Smooth swung on the officer, ready in his present state of feeling to carve up one or a dozen. An ingratiating smile split the nervous countenance of the Most High Grand Outer Guardian. Than to be flirting with disaster nothing was farther from his desires.
“Scuse me, Mistah Crumbaugh. I didn't know 'twuz you. I begs yore pardon!” he stated hastily. “Please, ef you don't mind, I'll settle dis matter fur you.”
He swung round on Jeff, who was making himself smaller by the second.
“Whut you mean,” he demanded, “per-vokin' Mistah Crumbaugh twell he's jes' about to lose his temper? Ef yore presence yere irritates him, w'y don't you go on 'way, lak a gen'leman?... Lis'en to dat! Don't you see you's 'bout to break up de programme?” From the rows of seats nearest them came indignant Sh-h-hs! Jeff's popped eyes, glaring about him, read in all visible looks only intense disapproval of him. It was not healthy to hold Smooth Crumbaugh responsible for the interruption; but poor Jeff stood in quite a different attitude with the assemblage.
He shrank away, pawing out behind him with both hands for the door. Partly mollified, but still growling, Smooth started to return to his seat, all in his way making a clear path for him. Jeff vanished through the opening like a scared chipmunk.
The Reverend Grasty had not been discommoded by the disturbance in the rear. He was getting louder every minute. So was Sister Shackleford.
Outside on the landing, Jeff breathed again and paused to master a trembling tendency as regards his legs, at the same time telling himself he had not wanted to stay through their old watch party anyhow. It was a lie; but he kept on telling it to himself over and over again until he almost believed it. With a bitter smile, reflective of the intense bitterness in his heart, he looked backward at the blank panels of the door and reflected that, barring one fascinating exception, he didn't have a real friend in all that multitude.
Why, if they really wanted to put somebody out, hadn't they clubbed in and put that tough Smooth Crumbaugh out? Why hadn't twenty-five or thirty of them formed a volunteer committee on good order and removed Smooth by force? He would have been glad to enroll as a member of that committee—as the thirtieth member and in an advisory capacity purely.
Oh, well, what was the use of hanging round a place where true gentility was neither recognised nor appreciated? These here Supreme Kings couldn't possibly last much longer, anyway—running things the way they did. He might as well go on about his business. Reluctantly, making compromise with his outraged dignity at every step, and rent between a hankering to linger on and a conviction that if he did linger a most evil thing surely would befall him, Jeff limped in his creaking new shoes down the empty stairs, descending yard by yard into a Slough of Despond.
At the foot of the steps he stopped again, fumbling in his pockets. The jangled state of his nerves demanded the sooth of nicotine. From one pocket he exhumed nearly half of a cigar and from the other a box of matches. He inserted the cigar between his lips and undertook to strike a light. These were a new kind of matches—long, thick ones, with big white-and-black heads. Judge Priest had brought home a supply of them the day before, and Jeff, attracted vaguely by their novelty of appearance and their augmented size, had been moved to borrow a box of them off the dining-room sideboard without mentioning the matter to any one.