On this crowded twenty-four-hour cross-section of contemporary American
life the curtain goes up at nine-thirty o'clock of a January forenoon.
Locality, the city of Marion--the capital of a state.
Time, that politically throbbing, project-crowded, anxious, and expectant
season of plot and counterplot--the birth of a legislative session.
Disclosed, the office of St. Ronan's Mill of the city of Marion.
From the days of old Angus, who came over from Scotland and established a
woolen mill and handed it down to David, who placed it confidently in the
possession of his son Stewart, the unalterable rule was that "The
Morrison" entered the factory at seven o'clock in the morning and could
not be called from the mill to the office on any pretext whatsoever till
he came of his own accord at ten o'clock in the forenoon.
In the reign of David the old John Robinson wagon circus paraded the
streets of Marion early on a forenoon and the elephant made a break in a
panic and ran into the mill office of the Morrisons through the big door,
and Paymaster Andrew Mac Tavish rapped the elephant on the trunk with a
penstock and, only partially awakened from abstraction in figures, stated
that "Master Morrison willna see callers till he cooms frae the mill at
ten."
To go into details about the Morrison manners and methods and doggedness
in attending to the matter in hand, whatever it might be, would not limn
Stewart Morrison in any clearer light than to state that old Andrew, at
seventy-two, was obeying Stewart's orders as to the ten-o'clock rule and
was just as consistently a Cerberus as he had been in the case of Angus
and David. He was a bit more set in his impassivity--at least to all
appearances--because chronic arthritis had made his neck permanently
stiff.
It may be added that Stewart Morrison was thirty-odd, a bachelor, dwelt
with his widowed mother in the Morrison mansion, was mayor of the city of
Marion, though he did not want to be mayor, and was chairman of the State
Water Storage Commission because he particularly wanted to be the
chairman; he was, by reason of that office, in a position where he could
rap the knuckles of those who should attempt to grab and selfishly exploit
"The People's White Coal," as he called water-power. These latter
appertaining qualifications were interesting enough, but his undeviating
observance of the mill rule of the Morrisons of St. Ronan's served more
effectively to point the matter of his character. Stewart Morrison when he
was in the mill was in it from top to bottom, from carder to spinner and
weaver, from wool-sorter to cloth-hall inspector, to make sure that the
manufacturing principles for which All-Wool Morrison stood were carried
out to the last detail.
On that January morning, as usual, he was in the mill with his sleeves
rolled up.
On his high stool in the office was Andrew Mac Tavish, his head framed in
the wicket of his desk, and the style of his beard gave him the look of a
Scotch terrier in the door of a kennel.
The office was near the street, a low building of brick, having one big
room; a narrow, covered passage connected the room with the mill. A rail
divided the office into two small parts.
According to his custom in the past few months, Mac Tavish, when he dipped
his pen, stabbed pointed glances beyond the rail and curled his lips and
made his whiskers bristle and continually looked as if he were going to
bark; he kept his mouth shut, however.
But his silence was more baleful than any sounds he could have uttered; it
was a sort of ominous, canine silence, covering a hankering to get in a
good bite if the opportunity was ever offered.
It was the rabble o' the morning--the crowd waiting to see His Honor the
Mayor--on the other side of the rail. It was the sacrilegious invasion of
a business office in the hours sacred to business. It was like that every
morning. It was just as well that the taciturn Mac Tavish considered that
his general principle of cautious reserve applied to this situation as it
did to matters of business in general, otherwise the explosion through
that wicket some morning would have blown out the windows. Mac Tavish did
not understand politics. He did not approve of politics. Government was
all right, of course. But the game of running it, as the politicians
played the game! Bah!
He had taken it upon himself to tell the politicians of the city that
Stewart Morrison would never accept the office of mayor. Mac Tavish had
frothed at the mouth as he rolled his r's and had threshed the air with
his fist in frantic protest. Stewart Morrison was away off in the
mountains, hunting caribou on the only real vacation he had taken in half
a dozen years--and the city of Marion took advantage of a good man, so Mac
Tavish asserted, to shove him into the job of mayor; and a brass band was
at the station to meet the mayor and the howling mob lugged him into City
Hall just as he was, mackinaw jacket, jack-boots, woolen Tam, rifle and
all--and Mac Tavish hoped the master would wing a few of 'em just to show
his disapprobation. In fact, it was allowed by the judicious observers
that the new mayor did display symptoms of desiring to pump lead into the
cheering assemblage instead of being willing to deliver a speech of
acceptance.
He did not drop, as his manner indicated, all his resentment for some
weeks--and then Mac Tavish picked up the resentment and loyally carried it
for the master, in the way of outward malevolence and inner seething. The
regular joke in Marion was built around the statement that if anybody
wanted to get next to a hot Scotch in these prohibition times, step into
the St. Ronan's mill office any morning about nine-thirty.
Up to date Mac Tavish had not thrown any paper-weights through the wicket,
though he had been collecting ammunition in that line against the day when
nothing else could express his emotions. It was in his mind that the
occasion would come when Stewart Morrison finally reached the limit of
endurance and, with the Highland chieftain's battle-cry of the old clan,
started in to clear the office, throwing his resignation after the gang o'
them! Mac Tavish would throw the paper-weights. He wondered every day if
that would be the day, and the encouraging expectation helped him to
endure.
Among those present was a young fellow with his chaps tied up; there was a
sniveling old woman who patted the young man's shoulder and evoked
protesting growls. There were shifty-eyed men who wanted to make a
touch--Mac Tavish knew the breed. There was a fat, wheezy, pig-farm keeper
who had a swill contract with the city and came in every other day with a
grunt of fresh complaint. There were the usual new faces, but Mac Tavish
understood perfectly well that they were there to bother a mayor, not to
help the woolen-goods business. There was old Hon. Calvin Dow, a pensioner
of David Morrison, now passed on to the considerately befriending Stewart,
and Mac Tavish was deeply disgusted with a man who was so impractical in
his business affairs that, though he had been financially busted for ten
years, he still kept along in the bland belief, based on Stewart's
assurances, that money was due him from the Morrisons. Whenever Mac Tavish
went to the safe, obeying Stewart's word, he expressed _sotto voce_ the
wish that he might be able to drop into the Hon. Calvin Dow's palm red-hot
coins from the nippers of a pair of tongs. It was not that Mac Tavish
lacked the spirit of charity, but that he wanted every man to know to the
full the grand and noble goodness of the Morrisons, and be properly
grateful, as he himself was. Dow's complacency in his hallucination was
exasperating!
But there was no one in sight that morning who promised the diversion or
the effrontery that would make this the day of days, and there seemed to
be no excuse that would furnish the occasion for the battle-cry which
would end all this pestiferous series of levees.
The muffled rackelty-chackle of the distant looms soothed Mac Tavish. The
nearer rick-tack of Miss Delora Bunker's typewriter furnished obbligato
for the chorus of the looms. It was all good music for a business man. But
those muttering, mumbling mayor-chasers--it was a tin-can, cow-bell
discord in a symphony concert.
Mac Tavish, honoring the combat code of Caledonia, required presumption to
excuse attack, needed an upthrust head to justify a whack.
Patrolman Cornelius Rellihan, six feet two, was lofty enough. He marched
to and fro beyond the rail, his heavy shoes flailing down on the hardwood
floor. Every morning the bang of those boots started the old pains to
thrusting in Mac Tavish's neck. But Officer Rellihan was the mayor's
major-domo, officially, and Stewart's pet and protégé and worshiping
vassal in ordinary. An intruding elephant might be evicted; Rellihan could
not even receive the tap of a single word of remonstrance.
It promised only another day like the others, with nothing that hinted at
a climacteric which would make the affairs of the mill office of the
Morrisons either better or worse.
Then Col. Crockett Shaw marched in, wearing a plug-hat to mark the
occasion as especial and official, but taking no chances on the dangers of
that unwonted regalia in frosty January; he had ear-tabs close clamped to
the sides of his head.
Mac Tavish took heart. He hated a plug-hat. He disliked Col. Crockett
Shaw, for Shaw was a man who employed politics as a business. Colonel Shaw
was carrying his shoulders well back and seemed to be taller than usual,
his new air of pomposity making him a head thrust above the horde. Colonel
Shaw offensively banged the door behind himself. Mac Tavish removed a
package of time-sheets that covered a pile of paper-weights. Colonel Shaw
came stamping across the room, clapping his gloved hands together, as if
he were as cold under the frosty eyes of Mac Tavish as he had been in the
nip of the January chill outdoors.
"Mayor Morrison! Call him at once!" he commanded, at the wicket.
Mac Tavish closed his hand over one of the paper-weights. He opened his
mouth.
But Colonel Shaw was ahead of him with speech! "This is the time when that
fool mill-rule goes bump!" The colonel's triumphant tone hinted that he
had been waiting for a time like this. His entrance and his voice of
authority took all the attention of the other waiters off their own
affairs. "Call out Mayor Morrison."
"Haud yer havers, ye keckling loon! Whaur's yer een for the tickit
gillie?" The old paymaster jabbed indignant thumb over his shoulder to
indicate the big clock on the wall.
"I can't hear what you say on account of these ear-pads, and it doesn't
make any difference what you say, Andy! This is the day when all rules are
off." He was fully conscious that he had the ears of all those in the
room. He braced back. With an air of a functionary calling on the
multitude to make way for royalty he declaimed, "Call His Honor Mayor
Morrison at once to this room for a conference with the Honorable Jodrey
Wadsworth Corson, United States Senator. I am here to announce that
Senator Corson is on the way."
Mac Tavish narrowed his eyes; he whittled his tone to a fine point to
correspond, and the general effect was like impaling a puffball on a
rat-tail file. "If ye hae coom sunstruck on a January day, ye'd best stick
a sopped sponge in the laft o' yer tar-pail bonnet. Sit ye doon and speir
the hands o' the clock for to tell when the Morrison cooms frae the mill."
The colonel banged the flat of his hand on the ledge outside the wicket.
"It isn't an elephant this time, Mac Tavish. It's a United States Senator.
Act on my orders, or into the mill I go, myself!"
The old man slid down from the stool, a paperweight in each hand. "Only
o'er my dead body will ye tell him in yer mortal flesh. Make the start to
enter the mill, and it's my thocht that ye'll tell him by speeritual
knocks or by tipping a table through a meejum!"
"Lay off that jabber, old bucks, the two of ye!" commanded Officer
Rellihan, swinging across the room. "I'm here to kape th' place straight
and dacint!"
"I hae the say. I'll gie off the orders," remonstrated Mac Tavish; there
was grim satisfaction in the twist of his mouth; it seemed as if the day
of days had arrived.
"On that side your bar ye may boss the wool business. But this is the
mayor's side and the colonel is saying he's here to see His Honor.
Colonel, ye'll take your seat and wait your turn!" He cupped his big hand
under the emissary's elbow.
Mac Tavish and Rellihan, by virtue of jobs and natures, were foes, but
their team-work in behalf of the interests of the Morrison was
comprehensively perfect.
"What's the matter with your brains, Rellihan?" demanded the colonel,
hotly.
"I don't kape stirring 'em up to ask 'em, seeing that they're resting
aisy," returned the policeman, smiling placidly. "And there's nothing the
matter with my muscle, is there?" He gently but firmly pushed the colonel
down into a chair.
"Don't you realize what it means to have a United States Senator come to a
formal conference?"
"No! I never had one call on me."
"Rellihan, Morrison will fire you off the force if it happens that a
United States Senator has to wait in this office."
The officer pulled off his helmet and plucked a card from the sweatband.
"It says here, 'Kape 'em in order, be firm but pleasant, tell 'em to wait
in turn, and'--for meself--'to do no more talking than necessary.' If
there's to be a new rule to fit the case of Senators, the same will
prob'bly be handed to me as soon as Senators are common on the
calling-list." He put up a hand in front of the colonel's face--a broad
and compelling hand. "Now I'm going along on the old orders and the clock
tells ye that ye have a scant twinty minutes to wait. And if I do any more
talking, of the kind that ain't necessary, I'll break a rule. Be aisy,
Colonel Shaw!" He resumed his noisy promenade.
Mac Tavish was back on the stool and he clashed glances with Colonel Shaw
with alacrity.
"There'll be an upheaval in this office, Mac Tavish."
"Aye! If ye make one more step toward the mill door ye'll not ken of a
certainty whaur ye'll land when ye're upheaved."
After a few minutes of the silence of that armed truce, Miss Bunker
tiptoed over to Mac Tavish, making an excuse of a sheet of paper which she
laid before him; the paper was blank. "Daddy Mac!" Miss Bunker enjoyed
that privilege in nomenclature along with other privileges usually won in
offices by young ladies who know how to do their work well and are able to
smooth human nature the right way. She went on in a solicitous whisper.
"We must be sure that we're not making any office mistake. This being
Senator Corson!"
"I still hae me orders, lassie!"
"But listen, Daddy Mac! When I came from the post-office the Senator's car
went past me. Miss Lana was with him. Don't you think we ought to get a
word to Mr. Morrison?"
"Word o' what?" The old man wrinkled his nose, already sniffing what was
on the way.
"Why, that Miss Lana may be calling, along with her father."
"What then?"
"Mr. Morrison is a gentleman, above all things," declared the girl,
nettled by this supercilious interrogation. "If Miss Corson calls with her
father and is obliged to wait, Mr. Morrison will be mortified. Very likely
he will be angry because he wasn't notified. I understand the social end
of things better than you, Daddy Mac. I think it's my duty to take in a
word to him."
"Aye! Yus! Gude! And tell him the music is ready, the flowers are here,
and the tea is served! Use the office for all owt but the wool business.
To Auld Hornie wi' the wool business! Politeeks and socieety! Lass, are ye
gone daffie wi' the rest?"
"Hush, Daddy Mac! Don't raise your voice in your temper. What if he should
still be in love with Miss Lana, spite of her being away among the great
folks all this long time?"
Mac Tavish was holding the paper-weights. He banged them down on his desk
and shoved his nose close to hers. "Fash me nae mair wi' your silly talk
o' love, in business hours! If aye he wanted her when she was here at hame
and safe and sensible, the Morrison o' the Morrisons had only to reach his
hand to her and say, 'Coom, lass!' But noo that she is back wi' head high
and notions alaft, he'd no accept her! She's nowt but a draft signed by
Sham o' Shoddy and sent through the Bank o' Brag and Blaw! No! He'd no'
accept her! And now back wi' ye to yer tickety-tack! I hae my orders, and
the Queen o' Sheba might yammer and be no' the gainer!"
Miss Bunker swept up the sheet of blank paper with a vicious dab and went
back to her work, crumpling it. Passing the hat-tree, she was tempted to
grab the Morrison's coat and waistcoat and run into the mill with them,
dodging Mac Tavish and his paper-weights in spite of what she knew of his
threats regarding the use he proposed to make of them in case of need. She
believed that Miss Lana Corson would come to the office with the others
who were riding in the automobile. She had her own special cares and a
truly feminine apprehension in this matter, and she believed that the
young man, who was one of the guests at the reopened Corson mansion on
Corson Hill, was a suitor, just as Marion gossip asserted he was.
Miss Bunker had two good eyes in her head and womanly intuitiveness in her
soul, and she had read three times into empty air a dictated letter while
Stewart Morrison looked past her in the direction which the Corson car had
taken that first day when Lana Corson had shown herself on the street.
And here was that stiff-necked old watch-dog callously laying his corns so
that Stewart Morrison would appear to be boor enough to allow a young lady
to wait along with that unspeakable rabble; and when he did come he would
arrive in his shirt-sleeves to be matched up against a handsome young man
in an Astrakhan top-coat! Under those circumstances, what view would Miss
Lana Corson take of the man who had stayed in Marion? Miss Bunker was
profoundly certain that Mac Tavish did not know what love was and never
did understand and could not be enlightened at that period in his life.
But he might at least put the matter on a business basis, she reflected,
incensed, and show some degree of local pride in grabbing in with the rest
of Mr. Morrison's friends to assist in a critical situation.
And right then the situation became pointedly critical.
The broad door of the office was flung open by a chauffeur.
It was the Corson party.
Colonel Shaw was not in a mood to apologize for anybody except himself. He
rose and saluted. "Coming here to herald your call, Senator Corson, I have
been insulted by a bumptious understrapper and held in leash by an
ignorant policeman. They say it's according to a rule of the Morrison
mills. I suppose that when Mayor Morrison comes out of the mill at ten
o'clock, following his own rule, he can explain to you why he maintains
that insulting custom of his and continues this kind of an office crew to
enforce it."
Miss Bunker flung the sheet of paper that she had crumpled into a ball and
it struck Mac Tavish on the side of the head that he bent obtrusively over
his figures.
The old man snapped stiffly upright and distributed implacable stare among
the members of the newly arrived party. He was not softened by Miss
Corson's glowing beauty, nor impressed by the United States Senator's
dignity, nor won by the charming smile of Miss Corson's well-favored
squire, nor daunted by the inquiring scowl of a pompous man whose
mutton-chop whiskers mingled with the beaver fur about his neck; a
stranger who was patently prosperous and metropolitan.
Furthermore, Mac Tavish, undaunted, promptly dared to exchange growls with
"Old Dog Tray," himself. The latter, none else than His Excellency,
Lawrence North, Governor of the state, marched toward the wicket, wagging
his tail, but the wagging was not a display of amiability. The politicians
called North "Old Dog Tray" because his permanent limp caused his
coattails to sway when he walked.
"Be jing! I've been on the job here at manny a deal of a morn," confided
Officer Rellihan to Calvin Dow, "but here's the first natural straight
flush r'yal, dealt without a draw." He tagged the Corson party with
estimating squints, beginning with the Governor. "Ace, king, queen,
John-jack, and the ten-spot! They've caught the office, this time, with a
two-spot high!"
Mac Tavish played it pat! "And 'tis the mill rule; it lacks twal' meenutes
o' the hour--and the clock yon on the wall is richt!" Thus referring all
responsibility to the clock, the paymaster dipped his pen and went on with
his figures.
The Governor cross-creased the natural deep furrows in his face with
ridges which registered indignant amazement. "You have lost your wits, but
you seem to have your eyes! Use them!"
"It's the mill rule!"
"But we are not here on mill business!"
"Then it canna concern me."
"Officer, do you know what part of the mill Mayor Morrison is in?" The
Governor turned from Mac Tavish to Rellihan.
"He is nae sic thing as mayor till ten o' the clock and till he cooms here
for the crackin wi' yon corbies!" declared the old paymaster, pointing
derogatory penstock through the wicket at "the crows" who were ranged
along the settees.
Rellihan shook his head.
"Well, at any rate, go hunt him up," commanded His Excellency.
Rellihan shook his head again; this seemed to be an occasion where
unnecessary talking fell under interdiction; for that matter, Rellihan
possessed only a vocabulary to use in talking down to the proletariat; he
was debarred from telling these dignitaries to "shut up and sit aisy!"
"A blind man, now a dumb man--Colonel Shaw, go and hunt up the man we're
here to see!"
The colonel feigned elaborately not to hear.
"And finally a deaf one! Take off those ear-tabs! Go and bring the mayor
here!"
Mac Tavish dropped from his stool, armed himself with two paper-weights,
and took up a strategic position near the door which led into the passage
to the mill.
"Roderick Dhu at bay! Impressive tableau!" whispered the young man of the
Corson party in Lana's ear, displaying such significant and wonted
familiarity that Miss Bunker, employing her vigilance exclusively in the
direction in which her fears and her interest lay, sighed and muttered.
The door of the corridor was flung open suddenly! The staccato of the
orchestra of the looms sounded more loudly and provided entrance music.
Astonishment rendered Mac Tavish _hors de combat_. He dropped his weights
and his lower jaw sagged.
It was the Morrison--breaking the ancient rule of St. Ronan's--ten minutes
ahead of time!