Читать книгу The Great Accident - Ben Ames Williams - Страница 9

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VICTOR RUTHERFORD KITE was a man about half the size of his name. Specifically, he was five feet and two inches tall with his shoes on and his pompadour ruffed up. A saving sense of the fitness of things had led him to abandon the long roll of names bestowed upon him by his parents in favor of the shorter and more fitting initials. As V. R. Kite, he had lived in Hardiston for twenty odd years; and most Hardiston people had forgotten what his given names actually were.

He was about sixty years old; and he looked it. His eyes were small, and they were washy blue. The eyelids fell about them in thousands of tiny folds and wrinkles, so that the eyes themselves were almost hidden. His eyebrows and his hair and his hints of side whiskers were gray. These side whiskers were really not whiskers at all; they were merely a faint downward growth of the hair before his ears; and they lay on his dry cheeks like the stroke of a brush. His skin was parched dry; it was so dry that it had a powdery look. He walked with a dignified little swing of his short legs, and held his head poised upon his thin neck in a self-contained way that indefinably suggested a turkey.

This man was a member of the session of his church; he was the proprietor and manager of a store that would have been a five-and-ten cent emporium in a larger town than Hardiston; and he was the acknowledged leader of the “wet” forces in Hardiston. He himself had come to the town in the beginning to run a saloon; but after a few years, he submerged his own personality in this venture and opened the little store, leaving a lieutenant to manage the saloon which he still owned. Thereafter, he acquired other establishments of a like nature, until he attained the dignity of a vested interest. When county option came, he suffered in proportion.

But though town and county voted “dry,” there were any number of Hardiston folk who still liked a drink now and then; and the city—for the town of Hardiston was legally a city—took judicial cognizance of the will of its citizens to this extent: the prohibition law was not strictly enforced. The official interpretation of it was: “It’s against the law to sell liquor if you get caught.”

V. R. Kite thought this was reasonable enough, and took care not to get caught.

On the evening of Amos Caretall’s home-coming, Kite was not in his store, so Peter Gergue had some difficulty in locating him. As a last resort, he tried the little man’s home, and was frankly surprised to find Kite there. He delivered Amos’s message, and Kite, who was at times a fiery little man, and a sulker between whiles, agreed in a surly fashion that he would go and see Amos that night. Gergue was satisfied.

Kite’s house was near that of Amos; but he did not set forth at once. When he did, it was just in time to encounter Winthrop Chase, Senior, at Amos’s gate. Kite bridled and slid past Chase as warily as a cat. The two men did not speak. If they had spoken, they would have fought; for each of them felt that he had borne the last bearable insult from the other. They passed, and Kite hurried up to Amos’s door while Winthrop Chase, looking back, watched with a calmly complacent smile. He felt that he and Amos had come to an understanding; and he rejoiced at the thought that this understanding meant the downfall of Kite as a political power in Hardiston.

Kite knocked at the door while Amos was still chuckling in the hall; and Amos let him in. Kite, once the door was open, slid inside, shoved the door shut behind him, and exclaimed in a low, furious voice: “That Chase met me outside. He was here. Don’t deny it, Amos! Did you aim for me to meet him here?”

Amos chuckled and patted Kite’s shoulder. “Now, now, Kite,” he said soothingly. “You didn’t run onto him here. You didn’t have to talk to him. So what you mad about?”

“I hate the sight of the man. He makes me sick.”

“Come in and set down,” said Amos, still chuckling.

They went into the sitting-room, Kite still grumbling at the nearness of his escape. When they were once settled, Amos broke in on this monologue without hesitation: “Chase says he’s going to be the next Mayor—whe’er or no,” he remarked.

Kite’s dry little countenance twisted with pain. Amos saw, and asked sympathetically: “That gripe ye, does it?”

“I’ll never live in the town with him Mayor,” Kite exploded. “I won’t live here. I’ll sell out and move away. I’ll shoot myself! Or him! I’ll....”

He petered out, and Amos grinned. “I gather you and Chase don’t jibe. What’s he ever done to you?”

“Grinned at me. He’s always grinning at me like a—like a—like....”

Amos smoothed the grin from his own countenance with a great hand, and tilted his head on one side. “You and him disagree some on the liquor issue, I take it.”

“We disagree on every issue. He’s....”

“Hardiston’s a little bit wet, ain’t it?”

“Of course! And no one objects! But this Chase wants to get in and make it dry. He’s a....”

“This county option law’s popular, though.”

“Popular—with fools and hypocrites like Chase.”

“Chase’ll make a good Mayor,” Amos suggested. “He’s a fine, public-spirited man. Always sacrificing himself for the town—sacrificing his own interests—an’ all that. So he says, anyhow. Said so to me, to-night.”

Kite waved his clenched fists above his head. He fought for words. Amos seemed not to notice this.

“He’s a good man, a churchly man,” he mused.

Kite exploded. “Damn hypocrite!”

Amos looked across at the other in surprise. “Hypocrite? How’s that?”

Kite became fluent. “Take the liquor question. He preaches dry—talks dry—and drinks like a fish. And his son is a common toper.”

Amos shook his head. “We-ell, a man’s private life ain’t nothing to do with his political principles. Lots of cases like that. If a man thinks right, and performs his office, I reckon that’s all you can ask. Out of office hours—he’s allowed to do what he wants.”

“He’ll ruin Hardiston,” Kite declared. “Ruin it.” He whirled toward the other. “Your fault, too, Amos. If you’d put up a man against him, instead of a fish like Jim Hollow....”

“I figured Jim would do. He always tried to do the right thing,” Amos protested; and Kite dismissed the protest with a grunt.

“The town don’t want Chase,” he declared vehemently, “but they can’t take Hollow.”

“We-ell,” said Amos thoughtfully, “what’s going to be done about it?”

Kite threw up his hands. “Nothing. Too late. But I....”

The Congressman interrupted drawlingly: “Now if it was young Wint that was going to be Mayor—you wouldn’t have to worry.”

Kite laughed shortly. “I guess not. But—he’s not.”

“He wouldn’t be likely to make the town so awful dry.”

“Not unless he drank it dry.”

“We-ell, he couldn’t do that.”

Kite grinned. “I’d chance it.”

They were silent for a moment; then Amos said slowly: “Funny—what a difference one letter makes. ‘Jr.’ instead of ‘Sr.’ Eh?”

Kite nodded slowly; and Amos was silent again, and so for a time the two men sat, thinking. Kite stared at the fire, his face working. Amos watched the fire, but most of all he watched Kite. He studied the little man, his head tilted on one side, his eyes narrowed. And Kite remained oblivious of this scrutiny. In the end, Amos spoke:

“Kite—how many votes you figure will be cast at this election?”

Kite looked up, considered. “A thousand or twelve hundred, I suppose.”

Amos bestirred his great bulk and drew from a pocket a handful of letters. He chose one, replaced the others. From another pocket he routed a stubby pencil, moistened the lead, and set down Kite’s figures on the envelope. “I think that’s too many,” he commented.

“Maybe,” Kite agreed. “What does it matter?”

“How many wet votes can you swing against Chase as it stands?”

Kite frowned. “I can’t do much with Hollow to work with. Maybe four hundred.”

“Suppose you had a good man to work with?”

“He ought to get close to five hundred out of twelve.”

“Everybody so much in love with Chase as that?”

Kite shook his head. “They don’t like him. Nobody does. He thinks he owns the town.”

“Does he own it?”

“A good part. Three or four hundred votes, anyhow.”

Amos tapped his envelope with his pencil, figuring thoughtfully. “I was thinking some of playing a little joke on Chase,” he said at last. “Think they’d enjoy a joke on him?”

Kite looked across at the Congressman with hope in his eye for the first time that evening. “Any joke on Chase will find lots to laugh at it,” he declared.

Amos nodded. “That’s what Gergue said.”

“He’s right.” Kite’s face fell. “But shucks! What chance is there?”

“There’s a chance,” said Amos.

“What is it?”

“Listen, Kite,” said the Congressman soberly. “Listen and I’ll tell you.”

He began to speak; he talked for a long time, and as he explained, Kite’s countenance passed from doubt to hope and then to exultant confidence.