Rope Part 9

THEODORE MIX CHOSEN TO MANAGE CAMPAIGN OF LEAGUE

Pledges Enforcement of City Ordinances to the Letter

His first reaction was one of bewilderment, and after that, one of consternation. His friend Bob Standish tried to laugh it off for him, but Henry hadn't a smile in his system.

"All right, then," said Bob Standish. "Go see the judge. He'll tell you the same thing. Mix's nothing but a bag of wind. He's an old blowhard."

"Maybe he is," conceded Henry, soberly. "But I'd be just as satisfied about it if he blew in some other direction."

Henry took the paper to Judge Barklay, who had already seen it, and made his own deductions. "Oh, no," he said, "I'm not astonished. When a man's in hot enough water, he'll cut up almost any kind of caper to get out. There's only two kinds of people who ever go into these radical movements--great successes and great failures. Never any _average_ folks. I'd say it's a pretty good refuge for him, and you drove him to it."

"Well--does he mean what he says there?"

"Not too much of it. How could he? If he does half he says he will, he'll lose his job. The town would be as pure as Utopia, and there wouldn't be any League."

"How about the ordinance he quotes, though?"

"Oh, _that_ ... it's Ordinance 147. It's so old it's toothless. The City Council doesn't quite dare to repeal it--n.o.body's sure enough, these days, to get up and take a chance--but they don't want it enforced, and they haven't for ages."

Henry frowned. "That's all right. But suppose they did arrest somebody under that Ordinance? What would you do?"

"Fine 'em, of course. I'd have to. But I've never had such a case that I can remember. There haven't been any arrests. It's an understood thing."

"Yes, that's fine--as long as everybody understands it the same way.

But maybe Mix doesn't--or Aunt Mirabelle either."

"Oh, I shouldn't worry much."

Henry continued serious. "Oh, I guess I can sleep nights all right without any paregoric, but what right have _they_ got to b.u.t.t into the only day of recreation the working people have? If their immortal souls hurt 'em as much as all that, why don't they go off and suffer where they can do it in peace and not bother _us_?"

The Judge laughed quietly. "Whence all this sudden affection for the working man, Henry?"

Henry reddened. "Strictly between the two of us, I don't like the idea of Sunday business, anyway. But unfortunately, that's the big day....

But, if _you_ had to work indoors, eight hours a day, six days a week, maybe you'd be satisfied to spend Sundays picking sweet violets out by the barge ca.n.a.l, but what would you do when it rained?"

"Of course," admitted the Judge, "it's a poor policy to have a law on the books, and ignore it. Both of us must admit that. A good law ought to be kept; a bad one ought to be repealed; but any law that _is_ valid oughtn't to be winked at. And if pressure _should_ be brought on the Mayor to enforce that ordinance, and any arrests are made, why I'll have to do my duty."

"Yes--and here I'm raising a mortgage and spending the money on improvements that'll hold us up for more than two weeks--and here Anna and I are going to live in a couple of box-stalls (every time you take a long breath in that flat you create a vacuum!)--and here I've been going to the City Commercial School every afternoon for two solid hours, and studying like a dog every night--and here I've resigned from the Golf Club, and everything else but the Citizens--and if they _do_ put the kibosh on Sunday shows, why I'll be elected to the Hohenzollern Club. And the cream of _that_ joke is that Aunt Mirabelle's outfit'd get itself endowed for putting me out of commission!"

"They won't do it, Henry. These organizations always make the same mistake. They go too far. They aren't talking reform; they're talking revolution, and people won't stand for it. These reform crowds always start out to be a band-wagon, and if they kept their senses, they could do some real good--and then they march so fast that pretty soon they find they've winded everybody else, and there isn't any parade.

All they need is rope. Give 'em enough of it, and they always hang themselves. That speech of Mix's has done more harm to the League than it has good. You go right ahead with your improvements."

In view of the Judge's official position, this was in the nature of an opinion from headquarters; and yet Henry delayed for a day or two before he signed his contract for the alterations. In the meantime, he saw Mr. Archer and got an interpretation of the will; Mr. Archer was sorry, but if Sundays were ruled out, there was no provision for reducing the quota, and Henry would have to stand or fall on the exact phraseology. He had another session with the Judge, and three a day with Anna, and one with the largest exhibitor in town (who pooh-poohed the League, and offered to back up his pooh-poohs with a cash bet that nothing would ever come of it) and eventually he was persuaded to execute the contract.

Through Bob Standish, he negotiated a mortgage which would cover the cost of the work, and leave a comfortable balance. "We're not going to be as poor as I thought we were," he said cheerfully to Anna who had put in two hectic weeks on the apartment she had chosen because it was the cheapest in the market. "We've got something in the bank for emergencies, and ten thousand a year is two hundred a week besides."

Anna was horrified. "You didn't think we'd _spend_ what we make, did you?"

"Why not? Uncle John didn't say we had to show them ten thousand in coin at the end of the year; he said I had to _make_ it--on the books.

We can spend every kopeck of it, if we want to. And I was about to say that with six thousand dollars left over from the mortgage money, we'll have a maid after all. Yea, verily, even a cook."

Anna glanced at her hands--slim, beautiful hands they were--and shook her head obstinately. "No, dear. Because what we save now _might_ be our only capital later."

"But we're going to _win_. We're going to exert our resistless wills to the utmost. What's the use of being tightwads?"

"But if we _shouldn't_ win, look where we'd be! No, dear, we're going to save our pennies. That's why I picked out this apartment; that's why I'm doing as much as I can with it myself. It's the only safe way.

And just look around--haven't I done wonders with almost nothing at all?"

Henry looked around, not that his memory was at fault, but because he was perpetually dumbfounded by her genius. Originally, this living-room had been a dolorous cave with varnished yellow-pine woodwork, gas-logs, yellow wall-paper to induce toothache, and a stark chandelier with two anemic legs kicking out at vacancy. She had caused the Orpheum electrician to remove the chandelier; with her own hands, she had painted the woodwork a deep, rich cream-colour; she had ripped out the gas-logs and found what no one had ever suspected--a practicable flue; and she had put in a basket grate which in the later season would glow with cheerful coals. Over the wall-paper she had laid a tint which was a somewhat deeper cream than the woodwork. She had made that cave attractive with a soft, dull-blue rug, and wicker furniture, with hangings of cretonne in sunny gold and an echo of the blue rug, with bra.s.s bowls which held the bulbs she had tended on the kitchen window-sill, with bookshelves, and pictures from her own home.

Especially by candle-light, it was charming; and her greatest joy, and Henry's unending marvel, was that it had cost so little, and that so much of it was her own handiwork.

"Yes, but pause and reflect a minute," said Henry. "I've sold the big car and bought a tin-plated runabout. I've sold my horse. I've sold ten tons of old clothes and priceless jewels. Financially speaking, I'm as liquid as a pellucid pool in a primeval forest. And there's another grand thing to consider; I'm keeping my own books, so n.o.body's going to crack the till, the way they did with grandfather.

Can't we even have a _cook_?"

"No, dear. n.o.body but me. We've got to play safe. It's all part of the game. Don't you see it is?"

Eventually, he agreed with her, and went back to the Orpheum, where a score of workmen were busy remodelling the interior, and patching up the facade. He stood for a moment to watch the loading of a truck with broken-seats, jig-saw decorations, and the remains of a battered old projector; he looked up, presently to the huge sign over the entrance: "Closed During Alterations, Grand Opening Sunday Afternoon, August 20th. Souvenirs." There was no disputing the fact that all his eggs were in one basket, and that if the Reform League started to throw stones at it, they would find it a broad mark. But Henry had plenty of a.s.surances that he didn't need to worry, and so he sponged away the last of his doubts, and set to work to learn his business with all possible speed.

It was his first experience with the building trades, and he was innocent enough to believe in schedules and estimates. In less than a fortnight, however, he came home to his wife in a mood which she was quick to detect, no matter how carefully he disguised it.

"Oh, I'm just peevish," said Henry. "The contractor says it'll take four weeks instead of three, and cost six thousand instead of forty-five hundred. But there's no use wearing a long face about it.

If I did, I didn't mean to."

Anna slipped out of her big ap.r.o.n, and rearranged her hair. "Of course you didn't. I just knew."

"As a matter of fact," he said, "my face feels long enough to fit in a churn. Only I was under the impression that I'd put on a mask of gaiety that was absolutely impenetrable.... Well, what's happened in the ancestral home today?"

She had burned a steak and both thumbs; there was a leak in the plumbing, and the family overhead had four children and a phonograph.

Henry kissed the thumbs, cursed the kitchen range, and forgot his troubles.

"You're going to ruin your hands," he said, sympathetically. "Darn it, we _can_ afford a cook, Anna. Come on; be reasonable."

She shook her head. "Oh! And I meant to tell you the wall-paper's peeling off in the dining room, and the most _awful_ smell of fried onions keeps coming up the dumb-waiter shaft."

Henry gathered her into his arms. "Dearest, in a year you can have a dipperful of attar of roses for every fried onion. And we'll be so rich you can mingle practically on equal terms with the plumber's wife.... Now let's go put on the feed-bag. And by the way, I prefer my steak slightly burned--it's more antiseptic."

He never suspected that ninety-nine percent of her difficulties were imaginary, and that she had invented them as soon as she saw his face.

A week later, the contractor brought in still another schedule, and another estimate; Henry became Chesterfieldian in his politeness, and wanted to know if a contract were a contract, or merely a piece of light literature. The contractor was apologetic, but wages were going up--materials were high--labour was scarce--transportation was uncertain--shipments were slow--

Henry was angry and disillusioned, but he knew that belligerence would gain him nothing. "In other words," he said, genially, "there's something the matter with everything but the Orpheum, and everybody but me. I congratulate myself. Well, when I do get the job finished, and what does it cost--not to a minute and a fraction of a cent, of course, but a general idea--what year, and--"

"Mr. Devereux!"

"And a guess that's within say, a couple of thousand dollars of the real price."

"I hope you don't think _I_'m making any big profit out of this. To tell the truth--"

"Oh, _I_ know," said Henry. "You're losing money. Don't deny it, you eleemosynary rascal, don't deny it."