“Why, yes, of course I did,” answered Bigelow, irritably. Now that his own candidate was safe, he was anxious to go home. “I’ve been voting for him ever since he was put up, except just the first round.” Haydock swore. He had taken it for granted that Bigelow had been keeping Wolcott out when, as a matter of fact, it had been some one else,—some one who no doubt was in complete sympathy with McGaw. His jump at the conclusion struck him now as an incredibly dull proceeding.
“I’m sure I don’t know what to do,” Haviland was saying. “We simply must have a seventh man. I hate to have the thing drag over until ‘next time,’ when we’re all here to-night. Nominate Tony Wilson, or Jack Linzee—somebody—anybody.”
“I nominate Tony Wilson!” drawled Baxford, obediently. Haydock and Ellis ostentatiously gave the new candidate the only two black-balls he received. Haviland grasped the situation at once.
“I think we’ll have to come to some sort of an understanding,” he said. He was tired and annoyed, and so conscious of the fact that he forced himself to be extraordinarily polite. “Two of us apparently want Wolcott enough to cause a deadlock,—which I suppose is perfectly justifiable,—and two of us don’t want him at all. Lots of things have been said in his favour, and no one has said much of anything against him. I think it’s only fair for the two fellows who are keeping us here so late to get up and give us some idea of why they don’t want him. We can’t very well throw his name out as long as he has only two black. If the fellows who are keeping him out have a really good reason, we ought to know it. Such things, I’m sure, won’t go beyond this room.” There was a pause, while Haviland looked inquiringly from face to face. Then McGaw stood up. There was just a trace of defiance in his general bearing that vanished as soon as he saw that every one had turned toward him with interest.
“I suppose I ought to have objected to Sears Wolcott earlier in the evening,” he said slowly. He looked quietly, fixedly, at Haydock. “I have met him in a way that none of you could meet him. I wish I didn’t know that he was one kind of a fellow with men who have money and friends and everything, and different with the other kind,—men who can’t afford such things. I’m very sorry that I’ve seen him laugh at a man because he was poor and underfed and dressed in somebody else’s clothes,—clothes that didn’t fit him; because I can’t forget it now, when I should like to. I can’t think that he has a good heart. I don’t want to meet him here.” McGaw said this very slowly and regretfully; and when he sat down he stared at the floor. His little speech left every one wide-awake and uncomfortable, and so silent that the fellows could hear the rain slapping in gusts against the window-panes outside. His words in the mouth of—say Baxford or Dickey Dawson would have been laughed at. As it was, Tommy murmured audibly, “‘Kind hearts are more than coronets,’” but the observation fell rather flat. McGaw had been painfully sincere. He had succeeded, beyond a doubt, in “getting his effect.” Haydock knew that just that sort of thing said about Wolcott, by some one who was liked rather than otherwise, and who more or less represented “the extreme left,” was peculiarly fatal. No one else in the room would have talked in that way under any circumstances, although there were several men who didn’t object to hearing it done so authoritatively. Wolcott, who had seemed to be on the verge of slipping into the Signet a moment or two before, was now given seven black-balls, and dropped without comment. Tony Wilson was elected with a feeble burst of applause; Haydock and Ellis were putting on their overcoats when the hat went around, and didn’t vote.
Haviland turned out the lights, and the men groped their way—holding on to one another and striking matches from time to time—down the two flights of steep, dark stairs to the wet street. No one spoke of the election on the way down. Had anything been said it would have had to do, undoubtedly, with McGaw’s speech; and McGaw was there, somewhere in the dark, with the rest of them. Haviland walked with Ellis and Haydock as far as the “Crimson” office,—he hoped to get the names of the Third Seven into the morning paper. But they didn’t talk of the election. Ellis was boiling with righteous indignation; Haydock was wondering who had been McGaw’s ally in black-balling Wolcott; and Haviland was too glad to have it over with, and be out in the fresh air, to think of the Signet. It was not until Haydock and Ellis threw some fresh wood on the fire at the club, and sank into two big leathern chairs, that they felt at liberty to discuss the matter freely.
“I suppose it was hopeless from the first,” mused Haydock.
“It needn’t have been,—that’s what makes me furious,” returned Ellis. “If McGaw only could have had an inkling of who he was keeping out—”
“Yes, I think he would have been the first to turn right around and work like a pup to get him in,” agreed Haydock.
“I felt like jumping up and telling everything.”