The Sturdy Oak Part 16

The whole population of White water, it seemed to George, was crowded about that corner.

"I'll be back in a minute," said Benjie Doolittle, disappearing through the private office door with the black tails of his coat achieving a true horizontal behind him. As statesman and as undertaker, Mr.

Doolittle never swerved from the garment which keeps green the memory of the late Prince Consort.

As the door opened, the much-tried George Remington had a glimpse of that pleasing industrial unit, Betty Sheridan, searching through the file for the copy of the letter to the c.u.mmunipaw Steel Works, which he had recently demanded to see. He pressed the buzzer imperiously, and Betty responded with duteous haste. He pointed through the window to the crowd in front of McMonigal's block.

"Perhaps," he said, with what seemed to him Spartan self-restraint, "_you_ can explain the meaning of that scene."

Betty looked out with an air of intelligent interest.

"Oh yes!" she said vivaciously. "I think I can. It's a Voiceless Speech."

"A voice l--" George's own face was a voiceless speech as he repeated two syllables of his stenographer's explanation.

"Yes. Don't you know about voiceless speeches? It's antiquated to try to run any sort of a campaign without them nowadays."

"Perhaps you also know who that--female--" again George's power of utterance failed him. Betty came closer to the window and peered out.

"It's Frances Herrington who is turning the leaves now," she said amiably. "I know her by that ducky toque."

"Frances Herrington! What Harvey Herrington is thinking of to allow----"

George's emotion constrained him to broken utterance. "And we're dining there tonight! She has no sense of the decencies--the--the--the hospitality of existence. We won't go--I'll telephone Genevieve----"

"Fie, fie Georgie!" observed Betty. "Why be personal over a mere detail of a political campaign?"

But before George could tell her why his indignation against his prospective hostess was impersonal and unemotional, the long figure of Mr. Doolittle again projected itself upon the scene.

Betty effaced herself, gliding from the inner office, and George turned a look of inquiry upon his manager.

"Well?" the monosyllable had all the force of profanity.

"Well, the women, durn them, have brought suffrage into your campaign."

"How?"

"How? They've got a list of every blamed law on the statute books relating to women and children, and they're asking on that sheet of leaves over there, if you mean to proceed against all who are breaking those laws here in Whitewater County. And right opposite your own office! It's--it's d.a.m.n smart. You ought to have got that Herrington woman on your committee."

"It's indelicate, unwomanly, indecent. It shows into what uns.e.xed degradation politics will drag woman. But I'm relieved that that's all they're asking. Of course, I shall enforce the law for the protection of every cla.s.s in our community with all the power of the----"

"Oh, shucks! There's n.o.body here but me--you needn't unfurl Old Glory,"

counseled Mr. Doolittle, a trifle impatiently. "They're asking real questions, not blowing off hot-air. Oh, I say, who owns McMonigal's block since the old man died? We'll have the owner stop this circus.

That's the first thing to do."

"I'll telephone Allen. He'll know."

Allen's office was very obliging and would report on the owners.h.i.+p on McMonigal's block in ten minutes.

Mr. Doolittle employed the interval in repeating to George some of the "Questions for Candidate Remington," illegible from George's desk.

"You believe that 'WOMAN'S PLACE IS IN THE HOME.' Will you enforce the law against woman's night work in the factories? Over nine hundred women of Whitewater County are doing night work in the munition plants of Airport, Whitewater and Ondegonk. What do you mean to do about it?"

"You 'DESIRE TO CONSERVE THE THREATENED FLOWER OF WOMANHOOD.'"

A critical listener would have caught a note of ribald scorn in Mr.

Doolittle's drawl, as he quoted from his candidate's statement, via the voiceless speech placards.

"To conserve the threatened flower of womanhood, the grape canneries of Omega and Onicrom Towns.h.i.+ps are employing children of five and six years in defiance of the Child Labor Law of this State. Are you going to proceed against them?"

"'WOMAN IS MAN'S RAREST HERITAGE.' Do you think man ought to burn her alive? Remember the Livingston Loomis-Ladd collar factory fire--fourteen women killed, forty-eight maimed. In how many of the factories in Whitewater, in which women work, are the fire laws obeyed? Do you mean to enforce them?"

The telephone interrupted Mr. Doolittle's hateful litany.

Alien's bright young man begged to report that McMonigal's block was held in fee simple by the widow of the late Michael McMonigal.

Mr. Doolittle juggled the leaves of the telephone directory with the dazzling swiftness of a j.a.panese ball thrower, and in a few seconds he was speaking to the relict of the late Michael.

George watched him with fevered eyes, listened with fevered ears. The conversation, it was easy to gather, did not proceed as Mr. Doolittle wished.

"Oh! in entire charge--E. Eliot. Oh! In sympathy yourself. Oh, come now, Mrs. McMonigal----"

But Mrs. McMonigal did not come now. The campaign manager frowned as he replaced the receiver.

"Widow owns the place. That Eliot woman is the agent. The suffrage gang has the owner's permission to use the building from now on to election.

She says she's in sympathy. Well, we'll have to think of something----"

"It's easy enough," declared George. "I'll simply have a set of posters printed answering their questions. And we'll engage sandwich men to carry them in front of McMonigal's windows. Certainly I mean to enforce the law. I'll give the order to the _Sentinel_ press now for the answers--definite, dignified answers." "See here, George." Mr. Doolittle interrupted him with unusual weightiness of manner. "It's too far along in the campaign for you to go flying off on your own. You've got to consult your managers. This is your first campaign; it's my thirty-first. You've got to take advice----"

"I will not be muzzled."

"Shucks! Who wants to muzzle, anybody! But you can't say everything that's inside of you, can you? There's got to be some choosing. We've got to help you choose.

"The silly questions the women are displaying over there--you can't answer 'em in a word or in two words. This city is having a boom; every valve factory in the valley, every needle and pin factory, is makin'

munitions today--valves and needles and pins all gone by the board for the time being. Money's never been so plenty in Whitewater County and this city is feelin' the benefits of it. People are buying things--clothes, flour, furniture, victrolas, automobiles, rum.

"There ain't a merchant of any description in this county but his business is booming on account of the work in the factories. You can't antagonize the whole population of the place. Why, I dare say, some of your own money and Mrs. Remington's is earning three times what it was two years ago. The First National Bank has just declared a fifteen per cent. dividend, and Martin Jaffry owns fifty-four per cent. of the stock.

"You don't want to put brakes on prosperity. It ain't decent citizens.h.i.+p to try it. It ain't neighborly. Think of the lean years we've known. You can't do it. This war won't last forever--" Mr. Doolittle's voice was tinged with regret--"and it will be time enough to go in for playing the deuce with business when business gets slack again. That's the time for reforms, George,--when things are dull."

George was silent, the very presentment of a sorely hara.s.sed young man.

He had not, even in a year when blamelessness rather than experience was his party's supreme need in a candidate, become its banner bearer without possessing certain political apperceptions. He knew, as Benjie Doolittle spoke, that Benjie spoke the truth--White-water city and county would never elect a man who had too convincingly promised to interfere with the prosperity of the city and county.

"Better stick to the gambling out at Erie Oval, George," counseled the campaign manager. "They're mostly New Yorkers that are interested in that, anyway."

"I'll not reply without due consideration and--er--notice," George sullenly acceded to his manager and to necessity. But he hated both Doolittle and necessity at the moment.

That sun-bright vision of himself which so splendidly and sustainingly companioned him, which spoke in his most sonorous periods, which so completely and satisfyingly commanded the reverence of Genevieve--that George Remington of his brave imaginings would not thus have answered Benjamin Doolittle.

Through the silence following the furniture man's departure, Betty, at the typewriter, clicked upon Georgie's ears. An evil impulse a.s.sailed him--impolitic, too, as he realized--impolitic but irresistible. It was the easiest way in which candidate Remington, heckled by suffragists, overridden by his campaign committee, mortifyingly tormented by a feeling of inadequacy, could re-establish himself in his own esteem as a man of prompt and righteous decisions.