Thus they talked of ordinary matters, till Wint got up to go at last. Joan went out on the porch with him; he stopped, on one of the steps, a little below her. He had said good-by before Joan found courage. She asked, then:
“Wint! Will you let me?... There’s something I want to ask you.”
He was surprised; his heart began to pound in his throat. “To ask me?” he repeated. “Why—all right, Joan. What is it?”
“Are you and Routt pretty good friends, Wint?”
“Yes,” he said, at once. “Jack’s the best friend I’ve got.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course. What’s the idea, Joan?”
She said reluctantly: “I don’t know. Only—I don’t seem to trust him. I don’t like him. I’m afraid of him.”
He laughed. “Good Lord! Jack’s harmless; he’s a prince.”
“I don’t think he’s as loyal to you as you are to him,” she said.
Wint exclaimed impatiently: “The way you girls get down on a fellow! Jack’s all right.”
Wint’s impatience made Joan quieter and more sure of herself. “I’m not sure,” she repeated, and smiled a little wistfully. “Just—don’t trust him too far, Wint.”
“I’d trust him with all I’ve got,” Wint said flatly. “I think you’re—I’m surprised at you, Joan.” The stubborn anger roused in the morning when Joan came upon him with Agnes reawoke in Wint. His jaw set, and his eyes were hard.
Joan was troubled; she wanted to say more, but she did not know how. And—she could not forget Hetty. She had not meant to speak to Wint of Hetty; but Joan was woman enough to be unable to hold her tongue. Also, Wint’s loyalty to Routt had angered her; she was willing to hurt him—as men and women are always willing to hurt the thing they love. She said slowly:
“Did you know people are beginning to talk about Hetty Morfee, Wint? You and Hetty!”
Wint’s anger flamed; he flung up his hand disgustedly. “You women. You’re always ready to jump on each other. Why can’t this town let Hetty alone?”
“I only meant—” Joan began.
“I don’t care what you meant,” Wint told her. “You ought not to pass gossip on, Joan. I hate it.”
“I don’t see why you have to defend her,” she protested; and he said hotly:
“I’m not defending her. She doesn’t need defending. If she did, I would, though. Hetty’s all right.”
Joan drew back a little into the shadow of the porch. After a moment, she said:
“Good night, Wint.”
He said harshly: “Good night. And for Heaven’s sake, forget this foolishness. Routt and Hetty.... They’re all right.”
She did not answer. He said again: “Good night,” and he turned and went down to the gate, and away.
Joan watched him go. She thought she ought to be angry with him, and hurt. She was surprised to discover that she was rather proud of Wint, instead; proud of him for beingangry, even at her, for the sake of his friend, and for the sake of Hetty.
She was troubled, because she thought he was wrong; but she was infinitely proud, too, because he had stuck by his guns.
JOAN’S warning as to Jack Routt, her word as to Hetty, and Wint’s rejection of both warning and advice did not lead to a break between them. They met next day, and Wint had the grace to say to her:
“I’m sorry I talked as I did yesterday, last night. I was tired, and—all that. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” Joan told him. “It’s natural for you to stick by your friends.”
“I needn’t have talked so to you, though.”
She laughed, and said he had been all right. “I guess you’ve been imagining you were worse than you really were,” she told him. “It’s quite all right, really.”
“But I’m sorry you—dislike Jack,” he said. “He’s an awfully decent sort.”
“Is he?” she asked. “Then I’m glad you and he are friends.”
“That’s the stuff,” Wint told her. “That’s the way to talk.”
Thereafter, for a week or so, life in Hardiston went quietly. V. R. Kite still bided his time; there was no liquor being sold; Ote Runns went home sober, day after day, with a look of desperate longing in his eyes. That sodden man who had embraced Wint in the Weaver House so long, whom Wint had jailed more than once for his drinking, suffered as much as Ote, or more. He came to Wint and unbraided him for what he had done. “It ain’t the way to treat a fellow,” he told Wint, pleading huskily. “You know how it is. I just gotta have a drink, Mister Mayor. I just gotta. I told Mrs. Moody she’s gotta give me a drink, and she told me you wouldn’t let her. You ain’t got a thing against me, now, have you?” Themiserable man’s fingers were twitching, his lips twisted and writhed. “If I don’t get a drink, I’m a-going to kill some-buddy, I am.”
Wint did not know what to do. He could see at a glance that the man was suffering a very real torment. He had himself never become so soaked with alcohol that his system cried out for it when he abstained; but he knew what torture this might be. He had an idea that candy would alleviate the man’s distress; but the idea seemed to him ridiculous, and he put it aside. Yet there was an obligation upon him to do something.
He did, in the end, a characteristic thing, an impulsive thing; and yet it was sensible, too. There was no saving this man. Highest mercy to him was to let him drink himself to death. Wint told him to come to the house that night; and he gave the poor fellow a quart bottle from his father’s store. The derelict wandered away, calling Wint blessed. They found him under a tree in the yard next door, in the morning, blissfully sleeping.
The story got around, as it was sure to do. The man told it himself; he boasted that Wint was a good fellow. V. R. Kite heard of it, and waved his clenched fists and swore at Wint by every saint in the calendar. Also, he sent for Jack Routt. “We’ve got him,” he cried. “He can’t put over a thing like this on me, Routt. I’ll not stand for it. I’ll run him out of town. Or get out myself. Damn it, Routt, he’s a hypocrite! He’s a whited sepulcher. I’ll—”
Routt laughed good-naturedly, and held up a quieting hand. “Hold on,” he said. “We’ll have better than this on Wint before long. Good enough so that I—I’ll tell you a secret, Kite.”
Kite looked suspicious, and asked what the secret was; but Routt decided not to tell. Not just yet. “Wait till the time comes,” he told Kite. “A little later on.”
So Kite waited.
Toward the end of June, the street carnival came to town for a week’s stay. These carnivals are indigenous to such towns as Hardiston. They resemble nothing so much as an aggregation of the added attractions which usually go with a circus, broken loose from the circus and wandering about the country alone. A merry-go-round reared its tent and set up it clanking organ at Main and Pearl streets. Down the hill below the tent, the snake-eating wild man had his lair; and below him, again, there was an “Ocean Wave.” Along Pearl Street in the other direction the Museum of Freaks and the Galaxy of Beauty were located. Main Street itself was given over to venders of popcorn, candy, hot dogs, ice-cream sandwiches, lemonade, ginger pop, and every other indigestible on the calendar. There also, you might, for the matter of a nickel, have three tries at ringing a cane worth six cents, or a knife worth three. Or you might take a chance in the great lottery, where every entrant drew some prize, even if it were only a packet of hairpins. The arts and crafts were represented by a man who would twist a bit of gilded wire into likeness of your signature for half a dollar.
The first tents of the carnival began to rise one Saturday morning; and all that day and the next, the boys of the town and the grown-ups, too, watched the show take shape. It was almost as good as a circus. At noon on Monday, the carnival opened for business, with the ballyhoo men in full voice before every tent. The moderate afternoon crowd grew into a throng in the evening, when the kerosene torches flared and smoked on every pole, and the normal things of daylight took on a dusky glamour in the jerky illumination of the flares.
Every one went uptown to the carnival that first evening. Wint was there, and Jack Routt, Agnes, Joan, V. R. Kite—every one. In mid-evening, the quieter folk drifted home, but Wint stayed to watch what passed. A little after eleven, he bumped into a drunken man.
In spite of his warning to the advance agent of this carnival, Wint had been expecting to see drunken men. It was the nature of the carnival breed. He wandered back and forth till he came upon Jim Radabaugh, and called the marshal aside.
“Jim,” he said, “they’re selling booze.”
Radabaugh shifted that lump in his cheek, and spat. “So?” he asked mildly.
“I want it stopped,” said Wint. “If you pin it on the carnival bunch, I’ll shut them up.”
“I’ll see,” Radabaugh promised.
“Come along, first, and let’s talk to the boss,” Wint suggested; and they sought out that man. He was running the merry-go-round; a hard little fellow with a cold blue eye. Wint introduced himself; and the man shook hands effusively.
“My name’s Rand,” he said. “Mike Rand. Glad t’ meet you, Mister Mayor.”
Wint said: “That’s all right,” and he asked: “Did your advance man give you my orders?”
“What orders?”
“I told him I didn’t want any booze peddling.”
“Sure, he told me.”
Wint jerked his head backward toward Main Street. “I ran into a drunk up there,” he said.
Rand grinned. “Can’t help that. We’re not selling any.”
“I’m holding you responsible,” said Wint. “If there’s any sold, I’ll cancel your permits.”
The little man stared at him bleakly. “You’ve got a nerve. You can’t pin anything on us.”
“I can’t help that,” Wint told him. “In fact, I don’t care. If there’s booze sold, you get out. If I pin in on any man, he goes to jail. Is that clear?”
“What is this town, anyway—a damned Sunday school?”
“If you like,” said Wint sweetly; and he and Radabaugh turned away. Rand’s engine man left his throttle to approach his chief and ask:
“What’s up? Who was that?”
“Mayor of this burg and the marshal. Say we’ve got to shut down on the booze.”
“Like hell!”
Rand grinned. “Sure. He can’t run a whoozer on me.”
When he left Radabaugh, Wint ran into Jack Routt, and they strolled about together through the crowd. Once they saw Hetty, and Wint thought she was unnaturally cheerful and gay. He wondered if it were possible she had been drinking again; and he stared after her so long that Routt asked:
“Takes your eye, does she?’
“I was wondering,” said Wint.
Routt touched his arm. “You take it from me, Wint, you want to keep clear of her. I’d get her out of the house, if I were you. They’re beginning to talk.”
Wint asked angrily: “Who’s beginning to talk? What about?”
“Everybody. About Hetty—and you, naturally.”
“I wish they—I wish people in this town would mind their own business.”
Routt grinned and said: “You act as though there was something in it.”
“Don’t be a darned fool.”
“Well, I’m telling you what people say. If I were you—you’re a public official, you know, in the public eye—I’d be careful. Tell your mother to get rid of her. Safest thing to do.”
“I’m not looking for safe things to do.” Wint liked the defiant sound of that.
Routt nodded. “I’d be worried, if it was me. That’s all.”
“I’m not worried,” said Wint. “Hetty’s all right. And if she weren’t—I don’t propose to be scared.”
“We-ell, it’s your funeral,” Routt told him.
Wint laughed. “I guess it’s not as bad as that. It’s almost twelve. I’m going home.”
IT was upon the carnival that Wint was to score first blood in his fight to clean up Hardiston. Mike Rand, carnival boss, was a hard man, willing to take a chance, afraid only of being bluffed. So he took Wint’s warning as a challenge. Nevertheless, for the sake of making things as sure as might be, he went to see V. R. Kite. He and Kite had known and understood each other for a good many years.
He dropped in to see Kite Tuesday morning; and the little man remembered his church connections and his outward respectability, and worried for fear some one had seen Rand come in. His worry took the form of resentment at Rand’s imprudence. “Ought to be more careful,” he protested. “Have more sense, man. I have to watch myself in this town. Don’t you know that? I have a position to keep up. You’re all right, of course.” This as Rand’s eyes hardened in a stare that made Kite wince. “But I can’t afford to be hitched up with you openly. It wouldn’t do either of us any good.”
Rand said dryly: “You don’t need to worry about me. I can stand it.”
“I can be useful to you now, whereas my usefulness would be gone if I were less respected.”
“Respected, hell!” said Rand without emotion. “Don’t they call you ‘The Buzzard’ around here? I’ve heard so. That don’t sound respectful.”
“That’s a jest,” said Kite. “Nothing more.”
“Pinned on you by this shrimp Mayor, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. Good-naturedly. He was drunk.”
“Drunk? Him?” Rand lifted his hands in pious horror. “I thought he was one of these ‘lips-that-touch-liquor-shall-never-touch-mine’ guys, to hear him talk.”
“He’s not drinking now; not openly. He was a sot, a fewmonths ago. Dead drunk in the Weaver House, the night he was elected Mayor. I saw him there.”
Rand drawled: “I’ll say this is some town.” He leaned forward. “What I want to know is: how about this booze? He serves notice on me that I’m responsible if any’s sold. How about it? Will he go through? Or is it a bluff?”
Kite considered. “I don’t know,” he said.
“Has he shut you down?”
“He gave us orders not to sell; and we’re not selling. But we’re not idle. We’re preparing to spring a mine under that man.”
“He’s got you bluffed.”
Kite’s face twisted with a sudden rush of fury. “I tell you, we’re going to destroy him—blast him!—in our own good time.”
Rand studied the little man; then he nodded. “Well, that’s all right. Just the same, he’s got you shut down.”
“Yes.”
“Has he pulled any one yet for selling?”
“No.”
“How about the marshal? Is he reasonable?”
“I believe he will obey the Mayor’s orders.”
“Only question is the Mayor’s nerve, then?”
“Yes.”
“And you haven’t tried it out?”
“No; we’re waiting to strike when we’re sure of winning.”
“Hell!” said Rand disgustedly. “He’s got you bluffed. I don’t believe he’s got the nerve to go through with it; but one thing’s sure. He’s got your number, you old skate.”
Kite answered hotly: “If you’re so brave, why don’t you go ahead and fight him?”
“Are you with me?”
“I’m not ready to fight.”
Rand got up. “Well, I am. I never dodged a fight yet. You watch, old man; you’ll see the fur fly yet.”
He stalked out, head back and shoulders squared aggressively. Kite watched him go, and nodded to himself with a measure of satisfaction. He was perfectly willing to see Wint forced tofight—provided some one besides himself did the forcing. Rand looked like a fighter.
Wint and Jack Routt met, on the way uptown after supper that day. Routt asked if Wint were going to the carnival again, and Wint nodded. “Keeping an eye on it,” he said.
They went to the Post Office first; and Routt stopped at his office. “Come up,” he said. “I’ll only be a minute.”
Wint went up with him. Routt dropped a letter or two on his desk; then from a lower drawer produced a bottle. “Don’t mind if I mix myself a highball, do you, Wint?” he asked cheerfully. “I don’t suppose you’ll feel called on to arrest me.”
“Go ahead,” Wint said. Routt poured some whisky into a glass, filled it from a siphon.
“You’re wise to leave the stuff alone,” he said, between the first and second sips from the glass. “It’s bad stuff unless a fellow can handle it.”
Wint nodded uneasily. There was no physical craving in him; nevertheless there was an acute desire to drink for the sake of drinking, for the sake of being like other men, for the sake of defying the danger. “That’s right,” he said. “I’m off it.”
“At that,” Routt remarked, the highball half gone, “I guess you’ve shown you can take it or let it alone. I lay off of it myself, once in a while, just to be sure I can.”
“Oh, I don’t miss it,” Wint said brazenly.
“Sure you don’t,” Routt agreed. “You’re no toper. Never were. Any one likes to drink for the sake of being a good fellow. That’s all I drink for.” He finished the glass, poured in a little more whisky. “Long as I’m sure I can stop when I want to, the way you have done, I go ahead and drink whenever I feel like it.”
Wint nodded. Routt looked at him with a curious intentness. “Another glass here, if you’d like,” he said.
“I guess not.”
Routt laughed. “All right. You know best. If you can’t let it alone when you get started—”
“Oh, I can take a drink and quit.”
“Want one?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
Routt chuckled. “Funny to see you afraid of anything,” he said. “I never expected to see it.”
Wint got up abruptly. The old Wint would have reached for the bottle; this was the new Wint’s impulse. But he fought it down, steadied his voice. “Jack,” he said, a little huskily, “you’re a friend of mine. I don’t want to drink, never. Don’t offer it to me. Some day I might accept. Don’t ever offer me a drink, Jack. Please.”
Routt was ashamed of himself, and angry at Wint for making him ashamed. “Hell, all right,” he said, and dropped the bottle into its place. “Come on, let’s take the air.”
At a little after eleven that night, Mike Rand sought out Wint. Wint was standing before the cane booth, watching the ring-tossers. Rand pushed up beside him and touched his arm, and Wint looked around. The carnival boss said harshly:
“Hey, you!”
Wint looked around at him, and said quietly: “Evening. What’s the matter?”
“Your damned hick marshal has pulled one of my men. I want to bail him out.”
Wint took a minute to consider this, get his bearings. He had not seen Radabaugh all evening. He asked Rand: “You mean he’s made an arrest? What’s the charge?”
“Claims the man was selling booze to a bum.”
“Was he?” Wint inquired gently.
“Was he” Rand growled. “No, of course not. You must think we’re bad men, coming here to dirty your pretty little town. He was selling liver pills, or pink tea. What the hell of it? I want to bail him out.”
“No bail accepted,” said Wint quietly. “He’ll have to stay in the calaboose over night.”
Rand exploded, as though he had been half expecting this. He said some harsh things about Hardiston, and some harsher things about Wint, none of which will bear repeating. In the midst of them, Wint stirred a little and struck the man heavilyin the mouth with his right fist; at the same time, his left started and landed in the other’s throat, and the right went home again on Rand’s hard little jaw. Rand fell in a snoring heap.
Wint was curiously elated. He looked around. A crowd had gathered, and some of the carnival men were pushing through the crowd. There was a belligerent look about them. Then he saw Marshal Jim Radabaugh elbowing through the circle, and Wint was glad to see Jim. He called him:
“Marshal, here’s a man I’ve arrested.”
That halted Rand’s underlings. Rand himself was groaning back to consciousness. Wint pointed down at him. “Take him to jail,” he said.
One of the carnival men protested. Wint turned to him. “Close up your shows, all of you,” he told the man. “Your permit’s cancelled. Get out of town to-morrow.”
Radabaugh had Rand on his feet; he gripped the man, his left hand twisted in the other’s collar. Two or three of Rand’s men surged toward them, and Radabaugh’s gun flickered into sight. It had a steadying effect; no one pressed closer.
All the fighting blood had flowed out of Rand’s smashed lips. He was whining now: “Come, old man, what’s the idea?” Wint and Radabaugh marched him between them through the crowd. Two or three score curious, cheering or cursing spectators followed them to the cells behind the fire-engine house. Rand submitted to being locked up there with no more than querulous protests. He seemed thoroughly tamed. He asked for a lawyer, but Wint said there was no need of a lawyer that night. Two of the fire department, on duty, had come out to see the business of locking up this second prisoner. Radabaugh bade them keep an eye on the cells, and they agreed to do so. Then the marshal scattered the crowd. Wint washed his bruised hands in the engine house. After a little, Radabaugh came in; and Wint asked:
“Is it true you got a man selling?”
“Yes. The capper at the lottery.”
“How’d you get him?”
Radabaugh chuckled, and shifted the lump in his cheek.
“Saw Ote Runns,” he said. “Figured Ote would nose out anyloose booze, so I kind of kept an eye on Ote. He talked to two or three men, and finally to this fellow. They went in behind the billboard by the hotel, and I saw him slip Ote the bottle and take Ote’s money. So I nabbed him.”
“Ote? Get him too?”
“Yes; him and his half pint. I let him keep it. He was pretty shaky. Needed it, I guess.”
Wint nodded. “Be around in the morning?” he asked. “I’ll be down early.”
Radabaugh assented. Wint hesitated, then he said: “Good work, Jim.”
The marshal grinned. “Well,” he told Wint, “from the looks of Rand’s face, you did some good work, too.”
They shook hands. There was a distinctly mutual liking and admiration in their grip. Then Wint started for home, and Radabaugh went back to keep an eye on his prisoners.
One of Rand’s men went to V. R. Kite with the news of the trouble; and Kite, uncertain what to do, sent for Jack Routt and told him what had happened. This was at midnight. “I’ve got to stand by Rand,” Kite said. “The question is, are we ready to get after Wint?”
Routt shook his head. “Time for that. Hold off,” he advised.
Kite asked impatiently: “How long? What makes you think you can get anything on him?”
“It’s ripe,” said Routt. “Apt to break any time. I’ve been working on it.”
In the end, he persuaded Kite to wait. “Well, then,” Kite asked, “what are we going to do about Rand?”
“He’s got to take his medicine.”
“He won’t. He’ll fight.”
“I’ll tell you,” said Routt. “I’ll go see him. Fix it up with him.”
“Can you do it without Wint’s finding out?”
Routt laughed. “I’m a lawyer. I’ve a right to have clients, even in the Mayor’s court. I’ll take their case.”
Kite, in the end, agreed to that. When Routt left the littleman, he intended to go direct to the jail; but on the way, he changed his mind. As well to let the men cool their heels. It would make Rand more ready to listen to reason.
He went up Main Street toward the carnival, and found that the tents were coming down, one of Radabaugh’s officers keeping a watchful eye on the proceedings. Wint’s orders that the shows be closed could not be evaded. This much, at least, he had scored. Routt went home and did some thinking.
He appeared at the jail half an hour before Wint came to hold court; and Radabaugh let him talk with Rand and with the other man. When Wint appeared, the two were brought into court, with Ote Runns as a witness, for good measure. Wint was surprised to see Routt. Jack nodded to him, and came up to Wint’s desk, and said: “Rand sent for me. Wanted me to take his case. He knows he’s licked, I think. He’ll take his medicine, if you don’t make it too stiff.”
“I’m charging him with assault and with using profane language,” said Wint.
“Assault?” Routt laughed. “Thought it was you that did the assaulting.”
“He made threats. Threats constitute an assault. You know that as well as I do.”
Routt nodded. “Oh, sure.” He added: “You know, the carnival’s shut up. It’s costing Rand money. You might go as light as you can.”
“I’m going to give the other man the limit,” said Wint.
“That’s all right,” Routt agreed. “Rand’s sore at him for getting caught. He’ll let the poor gink take his medicine.”
Wint nodded abstractedly. Foster, the city solicitor, had just come in, and Wint beckoned to him, and asked: “What’s the worst I can do on a charge of illegal liquor selling?”
“Two hundred dollars’ fine on the first offense,” Foster told him.
Three minutes later, the offender was protesting that he could not pay such a fine; he was appealing desperately to Rand. Wint bade the carnival boss stand up. Rand got to his feet.
“I’m sorry for this business,” he said humbly. “I thought you were just trying to save your face. Running a bluff.”
“Are you paying his fine for your friend?” Wint asked coldly.
Rand said: “No, blast him! If he wants to get caught by a hick constable, let him take his medicine. Work it out.”
“I wouldn’t call Radabaugh a hick to his face,” Wint suggested in a mild voice, and Rand apologized.
“I didn’t mean a thing,” he said.
Wint, in a swift hurry to be done, told him: “You’re fined ten for assault, and five for profanity. And costs.”
“That’s all right,” Rand cheerfully agreed. “I’ll pay.”
Wint nodded, disgusted at the man because he submitted so tamely. He sat back in his chair, listening idly to what Routt was saying, paying no apparent heed. Rand settled his fines and costs with the clerk, shook hands with Routt, and departed. When he was gone, Wint sat up with new energy.
“I hope we’re rid of him for good,” he said.
“You are, I’ll say,” Routt told him. “He’s had all he wants.”
The carnival got out of town that day; but before he departed, Rand had a word with Kite, and Kite comforted him. “Don’t worry,” Kite said. “This won’t last. You’ll make a harvest here, next summer.”
Rand said ruefully: “I’m not making any harvest now. And they tell me you helped elect this guy.”
“He was a common drunk, then. How could I know?”
Rand fingered his swollen face gingerly. “I’ll say he’s got a punch.”
“He won’t have any punch left when we’re done with him,” Kite promised. “Wait and see.”
“I’m waiting,” said Rand. And a little later, he and his cohorts went their way.
IN mid-July, Wint at last found out the truth about Hetty. That is to say, he found out a part of the truth; enough to make him heartsick and sorry.
His eventual enlightenment was inevitable as to-morrow morning’s sunrise. A more sophisticated young man—Jack Routt, for example—would not have remained in the dark so long. But Wint, aside from noticing that Hetty looked badly, and aside from some casual consideration of Routt’s repeated warnings, gave very little thought to his mother’s handmaiden. There were too many other and more important things to occupy him. His work as Mayor, his studies, his Joan. Joan was bulking very large in his life in those days. He found understanding, and sympathy, in her. They were better than sweethearts; they were friends. The other—this thought must have been lying, unspoken, in the mind of each—the other could wait and must wait till Wint had proved himself for good and all. Then.... Once in a while, Wint allowed himself to look forward, and to dream. But not often. The present was too engrossing to give much time for dreaming of the future.
So, though he saw Hetty daily, when she served the meals at home, or when he went into the kitchen, or when he encountered her at her cleaning in the front part of the house, Wint gave her very little consideration. His mother protested, once in a while, that Hetty was growing lazy. “She slacks things,” the voluble little woman said. “She leaves dust about; and she’s not so neat as she used to be. I declare, you just can’t get a girl that will keep up her work. They all get so lazy after a while, but I did think that Hetty was going to be—”
Wint’s father said, tolerantly, that Hetty was all right; that she was a good cook, and did her work well enough, so far ashe could see. The elder Chase had always been a good-natured man; but a new generosity in his appraisal of others was developing in the man now. He had been in some trouble of mind since that day in May when Amos Caretall came home. Chase was oppressed by the conviction that he had acted unworthily in that matter; yet he could not admit as much. His hostility toward Amos would not let him. The result was that he felt at odds with his son; that they avoided discussions of the town’s affairs; that they lived together in a polite neutrality. It was working changes in Chase. He was becoming, in some fashion, a sympathetic, rather likable figure. You felt he was unhappy, needed comforting.
So, on this day, he spoke well of Hetty; and because Mrs. Chase was always the loyal mirror of her husband’s opinions, she also ceased to criticize the girl. Wint had heard the conversation, but it made little impression on him. He was thinking of other things; wondering, for example, when Kite would make the first move in the conflict that was sure to come. He had heard, that day—Gergue told him—that Routt was thinking of running for Mayor against him in the fall. Wint was having difficulty in understanding that. He knew Routt was his friend; and, of course, political opponents might still be personal friends. Nevertheless.... The thing puzzled him. It did not jibe with his opinion of Routt.
After supper that night, the elder Chase went downtown. Wint had some writing to do, and went upstairs to his room to do it. Mrs. Chase had a caller, Mrs. Hullis, from next door. They were sewing and talking together in the sitting room. Wint could hear the murmur of his mother’s voice, steady and persistent. Mrs. Hullis was a good listener.
About an hour after supper, Wint realized that he wanted a drink of water. There was water in the bathroom; but there was a filter on the faucet in the kitchen, and Hardiston water needed filtering. It was pure enough, clean enough, but there was a proportion of iron in it that sometimes gave the water a slightly rusty color. So Wint went down by the back stairs, in order not to disturb his mother, into the kitchen.
He found Hetty sitting in a kitchen chair with her arms hanging limply and her feet outstretched before her. The girl’s whole body was slumped down, as though she had fainted; and at first Wint thought this was what had happened, for Hetty’s eyes were closed. He cried out:
“Why, Hetty? What’s the matter? Are you sick?”
And he went quickly toward her across the kitchen.
But when he spoke, Hetty opened her eyes and looked at him, and shook her head. “No,” she said, in the sullen tone that had become habitual to her. “No, I’m all right.”
“You are not,” Wint protested. “You’re as white as a rag.” He saw the dishes piled in the sink. “You’ve not cleaned up after supper. How long have you been this way?”
Hetty closed her eyes wearily, and opened them again, and managed a smile. “Oh, I’m all right, Wint,” she said. “You’re a nice boy. Run along. Don’t bother about me.”
Wint laughed. “I’m not bothering. I want to help. What happened?”
“I—just felt terribly tired—all of a sudden,” she said. There was a suggestion of surrender in her voice; as though the barriers of reserve were breaking down. “That’s all, Wint; I’m just tired.”
“You need a rest,” Wint agreed. “You’ve been plugging away, taking care of us, for a long time, now. Come in and lie down on the couch in the dining room.”
Hetty shook her head in a frightened little way; the bravado was going out of her. She seemed very helpless and feminine. “No, no,” she protested. “I’ll be all right as soon as I rest a little. Do run along, Wint.”
Wint put his hand on her forehead. “There’s more than just being tired the matter with you. You’re sick, Hetty. Your head’s hot. I’ll tell you, you go up and go to bed, and I’ll clean up down here. I’m a champion dish washer.”
Hetty laughed wearily. “You’re a champion decent boy, Wint,” she said. “But you’ll just have to let me alone. There’s nothing you can do for me.”
“I can see that you go up to bed.”
“No, no; I’m all right. Nearly.”
Wint started for the door. “I’m going to telephone for a doctor,” he declared. “You’re sick, Hetty. That’s the plain English of it. I’m going to telephone.”
She had moved so swiftly that she startled him; moved after him, caught his arm, shook it fiercely. “You’ll not telephone for any one, do you hear?” she told him hotly. “You let me alone, Wint. What do I want with a doctor!”
Wint was honestly uneasy about her. He said: “Then let me call mother. She’s a good hand to make sick people well. She—”
“No, no, not your mother,” Hetty protested. And half to herself she added: “Not your mother. She would know.”
The little phrase was profoundly revealing. “She would know.” It struck Wint like a splash of cold water in the face. “She would know.” It told so old a story. Wint understood, at last; and Hetty saw understanding in his eyes, and braced herself to defy him. But Wint only said softly:
“Hetty? That.... You poor kid! I’m so sorry.”
Hetty laughed harshly; and her face began to twist and work and assume strange contortions, and abruptly she began to cry. She turned and groped her way to the chair again, and sat down with her head pillowed on her arms on the table, and sobbed as though her heart was broken. Wint stood very still, stunned and miserable, watching her. There was no sound at all in the kitchen except the sound of Hetty’s racking, choking sobs. In the stillness, Wint could hear the even murmur of his mother’s voice, three rooms away, as she talked to Mrs. Hullis. He could almost hear the words she said. And Hetty sobbed, with her head on her arms.
Wint went across to her and touched her head with his hand; and she brushed it away with an angry gesture, as a hurt dog snarls at the hand that comes to heal its hurt. She was like a hurt animal, he thought; she was quite alone in the world. Worse than alone, for she was here in Hardiston, where every one would make her business their business. For that is the way of small towns. Wint was terribly sorry for her, terribly anxious to help her. He had no thought, in this moment, of Jack Routt’s warnings; and if he had remembered them, theywould only have hardened his determination to help her. Which may have been what Jack intended.
He said: “Cry it out, Hetty. Then I want to talk to you.”
She said thickly: “Go away. Let me alone.” But Wint did not move, while she cried and cried.
He stood just beside her. Hetty at last shifted her position, so that she could look down between her arms and see his feet where he waited. She said again:
“Go away.”
Wint chuckled comfortingly. “I’m not going away,” he said. “This is the time your friends will stick by you. I’m going to stick by you.”
“I don’t want you to,” she said. “I don’t want any one to. Go away. Let me alone. Let me do what I want to.”
Wint said: “You mustn’t think this is too desperately hopeless, Hetty. I’m going to do anything I can; and mother will take care of you.”
She lifted her head at that and looked at him and laughed in a hard, disillusioned way. “A lot you know about women, Wint,” she said.
“I know that you think things are darker than they are,” he assured her. “You’ll see. We’ll manage. Mother and I.”
“Your mother’ll order me out of the house, minute she knows,” said Hetty unemotionally.
Wint protested. “No; you don’t know her. Mother couldn’t hurt any one. You’ll see. She’ll do everything.”
Hetty got up and went to work on the dishes like an automaton. She had to busy herself with something, or she would have screamed. She was trembling, hysterically astir. Wint watched her for a little; then he said:
“You’re going to let us help you.”
“All the help I’ll get will be a kick,” she said. “Your mother won’t want the like of me in her house.”
“You don’t know her,” he insisted. “Mother’s fine, underneath. She’s always doing things for people. You’ll see.”
Hetty looked at him sideways, smiling a little. “You never would believe anything was so till you’d tried it, Wint,” she told him. “But you’re pretty decent, just the same.”
He said, studying her: “You’re looking better already. Feeling better?”
She nodded. “It helps some—just to tell some one,” she admitted. “And the spell is over, anyway.”
“Having friends always helps,” he told her. “You’ll find it so.” She smiled wistfully; and he went on: “I’m going to speak to mother to-night.”
Hetty said: “Well, she’s got a right to know. I’ll pack up my things.”
“After Mrs. Hullis goes.”
“Why not tell her, too? Your mother will, first thing in the morning.”
Wint laughed. “You like to look at the black side, don’t you? I tell you, it’s going to be all right.”
She whirled to face him, and said, under her breath, with a terrible earnestness: “All right? All right? If you say that again, I’ll yell at you. You poor, nice, straight fool of a kid. You talk like I was a baby that had stubbed its toe. And all the time, I’d better be dead, dead. This is no stubbed toe, Wint. Wake up. Don’t be a—”
And abruptly she collapsed again, weeping, into the chair.
Wint said insistently: “Just the same, Hetty, you’ll see I know what I’m talking about. Things will come out better than you think.”
She cried: “Oh, get out of here. Get out of here. You poor little fool.”
Wint went up to his room. Mrs. Hullis was still with his mother. He would wait till Mrs. Hullis was gone.
MRS. HULLIS stayed late, and Wint had time to do some thinking before she finally departed. But he did very little. He was in no mood for thinking. It was characteristic of Wint that when his sympathies were aroused, he was an unfaltering partisan; and there was no question that his sympathies had been aroused in behalf of Hetty.
It was equally characteristic of him that he wasted very little time wondering who was to blame for what had happened; and that he wasted no time at all in considering what Hardiston would say about it all. He was going to help the girl; he had made up his mind to that. The rest did not matter at all.
He counted on his mother’s sympathy and understanding; and when, after a time, he heard her showing Mrs. Hullis to the door, and heard their two voices upraised in a last babel as they cleaned up the tag ends of conversation and said good-by, he went out into the upper hall, to be ready to descend. Hetty had gone upstairs a little earlier; he could hear her now, moving about in her room.
His mother went out on the front steps with Mrs. Hullis, to be sure no word had been forgotten; and when she came in after her visitor had gone, Wint was waiting for her. She said: “Why, Wint, I thought you’d gone to bed long ago. I told Mrs. Hullis you were studying the law books up in your room. Mr. Hullis is a lawyer, you know. She says he brings his books home and sits up half the night, but I told her you were always one to go early to bed, ever since you was a boy. And she said she—”
Wint took her arm good-naturedly. “There, mother,” he interrupted. “I don’t care what Mrs. Hullis said. I want totalk to you about something that has just come up. Come in and sit down.”
Mrs. Chase, like most talkative women, was habitually so absorbed in her own conversation and her own thoughts that it was hard to surprise her. She took Wint’s announcement as a matter of course; and they went into the sitting room arm in arm, and she picked up her sewing basket and sat down in the chair she had occupied all evening, and began to rock primly back and forth while she stretched a sock on her fingers to discover any holes it might have acquired. “...do get such a comfort out of talking to Mrs. Hullis,” she was saying, as she sat down. “She’s such a nice woman, Wint. I never could see why you didn’t like her more. She and I—”
Wint said: “I don’t want to talk to you about Mrs. Hullis, mother. I want to talk to you about Hetty.”
Mrs. Chase did drop her work in her lap at that. “About Hetty?” she echoed. “Why should you want to talk about Hetty? Wint! You’re never going to marry her, are you? I—”
Wint laughed. “No, no. Not that Hetty isn’t a nice girl; and she’ll make some fellow a mighty fine wife. But I want to—”
“There,” said Mrs. Chase, immensely reassured. “I knew it couldn’t be that. I always knew you and Joan.... I said to Mrs. Hullis to-night that you and Joan were friendly as ever. She’s a nice girl, Wint. I don’t see why you don’t get married right away. Your father and I were married before—”
Wint said, persistently bringing her back to the point: “I don’t want to talk about Joan, either, mother. It’s Hetty.”
“Well, I should think you would want to talk about Joan,” Mrs. Chase declared. “She’s worth talking about. I’m sure she wouldn’t like it very much to know you didn’t want to talk about her, Wint. She—”
“Mother,” Wint insisted. “Hetty needs our help. I want you to—”
Mrs. Chase looked at him with a face that had suddenly turned white and cold. She put one trembling hand to herthroat. “Wint?” she asked, in a husky whisper. “What’s the matter with Hetty? What are you talking about? What is the—”
“Hetty’s going to have a little baby,” said Wint gently.
Mrs. Chase exclaimed: “Wint! You’re not.... You haven’t.... It isn’t you?”
“No, no,” Wint said impatiently. “Of course not. I—”
“The shameless girl!” his mother cried, all her alarm turning into anger. “The shameless hussy. In my house. I declare—”
“Please,” her son protested. His mother got up.
“She sha’n’t sleep another night under my roof,” she declared. “I never thought to live to—”
“Mother,” said Wint, so sternly that his mother stopped in the doorway. “Come back,” he told her. And she obeyed him, protesting weakly. “Sit down,” he said. “Hetty needs our help. Don’t you understand?”
When a wolf is injured, his own pack pulls him down; when a crow is hurt, his fellows of the flock peck him to death relentlessly; but wolf and crow are merciful compared to womankind. There is no deeper instinct in woman than that which condemns the sister who has strayed. It is true that, in many women, the compassion overpowers the cruelty of wrath. But Mrs. Chase was a very simple person, elemental, a woman and nothing more. She sat down at Wint’s command; but she said implacably:
“I won’t have her in the house, Wint. A girl like that. I should think you’d be ashamed to stand up for her. A shameless, worthless thing.... You can talk all you’re a mind to, but I’m going to send her packing. You and your father have your own way, most of the time, but this is once that I’m going to have mine. I always knew she was too pretty for any good. Pretty, and impudent, and all. I won’t have her—”
Wint asked: “Hasn’t she worked hard enough for you? Done her work well? Tried to do what you wanted?”
“Course she’s done her work, or I wouldn’t have kept her. That hasn’t a thing to do with it, Wint. I’m surprised at you,standing up for her. I told Mrs. Hullis, only the other day, that she was too pretty for her own good. I might have known she would get into trouble. The nasty little—”
“Mother,” Wint cried sharply, “I won’t let you talk like that. I told Hetty we’d help her; and she said you’d be against her; and I wouldn’t believe it. I can’t believe it. A poor girl without a friend anywhere, in the worst kind of trouble, and you—”
“Wint, I don’t see why you stand up for her if you aren’t—”
“You know I’m not. Don’t be ridiculous, mother. But I’ve known her all our lives. Grew up with her. And I’m going to—”
His mother shook her head positively: “I’m not going to have her in the house, Wint. You don’t need to talk any more. That’s all there is to it. I won’t!”
“I counted on you.”
“Well, you needn’t to count on me any more. I know what’s best; and I’m not going to have that shameless—”
She was interrupted, this time, by the arrival of Wint’s father. They heard the front door open, and heard him come in. Wint got up and went to the door that led into the hall. The elder Chase was hanging up his hat. Mrs. Chase, behind Wint, was talking steadily. Wint said to his father:
“Come in, will you? Mother and I are talking something over.”
Chase nodded; but he had news of his own. “Heard uptown to-night that Routt’s going to run against you in the fall,” he said. “Did you know that, Wint?”
Wint nodded. “I’d heard so.”
“I thought you and he were good friends.”
“We are,” Wint said good-naturedly. “But that doesn’t prevent our being political enemies. He’s had some break with Amos. Come in, dad. I want you to hear—”
But the older man heard it first from Mrs. Chase. She came across the room to meet them, pouring it out indignantly. “And Wint wants me to keep her,” she concluded. “Wants me to keep that girl in the house after this. I told him—”
Chase asked: “What’s that? Wint, what is this? Hetty—in trouble?”
“Yes, sir,” said Wint. “I found it out to-night; and I promised her we’d stand by her. Help her.”
Chase demanded sharply: “What right had you to commit us? If she chooses to destroy herself, how does that concern us? I’m surprised at you, Wint. It’s impossible.”
Wint said, in a steady voice: “She needs friends badly. She hasn’t any one to turn to. And Hetty’s a good sort, underneath. I told her—”
“Why doesn’t she turn to the man?” Chase interjected. “He’s the one that ought to—”
“As a matter of fact, I haven’t thought of him,” said Wint. “But if he were likely to help her, it seems to me he would have taken a hand before this. Don’t you think so?”
“Don’t I think so?” Wint’s father was outraged and angry. “I don’t think anything about it. It’s no concern of ours, so long as she packs herself out of here. Let her get out of her own mess.”
“I’m going to make it a concern of mine,” said Wint, his jaw stiffening. “I’m not going to see her turned adrift. I’m going to help her.”
Chase looked at him keenly. “By God, Wint, is this your doing? Are you—”
Wint said, a little wearily: “That was the first thing mother asked. You people don’t think very highly of me, do you?”
“Isn’t it the natural question to ask?” his father demanded. “Isn’t it the only possible explanation of this attitude on your part? Is it true, young man? That you—”
“Have it any way you want,” Wint exclaimed, too angry to deny again. “I don’t care. The point is this. Hetty is in trouble; she needs friends. I’ve promised that we would help her. I’ve promised you and mother would back me up. I counted on you.”
Chase lifted his hand in a terrible, silent rage. “You want to shame us, your mother and me, in the face of all Hardiston. I tell you, Wint, whether it’s your doing or not, you’re crazy. If it’s you—then we’ll give her some moneyand get rid of her. If it’s not, then she gets out of here to-night. Inside the hour.”
Wint said, half to himself: “We’d have to send her away, in any case. Somewhere. For a while.”
Chase laughed bitterly. “All right. If this is a new scrape you’ve got yourself into, I’ll buy you out of it. How much does the girl want?”
Wint flamed at him: “It’s not my concern, I tell you. You ought not to need to be told.”
“Then get her out of the house,” Chase exclaimed; “as quick as you can. Or I will. Where is she?” He turned toward the door.
But Wint was before him; blocked the doorway. “Father,” he said. “You and mother.... I’ve promised her help. Promised you would be good to her.”
“The more fool you. She goes out to-night.”
“If she goes,” Wint cried, “I go with her. You can do as you please.”
For a little after that, there was silence in the room. Wint stood in the doorway, head high and eyes hot. His father faced him. His mother stood by her chair, across the room, her lips moving soundlessly. It was she who first found voice. She came toward Wint in a clumsy, stumbling little run; and she caught his arms, and she pleaded with him.
“Don’t you do that, Wint. Don’t you. Don’t go away and leave us again. We’re getting old, sonny. Your father and I. Your old mother. Don’t you go away. We’d.... We couldn’t ever stand it again. We—”
Wint said gently: “I don’t want to go. I want to stay at home here with you both, and be proud of you, and love you.”
“You shall stay,” she told him. “You shall. Anything you want, Wint, sonny. I don’t care whether you did it or not. I’ll be good to her. I will, Wint. If you’ll stay—”
The boy said, half abashed: “I don’t want to seem to drive you to it. Only—I’ve promised her. I can’t break my word to her. Please, can’t you see?”
“It’s all right,” his mother protested. “I’ll do anything.” She clutched her husband’s arm. “Tell him to stay, Winthrop,” she begged. “Don’t let him go away. We’ll take care of Hetty.”
Chase said: “You’re making lots of trouble for us, Wint.” He smiled a little unsteadily. “We’re too old for so much excitement. You’ll have to remember that. Remember to take care of us—as well as Hetty.”
Wint could not hold out. He said: “All right. I won’t go away. Do as you think best about Hetty. I hope you’ll let her—”
“I’ll keep her,” his mother cried. “I’ll be as good as I know to her.”
And his father echoed: “We’ll take care of her, Wint.”
“You’re doing it because you want to,” Wint pleaded. “You don’t have to. I’ll stay anyway. But I—hope you’ll want to help her, anyway.”
“Yes,” Chase said. “We’ll keep her—because we want to. Do what we can.”
But they were not to keep her very long, for Hetty’s time was near. It was decided that she should go to Columbus for a little while, returning to them in the fall. Wint wrote a check to cover her expenses. Hetty’s old sullenness had returned to her. She took the check without thanks, and tucked it away in her pocketbook. She was to go to the train alone, to avoid talk.
The night of her going, Jack Routt met V. R. Kite, and took Kite to his office. And he told him certain things, an evil elation in his eyes. Told him in detail that which he had planned.
Kite listened with eyes shining; and at the end he said: “He’ll deny it. What can you prove?”
“This proves the whole thing,” said Routt triumphantly, and slid a slip of paper across the desk to Kite. Kite looked at it. A check, drawn by Winthrop Chase, Junior, to the order of Henrietta Morfee.
The buzzard of a man banged his hard old fist upon the table. “By God, Routt!” he cried, “we win. We’ll skin that cub. We’ll hang his hide on the barn!”
Routt reached into the drawer of his desk. “And that means,” he said, “that it’s time to have a drink. Say when?”
END OF BOOK IV
AT this time, and for a long while afterward, it seemed to Wint that all was well with the world. He had some reason to think so. He kept his promise to Hetty; and that matter, which had threatened to cause a difference between him and his father and mother, had resulted in the end in a closer understanding between them. They had let him see their dependence on him; they had let him see something of the depths of affection in their hearts for him. The Chases were not a demonstrative family; not given to much talk of these matters, and Wint found their attitude in some sort a happy revelation. His father began, in an uncertain way, to defer to Wint; the elder Chase began to ask his son’s advice, now and then; he seemed to have recognized the fact of Wint’s manhood; he seemed to have discovered that Wint was no longer a boy. There was a new respect in his bearing toward his son.
Wint’s mother had changed, too; she was, perhaps, a little less loquacious. She and the elder Chase were beginning to be proud of Wint; and this pride forced them to see him in a new light. Not as their boy, their son, their child; but as a man whom other men respected.
For Wint was respected. That was one of the things that made the world look bright to him. He was surprised to find, as the days passed, and as it was seen that his orders to clean up the town were being enforced, that good citizens rallied to him. Hardiston was normally a law-abiding, decent place; its people were normally decent and law-abiding people. They would not have condemned Wint for failure to enforce the law. In fact, with his antecedents, they had expected him to fail. They were the more pleased when he did enforce it; and they took occasion to let him see it. Also, they took occasion to tellthe elder Chase that his son was doing well; and Winthrop Chase, Senior, took a diffident pride in these assurances. Chase was never a hypocrite, even with himself; he could not forget that he had urged Wint to rescind those orders to Radabaugh.
Wint found a surprising number and variety of people rallying to his support, in those days after his clash with the carnival men and his victory in that matter. Dick Hoover’s father, for example; a solid man, a lawyer of the old school, and one who spoke little and to the point. Hoover told Wint he had done well.
Wint said he had tried to do well.
“You understand, young man,” Hoover drawled in the slow, whimsical fashion that was characteristic of him. “You understand, I’m no teetotaller, myself. I’ve been accustomed to a drink, when I chose, for a good many years. This—crusade—of yours has made it damned inconvenient for me, too. But it’s a good cause. I’ve no complaint. More power to your elbow!”
Wint laughed, and said: “I guess there would be no kick at anything you might do, sir.”
Hoover nodded. “Oh, of course, I could bring the stuff in if I chose. But a man can’t afford to be on the wrong side in these matters, you know; not if he wants to keep his self-respect. And I can do without it. I can do without it. Stick to your guns, young man.”
“I’m going to,” Wint told him, flushed and proud at the older man’s praise. “I’m going to, sir.”
Peter Gergue came to Wint, scratching the back of his head and grinning a sly and knowing grin, and told Wint he was making votes by what he had done. “That’s a funny thing, too,” said Gergue. “Man’d think you’d make a pile of enemies. But I could name two or three of the worst soaks in town that say you’re all right; got good stuff in you; all that.” Gergue scratched his head again. “Yes, sir, men are funny things, Wint.”
Wint had never particularly liked Gergue, because he had never seen under the surface of the man. He was coming tohave a quite genuine respect and affection for Amos’s lieutenant. “I’m not doing it to make votes,” he said good-naturedly.
“That’s the reason you’re making votes by it,” Gergue assured him. “And that’s the way politics goes. Take James T. Hollow now; he’s always trying to do what is right. He says so hisself. But it don’t get him anywhere; and I reckon that’s because he does what’s right because he thinks there’s votes in it. You go ahead and do it anyway. Maybe you do it because you think it’ll start a fight. Make some folks mad. And instead of that, they eat out o’ your hand.”
Wint nodded. “Even Kite,” he said. “He made some fuss at first. But it looks as though he had decided to take it lying down.”
Gergue shook his head. “Don’t you make any mistake about V. R. Kite,” he warned Wint. “He don’t like a fight, much. Getting too old. But he’ll fight when he’s got a gun in both hands. He’ll play poker when he holds four aces and the joker. V. R. will start something when he’s ready. I wasn’t talking about him.”
“I’m ready when he is,” Wint declared.
“He won’t be ready till he thinks you ain’t,” Gergue insisted.
But Wint was in no mood to be depressed by a possibility of future trouble. In fact, he rather looked forward to this potential clash with V. R. Kite. It added to the zest of life.
Old Mrs. Mueller, who ran the bakery, whispered to Wint when he stopped for a loaf of bread one night that he was a fine boy. “My Hans,” she said gratefully. “He is working now; and that he would never do when he could get his beer regular, every second day a case of it. And there is more money in the drawer all the time, too.”
And Davy Morgan, the foreman of his father’s furnace, told Wint that save for one or two irreconcilables, the men at the furnace were with him. “And the men that kick the most, they are the ones who are the better off for it,” he explained, in the careful English of an old Welshman to whom the language must always be an acquired and unfamiliar instrument. “William Ryan has never been fit for work on Mondays until now.”
Murchie, Attorney General of the state, who lived up the creek, and who had been a speaker at the elder Chase’s rallies in the last mayoral campaign, happened into town one day and told Wint he had heard of the matter at Columbus and that people were talking about him, Wint Chase, up there. “They knew old Kite, you see,” he told Wint. “He comes up there to lobby on every liquor bill; and they like to see him get a kick in the slats, as you might say. But you’ll have to look out for him.”
“I’m going to,” Wint assured Murchie.
“If you can down Kite, there’ll be a place for you at Columbus, some day,” Murchie predicted. “They don’t like Kite, up there.”
Sam O’Brien, the fat restaurant man, stopped laughing long enough to tell Wint he was all right, had good stuff in him, was a comer. “The Greek next door,” he explained. “He thinks you’re a tin god. He runs the candy store, you know. Says there never was so much candy sold. He’ll vote for you, my boy. If he ever gets his papers. And learns to read. And if you live that long.”
Wint got most pleasure, perhaps, out of the attitude of B. B. Beecham. He had an honest respect for the editor’s opinion on most matters. Every one had. Beecham was habitually right. In his editorial capacity, he took no notice of what had come to pass in Hardiston. When the carnival men were arrested, he printed the fact without comment. “Michael Rand was fined for assault and improper language,” theJournalsaid. The other man for “illegal sales of liquor.” And the “permit of the carnival for the use of the streets was canceled.” Thus the news was recorded, and every man might draw his own deductions. B. B. was never one to force his opinions on any man, which may have been the reason why people went out of their way to discover them.
Wint stopped in at theJournaloffice one hot day in July. B. B. was in his shirt sleeves, and collarless. He wore, habitually, stiff-bosomed shirts of the kind usually associated with evening dress. On this particular day, he had been working over the press—his foreman was ill—and there were inkysmears on the white bosom. Nevertheless, B. B.’s pink countenance above the shirt was as clean as a baby’s. There was always this refreshing atmosphere of cleanliness about the editor. Wint came into the office and sat down in one of the chairs and took off his hat and fanned himself. The afternoon sun was beginning to strike in through the open door and the big window; but there was a pleasantly cool breath from the dark regions behind the office where the press and the apparatus that goes to make a small-town printing shop were housed. Wint said:
“This is one hot day.”
“Hottest day of the summer,” B. B. agreed.
“How hot is it? Happen to know?”
“Ninety-four in the shade at one o’clock,” said B. B. “Mr. Waters telephoned to me, half an hour ago.”