The Co-Citizens Part 6

"Love is not everything. There are--other things more important than love. Every man knows that!"

"No woman ought to know it! Besides, love is everything. It's the face of every flower. It's the leaves on the trees. It's the breath of heaven. It's the blush on your cheek, the blood in your veins and mine, dear."

"No, liberty is more than love. And liberty is the enemy of love," she answered.

"You speak like a--like a----" He searched his imagination to find what she did speak like, and she finished for him:

"Like an enemy!"

"No, not quite so bad as that, but you are morbid, dear. This isn't a meeting of suffragists, this is a sacrament. You and I are alone before the altar of love. We must not deny one another this sweet bread of life!"

"You said something just then about suffragists. Do you believe in suffrage for women, for your wife, for example?"

He sat up and looked at her. He began to smile teasingly, as if she were a little girl and he a patient elder person with a beam in his eye.

"So that's it, hey? You want to be a suffragist and with the suffragists stand! Of course I believe in it. I believe in letting every woman have what she wants. Now kiss me, Selah, like the dear little suffering suff you are!"

"No, I must be sure you mean that. Men say things to women they do not believe, just to humour them, just to get----"

"A kiss, yes! I'd vote for you for coroner, Selah, for one kiss to-night!"

"Well, you won't get it, Mr. Sasnett, not until I am _sure_, absolutely sure, you are for us, not against us."

"Us! One at a time, Selah, I say. You wouldn't have me be for all women, would you? A man loves one woman, but he can't stand 'em _en ma.s.se_.

He'd romp like a four-year-old in a crowd of men, but a crowd of women, a commonwealth of women! Good Lord! it would be awful. Don't ask me to kiss them all, dear!"

"You are making fun of us. I knew you were not for us," she said.

"But I'm for _you_, heart and soul. When are we to be married? You promised to name the day."

"It will not be this year, if ever," she answered coolly.

"Not this year? It must be this year! I'm going to be representative from this county, and I want to take my bride to the Capitol with me."

"You don't know whether you will be elected or not, yet, Mr. Sasnett. It depends upon conditions of which you do not now dream. When is the election?"

"In November," he answered.

"Before that time there will be five thousand more voters in this county than there are now!"

"Where'll they come from?"

"They are here now."

"In your pocket, is that what you mean?"

"They may be," she answered, smiling darkly.

"You speak as if you were Mike Prim, Selah. It's scandalous!"

It was Sat.u.r.day afternoon, two days since the funeral and two days since Mike Prim bent listening with such furious excitement at the keyhole of Judge Regis's office. Jordantown had become the stage upon which a mystery play was being enacted with all the farcical features of a comedy. Every man, especially, was doing exactly what he would have done and said if there had been footlights and an audience in front, only not one of them knew that this was so. Providence is the Great Dramatist, and secures perfectly natural effects by providing emergencies which call for action, and by keeping every man under the delusion that he chooses his own role.

The suspense concerning the disposition of the Mosely Estate was only partially balanced by the confounded indignation of many citizens who came and went from Mike Prim's office.

"Sent for you again, too?" exclaimed Coleman when he met Acres as he descended the stairs.

"Yes, what's the matter?" asked Acres anxiously.

"You'll find out when you get up there. He's as mad as a rhinoceros horning sand in a desert."

"But what does he want?" Acres insisted.

"Wants you to double your subscription to the campaign fund. Better not go up if you can't do it. He got me for a cool hundred."

"What's he in such a hurry for? The campaign doesn't begin for months yet!"

"He says it's on, began two days ago. Says the liberty of every man in this county is at stake. Says he needs a fund of four times as much as usual to meet the situation," answered Coleman.

"What's he doing with it?"

"Can't tell you; not a cent of it is deposited in the bank."

"Well, I know he has taken in over a thousand dollars in the last two days."

"It's no time to collect now with everybody in suspense over this Mosely will," groaned Coleman.

"I'll be hanged if it doesn't look like blackmail to me!" exclaimed Acres.

"Why submit, then?" demanded Coleman with a grin.

"You know we are all in too deep with Prim. You submitted, didn't you?"

"Yes, and you will, too, when you see him. He's got conviction in his manner and compulsion in his tongue," said Coleman as Acres pa.s.sed him upon the stairs.

"Mabel, my boy, can you lend me fifty dollars?"

Acres beheld Colonel Adams standing in the deep shadows at the top of the stairs. He wore a yellow seersucker coat, brown linen trousers, carpet slippers, with the toes of his right foot bandaged and exposed through a slit in the red leather. He was forlornly sober, pale, with his moustache drooping like a rooster's tail in the rain.

"Fifty dollars, Colonel!" exclaimed Acres.

"I'm absolutely obliged to have it, Mabel."

"Make it fifty cents and I'll be glad to accommodate you."

"Very well, fifty cents then. Thank you, Mabel. I'll just go down with this. No use to face Mike with half a dollar. He wants fifty."