance without looking back over his shoulder.
"That's Mike now!" exclaimed Acres. "Not a dollar in his pocket, and he
owns this town."
"Yes, he has got dollars in his pocket, plenty of 'em. He's been
collecting for the campaign fund this afternoon--quarterage you know!"
sneered Coleman, who had just paid his.
"Aims to be the next mayor, doesn't he?"
"No, worse than that: he's going to be representative from this county
in the next legislature!"
"Bob Sasnett will have something to say about that. He told me to-day he
might run. That means he will."
"Well, he hasn't got anything else to do. He's the only man in town who
is independent of Mike. He can furnish his own campaign fund. Good
night!" said Coleman, determined to be gone this time.
"Wonder what's the matter with Coleman," muttered Acres, hurrying to
meet Carter, the editor of the _Signal_, only to see him vanish into the
drugstore. "Wonder what's the matter with everybody. Hello, Colonel
Adams, that you?"
"Yesh, it's me, Mabel; whatcher want," answered the Colonel, bracing
himself against the courthouse. He always called Acres "Mabel," after
his wife.
"Well, how do you feel--pretty good?" said the little gossip, grinning
up in the old red face.
"No, shur! I do not. I feel like a child on a cold night wish all the
bedclothes pulled off me--thatsh how I feel. How do you feel?"
"Same here, Colonel!"
[Illustration: "'_I want to ash you a delicate question--where ish the
ladies? I 'aven't sheen a woman in four hours_'"]
"Mabel, me boy," whispered the old man, swaying gently as he attempted
to fix his eyes upon the other's face, "I want to ash you a delicate
question: where ish the ladies? I haven't sheen a woman in four hours,
Mabel! Think of that and in a town full of the pretties' women in thish
state. What does it mean? Thash what I want to ash you. I'm famished,
I'm thirshty, for the shight of a pretty face!"
"That's so," said Acres; "what does it mean? Hadn't thought of it
before, but----"
"Oh, my God! what would thish world be without the ladies, Mabel! If we
wish 'em like thish in four hours, how could we live wishout 'em
forever! We could not, shur!" He began to weep, a poor old man of the
past, standing in the twilight of the village street, looking up and
down like a lost child crying for its mother. Then he moved on, refusing
"Mabel's" arm.
Men began to close their offices and shops; window sashes banged; keys
rattled in locks. More men appeared upon the streets. They lighted
cigars, loitered, not quite ready yet to go home. When a man knows his
wife and daughters are at home, he feels safe. He is in no hurry to be
there himself. This was the hour when every man in Jordantown was
accustomed to know that. If any one had asked a single one of them the
question, "Where's your wife?" he would have answered, "At home, of
course!" It was only the Colonel, half seas over, who had his doubts,
but the Colonel was notoriously psychic where women were concerned.
At this very moment a queer thing happened: a stream of women poured
into the square and took their way down both sides of it, almost
treading upon the toes of the men as they passed. And they were walking
leisurely.
These were undoubtedly the same women who had passed at four o'clock on
their way to the Civic League and Cemetery Association. Every man in the
streets recognized them. Yet they were not the same. They did not return
salutations. For the first time the men were ignored, not exactly
snubbed, but literally not seen by the women in Jordantown. And each
man was alone, there were not enough of them together to talk about it;
they could only feel and wonder, as they stood staring in amazement at
those fluttering white and black and blue and pink figures disappearing
around corners and down the avenues.
The sense of femininity is only a sense of weakness. And what we call
masculinity is only the sense of strength, which may belong to women as
well as to men under the same conditions. The men on the square had just
witnessed a miracle, never seen before in this world--the rise of
egotism in the feminine portion of the community, which caused every one
of them to enter that zone of man on an equal footing with men in
consciousness. And naturally the men did not understand that. They were
so dazed that they could not even discuss it with one another. What they
had experienced was too subtle to put into words. Not a man of them
looked any other man in the face as they followed those women home. But
every one of them was asking himself some question: "What's my wife
doing out so late?" "Why didn't Selah Adams speak to me?" "What in
hell's that old cat, Susan Walton, up to now, wading by me as if she
owned the town?" "Oh, it's nothing! they were embarrassed at being out
so late!" "But why then did they walk so infernally like Odd Fellows
coming home from the lodge at midnight?"
"I'll know presently!" said Magnis Carter, as he flirted around the
corner into the avenue. "I'll ask Carrie!"
And, as good as his word, he did.
"Carrie, what's the Civic League and Cemetery Association mean by
keeping such late hours?" he asked as he sat down to dinner.
"There is no such organization here any more, Magnis."
"Isn't? What's become of it? You women get mad and tear up your Magna
Charter?"
"No, we've changed it, going to get out another charter."
"So, you've changed it? Going to be an Odd Fellows lodge now?" he
laughed.
"Something like that," she answered coolly.
"Can't afford it, my dear; to be an Odd Fellow costs like thunder!"
"We have plenty of funds," was the astonishing reply.
"Speak as if you'd inherited the Mosely Estate."
Silence on the part of Carrie, who sat at the other end of the table
like a Dominique hen brooding strange eggs.
"Hear anything about the will?"
When there was no answer to this question, Carter looked up at his wife.
"I say did you hear anything about Sarah Mosely's will?"
Still no reply.
"Then you did hear something? What was it?" His manner had become
suddenly serious.
"You'll know soon enough, Magnis."
"Can't you tell me?"
"No, I cannot!"
"Secrets from your husband?"
"I never resent your keeping your affairs from me, why should you object
to my keeping mine from you?" she answered coolly.
"Good Lord, Carrie, you look at me as if you'd filed papers for divorce!
And when did the Mosely will become one of your affairs, I'd like to
know?"
She declined to tell him that. She poked her foot about under the table
with the absent-minded stare a woman always has when she is trying to
find the electric bell with her extremities. She found it and pressed
all the current on, so that the maid came with an injured put-upon air
to clear the table.
Carter continued to regard his wife as if she had become a phenomenon,
and as if he was entirely ignorant of the laws which had exalted her
into the unknown. When the servant disappeared with the tray of
indignantly rattling dishes he began again.
"Look here, Carrie, if there's any news about the disposition of that
woman's estate, I ought to have it for the _Signal_. We go to press
to-morrow."
"You'll get all the news you are entitled to have in time to publish
this week, Magnis, and through the proper channels."
Three doors farther down the avenue Selah Adams sat upon the front
veranda, looking like the vestal virgin of the moon.
She had taken the precaution to enter the house through the back door
when she returned with the other women. The Colonel was fuming in the
library. She could hear him through the open door as she fled
noiselessly up the staircase.
"Not a light in the house, by Jove! First time in forty years I've come
home to a darkened house. No candle in the window to guide an old man's
wandering feet, nobody to greet me, no slippers--no nothing!" he moaned.
And Selah, leaning over the banisters above, could hear him stumbling
over the chairs. She knew what that meant. The Colonel regarded all
chairs as his mortal enemies when he was in a certain condition. She
heard the crash of the big Morris chair as it struck the wall, and feet
attacking it furiously. Then the Colonel lumbered out into the hall.
"Hey, there! Tom! Becky! Where's everybody? By Gad! if somebody don't
come, I'll--I'll----"
"What is it, father?" came Selah's voice, tinkling like ice in a glass.
"Selah! whatsh thish mean?" he roared.
"What does what mean, father?"
"No light! I've just been asshaulted in my own house!" he shouted.
"Assaulted?" she giggled, turning the switch.
The hall below was instantly flooded with light. She beheld the Colonel
leaning against the newel post, looking up but not seeing her. He was
lifting first one foot and then the other and feeling them tenderly
with his hands.
"Yesh! thas what I shaid! That Morris chair met me at the door and
barked every shin I've got. Get out of here!" he roared at the two
servants who had entered from the kitchen. "Selah, where've you been?"
"I'm up here, father. I didn't know it was so late. I'll be down in a
minute."
To lie is not the nature of women, but it is often their necessity.
"Bring the arnica with you, me dear-- I'm a wounded man! But I'm glad
you were at home. I've been nervous 'bout you all day; there's something
wrong in this town!"
* * * * *
All that had happened an hour ago. The Colonel was now peacefully
snoring with both feet bandaged and elevated upon pillows; and Selah was
waiting upon the veranda. She was evidently waiting. When a young and
beautiful woman is not waiting for a lover, she does not look so calmly,
sweetly indifferent. She is restless. She rises and looks at the moon.
Now the moon was looking at Selah, embroidering her white dress with
the fairy shadows of leaves, covering her face with a soft splendour,
glistening like a crown of light upon her dark hair. That was the
difference.
Footsteps sounded upon the gravel. The figure of a man, tall, slender,
regnant, was swinging up the walk. Selah did not move. She was that
fairest thing in a darkened world, the presence achieved when a woman
combines herself with silence, stillness, and moonlight.
The man sprang lightly up the steps.
"Hush!" she whispered, "don't ring the bell!"
"Selah!" he exclaimed, advancing to her. "What a vision you are!"
"Don't speak so loud," she whispered, motioning him to a seat beside
her.
"I didn't, darling. I'd as lief shout before an altar as lift my voice
in this chapel of the moon," he answered, taking her hand and lifting it
to his lips.
"Father is not well. He's just dozed off!" she exclaimed.
"If I know anything about such dozing, it would take an earthquake to
rouse him now!" he answered, laughing.
Selah sighed and withdrew her hand.
"If you do that, dear, I shall seize more!" he whispered, leaning
forward and slipping his arm around her waist.
"Don't, Mr. Sasnett!" she said so coolly that he drew back and stared at
her.
"'Mr. Sasnett,' and when did I cease to be Bob, pray? I've been Bob for
a good many years to you, Selah. What's the matter? Have you seen me
flirting with another girl? You have not! Have you heard of my calling
on Mike Prim? You have not! Has some one told you of the last murder I
committed? Certainly not! I haven't killed a man yet. Shall not do so
until he becomes my rival in your heart. Now what is it? Why am I 'Mr.
Sasnett' upon this beautiful moonlight night when of all times I should
be most tenderly Bob?"
"I can't explain," she answered.
"What is the matter with everybody in this town, especially the women?
It hasn't been an hour since mother came home and said _she_ couldn't
explain when I asked her why she was so upset."
"She was upset then?" asked the girl curiously.
"Most awfully! She got out of the car like a flying squadron of rage,
eyes blazing, face pale. And when I asked her what the trouble was she
said I'd know soon enough. Now what did she mean?"
"You'll know soon enough," repeated Selah, smiling.
"Good heavens! What's the game, Selah?"
"We've drawn trumps at last," answered Selah.
"We! Who are we? Certainly not mother! As she dashed--really dashed, you
know, and at her age!--upstairs to her room she informed me that she had
resigned from the presidency of the Civic League and Cemetery
Association, and that never again would she be mixed up with women who
had so far forgotten their dignity and womanhood. Then she banged the
door."
"She did take it rather hard. I imagine your mother is a very
old-fashioned woman."
"Well, she's quite the lady, if that's what you mean, and something of
an autocrat. Did you depose her from the presidency this afternoon?"
"No, we dissolved the organization. There is no Civic League and
Cemetery Association now!"
"Then we'll all have weeds on our graves--and untidy streets!" he
murmured between a snigger and a sob.
"Was that all your mother said?" asked Selah.
"Not quite. The fact is that's why I came over to-night. She's got her
neck feathers up at you, too, it seems. I asked her through the door if
we were to come by and pick you up for the drive we had planned, and
she----" he hesitated.
"Well?"
"She said, 'Don't mention Selah Adams to me, Robert,' just like that, as
if she'd seen you leading a riot or addressing a mob!"
"Yes, I know. You are a dramatist, Bob, better than you suspect!"
answered Selah.
"Thanks for the 'Bob,' anyway. Now let's forget it. Mother will come
around all right. She really loves you. She's only ruffled over some of
your cat-scratching politics in the league. Now be a good girl and kiss
me, dear!" he pleaded.
"I can't, Bob."
"You mean you won't; well, I can and will," he exclaimed, placing his
palms upon either side of her face and drawing her to him.
"You must _not_!" she objected, evading him.
"Why? Aren't we engaged?"
"We were engaged," she answered with a sob.
"Who's broken it? Not I?"
"You will, when you know! Besides, I wish to be released from--from----"
"Say it! You'd as well to say it as to wish it!" he exclaimed with
sudden passion.
"I don't want to say it, but I must give you your liberty, dear."
"Well, I'll not have it so long as you call me 'dear' in that tone!" he
cried.
"But I want mine!" she said, looking at him gravely.
"Don't you love me, Selah?"
"Love is not everything. There are--other things more important than
love. Every man knows that!"
"No woman ought to know it! Besides, love is everything. It's the face
of every flower. It's the leaves on the trees. It's the breath of
heaven. It's the blush on your cheek, the blood in your veins and mine,
dear."
"No, liberty is more than love. And liberty is the enemy of love," she
answered.
"You speak like a--like a----" He searched his imagination to find what
she did speak like, and she finished for him:
"Like an enemy!"
"No, not quite so bad as that, but you are morbid, dear. This isn't a
meeting of suffragists, this is a sacrament. You and I are alone before
the altar of love. We must not deny one another this sweet bread of
life!"
"You said something just then about suffragists. Do you believe in
suffrage for women, for your wife, for example?"
He sat up and looked at her. He began to smile teasingly, as if she were
a little girl and he a patient elder person with a beam in his eye.
"So that's it, hey? You want to be a suffragist and with the suffragists
stand! Of course I believe in it. I believe in letting every woman have
what she wants. Now kiss me, Selah, like the dear little suffering suff
you are!"
"No, I must be sure you mean that. Men say things to women they do not
believe, just to humour them, just to get----"
"A kiss, yes! I'd vote for you for coroner, Selah, for one kiss
to-night!"
"Well, you won't get it, Mr. Sasnett, not until I am _sure_, absolutely
sure, you are for us, not against us."
"Us! One at a time, Selah, I say. You wouldn't have me be for all women,
would you? A man loves one woman, but he can't stand 'em _en masse_.
He'd romp like a four-year-old in a crowd of men, but a crowd of women,
a commonwealth of women! Good Lord! it would be awful. Don't ask me to
kiss them all, dear!"
"You are making fun of us. I knew you were not for us," she said.
"But I'm for _you_, heart and soul. When are we to be married? You
promised to name the day."
"It will not be this year, if ever," she answered coolly.
"Not this year? It must be this year! I'm going to be representative
from this county, and I want to take my bride to the Capitol with me."
"You don't know whether you will be elected or not, yet, Mr. Sasnett. It
depends upon conditions of which you do not now dream. When is the
election?"
"In November," he answered.
"Before that time there will be five thousand more voters in this county
than there are now!"
"Where'll they come from?"
"They are here now."
"In your pocket, is that what you mean?"
"They may be," she answered, smiling darkly.
"You speak as if you were Mike Prim, Selah. It's scandalous!"
* * * * *
It was Saturday afternoon, two days since the funeral and two days since
Mike Prim bent listening with such furious excitement at the keyhole of
Judge Regis's office. Jordantown had become the stage upon which a
mystery play was being enacted with all the farcical features of a
comedy. Every man, especially, was doing exactly what he would have done
and said if there had been footlights and an audience in front, only not
one of them knew that this was so. Providence is the Great Dramatist,
and secures perfectly natural effects by providing emergencies which
call for action, and by keeping every man under the delusion that he
chooses his own role.
The suspense concerning the disposition of the Mosely Estate was only
partially balanced by the confounded indignation of many citizens who
came and went from Mike Prim's office.
"Sent for you again, too?" exclaimed Coleman when he met Acres as he
descended the stairs.
"Yes, what's the matter?" asked Acres anxiously.
"You'll find out when you get up there. He's as mad as a rhinoceros
horning sand in a desert."
"But what does he want?" Acres insisted.
"Wants you to double your subscription to the campaign fund. Better not
go up if you can't do it. He got me for a cool hundred."
"What's he in such a hurry for? The campaign doesn't begin for months
yet!"
"He says it's on, began two days ago. Says the liberty of every man in
this county is at stake. Says he needs a fund of four times as much as
usual to meet the situation," answered Coleman.
"What's he doing with it?"
"Can't tell you; not a cent of it is deposited in the bank."
"Well, I know he has taken in over a thousand dollars in the last two
days."
"It's no time to collect now with everybody in suspense over this Mosely
will," groaned Coleman.
"I'll be hanged if it doesn't look like blackmail to me!" exclaimed
Acres.
"Why submit, then?" demanded Coleman with a grin.
"You know we are all in too deep with Prim. You submitted, didn't you?"
"Yes, and you will, too, when you see him. He's got conviction in his
manner and compulsion in his tongue," said Coleman as Acres passed him
upon the stairs.
"Mabel, my boy, can you lend me fifty dollars?"
Acres beheld Colonel Adams standing in the deep shadows at the top of
the stairs. He wore a yellow seersucker coat, brown linen trousers,
carpet slippers, with the toes of his right foot bandaged and exposed
through a slit in the red leather. He was forlornly sober, pale, with
his moustache drooping like a rooster's tail in the rain.
"Fifty dollars, Colonel!" exclaimed Acres.
"I'm absolutely obliged to have it, Mabel."
"Make it fifty cents and I'll be glad to accommodate you."
"Very well, fifty cents then. Thank you, Mabel. I'll just go down with
this. No use to face Mike with half a dollar. He wants fifty."
"Shearing you, too?"
"No, you can't shear a sheep that's been plucked as clean as your hand.
Prim keeps me mighty cool."
"What's he want with so much money, do you know?"
The Colonel limped forward very painfully, placed one hand upon Acres's
shoulder, ogled Prim's door, and whispered:
"There are only two things in this world more expensive than women and
wine, Mabel: politics and piety."
"You ought to be able to economize on piety," Acres retorted.
"When you do that, you get in deeper with politics--comes to the same
thing--and I've never held an office in my life!" he concluded with a
groan, as he placed his good foot on the second step of the stairs and
drew the other tenderly after it. When he had descended three in this
manner, he beckoned to Acres.
"Say, Mabel, if Mike asks about me, tell him I'm standing on the
courthouse steps, with both feet bandaged and my trousers rolled up
showing my barked shins. Tell him I'm begging for the cause, and as soon
as I've got fifty dollars I'll be up to see him!"
The next minute Acres was facing Prim, who sat with his hands spread
upon the desk in front of him, his elbows sticking out, his hair
bristling, his mouth sucked in, and his eyes spitting venom. He looked
like a reptile about to spring, and Acres had much the expression of a
rabbit facing the reptile, slowly being drawn to his fate.
"But a hundred dollars, Mike! I can't spare that much now. Besides,
what's the hurry?" he was protesting despairingly.
"Look here, Acres, who's kept this town wide open for five years? Mike
Prim! Who's profited by that? Every business man in it! Who's given
Jordantown an easy reputation that draws workingmen and all kinds of men
who spend liberally what they make for what they want? Mike Prim! Who's
profited by the jug business in the back of Bill Saddler's livery
stable? Not Prim! I get my liquor cheap, that's all. Who's borne the
reputation for the dirty work in your elections while you fellows played
the part of law-abiding citizens and deacons and elders in the church?
Prim! But who hired me for this job? You fellows with the ornamental
virtues of society. I was to provide all the profits of vice to support
your position. By God! do you think I haven't kept your letters of
instruction about the Wimply campaign--that suggestion you made about
counting the election returns? I've got it! And Coleman's order for
liquor and funds to be used in the Dry Valley district, I've got that,
too. And I have the agreement Wimply signed to keep the town open that
year you fellows were masquerading on that Law and Order Committee: You
all voted for Wimply! I've enough signatures here to put half of you in
stripes!" he exclaimed, striking the desk with his clenched fist.
"That's all right, Mike. I just wanted to know what----"
"What I'm up to? Well, I'll tell you I aim to be the representative from
this county. It'll take a damn sight of money to elect me, and I'm going
to be elected."
"Of course, we understand that. But what's the hurry? Campaign doesn't
begin now."
"That's all you know about it. But _I_ know we are facing a crisis in
this county _now_. Everything I've worked for, everything you fellows
have stood for secretly and made _me do_--all of it may be swept from
under our feet in sixty days. That's why I want money, and----"
"All right," Acres interrupted, taking out his check book, "here's mine.
And it's more than I can spare."
"Not if I need more!" growled Prim, listing the check with a dozen
others.
If an outlaw, armed to the teeth, had passed up and down the streets and
robbed every man in Jordantown, they could not have appeared more
dejected and, at the same time, alarmed. Conversation languished beneath
the awnings. Men sat in their shirt sleeves, side by side, perfectly
silent. You do not discuss the thorn in your side--and they all had two
thorns. They were not only outraged by Prim's demands, they were
suffering from the neuralgia of suspense in regard to the Mosely Estate.
"It's about time for the _Signal_ to be out," said Coleman, looking at
his watch.
"Never is anything in it when it does come----My God! What was that?"
The air was rent, torn to mere tatters of air, by a long blood-curdling
yell, a yell which seemed to catch its breath with battle fierceness,
and then come again.
The two men rushed to the door of the bank. They beheld a scene of the
wildest confusion. The square, which a moment before had been sunken in
apathy, was now filled with terrific excitement. Men were running from
every direction toward the post office, stumbling over yelping dogs,
shouting, waving their arms as they ran.
In front of the post office, in the yellow flare of the setting sun,
Acres and Coleman beheld a scene which contained all the elements of
dignity, rage, pathos, and comedy.
Judge Regis stood with his silk hat perfectly level upon his head, his
cane tucked under his arm, and he was looking over the spread sheet of
the Jordantown _Signal_ very much as if he stared at an enemy over the
top of an impregnable fortification.
In front of him Colonel Marshall Adams pranced like an old bird kicking
his wings. His hat and coat lay upon the pavement. His face was a red
map of rage. He held a copy of the _Signal_ between the thumb and
forefinger of his left hand, and at arm's length, as if closer contact
with it meant unbearable pollution. And as he trod his measure, his
right fist shot out at regular intervals, each time nearer and nearer
the Judge's nose, and with each motion the Colonel sent forth that
ear-splitting yell which had not been heard in Jordantown since a
Confederate regiment charged a Federal division there in 1864.
Bob Sasnett was the first to reach the scene. He seized the Colonel
around the waist from behind, dragging him back so that his red slippers
turned up on the heels and showed the soles.
"Look at him, gentlemen! That man has committed a crime!" the Colonel
shouted to the gathering crowd as he shook an accusing finger at Regis.
"A crime?" came an incredulous voice.
Regis, calmly folding his paper, looked over the head of his accuser and
addressed Sasnett.
"Thank you, Sasnett, for saving his dignity. He was a brave soldier. We
must never forget that," he said, lifting his hat impersonally to
courage as he made his way out of the ring of staring faces.
"Let me go, Bob!" screamed the Colonel, struggling. "Did you hear him?
_Was_ a brave soldier. By Gad, what am I now? And this from a man who
would destroy the sanctity of fair womanhood, and then barricades
himself behind a newspaper when I demand shatisfaction."
"What's the old boy talking about?" demanded Briggs, stretching his neck
to get a view of the Colonel.
"If you don't believe what I shay, though I dare any man to doubt my
word, read that!" he cried, flinging the paper from him.
The _Signal_ fell flat and smooth upon the pavement; there was the
scraping of many feet as the crowd pushed forward, a mere instant of
silence as they read:
"_The Last Will and Testament of Sarah Hayden Mosely_";
then a furious rush for the post office, where every subscriber to the
_Signal_ hastily snatched his copy.
The Colonel, bereft of Sasnett's support, slid gently to a sitting
posture against the lamp post, his legs wide apart, his red slippers
half off. Tears filled his eyes. He wagged his head and sobbed:
"Selah! Selah! Sharper than a sherpent's tooth----" He could not recall
the rest, he merely felt it. He was a poor old man, alone, forsaken, he
knew that.
No one noticed him. One after another the men filed out, each with the
_Signal_ wide open, and with his eyes fastened upon a certain column.
They scattered beneath the various awnings, singly or in groups. Not one
addressed his neighbour. Each remained concealed behind the wide
enveloping sheets which literally tittered in their trembling hands.