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

Once more, jubilantly, teasingly, wrought upon by the revived spirit of the intimacy of the old days, she assumed a playful pose with him, but this time her sincerity of soul was behind the situation. "Don't you realize, sir, that the calendar of the Hon. Jodrey Wadsworth Corson, on this day and date, is crowded with strictly new business? He is due at the State House very soon. Do you think he can afford to be bothered with unfinished business?"
He worshiped her with silence and a smile.
"Yes, Mister Mayor of Marion, unfinished business--yours and mine! Our business of the old days. But the honorable Senator is perfectly well aware that the business aforesaid is on the calendar. He had been supposing that we had forgotten it. I see a big question in your eyes, Stewart dear! Well, now that you're a party to the action and interested in the matter to be presented, I'll say that after Senator Corson had done his talking to me last evening, or very early this morning, to be more exact, I called on my family grit of which he's so proud and I did a little talking to Senator Corson. And he knows that the business is unfinished--he knows it will be brought duly to his attention--and he'll be in a better frame of mind after his present petulance has worn off."
"Petulance!" Morrison was rather skeptical.
"Exactly! He's just as much of a big child as most men are when another big child tries to take away a plaything. Oh, he was furious, Stewart! But let me tell you something for your comfort. He dwelt most savagely on the fact that you had grabbed in single-handed and beaten a Governor and a United States Senator at their own game! Wonderful, isn't it--admission like that? He has always patronized you as a countryman who knew how to make good cloth and who didn't amount to anything else in the world. Why, in a few days he'll be admitting that he admires you and respects you!"
She paused. After a few moments she went on, her tones low and thrilling. "I've been trying to explain myself to you, Stewart. You know, now, that I have always loved you. I have told you so in a way that leaves no doubts in a man such as you are. You have forgiven me for being simply human and silly before I woke up to understand you. And you don't misunderstand me any more, do you?" she pleaded, wistfully. "Last night I saw--your big _self_!"
"Lana, it was a wonderful night--more wonderful than I realized till now!"
After a time they became aware of a stir below-stairs and they came out from behind the screen where the Japanese faces grinned knowingly.
"Please obey me, Stewart; you must! It's really my trial of you to see if you're obedient when I know it's for your own good. Go down and wait for me." She left him in the corridor and ran away.
He marched down the stairs with as much self-possession as he could command.
Below him he saw Senator Corson, Mrs. Stanton, Silas Daunt, and the banker's son. All were garbed for outdoors and the Senator was inquiring of Mrs. Stanton why Lana was not ready.
From the landing down to the hall Stewart found the ordeal an exacting one. Those below surveyed him with an open astonishment that was more disconcerting than hostility; he was in a mood to fight for himself and his own; but to deal in mere polite explanations, after Lana's imperious command to keep silent on an important matter, was beyond any sagacity he possessed in that period of abashed wonder what to say or do.
It was his thought that Miss Corson, in her efforts to avoid an anticlimax of conventional procedure, was making a rather too severe test of him in forcing him to endure the unusual.
He did manage to say, "Good morning!" and smiled at them in a deprecatory way.
Coventry Daunt amiably responded as a spokesman for the group; but he had waited deferentially for his elders to make some response.
The Senator held a packet of telegrams in his hand. After Stewart had halted in the hall, putting on the best face he could and evincing a determination to stick the thing out, Senator Corson walked over and offered to give the mayor the telegrams. "They're beginning to arrive from Washington, sir. Better read 'em. They'll afford you a great deal of joy, I'm sure."
Stewart shook his head, declining to receive the missives. He wanted to tell the Senator that more joy right at that moment would overtask the Morrison capacity.
"I wish I were younger and more of an opportunist," Corson avowed. "In these guessing times among the booms, here is gas enough to inflate a pretty good-sized presidential balloon." He waved the papers.
The Senator's tone was still rather ironical, but Stewart was seeking for straws to buoy his new hopes; whether he was so recently away from Lana's dark eyes that the encouragement in them lingered with him, he was not sure. He felt, however, that the Senator's eyes did seem a little less hard than the polished ebony they had resembled.
An awkward silence ensued. The Senator stood in front of the caller and queried uncompromisingly with those eyes.
The caller, having been enjoined from babbling about the business that had been transacted behind the screen in the library, had no excuse to offer for hanging around there. "I--I suppose you're going to the State House," he suggested, after he decided that the weather called for no comments.
"We are! We are waiting for my daughter," stated Corson, with a severity which indicated that he was determined, then and there, to rebuke the cause of her delay.
"I'm so sorry you have waited!" Lana called to them from the landing, and came hurrying down, fastening the clasp of her furs.
She went to Mrs. Stanton, her face expressing apologetic distress. "It's so comforting, Doris, to know that you and I don't need to bother with all these guest and hostess niceties. You'll understand--because you're a dear friend! Father will make the doors of the Capitol fly open for his party--and you'll be looked after wonderfully." She bestowed her gracious glances on the others of the Daunt family, "I know you'll all forgive me if I don't come along."
She did not allow her amazed father to embarrass the situation by the outburst that he threatened. She fled past him, patting his arm with a swift caress. "I'm going with Stewart--over to Jeanie Mac Dougal Morrison's house. It's really dreadfully important. You know why, father. I'll tell you all about it later. Come, Stewart! We must hurry!"
Young Mr. Daunt was near the door. He opened it for her. When Stewart passed, following the girl closely, the volunteer door-tender qualified as a good sport. He whispered, "Good luck, old man!"
When Coventry closed the door he gave his sister a prolonged and pregnant stare of actual triumph.
It was only a look, but he put into it more significance than sufficed for Doris's perspicacity.
He had confided to his sister, the evening before, his hopeful reliance on a girl's heart.
But the Lana Corson who came down the stairs, who confronted them, who had fearlessly chosen her mate before their hostile eyes, was a woman.
And Coventry's gaze told his sister boastingly that he had made good in one respect--he had called the turn in his estimate of a woman.
THE END
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Publication Date: 11-25-2009

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