V
When John and his father reached home, Helen fell upon her brother’s neck.
“I’ve lost that wager! We’re invited!”
“Ah! The poison is at work, is it? Did it come special post, or did their dusky Senegambian bear the cards hither upon a golden plate?”
“Neither! Mrs. Kirby and Jeannette called and left them personally. I was making bread when they arrived but I had the presence of mind to shed my apron on my way to the door to let them in. Mother was darning socks but she came down and they stayed so long the bread burned to a cinder.”
“A few loaves of bread are nothing—nothing!”
“But, John, dear, I think maybe——” began Mrs. Ward, uncertainly and paused, noting that her husband was emptying a satchel of important looking papers as though he expected to spend the evening at work. He appeared more cheerful than she had seen him in years.
“Better let John have his way,” said Ward, senior. “The Campbells are driving business into the office and we’re not going to turn it away.”
“It’s your ability that’s bringing the business; you’ve always been a bigger man than Taylor or Swiggert!” declared Mrs. Ward, when the day’s events had been explained to her.
“We’ll pretend that’s it anyhow,” Ward assented. “There’s a mighty interesting question in that case of Pickett’s. You may be sure I’m going to give it my best care.”
“I’m so proud of you, Robert!”
“Be proud of John,” he laughed; “the boy’s bound to make or ruin us in these next few weeks.”
It was astonishing the number of ways in which the prospective visit of the Campbells became a matter of deep concern to Kernville. Billy Townley had entered with zest into John’s campaign, and Martin Cowdery, the owner of the Journal and the congressman from the district, wired instructions from Washington to cut things loose on the Campbell visit. Under the same potent inspiration the Journal’s venerable editorial writer took a vacation from his regular business of explaining and defending the proprietor’s failure to land a fish hatchery for the old Sycamore district and celebrated the approach of the Campbells under such captions as “The Dawn of a New Era,” and “Stand up, Kernville.” He called loudly upon the mayor, who was not of the Journal’s politics, to clean the streets that their shameful condition might not offend the eyes and the nostrils of the man of millions who was soon to honor the city with his presence.
The Sun, not to be outdone, boldly declared that Campbell was coming to Kernville as the representative of interests that were seeking an eligible site for a monster steel casting plant, an imaginative flight that precipitated a sudden call for a meeting of the Bigger Kernville Committee of the Chamber of Commerce, and the expenditure of fifteen dollars with war tax to wire a set of resolutions to Walter Scott Campbell. A five-line dispatch in the press report announcing that Walter Scott Campbell had given half a million toward the endowment of a hospital in Honolulu was handled as a local item, quite as though Kernville alone vibrated to Campbell’s generous philanthropies.
“Helen, we’ve got ’em going!” John chortled at the beginning of the second week. “Three automobile agents have offered me the biggest cars in their show rooms to carry the Campbells hither and yon. I’m encouraging competition for the honor. The Chamber of Commerce wants to give a banquet with speeches and everything for our old friend Walter. Old man Shepherd climbed our stairs today, risking apoplexy at every step, to ask as a special favor that the Chamber be granted this high privilege.”
“Ned’s asked me to go to the Kirby party with him,” confessed Helen. “The embargo seems to be off.”
“Ha!” cried John dramatically. “Mrs. Hovey called me up to request my presence at dinner Wednesday night. Alice has a friend visiting her. Alice with the hair so soft and so brown, as stated in the ballad, is the dearest girl in the world next to you, sis; no snobbery about her; but her mama! Ah, mama has seen a great light in the heavens!”
The population of Kernville was now divided into two classes, those who would in all likelihood be permitted to meet the Campbells, and those who could hardly hope for this coveted privilege. The Journal followed a picture of the Campbells’ Newport villa, fortified with a glowing description of its magnificence, with a counterfeit presentment of the White Gull, which had almost the effect of anchoring the Campbells’ seagoing yacht in the muddy Sycamore at the foot of Harrison street.
“The yacht’s the biggest thing we’ve pulled yet,” John announced to Helen, a few days after the craft’s outlines had been made familiar to the Journal’s constituency. “Since we sprung it our office has drawn four good cases, not including the collection business of the Tilford Casket Company, which ought to be good for a thousand bucks a year if the death rate in the rich valley of the Sycamore doesn’t go down on us.”
“It’s wonderful, John!” said Helen, in an awed tone. “Mrs. Montgomery spent an hour with mother this afternoon talking of the good old times, and how all us old families must stand together, and she insisted on throwing a tea for Mrs. Campbell—just for our old friends—you know how she talks! She’d no sooner rolled away than Mrs. Everett Crawford invaded our home and interfered terribly with the paper hangers while she begged to be allowed to give a dinner for the Campbells in the new home they’ve built with boodle they’ve made canning our native fruits.”
“Splendid! There may be some business there before we get through with it! Young Freddie Crawford is the gayest of our joy riders, and it would be worth a big retainer to keep him out of the penal farm.”
A second stenographer had been established in the office of Ward & Ward to care for the increased business when Cowdery left the halls of Congress for a look at his fences, held conferences with John in an upper room of the Kipperly House, sacred to political conspiracy, and caused the Journal forthwith to launch a boom for John Ward for prosecuting attorney subject to the decision of the April primaries.
“Look here, little brother,” said Helen, coming in from a dance to which Ned Shepherd had taken her, and finding John in the sitting room at work on one of the new cases that had been bestowed upon Ward & Ward, “we’ve got to put on brakes.”
“What’s troubling you, sis? Isn’t everybody treating you all right?”
“A queen couldn’t receive more consideration! But what’s worrying me is how we’re ever going to satisfy these silly people. If all the plutocrats in New York should come to visit us we couldn’t spread them around in a way to please all our fellow townsmen. We’re certainly in the lime light! People were buzzing me tonight about the prosecutorship—say you’ll win in a walk. But tell me what you think Cowdery’s going to expect from you in return. Does he want to shake the Campbell cherry tree?”
John eyed her with philosophical resignation.
“Now that you’ve been enfranchised by the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution of this more or less free republic, you must learn to view matters with a mind of understanding. Cowdery hankers for a promotion to the senate. If the accursed money interests of the nation are persuaded that he is not a menace to the angels of Wall street they can sow some seed over the rich soil of this noble commonwealth that will be sure to bear fruit. There’s a lot of Eastern capital invested in the state and a word carelessly spoken by the right persons, parties or groups in tall buildings in New York and a substantial corruption fund sent out from the same quarter will do much to help Cowdery through the primary. In me, sweet child, Cowdery sees a young man of great promise, who can hitch the powerful Campbell to his wagon.”
“And if you can’t do the hitching——?”
“Been giving thought to that, sis. Those resolutions the enterprising Bigger Kernville Committee sent Campbell annoy me a great deal. We can only hope that Walter has a sense of humor. The Journal’s got a new untouched photograph of him from somewhere and the boy looks cheerful. He has a triple chin and there are lines around his eyes and mouth that argue for a mirthful nature. The rest, dearest, is on the knees of the gods!”