CHAPTER XI
ACROSS THE MANY WATERS
And the day of the election arrived next morning and brought cold clouds shot through with occasional gleams of pale sunshine, only to be followed by light but threatening flurries of snow.
All through the Sunday night David had sat over in the editorial rooms of the Journal beside Andrew Sevier, talking, writing and sometimes silent with unexpressed sympathy, for as the last sheets of his editorial work slipped through his fingers Andrew grew white and austere. Once for a half-hour they talked about his business affairs and he turned over a bundle of papers to David and discussed the investment of the money that had come from his heavy royalties for the play now running, and the thousands paid in advance for the new drama.
As David ran carefully through them to see that they were in order for him to handle, Andrew turned to his desk and wrote rapidly for some minutes, then sealed a letter and laid it aside. After he had read the last batch of proof from the composing-room he turned to David and with a quiet look handed him the letter which was directed to Caroline Darrah.
"If she ever finds out give her this letter, please. It will make her understand why I go, I hope. I can't talk to you about it but I want to ask you, man to man, to look after her. Dave, I leave her to your care—and Phoebe's." And his rich voice was composed into an utter sadness.
"The work here and the night are both over, let's go down to headquarters," he added, and like two boys, with hands tight gripped, they passed out into the winter street.
Down at the Gray Picket they found some of David's ardent supporters still fresh and enthusiastic though they had been making a night of it. Soon waves of excitement were rising and falling all over the city and the streets were thronged with men from out through the county.
At an early hour heavy wagons moved with the measured tread of blind tigers and deposited blind tiger kittens, done up in innocent and deceptive looking crates, at numbers of discreet alley covers near the polls. At the machine headquarters rotund and blooming gentlemen grouped and dissolved and grouped again, during which process wads of greenbacks unrolled and flashed with insolent carelessness. The situation was and had been desperate and this last stand must be brought through for the whisky interest, come high as it would.
And so through the morning, delegations kept dropping in to David's headquarters to keep up the spirits of the candidate and incidentally to have their own raised. There were ugly rumors coming from the polls. The police were machine instruments and the back door of every saloon in the city was wide open, while a repeating vote was plainly indicated by crowds of floaters who drifted from ward to ward. The faces of the bosses were discreetly radiant.