The Co-Citizens Part 3

If the entire Republican party----"

"Listen to me, John Regis! Women are not parties. They are always factions, little, little factions, the one working against the other, because they have no really important issue at stake. Now, my arbor-vitae trees----"

The door opened and a young girl stood upon the threshold hesitating, as if she was not sure she was in the right place.

She was very tall, one of those cool, gray-eyed, ivory-skinned brunettes who always remind the beholder of white lilies blooming in the dark. Her lips were full, faintly pinkly purple, and affirmative, not beseeching.

She stood with one hand upon the k.n.o.b behind her, bent a little forward, the skirt of her white dress blown by the wind through the door, her eyes showing almost black beneath the brim of her white hat.

"Selah! Is it for you we've been waiting?" This from Mrs. Walton.

"Come, Selah, you are almost late! That would have been a bad beginning," said the Judge, rising, taking her hand and leading her to a chair.

"You sent for me?" the girl said, as if there might still be some mistake about that.

"Yes, yes! Sit down!"

"Mercy on us! What does the man mean? Do you know what he means, Selah, sending for the oldest and ugliest and the youngest and fairest woman in Jordantown to meet him in his office at this outrageous hour of the afternoon?"

"How do you do, Mrs. Walton?" Selah greeted.

"I don't do at all, my dear; I'm tired of doing. I should be taking my nap!"

For a moment after Selah Adams disappeared into Judge Regis's office the hall outside was silent, a gloomy tunnel between gray walls with a square light from the window at the end above the staircase. Then a singular thing happened: the ground-gla.s.s door at which Susan had stared with so much contempt opened very softly as if Silence himself was behind it. The enormous head and face of a man appeared. His features were concealed in fat, his nose merely protruded, a red k.n.o.b with nostrils in the end; his mouth was wide, sucked in above a great chin covered with short black stubble; his jowls hung down, the back of his neck rolled up, and the hair upon it stuck out like bristles.

He looked up and down the hall, listened. He opened the door wide, but very softly, and came through it tiptoeing, a huge figure, almost shapeless in its monstrous rotundity. He moved with astonishing swiftness to the staircase, looked down, then fixed his black eyes with a kind of animal ferocity upon the closed door of the Judge's office until he reached it, and laid one of his little red ears to the keyhole.

If we were permitted to observe any man or woman of our acquaintance when that person supposed himself or herself to be absolutely alone, we should be astonished and often horrified at the unconscious revelations we would receive. The woman with the Madonna face may unmask and show the lineaments of a common shrew in her chamber. And the virago may soften into the gentleness of a saint as she gives way to the penitence of her own thoughts. The dignified man with the air of virtue and authority might show himself as a nimble-motioned rascal, timid and furtive, if he believed only G.o.d saw him. Not one of us ever acts absolutely true to what we know we are except when the door between us and every other man is closed. It is barely possible that sometimes in the presence of a very young child we do play the role, but never before any other creature, however near, neither wife nor husband nor friend.

It is the nature of the human to act before the footlights of the world even in the broad open day, and even if there is no one to witness the performance but a beggar who never saw him before and never will see him again. It is only when he is alone that the best man does not practise at least the deceit of conceit, or cast himself for some other part in the _play of man_.

Mike Prim was alone. He was known as a jolly, blarney-tongued, slovenly wit, who for a consideration managed the political affairs of Jordantown and the county in a manner which was agreeable to the "deities" already mentioned, who were not willing to do all the things in this business that must be done. He was accustomed to call himself the "servant of the people." And naturally they paid for his services. He managed campaign funds and manipulated election returns in a manner which was highly satisfactory. In short, he was a fat, good fellow, elastic morally, but a good fellow, popular with men, and never introduced to women. This was the role he played in the town.

But now, with his ear glued to the keyhole of the Judge's door, he was not on the boards. He was behind the scenes acting according to the laws which governed his nature. And judged by the changes in his expression as he listened, one must have inferred that his personal standards were savage beyond belief. At first he showed only amus.e.m.e.nt, as if presently he might snort with mirth. His mouth worked like a worm, stretching in a grin, then a sneer. But when at last the three-cornered conversation within ended and the Judge's voice alone reached him, his whole body seemed to stiffen. He clenched his fat fists. Amazement fled before rage upon that furious face, perspiration streamed from every pore. His eyes shot this way and that like black bullets. No other man in the world can become so infuriated as the coward, for the brave man knows that he can satisfy his anger. He reserves it as a force to use in vengeance. He is temperate in that. But the worm-soul, which must crawl and be satisfied with merely stinging the heel of his enemy, knows no such temperance. He is the victim of his impotent fury.

Mike Prim was such a worm now, and it seemed that he must be consumed.

He was a hideous conflagration flaming against the door of the Judge's office, scarcely touching it with his huge bulk, his mind leaping to seize upon every sound from within.

Suddenly, without taking time to stand erect, he sprang back and fled, his legs working like those of an enormous cat, with noiseless swiftness. His door closed as gently as a feather blown in the wind, and the next moment Prim had seized his 'phone.

"Two-five-six! yes, Acres's store! What? Not in? Well, d.a.m.n him!" he muttered, as he rattled the receiver and began again.

"Give me the National Bank, Central! What? The number? You know the number! yes, five-two-four! What? Bank closed? I don't give a hang if it is. Coleman's in his office. Saw him there myself."

During the next hour Mr. Michael Prim called the telephone number of every prominent citizen in Jordantown. Treason was abroad in the air, much treason, that was conducted by Prim. And something akin to treason apparently was still going on in the Judge's office.

Meanwhile the streets of the town had taken on a lighter, more frivolous aspect. Prettily dressed women were mincing along the pavements, their parasols bobbing up and down like variegated mushrooms. They bowed, smiled coquettishly at the men. The men swept off their hats and smirked. All of them were lovers after the manner of lovers in the South. That is to say, they adored all women, and these ladies were accustomed to being loved after the manner of Southern women. They lived for that, nothing else. Pretty goods, expensive goods, and nice, virtuous little baggages. Speculators in love, but not deliberate moral beings. They had nice consciences, easily satisfied. They had nice minds, easily blinded. Some of them were little termagants, all the dearer for that to men who like to conquer the shrew in a woman, if they do not have to do it too often. Besides, these little doll ladies were public spirited. They did dainty things about town, and they were charming while they were doing them. At this very moment they were on their way to the Woman's Civic League and Cemetery a.s.sociation, which was meeting with Mabel Acres, who was the wife of the most prominent merchant in the town, and by the same token she always served the most expensive refreshments. Not a single one of them as they pa.s.sed beneath the windows of the National Bank Building would or could have believed that her whole nature and att.i.tude toward man was to be changed before night.

Susan Walton, strangely excited and enhanced, now happened to glance through the window, and the sight of the fluttering feminine pageant below reminded her of something.

"Come, Selah!" she exclaimed, rising with unexpected alacrity. "We are due at the Civic League and Cemetery a.s.sociation, and we have work to do there!"

"If I'm not mistaken in your expression, Susan, this will be the last meeting of that organization," said the Judge.

"I'm hopeful that it is. The women in this town only want something to do. And we've got it at last, if only we can make them see it!" she said, as she pa.s.sed through the door which he held open for her, accompanied by Selah, who wore the half-baptized look of a vague young soul still in doubt.

"Not a word about her arbor-vitae trees," said the Judge as he returned to his desk. "I doubt if they'll ever be mentioned again. The weeds will take the cemetery, and the women will stop fussing about clean cuspidors in the courthouse. But what a din we shall have in this town when they really get going. Well, G.o.d help us, it had to come! They are no longer one flesh with us."

A town without women in the streets is like a meadow without flowers, a bay tree without leaves, like the air without the wings of birds in it and the sweet sounds they make there about their feathers and affairs.

Now since four o'clock not a woman had been seen on the streets of Jordantown, if one excepted an occasional bandanna-headed negress. Not a fan had been purchased, not a paper of pins, nor a yard of lace. Trade languished. n.o.body knew yet what was wrong, but every man on the square missed something. They thought they were still worried about the Mosely will, and they were. But over and above that they had a sense of not being entirely present. For a man to be sufficiently conscious of himself, there must always be the possibility of a woman in sight before whom he may magnify himself at least in his own imagination. The Jordantown Square citizens lacked this mirror. They wandered from corner to corner expecting to find it, to see somewhere near or far the flutter of a woman's skirt, the sky of a woman's eyes. But they did not know that this was what they were after. Each one pretended to himself that he was looking for another man. And when two of them met, they went on to the next corner together, both looking for some one else. Then they separated, excused themselves, each hurrying in the opposite direction.

The afternoon pa.s.sed. Clerks were idle; they stood in doorways looking up and down the street. Prominent citizens left their chairs beneath the courthouse awning to avoid other prominent citizens whom they saw approaching. Still they could not avoid one another.

"Any news?" asked Acres of Coleman, whom he met coming out of the courthouse.

"Not a thing. Clerk says no will has been probated there to-day. Briggs was right. There isn't any. He thinks the court will appoint him administrator."

"And he looks his thought," sneered Acres; "been strutting around all the afternoon, swelled fit to burst."

"Well, he may, n.o.body can tell. See you later," said Coleman, hastening his steps.

"Wait! hold on! I thought you were going in my direction. I wanted to ask you something," exclaimed Acres, detaining him.

"No, I'm going back to the bank. What?"

"Have you seen Mike?"

"Yes, just from his office. Sent for me. No, he says he's in the dark, too," answered Coleman, still struggling against this companionship.

"He's always in the dark. Would be if he knew all about it," Acres grumbled.

At this moment the huge amorphous figure of a man emerged sidewise from the staircase of the National Bank Building. He looked back up the stairs, shot a glance up and down the street, then he moved like a blur around the corner into the darkening shadows. This was a habit he had which the innocent people of the town had not sufficient experience to interpret. He never started forth without looking both ways. He never walked any distance without looking back over his shoulder.

"That's Mike now!" exclaimed Acres. "Not a dollar in his pocket, and he owns this town."

"Yes, he has got dollars in his pocket, plenty of 'em. He's been collecting for the campaign fund this afternoon--quarterage you know!"

sneered Coleman, who had just paid his.

"Aims to be the next mayor, doesn't he?"

"No, worse than that: he's going to be representative from this county in the next legislature!"

"Bob Sasnett will have something to say about that. He told me to-day he might run. That means he will."

"Well, he hasn't got anything else to do. He's the only man in town who is independent of Mike. He can furnish his own campaign fund. Good night!" said Coleman, determined to be gone this time.

"Wonder what's the matter with Coleman," muttered Acres, hurrying to meet Carter, the editor of the _Signal_, only to see him vanish into the drugstore. "Wonder what's the matter with everybody. h.e.l.lo, Colonel Adams, that you?"