CHAPTER I

SUNNY SKIES

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 tell the 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 to have 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,” the _Journal_ said. 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 the _Journal_ office 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 inky smears 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.”

“J. B. Waters? He keeps a weather record, doesn’t he?”

“Yes. Has, for a good many years. We print his record every week. Perhaps you haven’t noticed it.”

Wint nodded. “Yes. I suppose every one likes to read about the weather. Even on a hot day.”

B. B. smiled. “That’s because every one likes to read about things they have experienced. You won’t find a big daily in the country without its paragraph or its temperature tables devoted to the weather, every day in the year. And a day like this is worth a front-page story any time.”

“You know what a day like this always makes me think of?” Wint asked; and B. B. looked interested. “A glass of beer,” said Wint. “Cool and brown, with beads on the outside of the glass.”

The editor smiled. “The beads on the outside of the glass won’t cool you off half as much as the beads on the outside of your head,” he said. “Did you ever stop to think of that?”

“Sweat, you mean?”

“Exactly. You know, when troops go into a hot country, they get flannel-covered canteens; and when they want to cool off the water in the canteens, they wet the flannel and let it dry. The evaporation of your own perspiration is the finest cooling agency in the world.”

“May be,” Wint agreed. “But it doesn’t stop your thirst.”

B. B. said good-naturedly: “A thirst is one of the handicaps of the smoker. I quit smoking a good many years ago. A non-smoker can satisfy his own thirst by swallowing his own spittle. I don’t suppose you ever thought of that?”

“Is that straight?”

“Yes, indeed.”

Wint asked amiably: “Mean to say you wouldn’t have to take a barrel of water to cross the Sahara.”

“Oh, when the bodily juices are exhausted, of course....”

Wint grinned. “I’ll stick to my beer.”

B. B. laughed and said: “I expect a good many Hardiston men are cussing you to-day because they can’t get beer.”

“I suppose so. I’ve a notion to cuss myself.” He added, a moment later: “You know, B. B., it’s surprising to me how little fuss has been made over that.”

“You mean--the--enforcing the law?”

“Yes. I looked for a row.”

“Oh, you’ll find most people are on your side. You know, most people are for the decent thing, in the long run. That’s what makes the world go around.”

“Think so?”

“Yes, indeed. If that weren’t so, where would be the virtue in democracy?”

“Well,” Wint said good-naturedly, “I’ve always had an idea that a democracy was a poor way to run things, anyway. About all you can say for it is that a man has a right to make a fool of himself.”

“Well, that’s about all you can say against slavery, isn’t it?”

Wint considered. “I don’t get you.”

“There were good men in the South before the war, owning slaves,” said B. B. “And the slaves were better off than their descendants are now. Materially; perhaps morally, too. But that doesn’t prove slavery was right.” He added: “The darkies had a right to make fools of themselves if they chose, you see. Their masters--even the good masters--prevented them.”

“I suppose that’s what a benevolent despot does?”

“Exactly.”

“If it wasn’t so hot, I’d give three cheers for democracy.” He considered thoughtfully, fanning himself with his hat. “But that’s what I’m doing, B. B. I’m refusing to let some that would like to, make fools of themselves with booze.”

B. B. shook his head. “Not at all. It’s not your doing. The people are doing it themselves. They voted dry; they elected you to enforce their vote. See the distinction?”

“Think I’ve done right, then?” Wint asked.

And B. B. said: “Yes, indeed.” Wint got a surprising amount of satisfaction out of that. Because, as has been said, he valued B. B.’s opinion.

So, on the whole, that month of July was a cheerful one for Wint. Things were going his way; the world was bright; the skies were sunny.

The first cloud upon them came on the second of August. It was a very little cloud; but it was a forerunner of bigger ones to come. Wint did not, in the beginning, appreciate its full significance. In fact, he was not sure it had any significance at all. It merely puzzled him.

His month’s statement from the bank came in. When it first came, he tossed the long envelope aside without opening it; and it was not till that night that he compared the bank statement with the balance in his check book.

He discovered, then, that there was a mistake somewhere. The bank credited him with more money than he should have had. He said to himself, good-naturedly, that he ought not to kick about that. Nevertheless, he ran through his canceled checks, comparing them with his stubs, to see where the difference lay.

He located the discrepancy almost at once; and when he discovered it, he sat back and considered its significance with a puzzled look in his eyes.

The trouble was that his check to Hetty, for her expenses in Columbus, had never been cashed; and Wint could not understand that at all.