Her father said sharply: “Get into your room, Agnes!” The girl looked at him, and at the anger in his eyes she turned a little pale and slipped silently away.
Amos took Wint to his room, where Wint fell helplessly across his bed and began instantly to snore. The Congressman looked down at him for an instant with a grim sort of pity mingled with the anger in his eyes. Then he bent and loosened Wint’s shoes and drew them off; and afterward he took off the boy’s collar, and unbuttoned his garments at the throat,and unbuckled his belt so that his sodden body should nowhere be constricted.
“I guess that’ll do, Wint,” he said slowly then. “You’re too heavy for me to handle. Besides, Wint—you ain’t right clean.” He stood for a moment longer, then turned toward the door. At the door he looked back once, snapped out the light, and so was gone.
Wint’s snores were unbroken.
The Caretall home stood in that end of town where the largest of the furnaces is located. A railroad siding passes this furnace, and a switching engine is busy here twenty-four hours of the day. The engine occasionally finds occasion to whistle; and the furnace itself has a whistle of enormous proportions; a siren whose blast carries for miles across the hills. This siren blows at every change of shift, it blows at casting time, and it blows at the whim of the engineer who may wish to startle some casual visitor or friend.
Persons who have lived long in this part of Hardiston grow accustomed to this great whistle. They sleep undisturbed when it rouses the night echoes; and they talk undisturbed when it shatters the peace of the day. It is even told of some of them that when the furnace went out of blast and its whistle was stilled, they used to be awakened in the middle of the night by the failure of the siren to sound at the accustomed time.
Wint’s own home was in the other end of town. He had not lived long enough near the furnace to accustom himself to its noises; and they disturbed him. They penetrated his stupefied sleep on the night of this debauch. The steady roar of the great fires, which could be heard three or four miles on a still night, played on his worn nerves and tortured them; the sharp toots of the switching engine made him jump and quiver in his sleep like a dreaming child; and when he woke in the morning to find Amos shaking him by the shoulder, he was miserable and sick and his head throbbed with the beat of a thousand drums, and seemed like to split with agony. He wished, weakly, that it would split and be done.
When he opened his bloodshot eyes, Amos laughed andjerked him upright and shook some of the slumber out of him. “Come, Wint,” he commanded heartily. “I’ve got a cold tub all ready. Jump in it. Got to get in shape, y’know. Inaugurated t’day.”
Wint groaned and held his head in both hands. “Hell with it,” he scowled. “Inaugural. Whole damn business. I’m not goin’ to do it. Goin’ sleep. Hell with it, I say.”
He tried to drop back on the bed, but Amos laughed and caught him and dragged him to his feet. “Come out of it,” he enjoined. “You’ll be all right.”
Wint shook his head stubbornly; then cried out with pain at the shaking. The fumes of the liquor were gone out of him; he was only dreadfully sleepy and dreadfully sick. He felt as though he were pulled and tortured by pricking wires that tore his flesh, and his eyelids were as heavy as lead and as hot as coals upon his bloodshot eyes. But he opened them, and said heavily: “No, Congressman Caretall. It’s off. I won’t do it. I’m through.”
It was as Amos groped for a next word that the siren began to blow. This was the signal for the morning’s casting. The engineer must have been in good spirits that morning, for he gave more than full measure on the blast. The whistle shrieked and roared till the very windows rattled and shivered in their places; and Wint, at the first sound, whipped up his hands to shield his agonized ears, and dropped on the bed and held his head and groaned until his groan became almost a shriek with the pain. Then, when the siren died into silence, he got dully to his feet, and glared at Amos, who said huskily: “I’d like t’ kill man that did that. Like to dynamite that whistle. Anything—make it keep quiet.”
Amos suddenly smiled; then he chuckled. “Well, Wint,” he said quickly, “there’s ways to make it keep quiet.”
Wint looked at him with torpid interest. “I’ll bite,” he said. “Tell me one.”
Amos waved his hands. “Why, f’r instance, the Mayor has power to enforce the abatement of a nuisance. Make them shut off that whistle, if it’s a nuisance. Anything like that.”
Wint swayed on his feet, and steadied himself with a handon the foot of the bed. “Can the Mayor do a thing like that—on the square?”
“Why, sure,” said Amos.
Wint grinned; a cracked and painful grin, but mirthful too; and he took a step forward. “Then say,” he exclaimed. “Then say! There’s something in this Mayor job, after all....”
“Sure there is!”
Wint gripped Amos’ arm. “Lead me to that cold, cold tub,” he enjoined.
END OF BOOK II
THE inauguration of a small-town Mayor is no great matter for excitement. But Hardiston was interested in Wint, and wanted to have a look at him, so everybody came to see him step into his new responsibilities.
The Hardiston council chamber was on the second floor of the fire house. This was a three-story building of red brick, and a place of awe and wonder for the small boys of the town. The fire engine and the hose cart were kept on the ground floor, in front. Behind them were the stalls for the four sleek horses; behind the stalls again, a number of iron-barred stalls for human beings. Here were housed the minor criminals, arrested by Marshal Jim Radabaugh for petty peculations or disorders, and waiting for their hearings before the Mayor. These little cells were not designed to house prisoners for any length of time, and for the most part they were furnished simply with heaps of straw pilfered from the supply that was kept for the fire horses. The town drunkard, when the marshal got him, was treated as well as the fire horses; and this is more than may be said in larger towns than Hardiston.
At the left-hand side of the building there was an entrance hall, through which one passed to reach the stairs that led up to the council chamber. In the middle of this square hallway hung a rope, with a knot on the end. This rope disappeared through a hole in the ceiling. If you pulled it in the proper fashion, the bell in the steeple began a chattering, staccato beat like the clanging of a gong. This was the fire bell; and when it rang the fire chief came from his feed store across the street, and the firemen came from the bakery, and the hardware store, and the blacksmith shop where they worked;and the fat fire horses—they doubled in the street-cleaning department—came on the gallop from their abandoned wagons in the streets. Then everybody got into harness of one kind or another and went to the fire.
Everybody in town wanted to ring that fire bell. Any one who discovered a fire and reached the fire house with the news was privileged to do it. There was a tradition that a boy once tried to ring the bell and was jerked clear off the floor by the rebound after his first tug at the rope. This added to the wonder and the mystery of it. The boys used to hang around the doorway, watching this rope, and occasionally fingering it in a gingerly way, and wishing a fire would start somewhere so that they might see the bell rung.
It was through this hall where the rope hung that the people of Hardiston crowded to see Wint inaugurated. They went up the worn, wooden stairs into the council chamber, and they packed themselves in on the benches in the rear of the room. This was not only the council chamber; it was the seat of the Mayor’s court. There was an enclosure, surrounded by a railing. When some of the bigger, or perhaps it was only the braver, men of the town came in, they sat inside this railing, tilting their chairs back against it, with a spittoon drawn within easy range. The crowd came early; and they talked in cheerfully loud tones while they waited. One by one the aldermen drifted in, the new ones and the old. And Marshal Jim Radabaugh was there; and the clerk and the other officials arrived and took their places within the enclosure. They were carelessly matter of fact, as though the inauguration of a new Mayor was an everyday matter. The boys, perched on the window sills, whistled, and giggled, and then subsided into frightened silence to watch with staring eyes.
Amos Caretall had let Wint sleep as late as possible this morning. Wint needed the sleep, and Congressman Caretall made it his business to study the needs of his fellow men. His Congressional creed, which he summarized upon occasion, was as simple as that. “If a bill’s aimed to make you folks at home here more comfo’table, I’m for it,” he would say.“If it ain’t, I’m against it; and that’s all the way of it with me.” So he let Wint sleep this morning until the last minute, then shook him into wakefulness.
Even then, Wint might have thrown the whole thing over but for that whistle. He was sick and sore, his head hurt, and his eyes could not bear even the dim light of his bedroom. He told Amos he would not go through with it, that he would not be inaugurated. Then the whistle blew, and when Amos said it would be a part of his powers as Mayor to stop that plagued whistle if he wanted to, the idea struck Wint’s sense of humor. He grinned, and decided there was something in being Mayor, after all, and climbed unsteadily out of bed.
After the tub of cold water which Amos had waiting for him, he felt better. After old Maria Hale’s breakfast—fried eggs, and country-cured ham, and three cups of strong coffee—he felt better still. But he was not yet himself. Physically, he was acutely comfortable, blissfully comfortable. His legs and his arms felt warm; they tingled. His head did not hurt; it was merely numb. It was true that his tongue was furry and thick, so that he had to talk very carefully when he talked at all; but save for this precision of speech, there was no mark on him of the night before. He was young enough to recover quickly, his cheeks were red, his eyes were lazily clear.
But it was not to be denied that his head was numb. He was in something like a daze when he went out with Amos and started toward the fire-engine house. The day was bright and warm for the season, and the sun was cheerful. Wint enjoyed the walk. But he had to keep his eyes shut much of the time. The light hurt them. When he heard Amos speak to some one they passed, he also spoke. When Amos talked to him, he answered. But his answers were idle and unconsidered; he was too comfortable to think.
They went up some stairs after a while, and Wint understood that they had arrived. He heard people talking all together, and then one at a time. Men said things, and Amos nudged him, and he made replies. He could hear what others said to him. They mumbled hurriedly, as though over sometoo-familiar formula. There was nothing particularly impressive, or dignified, in the proceedings. The light from the windows at the back of the room hurt Wint’s eyes, so he still kept them half shut. The people before him were merely black shadows, silhouetted against this glare. He could not see who any of them were.
After a time, some one—it sounded like a small boy—yelled: “Speech!” And others took up the cry, and Amos nudged Wint. So Wint stood up again and said with that careful precision which the condition of his tongue demanded: “I’ve nothing to say. I’ll let what I do, do the talking for me.”
That seemed to be satisfactory. Every one cheered, so that the noise hurt his ears. Then he sat down. A moment later, every one got up, and he got up, and they all began to crowd around him, and to crowd toward the door. Somebody came up and shook hands with Wint, and he recognized the voice of V. R. Kite. He had never liked Kite; the man was like a foul bird. A buzzard. The idea pleased Wint. He said cheerfully:
“To hell with you, you old buzzard.”
He heard Amos chuckle, somewhere near him. Every one else stood very still. So Wint strode past Kite to the stairs, and Amos followed him, and Peter Gergue followed Amos. They went back home to Amos’s house. Once, on the way, Wint asked:
“That all there is to it?”
Amos said: “Land, no, that’s just the beginning.”
Wint chuckled. He was beginning to enjoy himself. But he was very sleepy. When they got home, he went to bed and slept till dinner was ready, and he slept all the afternoon, and he went to bed for the night as soon as supper was done.
Amos had been thinking he ought to get back to Washington. He was glad Wint went off to bed, because there were two or three matters he wanted to attend to. One of these matters had to do with Jack Routt. Amos was not sure of his ground in that direction, but he had his suspicions. He sent for PeterGergue after supper, and Gergue came quickly at the summons. They sat down before the coal fire, and Peter filled his pipe in careful imitation of Amos, and the two men smoked together in silence for a space, while Amos considered what to say.
Peter was one of those unfortunate men who do not like silences. This put him at a disadvantage before Amos, who could be silent indefinitely. It was Amos’s chief superiority over Peter, and it gave the Congressman his mastery over the man. This night as always, it was Peter who spoke first. He puffed at his pipe, and he said:
“Well, Amos, you’ll be gittin’ back to Washin’ton.”
Amos turned his head, tilted it on one side, and squinted at Peter. “I guess so,” he agreed.
“Thought you’d be going,” said Peter. “Wint’ll miss you.”
“Do you think he’ll know he misses me?” Amos asked.
“If he did,” said Peter, “he wouldn’t admit it.”
The Congressman nodded. “Wint’s a cur’ous cuss. Peter.”
“Yeah.”
“He’s a nice boy—give him a chance.”
“We-ell, he’s got his chance.”
“What’s he going to do with it, Peter?”
Gergue rummaged through his black hair thoughtfully. “Guess that depends on what he’s let do with it. Somebody come along and tell him he ought to make a good Mayor, and he’ll make a bad one, just to show he can’t be bossed.”
“That’s right.” Amos agreed. He considered, grinned to himself. “You know, Pete, if we could get Kite to sign on as Wint’s guide, philosopher, and friend. Wint’d do all right.”
Gergue considered, and he chuckled. “Sure. If he went contrary to what Kite said. And he would. Wint’s always on the contrary-minded side of a thing.”
“Now why is that?” Caretall asked.
“That’s because he’s who he is, I sh’d say.”
Amos puffed deep at his black pipe. “Trouble is,” he commented, “Kite wouldn’t take the job. Not after what Wint handed him to-day. You heard that?”
Gergue grinned widely. “Yeah. The old buzzard. Say,that surely does hit Kite. The way he holds his head. I’d always thought of a turkey, but I guess a buzzard does it too. Like he was always looking over a wall.”
“What I’d like to see,” said Amos, “is some one that would guarantee to give Wint bad advice.”
“We-ell,” Peter told him, “I can do some of that.”
“Trouble is, there’s others will tell him to do the right thing.”
“You talk like James T. Hollow,” said Gergue. “Always trying to do what’s right.”
“I wonder,” said Amos casually, “whether them that tell him to keep straight figure he’ll do what they say?”
Peter understood that there was something back of the question; he studied Amos’s impassive face. Then he thought for a minute, and nodded his head.
“You mean Jack Routt,” he said.
“Yes,” the Congressman agreed.
Peter considered. “I don’t quite know about Jack,” he said. “He lets on to be Wint’s friend. But he don’t help Wint any. Jack’s got a way of telling Wint to do a thing that works the opposite every darned time.”
“I’ve a notion,” said Caretall, “that if Routt was to tell Wint to take care of his health, say, Wint’d go shoot himself, just to be different.”
“That’s right,” Gergue agreed; and the two men sat for a time without speaking, their pipes bubbling, the smoke drifting upward lazily.
“Question is,” said Caretall at last, “what are we going to do about it?” Gergue made no comment, and Amos asked: “What do you think, Peter?”
“I don’t see through Routt,” said Gergue. “I don’t see what he’s got on his mind.”
“Looks to me that he’s plain ornery,” Amos suggested.
“I guess that’s right.”
“But that don’t get us anywheres. I’d like to have him let Wint alone.”
“He’d ought to.”
“How can we make him let Wint alone?” Amos asked.
Peter considered that, fingers rummaging about the back of his head. “Routt’s looking for something,” he said. “Maybe he wants to be prosecuting attorney. Or something. I don’t know.”
“He never will be,” said Amos.
“I guess that’s right.”
“Not as long as I can swing any votes here.”
“Question is,” said Peter, “whether he knows you feel that way.”
“No,” Amos told him. “He don’t know.”
Peter looked sidewise at Amos. “He might be bought,” he suggested. “Or he might be scared. I don’t know. He may be yellow. If he is, you could scare him.”
Amos’s pipe went out, and he rapped it into his palm and treasured the charred crumbs to prime his next smoke. “Peter,” he said thoughtfully, “I’d like to see Jack. To-night.”
Gergue was a good servant. He got up at once. “All right, Amos,” he said.
Caretall went with him to the door. “I’m taking the noon train, to-morrow,” he told Gergue.
“I’ll be there,” said Peter.
Amos shut the door behind him and went back to the fire. He sat there for a while, considering. Then he went out into the hall and called Agnes. She was in her room; and she came running down, very gay and pretty in a blue-flowered kimono, her hair down her back in a golden braid. Amos looked at her thoughtfully. There was always a wistful question in his eyes when he looked at Agnes. He met her at the foot of the stairs, and he asked:
“Agnes, how’d you like to go to Washington?”
Now the girl had gone to Washington one winter with Amos. And she had not liked it. Amos was just a small-town Congressman, one of scores. And his daughter was just a pretty girl, and nothing more. Amos was a small toad in that big puddle; Agnes had found herself not even a tadpole. And—that did not please Agnes. Here in Hardiston, she was the daughter of the biggest man in town; and she was theprettiest girl in town, some said. At least, they told her so. Jack Routt, and some of the other boys.
“I wouldn’t like it at all, dad,” she told Amos laughingly. “Washington is a dead old place beside Hardiston.”
“I’m thinking of taking you,” Amos said, watching her with something like sorrow in his eyes.
“I haven’t any clothes,” she protested. “I’m not ready, at all. I’d rather not go, dad.”
“I’d rather you would,” he repeated gently.
She pouted. “Why? You’re always away. I’d never see you. I’d have nothing to do at all. I—”
“I’d rather not leave you and Wint alone here. Wouldn’t be just the thing,” her father insisted gently.
She laughed. “You funny old daddy. We’d have Maria for chaperon.”
“Wouldn’t be just the thing,” Amos said again.
“I’m not going to eat Wint,” she protested, half angry. “We get along beautifully.”
“Guess you’d better go along with me,” Amos told her.
She stamped her foot. “Dad, I don’t want to.”
Amos jerked a forefinger up the stair, head on one side, eyes steady. “Run along and pack, Agnes,” he said. “Won’t be much time in the morning.”
Agnes began to cry. Amos watched her for a moment, watched her bowed head, and a load seemed to settle on the man’s big shoulders. He turned back to the sitting room without a word. After a while, he heard her run up the stairs, every pound of her little feet scolding him, as a bird scolds.
Amos filled his pipe and began to smoke again.
Jack Routt came late. While he waited, Amos had smoked two pipes to the last bubble. When Jack knocked, he got up lumberingly and went to the door to let the young man in. “Come in,” he said curtly. “Hang up your things.”
He went back and sat down before the fire, and Jack Routt joined him there. Amos looked up at him sidewise. “Sit down, Routt,” he said. “Take a chair. Any chair.”
Routt sat down. “Gergue said you wanted to see me,” he reminded Amos.
“Yes,” Amos agreed. “I told him to tell you.”
“Came as soon as I could,” said Routt.
“That’s all right,” said Amos. “I wasn’t in a hurry. I’m hardly ever in any hurry. Things come, give them time.” The colloquialisms had fallen from his speech. Amos talked as well as any one when he chose; when he was with Hardiston folks, he talked as they talked. Routt was a college man.
Routt fidgeted in his chair. He had always been somewhat afraid of Amos. He wondered what the Congressman wanted now, but Amos did not tell him. He just sat, staring at the fire, smoking. Like Gergue, Routt was driven to break the silence.
“What did you want with me, Amos?” he asked.
Amos spat into the fire. “Wanted to talk things over, Jack,” he said. “I’m going to Washington to-morrow.”
“I’ve been expecting you’d go back.”
“Well, I’m going.”
Another silence, while Routt moved uneasily. At last he said: “You put Wint over, all right.”
“Yes,” Amos agreed. “I put him over.” He looked at Routt then, with eyes unexpectedly keen. “Think he’ll make a good Mayor, do you?”
“Well,” said Routt slowly, “he’ll be all right if he lets the booze alone.”
Amos caught Routt’s eyes and held them commandingly. “Jack,” he said, “I want you to let Wint alone.”
Routt asked angrily: “Me? What do you mean?”
“I don’t want you giving him any advice, and I don’t want you getting him drunk. I want you to let him alone. Is that clear?”
Routt protested: “I’m the best friend Wint’s got.”
“You’re the worst enemy he’s got,” said Amos. “And you know it.”
“You can’t say that,” Routt pleaded.
Amos did not let go the other man’s eyes. “You got Wintdrunk, day before election,” he said. “You got him drunk last night. Routt, don’t you do that again.”
“I got him drunk? Good Lord, Congressman, Wint’s a grown man. I’m not his keeper.”
“I made you his keeper, before election,” said Amos. “I told you to keep him straight. You didn’t do it. You got him drunk. Now I tell you, let him alone.”
“I tried to keep him from drinking,” Routt urged.
“You said to him, ‘Don’t you drink, Wint. It ain’t good for you. You can’t stand it.’ So he drank, to show you he could stand it. Just as you knew he would.” Amos got up with a swiftness surprising in that slow-moving man. He said harshly: “Routt, get your hat and get out. And mind what I say. You let Wint alone.”
Some men would have sworn at Amos, some would have defied him. Routt was the sort to promise anything. He said, with an assumption of straightforward frankness:
“Why, of course, if you say so, I’ll keep away from him.”
“See that you do,” said Amos. “Now—good night.”
When the door closed behind Routt, Amos stood for a minute in the hall, thinking. “Now I wonder,” he asked himself. “Will he do it? Was he scared enough to keep hands off? I wonder, now.”
Routt, half a block away, was grinning without mirth. “Damn him,” he said to himself. “Him and Wint too. I’ll....”
He wondered just what he had best do; and before he reached home, he had decided to go and see V. R. Kite.
Congressman Caretall and Agnes took the noon train, next day. Wint went with them to the station, and Amos had a last word for him.
“Don’t you get the idea I’ve left you on your own, Wint,” he said. “You’ll need help. Things’ll come up. When they do, don’t you try to stand on your own feet. Just write me—or telegraph. And I’ll come, or tell you what to do.
“You’ll run into trouble. Don’t you try to fight it alone. Just you call on me.”
Then the train pulled out. Wint watched it go; and when it rounded the curve and disappeared beyond the electric-light plant, he grinned.
“Run to you when I need help, will I, Amos?” he asked good-naturedly, under his breath. “I guess not. You’ve left me alone. And I’m going to stand on my own hind legs. On my own two feet, by God!”
He turned and went swiftly back uptown.
THE months of that winter passed quietly in Hardiston. The excitement of the election was not forgotten; the drama of Wint’s choice as Mayor became one of the stories to be told about the stoves on cold home-keeping days. But Wint himself was no longer an object of curious interest; he was just the Mayor. An inconsiderable figure in the town. There had been Mayors in the past, and there would be again. Never amounted to much, one way or another. Hardiston went along just the same; the winters were just as cold, the summers just as hot, the rains just as wet, the sun just as warm.
Hardiston is infamous for its winters and for its summers. In the spring or in the fall there is no lovelier spot. In the spring, apple blossoms clothe the hills; in the fall the woods are great splashes of flame against the dull green of the fields. But in winter the mercury drops far below zero, and climbs forty degrees in half a day. The snow comes tempestuously, eight, ten, twelve inches of it; and it melts as quickly as it comes. The roads turn into mud at the first snow; they remain mud till the increasing heat of the northing sun bakes them to dust. On Monday, every water pipe in town freezes tight; on Tuesday, violets bloom in sheltered corners about the houses. On a cold morning, adventurous boys skate on the film of ice that forms on streams and ponds; but by noon the ice is unsafe, and some one has broken through, and by mid-afternoon, it is freezing hard again.
This winter in Hardiston was like all others. The new Mayor stuck strictly to business. Jack Routt let him alone. When boys were arrested for misdemeanor, or children of a larger growth for more pretentious wrongs, they were brought before Wint and he passed sentence upon them, marveling thathe, Wint Chase, should be passing judgment on his fellow man. At first, this feature of his work shamed him; later it awed him, and made him look into his own heart and ask whether he were fit for such a rôle. He tried to make himself fit.
To act as judge of the Mayor’s court and to preside at council meetings comprised the bulk of Wint’s official duties. They took only a fraction of his time. When the electric-light plant went out of commission with a broken cylinder head, Wint had to do the explaining; when a sewer became stopped up, he had to see that it was opened; when the old project for a sewage-disposal plant came up on its annual burst of life, he had to consider it. When Ned Howell filed his regular yearly suit for damages done to his pasture by overflow from the sewage-filled creek, Wint had to attend court and testify. But—there was time on his hands and to spare. He did not know what to do with himself.
He did not undertake any crusades. A certain diffidence, in these first months, restrained him. He was not sure of his ground; he was not sure of himself. V.R. Kite’s underlings continued to peddle their wares, and the Mayor’s court had to deal, now and then, with one of Kite’s bibulous customers. Wint dealt with them, but he did not dig for the root of the evil, to tear it out. Matters in Hardiston went on much as they had in the past. Men rose, did their day’s work, ate, and went to bed again. Women likewise. The annual Chautauqua lecture course began and was finished; Number Four theatrical companies came to town with Broadway attractions, played one-night stands, and departed as they had come. The moving-picture houses had new films every day, and the same audiences day after day. The dramatic teacher in the high school organized a pageant, and it was presented to the eyes of admiring parents in the Rink. The high school played basket ball, the women played bridge, the men played poker of a night. Now and then the Masons or the Knights of Pythias gave a dance. The preachers preached sermons in which they tried to prove there was nothing the matter with the churches. The schools developed their annual scandal over the dischargeof a school-teacher. There were the regular rumors of a new factory that was to come to town; and the rumors fell through in the regular way. Now and then a baby was born, now and then there was a wedding, now and then there was a funeral.
Wint stuck to his guns, and the world rolled majestically and interminably on.
When Wint took hold of his job, he wondered what there was for him to do. Dick Hoover told him. Dick was a lawyer, in with his father, who had the biggest practice in town. He showed Wint where to look, in the statute books, for the duties of a Mayor. Wint was surprised to discover that laws were simple, everyday things, having to do with life as it was lived. One day when he went to Dick’s office to look up a statute, the book he sought was in use. To kill time, he took down a volume of Blackstone and peered into it curiously. He discovered that Blackstone said water was a “movable, wandering thing,” and the description fascinated him. He read on....
The more law he read, the more interested he became. In January, he asked Dick Hoover if it were possible to study law in leisure hours. Hoover told him it was not only possible, it was easy. The end of January saw Wint putting in his spare time on calfskin-bound volumes of which each page was one-third reading matter and two-thirds footnotes. The first day he picked up a book of cases was marked with a red letter on his mental calendar. He found these cases as interesting as fiction.
He began to read law systematically. Dick Hoover’s father was interested, helped him. The elder Hoover told Wint’s father one day:
“Chase, your boy is going to make a lawyer before he’s through.”
The senior Chase looked at Hoover, half minded to resent the fact that his son had been mentioned in his presence. But—the old wound was healing. Men no longer took occasion to remind him of last fall’s election with a jeer in their eyes. His conditional alliance with Kite had languished,because Wint had made no move to make the town dry. Chase hated Amos Caretall as ardently as ever; but he could not hate his son. That is not the way with fathers. He loved Wint; he had been, for some time, secretly proud of him.
He said to Hoover: “He’s smart enough, if he sticks to it.”
“He’s sticking,” Hoover told Wint’s father.
Winthrop Chase, Senior, nodded indifferently, hiding the light in his eyes. “He never stuck to anything before,” he said, and turned away.
He thought of telling Wint’s mother, that night, but did not do so. When he spoke of Wint to her, it precipitated one of her endless remarks. They wearied him. But he had to tell some one, so he told Hetty Morfee, when he went to the kitchen for a drink of water. Hetty was washing dishes at the time, and she stopped with a plate in one hand and a dish-rag in the other, and listened, and said with a cheerful wistfulness in her voice:
“Wint’s smart, sir. You’ll be proud of him.”
Chase was proud of him, but he would not admit it to himself, much less to Hetty.
“He’s smart enough,” he told her. “But he’s ... He’s....”
He turned abruptly and went out of the kitchen without saying what Wint was, and Hetty looked after him with understanding in her smile. Then her face became still and somber again. There was growing in Hetty’s eyes a certain unhappy light. A desperate fashion of unhappiness, which no one was sufficiently interested to notice. She was not so cheerful as she used to be. And there was a helplessness about her.
Word of Wint’s new industry spread slowly through Hardiston. It was Dick Hoover himself who told Joan of it. Dick was a Mason, and he took Joan to a Masonic dance one night. She spoke of Wint. “I have heard that he is studying law,” she said. “Is it true?”
So Dick told her. “True as Gospel,” he said. “And he’s darned quick to pick it up, too. The principles.... Of course, it will take time. But I’d just as soon have him try a case for me now, as some of these....”
He went on enthusiastically. Hoover was always enthusiastic about things. He was an extremist. His friends were the finest chaps in the world, his enemies were the least of created things. But he had few enemies. People liked him, and he liked people. Joan liked him; liked him particularly this evening because he talked to her of Wint.
Joan Arnold was, in a way of speaking, a girl to tie to. There was a peculiar steadfastness in her. She was a little taller than Wint, and she was habitually grave and quiet, especially when she was with him. In his presence she had always been faintly abashed and reticent as a girl is apt to be in the presence of a man she cares for. Joan had always cared for Wint. In spite of the fact that she was a year or two his junior, they had played together as children: and they had grown up together. When they were little children, they fought as only good friends can fight. When they were a little older, Wint scorned her because she was a girl. A year or so later, she scorned Wint because she was at the age when girls resolve to have a career and never marry at all. But in their late teens, they were devoted to each other, so that the mothers of the town smiled when they passed by, and nodded to each other, and whispered, with the delight women take in such matters, that they were a nice-looking couple together. Wint’s short, sturdy strength matched well the girl’s slightly larger stature and her quiet poise.
The first passage of affection between them had come when she was eighteen, when he went away to college. Before that they had been much together, but none save the most casual words had passed between them. The night before Wint went away, he went to see her. He was feeling adventurous and heroic and important as a boy does feel when he leaves home for the first time. He talked vastly, of big things he meant to do, of his dreams. She thrilled to his dreams with the half of her that was still child; she smiled at his enthusiasm with the half that was already woman. They were sitting on the porch of her home. There were locust trees about the veranda. They sat in a two-seated swing, facing each other, Wint leaning toward her earnestly.
He became melancholy, and she comforted him softly. He did not want to go away, he said. She told him he would be happy. The movement of the swing made him lean toward her. There was a moon, and the September evening was warm, and the very air seemed trembling in a rhythm that beat upon them both.
When he got up to go, she got up at the same time, and the swing lurched and threw them together. Ineptly, he kissed her, fumblingly, on the cheek. She did not move, she trembled where she stood. He took her awkwardly in his arms, as though afraid she would break, and kissed her cheek again. He rubbed his cheek against hers. She looked at him with wide eyes, lips a little parted, and he kissed her lips. They were cool, unused to kisses.
The months thereafter, till Wint was expelled from college, passed smoothly with them. Too smoothly, too placidly. They wrote short, broken letters; they saw each other when Wint came home. They thought they were very happy; yet each was conscious of a lack in their happiness. There was no fire in it, none of the exquisite anguish of love. They missed this, without knowing what they missed. All went too well with them.
Joan wept on her pillow when he was expelled, but she did not let him see her weep. She reassured him. There was an unsuspected strength in her. Women are full of these surprises. They are indescribably dainty creatures, habitually clad in fabrics like gossamer, seeming light as air and fit to vanish at a breath, who reveal—in a bathing suit, for instance—a surprising physical solidity. It was so, spiritually, with Joan. She was so quiet and so still that Wint, if he had thought at all, would have supposed she was a simple girl and nothing more; but in the revelations of his disaster, she showed a poise and a power which heartened him immensely, and made him a little afraid of her. She was a tower of strength for him to lean upon, a miracle of understanding and of sympathy.
He had expected her to be shocked and revolted at the shame of his expulsion; she was simply sorry for him, and loved him none the less. Wint knew, then, how much he loved her.There is nothing that so inspires love in a man as to find himself beloved. This is the conceit of the creature!
Joan had told Wint that she was done with him, when the story of his drunken sleep in the Weaver House went abroad through Hardiston. But—she had done it for his sake. She thought there was good in him. How could she love him else? She thought it might come out if he had to fight; she thought his very stubbornness might save him. Joan had no illusions about Wint. She knew he was prideful and stubborn. But—she loved him. And so had told him she would have no more of him. With a reservation in her heart....
Thus what Dick Hoover told her made Joan happy; happier than Hoover could possibly guess. Another girl would have cried herself to sleep with happiness that night, but Joan was not given to tears. She lay awake for a long time, thinking....
Three or four days later, she met Wint on the street. They had met thus, often, for Hardiston is a small place. But heretofore they passed with a word, unsmiling. This time, Wint would have passed her in that fashion; but Joan stopped and spoke to him.
“Wint,” she said.
He had been sick with hunger for a word from her for weeks. He stopped as though she had struck him, and his cheeks burned red as fire. He could not have spoken, for his life. He stood, hat in hand, face crimson, staring at her.
Joan knew what she wished to say. “I want you to know that I am proud of you, Wint,” she said.
His impulse was to laugh, to reject her friendliness. The old Wint, stiff with pride, would have done this. But the old Wint was gone; or at least, he was going. This Wint who stood before Joan tried to find something to say, but all he found to say to her was:
“Oh!”
Joan smiled at him. “There was a time when I wouldn’t have dared say this, Wint,” she said. “But I do dare now. Stick to the fight, Wint. This is what I want to say.”
He said, sullen in his embarrassment: “I’m going to.”
“There was a time when you were not going to—just because I—your friends—told you to stick.”
Wint looked away from her. “Well, that’s all right,” he told her uncomfortably.
“There’s never any harm in having friends, Wint, and taking their advice,” she said.
The old impatience burst out for a moment. “Don’t preach,” he said harshly.
“I’m not going to preach.” She was afraid she had spoiled it all. But he reassured her, hot with shame at his own decency.
“It’s all right, Joan,” he said. “I know you mean to help. I’ll try.”
“Do try,” she echoed softly.
He nodded, and she watched him, and at last added:
“I’d like to have you come to see me some time.”
He hesitated, then he said swiftly: “All right. Some time. Good-by!”
He jerked his head in farewell and hurried away as though he were afraid of her. Joan watched him go, and she pressed her hand to her lips as though to still them.
WHEN Wint left Joan, after their encounter on the street, he was walking in a daze. He stumbled, his head was down, his eyes were blank. He was stunned and humbled; and after he had left her, he began to feel defiant. He thought of words with which he could have crushed her and silenced her. Presuming to forgive him, to praise him. What right had she to do that anyway? He ought to have laughed at her.
Not that Wint did not love Joan. He did; but he was still, at this time, a boy and nothing more. And he had rather more than a boy’s usual measure of stubborn contrariness in him. When his father, and his mother, and Joan, and every one else he cared for had bade him mend his ways, he had refused to mend them, and the thing had been a scandal on every tongue in Hardiston. When, in like fashion, father and mother and Joan bade him go to the dogs, whither he seemed surely bound, he had braced himself, fought a good fight, begun to make good. Now Joan was telling him he had made good, that he was all right. He had a reckless desire to go to the devil, forthwith, to prove her wrong.
He had met Joan at the corner by the Star Company’s furniture store, an institution that was always holding fire sales and closing-out sales without either fires before or actual closings after. Their talk there together had not gone unremarked. Every one in town would know of it within the day. When they separated, Joan went away from town toward her home, and Wint went up Broadway toward the Court House. Not that he knew where he was going. But he had to go somewhere.
There were only one or two places in Hardiston to go to when you did not know where to go. You might go to the Smoke House, and shake dice for a cigar, or drop a nickel in the slot machine and see how your luck was running. Or you might drop in at the Post Office in the idle hope that a special train had come along with a letter for you since the last regular mail was sorted into the boxes. Or you might stop at one of the newspaper offices. The editors were always willing to talk, and there were usually two or three others there before you.
Wint headed, somewhat aimlessly, for the Post Office. But when he passed down Main Street, B. B. Beecham, editor of theJournal, called Wint in to look at proofs of some city printing. Wint always got on well with B. B. The editor never preached, he never seemed to have any particular interest in the wrong-doings of other people, he attended to his own business and let you attend to yours. A square-built man, with a big barrel of a chest and stocky shoulders, and a strong, amiable countenance. Wint went in at his hail; and B. B. got the proofs for him, and Wint began to look them over. B. B. chunked up the fire in the little round iron stove that had seen so many years of service it was disintegrating. It was bound together with wire to hold it together; and there were holes in the front of it through which the fire could be seen. The stovepipe went up at an angle like that of the leaning tower of Pisa, then made a back-handed elbow turn and ran along in a hammock of wire braces to disappear into the wall. B. B. thrust a bit of wood in through the door, down into the fire, twisted it upward, breaking up the clotted coals and ashes. Then he put on more coal, and shut the door, and the fire roared up the chimney. Wint was going over the proofs, figure by figure. They had to do with bids on a sewer contract. B. B. sat down at his desk with his back to Wint and busied himself with something.
B. B.’s desk was a roll top, its pigeonholes frazzly with letters and papers jammed into them to the bursting point. The desk itself was littered with newspapers and notes and notebooks and scratch pads made out of old order blanks.There was an old iron inkwell, a tin box full of pins, a pencil or two. In a little hexagonal glass bottle at one side, a newly hatched humming bird which had fallen from the nest and been killed was preserved in alcohol. Not so large as a bumblebee, and not nearly so impressive. For paper weight, B. B. used a witch ball, taken from the stomach of a steer that Ned Howell had butchered. A round, smooth, yellowish thing, with a hole picked in to show the hair inside. It was as big as a small orange, and looked not unlike one, save that the yellow was dull and muddy. On top of the desk were books, a big hornet’s nest, an ear of corn. There was a curiously marked squash on the open iron safe in the corner; and in the rear of the office a stand-up desk and a smaller one at which a person might sit were littered with the miscellany of B. B.’s business.
While Wint was looking over the proofs, an old darky came in from the street. A ragged old man.... Wint knew him. He lived down the creek in a log cabin, and caught catfish, and farmed a plot of ground. His hat was battered, his coat was too big for him, his trousers slumped about his slumping shoes. His name was John Marshum. He took off his hat and looked around the ceiling of the office uneasily, as though he expected it to fall, and Wint and B. B. said hello to him, and he said:
“Howdy.”
B. B. asked: “Is there anything I can do for you?”
The old negro gulped, and said: “I’d like tuh borry a paper and a pencil, ef you please.”
B. B. gave him what he asked for, and the old man sat down at the desk in the back of the room, and bit his tongue, and gnawed the pencil, and began to write with infinite pains, slowly, the sweat bursting out of him with the effort. Wint and B. B. went on with their affairs.
After a while, the old fellow got up and crossed to B. B. and held out the product of his effort. “Heah’s a paper for you, suh,” he said. When B. B. took it, the old man hurried awkwardly out of the door and disappeared.
B. B. read the paper and chuckled, and Wint asked: “Whatis it?” The editor handed it to him, and he read the scrawl aloud: