Читать книгу The Victors; a romance of yesterday morning & this afternoon - Robert Barr - Страница 9

Table of Contents

It was still early morning when Maguire left the Slade homestead to make his way along the side road to his boarding-place. The young politician was in some anxiety regarding his breakfast, fearing he might miss a meal between the houses; breakfast is important to a person in good health. The cool, early air was inspiriting as well as appetising. As Patrick marched down the road, whose thick layer of dust was dampened on the surface by the dew of the night, he left tracks behind him as if he walked through snow, yet the powdered earth did not rise in a cloud around him as it would later in the day. He sang cheerily:

I have fifteen dollars in my inside pocket;

Do you moind.

Which musical statement, in the circumstances, was an underestimate of the case. He had actually fifty-five dollars in his trousers pocket at the moment, and he was determined that the bulk of it should stay there. All in all, the young man was pleased with himself, and as the day was still in its infancy, superb as far as it had gone, his voice rang out merrily over the fields and was echoed back to him from remaining clumps of the ancient forest that had once covered the land.

Arriving at the Byfield farm, he found, as he expected, that the breakfast dishes had been cleared away; but with typical American rural hospitality a plate had been left for him on the table and his breakfast was kept warm in the oven. Lottie was alone in the dining-room and Patrick was not without hope that she was waiting for him, as they had had many interviews since their first, and were on a basis of friendship, although she had not yet foregathered with him at the gate in the evening as he desired. He hungered for his breakfast, and also for the grateful applause which he felt was his due as a man of parts who had succeeded in getting other men to follow his wishes. The desire for praise, or at least for commendation, is almost universal in the breast of man, and the woman who understands this establishes easy dominion over him. Thus have women without beauty or youth or any of those qualities that are supposed to fascinate ruled empires, while stupid historians, being mere men, have marvelled, unable to account for the power these women wielded.

“We thought you were lost,” said Lottie. “You surely weren’t electioneering so early in the morning.”

“No, Lottie, I wasn’t—at least I was electioneering for myself, and I got elected every time. I was over at old Slade’s and wanted to catch him before he went out to the fields, which I just did and no mistake. Caught him every way you put it. They said at the meeting that any one who got money out of old Slade would have to get up early in the morning, so I got up early.”

“And got the money?”

“You bet. Look-a-there!” Maguire, with a gesture of justifiable pride, pulled from his pocket a handful of bills and coins and flung the accumulation on the table.

“My!” exclaimed the girl, eyes opening wide, “what a lot of it.”

“Yes-sir-ee. Fifty-five dollars to a cent. Not bad for a week and a half’s work, is it?”

“Is that the money they raised at the meeting?”

“Yah. All but two dollars, and I expect to have that out of Slade before to-morrow night. Say! You ought t’heard the way I read the riot act to old Slade! Oh, it was as good as a picnic, and his eyes simply bulged, and he actually got pale at times, and yet I clean forgot some of the best things I was going to say to him. And now I tell you,” he continued with great heartiness, selecting ten of the tattered bills, “I want your mother to take ten dollars for my keep while I’ve been earning of this pile, and here’s the boodle.” He waved the money over towards her, but she shrank back from contact with it.

“But it isn’t yours,” she gasped breathlessly.

“It isn’t all mine, but a good share of it is. You trust P. Maguire for that.”

“I thought it was collected for election expenses.”

“Cert. That’s right. I’m the biggest election expense this part of the country’s got, and I’m going to win for them as well as myself. Oh, I’m giving ’em value for their cash, you bet. There’s nothing mean about me.”

“I—I—I’m afraid I don’t understand. I thought you said you weren’t going to take anything—that you were doing all this for nothing, and that’s what everybody else thinks.”

“Well, now, look here, Lottie; you’re a sensible girl; you don’t think I am in this for my health, do you?”

“Then why didn’t you say so at first?”

The young man looked at her from his half-eaten breakfast, an expression of amazed injured innocence on his face. The trend of her questions and the tone of her voice bewildered him. Was it possible that she was not going to perceive and admire his financial skill?

“Say so at first? Why, thunder! I wouldn’t have got a cent if I did. You know that.”

“Well, I don’t know much about these things, but it doesn’t strike me as honest to keep for yourself what was intended for something else.”

“Oh, I see what you mean. Why, there’s just where you are mistaken, Lottie. Honesty’s my strong point. I say if a man isn’t honest his name’s Mud, and it ought to be. ‘Honesty’s the best policy’ ’s my motto. Of course I’ve lost money by it, but I’d rather have a clear conscience than a wad of five-dollar bills. I am just going to tell you all about it, and then you’ll understand. You see, I said I didn’t want any pay, and I don’t. I’ll pay myself, every time, and don’t you forget it. I don’t want anybody else lying awake nights worrying about how Pat Maguire’s going to come out of a deal. That’s my department, and I look after it every time. Yes-sir-ee. But you think I’m hogging this money to myself and not giving value received. That’s where you’re away off. It’s straight as a string, bargain and sale, cash down, money paid, got the tin, signed, sealed and delivered, witness my hand, and everybody satisfied, ’specially P. Maguire, Esquire. It’s just like this. I don’t charge ’em nothing for my valuable services, nary a red. But I make a little on a deal, as we all do. I buy eleven votes for one dollar apiece, market price, no dickering, cash paid, goods delivered and no questions asked. Them votes is mine, but I’ve no particular use for ’em. I’m buying to sell again, same’s any respectable merchant.

“All right; I look round for a market, I charge five dollars apiece for my stock, and it can’t be bought cheaper, for I’ve got a corner on the market. All right; money is turned over, and to-morrow I turn over the goods. Everybody’s satisfied, and the goose hangs high. What could be honester than that? Honest! Well I should smile! That’s just my weak point. Why, what would a dishonest man have done? He would have pocketed the whole fifty-five dollars, jumped his board bill, skipped by the light of the moon, and it would have been ‘good-bye, John.’ Nobody could have said a durned word, except your father for me boarding free. Yes, sir, I could have come right back here and nobody dared’ve put a hand on me, for they know what the money’s subscribed for. But I’m an honest man, and I’m losing just twenty-one dollars by it; there’s eleven dollars for the voters and ten dollars for my board bill. I’m not such a fool as to say ‘honesty’s the best policy’ when you lose twenty-one dollars by it, but that’s me every time. I’m a square man, I am, and I give you notice, Lottie, I’m coming back to this here district, and I want to come back with a clean conscience and have people glad to see me. I’m not jumping no board bills this trip. No, sir.”

During this enunciation of principle there was, at times, a suggestion of pathos in the tones of the speaker’s voice, alternating with the reverberation of that earnest indignation which comes upon a man unjustly censured. Few of us submit patiently to the accusation of the lack of some quality on whose possession we pride ourselves.

“You have no right to the money,” persisted the girl with a woman’s perverse ignoring of the inevitableness of logic.

“Then who has?”

“I don’t know. It should be used as it was intended to be used, and if there is any left over that should be given back to those who subscribed it.”

“Well of all the—Now, if that doesn’t beat the Dutch! That gets me right where I live! Used as was intended? My stars, if it is and the government finds it out, then them that subscribed will go to state prison where they belong. Used as—my land o’ Goshen—to buy votes! To bribe hard-working men to vote against their consciences, so that the schemes of these plotters will come out all right! And me—here I’ve been a-working like a dozen niggers for nearly two weeks, neglecting my own business, and now it don’t none of it belong to me! I’m to tramp my half-soles off, talk till I need a carload of lozenges to get my throat smooth again, slave early and late, and then they’re to say, ‘We’re much obliged, Maguire; you can go to grass now we’re through with you.’ And what those honest farmers want me to do, and expect me to do for nothing, is a crime against the law that men are put in jail for.”

“Then you shouldn’t do it.”

“It’s easy to say that, but what would they think of me going back on them at the last moment? I’d be a fine kind of a sneak, wouldn’t I?”

“Better that than do wrong.”

“But it isn’t really wrong; it’s against the law, that’s all. It’s done every day at every election in the country more or less, gen’lly more, I guess.”

“That doesn’t make it right. You should give back the money.”

“What would your father say?”

“What could he say? I’m sure he didn’t know the money was to be used to commit a crime.”

“But I tell you people don’t look at it that way. He doesn’t, neither does any other sensible man. You’ve got to do this sort of thing or get beat.”

“Well, let them get beaten. That doesn’t matter, but the other does.”

“I’ve gone too far now. I can’t go back on them.”

“If you have, then don’t return here, either now or at any other time.”

“Say, Lottie, you don’t mean that. You’re just angry, that’s all. When you come to think over it you’ll see how unreasonable you are.”

The girl remained silent, and Maguire pushed back his chair and slowly gathered up the money that was on the table.

“Won’t you give that ten dollars to your mother?”

Lottie shook her head; her eyes were moist, but she looked unflinchingly at him as if to read his ultimate purpose.

“All right, then; I’ll give it to her myself.”

“We ain’t going to charge you anything for your board. I told you we didn’t keep a boarding-house.”

Lottie was determined to leave him no escape from doing what she thought was right. Maguire, with bent head, seemed to be marking time. He separated the silver from the paper somewhat aimlessly, and rolling up the bills slipped them into one pocket. He counted the silver once or twice, then shovelled it into another pocket. The ten single-dollar notes were still on the table, and he ran each through his fingers carefully, pulled himself together, raised his head suddenly, then said sharply:

“You won’t take them?”

“No.”

“All right.”

He pulled out the roll he had placed in his pocket, the girl watching him intently, and selected a dollar bill from the wad which he placed with the ten dollars, making the total eleven dollars, the exact amount needed to bribe the free and independent electors, as the girl noted. These he put in a vest pocket, and the rest he returned to their former resting-place.

“Good-bye,” he said, holding out his hand.

“Good-bye,” she replied, with a catch in her voice, her hands behind her back, as she had been taught to hold them at school, and there they remained.

Maguire paused a moment with outstretched hand untaken, then turned sharply on his heel and went out, closing the door with no gentle pull behind him, leaving the girl motionless in the centre of the room.