All-Wool Morrison, Holman Day [historical books to read txt] 📗

"No, sir!" he said, mildly.
"I hope you hear that, Governor North! I was compelled to give countersigns to your soldiers--quite emphatic countersigns. The new regime is to be complimented."
Morrison threw open the door. "That's all, Rellihan! Report to the chief!"
The newspaper men came crowding to the threshold.
"You have interviewed Mayor Morrison on the situation, haven't you?" demanded the Senator, breaking in on their questions.
"Yes!"
"To-night--for the time being--for now," returned Corson, dwelling on the point as emphatically as he had when he spoke before, "Mayor Morrison seems to be doing very well in all that has been undertaken. I have no statement to make--absolutely no word to say!"
He stepped back and allowed the Governor to lead the retreat; His Excellency collided with two of the more persistent news-gatherers. With volleyed "No! Nothing!" he marked time for the thudding of his feet.
Apparently Lana had entered into the spirit of that armed truce which, so her father's manner informed her, was merely a rearrangement of the battle-front. She hurried out of the chamber without even a glance in Morrison's direction.
Stewart's grim countenance intimidated the reporters; they went away.
For a long time the mayor paced up and down the Executive Chamber, his hands clasped behind him.
Miss Bunker thumbed the leaves of her note-book, putting on an air of complete absorption in that matter.
Mac Tavish studied the mayor's face; Morrison was wearing that expression which indicated a mood strange for him. Mac Tavish had seen it on the master's face altogether too many times since the Morrison had come from the mill in the forenoon. It was not the look he wore when matters of business engrossed him. The old paymaster liked to see Morrison pondering on mill affairs; it was meditation that always meant solution of difficulties, and the solution was instantly followed by a laugh and good cheer.
But it was plain that Morrison had not solved anything when he turned to Mac Tavish.
"Not much like honest, real business--this, eh, Andy?"
"Naething like, sir!"
"Doesn't seem to be a polite job, either--politics--if you go in and fight the other fellow on his own ground."
"I've e'er hated the sculch and the scalawags!"
"Totten calls this a political exigency."
"I'll no name it for mysel' in the hearing o' the lass!"
"Seems to need a lot of fancy lying when a greenhorn like me starts late and is obliged to do things in a hurry. Gives business methods an awful wrench, Andy!"
"Aye!" The old Scotchman was emphatic.
"In fact, in a political exigency, according to what I've found out this evening, the quickest liar wins!" He walked to Miss Bunker's side. "You might jot that down as sort of summing the thing up and consider the record closed."
"Do ye think it's all closed and that ye're weel out of it?" inquired Mac Tavish, anxiously.
"I think, Andy," drawled the mayor, a wry smile beginning to twist at the corners of his mouth, "that I may have the militia and the people and the politicians well out of it, but considering the mess, as it concerns me, myself, I'm only beginning to be good and properly in it."
"Ye hae the record, as jotted by the lass, and I heard ye say naething but what was to your credit. And the words o' the high judges! Ye're well backed!"
"Oh, that reminds me, Andy. That boy who brought the telegrams to the door! He'll come to the mill in the morning. Pay him ten dollars. I didn't have the money in my clothes when I hired him."
"And that reminds me, too, Mr. Morrison!" said Miss Bunker. "Do you want me to keep the telegrams with the record? You remember you took them when you went out with the general."
Morrison reached into his breast pocket for the papers, tore them slowly across, and stuffed the scraps back into a side-pocket. "I reckon they won't do the record much good. It's more of the political exigency stuff, Andy! I wrote 'em myself!"
His hands had touched his pipe when he had shoved the bits of paper into his pocket. He took it out and peered into the bowl. There was tobacco there and he fumbled for a match.
"Andy, usually I like to have morning come, for there's always business waiting for me in the mornings and honest daylight helps any matter of clean business. But I'm not looking ahead to this next sunrise with a great deal of relish. Those telegrams were clinchers in the case of Totten, but I don't know what the judges will say. What I said about Senator Corson to the mob helped a lot--but I don't know what the Senator is going to say in the morning. And I don't know what Governor North proposes to say. Or what--" He checked himself and shook his head. "Well, there's considerable going to be said, at any rate! I'll run over the thing in my mind right now while I have time and everything is quiet. Mac Tavish, take Miss Bunker to the car and tell Jock to carry you and her home and to come back here for me."
After they had gone he lighted his pipe and sat down in the Governor's big chair and smoked and pondered. Every little while he thrust his forefinger and thumb into his vest pocket and ransacked without avail. "I must have left it in my dress clothes," he muttered. "But no matter! I'm not in the right frame of mind to enjoy poetry. However, merely in the way of taking a new clinch on the proposition I do remember this much, 'But I will marry my own first love!' There's truth in poetry if you go after it hard enough. And, on second thought, I'd better keep my mind on poetry as closely as I can! I certainly don't dare to think of politics right now!"


XX
IN THE COLD AND CANDID DAYLIGHT
For the first time in his life Governor North had his breakfast served to him in his room at his hotel; he ate alone, chewing savagely and studying newspapers. He did not welcome this method of breakfasting as a pleasing indulgence. Rugged Lawrence North was no sybarite; he hated all assumptions of exclusiveness; he loved to mingle and mix, and his morning levees in the hotel breakfast-room catered to all his vanity as a public functionary. He did not own up squarely to himself that he was afraid to go down and face men and answer questions. He had ordered the hotel telephone exchange to give him no calls; he had told the desk clerk to state to all inquirers that the Governor was too busy to be seen; he paid no attention to raps on his door. His self-exculpation in this unwonted privacy was that he could not afford to allow himself to be bothered by questioners until he and Senator Corson could arrange for effectual team-work by another conference. When he and the Senator parted they agreed to get together at the Corson mansion the first thing after breakfast.
While the Governor ground his food between his teeth he also chewed on the savage realization that he had nothing sensible to say in public on the situation, considering his uncompromising declarations of the day before; there were those declarations thrusting up at him from the newspaper page like derisive fingers; by the reports in parallel columns he was represented as saying one thing and doing another! And a bumptious, blundering, bull-headed Scotchman had put the Governor of a state in that tongue-tied, skulking position on the proud day of inauguration!
His Excellency slashed his ham, and stabbed his eggs, making his food atone vicariously.
He did not order his car over the hotel telephone. The hotel _attachés_ were obsequious and would be waiting to escort him in state across the main office. The politicians would surround the car. And he was perfectly sure that some of the big men of an amazed State House lobby might step into that car along with him and seek to know what in the name o' mischief had happened overnight to change all the sane and conservative plans in the way of making a legislature safe!
He bundled himself and his raw pride into his overcoat, turned the fur collar up around his head, and went down a staircase. He was sneaking and he knew it and no paltering self-assurance that he was handling a touchy situation with necessary tact helped his feelings in the least. He stepped into a taxicab and was glad because the breath of previous passengers that morning had frosted the windows. That consolation was merely a back-fire in the rest of the conflagration that raged in him.
It was a dull morning, somber and cold.
When he stamped up the broad walk from the gate of the Corson mansion he beheld the boarded windows of the ballroom, and the spectacle added to his sense of chill. But his anger was not cooled.
Senator Corson's secretary was waiting in the hall; he showed the Governor up to the Senator's study.
Either because the outdoors was not cheerful that morning or because the Senator had been too much engrossed in meditation to remember that daylight would serve him, the curtains of the study were drawn and the electric lamps were on.
Corson was walking up and down the room, chewing on one end of a cigar and making a soggy torch of the other end. He continued to pace while North pulled off his coat.
"I have sent word to Morrison to come here," reported the host.
The mantel clock reported the hour as nine; His Excellency scowled at the clock's face. "And you got word back, I suppose, that after he has come out of his mill at ten o'clock and has washed his hands and--"
"He's at City Hall," snapped Corson, with an acerbity that matched the Governor's. "I called the mill and was referred to Morrison at City Hall. He's on his way up here! At any rate, he said he'd start at once."
"Did he condescend to intimate in what capacity he proposes to land on us this time?"
"I'm going to allow you to draw your own conclusions. I've been trying to draw some of my own from what he said."
"What did he say?"
"Apologized because I was put to any trouble in locating him. Said he was expecting to be called by me and thought he would go to City Hall and await my summons in order to put himself and the whole situation on a strictly official basis." The Senator delivered that information sullenly.
"What kind of a devilish basis does he think he's been operating on?"
"Look here, North! If you have come up here to fight with me after the row you have been having down-town this morning I warn you--"
"I have had no row down-town. I wouldn't see anybody. I wouldn't talk with anybody. Blast it! Corson, I don't know what to say to anybody!"
"Well, that's one point, at least, on which you and I can get together even if we can't agree on anything else. If you have been so cursedly exclusive as all that, North, perhaps you haven't been in touch with any of the justices of the supreme court, as I have."
"You have, eh?"
"I called Davenport and Madigan on the telephone."
"What excuse could they give for sending their snap opinions over the wire on the inquiry of a fool?"
"They offered no excuse. They couldn't. They knew nothing about any telegrams till I informed 'em. They received no inquiry. They sent no replies, naturally."
"That--that--Did that--" The Governor pawed at his scraggly neck. "He faked all that stuff?"
"Absolutely!"
Comment which could not have been expressed in long speeches and violent denunciation