Booth Tarkington

by Booth Tarkington

  “Yes, madam,” said Goldstein mildly; “we are both Jews.”

  A low laugh rippled out from near-by, and Alonzo, turning almost violently, beheld his lady of the furs. She was leaning back against a broad pilaster, her hands sweeping the same big coat behind her, her face turned toward him, but her eyes, sparklingly delighted, resting upon Goldstein. Under the broad fur hat she made a picture as enraging, to Alonzo Rawson, as it was bewitching. She appeared not to see him, to be quite unconscious of him—and he believed it. Truslow and five or six members of both houses were about her, and they all seemed to be bending eagerly toward her. Alonzo was furious with her.

  Her laugh lingered upon the air for a moment, then her glance swept round the other way, omitting the Senator from Stackpole, who, immediately putting into practice a reserve which would have astonished Napoleon, swung about and quitted the deputation without a word of farewell or explanation. He turned into the cloak-room and paced the floor for three minutes with a malevolence which awed the coloured attendants into not brushing his coat; but, when he returned to the corridor, cautious inquiries addressed to the tobacconist elicited the information that the handsome lady with Senator Truslow had departed.

  Truslow himself had not gone. He was lounging in his seat when Alonzo returned and was genially talkative. The latter refrained from replying in kind, not altogether out of reserve, but more because of a dim suspicion (which rose within him, the third time Truslow called him “Senator” in one sentence) that his first opinion of the young man as a light-minded person might have been correct.

  There was no session the following afternoon, but Alonzo watched the street from the windows of his committee-room, which overlooked the splendid breadth of stone steps leading down from the great doors to the pavement. There were some big bookcases in the room, whose glass doors served as mirrors in which he more and more sternly regarded the soft image of an entirely new grey satin tie, while the conviction grew within him that (arguing from her behaviour of the previous day) she would not come, and that the Stackpole girls were nobler by far at heart than many who might wear a king’s-ransom’s-worth of jewels round their throats at the opera-house in a large city. This sentiment was heartily confirmed by the clock when it marked half-past two. He faced the bookcase doors and struck his breast, his open hand falling across the grey tie with tragic violence; after which, turning for the last time to the windows, he uttered a loud exclamation and, laying hands upon an ulster and a grey felt hat, each as new as the satin tie, ran hurriedly from the room. The black automobile was waiting.

  “I thought it possible you might see me from a window,” said Mrs. Protheroe as he opened the little door.

  “I was just coming out,” he returned, gasping for breath. “I thought—from yesterday—you’d probably forgotten.”

  “Why ‘from yesterday’?” she asked.

  “I thought—I thought—” He faltered to a stop as the full glorious sense of her presence overcame him. She wore the same veil.

  “You thought I did not see you yesterday in the corridor?”

  “I thought you might have acted more—more—”

  “More cordially?”

  “Well,” he said, looking down at his hands, “more like you knew we’d been introduced.”

  At that she sat silent, looking away from him, and he, daring a quick glance at her, found that he might let his eyes remain upon her face. That was a dangerous place for eyes to rest, yet Alonzo Rawson was anxious for the risk. The car flew along the even asphalt on its way to the country like a wild goose on a long slant of wind, and, with his foolish fury melted inexplicably into honey, Alonzo looked at her—and looked at her—till he would have given an arm for another quick corner and a street-car to send his cheek against that veiled, cold cheek of hers again. It was not until they reached the alternate vacant lots and bleak Queen Anne cottages of the city’s ragged edge that she broke the silence.

  “You were talking to some one else,” she said almost inaudibly.

  “Yes ma’am, Goldstein, but—”

  “Oh, no!” She turned toward him, lifting her hand. “You were quite the lion among ladies.”

  “I don’t know what you mean, Mrs. Protheroe,” he said, truthfully.

  “What were you talking to all those women about?”

  “It was about the ‘Sunday Baseball Bill.’”

  “Ah! The bill you attacked in your speech, last Wednesday?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “I hear you haven’t made any speeches since then,” she said indifferently.

  “No ma’am,” he answered gently. “I kind of got the idea that I’d better lay low for a while, at first, and get in some quiet hard work.”

  “I understand. You are a man of intensely reserved nature.”

  “With men,” said Alonzo, “I am. With ladies I am not so much so. I think a good woman ought to be told—”

  “But you are interested,” she interrupted, “in defeating that bill?”

  “Yes ma’am,” he returned. “It is an iniquitous measure.”

  “Why?”

  “Mrs. Protheroe!” he exclaimed, taken aback. “I thought all the ladies were against it. My own mother wrote to me from Stackpole that she’d rather see me in my grave than votin’ for such a bill, and I’d rather see myself there!”

  “But are you sure that you understand it?”

  “I only know it desecrates the Sabbath. That’s enough for me!”

  She leaned toward him and his breath came quickly.

  “No. You’re wrong,” she said, and rested the tips of her fingers upon his sleeve.

  “I don’t understand why—why you say that,” he faltered. “It sounds kind of—surprising to me—”

  “Listen,” she said. “Perhaps Mr. Truslow told you that I am studying such things. I do not want to be an idle woman; I want to be of use to the world, even if it must be only in small ways.”

  “I think that is a noble ambition!” he exclaimed. “I think all good women ought—”

  “Wait,” she interrupted gently. “Now, that bill is a worthy one, though it astonishes you to hear me say so. Perhaps you don’t understand the conditions. Sunday is the labouring-man’s only day of recreation—and what recreation is he offered?”

  “He ought to go to church,” said Alonzo promptly.

  “But the fact is that he doesn’t—not often—not at all in the afternoon. Wouldn’t it be well to give him some wholesome way of employing his Sunday afternoons? This bill provides for just that, and it keeps him away from drinking too, for it forbids the sale of liquor on the grounds.”

  “Yes, I know,” said Alonzo plaintively. “But it ain’t right! I was raised to respect the Sabbath and—”

  “Ah, that’s what you should do! You think I could believe in anything that wouldn’t make it better and more sacred?”

  “Oh, no, ma’am!” he cried reproachfully. “It’s only that I don’t see—”

  “I am telling you.” She lifted her veil and let him have the full dazzle of her beauty. “Do you know that many thousands of labouring people spend their Sundays drinking and carousing about the low country road-houses because the game is played at such places on Sunday? They go there because they never get a chance to see it played in the city. And don’t you understand that there would be no Sunday liquor trade, no working-men poisoning themselves every seventh day in the low groggeries, as hundreds of them do now, if they had something to see that would interest them?—something as wholesome and fine as this sport would be, under the conditions of this bill; something to keep them in the open air, something to bring a little gaiety into their dull lives!” Her voice had grown louder and it shook a little, with a rising emotion, though its sweetness was only the more poignant. “Oh, my dear Senator,” she cried, “don’t you see how wrong you are? Don’t you want to help these
poor people?”

  Her fingers, which had tightened upon his sleeve, relaxed and she leaned back, pulling the veil down over her face as if wishing to conceal from him that her lips trembled slightly; then resting her arm upon the leather cushions, she turned her head away from him, staring fixedly into the gaunt beech woods lining the country road along which they were now coursing. For a time she heard nothing from him, and the only sound was the monotonous chug of the machine.

  “I suppose you think it rather shocking to hear a woman talking practically of such commonplace things,” she said at last, in a cold voice, just loud enough to be heard.

  “No ma’am,” he said huskily.

  “Then what do you think?” she cried, turning toward him again with a quick imperious gesture.

  “I think I’d better go back to Stackpole,” he answered very slowly, “and resign my job. I don’t see as I’ve got any business in the Legislature.”

  “I don’t understand you.”

  He shook his head mournfully. “It’s a simple enough matter. I’ve studied out a good many bills and talked ’em over and I’ve picked up some influence and —”

  “I know you have,” she interrupted eagerly. “Mr. Truslow says that the members of your drains-and-dikes committee follow your vote on every bill.”

  “Yes ma’am,” said Alonzo Rawson meekly, “but I expect they oughtn’t to. I’ve had a lesson this afternoon.”

  “You mean to say—”

  “I mean that I didn’t know what I was doing about that baseball bill. I was just pig-headedly goin’ ahead against it, not knowing nothing about the conditions, and it took a lady to show me what they were. I would have done a wrong thing if you hadn’t stopped me.”

  “You mean,” she cried, her splendid eyes widening with excitement and delight; “you mean that you—that you—”

  “I mean that I will vote for the bill!” He struck his clenched fist upon his knee. “I come to the Legislature to do right!”

  “You will, ah, you will do right in this!” Mrs. Protheroe thrust up her veil again and her face was flushed and radiant with triumph. “And you’ll work, and you’ll make a speech for the bill?”

  At this the righteous exaltation began rather abruptly to simmer down in the soul of Alonzo Rawson. He saw the consequences of too violently reversing, and knew how difficult they might be to face.

  “Well, not—not exactly,” he said weakly. “I expect our best plan would be for me to lay kind of low and not say any more about the bill at all. Of course, I’ll quit workin’ against it; and on the roll-call I’ll edge up close to the clerk and say ‘Aye’ so that only him’ll hear me. That’s done every day—and I—well, I don’t just exactly like to come out too publicly for it, after my speech and all I’ve done against it.”

  She looked at him sharply for a short second, and then offered him her hand and said: “Let’s shake hands now, on the vote. Think what a triumph it is for me to know that I helped to show you the right.”

  “Yes ma’am,” he answered confusedly, too much occupied with shaking her hand to know what he said. She spoke one word in an undertone to the driver and the machine took the very shortest way back to the city.

  After this excursion, several days passed, before Mrs. Protheroe came to the State-house again. Rawson was bending over the desk of Senator Josephus Battle, the white-bearded leader of the opposition to the “Sunday Baseball Bill,” and was explaining to him the intricacies of a certain drainage measure, when Battle, whose attention had wandered, plucked his sleeve and whispered:

  “If you want to see a mighty pretty woman that’s doin’ no good here, look behind you, over there in the chair by the big fireplace at the back of the room.”

  Alonzo looked.

  It was she whose counterpart had been in his dream’s eye every moment of the dragging days which had been vacant of her living presence. A number of his colleagues were hanging over her almost idiotically; her face was gay and her voice came to his ears, as he turned, with the accent of her cadenced laughter running through her talk like a chime of tiny bells flitting through a strain of music.

  “This is the third time she’s been here,” said Battle, rubbing his beard the wrong way. “She’s lobbyin’ for that infernal Sabbath-Desecration bill, but we’ll beat her, my son.”

  “Have you made her acquaintance, Senator?” asked Alonzo stiffly.

  “No, sir, and I don’t want to. But I knew her father—the slickest old beat and the smoothest talker that ever waltzed up the pike. She married rich; her husband left her a lot of real estate around here, but she spends most of her time away. Whatever struck her to come down and lobby for that bill I don’t know—yet—but I will! Truslow’s helping her to help himself; he’s got stock in the company that runs the baseball team, but what she’s up to—well, I’ll bet there’s a nigger in the woodpile somewhere!”

  “I expect there’s a lot of talk like that!” said Alonzo, red with anger, and taking up his papers abruptly.

  “Yes, sir!” said Battle emphatically, utterly misunderstanding the other’s tone and manner. “Don’t you worry, my son. We’ll kill that venomous bill right here in this chamber! We’ll kill it so dead that it won’t make one flop after the axe hits it. You and me and some others’ll tend to that! Let her work that pretty face and those eyes of hers all she wants to! I’m keepin’ a little lookout, too—and I’ll—”

  He broke off, for the angry and perturbed Alonzo had left him and gone to his own desk. Battle, slightly surprised, rubbed his beard the wrong way and sauntered out to the lobby to muse over a cigar. Alonzo, loathing Battle with a great loathing, formed bitter phrases concerning that vicious-minded old gentleman, while for a moment he affected to be setting his desk in order. Then he walked slowly up the aisle, conscious of a roaring in his ears (though not aware how red they were) as he approached the semi-circle about her.

  He paused within three feet of her in a sudden panic of timidity, and then, to his consternation, she looked him squarely in the face, over the shoulders of two of the group, and the only sign of recognition that she exhibited was a slight frown of unmistakable repulsion, which appeared between her handsome eyebrows.

  It was very swift; only Alonzo saw it; the others had no eyes for anything but her, and were not aware of his presence behind them, for she did not even pause in what she was saying.

  Alonzo walked slowly away with the wormwood in his heart. He had not grown up among the young people of Stackpole without similar experiences, but it had been his youthful boast that no girl had ever “stopped speaking” to him without reason, or “cut a dance” with him and afterward found opportunity to repeat the indignity.

  “What have I done to her?” was perhaps the hottest cry of his bruised soul, for the mystery was as great as the sting of it.

  It was no balm upon that sting to see her pass him at the top of the outer steps, half an hour later, on the arm of that one of his colleagues who had been called the “best-dressed man in the Legislature.” She swept by him without a sign, laughing that same laugh at some sally of her escort, and they got into the black automobile together and were whirled away and out of sight by the impassive bundle of furs who manipulated the wheel.

  For the rest of that afternoon and the whole of that night no man, woman, or child heard the voice of Alonzo Rawson, for he spoke to none. He came not to the evening meal, nor was he seen by any who had his acquaintance. He entered his room at about midnight, and Trumbull was awakened by his neighbour’s overturning a chair. No match was struck, however, and Trumbull was relieved to think that the Senator from Stackpole intended going directly to bed without troubling to light the gas, and that his prayers would soon be over. Such was not the case, for no other sound came from the room, nor were Alonzo’s prayers uttered that night, though the unhappy statesman in the next apartment could not get to sleep for several hours on acco
unt of his nervous expectancy of them.

  After this, as the day approached upon which hung the fate of the bill which Mr. Josephus Battle was fighting, Mrs. Protheroe came to the Senate Chamber nearly every morning and afternoon. Not once did she appear to be conscious of Alonzo Rawson’s presence, nor once did he allow his eyes to delay upon her, though it cannot be truthfully said that he did not always know when she came, when she left, and with whom she stood or sat or talked. He evaded all mention or discussion of the bill or of Mrs. Protheroe; avoided Truslow (who, strangely enough, was avoiding him) and, spending upon drains and dikes all the energy that he could manage to concentrate, burned the midnight oil and rubbed salt into his wounds to such marked effect that by the evening of the Governor’s Reception—upon the morning following which the mooted bill was to come up—he offered an impression so haggard and worn that an actor might have studied him for a make-up as a young statesman going into a decline.

  Nevertheless, he dressed with great care and bitterness, and placed the fragrant blossom of a geranium—taken from a plant belonging to his landlady—in the lapel of his long coat before he set out.

  And yet, when he came down the Governor’s broad stairs, and wandered through the big rooms, with the glare of lights above him and the shouting of the guests ringing in his ears, a sense of emptiness beset him; the crowded place seemed vacant and without meaning. Even the noise sounded hollow and remote—and why had he bothered about the geranium? He hated her and would never look at her again—but why was she not there?

  By-and-by, he found himself standing against a wall, where he had been pushed by the press of people. He was wondering drearily what he was to do with a clean plate and a napkin which a courteous negro had handed him, half-an-hour earlier, when he felt a quick jerk at his sleeve. It was Truslow, who had worked his way along the wall and who now, standing on tiptoe, spoke rapidly but cautiously, close to his ear.