Landlord Files set forth a boiled dinner that day; he skinched on corned beef and made up on cabbage; but he economized on fuel, and the cabbage was underdone.
Mr. Britt, back in his office, allowing his various affairs to be digested—his dinner, his political project, the valentine—his hopes in general—found that soggy cabbage to be a particularly tough proposition. He was not sufficiently imaginative to view his punishment by the intractable cabbage as a premonitory hint that he was destined to suffer as much in his pride as he did in his stomach. His pangs took his mind off the other affairs. He was pallid and his lips were blue when Emissary Orne came waddling into the office.
Mr. Orne, in addition to other characteristics that suggested a fowl, had a sagging dewlap, and the February nip had colored it into resemblance to a rooster's wattles. When he came in Mr. Orne's face was sagging, in general. It was a countenance that was already ridged into an expression of sympathy. When he set eyes on Britt the expression of woe was touched up with alarm. But that the alarm had to do with the personal affairs of Mr. Orne was shown when he inquired apprehensively whether Mr. Britt would settle then and there for the day's work.
The candidate looked up at the office timepiece. “It ain't three o'clock. I don't call it a day.”
“You call it a day in banking. I've got the same right to call it a day in politics.”
“What infernal notion is afoul of you, Orne, grabbing for my money before you report?”
“I do business with a man according to his own rules—and then he's suited, or ought to be. You collect sharp on the dot after service has been rendered. So do I.” Mr. Orne was displaying more acute nervous apprehension. “And the understanding was that you'd leave it to me as your manager, and wouldn't go banging around, yourself.”
Britt found the agent's manner puzzling. “I haven't been out of this office, except to go to my dinner. I haven't talked politics with anybody.”
“Oh!” remarked Orne, showing relief. “Perhaps, then, it was the way the light fell on your face.” He peered closely at his client. Mr. Britt's color was coming back. Orne's cryptic speeches and his haste to collect had warmed the banker's wrath. “It'll be ten dollars, as we agreed.”
Britt yanked a big wallet from his breast pocket, plucked out a bill, and shoved it at Orne. The latter set the bill carefully into a big wallet of his own, “sunk” the calfskin, and buttoned up his buffalo coat.
“It does beat blazes,” stated “Sniffer” Orne, “what a messed up state all politics is in since this prim'ry business has put the blinko onto caucuses and conventions. Caucuses was sensible, Mr. Britt. Needn't tell me! Voters liked to have the wear and tear off 'em. Now a voter gets into that booth and has to caucus by himself, and he's either so puffed up by importance that he thinks he's the whole party or else—”
Mr. Britt's patience was ground between the millstones of anger and indigestion. He smacked the flat of his hand on his desk. “When I want a stump speech out of you, Orne, I'll drop you a postcard and give you thirty days' notice so that you can get up a good one. You have made a short day of it, as I said, but you needn't feel called on to fill it up with a lecture.” Mr. Britt continued on pompously and revealed that he placed his own favorable construction on the emissary's early return from the field. “You didn't have to go very far, hey, to find out how I stand for that nomination?”
“I went far enough so that you can depend on what I tell you.”
“Go ahead and tell, then.”
Mr. Orne slowly fished a quill toothpick from the pocket of his overcoat, set the end of the quill in his mouth, and “sipped” the air sibilantly, gazing over Britt's head with professional gravity. “Of course, you're the doctor in this case and are paying the money, and if you don't want any soothing facts, like I was intending to throw in free of charge and for good measure, showing how the best of politicians—”
There were ominous sounds from the direction of Britt. Orne checked his discourse, but he did not look at the candidate. “But no matter,” said the agent. “That may be neither here nor there. You're the doctor, I say! When I first came in here I thought you had been disobeying my orders and had dabbled into the thing. Your face looked like you was posted.”
“I'm paying for the goods, not for gobbling, you infernal old turkey! Come out with the facts!”
“Facts is that the whole thing is completely gooly-washed up,” stated Mr. Orne, with an oracle's decisiveness.
But that declaration in Mr. Orne's political terminology did not convey much information to the candidate. Britt, thoroughly incensed by what seemed to be evasion, leaped up, twitched the toothpick from Orne's lips, and flung it away. “I've paid for the English language, and I want it straight and in short words, and not trigged by a toothpick.”
“All right! You're licked before you start.”
It was a bit too straight from the shoulder—that piece of news! Britt blinked as if he had received a blow between the eyes. He sat down and stared at Orne, elbows on the arms of the chair, hands limply hanging from lax wrists.
“It's this way!” Mr. Orne started, briskly, with upraised forefinger; but he shook his head and put down his hand. He turned away. “I forgot. You ordered plain facts.”
“You hold on!” Britt thundered. “How do you dare to tell me that you can go out and in fifteen minutes come back with information of that sort?”
Mr. Orne glanced reproachfully from his detractor to the clock; he had not the same reasons as Mr. Britt had for finding the hours of the day fleeting. “Mr. Britt, a man doesn't need to make a hoss of himself and eat a whole head of cabbage by way of sampling it.” Britt winced at the random simile. “It's the same way with me in sampling politics, being an expert. Your case, to start with, had me gy-poogled and—”
“English language, I tell you!” Britt emphasized his stand as a stickler by a tremendous thump of his fist on the desk.
Orne jabbed his finger back and forth from his breast to the direction of Britt, with the motions of the “eeny, meeny” game. “I was mistook. You was mistook. I figgered on your money. So did you. I figgered you'd go strong in politics like you had in finance. So did you.” Mr. Orne put his hand up sidewise and sliced the air. “Nothing doing in politics, Mr. Britt! You can cash in on straight capital, but there ain't a cent in the dollar for you when you try to collect in what you 'ain't ever invested. A man don't have to be so blamed popular after he is well settled in politics; but you've got to have some real human-nature assets to get a start with. You've got to depend on given votes—not the boughten ones.”
“Orne, you're rasping me mighty hard.”
“You demanded facts—not hair-oil talk.”
“Then the facts are—” Britt hesitated.
“Facts is that, by the usual arrangement in the legislative class of towns, Egypt had the choice this year. You won't get a vote in Egypt.”
“But the men who come in here—” Again Britt halted in a sentence.
“The men who come in here and sit down at that desk and pick up a pen to sign a note have fixed on their grins before they open your door. But the men who get into a voting booth alone with God and a lead pencil, they'll jab down on to that ballot a cross for t'other candidate that'll look like a dent in a tin dipper. Somebody else might lie to you about the situation, Mr. Britt. I've done consid'able lying in politics, too. But when I'm hired by a man to deliver goods—and same has been paid for—my word can be depended on.”
Britt turned around and looked into the depths of his desk, staring vacantly. His rounded shoulders suggested grief. Orne settled his wallet more firmly, pressing on the outside of the buffalo coat. His face again sagged with sympathy. “Mr. Britt, it's only like what most of us do in this life—take smiles without testing 'em with acid—take words-current for what they seem to be worth, and then we do test 'em out and—”
Britt whirled and broke on this fatuous preachment with an oath. Mr. Orne thriftily withheld further sympathy; it was plainly wasted.
“Orne, I hope it's about due to revise the New Testament again. I want to send in some footnotes for that page where Judas Iscariot is mentioned. I want a full roster of his descendants to appear; I'll furnish the voting list of this town. Get out of here and pass that word.”
But a yelp from the candidate halted the departing Orne at the door. “Seeing that you have my ten dollars and are full of political information, perhaps you'll throw in free of charge who it is this town is going to send to the legislature!”
“Only one thing has been decided on so far,” returned the politician. “And, having no desire to rub it in, I'll let you draw your own conclusions.” Mr. Orne had the door open; he dodged out and slammed the door shut.
It was promptly opened—so promptly that Mr. Britt was fairly caught at what he was about. He was standing up, shaking both fists at the door and cursing roundly. Vona was gazing at him in alarm.
“I was waiting in the corridor, sir, till you—till your business—till Mr. Orne went away,” she stammered.
“Come in!” muttered Britt, even more disconcerted than the girl.
Then he wished that he had told her to go away. He realized that he was in no mood or condition to woo; the cabbage had tortured him, but this new sort of indigestion in the very soul of him had left him without poise or courage.
He slumped down in his chair and waved a limp hand in invitation for her to take a seat near him. But she merely came and stood in the middle of the room and surveyed him with an uncompromising air of business. From the velvet toque, with just a suggestion of a coquettish cant on her brown curls, down her healthily round cheeks, a bit flushed, above the fur neckpiece that clasped her throat, Britt's fervent eyes strayed. And some of the words of the Prophet's singsong monotone echoed in the empty chambers of Britt's consciousness, “'Thou hast dove's eyes within thy locks—thy lips are like a thread of scarlet.'”
But she was aloof. She held herself rigidly erect. Her eyes were coldly inquiring. Those lips were set tightly. Mr. Britt had just been reaching out for honors, and his knuckles had been rapped cruelly. He wanted to reach out for love—and he dared not. The girl, as she stood there, was so patently among the things he was not able to possess!
She had come into his presence with expectation keenly alert, with her fears putting her into a mental posture of defense. She felt that she knew just what was going to happen, and she was assuring herself that she would be able to meet the situation. But she was not prepared for what did happen. She did not understand Britt's mental state of that moment. Mr. Britt, himself, did not understand. He had never been up against conditions of that sort. He had not had time to fix his face and his mood, as he did daily before the mirror in his bedroom. He did what nobody had ever seen him do—what neither he nor the girl would have predicted one minute before as among human probabilities—he broke down and blubbered like a whipped urchin.
And after he had recovered some of his composure and was gazing up at her again, sniffling and scrubbing his reddened eyes with the bulge at the base of his thumb, knowing that he must say something by way of legitimate excuse, dreading the ridicule that a girl's gossip might bring upon him, a notion that was characteristic of Mr. Britt came to him: he grimly weighed the idea of telling her that Files's boiled dinner was the cause of his breakdown. However, in his weakness, his love flamed more hotly than ever before.
“Vona, I'm so lonesome!” he gulped.
Miss Harnden had entered behind her shield, nerved like a battling Amazon. She promptly lowered that shield and became all woman, with a woman's instinctive sympathetic understanding, but womanlike, she took the opportunity to introduce for her own defense a bit of guile with her sympathy. “I quite understand how you feel about the loss of Mrs. Britt, sir. And I'm glad because you remain so loyal to her memory.”
Mr. Britt, like a man who had received a dipperful of cold water in the face, backed away from anything like a proposal at that unpropitious moment. But in all his arid nature he felt the need of some sort of consolation from a feminine source. “Vona, I've just had a terrible setback,” he mourned. “There's only one other disappointment that could be any worse—and I don't dare to think of that right now.”
Miss Harnden apprehensively proceeded to keep him away from the prospective disappointment, dwelling on the present, asking him solicitously what had happened.
He told her of his ambition and of what Ossian Orne had reported.
“But why should that be so very important for a man like you—to go to the legislature—Mr. Britt?”
He opened his mouth, hankering to blurt out what he had been treasuring as dreams whose realization would serve as an inducement to her. He had been picturing to himself their honeymoon at the state capital, away from the captious tongues of Egypt—how he would stalk with his handsome bride into the dining room of the capital's biggest hotel; how she would attract the eyes of jealous men, in her finery and with her jewels; how she would sit in the gallery at the State House and survey him making his bigness among the lawmakers; for some weeks he had been laboring on the composition of a speech that he intended to deliver. But her second dash of cold water kept him from the disclosure of his feelings. He went on so far as to ask her if she did not think a session at the state capital would be interesting.
“I have never thought anything about such a matter, of course, Mr. Britt, being only a girl and not a politician.”
“But women who are there get into high society and wear fine clothes and have a grand time, Vona.”
“It must be a tedious life,” she replied, indifferently.
“Wouldn't you like to try it?” Now that he could not offer her the grand inducement he had planned as an essential part of his campaign of love he sought consolation in her assurance that the prospect did not tempt her. His hopes revived. He was reflecting that his money could buy railroad tickets, even if he had not the popularity with which to win votes. She shook her head promptly when he asked the question, and he went on with his new idea. “I suppose what a girl really enjoys is to see the world, after she has been penned up all her life in a town like this.”
“I don't waste my time in foolish longings, Mr. Britt. In fact, I have no time to waste on anything.” She gave him a bit of a smile. “In that connection I'll confess that I must hurry home and help mother with some sewing. Did you want anything especial of me?” Her smile had vanished, and in her tone there was a clink of the metallic that was as subtly suggestive of “On guard” as the click of a trigger.
Mr. Britt had planned upon a radiant disclosing of his projects—expecting to be spurred in his advances by the assurance of what he could offer her as the consort of a legislator—as high an honor as his narrow vision could compass. She had found him cursing, had kept him at bay, and he had already had evidence of the danger of precipitateness in her case. And his tears made him feel foolish. His ardor had been wet down; it took a back seat. His natural good judgment was again boss of the situation.
“I had something on my mind—but it can wait till you're in less of a hurry, Vona. Never neglect a mother. That's my attitude toward women. I'm always considerate where they're concerned. It's my nature. I hope you'll hold that in mind.”
“Yes, Mr. Britt.” She turned and hurried to the door, getting away from a fire that was showing signs of breaking out of its smoldering brands once more.
Britt recovered some of his courage when her back was turned. “You haven't said anything about those verses,” he stammered.
“I think it's a beautiful way of putting aside your business cares for a time. I'm taking them home to read to mother.”
He marched to the window and watched her as long as she was in sight.
Then he glowered on such of the Egyptians as passed to and fro along the street on their affairs. He muttered, spicing his comments with profanity. The girl's disclaimer of personal interest in Britt's ambitions did not soften his rancorous determination to make the voters of Egypt suffer for the stand they had taken—suffer to the bitter limit to which unrelenting persecution could drive them. He gritted his teeth and raved aloud. “From now on! From now on! Anything short of murder to show 'em! And as for that girl—if there's somebody—”
Britt stopped short of what that rival might expect, but his expression indicated that the matter was of even more moment than his affair with the voters of the town.
All books are sourced from Project Gutenberg