elect”--_the devil_ quivered back of his teeth, but as that savored of
irreverence, he substituted “the Apoostate!”
Right here a devil entered in unto Saunders McClellan--the mocking devil
whose mission it was to abase Zorra to the dust. But it did not make its
presence known until, next day, Saunders carried the news of Elder
McCakeron's retaliation to Cap'en McKay's pig-killing.
“He's going,” Saunders informed the cap'en and Neil McNab between
pigs,--“he's going to run Sandy 'Twenty-One' against your candidate.”
Now between Neil and Sandy lay a feud which had its beginnings what time
the latter _doctored_ a spavined mare and sold her for a price to the
former's cousin Rab.
“Yon scunner?” Neil exclaimed, using the very form of the elder's words,
“yon scunner? I'd as lief ... as lief ... elect ...”
“... the Apoos-tate,” said the Devil, though Neil thought that Saunders
was talking.
“Ay, the Apoos-tate,” he agreed.
“It wad be a fine joke,” the Devil went on by the mouth of Saunders, “to
run the Apoos-tate agin' his candidate. McCakeron canna thole the man.”
“But what if he was elected?” the mariner objected.
The Devil was charged with glib argument. “We couldna very weel. It's to
be a three-cornered fight, an' Robert Duncan, brother to Tammas, has it
sure.”
“'Twad be a good one on McCakeron,” Neil mused. “To talk up Dunlop, who
doesna care a cent for the eldership, an' then spring the Apoos-tate on
him.”
“'Twould be bitter on 'Twenty-One,'” the cap'en added. He had been
diddled by Sandy on a deal of seed-wheat.
“It wad hit the pair of 'em,” McNab chuckled, and with that word the
Devil conquered.
So far, as aforesaid, Saunders had been unconscious of the Devil, but
going home the latter revealed himself in a heart-to-heart talk. “Ye're
no pretty to look at,” Saunders said. “I'm minded to throw ye oot!”
The Devil chuckled. “Janet's so bonny. Fancy her on the pillow beside,
ye--scraggy--bones--freckles. Hoots, man! a nightmare!”
Shuddering, Saunders reconsidered proceedings of ejectment. “But the
thing is no posseeble?”
“You know your men,” the Devil answered. “Close in the mouth as they are
in the fist. McCakeron will never get wind o' the business till they
spring it on him in meeting.”
“That is so,” Saunders acknowledged. “'Tis surely so-a.”
“Then why,” the Devil urged,--“then why not rig the same game on him?”
“Bosh! He wouldna think o't.”
“Loving Dunlop as himself?” The Devil was apt at paraphrasing Scripture.
“Imph!”
“It _would_ let me out?” Saunders mused.
“Ye can but fail,” argued the Devil. “Try it.”
“I wull.”
“This very night!” It is a wonder that the sparks did not fly, the Devil
struck so hard on the hot iron. “To-night! Ye ken the election comes off
next week.”
“To-night,” Saunders agreed.
Throughout that week the din of contending factions resounded beneath
brazen harvest skies; for if there was a wink behind the clamor of any
faction, it made no difference in the volume of its noise. Wherever two
men foregathered, there the spirit of strife was in their midst; the
burr of hot Scot's speech travelled like the murmur of robbed bees along
the Side Lines, up the Concession roads, and even raised an echo in the
hallowed seclusion of the minister's study. And harking back to certain
eldership elections in which the breaking of heads had taken the place
of “anointing with oil,” Elder McIntosh quietly evolved a plan whereby
the turmoil should be left outside the kirk on election night.
But while it lasted no voice rang louder than that of Saunders
McClellan's devil. Not a bit particular in choice of candidates, he
roared against Dunlop, Duncan, or “Twenty-One” according to the company
which Saunders kept. “Ye havna the ghaist of a show!” he assured Cap'en
McKay, chief of the Dunlopers. “McCakeron drew three mair to him last
night.” While to the elder he exclaimed the same day: “Yon crazy
sailorman's got all the Duncanites o' the run. He has ye spanked, Elder.
Scunner the deil!” So the Devil blew, hot and cold, with Saunders's
mouth, until the very night before the election.
The morning of the election the sun heaved up on a brassy sky. It was
intensely hot through the day, but towards evening gray clouds scudded
out of the east, veiling the sun with their twisting masses; at twilight
heavy rain-blots were splashing the dust. At eight o'clock,
meeting-time, rain flew in glistening sheets against the kirk windows
and forced its way under the floor. There was but a scant
attendance--twoscore men, perhaps, and half a dozen women, who sat, in
decent Scotch fashion, apart from the men--that is, apart from all but
Joshua Timmins. Not having been raised in the decencies as observed in
Zorra, he had drifted over to the woman's side and sat with Janet
McCakeron and Jean McClellan, one on either side.
But if few in number, the gathering was decidedly formidable in
appearance. As the rain had weeded out the feeble, infirm, and
pacifically inclined, it was distinctly belligerent in character. Grim,
dour, silent, it waited for the beginning of hostilities.
Nor did the service of praise which preceded the election induce a
milder spirit. When the precentor led off, “Howl, ye Sinners, Howl! Let
the Heathen Rage and Cry!” each man's look told that he knew well whom
the psalmist was hitting at; and when the minister invoked the “blind,
stubborn, and stony-hearted” to “depart from the midst,” one-half of his
hearers looked their astonishment that the other half did not
immediately step out in the rain. A heavy inspiration, a hard sigh, told
that all were bracing for battle when the minister stepped down from the
pulpit, and noting it, he congratulated himself on his precautions
against disturbance.
“For greater convenience in voting,” he said, reaching paper slips and a
box of pencils from behind the communion rail, “we will depart from the
oral method and elect by written ballot.”
He had expected a protest against such a radical departure from
ancestral precedent, but in some mysterious way the innovation seemed to
jibe with the people's inclination.
“Saunders McClellan,” the minister went on, “will distribute and collect
balloting-papers on the other aisle.”
“Give it to him, Cap'en!” Saunders whispered, as he handed him a slip.
“He's glowering at ye.”
The elder was indeed surveying the mariner, McNab, and Dunlop with a
glance of comprehensive hostility over the top of his ballot. “See what
I'm aboot!” his look said, as he folded the paper and tossed it into
Saunders's hat.
“The auld deevil!” McNab whispered, as the minister unfolded the first
ballot. “He'll soon slacken his gills.”
“That'll be one of oor ballots,” the cap'en hoarsely confided.
The minister was vigorously rubbing his glasses for a second perusal of
the ballot, but when the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth were added to
the first, his face became a study in astonishment. And presently his
surprise was reflected by the congregation. For whereas three candidates
were in nomination, the ballots were forming but two piles.
Whispers ran through the kirk; the cap'en nudged McNab.
“McCakeron must ha' swung all the Duncanites?”
“Ah,” Neil muttered. “An' that wad account for the stiff look o' the
reptile. See the glare o't.”
They would have stiffened in astonishment could they have translated the
“glare.” “Got the Duncanites, did ye?” the elder was thinking. “Bide a
wee, bide a wee! He laughs best that laughs last.”
Saunders McClellan and his Devil alone sensed the inwardness of those
two piles, and they held modest communion over it in the back of the
kirk. “You may be ugly, but ye've served me well,” Saunders began.
The Devil answered with extreme politeness: “You are welcome to all ye
get through me. If no honored, ye are at least aboot to become famous in
your ain country.”
“Infamous, I doobt, ye mean,” Saunders corrected. Then, glancing
uneasily toward the door, he added, “I think as we'd better be leaving.”
“Pish!” the Devil snorted. “They are undone by their ain malignancy. See
it oot.”
“That's so,” Saunders agreed. “That is surely so-a. Hist! The
meenister's risen. Man, but he's tickled to death over the result. His
face is fair shining.”
The minister did indeed look pleased. Stepping down to the floor that he
might be closer to these his people, he beamed benevolently upon them
while he made a little speech. “People of Scottish birth,” he said,
closing, “are often accused of being hard and uncharitable to the
stranger in their gates, but this can never be said of you who have
extended the highest honor in your gift to a stranger; who have elected
Brother Joshua Timmins elder in your kirk by a two-thirds majority.”
The benediction dissolved the paralysis which held all but Saunders
McClellan; but stupefaction remained. Astounding crises are generally
attended with little fuss, from the inability of the human intellect to
grasp their enormous significance. As John “Death” McKay afterward put
it, “Man, 'twas so extraordin'ry as to seem ordin'ry.” Of course neither
Dunlopers nor “Twenty-One's” were in a position to challenge the
election, and if the Duncanites growled as they pawed over the ballots,
their grumbling was presently silenced by a greater astonishment.
For out of such evenings history is made. While the minister had held
forth on the rights and duties of eldership, Saunders McClellan's gaze
had wandered over to Margaret McDonald--a healthy, red-cheeked girl--and
he had done a little moralizing on his own account. In the presence of
such an enterprising spinsterhood, bachelorhood had become an
exceedingly hazardous existence, and if a man must marry, he might as
weel ha' something young an' fresh! Margaret, too, was reputed
industrious as pretty! Of Janet's decision, Saunders had no doubts.
Between himself and Jeannie, and Timmins--meek, mild, and
unencumbered--there could be no choice. Still there was nothing like
certainty; 'twas always best to be off wi' the old, an' so forth!
Rising, he headed for Janet, who, with her father, Jeannie, Timmins, and
the minister, stood talking at the vestry door. As he made his way
forward, he reaped a portion of the Devil's promised fame. As they filed
sheepishly down the aisle, the Dunlopers gave him the cold shoulder, and
when he joined the group, Elder McCakeron returned a stony stare to his
greeting.
“But ye needna mind that,” the Devil encouraged. “He daurna tell, for
his own share i' the business.”
So Saunders brazened it out. “Ye ha' my congratulations, Mr. McCakeron.
I hear you're to get a son-in-law oot o' this?”
If Elder McCakeron had given Saunders the tempter the glare which he now
bestowed on Saunders the successfully wicked, he had not been in such
lamentable case.
“Why, what is this?” the minister exclaimed. “Cause for further
congratulation, Brother Timmins?”
Saunders now shone as Cupid's assistant. “He was to ha' Janet on
condeetion that he made the eldership,” he fulsomely explained.
The minister's glance questioned the elder.
“Well,” he growled, “I'm no going back on my word.”
Saunders glowed all over, and in exuberance of spirit actually winked at
Margaret McDonald across the kirk. Man, but she was pretty!
“It's to your credit, Mr. McCakeron, that you should hold til a
promise,” Jeannie was saying. “But ye'll no be held. A man may change
his mind, and since you refused Joshua, he's decided to marry on me.”
Saunders blenched. He half turned to flee, but Janet's strong fingers
closed on his sleeve; and as her lips moved to claim him before minister
and meeting, he thought that he heard the Devil chuckling, a great way
off.
IN THE INTERESTS OF CHRISTOPHER
BY MAY HARRIS
Mrs. Manstey's big country-house was temporarily empty of the guests she
had gathered for a week-end in June when the two Eversley girls reached
it, Saturday at noon. Their hostess met them at the door when the
carriage wheels crunched on the gravelled curve of the drive before the
house--a charming gray-haired woman of sixty, with a youthful face and a
delicate girlish color.
“I've sent everybody away to explore--to ravage the country,” she gayly
explained the emptiness of the large hall, where the grouped chairs
seemed recently vacated and pleasantly suggestive of suspended
tête-à-tête. “I've had Rose before,” Mrs. Manstey pursued, taking them
up the stairs to their rooms, “but not _you!_” She gave Edith's shoulder
an affectionate little pat. She thought the younger girl extremely
beautiful--which she was, with a vivid, piquant face and charming eyes.
“I've had my day,” Rose Eversley acknowledged, with her usual air of
jesting gravity, that, almost ironic, made one always a little unsure of
her. “Dear Mrs. Manstey, you perfectly see--don't you?--that Edith is
papa's image, and--”
“And he was my old sweetheart!” Mrs. Manstey completed, with humorous
appreciation of her own repetition of an old story.
“Was he, really?” Edith wondered. “Mamma says you were _her_ friend.”
Mrs. Manstey laughed. “Couldn't I have been--both?” she gayly put it.
“Friends are better than sweethearts--they last longer. Though of course
you won't agree, at your age, to such heresy.”
“Sweethearts?” the girl pondered as she lifted her hands to take off her
hat. “I--don't know. It's such a pretty word, but it doesn't mean much
these days--there aren't any!” She shrugged her shoulders with a
petulant pessimism her youth made amusing. “Papa was the last of the
kind--he's a _love!_--and you let mamma have him!”
“I didn't 'let.'” Mrs. Manstey enjoyed it. “When he met your mother he
forgot all about me. Think of it! I haven't seen either him or your
mother in years, years, years!”
“_My_ years!” Edith said. “I was a baby, mamma says, when she saw you
last.”
“So you were.”
A servant knocked, with a note for Mrs. Manstey. As she took it and
turned to leave the room, her smile, caressingly including Rose, went
past her and lingered a thought longer--as people's smiles had a way of
doing--with Edith.
“I know you're tired,” she added to her smile. “Five hours of train--Get
into something cool and rest. Luncheon isn't until two.”
She disappeared, and Rose looked at her sister, who, with her hat in her
hand, was going into her room.
“Well--?” Rose lifted her voice in its faint drawl of interrogation.
Edith looked at her absently. “I don't know,” she said, drawing her
straight brows into a puzzled frown. “I'm as far away as ever--I'm so
perplexed.”
“Well--you'll _have_ to decide, you know.”
Edith shook her head impatiently and went into her room, closing the
door. She hurried out of her dusty travelling things into cool
freshness, and, settled in the most comfortable chair, gave herself up
to an apparently endless fit of musing. She was so physically content
that her mind refused to respond with any vigorous effort; to think at
all was a crumpled rose-leaf.
From the lower hall the clock chimed one with musical vibrations. Edith
leaned forward with her chin on her hand, driving her thoughts into a
definite path. The curtains stirred in a breeze from the out-of-doors
whose domain swept with country greenness and adventitious care away
from the window under the high brilliance of the sun.
Close to the window a writing-table, with blotter, pens, and ink, made a
focal-point for her gaze. At first a mere detail in her line of vision,
it attained by degrees, it seemed, a definite relevancy to her train of
thought. She looked in her portmanteau for her desk, and getting out
some note-paper, went to the table and began to write a letter.
What she had to say seemed difficult to decide. She wrote a line, stared
out of the window with fixity, and then wrote again--a flurry of quick,
decisive strokes as if at determinate pressure. But a sigh struck across
her mood, and almost against her will the puzzled crinkle returned to
her brow. The curtain blew against her face, disarranging her hair, and
as she lifted her hand to put back a straggling lock, the wind tossed
the sheet of the letter she was writing out of the window. Her eyes, as
she sprang up, followed its flight, but it whirled around the corner of
the house and was lost to her desperate gaze.
Négligé, even of the most-becoming description, was not to be thought of
in pursuing the loss, for the silence of the house had stirred to the
sound of gay voices, the movement of feet.
Rose, also in négligé, opened the door between them and found her madly
tearing off her pale-blue kimono. “What's the matter?” She paused,
staring.
“Heavens! My shoes--please!--there by the table.” She kicked off her
ridiculous blue slippers and pulled on the small colonials her sister in
open wonder handed her. “If you had only been dressed,” she almost
wailed, “you might have been able to get it.”
“Get what?”
“My letter!” Tragic, in spite of a mouthful of pins--which is a woman's
undoubted preference, no matter how many befrilled pincushions entreat a
division of spoils,--she turned her face with its import of sudden
things to her sister in explanation. “I was writing a letter and it blew
out of the window!”
“Well, if it did--”
“But, don't you see?--I was writing to _Christopher!_ I had been thinking
and thinking, and at last I screwed up my courage to answer his letter.
I had all but signed my name!”
Rose Eversley began to laugh helplessly; heartlessly, her sister
thought.
“If you hadn't signed it--” she at last comforted her sister's indignant
face that was reflected from the mirror, where she stood as she fastened
the white stock at her throat and snapped the clasp of her belt.
“Signed it!” She was almost in tears. “What difference will that make
when I claim the letter? I _must_ find it! But of course some one who
knows me will be sure to find it. And _that_ letter, of all letters!”
“If I were you, Edith,” Rose advised, calmly, “I shouldn't--”
“Well?”--with her hand on the door-knob.
“--try to find it. It will be impossible to trace it to you, in that
case.”
“But _don't_ you see--”
“Wait!” Rose caught and pulled her back. “How _could_ they know? You'll
get in much deeper. What had you written?”
“I said, 'Dear Christopher'--”
Rose laughed. “I'm glad you didn't say 'Dear Mr. Brander.' In that case
you'd have given _him_ away. But 'Christopher' is such an unusual name,
they might--Sherlock Holmes could trace him by it alone.”
“You _are_ a Job's comforter--a perfect Eliphaz the Temanite! Oh, oh!”
Her soft crescendo was again tragic.
“In effect you said: 'Dear Christopher, as you have so often entreated,
I have at last decided to be thine. The tinkle of thy shekels, now that
I am so nearly shekelless myself, has done its fatal worst. I am
thine--'”
“Oh, let me go!” Edith cried, in a fury close to tears. “You haven't any
feeling. You are not going to sacrifice _your_self!”
“To a good-looking young man who loves me exceedingly, and to something
over a million? No, I am not!” Rose said, dryly.
“Oh, it's dreadful! Perfectly!” Edith cried, and on her indecision Rose
hung another bit of wisdom:
“Why don't you go down in a leisurely way and investigate? You know the
direction it blew away; follow it. If you meet any one, be admiring the
scenery!”
Again Edith's look deserved the foot-lights, but Rose shrugged her
shoulders and withdrew her detaining hand. Edith caught up her parasol
and ran down the stairs. The big hall was empty. From a room on the
right came a click of billiard-balls.
“Perhaps they are all in the house!” she thought, and drew a small
breath of relief.
On the door-step she paused, with her parasol open, and considered. The
house faced the west; her room was to the south, and the letter had
disappeared to the east. She chose her line of advance carefully
careless.
The lawn on the eastern side of the house sloped to an artificial pond,
and near it a vine-covered summer-house made a dim retreat from the June
sun. Look as she would, though, no faintest glimpse of white paper
rewarded her gaze.
She strolled on--daunted, but still persistent, with the wind blowing
her hair out of order--to the door of the summer-house. Within it a
young man was standing, reading her letter. He looked up and took off
his hat hastily, crumpling the letter in his hand. She saw he was quite
ugly, with determined-looking eyes, and the redemption of a pleasant
mouth.
She hesitated, the words “That is my letter!” absolutely frozen on her
lips. He had been reading it! It seemed impossible for her to claim it,
and so for a moment's silence she stood, with the green vines of the
doorway--
Half light, half shade--
framing herself and her white umbrella.
“You are looking for a cool spot?”--he deprecatingly took the
initiative. “This is a good choice. There's a wind--”
“Horrid!” she interrupted, so vehemently that she caught his involuntary
surprise. “I don't like the wind,” she added.
“'It's an ill wind,' you know, 'that doesn't blow some one good.'”
“I assure you _this_ is an ill wind! It has blown me all of the ill it
could.”
“Do come out of it,” he begged. “The vines keep it off. It's a half-hour
until luncheon,” he added, “unless they've changed since I was here
last.” He put up his watch. “We're fellow guests. You came this morning,
didn't you?--while we were out. I came last night.”
She seated herself provisionally on the little bench by the door, and
dug the point of her umbrella into the ground. Her mind was busy. He
still held the letter. She had had a forlorn hope that he would throw
down the sheet; but he did not. Was there any strategy, she wondered.
But none suggested itself; and indeed, as if divining her thought, he
put the crumpled sheet in his pocket. Her eyes followed despairingly the
“Dear Christopher,” in her clear and, she felt, unfortunately individual
writing, as it disappeared in his capacious blue serge pocket.
Different ideas wildly presented themselves, but none would do. Could
she ask him to climb a tree? Of course in that case he would have to
take off his coat and put it down, and give her the opportunity to
recover the horrible letter from his pocket. But one cannot ask a
stranger to climb a tree simply to exhibit his acrobatic powers. And
trees!--there were none save saplings in a radius of fifty yards! Could
she tumble in the pond? It would be even less desirable, and he would
simply wade in and pull her out, with no need to remove his coat.
“Mrs. Manstey,” he was saying, a little tentatively, upholding the
burden of conversation, “sent some of us out riding this morning, and
Ralph Manstey raced us home by a short cut cross country. That is, he
took the short cut. _We_ gave it the cut direct and looked for gaps.”
“If I had been out, I'd have taken every fence,” she said, boastfully,
and then laughed. He laughed too.
“If I--if you were my sister, I shouldn't let you follow Ralph Manstey
on horseback. He's utterly reckless.”
“So am I,” she came in, with spirit. “At home I ride anything and jump
everything.”
“Well, you shouldn't if you were my sister,” he repeated, decisively.
“I'm sorry for your sister,” she declared.
“Well, you see, I haven't one,” he said, gayly, and smiled down at her
lifted face. Remembering the letter, she corrected her expression to
colder lines.
“There's no one to introduce us,”--he broke the pause. “Mayn't I--” He
colored and put his hand into his pocket, and taking out her letter,
folded the blank sheet out and produced a pencil. “It's hard to call
one's own name,” he continued. “Suppose we write our names?”
As he was clumsy in finesse, she understood his idea, and her eyes
flashed. But she said nothing as he scribbled and handed the paper to
her. She read, “C.K. Farringdon,” and played with the pencil.
“Mr. Farringdon,”--she said it over meditatively. “How plainly you
write! My name's Edith Eversley,” she added, tranquilly, and, because
she must, per force, returned the sheet to him. She had a wicked delight
in the defeat of his strategy which she could cleverly conceal.
“I wish,” he deprecated, gently, but with persistence, “that you would
write your name here--won't you, as a souvenir?”
But she shook her head and rose--angry, which she hid, but also amused
at his pertinacity.