CHAPTER XIX
"Mr. Bowers wants to talk to you," Isabel said, smoothing Jap's limp hair from his haggard face. "He has been here every day for a week, and Mamma wouldn't hear to his bothering you, especially as you had concluded that you must talk to Bill about the office."
"Let him come," said Jap wearily.
The Judge tramped heavily into the bedroom.
"I want to talk to you about Flossy's affairs," he declared, dropping into a chair and blowing his nose.
Jap's face flushed, then paled. He lifted one thin hand to his eyes and leaned back in the pillows.
"I sent for Bill to meet me here and have Brent Roberts read Flossy's will."
"Why?" Jap's voice rasped with pain.
"You have been sick nigh a month," said the Judge, "and there's a power o' things that oughter be seen to, and Brent refused to read Flossy's will till you could hear it. I want to settle the bills."
Isabel slipped her arm around Jap's shoulder and glared at the Judge.
"You ought to be ashamed," she cried. "Jap is not strong enough to be bothered with business."
Jap put her aside gently and sat up.
"The Judge is right, sweetheart," he said. "I will not be tired with doing anything for—for her."
He covered his face with his hands. Bill entered softly. His brows lowered at sight of his father.
"What did you want with me and Roberts?" he queried shortly.
"It is all right, Bill," Jap said brokenly. "It will hurt whenever it comes, so let's get it done."
After the will was read Jap lay silent, the tears slipping down his cheeks, for Flossy's will gave all that she possessed to her son, Jap Herron. It was made the day after she knew that her own child was doomed to an early death.
They filed slowly from the room, even the Judge awed by the face of the boy.
The New Year had turned the corner when Jap was moved to the office. Little by little he grew back into harness. They did not talk of Flossy in those early days. It was not possible. One chill spring day, when the grass was greening, and the first blossoms were opening among the hyacinths on Ellis's grave, Jap walked with Bill to the cemetery. He bent above the dried wreaths with their faded ribbons, sodden and dinged by the winter's snows.
"Throw them away, Bill," he choked. "They are the tawdry tokens of mourning. I am trying to forget that mourning."
Bill gathered the dry bundles and carried them away. Coming back, he stood looking mournfully upon the muddy sod. Jap raised his eyes suddenly, and they gazed for a long minute into each other's hearts. Bill threw his hands over his eyes and cried aloud.
"Don't, Bill!" Jap's hand clutched him tightly. "For God's sake, help me to be a man!"
And forgetting the sodden grass, they knelt beside the grave and sobbed together in an abandon of grief. Boys they were, despite their years, and Flossy had been more to them than the mother whom youth is prone to take for granted. When the tempest of sorrow and desolation had spent itself they arose.
"It is done," said Jap, looking up into the sky where the stars were beginning to twinkle palely. "It had to be done. Now I can realize that they laid Flossy beneath the earth. But, please God, I can forget it. Now I know that she has left the beautiful shell behind. But, Bill," he touched the mound with his fingers, "Flossy has never been here, never for an instant."
"She is in heaven," said Bill reverently.
Jap laid his arm around Bill's shoulders.
"You don't believe that, Bill. You know better. Flossy is right with us, as Ellis has always been. Just as he has inspired us to develop his paper and his town, so she will stay with us, to create good and optimism and faith in ourselves. Bill, when those two wonderful people came into our lives, they came to stay. Do you think Ellis and Flossy would get any joy out of strumming on a harp and taking their own selfish ease? No, Bill, that's all a mistake. They're working right with us, and it's up to you and me to so wholly reflect them that we will be to this town what they have been to us. In any crisis in our lives, let us not forget that Ellis and Flossy Hinton are not dead. We may have need to remember it, Bill."
The next morning he climbed on his stool and took the stick in his hand. Bill stopped at the door of the composing room, something in Jap's attitude arresting him.
"What are you going to do, Jap?"
"Get busy," declared Jap. "We have given out enough plate. The Herald is going back on the job."
Bill felt a lump rise in his throat as he paused to finger the copy on his hook.
"We have to get the drums beating," said Jap. "We have to elect Wat Harlow governor, and, believe the Barton Standard, we have some rough road to travel."
And the battle was on! Alone, the Bloomtown Herald tackled the job of making a governor. Watson Harlow had been a familiar figure in state politics for more than twenty years, but as gubernatorial timber no one had ever regarded him seriously. His opponent, on the other hand, was a fresh figure in the state, with all the novelty of the unknown quantity about him. It was an off year for the dominant party, both locally and nationally, and the fight promised to be a complicated one.
Week by week the battle raged between the types. Little by little the country press began to get in the fight. Not content with the picturesque drumming of his own machine, Jap interested the city press in the history of Wat Harlow, the "Lone Pine, of Integrity Absolute." This descriptive title was proclaimed in and out of season during the months of battle, both before and after the nomination of Harlow and Jones. Jap invented a stinger for Bronson Jones. In his past history, it was alleged, he had much that were better concealed than revealed. Not the least of his offenses was that he had assisted his father, a certain P. D. Jones, in stealing red-hot cook-stoves from the ruins of the Chicago fire. Jap so declared, and he offered to prove that Jones had sold these same stoves to their former owners, when they became cold. In one instance, the victim was a widow who had lost everything, even her former mate, in the fire. And Jones carried the title, "The Widow's Friend," for years. All this was fun for the city dailies, and cartoons of the "Lone Pine" being fed to the "Cook-Stove" alternated with those of the pine falling upon the "Widow's Friend" as he was about to sell a stove to the above-mentioned widow.
The color came back to Jap's cheeks, and the battle light flamed in his gray eyes. His one relaxation was the tranquil hour with Isabel. Harlow, like an uneasy ghost, haunted the Herald office when he was not out storming the hustings. The Barton Standard continued to pry into Wat's past, while the Herald continued to lift the lid from the chest of Bronson's secret garments. Unfortunately, the Standard had played its big trump card in the congressional campaign. The vermilion handbill was once more dragged to light, but it worked like a boomerang, for several of Wat's own party workers had been caught red-handed in the act of attempting to operate a shameless graft game, in the name of the university. And Jap utilized the story to show that Wat was a man above party, a man in whose mind integrity was indeed absolute.
Argument grew red hot, every place but Bloomtown. There, there was no one to argue with. Bloomtown was one man for Harlow. Jones undertook to deliver one speech there, and that bright hour nearly became his last. After the good-natured raillery of the opening address, Jones plunged into the vitriolic explosion he had delivered at the various places he had spoken. For exactly ten minutes it lasted. By that time, Kelly Jones had reached Hollins's grocery store and gathered enough eggs to start a protest against the defamation of Wat Harlow's character. And the protest was proclaimed unanimous!
It was stated that there were no eggs on Bloomtown's breakfast table next morning, and no Sunday cakes.
"But," said the Herald, "if Bronson Jones wants any more hen-fruit, the housewives of Bloomtown will cheerfully sacrifice themselves in his behalf."
And so the months sped away until the grass had mossed the graves in the cemetery with lush beauty, and the three mounds were merged into one by the riotous growth of sweet alyssum, Flossy's best loved blossom. The summer waned. The autumn hasted, and chill winds whispered around the Lone Pine as the last sortie was made. Then Bloomtown pressed her hands to her throbbing breast and got ready for—Victory?