CHAPTER VI
Shelby stretched himself awake and contentedly surveyed his bachelor bedroom in the Tuscarora House. He had boarded at this establishment upward of five years, and his chamber had been decorated and, to a degree, furnished in accord with his notions of elegant comfort. The wall paper was a pattern which William Morris and his disciples would have writhed to behold,—a hideous terra-cotta ground overrun with meaningless scrolls and stiff garlands of roses of an unearthly pink. There were stuffy maroon lambrequins above the window casements, and two large blue vases, containing many-dyed plumes of pampas grass, flanked like rigid sentinels a pseudo-marble clock upon the truly marble mantelpiece which somehow suggested a mausoleum falling to decay; while the blue motive was further emphasized by a plush photograph album, with a little mirror let into its cover, standing in a metallic holder on the bureau, whose sombre walnut matched the bed and chairs. The pictures included a chromo, depicting an impossible castle set in an equally impossible landscape, a print or two of race horses, a lithograph of a poker game in supposably high life, and a photogravure of a painting familiar to the habitues of a great metropolitan hotel, popularly fancied in the country to be daring in the extreme. At first sight of the original, over the rim of a cocktail, Shelby had been fired with the resolve to own some sort of copy, and even now, after several years of possession, he esteemed it one of the world's masterpieces of pictorial art.
He dressed himself in the same content which had flushed his waking revery. The plaudits of last night's mass-meeting still rang harmoniously in his ears, and the praise of Ruth Temple and Mrs. Hilliard was sweeter in retrospect than it had been in reality. This happy serenity bore him company through the bare echoing corridors of the hotel to the office, to be heightened by the gratulations of the landlord and the help, who seemed to feel that a vicarious honor had been done the house, a most insinuating form of hero-worship which attained its climax in the homage of the true-penny who set forth his morning bitters on the bar.
Extended notices of the meeting had been telegraphed to the neighboring cities by local correspondents, and Shelby ran through the newspaper accounts in the cheerless dining room, which he thought to-day by no means comfortless. There was a flattering deference in the manner of the waitresses, and the lessening of their pert familiarity told him, more plainly perhaps than anything else, that he had become a personage. He failed to remind them that the oatmeal was burned, the rolls soggy, and the coffee reminiscent of chicory. He ate all that was set before him, and was still content. The hotel barber-shop seemed a blithe spot indeed, as he sat for his daily shave, and the admiring barber a prince of good fellows. Sweet also were the greetings of the market-place, as, cigar in mouth, he sauntered through Main Street to his law office. All his paths were pleasantness and peace.
The first discordant note was struck, oddly enough, by his faithful satellite, William Irons, who, at his employer's entrance, abruptly left off an attempt to coax his red shock into lovelocks, slid his pocket mirror under a heap of papers, and fell to hammering the typewriter with unnatural energy. Shelby accepted the subterfuge, and wished him a hearty good morning.
"Did you attend the rally, William?" he inquired, as he slit the envelopes of his morning's mail.
"Yep," said William Irons.
"Everybody seemed pleased?"
"Nope."
"No?" Shelby repeated, lifting his eyes. "And who was disgruntled?"
"The Widow Weatherwax."
"Ah! That's unfortunate," returned Shelby, blandly. "What is the widow's grievance?"
"She's put out because you told a story makin' light of drinkin' punch.
She belongs to all the temp'rance societies doin' business, you know."
"No; I didn't know."
"And she says none of her church 'll vote for you after your countenancin' such a cryin' sin."
"Her list of cardinal sins is extensive."
"Yep," agreed William. "Won't even let me play my fiddle in the house.
Says it's a vanity."
"I'd forgotten that you had gone to live with her."
"Do chores for my keep," explained the clerk. "Have codfish three times a day, Monday morning to Saturday night, and no warm victuals Sundays. Makes me keep my fiddle in the barn and play it behind the woodpile."
Shelby laughed, and sought to woo back his mood of charity toward all, but it was futile. The widow's mite of hostile criticism had leavened the whole lump with bitterness. Nevertheless, he bridled his tongue.
Work came hard for the moment, and his eyes strayed past his papers through an open window and spied Ruth Temple's slender shape in the lawn below. The dewy freshness of the morning seemed to touch her youth as it did the asters and belated hollyhocks of the quaint garden into which she passed as he watched. Then Bernard Graves suddenly cut into the picture, and drew a newspaper from his pocket, directing her attention to something which amused him. But Ruth did not laugh. Shelby clearly saw her color change.
A heavy step outside his door heralded the coming of the Hon. Seneca
Bowers. The county leader was in no mood for idle words, and looked as
Grant may have looked when about to pass judgment on a disgraced
soldier.
"Seen the Whig?" he asked curtly, when William Irons had been despatched to the post-office.
"The Whig! No, I don't take it."
"I'd advise you to subscribe."
Shelby's face sobered with a premonition of misfortune.
"What's to pay now?" he asked.
Bowers struck open a copy of Volney Sprague's newspaper, and with stubby rigid thumb guided the candidate's glance to an editorial.
"Read that, sir."
His tone was a new thing in their intercourse, but without remark
Shelby read:—