Booth Tarkington

by Booth Tarkington

  It was Joe Lane and he was pretty drunk. He walked over to the bed and caught himself unsteadily once or twice. I’d never seen him stagger before. He didn’t speak until he had sat down on the coverlet; then he shaded his eyes with his hand and stared at me as if he wanted to make sure that it was I.

  “I’ve just been down to Hugo Siffles’s drug-store,” he said, speaking very slowly and carefully, “and Hugo was telling a crowd about a conver—conversation between you and Passley Trimmer. He said Trimmer said Hector Ransom ought to drop Miss Rainey—and ‘hand her over to Joe Lane.’ Is that true?”

  “Yes,” I answered. “The beast said that.”

  “There was more,” Joe said heavily. “More that im—implied—might be taken to imply scandal, which I believe Trimmer did not seriously believe—but thought—thought might be used as an argument with Hector to persuade him to jilt her?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was said ex—actly? It is being repeated about town in various forms. I want to know.”

  Like a fool I told him the whole thing. I didn’t think, didn’t dream, of course, what was in that poor, drunken, devoted head, and I wanted to blow off my own steam, I was so hot.

  He sat very quietly until I had finished; then he took his head in both hands and rocked himself gently to and fro upon the bed, and I saw tears trickling down his cheeks. It was a wretched spectacle in a way, he being drunk and crying like a child, but I don’t think I despised him.

  “And she so true,” he sobbed, “so good, so faithful to him! She’s given him her youth, her whole sweet youth—all of it for him!” He got to his feet and went to the door.

  “Hold on, Joe,” I said, “where are you going?”

  “’Nother drink!” he said, and closed the door behind him.

  After supper I went to work with Henderson and three or four others in a little back-room in our headquarters; and we were hard at it when one of the boys held up his hand and said: “Listen!”

  The sounds of a big disturbance came in through the open windows: shouting and yelling, and crowds running in the streets below. The town had been so noisy all evening that I thought nothing of it. “It’s only some delegation getting in,” I said. “Go on with the lists.”

  But I’d no more than got the words out of my mouth than the noise rolled into the outer rooms of our headquarters like a wave, and there was a violent hammering on the door of our room, some one calling my name in a loud frightened voice. I threw open the door and Hugo Siffles fell in, his pig’s eyes starting out of his pale, foolish face.

  “Come with me!” he shouted, all in one breath, and laying hold of me by the lapel of my coat, tried to drag me after him. “There’s hell to pay! Joe Lane came into Trimmer’s headquarters, drunk, twenty minutes ago, and slapped Passley Trimmer’s face for what he said to us this afternoon. Link Trimmer came in, a minute later, drunk too, and heard what had happened. He followed Joe to Hodge’s saloon and shot him. They’ve carried him to the drug-store and he’s asked to speak to you.”

  I had the satisfaction of kicking that little cuss through the door ahead of me, though I knew it was myself I ought to have kicked.

  It was true that Joe had asked to speak to me, but when I reached the drug-store the doctor wouldn’t let me come into the back-room where he lay, so I sat on a stool in the store. They’d turned all the people out, except four or five friends of Joe’s; and the glass doors and the windows were solid with flattened faces, some of them coloured by the blue and green lights so that it sickened me, and all staring horribly. After about four years the doctor’s assistant came out to get something from a shelf and I jumped at him, getting mighty little satisfaction, you can be sure.

  “It seems to be very serious indeed,” was all he would say. I knew that for myself, because one of the men in the store had told me that it was in the left side.

  Half-an-hour after this—by the clock—the young man came out again and called us in to carry Joe home. It was not more than a hundred yards to the old Lane place, and six of us, walking very slowly, carried him on a cot through the crowd. He was conscious, for he thanked us in a weakish whisper, when we lifted him carefully into his own bed. Then the doctor sent us all out except the assistant, and we went to the front porch and waited, hating the crowd that had lined up against the fence and about the gate. They looked like a lot of buzzards; I couldn’t bear the sight of them, so I went back into the little hall and sat down near Joe’s door.

  After a while the assistant opened the door, holding a glass pitcher in his hand.

  “Here,” he said, when he saw me, “will you fill this with cold water from the well?”

  I took it and hurried out to the kitchen, where four or five people were sitting and glumly whispering around an old coloured woman, Joe’s cook, who was crying and rocking herself in a chair. I hushed her up and told her to show me the pump. It was in an orchard behind the house, and was one of those old-fashioned things that sound like a siren whistle with the hiccups.

  It took me about five minutes to get the water up, and when I got back to Joe’s room, a woman was there with the doctors. It was Miss Rainey. She had her hat off, her sleeves were rolled up and, though her face was the whitest I ever saw, she was cool and steady. It was she who took the water from me at the door.

  I heard low voices in the parlour, where a lamp was lit, and I went in there. Mary was sitting on a sofa, with a handkerchief hard against her eyes, and Hector was standing in the middle of the room, saying over and over, “My God!” and shaking. I went to the sofa and sat by Mary with my hand on her shoulder.

  “To think of it!” Hector moaned. “To think of its coming at such a time! To think of what it means to me!”

  His mother spoke to him from behind her handkerchief: “You mustn’t do it; you can’t Hector—oh, you can’t, you can’t.”

  For answer he struck himself desperately across the forehead with the palm of his hand.

  “What is it,” I asked, “that your mother wants you not to do?”

  “She wants me to give up Trimmer—to refuse to make the nominating speech for him to-morrow.”

  “You’ve got to give him up!” cried his mother; and then went on with reiterations as passionate as they were weak and broken in utterance. “You can’t make the speech, you can’t do it, you can’t—”

  “Then I’m done for!” he said. “Don’t you see what a frightful blow this pitiful, drunken folly of poor Joe’s has dealt Trimmer’s candidacy? Don’t you see that they rely on me more than ever, now? Are you so blind you don’t see that I am the only man who can save Trimmer the nomination? If I go back on him now, he’s done for and I’m done for with him! It’s my only chance!”

  “No, no,” she sobbed, “you’ll have other chances; you’ll have plenty of chances, dear; you’re young—”

  “My only chance,” he went on rapidly, ignoring her, “and if I can carry it through, it will mean everything to me. The tide’s running strong against Trimmer to-night, and I am the only man in the world who can turn it the other way. If I go into the convention for him, faithful to him, and, out of the highest sense of justice, explain that, even though Lane has been my closest friend, he was in the wrong and that—”

  Mary rose to her feet and went to her son and clung to him. “No, no!” she cried; “no, no!”

  “I’ve got to!” he said.

  “What is that you must do, Hector?” It was Miss Rainey’s voice, and came from just behind me. She was standing in the doorway that led from the hall, and her eyes were glowing with a brilliant, warm light. We all started as she spoke, and I sprang up and turned toward her.

  “He’s going to get well,” she said, understanding me. “They say it is surely so!”

  At that Mary ran and threw her arms about her and kissed her—and I came near it! Hector gave a sort of shout of relief and sank into a ch
air.

  “What is that you must do, Hector?” Miss Rainey said again in her steady voice.

  “Stick to Trimmer!” he explained. “Don’t you see that I must? He needs me now more than ever, and it’s my only chance.”

  Miss Rainey looked at him over Mary’s shoulder. She looked at him a long while before she spoke. “You know why Mr. Lane struck that blow?”

  “Oh, I suppose so,” he answered uneasily. “At least Siffles—”

  “Yes,” she said. “You know. What are you going to do?”

  “The right thing!” Hector rose and walked toward her. “I put right before all. I shall be loyal and I shall be just. It might have been a terribly hard thing to carry through, but, since dear old Joe will recover, I know I can do it.”

  The girl’s eyes widened suddenly, while the warm glow in them flashed into a fiery and profound scrutiny.

  “You are going to make the nominating speech,” she said. It was not a question but a declaration, in the tone of one to whom he stood wholly revealed.

  “Yes,” he answered eagerly. “I knew you would see: it’s my chance, my whole career—”

  But his mother, turning swiftly, put her hand over his mouth, though it was to Miss Rainey that she cried:

  “Oh, don’t let him say it—he can’t; you mustn’t let him!”

  The girl drew her gently away and put an arm about her, saying: “Do you think I could stop him?”

  “But do you wish to stop me?” asked Hector sadly, as he stepped toward her. “Do you set yourself not only in the way of my great chance, but against justice and truth? Don’t you see that I must do it?”

  “It is your chance—yes. I see the truth, Hector.” Her eyes had fallen and she looked at him no more, but, with a little movement away from him, offered her hand to him at arm’s length. It was done in a curious way, and he looked perplexed for a second, and then frightened. He dropped her hand, and his lips twitched. “Laura,” he said, and could not go on.

  “You must go now,” she said to all three of us. “The house should be very quiet. I shall be his nurse, and the doctor will stay all night. Isn’t it beautiful that Joe is going to get well!”

  She went out quickly, before Hector could detain her, back to the room where Lane was.

  There’s no need my telling you the details of that convention: Henderson was beaten from the start, and Hector’s speech was all that happened. If he hadn’t made it, there might have been a consolidation on a dark horse, for feeling was high against Trimmer. It isn’t an easy thing to go into a convention with a brother locked up in jail on a charge of attempted murder!

  I’ll never forget Hector’s rising to make that speech. There wasn’t any cheering, there was a dead, cold hush. This wasn’t because his magnetism had deserted him; indeed, I don’t think it had ever before been felt so strongly. He was white as white paper, and his face had a look of suffering; altogether I believe I couldn’t give a better notion of him than saying that he somehow made me think of Hamlet.

  He began in a very low but very penetrating voice, and I don’t think anybody in the farthest corner missed a single clear-cut syllable from the first. As I may have indicated, I had never been a warm admirer of his, but with all my prejudice, I think I admired him when he stood up to his task that day. For the effect he intended, his speech was a masterpiece, no less. I saw it before he had finished three sentences. And he delivered it, knowing that even while he did so he was losing the woman he loved; for Hector did love Laura Rainey, next to himself, and she had been part of his life and necessary to him. But though the heavens fell, he stuck to what he had set out to do, and did it masterfully.

  Not that what he said could bear the analysis of a cool mind: nothing that Hector ever did or said has been able to do that. But for the purpose, it was perfect. For once he began at the beginning, without rhetoric, and he made it all the more effective by beginning with himself.

  “Doubtless there are many among you who think it strange to see me rise to fulfil the charge with which you know me to be intrusted. My oldest and most intimate friend lies wounded on a bed of suffering, stricken down by the hand of another friend whose heart is in the cause for which I have risen. Therefore, you might well question me; you might well say: ‘To whom is your loyalty?’ Well might I ask myself that same question. And I will give you my answer: ‘There are things beyond the personal friendship of man and man, things greater than individual differences and individual tragedies, things as far higher and greater than these as the skies of God are higher than the roof of a child’s doll-house. These higher things are the good of the State and the Law of Justice!’”

  That brought the first applause; and Trimmer’s people, seeing the crowd had taken Hector’s point, sprang to their feet and began to cheer. At a tense moment, such as this, cheering is often hypnotic, and good managers know how to make use of it on the floor. The noise grew thunderous, and when it subsided Hector was master of the convention. Then, for the first time, I saw how far he would go—and why. I had laughed at him all my life, but now I believed there was “something in him,” as they say. The Lord knows what, but it was there; and as I looked at him and listened it seemed to me that the world was at his feet.

  He was infinitely daring, yet he skirted the cause of the quarrel with perfect tact: “The misinterpretation of a few careless and kindly words, said in passing, and repeated, with garbling additions, to a man who was not himself. . . . The brooding of a mind most unhappily beset with alcohol. . . . A blow resented by a too devoted but too violent kinsman. . . .”

  Then, with the greatest skill, and rather quietly, he passed to a eulogium of Trimmer’s public career, gradually increasing the warmth of his praise but controlling it as perfectly as he controlled the enthusiasm and excitement which followed each of his points. For myself, I only looked away from him once, and caught a glimpse of Henderson looking sick.

  Hector finished with a great stroke. He went back to the original theme. “You ask me where my duty lies!” His great voice rose and rang through the hall magnificently: “I reply—‘first to my State and her needs’! Is that answer enough? If it be necessary that I should answer for my personal loyalty to one man or another then I ask you: ‘Shall it go to the friend who, without cause, struck the first blow? Shall it go to that other friend who went out hot-headed and struck back to avenge a brother’s wrongs? Is it only between these that I—and many of you—are to choose to-day? Is there not a third?’ I tell you that I have chosen, and that my loyalty and all my strength are devoted to that other, to that man who has suffered most of all, to him who received a blow and did not avenge it, because in his greatness he knew that his assailant knew not what he did!”

  That carried them off their feet. Hector had turned Trimmer’s greatest danger into the means of victory. The Trimmer people led one of those extraordinary hysterical processions round the aisles that you see sometimes in a convention (a thing I never get used to), and it was all Trimmer, or rather, it was all Hector. Trimmer was nominated on the first ballot.

  There was a recess, and I hurried out, meaning to slip round to Joe Lane’s for a moment to find out how he was. I’d seen the doctor in the morning and he said his patient had passed a good night and that Miss Rainey was still there. “I think she’s going to stay,” he added, and smiled and shook hands with me.

  Joe’s old darky cook let me in, and, after a moment, came to say I might go into Mr. Lane’s room; Mr. Lane wanted to see me.

  Joe was lying very flat on his back, but with his face turned toward the door, and beside him sat Laura Rainey, their thin hands clasped together. I stopped on the threshold with the door half opened.

  “Come in,” said Joe weakly. “Hector made it, I’m sure.”

  “Yes,” I answered, and in earnest. “He’s a great man.”

  Joe’s face quivered with a pain that did not come from his hu
rt. “Oh, it’s knowing that, that makes me feel like such a scoundrel,” he said. “I suppose you’ve come to congratulate me.”

  “Yes,” I said, “the doctor says it’s a wonderful case, and that you’re one of the lucky ones with a charmed life, thank God!”

  Joe smiled sadly at Miss Rainey. “He hasn’t heard,” he said. Then she gave me her left hand, not relinquishing Joe’s with her right.

  “We were married this morning,” she said, “just after the convention began.”

  The tears came into Joe’s eyes as she spoke. “It’s a shame, isn’t it?” he said to me. “You must see it so. And I the kind of man I am, the town drunkard—”

  Then his wife leaned over and kissed his forehead.

  “Even so it was right—and so beautiful for me,” she said.

  Mrs. Protheroe

  * * *

  WHEN ALONZO RAWSON took his seat as the Senator from Stackpole in the upper branch of the General Assembly of the State, an expression of pleasure and of greatness appeared to be permanently imprinted upon his countenance. He felt that if he had not quite arrived at all which he meant to make his own, at least he had emerged upon the arena where he was to win it, and he looked about him for a few other strong spirits with whom to construct a focus of power which should control the senate. The young man had not long to look, for within a week after the beginning of the session these others showed themselves to his view, rising above the general level of mediocrity and timidity, party-leaders and chiefs of faction, men who were on their feet continually, speaking half-a-dozen times a day, freely and loudly. To these, and that house at large, he felt it necessary to introduce himself by a speech which must prove him one of the elect, and he awaited impatiently an opening.

  Alonzo had no timidity himself. He was not one of those who first try their voices on motions to adjourn, written in form and handed out to novices by presiding officers and leaders. He was too conscious of his own gifts, and he had been “accustomed to speaking” ever since his days in the Stackpole City Seminary. He was under the impression, also, that his appearance alone would command attention from his colleagues and the gallery. He was tall; his hair was long, with a rich waviness, rippling over both brow and collar, and he had, by years of endeavour, succeeded in moulding his features to present an aspect of stern and thoughtful majesty whenever he “spoke.”