The Great Accident

by Ben Ames Williams

Having aroused his master, Muldoon in his turn decided to feign abstraction. He lay down, ostentatiously, across Wint’s knees, and he pillowed his muzzle on his forepaws and lay there with eyes rolling up in spite of himself to watch Wint’s face. Wint cupped the dog’s lower jaw in his right hand and shook it gently. “What are they saying about me uptown, Muldoon?” he asked.

The dog moved its head, then fell into a motionless pose again. Wint bent over it, whispering, half to Muldoon and half to himself. “Laughing, of course,” he said softly. “Laughing! The joke of years!” He smiled grimly. “Tough on dad. He’d set his heart on this Mayor business.”

He looked across to the window, and his eyes hardened. “They meant it as much as a joke on me as on father,” he reminded himself, and his eyes burned. He wondered how the plan had been carried through. Caretall and Gergue must have had their hand in it; they had probably united with V. R. Kite. It would be reasonably easy, he knew. His father had had no real popularity. Winthrop Chase, Senior, was not a likable man. He was not a vote getter. There was a self-conscious condescension about his good-fellowship.

Wint had never paid any great attention to local politics. He wondered idly what a Mayor had to do. He tried to remember some of the things Mayors had done in the past; and he found his only knowledge of the subject concerned with a Hallowe’en prank as a result of which he and two others had been haled before the Mayor’s court and badly frightened.

“He must do something besides that,” he assured himself. “But Lord—I couldn’t even do that.”

What was he to do? That was the thing he had to decide, and he must decide at once. What could he do? Was there any way by which he could nullify the election; resign; abdicate; get himself impeached? He thought of these projects wistfully. They took no concrete form in his mind. He knew nothing of the machinery of local government, knew nothing of the avenues of escape which might be open to him.

He only knew that he would not be made thus the butt of the town’s mirth. His face flushed at the thought; and he got up abruptly and walked to the window, Muldoon pacing at his side and looking up wistfully at his master. He would not do it. They should have their trouble for their pains. They were fools. Impudent fools....

One thing he could do; one thing at least. He could go away. Hide. If he were not here, they could not force him to serve. So much was sure. He would go away....

This decision, Wint told himself, had cleared the air. He tried to believe that it solved all his perplexities; and he bent over Muldoon and cuffed the dog and romped with it across the room, to Muldoon’s delirious delight. Then he began to whistle to himself, and so looked about and sat down on the bed, and drew on the sock which still lay on the floor. He had difficulty in fastening the sock supporter about his leg. The leg of the trousers obstructed him. He fussed over the thing until he was fuming again, and his face flushed with stooping. But at last the trick was done, and he took his shoes from the chair and put them on. He found that one of the laces was broken, no doubt by his drunken fingers when he had unlaced the shoes before removing them. This discovery whetted his resentment and disgust. He knotted the lace and hid the knot under an eyelet of the shoe, where it pressed on his instep and irked him. He kicked the shoe on the floor until it gave him some measure of comfort.

His hat and coat were on the floor. He put them on, brushing the dust from the coat with his hands, and afterwards with a flicker of his handkerchief. Then he crossed reluctantly to the speckled mirror and looked into it.