Chapter 14

Meantime, Mr. Simpson had called on Mr. Knaggs to do a dance, as he alleged himself unable to do anything else. Mr. Knaggs responded, and did pretty well considering the lateness of the hour, but insisted that he ought to have a better surface than the carpet. Amidon dimly resented as an impropriety Mr. Knaggs' brilliant proof of the correctness of his position regarding the carpet, by a tumultuously successful clog-dance on the table.

By this time, it being past the hour for retiring, according to the habit of most, several of the guests were asleep, and most of the rest were indulging in monologues under the impression that they were conversing with their neighbors. Edgington was on his feet proposing a series of interrogatories in strictly legal form requiring Amidon to say how he got the support of Barney Conlon, what there was in his labor record to win the support of Sheehan and Zalinsky, and various other matters. At Alvord's request, Judge Blodgett was moving that these be "struck out," while Slater insisted that it ought to be a "base on balls." It was a new experience for Amidon. He was surprised to find a something in it which he enjoyed. The very hubbub was interesting.

No wonder, such being the conditions, that the A. D. T. boy rapped long and was not heard. No wonder that the ultimate opening of the door was unnoted by those present, or that no one observed the tall man with whisker extensions to a mustache naturally too large, who came in after the messenger. Observed or not, however, he entered and walked heavily down the banqueting-hall.

"Brassfield, a summons for you," said he fiercely. "Here's the copy; this is the 'rig'nal. Waive the readin', I s'pose? Sorry to interrupt. So long."

Amidon looked at the stiff document as if it had been a Gila monster on toast. He saw such words as "State of Pennsylvania, County of Rockoil, ss," and "Default will be taken against you, and judgment rendered thereon," and sundry dates and figures. Instinctively he turned to Judge Blodgett, saying:

"What's this, Blodgett?"

A tremor of panic seized on Amidon, and a wave of sobriety passed over the guests. Much the same thing must have marked the breaking up of the feast of Belshazzar. The roisterers gazed at the paper, or began their preparations for departure.

"What is it?" asked Amidon.

"I don't know enough about the practice here," said the judge slowly, "to be able to say whether it's good or not--seems to have been hastily and rather slovenly gotten up----"

"But what is the damned thing?" shouted Alvord; "cut it short and tell us."

"Seems perfectly regular, though," went on the judge deliberately. "It's a summons in the case of Daisy Scarlett versus Eugene Brassfield in a suit for twenty-five thousand dollars for breach of promise of marriage."

Amidon sank back in a collapse which was almost a faint. The little nervous Alvord rose to command.

"Now," said he, standing in his place, "I want to say a few words before a man leaves this room. I know something of this case, and I want you to take my word that there's no more foundation for it than there would be if it were brought against any one of us. And furthermore, there must be nothing said about this. These papers are not on record yet, and I believe something can be done. Why, confound it, something shall be done! Every man must pledge me his word that he won't breathe a word of this, and will deny it if asked about it."

"We promise!" came the unanimous shout.

Alvord walked toward the guest of honor, tripping over the legs of Bulliwinkle as he went, and offered his hand to Amidon.

"I say, old man, I warned you that you were carrying on a little strong; and now here's a--"

"How-de-do!" said Bulliwinkle.

_In vino veritas_! Truly, most bibulous Bulliwinkle, thou hast supplied the very word to convey the meaning for which we at this moment desire expression! Here's a how-de-do indeed! Just as our friend Amidon has made a successful lodgment in the outworks of Port Waldron--a citadel which he had taken by stratagem, abandoned for conscience' sake, and re-invested on lines of fairer warfare, to say nothing of the investment of the mayoralty--the hope of victory is swallowed up in a sea of disasters. The meeting on the stairway, the repudiation of Mrs. Hunter, the arrested flirtation in the east room: all these--any of these--were enough: but what hope for us remains, after this sensational summons, served in the small hours of a bacchanalian revel, in a breach-of-promise action at the suit of the dreadful "Strawberry Blonde"? Verily, Bulliwinkle, here is indeed a how-de-do!

"Old man," said Mr. Alvord, in private communication to Mr. Amidon at parting, "we're none of us in condition to discuss this calmly now; but don't give up. It's a blow, but with our pull with the press, and our personal relations with Cox, can be squelched, I believe. Until after election----"

"Until when?" asked Amidon dazedly.

"After election," answered Alvord. "After that, while it will be a blow, of course, it won't wreck things quite so completely, you know. And even if it does sort of leak out, it's one of those mix-ups that lots of voters'll rather admire you for, you know. It may react in your favor, if we can----"

"Mr. Alvord," said Amidon, "please to understand that I don't care a rush, one way or the other, about this election!"

"Now, now, don't say that!" said Alvord soothingly. "I can see how you feel, 'Gene--pride, and affection, and Bessie, and the wedding coming on--but, pshaw, we lots of us have things kind of tangle up on us coming in on the home stretch of a pretty swift heat! Go home, and don't worry too much. I'm with you, and we'll win. F. D. and B., you know. Keep the other strings pulling right--it's only a day or so now. Good night, old man, and brace up! See you to-morrow."

One rather likes the optimistic fighter--purely as a fighter--of the Alvord stripe. He was so occupied with plans for the next day's battle that the dubious features of the contest were already clearing up in his mind with the forming of plans for attacking the situation. A few hours of sleep, and he was up and at them. His telephone called up the editors of the town with the morning star. Long before the enemy could have known of the breach in his works, his trusty troops were busy filling it up. He was almost happy again, when Edgington rushed into his presence with a newspaper crushed in his clenched fist, and all sorts of disaster depicted in his expression.

"Jim," he cried, "have you seen this?"

"No," answered Alvord. "It ain't that Scarlett business? I thought I'd got that----"

"No, no! It isn't that!" groaned Edgington. "But we're done, all the same! Done to a finish! You might as well close the headquarters and go home, for if we win, on this platform, we lose, and all the money we've put in is lost! I tell you, Jim, 'Gene Brassfield is either insane--and I believe it's that--or he's the damnedest traitor and sneak and two-faced hound that ever stepped, and I'll have it out with him! Some way, if I wait ten years, I'll have it out with him, if I have to do it with a gun! His business leaves my office at once. Why, there aren't words fit for me to use, to describe the miserable, false, lying----"

"See here, Edge!" said Alvord. "We may be done, as you say, but Eugene Brassfield has made you, and he's my friend, and you'd better not go on like that, here! Let me see that paper!"

Edgington threw it to him. In heavy type he saw the fateful platform summarized in a black-bordered panel on the first page:

BRASSFIELD'S PLATFORM

1. Strict enforcement of early closing regulations for saloons.

2. No franchises except on public bidding, and ample provision for subsequent acquisition by the city.

3. Gambling laws to be strictly enforced.

4. Segregation of vice.

5. Vote of the people on all important measures.

6. Appointments non-partizan on the merit system.

7. Publication of all items of campaign expenses.

Alvord fell back in utter dismay. Then he read in full the manifesto which Amidon and Elizabeth had prepared; and, folding up the paper, he stuck it in a drawer, which he locked, as if thereby to seal up the direful news. For a moment he felt betrayed and utterly defeated. Then he straightened himself for a resumption of the battle.

"See here, Edge," he said insinuatingly, "this is pretty bad, I admit. I think, myself, that Brass is off his head. He 'phoned me once about this, but he's such a josher, and it was such wild-eyed lunacy that I thought he was kidding. You'd have thought so, too, in my place. But we can pull through yet. We can convince the sports that this high-moral business is only for the church people, and the civic purity push. Why, Brassfield himself couldn't make Fatty Pierson believe he stands for this stuff. It's so out of reason,--the safe and sane life he's lived. And I'll undertake to keep the God-and-morality folks lined up, because these are really the things they say they want. This ain't going to be so very bad, after all, Edge!"

"Bad!" ejaculated Edgington. "Why, Alvord, you're so wrapped up in Brassfield that you're ready to go crazy with him!"

"Well, I want to say right here," shouted Alvord, "that if you think I'm going to quit on a man I've eaten with and slept with and sworn to stay by--By gad, I won't!"

"Well, stay by him, then!" cried Edgington. "Go on and butt your brains out on this stone wall of ism, and see where you come out. You're already beaten. The other side knew about this last night, and you'll be blown out of water before to-morrow morning. Doctor Bulkon and his crowd are already lined up against you: the doctor will take the position that Brassfield's proposal to segregate vice is a compromise with sin, and that that's the paramount issue. Why, Pumphrey and Johnson and the Williams set are all among his best-paying parishioners, and they've put the screws to Bulkon--who doesn't see the point, anyhow. I tell you that there are too many pillars of the church with downtown property to rent, for you to keep either them or their pastors in line. They'll find moral issues to fight the ten commandments on, if they have to. You ought to know this, Jim."

"Well," said Alvord, "let the Pharisees oppose us! I'll appeal to the liberal element. I'll convince 'em that Brassfield don't mean this stuff. They like him, and they'll stick!"

"Stick!" sneered Edgington. "Like him! You make me tired, Jim! How long will they 'stick' against the influence of their landlords and bankers? Why, they've all read this platform, and the story has gone down the line that Brassfield is so infatuated with Miss Waldron that he's allowing her to write his platform, and that she'll be the mayor. Don't you think that that won't cut the ground from under you, either! A saloon man or gambler fears a good woman's influence as a wolf fears fire. Why, Jim, when this 'advanced thought' platform of yours comes to be voted on, there won't be any one for it except thick-and-thin party men who 'never scratch.' Now I'm not going down with any such sinking scow. I shall make terms for my financial interests with the other side."

"Go, then!" shouted Alvord, "and find you've hopped out of the frying pan into the fire! By George, I tell you we've got the money to buy this election!"

"Oh!" said Edgington, "_have_ you! And how about your publishing an itemized account of campaign expenses?"

Alvord, his last card played, fell back beaten, every vestige of optimistic pugnacity gone from his face. Edgington laid his hand on the other's shoulder, in sympathy.

"I tell you, Jim," said he, as he departed, "this is no place nor time to run a reform campaign. Brassfield isn't the candidate for it, and you're not the manager. You're simply fish trying to fly. Come with me and we'll get into our natural element."

"Not by a good deal," said Alvord stubbornly. "I don't know anything in this but Brassfield, and to him I'll stick!"

"As you please," said Edgington. "But keep the lid on the Scarlett business!"

Alvord made no reply. But when Edgington was gone he took up his work with a groan of real distress.

XXIII

THE MOVING FINGER WRITES

To the Queen came the guard full of zeal: Haled in bonds the Pretender: "Shall it be noose or knout, rack or wheel?" But her proud face grew tender. Down she stepped from her throne--made him free; "Love," she said, with a sigh, "What is rank? You are you, we are we, I am I!" --_The Cheating of Zenobia_.

I should like to write, just here, a little disquisition on Crises. I should show how all nature moves ever on and on toward certain cataclysmic events, each of which marks a point of departure for new ascents in progression. I should begin, of course, with the Nebular Hypothesis, its crash of suns, followed by the evolution of the star and its system of planets, its life, cooling, death, and a fresh crisis forming a new nebula. I should end with either Revolutions or Malaria, depending on whether I should last consider the subject in its relation to sociology or to pathology; but in any case, somewhere along in the latter third of the work, I should treat of Love and Marriage, and therein of the Crisis and Catastrophe in Romance.

I have a good mind to do it!

But, no; crises in general must wait, seeing that our particular one stands clamoring for solution. The concrete bids away with the abstraction. None of our friends of this history could be brought just now, for a single moment, to seek solace in philosophy, unless it might be Professor Blatherwick--and he is entirely oblivious of the fact of the crisis having made its appearance.

Not so, for instance, with the professor's extraordinary daughter, whose feelings were so lacerated by the culminating proof of the fickleness of Brassfield at the Pumphreys' reception that she wondered how she could ever have thought of keeping him in that perfidious plane of consciousness in the hope that therein he would cleave to her only. Better a good friend in Amidon, said she, than a false lover in Brassfield. Howbeit, she isolated herself and mourned, thinking much of the wrong her deed of the reception had done to Amidon, and wondering how it might be remedied.

Nor with Mr. Amidon, who, while ignorant of the full extent of his misfortune in the eyes of Elizabeth, yet knew that he was deep, deep in disgrace with her, and found so many plausible reasons for it that the episode at the reception seemed the least of them. He knew enough of Brassfield to believe him guilty on any charge which might be brought against him. The only doubt he allowed himself was as to how far he, Florian Amidon, was morally responsible for Brassfield's wrong-doings. He had no doubt that Miss Scarlett had a real grievance against Brassfield, and, in an extremity of woe, made up his mind that Amidon must hold himself to the sorry trade of answering a debt he never contracted. He knew from a brief interview with Alvord that the political situation was bad, but for this he had scarcely a thought since the tragic breaking-up of their little Belshazzar's Feast. It was his relations with Miss Waldron and Miss Scarlett which placed him beyond the reach of philosophy.

So also is Judge Blodgett, who has been busy since the banquet, some of the time with a towel about his brow, searching through Edgington's library, to which his connection with the Bunn's Ferry well case gave him the _entree_, for the law of breach of promise of marriage as defined by the Pennsylvania decisions. Edgington himself was apparently always from his office. Blodgett's call on Fuller and Cox was most unsatisfactory, Mr. Fuller with some acerbity disclaiming all knowledge of any such case as Scarlett versus Brassfield, and Mr. Cox being invisible.

"They act," said he to Florian, "like people who are out for revenge, or a vindication, or something besides money. I don't consider their attitude favorable to a compromise."

"Well," said Amidon, "that does not surprise me at all."

"It doesn't, eh?" went on the judge. "Well, I can't say that anything surprises me; though I was a little taken off my feet by a rumor that something took place between you and the plaintiff at that party the other night. How was that?"

"There may have been something," said Amidon calmly, "but you must get particulars from some one else--Clara, perhaps. You see, she was giving tests, and put me into that--Brassfield state, (why, I can't understand)--and I don't know what occurred; but there was something."

"I'd like to know about that," said the judge contemplatively, "I'd like to know. That stairway episode--that collision, you remember--may not count for much on the trial; but with a few corroborative circumstances, eh, my boy? Farmer jury; pretty girl; blighted affection; damned villain, you know. But say! she's got something to prove if she wins, under the authorities here, and there are more cases in this state than there ought to be in the whole world; but a summer-resort engagement, girl of mature years, a little bit swift down the quarter-stretch and all that--cheer up, Florian, we'll win, or we'll make it a great case----"

"Blodgett," answered Amidon, who heard with horror the lawyer's forecast of the trial, "she may not have to prove anything. There may not be any trial. I must know these facts! I may owe her reparation. I may--anything! I must know; and no one but Madame le Claire can help us, and she must act through that accursed scoundrel who has got us into all this--Brassfield! Go to her, Blodgett, and tell her that she must see us. I have asked for an interview a dozen times since that reception but she won't see any one. Get an interview for this afternoon; and you must be present and hear her bring out of him a full confession; not as my attorney, but as my friend, as a gentleman. If you find out the worst, as I believe, I shall offer----"

Judge Blodgett gave Amidon's hand a warm grasp.

"That's like you, Florian," he exclaimed, "and it's the part of a man! But I'd see her in Halifax first! Why, you may be called to give up--have you considered--Miss Wald----"

"No no!" said Amidon, "that--_she_ is no longer a factor in the case. It's all over with her anyhow, if---- I can't talk of that; but can't you see that this other matter must be cleared up--before I can even come into her presence? Can't you see----"

"I'll see the madame," said the judge. "Yes--I'll see her! I'll see her at once. I guess you're right about it, Florian."

Madame le Claire was keenly conscious of the converging lines of fate, the meeting of which was so rich in baleful promise. She was prostrated at the result of her work at the reception. She had seen Florian in a position of utter humiliation. She had observed the gray pallor in Elizabeth's face as she walked from the room, and felt on her conscience the murder of their happiness. She had seen--and this hurt her more than she would to herself admit--she had seen Brassfield walk from a whispered conversation with herself--an amorous, wooing conversation--to a secret meeting with Daisy Scarlett; so that she felt despoiled of the hold she had had on the affections of even Amidon's false second self, Brassfield. For all this she blamed herself because of the little jealous spite, to gratify which she had made Brassfield walk his disastrous hour on the stage. What should she do? What could she do? She secluded herself and pondered. On this second day, she made her resolve: she would see Miss Waldron, and if possible explain as much of the mystery as might serve to satisfy her with reference to the affair of the East Room. Accordingly, a note went up to the house with the white columns, asking for a meeting. And as the messenger departed, the card of Judge Blodgett came in.

"No!" said Madame le Claire, to his request, "no, I must be excused! I can not conscientiously put him in that state again. If you could have seen him when last----"

"Exactly!" said the judge, filling in the pause. "And as I didn't see that reception affair, you must tell me about it. It's important for me to know."

When he had been told, the judge walked back and forth in evident perturbation, fingering over the leaves of a little square book which he took from his pocket.

"Did you ever," said he at last, "happen to hear what was the rule laid down in the breach of promise case of Hall versus Maguire?"

"Breach of promise!" ejaculated the young woman, inferring a volume from the words. "What do you mean?"

"These facts of which you inform me," said he, "bring Mr. Amidon's case within the rule in Hall versus Maguire, square as a die! Oh, I forgot to tell you! Mr. Amidon, doing business under the name and style of Eugene Brassfield, has been sued by Miss Daisy Scarlett, for breach of promise. No publicity, as yet, but----"

"Oh, it must be stopped!" exclaimed the occultist; "it shall be stopped! He is not guilty. He was irresponsible--ask papa about it; he will tell you so. This girl is coming to see me here to-day: I'll tell her how wrong----"

"No, no, my dear!" said the judge in a fatherly manner. "That would never do, never! You may have given a hint as to this matter of irresponsibility, worth considering. Promise of marriage--civil contract; abnormal state--irresponsibility: it looks pretty well! You should have been a lawyer. But this thing of having dealings with Miss Scarlett except in the presence of and through her legal advisers, Messrs. Fuller and Cox--not for a moment to be thought of by an honorable practitioner: not for a moment!"

Madame le Claire regarded him with a lofty scorn meant for these antiquated scruples of his; but before she could find words, the knock of the bell-boy called her attention to the door.

"Miss Waldron is below!" said she. "Judge, you may bring Mr. Amidon up in half an hour. I shall then be at liberty, and may grant his request. Please leave me, now; I have asked Miss Waldron to be shown up, and must see her alone."

Elizabeth Waldron, in this plexus of disasters, found nowhere a gleam of comfort. Her fine chagrin at the thought of such things as she feared might be censurable as overfree self-revelation to her lover in such things as letters and the sweet concessions of the new betrothal--all this was past, now. Tragedy has this of comfort in it: its fateful lightnings burn out of the atmosphere of life all the noisome littlenesses which have seemed worthy of concern. So it was with Elizabeth, as she now faced the very annihilation of all for which she had lived--centered in that "perfect lover," who was now worse than annihilated in this descent to a plane which made every act of homage to her so mean and common that she would have felt his status uplifted by some proof of great guilt on his part. And she could see no way of acquitting him. There was mystery in it, but no exculpation. Mystery----

With the idea of mystery came in the image of the strange girl with the fascinating glance and the party-colored hair. Could it be possible that the occult power possessed by her might somehow furnish an explanation of her lover's strangely base behavior? More and more did this fixed thought engross her mind. She felt that she must know--must see this woman and her colorless father. Desire grew to resolve; resolve bred inquiry as to ways of compassing an interview; and in the midst of the inquiry, came Madame le Claire's messenger. Her answer was the putting on of her cloak for a visit to the occultist's parlors.