The Fighting Edge (Smith's Magazine 1907)/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX.
Stoneman had an engagement to lunch with Miss Marriott on the day of Miller’s election. He had arranged the time himself of set purpose, for he had expected that morning’s joint session to end in his own election, and it had seemed to him a fitting climax of his good fortune that he should, in his hour of hours, listen to the congratulations of Maisie Marriott. Surely, then, with such an achievement to lay at her feet, the resistance of this charming creature would vanish before his attack. No more propitious moment could he choose to demand that she make his cup of triumph full.
It was characteristic of Stoneman that his defeat, exceedingly bitter though he found it, did not change his plans as regards her. He was a good fighter, and was the last man to ask her to excuse him because the cards had turned against him. Perhaps, too, there was in him a secret, unrecognized longing to listen to her warm, sweet sympathy.
If so, his hope was not vain.
She came toward him with that wonderful, famous walk of hers, both hands outstretched to meet him. How sweetly she glowed sympathy! How her fine eyes told their kind, tender message to him! It made him sorrier for himself to see with what maternal tenderness she expressed her sorrow for him.
While he held her hands in his and searched her face for all the sweetness it might offer, there came to him a new realization of what such a woman might bring a man. Might bring; nay, should bring. Her weakness would be the complement of his strength, he resolved, and never suspected that in her lay a strength more sufficient to itself than his own.
She led him gently to a Morris chair, and hovered over him with a solicitude which warmed as sunshine does a basking invalid.
“You’re very good to me. It’s almost worth the price,” he smiled.
“You poor boy,” she murmured. “It must have been a dreadful blow, and you so confident.” She was sitting on the arm of his chair, and quite simply her cool hand brushed his hot temples.
He had none of Devvie Blake’s sure instinct about Maisie Marriott. Now he misjudged the impulsive play of her sweet pity, and his vanity urged him to dare. He did greatly. With a swift sweep, his arm went round her shoulders and pulled her toward him. With surprising strength she pushed back from him while the first kiss burnt her cheek.
“How dare you!” she cried hotly. “And I thought you understood. I would have let you kiss me if you had asked me in the right way, but Oh, it’s horrid! It spoils our friendship. Go away. I don’t want you here,” she flamed, and swept with supple litheness down the room and back in hot disgust at his stupidity.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said doggedly, ready to fall into a sullen temper. “You're all moods. How is a man to please you? If I had asked I might have kissed you, but you fly into a rage because I didn’t ask. I don’t see the distinction.”
“Of course you don’t,” came with fine contempt her retort. “I mean that I’m no prude. You were down, and we were friends. Why shouldn’t I let you kiss me if it would have made you happier? But not this way. You’ve taken advantage of my sympathy—betrayed our friendship. If you don’t understand, I can’t tell you. What’s more, I’m not going to try.”
She wheeled and went down the room again, this time to stand frowning at the window with her back to him. It was too bad one could not be nice to a man without inducing such blundering idiocy. Vexatious tears came to her eyes.
Stoneman followed her to the window. He had decided on an apology, which was not at all in accord with his habit of mind toward others.
“I’m a child with women. I don’t know anything about them—least of all, about you,” he explained humbly. “You must forgive me, and be friends again.”
“Oh, must I?”
“Yes, you must. I’m a social barbarian, it seems. Well, I'll learn better in time, but you must bear with me till I do.”
The unwonted note of humility in a man given to self-satisfaction touched her. It was characteristic that she forgave swiftly with no more ado.
“Will you be good, Jeff?” she dared, whirling on him with laughter in her tears.
“I’ll be good,” he promised boyishly.
She exulted in her sense of power over this stiff, unbending ambition-machine. She alone could strike the human note in him, and dared to shake him from the pedestal upon which he had set himself.
“Very well. Go and sit in that chair, sir, while I tell you a few things for your good.” She perched herself on the edge of a table in front of him. “In the first place, I’m sorry you were not elected, and very glad of it.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“No, I’m not in the least mixed. That’s exactly what I mean. I did want you to be senator. But I think you got just what you deserved,” she told him coolly.
“Just what I deserved!” He colored darkly. “Will you please explain, Miss Marriott?”
“With pleasure. I had supposed you were conducting an honorable campaign, and I find”
“Go on. What did you find?” he demanded coldly.
“I find that the whole thing had been outrageous, both on your part and on the part of your opponent.”
“Please specify in detail just what you mean.”
“Is it necessary? But I shall, if you like. Don’t think I’m afraid because you look at me like that.”
“I am waiting, Miss Marriott.”
“Well, you needn’t wait any longer. It is very plain that there has been an enormous amount of bribery, and that Jefferson B. Stoneman is not guiltless.”
“Who says so?” he asked sharply.
“I do.”
“You don’t know what you are talking about,” he rapped out bruskly.
“Do you mean to tell me that you were ignorant of what was being done on your behalf?”
He met her indignant, accusing eyes without flinching. “I mean to say that I have not spent one cent dishonorably to further my election—not one cent. My hands are absolutely clean—absolutely.” His most impressive, statesman voice was in requisition to convey this information.
She was staggered. “You mean that?”
“I most certainly do.”
“But—all that bribe-money?”
“Suppose it were offered—and I don’t know whether it was or not—does it follow that the guilt is mine?”
“Mr. Bulger,” she voiced.
“Has not been in my employ for months,” he assured her virtuously.
“Still—oh, it’s all blind to me. Who could have done it?”
“Assuming that it was done at all, and that the whole thing was not a plot to steal the senatorship,” he suggested pointedly.
“What you suggest is entirely ridiculous, Mr. Stoneman,” said Miss Marriott promptly.
“I think such an explanation very reasonable; but admitting the bribery for the sake of argument”
“Quite so. For the sake of argument,” she smiled.
“One can very easily put one’s finger on the guilty parties. There has for a long time been a bitter fight for the control of the Three C system between Schaffner and Harlan. The fight was carried into this senatorship contest. If Harlan threw his influence in my favor am I to blame?”
“Did you know that he was bribing members of the legislature to vote for you?”
“No, I did not know it,” he answered emphatically.
“But you suspected,” she guessed shrewdly.
“If you had read the editorials in my papers, you would see that I also deplored the fact.”
“Yet expected to benefit by it.”
“Why not? My country needs my services. Personally, I would rather die than stoop to bribery. But am I responsible if Schaffner is halted by another unscrupulous robber baron while he is stealing the senatorship? Surely you go too far when you say that I should have called off Harlan and told him to let his enemy, and for that matter the enemy of the people, too, steal in peace without opposition.”
Her smile mocked his ponderous self-esteem. “It is very plain that the other man is the sinner. It would be lèse-majesté to suggest that Mr. Stoneman, ‘the rising young Jefferson of the Rockies,’ would
“Compound for sins that he’s inclined to
By damning those he has no mind to.”
“I am accustomed to ask of my friends a more generous faith than you appear able to give me, Miss Marriott,” he retorted, with large dignity. “May I ask why, since you held this poor opinion of me, you offered me so friendly a greeting this afternoon.”
Her instant warm smile was something to cherish. “Because, sir, I am a flesh-and-blood woman, and not a creature of logic. I discriminate between the sinner, who is my friend”—she reached out a swift, impulsive hand to him—“and his sin, which I find hateful to look on. Please don’t defend the wrong you did. Surely you recognize it as wrong.”
“I have done nothing wrong,” he doggedly insisted. “Nor can I remain friends with anybody who so judges my actions in this matter.”
“I am to refuse the evidence of my reason or forfeit your friendship?”
“If you care to put it so. I will have no friends who do not render me implicit belief,” he told her, with proud gravity.
“But I want to be your friend. I like you,” she cried, her lip trembling.
He folded his arms and looked at her, frowning like a hanging judge. “Choose.”
“You offer me no choice. Reason is not a matter of will with me.”
“In that case, Miss Marriott, there is nothing left for us to say but good-by.”
“Remember, you force the issue, not I,” she sighed.
“If it relieves your conscience to think so, far be it from me to enter a denial,” he magnanimously conceded.
There came a knock on the door, and Miss Mariott read on the card which the bell-hop brought in the words: “Mr. Devereux Blake.”
Maisie reflected swiftly for a moment, glanced under her long lashes at Stoneman, and told the boy to send the gentleman up.