Tongues of Flame (MacFarlane)/Chapter 25
BILLIE, because she was in Portland, knew nothing of all this pother; and Henry was beginning to need her. He felt drained and weakened by the steadily dripping reproaches of three long days. He was a young man who had thrived upon the general good will and suddenly the general good will was taken from him. The girl was his great untapped reservoir of moral strength.
"I must see you, Billie," he confided over the long-distance wire, "I hate to have you breaking off your visit for me but I need you something awful."
"I'd break off anything for you," purred Billie's voice vibrant with the instinctive perceptions of love. "I'll take the morning boat and be in at three o'clock."
"Oh, you—you darling!" murmured Henry gratefully.
When the conversation was over he boasted to himself: "A brick house doesn't have to fall on that girl. It's going to hurt her when I tell her though. I—I must be very, very careful. But shell be game. She'll wink the tears away and help."
Henry slept that night, and in the morning rose up strong, prepared to resist like adamant that wearing stream which would again be turned upon his resolution. But, to his surprise, there was no wearing stream. Callers came and went, but during the entire morning there was not one reference to the defense of Adam John. Perhaps this was more clever psychology on Scanlon's part; for with the pressure lifted, Henry's resolution relaxed a bit. He was in one of his regretting moods when Charlie Clayton came in about the McKenzie's Tongue project.
Now McKenzie's Tongue was a strip of land some seventeen hundred acres in extent from which Boland General had stripped the timber, and there was a bill before the state legislature to acquire this land for sixty-two thousand dollars and locate the new state prison upon it. "The bill will be up for final passage in the house sometime next week," reminded Clayton. "It will go through all right of course; but since it's of special benefit to our end of the state, it will look better to have a full delegation voting from Socatullo County. Better arrange to be there, Henry."
"Count on me," smiled Harrington; "but be sure and let me know when it's coming up. I've got a good deal on my mind right now."
Clayton looked as if he understood. "All right; so long."
It did Henry good to have Clayton come in like this and consult him quite in the old way. It showed that there was to be no permanent or wide-front break in his relations with the official family of Boland General. Yet he was not long permitted to enjoy entirely comfortable reflections. Senator Murphy was announced.
"What can she want?" speculated Henry.
There were several women in the state legislature this term, earnest, intelligent and, some of them, astonishingly astute. None took their duties any more seriously than Sarah Murphy. She was self-assertive to a degree. She was almost offensively honest, exceedingly outspoken and a little of a nuisance; but Harrington had rather admired her aggressiveness and did not resent her activities as a good many legislators did. He was fingering her card with pleasurable anticipations when she entered, large and masterful but withal an attractive woman, a youthful forty in appearance, with dark eyes and a firm but dimpled chin.
"Henry, how do you stand upon that McKenzie's Tongue project?" she demanded promptly.
"Naturally, I'm for it," answered Henry.
Senator Murphy's handsome eyes narrowed and her tone became as grim as her expression. "You know it's a job, don't you? A low-down dirty steal! Hatched by George Madden to pay old Boland sixty-two thousand dollars for a lot of land that isn't worth a German mark or a Russian ruble."
"I guess it isn't any job," bridled Henry. "Mr. Boland makes mistakes but he doesn't deal in jobs. The old prison site is unhealthy; new buildings have to be erected anyway; the Tongue is breeze-swept and the soil is rich; the prisoners will clear the ground and make those 1700 acres produce food enough for themselves and half the other state institutions."
"Besides which," Senator Murphy chimed in sarcastically, "it will give John Boland something for nothing, not to mention nice fat pickings in supply bills for the merchants of Socatullo County. No, Henry; this argument of yours is the bunk Senator Madden and Boland's kept-press have been feeding out to the whole state. The old prison site is as healthy as your McKenzie's Tongue. It's the old building, inadequate and insanitary, that makes the hospital list so long. It will cost less to erect new buildings there with prison labor than to erect them on McKenzie's Tongue; and you know it would take five years to get that Socatullo wilderness in shape to grow one mess of green corn. Henry, it's a job, a plain John Boland job. They railroaded it through the Senate before I was awake; but I'm going to beat that bill in the Assembly or my name's not Sarah Murphy. Henry, I want you to vote against it. I want you to speak against it."
Harrington was too polite to smile. "You'll have to show me!" he answered seriously.
Senator Murphy proceeded to show him. Opening up a Boston bag she produced documents, affidavits and reports, and volubly indicated their significance; then turned his attention to a roll of the House, opposite each name of which she had penciled an N or a Y.
Harrington's eye ran down the column. "Jerry Cunningham, there," he challenged. "If the deal's wrong, he'd nose it out and be against it."
"He would if he hadn't been reached," replied the lady, with a sarcastic wrinkling of her large nose. "Jerry had a mortgage due on his prune ranch the year that prunes went down with a crash; but the mortgage wasn't foreclosed. Some influence from Socatullo County came up and saved his neck with the money-lenders. Somebody scratched his back and now he's got to scratch theirs."
"Is that the way you interpret it?" smiled Henry.
"Same way with old man Hemmingford—only different," affirmed the lady with an emphatic nod. "He's been carrying a patch of fir timber down in his corner of the state till he couldn't carry it any longer. About the time Clayton was scurrying around for votes on this project, somebody bought a piece of Hemmingford's timber for so much that he can afford to carry the rest of it till the increase in values makes him rich. More back-scratching!"
Henry was amused, but Senator Murphy was only the more aroused. "That is the modern method of bribery, you know—back-scratching," she frowned savagely. "Men are not bought with gold in this legislature; and yet they're bought just the same. Usually they don't know they're bought. They think they're only playing square, showing appreciation for kindness—that sort of thing. 'We've scratched your back; now you scratch ours.' That's the system. It isn't alone in our legislature; it's in our courts and in our administrative offices, tax-assessors, prosecuting attorneys and all that."
"Naturally, I've heard of the practice," remarked Henry dryly, and wondered if the senator suspected how in the last four days his back had been curried till it was raw and he was getting mad.
"And it isn't only money," observed Senator Murphy acutely. "Here's George Lamont. Now nobody could give George a dishonest dollar, but his wife has social aspirations. Get her an invitation to a week-end at Boland's, and you could deliver old George Lamont on almost anything. Why, the Boland corporations are among the most skilful back-scratchers in the state."
"I've been finding that out," admitted Henry, grimly. "Only you're wrong to accuse Mr. Boland of it personally. He may have done all those favors you speak of. Probably did. He's a kindly man yet not above knowing that individual gratitudes might make it easier for legislatures to do their duty; but—the general good is attached to every project of his."
"You'll look pretty close, Henry, to find it attached to this," charged Senator Murphy, tapping significantly the little pile of papers.
"Leave them with me for a day or two," proposed Henry.
The senator left him thinking deeply, as so many of his callers had of late. He was still thinking when the realization came that Billie's boat was almost due, and he reached the apron just as it was docking.
"Henry!" Billie cried and sprang into his arms, kissed him and gave him one quick, ecstatic little hug, right before the small throng upon the dock. Henry guessed that demonstration would rather settle any wild rumors, wouldn't it? How proud he was of her! And of her frank loyalty!
"Oh, Henry!" she cried, and kissed him again.
Half an hour later they were in his car and headed for a nook beneath a giant cedar on the western slope of Pigeon Point, a nook that was only three miles away and yet so sequestered and beautiful—wildly beautiful—that it was a favorite trysting place of theirs.
She nestled close as he drove, giving his arm from time to time, more of those quick, ecstatic little hugs. Her talk was swift, ejaculatory phrases, but of nothing in particular. There seemed nothing to occupy her mind but love—and Henry. He too ejaculated, but nothing consequential. For each there was nothing in the world but the other. Every sight Billie saw upon the road seemed pleasing. Everything called for smiles. Every remark of his, every little gesture of his free hand; every squeeze and pinch of his toying, playful fingers seemed to her uproariously funny, breathlessly amusing.
"Oh, it's so—so good just to be with you—you!" she was crying spontaneously, as they turned in beneath the jagged arms of the storm-beaten old cedar, with the sun letting himself down into the western haze—the peering, knowing sun. Here, with the windows of the car wide, the drone of wind in boughs above, a murmur in that wide lip of sea-foam before them, with the invigorating bite of salt air and the freshening breeze in their nostrils, they saw and heard and inhaled and forgot. Love was having its hour.
Never had kisses been so tender, so clinging, so electrifying. Passion mounted to its peak and passed, but love flowed on in still deep water. Soft looks, languorous caresses, sighs, heart-throbs, little bursts of silly lovers' laughter; and then more striving to compass all sweet ecstasy in a single caress, a single long-drawn, slow-mounting embrace. Raptures! Transports!
Little nothings Billie whispered in Henry's ear. She played with his hair, she dwelt with velvet lips upon his gray, love-filled eyes. "Oh, how—how wonderful you are!" she sighed. Her hat had fallen off, her hair was disarranged, she hung upon his shoulder, re-observing fondly every detail of his lean, chiseled face.
Henry lay back upon the cushioned seat, eyes half-closed, dimly conscious of the world outside, but keenly conscious of the universe within the circle of his arms. He had yielded to a lassitude, but it was a delicious lassitude until there stole in upon it, like an assassin in the night, a thought.
And with the thought obtruded a sense of cruel separation, as of some strong jealous hand thrust into the car and prying their warm, attracted bodies apart. Harrington knew what it was—what he must do. It was rude—the rudest possible awakening. It was the most poignant and shattering intrusion of a chaos upon a paradise. He must tell her. It was her right. Besides, he needed those reënforcements which slumbered in reserve in that palpitant beauty by his side. He must tell her and he did, not without flinching, but quite without mincing—that he would defend Adam John!
He had been holding her hand. It grew cold and limp in his. All at once it had fallen out of his grasp. He felt her body grow tense, and as if breaking from the spell of some nightmare whose horror had been slowly congealing her veins, she whispered in a hoarse chill of fear: "Henry . . . Henry! What have you been saying?"
She sat up and stared at him utterly incredulous, with an awed note in her voice. "Fight . . . fight my father?" Her face had grown very white, her lips were puckered until they showed no red at all. Her sweet mouth had become a wound that quivered as with an awful hurt. Henry's heart was melted entirely. It was so much more suffering than he felt it would be necessary to bring to her. He wanted to take her again into his arms and to console and reassure.
"Not fight him—no!" he argued wretchedly. "Merely defend"
But Billie's own keen intelligence perceived both a falsity in this distinction and that he did not perceive it—which made her suddenly wild at his obtuseness for supposing that he could attack Boland General without attacking John Boland; or that he could reflect upon him without laying the lash upon the quivering flesh of his daughter! The tears of an uncontrollable rage leaped into her eyes. She seized him by the lapels and shook him. "Stupid!" she cried, and was more deeply angered by the futility of the word. "Stupid!"
Henry was astounded at her frenzy, but still tender. "Billie!" he expostulated, grasping her hands. "Billie! Won't you understand?" His appeal was desperate. "I have to do it. It's a matter of conscience."
"Conscience!" she scorned. "It's for that stubborn little Indian!"
"No, no; not for any individual," he insisted. "For something infinitely bigger. Won't you see, dear?" he implored humbly. "Oh, why won't you let me make it clear to you so that you can make it clear to your father? And then all this will be un"
"To my father!" the girl raged, and flung his hands from hers, contemptuous at his presuming still to reflect upon either her father's intelligence or his moral judgments. "You fool!" Her glance scorched. "You . . . you traitor!" She breathed that last denunciation slowly, with the utmost of feeling, and the slightest of vocalization, looked at him for an instant longer to burn the brand in, then stepped out of the car as from contamination.
Harrington was stunned rather than hurt—sick with dismay at the discovery that Billie was as blind as the others. Where, he marveled, was all that wonderful sympathy for the poor and downtrodden of earth which she had manifested in his earlier talks with her—words of hers that had quickened and inspired him into the very position in which he found himself today? Where was it? Nowhere, he perceived, when reflections on her father were involved. He, to her, was a god who would not err.
Henry sat completely baffled, with a choking sensation in his throat. Yet—yet it must be that the girl could be got to see a moral chasm wide as the Grand Canyon. He must make another effort; he left the car and confronted her.
Billie faced him defiantly. Offended majesty, injured pride, hurt love, unbelievable disappointment, thwarted self-will, childish petulance—she got them all into her air. "When men fight my father he breaks them like this!" she warned haughtily, and her quick hands made the gesture of snapping a twig and casting it disdainfully aside.
"But, Billie!" Henry protested feebly. "I—I thought you loved me."
Her scorn was quick. "I—I thought I loved you too," she astonished him by retorting; "but . . . can a woman love a fool?" Dramatically her glance circled upward to the sky as in mute protest that God could have played her such a trick as make her love a fool. It was the artifice that did it. Henry became angry.
"If I—if I am that," he had begun hotly, when the sudden change in his manner made her see him with different eyes, take re-account of him—who he was. Her impatient rage had been more like an explosion than a conflagration anyway. Revulsion was swift but—amusingly, femininely uncompromising.
"Oh, why did I let myself love you?" she cried in a voice teary with utter exasperation, and the next moment had flung herself into his arms and was weeping on his shoulder.
"Henry!" she cried and hugged him to her. "Henry!" Her sobs beat against the drums of his ears; her kisses were warm and moist upon his neck. "I don't want you broken," she cried piteously, hugging him close, "Oh, I don't want you broken!"
"Broken?" Harrington smiled expansively at his unexpectedly quick victory. "Why, how little you understand your father!"
"Little you do!" she retorted in a voice muffled against his side, and he felt her body shuddering against his. "Besides, I promised them you wouldn't. Oh, you humiliate me so!"
Harrington started and held her off from him fiercely. "W-what!" he gasped, horrified. "You promised them? Who? Promised what?"
"Scanlon and father," wailed the muffled voice. "Promised that I wouldn't let you make a fool of yourself like this."
"Then you . . . you knew all about it before I told you?" breathed Henry, aghast. The girl lifted her head to face the accusation in his tone, and saw slow horror mounting in her lover's eyes. "You were only acting then—when you gave yourself up to me" he charged, and his voice trembled as his mind reviewed the sacred emotions of the last hour.
"No, no," she protested frenziedly. "Don't look at me, Henry, like that. I meant—oh, your kisses meant everything to me. I—I was trying to forget that we had to—disagree so, so horribly!"
Something of the revulsion in him lessened. He could understand that. He too had tried to forget, but—she had promised them not to let him make a fool of himself. She, too, was a back-scratcher! Her glance fell before the indictment in his eyes, and, sobbing as if discovered in shame and overcome with humiliation, she turned to sit apart from him upon a fallen tree.
And this was his reservoir of moral strength that he had counted on so confidently! Harrington gazed down at the girl in a kind of sad wonder, properly sorry for her, but sorry also for himself. It seemed as if all the fates of the universe had conspired against him; had woven this net of circumstances about him with only one way out—rough-shod over her heart.
"I had been depending on you to help me, Billie," he managed to stammer in a ragged voice. "I—I needed your proud strength."
Her strength was proud. She showed it by her manner, an utter unresponsiveness to the pathos in this last trembling appeal of his. Her sobbings had ceased. She was investing herself with a kind of lofty reserve. She turned dry eyes to where the sun buried his brazen head in gorgeous clouds and glorified waters. The sense of a fundamental difference in moral perception drove itself between the two of them with the chill and the power of a glacial wedge.