IX
GARWOOD awoke after a few hours of restless sleep, snatched a hurried breakfast, seized his hat and was going away without a word, when Emily followed him through the hall and to the door, and with nervousness and suspense showing in her concentrated brows she looked up at him and said:
“I’ll be glad when this day’s over.”
“So’ll I,” he rejoined, and then, though he had stepped on the veranda, he turned again. A sudden tenderness, springing from the need of support and sympathy he himself felt that day, overflowed his heart, and he pressed his fingers to her brow and touched the wrinkles.
“I don’t like to see those there,” he said, and as if in instant response to his whim, her smile smoothed them away.
“You’ll send me word, Jerome, won’t you?” she said, “the babies and I’ll be watching and waiting, you know. Oh, I wish we could help!”
He smiled his old smile at her loyalty.
“Good by,” he said; “I’ll keep you posted.” And he ran down the steps. The rain was slanting down to make an ideal primary day, and Garwood was glad of the waiting carriage which, in the extravagance a man can always justify to himself in the midst of a campaign, he had ordered the night before. Emily watched him drive away, down the streaming street. Once he turned and looked back through the window at her, or she thought he did, and she waved her hand.
Then all the morning long she went about the house with the memory of his kiss upon her lips, and she sang at times, though her heart would forever leap into her throat when she thought of the bitter contest going on in the rain that was falling upon the green fields of Polk County. The rain fell steadily in the gloom with an impressiveness that would remind her of the silent fate which that day was deciding Jerome’s future and her own.
She felt as if she were passing through a crisis in her life. She found it impossible to apply herself steadily to any one of the futile little tasks that are always awaiting the hand of the housewife, but wandered aimlessly about, unable to rest, unable to work, unable to do anything until she knew the event of that day. She had found a new faith in Jerome with the kiss he had given her at parting, and she lived over and over again that one last moment when he had smiled down into her eyes with the expression she remembered of other days. That moment and that kiss were enough to blot out all the years of her loneliness and renunciation, and as those years faded from her view she could look forward now with a new hope and a new confidence to the happier days she felt must come when this last battle had been fought. For she felt it would be the last battle; she determined that it must be the last battle; she could not endure the strain and suspense of another, and her soul’s sincere desire took the romantic form of a prayer that Jerome return to her bearing his shield or being borne upon it.
The rain had come with a thunder storm early in the morning, but as the day advanced the temperature lowered and a cold, raw wind blowing from the west lashed out the last of the warm weather they had been having all over central Illinois. The hope of the spring seemed suddenly gone; the day, indeed, might have belonged to that dreary season of the fall, when gray clouds hang low and children long for the darkness that will bring the needed cheer of early lamp-light.
The streets were silent and deserted. Now and then, perhaps some grocer’s wagon would lurch along, its driver slapping the streaming rubber blanket on his horse’s back with his wet reins, and sometimes one of the town’s tattered old hacks would rattle by. Here and there, near some cobbler’s shanty, or by the door of a little barber shop, ward workers huddled in shivering groups, and every little while men drove out of town in buggies or buckboards, to look after the caucuses that were to be held that afternoon in the townships; but the people themselves, as their habit ever was, in Grand Prairie, evinced little interest in the political contest at this critical stage of its development, and seemed to be indoors waiting for the rain to cease.
Yet a great battle was raging in Grand Prairie that day, and Garwood’s law offices were once more serving as political headquarters. All morning long the crowd of workers whom he had enrolled in his new organization thronged the outer office, each of them wishing to seize Garwood a moment for himself, as if his suggestion, or his complaint, or the news he bore was such that Garwood himself alone should hear it.
Their clothes were soaked with the rain, their wet boots tracked the floor with mud, their umbrellas trickled little streams of dirty water. The air, already saturated with heavy moisture and foggy with the smoke of tobacco, which does for the smoke of battle in these political contests, was foul with the fumes of beer and whisky, while the whiff of an onion now and then brought to mind the long saloon of Chris Steisfloss below where the pink mosquito-netting had been removed for that day from the free-lunch table.
In his private office, his rumpled hair falling to his haggard eyes, his cravat untied, his long coat tails gathered behind the hands that were thrust deep in his trousers’ pockets, Garwood strode back and forth silent and savage, chewing the cigar that smoked away in the corner of his mouth. Pusey was with him, tapping in and out of the room, and so was Hale. Hale had been there all morning, for, having no acquaintance in Grand Prairie, he could do nothing outside, and so he sat, feeling that his stolid, imponderable presence must somehow be a comfort to Garwood. And, besides, he did not know how he could decently get away.
Garwood spoke to neither of them; but walked the floor and rolled his cigar round and round in his mouth, spitting out pieces of it now and then savagely. Once at the end of the beat he was pacing he paused by the revolving bookcase in which he had kept his working library, the books he had needed at his elbow when he was digging into the law. These books, because of that rapid displacement which goes on in law libraries, so swiftly do the appellate courts grind out new decisions, were now out of date; the statutes were two sessions behind the Legislature, the digest had been superseded by a new edition, the last six numbers of his set of the reports were missing.
But he did not observe these things—a little volume had caught his eye, and he picked it up, blew the dust from it, and opened it. And as his glance fell on its pages, its well-read remembered pages, his face softened and there passed across its darkness the faint reflection of a smile. It was not a law book, for Garwood held it tenderly in his hand, as though he loved it, and men do not learn to love law books. It was a little leather covered copy of Epictetus, with the imprint of a London publisher on its title page, one that Emily had given him, and he had read it through and through, and it bore many loving marks on its margins.
It had lain there on that bookcase, possibly untouched, certainly unopened for years. He must have tossed it down there before his first campaign—how long ago that seemed! He turned over the pages and here and there he saw a marked passage, words that once had thrilled him, more than that, words that had comforted him, but now they were cold and dead, they no longer had any meaning or any message for him; he wondered for a moment why it was so. But his mind could not long desert its hard pressed post that day, and if for an instant he yearned for some of the peace of the days that little book somehow stood for, he tossed it back where it had lain so long, brushed his fingers together to fleck the dust from them, and resumed his pacing.
Noon came, the clock in the high school tower struck, the bell in the fire engine house tapped, the whistle at the woolen mills blew. The outer office was deserted, Pusey had left an hour before, and when Crawford and Hale suggested luncheon to Garwood, he shook his head so petulantly that they were glad enough to go out and leave him alone. When they had gone, he sank into his chair, sprawled his long legs out before him, and sat there scowling darkly.
He sat there a long while, but finally he roused, got up, opened the ugly walnut cupboard in his room, drew out a bottle and a glass and poured out for himself a generous draft of whisky. He drank the stuff without water, raw, and when he had taken advantage of his brief seclusion to light a cigarette, inhaling its smoke eagerly, he began to pace the floor again. Two or three times after that he stopped by the cupboard and took the bottle down; at last he did not put it back in its hiding place, but set it out openly on his desk. Now, the times he passed it without drinking were growing fewer and fewer.
Hale was the first to return. Garwood had just halted by his desk and poured himself another drink, and he stood with his hand still on the bottle when Hale burst into the room. The man’s face plainly foreboded evil tidings, and he stood and stared at Garwood without speaking, as if he disliked to tell him what was on his tongue. Garwood had raised the glass, but with it at his lips he stopped and looked up to say:
“What in hell’s the matter with you, Hale; are you drunk or crazy, or have you seen a ghost?”
“I’ve seen—Bailey.”
“Bailey!” Garwood slowly lowered the glass to the desk, as if Hale had seen something more than a ghost.
“Yes.”
“Out on—what’s that long street? He was with Rankin, goin’ west.”
“Over to the woolen mills?” Garwood asked.
“I suppose so,” said Hale. “You see, after Crawford and I’d got a bite to eat over at that restaurant on the other side of the square—what’s the name of it?”
“Oh, damn the name!” exclaimed Garwood. “Go on.”
“Well, anyways, after that I went out to try an’ do somethin’, but about all I could do was to hire ’bout half a dozen hobos who were goin’ through from Chicago, and I was takin’ them down to Enright so’s he could vote ’em at all the prim’ries, you know, and I happened to look up—and there I see Bailey.”
“What was he doing, did you say?” asked Garwood with the morbid fascination the recital of some painful fact has for the one it most concerns.
“Oh, he was just moseyin’ along the street with Rankin, you know that slow, splay-footed, knock-kneed way he has of walking, don’t you? Oh—there’s no doubt it’s him!”
Garwood slowly swallowed his drink, and had just turned to speak again, when Pusey entered.
“Did you know Bailey’s here?” he demanded.
Pusey walked straight to the desk, and he had lifted the bottle before he replied:
“Yes.”
“When did you hear?” Garwood asked.
“Just now. I repaired here instantly to apprise you.”
“You did!” said Garwood. “Well, where in hell are you going to repair to next to do something about it? Where did you see him?”
“I saw him at the Cassell House, and Rankin—”
“Yes—Rankin,” said Garwood. He ceased to give attention to Pusey, since the climax of his tale was already too fully known, but repeated Rankin’s name in a reminiscent tone not unlikely to inspire pleasure in the breast of Rankin’s successor, as if one should sigh for a first wife in the presence of the second. “Jim Rankin,” he repeated, “that’s the worst of it.”
“You miss Rankin, heh?” piped Pusey, squinting at the drink he was pouring.
Garwood turned on him then, and shouted angrily:
“Yes, damn you, I do! If he were here now he’d have a suggestion; he’d have some resources. What have you to offer?”
Pusey lifted the glass and even turned deliberately to hold it more in range with the window, so that the light could stream through it and bring out the rich, warm colors of the liquor. And then, carefully tilting the drink into his gullet, he put the glass down, sucked his mustache into his mouth to get the last lingering taste of the whisky, and said:
“Buy him.”
“Who?” said Garwood.
“Rankin.”
Garwood took an impetuous step toward Pusey, and then halting suddenly he stared at him in utter amazement. Hale turned on the little editor a look no less startled, but quickly glanced around at Garwood to see what he would do. The anger that had flushed Garwood’s face slowly died out of it, and his lips began to curl into a mordant smile that slowly took on in turn the qualities of contempt and pity.
“Pusey,” he said, not at all in the tone that Hale had expected to hear break from him, “Pusey,” he said, “don’t be foolish.”
“Foolish?” repeated Pusey seriously. “Is it so foolish, think you?”
“Damnably foolish,” Garwood replied.
“Pardon me,” Pusey said, “you evidently misunderstood me.”
“Misunderstood you? Didn’t you suggest buying Jim Rankin? You evidently don’t know men.”
“Did I say Jim Rankin?” answered Pusey. “If I did, I meant Jim Rankin’s men.”
“Oh,” Garwood and Hale exclaimed together in a weak, unconvinced note. Garwood looked at Pusey more charitably, and Pusey returned the look by one of subtlest meaning. Thus they stood and gazed at each other for a whole minute, that seemed, in the stillness that dripped into the room, a whole age.
It was, in the end, Hale who spoke.
“We’ll have to do something, turn some sort of a trick, and do it quick. Zeph Bailey ain’t here for nothing!”
Hale had drawn his watch from his pocket.
“What time is it?” Garwood asked.
Hale looked at his watch again.
“Two-thirty,” he replied. He had once been a railroader.
“The bank closes at four,” said Garwood. He began slowly and hesitatingly to button his waistcoat, and as though to occupy some irresolute moment that awaited the formation of big issues, he poured himself another drink, and gulped it, making a wry face. Another moment passed while the two men stood narrowly watching him.
“The polls close at seven, don’t they?” he asked.
“Don’t know but they do,” replied Pusey.
Then Garwood, with the firmness of a final decision, put his hat on his head.
“You wait here,” he said.
Then he bolted from the room.