A Hoosier Chronicle Part 19

"I haven't been here long enough to be known," answered Dan, looking up and smiling.

Mrs. Owen removed her hat and tossed it on a little stand, as though hats were a nuisance in this world and not worthy of serious consideration. She continued her observation of Dan, who was applying a blotter to his signature.

"I'll have to take this to my office to affix the seal. I'm to give it to Mr. Wright in the morning for recording."

"Where is your office, Mr. Harwood?" she asked flatly.

"Boordman Building," answered Dan, surprised to find himself uncomfortable under her direct, penetrating gaze.

"Humph! So you're Morton Ba.s.sett's young man who was written up in the 'Advertiser.'"

"Mr. Ba.s.sett has given me a chance to read law in his office. He's a prominent man and the 'Advertiser' chose to put its own interpretation on his kindness to me. That's all," answered Dan with dignity.

"Sit still a minute. I forget sometimes that all the folks around here don't know me. I didn't mean to be inquisitive, or disagreeable; I was just looking for information. I took notice of that 'Advertiser's' piece because Mr. Ba.s.sett married my niece, so I'm naturally interested in what he does."

"Yes, Mrs. Owen, I understand."

Dan had heard a good deal about Mrs. Sally Owen, in one way or another, and persuaded now, by her change of tone, that she had no intention of pillorying him for Ba.s.sett's misdeeds, he began to enjoy his unexpected colloquy with her. She bent forward and clasped her veined, bony hands on the table.

"I'm glad of a chance to talk to you. It's providential, your turning up this way. I just came to town yesterday and Edward Thatcher dropped in last night and got to talking to me about his boy."

"Allen?"

Dan was greatly surprised at this turn of the conversation. Mrs. Owen's tone was wholly kind, and she seemed deeply in earnest.

"Yes, I mean Allen Thatcher. His father says he's taken a great s.h.i.+ne to you. I hardly know the boy, but he's a little queer and he's always been a little sickly. Edward doesn't know how to handle him, and the boy's ma--well, she's one of those Terre Haute Bartlows, and those people never would stay put. Edward's made too much money for his wife's good, and the United States ain't big enough for her and the girls. But that boy got tired o' gallivanting around over there, and he's back here on Edward's hands. The boy's gaits are too much for Edward. He says you and Allen get on well together. I met him in the bank to-day and he asked me about you."

"I like Allen;--I'm even very fond of him, and I wish I could help him find himself. He's amusing"--and Dan laughed, remembering their first meeting--"but with a fine, serious, manly side that you can't help liking."

"That's nice; it's mighty nice. You be good to that boy, and you won't lose anything by it. How do you and Morton get on?"

"First-rate, I hope. He's treated me generously."

Then she fastened her eyes upon him with quizzical severity.

"Young man, the 'Advertiser' seems to think Morton Ba.s.sett is crooked.

What do you think about it?"

Dan gasped and stammered at this disconcerting question.

She rested her arms on the table and bent toward him, the humor showing in her eyes.

"If he _is_ crooked, young man, you needn't think you have to be as big a sinner as he is! You remember that Sally Owen told you that. Be your own boss. Morton's a terrible persuader. Funny for me to be talking to you this way; I don't usually get confidential so quick. I guess"--and her eyes twinkled--"we'll have to consider ourselves old friends to make it right."

"You are very kind, indeed, Mrs. Owen. I see that I have a responsibility about Allen. I'll keep an eye on him.

"Drop in now and then. I eat a good many Sunday dinners alone when I'm at home, and you may come whenever you feel like facing a tiresome old woman across the table."

She followed him into the hall, where they ran into Sylvia, who had been upstairs saying good-night to her grandfather. Mrs. Owen arrested Sylvia's flight through the hall.

"Sylvia, I guess you and Mr. Harwood are already acquainted."

"Except," said Dan, "that we haven't been introduced!"

"Then, Miss Garrison, this is Mr. Harwood. He's a Yale College man, so I read in the paper."

"Oh, I already knew that!" replied Sylvia, laughing.

"At Wellesley please remember, Miss Garrison, about the Kalamazoo cousins," said Dan, his hand on the front door.

"I guess you young folks didn't need that introduction," observed Mrs.

Owen. "Don't forget to come and see me, Mr. Harwood."

CHAPTER XI

THE MAP ABOVE Ba.s.sETT'S DESK

Sometimes, in the rapid progress of their acquaintance, Allen Thatcher exasperated Harwood, but more often he puzzled and interested him. It was clear that the millionaire's son saw or thought he saw in Dan a Type. To be thought a Type may be flattering or not; it depends upon the point of view. Dan himself had no illusions in the matter. Allen wanted to see and if possible meet the local characters of whom he read in the newspapers; and he began joining Harwood in visits to the hotels at night, hoping that these wonderful representatives of American democracy might appear. Harwood's acquaintance was widening; he knew, by sight at least, all the prominent men of the city and state, and after leaving the newspaper he still spent one or two evenings a week lounging in the hotel corridors. Tradition survived of taller giants before the days of the contemporaneous Agamemnons. Allen asked questions about these and mourned their pa.s.sing. Harrison, the twenty-third President; Gresham, of the brown eyes, judge and cabinet minister; Hendricks, the courtly gentleman, sometime Vice-President; "Uncle Joe" McDonald and "Dan"

Voorhees, Senators in Congress, and loved in their day by wide const.i.tuencies. These had vanished, but Dan and Allen made a pious pilgrimage one night to sit at the feet of David Turpie, who had been a Senator in two widely separated eras, and who, white and venerable, like Aigyptos knew innumerable things.

The cloaked poets once visible in Market Street had vanished before our chronicle opens, with the weekly literary journals in which they had shone, but Dan was able to introduce Allen to James Whitcomb Riley in a bookshop frequented by the poet; and that was a great day in Allen's life. He formed the habit of lying in wait for the poet and walking with him, discussing Keats and Burns, Stevenson and Kipling, and others of their common admirations. One day of days the poet took Allen home with him and read him a new, unpublished poem, and showed him a rare photograph of Stevenson and the outside of a letter just received from Kipling, from the uttermost parts of the world. It was a fine thing to know a poet and to speak with him face to face,--particularly a poet who sang of his own soil as Allen wished to know it. Still, Allen did not quite understand how it happened that a poet who wrote of farmers and country-town folk wore eyegla.s.ses and patent-leather shoes and carried a folded silk umbrella in all weathers.

The active politicians who crossed his horizon interested Allen greatly; the rougher and more uncouth they were the more he admired them. They were figures in the Great Experiment, no matter how sordid or contemptible Harwood p.r.o.nounced them. He was always looking for "types"

and "Big" Jordan, the Republican chief, afforded him the greatest satisfaction. He viewed the local political scene from an angle that Harwood found amusing, and Dan suggested that it must be because the feudal taint and the servile tradition are still in our blood that we submit so tamely to the rule of petty lordlings. In his exalted moments Allen's ideas shot far into the air, and Dan found it necessary to pull him back to earth.

"I hardly see a Greek frieze carved of these brethren," Dan remarked one night as they lounged at the Whitcomb when a meeting of the state committee was in progress. "These fellows would make you weep if you knew as much about them as I do. There's one of the bright lights now--the Honorable Ike Pett.i.t, of Fraser. The Honorable Ike isn't smart enough to be crooked; he's the bellowing Falstaff of the Hoosier Democracy. I wonder who the laugh's on just now; he's shaking like a jelly fish over something."

"Oh, I know him! He and father are great chums; he was at the house for dinner last night."

"What!"

Harwood was unfeignedly surprised at this. The editor of the "Fraser County Democrat" had probably never dined at the Ba.s.setts' in his own town, or at least Dan a.s.sumed as much; and since he had gained an insight into Ba.s.sett's affairs he was aware that the physical property of the "Fraser County Democrat" was mortgaged to Morton Ba.s.sett for quite all it was worth. It was hardly possible that Thatcher was cultivating Pett.i.t's acquaintance for sheer joy of his society. As the ponderous editor lumbered across the lobby to where they sat, Dan and Allen rose to receive his noisily cordial salutations. On his visits to the capital, arrayed in a tremendous frock coat and with a flapping slouch hat crowning his big iron-gray head, he was a prodigious figure.

"Boys," he said, dropping an arm round each of the young men, "the Democratic Party is the hope of mankind. Free her of the wicked bosses, boil the corruption out of her, and the grand old Hoosier Democracy will appear once more upon the mountain tops as the bringer of glad tidings.

What's the answer, my lads, to Uncle Ike's philosophy?"

"Between campaigns we're all reformers," said Harwood guardedly. "I feel it working in my own system."

"Between campaigns," replied the Honorable Isaac Pett.i.t impressively, "we're all a contemptible lot of cowards, that's what's the matter with us. Was Thomas Jefferson engaged in manipulating legislatures? Did he obstruct the will of the people? Not by a long shot he did _not_! And that grand old patriot, Andrew Jackson, wasn't he satisfied to take his licker or let it alone without being like a heathen in his blindness, bowing down to wood and stone carved into saloons and distilleries?"

"It's said by virtuous Republicans that our party is only a tail to the liquor interests. If you're going back to the Sage of Monticello, how do you think he would answer that?"

"Bless you, my dear boy; it's not the saloons we try to protect; it's the plain people, who are ent.i.tled to the widest and broadest liberty.

If you screw the lid down on people too tight you'll smother 'em. I'm not a drinkin' man; I go to church and in my newspaper I preach the felicities of sobriety and domestic peace. But it's not for me to dictate to my brother what he shall eat or wear. No, sir! And look here, don't you try to read me out of the Democratic Party, young man. At heart our party's as sweet and strong as corn; yea, as the young corn that leapeth to the rains of June. It's the bosses that's keepin' us down."