“You may bolt the State ticket as much as you d——d please. I don’t like your doing it, and it will injure you more than any efforts of mine can make good, but I can’t help it, and it wasn’t for that that I wanted to see you. But if you bolt me, Mr. Seth, or put so much as a straw in my path, by God! I’ll grind you, and your paper, and everybody responsible for it, finer than tooth-powder! However—we will exhaust the other side of the subject first. I’ve had it in mind for a long while, in fact ever since I first procured you a place there, to buy you a share in the Chronicle. Workman would be glad of the ready money—he itches for it as much as any living man—and it would be a good thing for you. Would you like that?”
“You haven’t told me yet what you dragged me up here, away from my work, for,” said Seth. “You presumably had an object of some sort.”
“Ah, you want to get down to business, do you? You shall have it, in a nutshell. I want you to see Ansdell, and get him to promise that if I beat him in the Convention he will support me squarely at the polls; I want you to get a pledge from Workman that the Chronicle will come out for me, solid, the day after I am nominated. That’s what I want, and it is mighty little for me to ask of you! And you may tell Workman for me that if he and his paper give me the smallest ground for complaint, and waver in the least in backing me up, I’ll start a paper in Tecumseh before Christmas that will crush the Chronicle out of sight. The paper is no good, anyway. I know hundreds of good citizens who would rejoice to have a decent substitute for it.” The pride of the editor was wounded. “You seem to worry a good deal about this worthless paper, at all events,” he said, bitterly.
“Don’t bandy words with me, youngster!” cried Albert, scowling and pacing the floor. “I want your answer, or the answer of your employer—yes or no! I’ll have none of your impudence!”
Seth held his temper down. He could not help feeling that his brother, from the fraternal standpoint at least, had some pretty strong arguments on his side. He made answer:
“I should have no influence with Ansdell, one way or the other, even if I talked with him. He knows his own business best, and if he has made up his mind to a certain course, nothing that I could say would move him. As for the Chronicle we’ve kept our hands off, thus far, on your account, and we’ve said nothing at all about your leading the Dearborn County delegates into the machine camp at the State Convention, although the whole rest of the State is ringing with it. But I am charged to say that that is as much as we can do. If you are nominated, we can’t and won’t support you. It is not a nice thing for me to have to say to you, but there’s no good mincing matters. Besides, you know—there may be a way out of it; you may not be nominated to-morrow.”
“All hell can’t prevent it!” The words came forth in an explosion of wrath. Albert stamped his foot and clenched his fists as Seth had never seen him do before. He tapped his breast three or four times, significantly, as if there were something in the pocket to which he was referring—Seth remembered the gesture long afterward—and repeated that his nomination was assured. He seemed to dislike his passion, and strive to restrain it, but the choleric vein between his brows grew more swollen, and his black, keen eyes flashed more angrily than ever, as he strode up and down before the stove.
“Yes, and I’ll be elected too! All the white-livered hounds in Adams County, from my own brother up, shall not stop me! I’ll stump the district every night and day till election. I’ll speak in Tecumseh—yes, in Tecumseh, at the biggest meeting money and organisation can get together—and I’ll handle this whole bolting business so’s to warm the hearts of honest men all over the State. By God! I’ll shake Workman as a terrier shakes a rat, in view and hearing of his whole community! Won’t he squirm though! And won’t the crowd enjoy having him shown up! And you”—there followed some savage personal abuse, profane in form—“after to-morrow morning, never let me lay eyes on you again!”
“It is not for the pleasure of seeing you that I come here, ever,” Seth retorted, the words coming quick and fierce. “Be sure I’d never trouble you again, if you were the only one in this house!”
The lawyer’s eyes sparkled with a sardonic meaning, and Seth, as he saw it, bit his tongue with impatience at the thoughtless form of his speech; for he read in this cold, glancing light that nothing had been lost upon his brother’s perception when he entered the room.