“I don’t like to see you letting Amos use you.”
“Aside from that, isn’t it a good thing to clean up the town, no matter what the motive?”
“You’ll find in your law books somewhere the statement that the motive determines the deed,” Chase told him.
“Don’t you think it important to clean up Hardiston?”
“I think it important not to cement Amos Caretall’s hold on this county, and this town.”
Wint said angrily: “Forget Amos. Forget he exists. I’m asking a flat question. Why don’t you answer it?”
Mrs. Chase interposed: “Don’t you talk to your father so, Wint. Don’t you do it. He knows best what’s good for you, and for Hardiston, and for everybody. You know he—”
“Is whisky good for Ote Runns?” Wint demanded.
“Well, I guess it doesn’t do him any hurt. It’s not as if he had a wife and children, Wint, you know. You ought to do what your father says. He—”
Wint faced the older man. “Well,” he asked, “what is it you say I should do, dad? In plain language. Just what do you claim I ought to do?”
“Refuse to let Amos Caretall make you his tool,” Chase said steadily.
“Let Hardiston wallow in booze?”
“That’s beside the point. Amos is the point.”
Wint got up swiftly. “Amos is not the point,” he said.“Hardiston’s the point. Hardiston’s the point, and I’m the point, too. If whisky is good for Hardiston, the town ought to have it. If lawbreaking is good for Hardiston, the lawbreaking ought to be permitted to go on. But if it’s right and decent to keep the law, then I’m right. And if it’s right to leave booze alone, then I’m right. And if I think what I’m doing is right, I ought to go on with it; and if I think it’s wrong, I ought to drop it. Amos has nothing to do with it. Anyway, a bad man doing good things is a good man. If Amos were doing this, the fact that he’s a crook wouldn’t make it crooked. The whole thing works the other way. If Amos is doing this, and it’s a good thing to do, then so far as this is concerned, Amos is a good man.”
He flung up his hand. “I don’t mean to hurt you, dad. I think you’re wrong on this. I can’t believe you want me to back down.”
Chase had his share of stubbornness, of the pride which had been a pitfall before Wint’s feet. He was too stubborn to admit himself in the wrong. He said swiftly:
“I do want you to back down. Call off Radabaugh. Tell Amos he can’t make a monkey out of you. Can’t get you to pull his chestnuts out of the fire.... Stand on your own feet. That’s what I advise you to do, Wint.”
Wint looked his father in the eye for a moment; then he shook his head as though to brush away a veil. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I mean to fight it out on this line. Stick to it.”
Chase said nothing. Mrs. Chase, silenced by the tension in the atmosphere, looked from father to son with wide eyes, and she was trembling. After a little, Wint asked gently:
“Does this mean—a break, father? Does it mean for me to get out of here?”
Chase got to his feet in swift protest. “No, no, Wint, not that.” For a moment, he had an overpowering impulse to open his heart, promise Wint his support, offer the boy his hand. But he could not bring himself to do it. The stubborn, prideful streak was strong in him. He fought down the impulse, said simply: “We can disagree without fighting, I guess. That’s all.”
“You mean we’re on opposite sides of the fence in this, dad? You really mean that?”
“Yes.”
Wint’s voice was wistful. “I—counted on you.”
Chase flung toward the door. “I can’t help it, Wint,” he said harshly. “I can’t link up with Amos Caretall. Not for any man.”
When the door shut behind him, Wint stood still for a little, thinking hard. Then his mother touched his arm, and he looked down and saw that she was crying with fright.
“Wint,” she pleaded, “don’t you go quarreling with your father again. Don’t you, Wint. Please.... He couldn’t stand it. Not again, Wint. I told Mrs. Hullis when you were gone before—”
He put his arm around her affectionately; and he smiled. “There, mother, it’s all right,” he said. “Dad and I are all right. Don’t you worry. We understand each other.”
“I told Mrs. Hullis he couldn’t stand it to have you go away again—”
“I’m not going away,” Wint promised.
“Don’t you....” she begged. “Don’t you go, any more.”
ACONSCIOUSNESS of having acted unworthily does not make for a man’s peace of mind. The plain truth of the matter is that after his talk with Wint at supper that night, Winthrop Chase, Senior, was ashamed of himself. Not that he admitted it, even in his thoughts; but it was obvious enough in his uneasiness, his inability to sit still, his restless movements here and there about the sitting room. Wint was not blind. He guessed something of what was passing in his father’s mind, and wished there were some way for them to come together. But there seemed no move he could make to that end.
The older man at last announced that he was going to walk downtown for the mail. Wint said: “Good idea. I’ll go along.” But Chase said:
“I’ve got to see a man,” and Wint understood that his father did not want his company, so he stayed at home when the older man departed.
Chase wanted to see Kite. He had no definite idea why he wanted to see Kite, but he felt the need of reassurance from some one, and he knew Kite would reassure him as to what he had done. So he went downtown to find Kite and talk to him. The Bazaar was closed. He telephoned Kite’s home, and the old woman who kept house for him said Mr. Kite had gone uptown to see Mr. Routt. So Chase went to the building on the second floor of which Routt had his office, and saw a light behind the drawn blind in Routt’s window and went up. He heard their voices inside, Kite’s and Routt’s, before he tried the door. The door was locked; and when he touched the knob, silence fell inside. Routt called: “Hello, who’s there?”
Chase told him, and Routt said: “In a minute,” and unlockedthe door and let him in. Chase saw Kite sitting by the desk, his side whiskers bristling angrily.
There are no modern office buildings in Hardiston. Routt’s office was on the second floor of the three-story building at the corner of Main and Broad streets. There was a hardware store on the first floor, and a lodge room on the floor above Routt’s office. Routt and three or four others had quarters on the second floor. Routt’s office faced the street; a single room with a hot-air register in the wall near the door. There were shelves around the wall, with a meager library of brand-new and little-used law books. Routt’s desk was shiny, yellow oak. A diploma, or perhaps a certificate of admission to the bar, framed in mission oak, hung on the wall above the desk. There was an electric light in the middle of the ceiling, and it shed a bald and naked light over the three men who faced each other in the room.
Kite said: “Hello, Chase,” and Chase responded to the greeting. Routt asked:
“How’d you happen to drop in? Glad to see you.”
“I was looking for Kite,” Chase said. “Heard he was with you.”
Kite asked eagerly: “Looking for me, Chase? Good news? What’s happened?”
Chase looked at Routt, with a curious, dull inquiry. The man was moving in something like a daze; he had not yet found himself in this new alliance. He was hating himself for opposing Wint, and he was flogging his courage to the venture. He wondered what Kite and Jack Routt were doing together. Routt was a Caretall man in politics; also he was a friend of Wint. Chase tried to puzzle this out, and Kite asked again:
“What’s happened?”
“I—spoke to Wint,” Chase said slowly.
Routt asked: “About withdrawing his orders to Radabaugh? He’ll never do it.”
“No,” said Chase. “He’ll never do it.”
Kite cried fiercely: “He’s got to. He doesn’t understand. Didn’t you tell him, Chase? Didn’t you make him see?”
“I couldn’t make him see anything. He would not change.”
“He’ll never change unless he’s forced to,” Routt said; and Chase looked at the young man and asked slowly:
“I thought you and Wint were friends, Routt?”
“We are,” Routt declared. “He’s the best friend I’ve got. That’s why I don’t want to see him made a fool of. That’s why I don’t want to see Amos make a fool of him. You’re his father, but you feel the same as I do, that he’s wrong, that he’s got to be made change his mind.”
“I thought you were with Amos,” Chase insisted mildly.
“Amos and I have broken,” said Routt hotly. “He tried to trick me as he tricks every one, and I wouldn’t stand for it. That’s all. I’m out to even things with him.”
Chase looked around for a chair and sat down. Routt sat on the desk. Kite had not risen when Chase came in. The little man asked Chase now: “What did you say to Wint anyway? I should think he’d take your advice before he’d take Caretall’s.”
“I told him Caretall was using him, that he was being used to play politics.”
“Well, what did he say?”
“Said this wasn’t Amos’s doing at all. Said it was his own idea, that he had given the orders, that he meant to carry them through. Said, even if it were Caretall’s move, it was a good thing, and he was for it.”
Kite snarled: “He’s damnably moral, all of a sudden.” And Chase felt a surge of resentment at the other’s tone, and countered:
“He’s right, you know. Booze is dirty business.”
“It’s my business,” Kite snapped, stamping to his feet; and if Routt had not intervened, the old feud between Kite and Chase might have been revived, then and there. But Routt had no notion of permitting a break between these strange allies. He said cheerfully:
“Sit down, Kite. We’re not talking about booze. We’re talking about Amos Caretall. We’re not trying to settle the moral issue. We’re trying to settle Amos Caretall’s hash. Question is, how are we going to do it?”
“That’s right,” Chase agreed. Caretall’s name was like an anchor, to which he could make fast his disturbed thoughts. So long as he was opposing Amos, he could not go wrong.
Kite sat down, thinking; and he asked: “You say Wint told you Amos had nothing to do with this, Chase?”
“Yes. He probably thinks that’s true. Caretall got around him, somehow.”
Routt said: “Caretall’s a shrewd man, he can get around other men. He knows the trick of it.” Kite said nothing. He was thinking over what Chase had said. Routt continued: “What we want to do is to go out and get him.”
Chase suddenly found the atmosphere of this room unbearable; he wanted to get out in the air. So he got up, and said harshly: “I’m with you on that. I’ll do anything I can against Amos. Let me know what you decide.”
Routt said: “Don’t run away. Let’s talk things over.” But Chase told him he had business elsewhere; and Kite made no objection to his going. When he was gone, Routt told Kite:
“He’ll have to be handled carefully. He’s naturally a dry man, you know.”
Kite said thoughtfully, as though he were considering another matter: “Yes, that’s so.”
“I’ve been figuring on what you suggested—getting a handle to control Wint,” Routt told him. “You know, I think there’s a way.”
“To get something on Wint?”
“Yes. He’s not such a terribly upright young man. Any one’s foot is apt to slip.”
“You mean his has slipped?” Kite asked eagerly. Routt only grinned.
“I’ll let you know what I mean, in good time,” he said.
Kite grunted. It was evident that his mind was busy with another angle of the situation. A little later, still abstracted, he took himself away.
While he walked home, he turned over and over in his thoughts his new idea.
KITE’S new idea was one that appealed to the mean heart of the man. There had been a time when Kite was bold as a lion in evil-doing; but as he grew old, he was becoming timorous. He had, now, no stomach for a fight, talk as ferociously as he pleased. He wanted life to move easily and smoothly; and fighting jarred on him. He thought, with a self-pitying regret, that things had been going so comfortably. It was a shame that Wint had come along and started all this trouble. He was an old man, not made for trouble.
There was very little pride in Kite, and a good deal of the shamelessness of the miser. If he was a miser, his illicit business was his hoarded gold. He was ready to go to any lengths of self-humiliation to protect this treasure. He would fight if he had to; but he had no stomach for it. There must be some other way.
The suggestion of that other way had come from Chase. When Chase first warned him that Amos would turn Hardiston dry, Kite had refused to believe; when Routt repeated the warning, he was still doubtful. When Wint actually gave the orders he had dreaded, Kite was half forced to agree that Amos had tricked him, but even in the face of the fact, he had still clung in his heart to the hope that this was none of Caretall’s doing, and that the two who had warned him were wrong.
He had hoped desperately that they were wrong, because if they were mistaken there was a chance to save himself without a fight. What Chase had told him this night strengthened his hope. Wint, Chase said, declared Amos had nothing to do with the case, that Amos had neither advised nor prompted his orders to Radabaugh, and that the whole crusade was his own idea and his own battle.
If this were true, if Wint were actually standing on his own feet, then there was a chance of coming at him through Amos. That was the thought from which Kite took hope. He and Amos were, on the surface, allies still. Amos would not willingly antagonize him. And if this move of Wint’s were not Amos’s doing, then Amos might be willing to take a hand on Kite’s behalf, call Wint off, return things to their original condition, smooth Kite’s existence into tranquillity again.
When he first conceived the idea, Kite cast it aside as grotesque and impossible. But it returned to his thoughts, and his hopes fought for it, until he convinced himself there was something in it; better than an even chance in his favor; worth trying, certainly. When he made up his mind to this—it was after he had undressed and got into bed that night—he dropped off into a restless sleep; and when he woke, as his habit was, at daylight, he began at once to consider what he should say to Amos.
He telephoned Caretall before breakfast and asked him when he could see him to talk things over. Amos told him good-naturedly that he could come right after breakfast. “I’m taking my ease, these few days,” he said. “Staying at home in my carpet slippers, and smoking my pipe. Drop in any time.”
“I’ll be there in an hour,” Kite told him. And Amos said that was all right, and hung up the receiver. Immediately, he telephoned Peter Gergue to come right over, and Peter joined him at breakfast in ten minutes. It was not even necessary for old Maria to set an extra plate for Peter. Agnes had overslept—she nearly always did oversleep—and Amos was breakfasting alone, with Agnes’s empty place across the table from him.
Peter sat down there, and Amos helped him to fried eggs and bacon, and Maria gave him a cup of coffee. Amos said at once: “Kite just called up, Peter. He’s coming over.”
Gergue swallowed a gulp of coffee. “Guessed he would,” he assented. “Guessed he’d have things to say to you.”
“What do you guess he’s got to say to me, Peter?” Amos asked.
“He’ll want you to call Wint off, I’d say.”
Amos looked politely regretful, as though he were talking to Kite. “Why, now, you know, Wint’s his own boss. He does what he wants to do. I never saw any one that could run Wint, did you?”
“Not if Wint knew it, I never did.”
“What have you heard, Peter?” Amos asked. “What did Kite do yest’day, when he heard the sad news?”
“Lutcher told him,” said Peter. “Lutcher says he was wild. But when Jim Radabaugh saw him, he kept his head, and said it didn’t concern him. I hear he had some talk with Jack Routt; and then he posted off down to the furnace to see Chase.”
“To see Chase, eh?”
“What I hear.”
“What about, Peter?”
“I sh’d guess he wanted Chase to call Wint off. Kite don’t like a fight, you know.”
Amos nodded. “V. R. Kite,” he said pleasantly, “is a lick-spittle, Peter. That’s what V. R. Kite is. I don’t like to see Chase mixing with him.”
“You know,” said Peter, “Chase has changed some, since you put the laugh on him.”
“Chase is all right,” said Amos surprisingly. “He’s had the foolishness knocked out of him. Peter, he’ll make a good man, before he’s done.”
Peter looked at Amos sidewise and said he wouldn’t be a bit surprised.
“But he makes a mistake to tie up to Kite,” said Amos.
“Him and Kite had a talk with Routt, in Jack’s office, last night,” said Peter.
Amos chuckled. “Pete, it beats me how you find out things.”
“I don’t find ’em out,” said Peter. “People tell me.” He rummaged through the tangle at the back of his neck. “Looks like people aim to make mischief, so they tell me things to tell you that’ll start a fight, and the likes of that. That’s the way of it.”
“This won’t start a fight,” said Amos. “I’m home for a rest.”
Peter looked at him intently. “You backing Wint?”
“No.”
“What?”
“Pete,” said Amos thoughtfully, “this was Wint’s idea. He figured it out, the right thing to do. He’s started it. It won’t hurt him a bit to fight it out. I’m going to stand by and yell: ‘Go it, wife; go it, b’ar.’ That’s me in this, Peter.”
“What are you going to tell Kite?”
“Going to tell him just that,” said Amos.
They had finished breakfast and moved into the sitting room and filled their pipes. Agnes came downstairs in her kimono, hair flying, and kissed Amos and pretended to be embarrassed at appearing before Peter in her attractive disarray. Then she went out to her breakfast. The two men smoked without speaking. Amos had looked after his daughter with a certain trouble in his eyes; and Peter saw it. Peter did not like Agnes.
Peter had gone before Kite arrived. Old Maria let Kite in, and Amos called from the sitting room:
“Right in here, Kite. I’m too darned lazy to come and meet you. Leave your hat in the hall.”
Kite obeyed the summons, and Amos said lazily: “Take a chair, Kite. Any chair.” And when the little man had sat down: “Fine day, Kite. I tell you, there isn’t any place that can beat Hardiston in May that I know of.”
Kite said: “That’s right, Amos.”
“Yes, sir,” Amos repeated. “They can’t beat old Hardiston.” He lapsed into one of those characteristic silences, head on one side, squinting idly straight before him, his pipe hissing in his mouth. You might have thought there were no words in the man. Kite said impatiently:
“Amos, I want to talk to you.”
Amos looked at him, and said amiably: “Well, Kite, you’ll never have a likelier chance. I don’t aim to move out of this chair.”
“Well,” said Kite uneasily, “I want to talk to you about young Chase.”
“Mayor Chase?”
“Yes. Wint.”
“Oh!” said Amos, without any curiosity.
“I mean to say,” Kite explained, “I want to talk about this move of his. You’ve heard about it.”
“I hadn’t heard he’d moved,” said Amos. “Thought he was living with his paw. Where’s he gone to now?”
“Damn it, Amos!” Kite protested, “don’t fool with me. You know what I mean.”
“Kite,” said Amos, “nobody ever knows what you mean, even when you say it. You’re such an excitable man.”
“Well, who wouldn’t get excited? I tell you, this is a—”
“What is?” Amos asked, interrupting without seeming to do so.
“This damned idea of enforcing a fool liquor law.”
“Oh, that,” said Amos.
Kite leaned forward. “Is it your doing, Amos? Did you get him to do this? Because if you did—”
“Why, man,” said Amos, “I’m not Wint’s boss.”
“You elected him.”
“You elected him as much as me, Kite. And I heard how he called you a buzzard. If he calls you a buzzard, what do you think he’d call me?”
“I hold no grudge for that,” Kite explained. “He was drunk. Fact remains, he’s friendly with you. I ask you, I’m asking you flatly: Did you prompt him to do this, or tell him to, or advise him to in any way?”
“Well,” said Amos, “if you ask me, I’ll say: No.”
Kite slapped his knee. “I knew it,” he exclaimed.
“Who says I did?” Amos asked. “Wint say I did?”
“No. He says you didn’t. Chase and Routt claim you did it.”
“Chase? And Jack Routt? Why, now, I take that unkind,” Amos protested, in a hurt voice, and Kite realized that he had blundered, and hurried past the danger point.
“Well, if you didn’t advise Wint to do this, what are you going to do now? Back him in his fight?”
“You know,” said Amos, “Pete Gergue asked me just that. Ever hear the story about the lady and the bear, Kite? Bearchased the lady around the tree, and the lady’s husband was up the tree. Lady yells to him to come down and kill the bear; but husband just sets on his branch, out of reach, and yells: ‘Go it, wife; go it, b’ar.’ Ever hear that story, Kite?”
Kite chuckled without any mirth in his dry old eyes. “No,” he said.
“That man didn’t figure to play any favorites,” Amos explained. “And neither do I. Ain’t often I get a chance to set back and watch a fight. This time, I’m going to. On the sidelines. That’s me, Kite.”
Kite protested instantly. “That’s not the fair thing, Amos. You and I worked together to put him in there, with the understanding he’d let the liquor business alone.”
Amos lifted his hand. “Understanding was that Wint weren’t likely to monkey with it. You thought so. That’s why you was willing to help me. I didn’t make any promises, nor any predictions, Kite.”
“But, damn it,” Kite insisted, “you ought to be willing to help me out. I helped you out.”
“It would hurt me, Kite, to know I sanctioned nonenforcement.”
“Nobody would know.”
“They’d find out. Things like that do get out, you know, Kite.”
The little man tugged at his side whiskers feverishly. “Amos,” he pleaded, “isn’t there anything you can do for me? This is bad business. I can’t stand it. I won’t stand it. Isn’t there anything you can do?”
Amos considered, then he sighed, and said good-naturedly: “Kite, you’re an awful pest, stirring me up when I’m comfortable.”
“You’ve got to do something.”
“We-ell, I’ll tell you. I’ll take you to see Wint. You can put it up to him. That’s the best.”
“You’ll back me up?”
Amos shook his head. “You and him can have it out. I’ll not yell for either of you.”
Kite protested: “A lot of good that will do.”
Amos shrugged his big shoulders. “Well....” Kite got up hurriedly.
“All right,” he agreed, before Amos could withdraw his offer. “All right, come on.”
Amos looked ruefully at his feet, and wiggled his toes in his comfortable slippers. “I declare, Kite, I hate to put on shoes.”
“Damn it, man, it’s your own offer,” Kite protested; and Amos admitted it, and groaned:
“All right, I’ll come.”
Wint was in a cheerful humor, that morning. He had been depressed by his father’s attitude, disappointed that the elder Chase chose to oppose him. But at the same time, the opposition exhilarated him. After his father left the house, he went to see Joan for an hour; and without over-applauding the step he had taken, she spoke of the trouble and the opposition he would face, and the prospect pleased Wint. He took a cheerful delight in opposing people. He was never so good-natured as when he was fighting.
So Amos and Kite found Wint amiably glad to see them both. Amos sat on the broad window ledge, his back to the light, his face somewhat shadowed. Wint made Kite sit down near his desk; he himself tilted his chair back against one of the leaves of the desk, and put his feet on an open drawer, and asked what their errand was.
“Kite wanted to see you,” said Amos. “Asked me to come along.”
“No need of that, Kite.” Wint said good-naturedly. “I don’t keep an office boy. Anybody can see me any time.”
Kite shifted uneasily in his seat, not quite sure what he meant to say. Amos prompted him from the window. “Kite don’t think you ought to shut down on him,” he said.
Wint looked surprised. “Shut down on him? What’s the idea, Kite?”
Kite said, in a flustered way: “It’s not so personal as that.You know, I’m by conviction a believer in the sale of liquor. I believe the people of Hardiston agree with me. I’m sorry to hear you’ve taken steps to stop the sale.”
“Why, no,” said Wint cheerfully, “the town voted against it. I had nothing to do with that. I’m just enforcing the law.”
Kite smiled weakly. “There are laws, and laws,” he said. “Some laws are not meant to be enforced. The people of Hardiston objected to the open saloon; they did not object to the unobtrusive and inoffensive sale.”
“Oh!” said Wint.
“You didn’t object to it yourself,” Kite reminded him. “Isn’t that so?”
He expected Wint to be confused; but Wint only laughed. “I should say I didn’t,” he admitted. “I liked it as well as any one. Same time, this isn’t a question of liking; it’s a question of the law.” He leaned forward with a certain jeering earnestness in his voice. “Why, Mr. Kite, if I didn’t enforce the law, Hardiston people could remove me for misfeasance in office, or something like that.”
Kite said: “Bosh!” impatiently. And Wint asked him suddenly:
“What’s your interest in this?”
“That of a citizen.”
“Oh, I know you don’t sell it yourself,” said Wint, meaning just the contrary. “But, Mr. Kite, if you have any friends in the business, tell them to get out of it. It’s dead, in Hardiston. Dead and gone.”
Kite said weakly: “Amos and I came here to try and make you change your mind about that.”
Wint looked at Amos. “That so?” he asked. “You think I ought to back down?”
“‘Go it, wife; go it, b’ar,’”said Amos cheerfully. “That’s me.”
“Not taking sides?”
“No.”
Kite explained: “Amos and I worked together to elect you, you know.”
Wint eyed him blandly. “Well, I’m much obliged. But I don’t see what that has to do—”
“You owe us some gratitude.”
“I’m grateful.”
“There’s a moral obligation.”
Wint grinned. “Kite, I’m afraid you’re an Indian giver. I’m afraid you elected me, thinking you could use me. But I didn’t ask to be elected, so I don’t see—”
Hopelessness was settling down on V. R. Kite; hopelessness, and the desperate energy of a cornered rat. There was no shame in him, and no scruple. Also, there was very little wisdom in the buzzard-like man. He was to prove this before their eyes.
“Wint,” he said, “Amos and I are practical men. You’re practical, too, aren’t you? There’s no place for dreams in this world, Wint. It’s a hard world. You understand that.”
“You find it a hard world? Why, Kite, I think the world is a pretty good sort of a place. That’s the way it strikes me.”
“I—”
“Maybe it’s your own fault you find it hard.”
Kite brushed the suggestion away. He was obsessed with a new idea, a last hope. He said: “Wint, if you drop this, Amos and I can do a lot for you.”
“You and Amos?” Wint looked at Amos again. “How about it, Congressman?”
“‘Go it, wife; go it, b’ar,’”Amos repeated imperturbably.
“What I mean,” said Kite, “is that we can send you to the legislature, or anything.”
“Why, I’m not looking for anything,” said Wint mildly.
Kite snapped: “Every man has his price.” And when he met Wint’s level eyes, and knew he was committed, he went on hurriedly: “I know that. If politics isn’t yours, something else is. Speak out, man. What do you—”
Wint asked curiously, and without anger: “What’s the idea, Kite?”
“I could give you a start in business. Help you.... I’m a business man, you understand. Anything....”
Wint laughed. “You’re too vague.”
Kite looked at Amos. He looked at him so steadily that Amos got down from the window seat, and whistled softly under his breath, and walked out of the office into the council chamber above the fire-engine house. He shut the door behind him. Kite leaned toward Wint. “Five hundred?” he asked huskily.
Wint chuckled. “I say,” he exclaimed, “I had no idea there was any money in this job.”
“A thousand....”
“I’ve always wanted to know what it felt like to be bribed.”
“A thousand, Wint? For God’s sake....”
Wint shook his head, still perfectly good-humored. “There’s no question about it, Kite,” he said. “You surely are an old buzzard. Get out of my nest, you evil bird!”
Kite protested: “Wint, listen to—”
“Damn you!” said Wint, still without heat, “do you want me to throw you out the window?”
Kite got up. Wint had not even taken his feet down from their perch. Kite said: “You’ll change your—”
Wint’s feet banged the floor; and Kite stopped, and he went swiftly to the door. In the doorway, he turned and looked back, his dry old face working. He seemed to want to speak. But without a word, he turned and went away.
Amos strolled back in. Wint looked up at him and chuckled. But Amos looked serious.
“Went away all rumpled up, didn’t he?” Wint commented. “But he didn’t have a word to say.”
Amos nodded. “Not a word to say,” he agreed. “But, Wint,” he added, “knowing Kite like I do, I wish he had.”
“Wish he had had a word?”
“I never was much afraid of a barking dog,” said the Congressman.
IF Wint had expected immediate conflict, he was to be disappointed. For after Kite left his office that day, nothing happened; neither that day, nor the next, nor the next. Amos told Wint that Kite would strike, in his own time, and strike below the belt. Wint laughed and said he was ready to fight, foul or fair. But—neither foul blow nor fair was struck. Radabaugh reported that his orders had been obeyed. Lutcher had left town, temporarily, it was said. His rooms off the alley were locked, and he had gone so far as to give Radabaugh a key, so that the marshal might make sure, now and then, that Lutcher’s store of drinkables was not disturbed. One shipment did come in for Mrs. Moody. It was labeled “Canned Goods”; but Jim Radabaugh made it his business to inspect all sorts of goods consigned to Mrs. Moody, and he found this particular box contained goods in bottles instead of cans. He emptied the bottles into the creek, across the railroad tracks from the station, and told Mrs. Moody about it. She threw a stick of firewood at him, then wept with rage because he dodged it successfully.
For the rest, Hardiston was quiet. The lunch-cart man whom Radabaugh had suspected took his cart and left town. Kite met Wint on the street and greeted him as pleasantly as usual. Jack Routt cultivated him, and joked him about his ideas of morality. One night, at Routt’s home, he offered Wint a drink. Wint looked thoughtfully through the smoke of his pipe as though he had not heard. When Routt repeated the offer, Wint declined politely.
The business of being Mayor occupied very little of Wint’s time. Early in June, Foster, the city solicitor, brought a stranger to see Wint about a street carnival which wanted tocome to Hardiston the last week in June. Wint agreed to grant the permits necessary.
“You understand,” he told the man, “that this is a dry town.”
The stranger winked, and said he understood. Wint shook his head gravely. “I’m afraid you don’t understand,” he said. “This is a dry town. There’s no booze sold here. Last summer, I remember, there was some selling in connection with your carnival, here. If you try that this time, I’ll have to close you up.”
The man looked surprised and disgusted. “What is this, a Sunday school?” he demanded.
“No,” said Wint. “Just a dry town.”
“How about the games?”
Wint smiled good-naturedly. “Oh, don’t make them too raw. I’ve no objection to ‘The cane you ring, that cane you get.’”
“Hell!” said the man. “We won’t make chicken feed.”
“You don’t have to come.”
But the stranger said they would come, all right. After he had gone, Wint told Foster the carnival would bear watching. Foster agreed, but said the merchants wanted it. “Brings the farmers to town every day, instead of just Saturday, you know.”
“I know,” said Wint. “Well, let them come.”
After a week of quiet, Wint decided that Kite and his allies had put the lid on. “But they’re just waiting,” Amos warned him. “Waiting till they get a toe hold on you, somehow. Watch your step, Wint.”
Wint said he was watching. “I wish they’d start something,” he said. “Hot weather’s dull, with no excitement.”
“There’ll be enough excitement,” Amos assured him.
Routt walked home with Wint one afternoon, talking over a proposition that he had brought up a day or two before. Since Wint was going to be a lawyer, he said, they ought to go in together. Wint was already so well advanced in his reading that Routt thought in another year or eighteen months he could take the examinations. “There’s a big practice waiting for the right people down here,” he told Wint enthusiastically. “Dick Hoover and I are going to get together when his father dies. The old man is pretty feeble. You come in with us. We’ll do things, Wint.”
Wint was pleased and somewhat flattered by the suggestion, and thought well of Routt for it. But he only said, good-naturedly, that it was still a long way off, and that there would be times enough to talk about the matter when he was admitted to the bar. Nevertheless, Routt dwelt on it insistently, so insistently that instead of turning aside toward his own home at the usual place, he came on toward Wint’s father’s house, still talking. It did not occur to Wint that there was any purpose in Routt’s thus accompanying him. He had heard that Routt and Kite had been seen together, and asked Jack about it. Routt explained that he had to keep in touch with all sorts. A mixture of business and politics, he said, and Wint was satisfied.
When they came in sight of the house, it was still an hour before supper time; and Hetty Morfee was sweeping down the front steps and the walk to the gate. They saw her while they were still half a block away, and Routt said casually:
“Hetty still working for your mother, I see.”
Wint nodded. “Yes; I guess she’s pretty good.”
Routt agreed. “If she’d only keep straight. But....”
“I don’t think she’s that kind,” said Wint.
“I hope not,” Routt assented. “Hope she doesn’t—get into trouble. If she ever did, in this town....”
Wint said nothing; and Routt added: “She’d need a friend, all right.” And again: “She’d need some one to take her part. But he’d be in Dutch, whoever he was.”
He looked at Wint sidewise. They were near the gate now, and Wint said: “Come in and have supper.”
Routt shook his head. “Not to-night.”
Hetty looked up, at their approach, and Wint called: “Hello, Hetty.”
She said: “Hello, Wint.” Routt repeated Wint’s greeting, and the girl looked at him with curiously steady eyes, and said:
“Hello, Jack.”
Wint thought, vaguely, that there was some repressed feeling in her tone; but he forgot the matter in bidding Routt good-by, and went inside, leaving Hetty at her task, while Routt went back by the way they had come. Hetty watched him go. He did not look toward her, did not turn his head. She watched him out of sight.
Jack Routt took Agnes Caretall to the moving pictures that night. Wint saw them there. He was with Joan. Afterward, Routt and Agnes walked home together.
Routt did most of the talking, on that homeward walk. Now and then Agnes seemed to protest, weakly, at something he was urging her to do. One near enough might have heard him speak of Wint. But there was no one near.
When they reached her home, there was a light in the sitting-room window. That meant Amos was there; and Routt said he would not go in. “But you’ll remember, won’t you, Agnes,” he asked, “if you want to do something for me?”
She said softly: “I do want to do anything for you.”
He laughed at her gently. “How about him?”
“I hate him,” she said, with a sudden intensity that was not pretty to see. “I hate him. Hate him, I say.”
“What’s he ever done to you?” Routt teased; and she said:
“Nothing,” as though that one word were an accusation.
Routt put his arm around her; and she clung to him with a swift, terrified sort of passion, as though afraid to let him go. It seemed to embarrass him; he freed himself a little roughly.
He left her standing there when he hurried away.
IF Jack Routt had meant to force Hetty into Wint’s thoughts, he had succeeded. Wint was not conscious of this when he left Jack at his gate; he was thinking of other things. But during supper, an hour later, when Hetty came into the dining room, Wint remembered what Jack had said; and he looked at the girl with a keen scrutiny. He studied her, without seeming to do so.
He was surprised to discover in how many ways Hetty had changed, since she came to work for his mother. The changes were slight, they had been gradual. But they were appallingly obvious, under Wint’s cool appraisal now. He tallied them in his thoughts. Her laughter had been gayly and merrily defiant; it was sullen, now, and mirthless. Her eyes had twinkled with a pleasant impudence; they were overcast, these days, with a troubling shadow. There was a shadow, too, upon the clear, milky skin of her cheeks; it was a blemish that could neither be analyzed nor defined. Yet it was there.
Hetty had slackened, too. Her hair was no longer so smoothly brushed, so crisply drawn back above her ears. It was, at times, untidy. Her waists were no longer so immaculate; her aprons needed pressing, needed soap and water, too, at times. She had been fresh and clean and good to look upon; she was, in these days, indefinably soiled.
After supper that night, Wint went out into the kitchen where Hetty was washing dishes. He went on the pretext of getting a drink of water. There had been a time, a few months ago, when Hetty would have turned to greet him laughingly, and she would have drawn a glass of water and given it to him. But she did neither of those things now. Instead, she moved aside without looking at him, while he held the glassunder the faucet; and when he stepped back to drink, she went on with her work, shoulders bent, eyes down.
Wint finished the glass of water, and put the glass back in its place. Then he hesitated, started to go, came back. At last he asked pleasantly: “Well, Hetty, how are things going?”
She looked at him sideways, with a swift, furtive glance. And she laughed in the mirthless way that was becoming habitual. “Oh, great,” she said, and her tone was ironical.
“What’s the matter?” Wint asked. “Anything wrong?”
“Of course not. Don’t be a kid. Can’t I have a grouch if I want to?”
“Sure,” he agreed amiably. “I have ’em, myself. Anything I can do to bring you out of your grouch?”
“No.”
“If there is,” he said, so seriously she knew he meant his offer. “If there is, let me know. Maybe I can help.”
“I’m not asking help,” she told him sullenly.
“Is there anything definite? Anything wrong?”
She said, with a hot flash of her dark eyes in his direction: “I told you no, didn’t I? What do you have to butt in for?”
Wint considered that, and he filled his pipe and lighted it; and at last he turned to the door. From the doorway he called to her: “If anything turns up, Hetty, count on me.”
She nodded, without speaking; and he left her. He was more troubled than he would have cared to admit; and he was convinced, in spite of what Hetty had said, that there was something wrong.
The third or fourth day after, Hardiston meanwhile moving along the even tenor of its way, Wint decided, after supper at home, that he wanted to see Amos. He telephoned the Congressman’s home, and Agnes answered. He asked if Amos was at home.
“He went uptown for the mail,” Agnes told him. “But he said he’d be right back. He’ll be here in a few minutes.”
“Tell him I’m coming down, will you?” Wint suggested, and Agnes promised to do so. Wint took his hat and started for Amos’s home. He thought of going through town on thechance of picking Amos up at the Post Office; but the mail had been in for an hour, and he decided Amos would have reached his home before he got there, so he went on. Wint and Amos lived on the same street, but at different ends of the town. The better part of a mile lay between the two houses. The stores and business houses were the third point of a triangle of which the Chase home and Amos’s formed the other angles.
The night was warm and moonlit; a night in June. The street along which Wint’s route lay was shaded on either side by spreading trees, and lined with the attractive, comfortable homes of Hardiston folks who knew what homes should be. Wint met a few people: A young fellow with a flower in his buttonhole, in a great deal of a hurry; a boy and a girl with linked arms; a man, a woman here and there. At one corner, in the circle of radiance from a sputtering electric light, a dozen boys were playing “Throw the Stick.” Wint heard their cries while he was still a block or two away; he saw their shadowy figures scurrying in the dust, or crouching behind bushes and houses in the adjoining yards. As he passed the light, a woman came to the door of one of the houses and called shrilly:
“Oh-h-h, Willie-e-e-e-e!”
One of the boys answered, in reluctant and protesting tones; and the woman called:
“Bedti-i-ime.” Wint heard the boy’s querulous complaint; heard his fellows jeer at him under their breath, so that his mother might not hear. The youngsters trained laggingly homeward; and the woman at the door, as Wint passed, said implacably to her son:
“You go around to the pump and wash your feet before you come in the house, Willie.”
The boy went, still complaining. And Wint grinned as he passed by. His own days of playing, barefoot, under the corner lights were still so short a time behind him that he could sympathize with Willie. Is there any sharper humiliation than to be forced to come home to bed while the other boys are still abroad? Is there any keener discomfort than to take your two dusty feet, with the bruises and the cuts and the scratches allcrudely cauterized with grime, and stick them under a stream of cold water, and scrub them till they are raw, and wipe the damp dirt off on a towel?... Wint was half minded to turn back and join that game of “Throw the Stick.” The bewildering moonlight, the warm air of the night had somewhat turned his head. It required an effort of will to keep on his way.
Agnes opened the door for him when he came to Caretall’s home. “Dad’ll be here in a minute or two,” she said. “Come right in.”
Wint hesitated. “Oh, isn’t he home yet?”
“No, but he will be.” She laughed at him, in a pretty, inviting way she had. “I won’t bite, you know.”
“I guess not,” he agreed good-naturedly. “But it’s a shame to go in the house, a night like this.”
She said: “Wait till I get a scarf. Sit down. The hammock, or the chairs. I’ll be right out.”
So Wint sat down, where the moonlight struck through the vines about the porch and mottled the floor with silver. Agnes came out with something indescribably flimsy about her fair head; and Wint laughed and said: “I never could make out why girls think a thing like that keeps them warm.”
“Oh, but it does,” she insisted. “You’ve no idea how much warmth there is in it.”
He shook his head, laughing at her. “That wouldn’t keep a butterfly warm on the Sahara Desert.”
She protested: “Now you just see....” And she moved lightly around behind him and wrapped the film of silken stuff about his head. “There,” she said, and looked at him, and laughed gayly. “You’re the funniest-looking thing.”
Wint unwound the scarf gingerly. “It feels like cobwebs,” he said. “I don’t see how you can wear it. Sticky stuff.”
“Men are always afraid of things like cobwebs. Always afraid of little things.”
Wint chuckled. “What’s this? New philosophy of life?”
“Can’t I say anything serious?”
“Why, sure. I don’t know but what you’re right, too.”
He had taken one of the chairs. She sat down in the hammock. “Come sit here with me,” she invited. “That chair’s not comfortable.”
“Oh, it’s all right.”
She stamped her foot. “I should think you’d do what I say when you come to see me.”
“Matter of fact, you know, I came to see your father.”
“Well, you’re staying to see me. If you don’t sit in the hammock, I’m going in the house and leave you.”
Wint held up his hands in mock consternation. “Heaven forbid.” He sat down beside her, as uncomfortable as a man must always be in a hammock; and she leaned away from him, half reclining, enjoying his discomfort. He could see her laughing at him in the moonlight. She pointed one forefinger at him, stroked it with the other as one strops a razor.
“’Fraid to sit in the hammock with a girl,” she taunted.
She was very pretty and provoking in the silver light; and Wint understood that he could kiss her if he chose. He had kissed Agnes before this. “Wink” and “Post Office” and kindred games were popular when he and Agnes were in high school together. But—he had no notion of kissing Agnes, moonlight or no moonlight. He had come to see Amos. Amos’s daughter was another matter.
“When is Amos coming home?” he asked. “Has he called up? Maybe I’d better walk uptown.”
“He called and said he was starting,” she assured him. “You stay right here. He’ll be here, unless he gets to talking some of your old politics. I suppose that’s what you came to see him for.”
“Oh, I just happened down this way....”
She sat up straight. “Good gracious. You act as though it were a secret. Tell me, this minute.”
“Why, as a matter of fact,” said Wint good-naturedly, “I want to talk to him about a sewer the city’s going to put in through some land he owns. I guess you’re not interested in sewers.”
She grimaced, and said she should say not. “I thought maybe it was something about the bootleggers,” she said.“Everybody’s talking about them. What are you going to do to them?”
Wint laughed. “That’s like the instructions for destroying potato bugs,” he said. “First, catch your potato bug.”
“You mean you haven’t caught any?”
“Not yet.”
“Are you trying to?”
“Why, we’ve got our eyes open.”
“I love to hear about criminals and everything,” she said. “What will you do to them when you get them? Send them to jail?”
“Well, I’ll do that, if I can’t do anything worse.”
She asked: “You’re really going to—you really mean to get after them?” He nodded, and she laughed. He asked:
“What’s the joke?”
“Oh, it seems funny for you to be so moral about whisky and things.”
He grinned. “It is funny, isn’t it?”
“I should think they’d just laugh at you.”
“Well, maybe they do.”
“I suppose you’re just going to give them a lesson, and then—sort of let things go, aren’t you?”
Wint shook his head. “No, I sha’n’t let things go. Not as long as I’m—in charge.”
“But lots of people will be awfully mad at you. Why, even your father buys whisky and things, doesn’t he?”
“Yes, I suppose so. But he doesn’t sell them.”
“Well, some one’s got to sell them to him.”
“They’ll not sell in Hardiston,” said Wint. He was a little tired of this. “Looks to me as though Amos has stopped to talk politics, after all. Did you tell him I was coming?”
“Oh, yes,” she assured him. “He’ll be right home.” She got up abruptly. “There’s some lemonade in the dining room,” she said. “Would you like some?”
“Every time,” he said. “It’s warm enough to make it taste pretty fine, to-night.”
She came out with a tall pitcher and two glasses, and filledhis glass and her own. They lifted the glasses together, and Wint touched his to his lips. Then he took it down, and looked at it, and said:
“Hello!”
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
“There’s a stick in this, isn’t there?”
“Yes. I always put a little in. Peach brandy. I love it.”
“Peach brandy, eh?”
“Yes. Don’t you like it?”
“Well, I’ve been letting it alone lately I guess I’ll not.”
“Oh, don’t be silly, Wint,” she protested, and stamped her foot at him. “I guess a little brandy won’t hurt you!”
“No, probably not,” Wint agreed. “But I’m on the wagon, you see.”
“You make me feel as though I’d done something wrong to offer it to you.”
“Why, no. Only, I....”
They were so interested that neither of them had heard Amos, and neither of them had seen him stop by the gate for a moment, listening to what they said. But when the gate opened, Agnes saw him, and the sight silenced her. Amos came heavily toward the house, and Agnes called to him:
“Wint’s here, dad.”
Amos said: “Oh! Hello, Wint!”
Wint said “Good evening.” Amos was up on the porch by this time, and seemed to discover the lemonade.
“Hello, there,” he exclaimed. “That looks pretty good. I’m hot. Pour me a glass, Agnes.”
She hesitated; and Wint said: “Take mine.”
“What’s the matter with it?” Amos asked good-naturedly. “Poisoned?” He lifted the glass to his nose. “Oh, brandy, eh? Well, got anything against that?”
“Oh, I’m on the wagon, myself, that’s all.”
Amos nodded. “Well, I never touch it. Not lately. Take it away, Agnes.”
His voice was gentle enough; but Wint thought the girl seemed very white and frightened as she faced her father. She took pitcher and glasses and went swiftly into the house. Amos turned to Wint, and sat down, and asked cheerfully:
“Well, young fellow, what’s on your mind?”
When their business was done, and Wint had gone, Amos sat quietly upon the porch for a while. Then, without moving from his chair, he turned his head and called toward the open door:
“Agnes!”
She answered, from inside. He said: “Come here.” And she appeared in the doorway. He bade her come out and sit down. She chose the hammock, lay back indolently.
Amos filled his pipe with slow care and lighted it. His head was on one side, his eyes squinted thoughtfully. If there had been more light, Agnes could have seen that he was sorely troubled. But she could not see. So she thought him merely angry; and grew angry herself at the thought.
He asked at last: “You offered Wint booze?”
“Just some lemonade,” she said stiffly.
“Booze in it,” he reminded her. “Don’t you do that any more, Agnes.”
“I guess a little brandy won’t hurt Wint Chase,” she told him.
“Don’t you do it any more,” he repeated, finality in his tones. She said nothing; and after a little he asked, looking toward her wistfully in the shadows of the porch: “What did you do it for, Agnes? What did you do it for, anyway?”
She shrugged impatiently. “Oh, I don’t know.”
“What did you do it for?” he insisted. There was an implacable strength in Amos; she knew she could not escape answering. Nevertheless, she evaded again.
“Oh, no reason.”
“What did you do it for?” he asked, mildly, for the third time; and Agnes stamped to her feet. When she answered, her voice was harsh and hard and indescribably bitter.
“Because I wanted to get him drunk,” she said. “He’s so funny when he’s that way. That’s why.”
She stared down at him defiantly; and Amos saw hard lines form about her mouth. Before he could speak, she was gone indoors.
Amos sat there for a long while, after that, thinking.... His thoughts ran back; he remembered Agnes as a baby, as a schoolgirl. She was a young woman, now.
He thought to himself, a curiously helpless feeling oppressing him: “I wish her mother hadn’t’ve died.”
WINT found himself unable to put Hetty out of his mind, next day. He had overslept, was late for breakfast, and ate it alone with Hetty serving him. When she came into the dining room, he said:
“Good morning.”
Hetty nodded, without answering. And he asked cheerfully: “Well, how’s the world this morning?”
She said the world was all right; and she went out into the kitchen again before he could ask her anything more. Wint, over his toast and coffee, wondered. He was beginning to have some suspicion as to what was wrong with Hetty. But—he could not believe it. It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be.
A certain burden of work shut down on him that day and the next, so that he forgot her in his affairs. He saw her every day, of course; but they were never alone together. His mother was always about. And there were other matters on Wint’s mind. He was glad to be able to forget her. Wint, like most men, was willing to forget a perplexity if forgetting were possible. And Hetty kept out of his way, and seemed to resent his interest.
He met Agnes on the street one morning, and she stopped him and talked with him. She was very gay and vivacious about it, touching his arm in a friendly way now and then to emphasize some meaningless word. Her hand was on his arm thus when he saw Joan coming, a little way off. He did not know that Agnes had seen her some time before, without seeming to do so. Agnes discovered Joan now with a start of surprise, and she took her hand off Wint’s arm in a quick, furtive way, as though she did not want Joan to see. Yet Joan must have seen. Wint was uncomfortably conscious that he had been put in an awkward light; but he supposed the whole thing was chance. Nothing more.
Agnes exclaimed: “Why, Joan, we didn’t see you coming.” Her words conveyed, subtly enough, the impression that if they had seen Joan coming, matters would have been different; and Wint scowled, and looked at Joan, and wondered if she was going to be so foolish as to mind. Then Agnes turned to him and said:
“Run along, Wint, I’ve something to say to Joan.” And he looked at Joan, and thought there was pique in her eyes; and he went away in such a mood of sullen resentment as had not possessed him for months. It stayed with him all that day: he reverted into the prototype of the old, sulky, stubborn Wint who had made all the trouble.
Agnes and Joan walked uptown together, and Agnes chattered gayly enough. Agnes had always a ready tongue, while Joan was of a more silent habit. Agnes said Wint had come down to see her, a few days before.
“That is, of course,” she explained, “he pretended he came to see dad. But he telephoned, and I told him dad wasn’t at home, but he came anyway. We sat on the porch and drank lemonade. That night the moon was full. Wasn’t it the most beautiful night, Joan? I think Wint’s a peach. I always did. I never could see why you and he quarreled. Seems to me you were awfully foolish. I’ll never have a fuss with him, I can tell you.”
There was too much sincerity in Joan for this sort of thing; she was almost helpless in Agnes’s hands. That is, she did not know how to counter the other girl’s shafts. She did say: “Wint and I haven’t really quarreled. We’re very good friends.”
Agnes nodded wisely, and said: “Oh, I know.” She looked up at Joan. “Was it about that Hetty Morfee, Joan? I know it’s none of my business, but I can’t help wondering. I shouldn’t think you’d mind that. Men are that way. I know it doesn’t make a bit of difference to me. Not if—Well, I sha’n’t quarrel with Wint over Hetty, I can tell you.”
Joan had turned white. She could not help it; and Agnes saw, and added cheerfully:
“Of course, you can’t believe half you hear, anyway. But they do say that she.... No, I’m not going to.... I never was one to tell nasty stories about people, Joan.”
Joan could not say anything to save her life. She had to get away from Agnes, and she managed it as quickly as she could. She was profoundly troubled, profoundly unhappy. She had not realized how much Wint meant to her. The things which Agnes intimated made her physically sick with unhappiness at their very possibility. She finished her errands as quickly as she could, and hurried home. On the way, she passed Agnes and Jack Routt together, and they spoke to her, and she responded, holding her voice steady. She was miserably hurt and unhappy.
At home, she shut herself in her room to think. There was a picture of Wint on her bureau, a snapshot she had taken two or three years before. Wint had changed since then. The pictured face was boyish and round and good-natured; Wint’s face now had a strength which this boy in the picture lacked. Wint was a man now, for good or ill.
She had, suddenly, a surge of loyal certainly that it was for good, and not for ill, that Wint was become a man. There was an infinite fund of natural loyalty in Joan; she had been prodded by Agnes into a panic of doubt, but when she was alone, this panic passed. A slow fire of anger at Agnes began to burn in her; anger because Agnes had meant to injure Wint, not because Agnes had hurt her. In Wint’s behalf she took up arms; she considered Agnes; she questioned the girl’s motives, she went over and over the incident, trying to read a meaning into it.
There is an instinctive wisdom in woman which passes anything in man. In that long day alone, thinking and wondering and questioning, Joan came very near hitting upon the whole truth of the matter. Nearer than she knew. She came so near that before Wint appeared that evening—he had arranged, a day or two before, to come and see her—she had begun to hate Jack Routt.
She did not know why this was so. She had never particularly liked Jack Routt; yet he had always been cheerful, an amiable companion, a good fellow. Also, he was Wint’s friend, and Joan was loyal to Wint’s friends as she was to Wint. But—All that day, she had thought, again and again, of Jack’s eyes when she saw him with Agnes. She told herself there had been something hidden in them, something she could not define, something meanly triumphant. She mistrusted him; and before Wint came to her, she hated Routt. And feared him.
Nevertheless, she and Wint talked of matters perfectly commonplace for most of that evening together. They were apt to talk of commonplace things in these days; because safety lay in the commonplace. There was a strange balance of emotions between Wint and Joan. A little thing might have tipped it either way. At times, Wint wished to bring matters to an issue; he wished to cry out to Joan that he loved her. But he was restrained by a desperate fear that she was not ready to hear him say this. He was afraid she would cast him out once more. And—he could not bear the thought of that. It was something to be able to see her, talk with her, be near her. He dared not risk losing this much.