Collected Works of Booth Tarkington

by Booth Tarkington

  I sat and smoked, lounging in one of Mary’s comfortable porch-chairs. I managed without trouble to be in the background and I couldn’t help putting in most of my time studying Joe Lane and Miss Rainey. Those two were sitting, on the side-steps of the porch, a little apart from the rest of us — and a little apart from each other, too. Lord knows how you get such strong impressions, but I was very soon perfectly sure that these two young people were in love with each other and that they both knew it, but that they had given each other up. I was sure, too, that they were both under Hector’s spell, and preposterous as it may seem, that they were under his will, and that Hector’s plans included Miss Rainey for himself.

  It was a mighty pretty evening; full of flower-smells and breezes from the woods, which began just across the village street. Joe sat in a sort of doubled-up fashion he had, his thin hands clasped like a strap round his knees. She sat straight and trim, both of them looking out toward where the twilight was fading. As the darkness came on I could barely make them out, a couple of quiet shadows, seemingly as far away from the group about the lamp-lit doorway where Hector sat, as if they were alone on big Jupiter who was setting up to be the whole thing, far out yonder in the lonely sky.

  By and by, the moon oozed round from behind the house and leaked through the trees and I could see them plainer, two silhouettes against the foliage of some bright lilac-bushes. Joe hadn’t budged, but the back of Miss Rainey’s head wasn’t toward me as it had been before; it was her profile. She was leaning back a little, against a post, and looking at Joe — just looking at him. Neither of them spoke a word the whole time, and somehow I felt they didn’t need to, and that what they had to say to each other had never been spoken and never would be. It was mighty pretty — and sad, too.

  I felt so sorry for them, but it made me more or less impatient with Hector, and with Joe — especially with Joe, I think. It seemed to me he needn’t have taken his temperament so hopelessly. But what’s the use of judging? When a man has a temperament like that, people who haven’t can’t tell what he’s got to contend with.

  That Fourth of July speech gave Hector his chance. His district managers and the Trimmer faction saw they could use him; and they sent him round stumping the district. Two campaigns later the State Committee was using him, and parts of his speeches were being printed in all the party papers over the State. Locally, I suppose you might say, he had become a famous man; at least he acted like one — not that there was any essential change in him. His style had undergone a large improvement, however; his language was less mixed-up, and he seemed clear-headed enough on “questions of the day,” showing himself to be well-informed and of a fine judgment.

  In these things I thought I saw the hand of Laura Rainey. The teacher was helping him. The seriousness of his face had increased, he had always entirely lacked humour; yet the spell he managed to cast over his audiences was greater. He never once failed to “get them going,” as they say. At twenty-nine he was no longer called “a rising young orator”; no, he was usually introduced as the “Hon. Hector J. Ransom, the Silver-tongued Lochinvar of the West.”

  Things hadn’t changed much at Greenville. Mary had always been so proud of Hector that she hadn’t inflated any more on account of his wider successes. She couldn’t, because she hadn’t any room left for it.

  Joe Lane still went on his periodical sprees quite regularly, about one week every three months, and he was the least offensive tippler I ever knew. He came up to the city during one of his lapses, and called at my office. He was dressed with unusual care (he was always a good deal of a dandy), and he did not stagger nor slush his syllables; indeed, the only way I could have told what was the matter with him, at first, was by the solemn preoccupation of his expression. A little black pickaninny followed him, grinning and carrying a big bundle, covered with a new lace window-curtain.

  “I am but a bearer of votive flowers,” Joe said, bowing. Then turning to the little darky, he waved his hand loftily. “Unveil the offering!”

  The pickaninny did so, removing the lace curtain to reveal a shiny new coal-bucket in which was a lump of ice, whereon reposed a pair of white kid gloves and a large wreath of artificial daisies.

  “With love,” said Joe. “From Hector.” And he stalked majestically out.

  There was a card on the wreath, which Joe had inscribed: “To announce the betrothal. No regrets.”

  Sure enough, the next morning I had a letter from Mary, telling me that Hector and Miss Rainey were engaged, that they had been so without announcing it, for several years, and she feared the engagement must last much longer before they could be married. So did I, for all of Hector’s glittering had brought him very little money. While he had some law practice, of course it was small, in Greenville, and what he had he neglected. Nor was he a good lawyer. I knew him to be heavily in debt to Lane, whose father had died lately, leaving Joe fairly well off; and I knew also that this debt sat very lightly on Hector. I judged so, because in the matter of the advances I had made for his education, I never heard him refer to them. Probably he forgot all about it, having so many more important things to think of.

  Mary was right: it was a very long engagement. It had lasted seven years in all, when Passley Trimmer declared himself a candidate for the nomination for Governor and gave Hector the great chance he had been waiting for. Hector “came out” for Trimmer, and came out strong. He worked for him day and night, and he was one of the best cards in Trimmer’s hand.

  It was easy enough to understand: Trimmer’s nomination would leave his seat in Congress vacant and the Trimmer crowd would throw it to Hector.

  You could see that the “young Lochinvar” was really a power, and I think they counted on him almost as much as on the personal machine Trimmer had built up. Most of all, they counted on Hector’s speech, nominating Trimmer, to stampede the convention. If it was to be done, Hector was the man to do it. There’s no doubt in the world of the extraordinary capacity he had for whirling a crowd along into a kind of insane enthusiasm. He could make his audience enthusiastic about anything; he could have brought them to their feet waving and cheering for Ben Butler himself, if he had set out to do it. I believe that most of us who were against Trimmer were more afraid of Hector’s stampeding the convention than of Trimmer’s machine and all the money he was spending.

  I was working all I knew for another man, Henderson, of my county, and our delegation would go into the convention sixty-three solid for Henderson, first, last, and all the time. On that account I had to play Barras again to the young Napoleon. He came to see me, and made one of his orations, imploring me to swing half of our delegation for Trimmer on the first ballot, and all of it on the second.

  “But they count on me!” he declaimed. “They count on me to turn you! Is a man to be denied by his own flesh and blood? Are the ties of relationship nothing? Can’t you see that my whole future is put in jeopardy by your refusal? Here is my opportunity at last and you endanger it. My marriage and my fortune depend on it; the cup is at my lips. My long years of toil and preparation, the bitter, bitter waiting — are these things to go for nothing? I tell you that if you refuse me you may blast the most sacred hopes that ever dwelt in a human breast!”

  I only smoked on, and so he did “the jury pathetic,” and he was sincere in it, too.

  “Have you no heart?” he inquired, his voice shaking. “Can you think calmly of my mother? Remember the years she has waited to see this recognition come to her son! Am I to go back to her and tell her that your answer was ‘No’? I ask you to think of her, I ask you to put self out of your thoughts, to forget your own interests for once, and to think of my mother, waiting in the old home in the quiet village street where you knew her in her bright girlhood. Remember that she awaits your answer; forget me if you will, but remember what it means to her, I say, and then if there is a stone in your breast, instead of a human heart, speak the word ‘No’!”

  I spoke it, and, as he had to catch his train, he
departed more in anger than in sorrow, leaving me to my conscience, he told me. At the door he turned.

  “I warn you,” he said, “that this faction of yours shall go down to defeat! Trimmer will win this fight, and I shall take his seat in Congress! That is my first stepping-stone, and I will take it! I have worked too hard and waited too long, for such as you to successfully oppose me. I tell you that we shall meet in the convention, and you and your machine will be broken! The rewards, then, to us, the victors!”

  “Why, of course,” I said, “if you win.”

  The Trimmer people were strong with the State Executive Committee, and, in spite of us, worked things a good deal their own way. They took the convention away from the State Capital to Greenville, which was, of course, a great advantage for Trimmer. The fact is, that most of the best people in that district didn’t like him, but you know how we all are: he was one of them, and as soon as it seemed he had a chance to beat men from other parts of the State, they began to shout themselves black in the face for their own. When I went down there, the day before the convention, the place was one mass of Trimmer flags, banners, badges, transparencies, buttons, and brass bands.

  I went around to see Mary right away, and while she wasn’t exactly cold to me — the dear woman never could be that to anybody — she was different; her eyes met mine sadly and her old, sweet voice was a little tremulous, as if she were sorry that I had done something wrong.

  I didn’t stay long. I started back to the Henderson headquarters in the hotel, but on my way I passed a big store-room on a corner of the Square, which Trimmer had fitted up as his own headquarters. There was quite a crowd of the boys going in and out, looking cheerful, fresh cigars in their mouths, and a drink or two inside, band coming down the street, everything the way an old-timer likes to see it.

  Passley Trimmer himself came out as I was going by, and with him were his brother, Link, and two or three other men, among them a weasel-faced little fellow named Hugo Siffles, who kept a drug-store on the next corner. Hugo wasn’t anybody; nobody ever paid any attention to him at all; but he was one of those empty-headed village talkers who are always trying to look as if they were behind the scenes, always trying to walk with important people. Everybody knows them. They whisper to the undertaker at funerals; and during campaigns they have something confidential to communicate to United States Senators. They meddle and intrude and waste as much time for you as they can.

  When Trimmer saw me, he held out his hand. “Hello, Ben! I hear you’re not for me!” he said cordially.

  “How are you running?” I came back at him, laughing.

  “Oh, we’re going to beat you,” he answered, in the same way.

  “Well, you’ll see a good run, first, I expect!”

  He walked along with me, Link and the others following a little way behind; but Hugo Siffles, of course, walking with us, partly to listen and tell at the drug-store later, and partly to look like state secrets.

  “Sorry you couldn’t see your way to join us,” Trimmer said. “But we’ll win out all right, anyway. I shouldn’t think that would be much of a disappointment to you, though. It will be a great thing for one of your family.”

  “Oh, yes,” I said, “Hector.”

  Trimmer took on a little of his benevolent statesman’s manner, which they nearly all get in time. “I have the greatest confidence in that young man’s future,” he said. “He may go to the very top. All he needs is money. I speak to you as a relative: he ought to drop that school-teacher and marry a girl with money. He could, easily enough.”

  That made me a little ugly. “Oh, no,” I said. “He can make plenty in Congress outside of his salary, can’t he? I understand some of them do.”

  Of course Trimmer didn’t lose his temper; instead, he laughed out loud, and then put his hand on my shoulder.

  “Look here,” he said. “I’m his friend and you’re his cousin. He’s one of my own crowd and I have his best interests at heart. That isn’t the girl for him. He tells me that, for a long while, she used to advise him against having too much to do with me, until he showed her that winning my influence in his favour was his only chance to rise. Now, if you have his best interests at heart, as I have, you’ll help persuade him to let her go. Why shouldn’t he marry better? She’s not so young any longer, and she’s pretty much lost her looks. And then, you know people will talk—”

  “Talk about what?” I said.

  “Well, if he goes to Congress, and, with his prospects, throws himself away on a skinny little old-maid school-teacher in the backwoods, one that he’s been making love to for years, they might say almost anything. Why can’t he hand her over to Joe Lane? I’m sure—”

  “That’ll do,” I interrupted roughly. “I suppose you’ve been talking that way to Hector?”

  “Why, certainly. I have his best interests at—”

  “Good-day, sir!” I said, and turned in at the hotel and left him, with Hugo Siffles’s little bright pig’s eyes peeking at me round Trimmer’s shoulder.

  Sore enough I was, and cursing Trimmer and Hector in my heart, so that when some one knocked on my door, while I was washing up for supper, I said “Come in!” as if I were telling a dog to get out.

  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 drugstore,” 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 intend — 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, t
wenty 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.