The Sturdy Oak Part 36

"Mr. Remington, you here!" she cried in amazement as he strode toward her. "What--what do you want?"

"I want--I want--" gasped George. But instead of finishing his sentence he elbowed Mrs. Herrington out of the way, shoved past her, and stepped forth in front of the Voiceless Speech. There, standing in the frame of jagged plate-gla.s.s, upon what was equivalent to a platform raised above the crowd, he sent forth a speech which had a voice. "Ladies and gentlemen!" he called, raising an imperative hand. The uproar subsided to numerous exclamations, then to surprised silence; even Noonan's men checked their disorder at this appearance of their party's candidate.

"Ladies and gentlemen," and this Voiceful Speech was loud,--"I'm here to answer the questions of this contrivance behind me. But first let me tell you that though I'm on the ballot as the candidate of the Republican party, I do not want the backing of the Republican machine.

I'm running as an Independent, and I shall act as an Independent.

"Here are my answers:

"I want to tell you that I shall enforce all the factory laws.

"I want to tell you that I shall enforce the laws governing housing conditions--particularly housing conditions in the factory district.

"I want to tell you that I shall enforce the laws governing child labor and the laws governing the labor of women.

"And I want to tell you that I shall enforce every other law, and shall try to secure the pa.s.sage of further laws, which will make Whitewater a clean, forward-looking city, whose first consideration shall be the welfare of all.

"And, ladies and gentlemen--" he shouted, for the hushed voices had begun to rise--"I wish I could address you all as fellow-voters!--I want to tell you that I take back that foolish statement I made at the opening of the campaign.

"I want to tell you that I stand for, and shall fight for, equal suffrage!

"And I want to tell you that what has brought this change is what some of the women of White-water have shown me--and also some of the things our men politicians have done--our Doolittles, our Noonans----"

But George's speech terminated right there. Noise there had been before; now there burst out an uproar, and there came an artillery attack of eggs, vegetables, stones and bricks. One of the bricks struck George on the shoulder and drove him staggering back against the Voiceless Speech, sending that instrument of silent argument crashing to the floor.

Regaining his balance, George started furiously back for the window; but Mrs. Herrington caught his arm.

"Let me go!" he called, trying to shake her off.

But she held on. "Don't--you've said enough!" she cried, and pulled him toward the rear of the room. "Look!"

Through the window was coming a heavier fire of impromptu grenades that rolled, spent, at their feet. But what they saw without was far more stirring and important. Noonan's men in the crowd, their hoodlumism now unleashed, were bowling over the people about them; but these really const.i.tuted Noonan's outposts and advance guards.

From out of two side streets, though George and Mrs. Herrington could not see their first appearance upon the scene, Noonan's real army now came charging into Main Street, as per that gentleman's grim instructions to "show them messin' women what it means to mess in politics." Hundreds of Whitewater's women were flung about, many sent sprawling to the pavement, and some hundreds of the city's most respectable voters, caught unawares, were hustled about and knocked down by the same ruthless drive.

"My G.o.d!" cried George, impulsively starting forward. "The d.a.m.ned brutes!"

But Mrs. Herrington still held his arm. "Come on--they're making a drive for this office!" breathlessly cried the quick-minded lady. "You can do no good here. Out the rear way--my car's waiting in the back street."

Still clutching his sleeve, Mrs. Herrington opened a door and ran across the back yard of McMonigal's building in a manner which indicated that that lady had not spent her college years (and similarly spent the years since then propped among embroidered cushions consuming marshmallows and fudge.)

The lot crossed, she hurried through a little grocery and thence into the street. Here they ran into a party that, seeing the riot on Main Street and the drive upon the window from which George had spoken, had rushed up reinforcements from the rear--a party consisting of Penny, E. Eliot, Betty Sheridan and Genevieve. "Genevieve!" cried George, and caught her into his arms.

"Oh, George," she choked. "I--I heard it all--and it--it was simply wonderful!"

"George," cried Betty Sheridan, "I always knew, if you got the right kind of a jolt, you'd be--you'd be what you are!"

E. Eliot gripped his hand in a clasp almost as strong as George's arm.

"Mr. Remington, if I were a man, I'd like to have the same sort of stuff in me."

"George, you old roughneck--" began Penny.

"George," interrupted Genevieve, still chokingly, her protective, wifely instinct now at the fore, "I saw you hit, and we're going to take you straight home----"

"Cut it all out," interrupted the cultured Mrs. Herrington. "This isn't Mr. Remington's honeymoon--nor his college reunion--nor the annual convention of his maiden aunts. This is Mr. Remington's campaign, and I'm his new campaign manager. And his campaign manager says he's not going away out to his home on Sheridan Road. His campaign headquarters are going to be in the center of town, at the Commercial Hotel, where he can be reached--for there's quick work ahead of us. Come on."

Five minutes later they were all in the Commercial Hotel's best suite.

"Now, to business, Mr. Remington," briskly began Mrs. Herrington. "Of course, that was a good speech. But why, in heaven's name, didn't you come out with it before?"

"I guess I really didn't know where I stood until today," confessed George, "and today I tried to come out with it."

And George went on to recount his experience with the _Sentinel_--his scene with Doolittle--and Doolittle's plan for an extra of the Sentinel, which was doubtless then in preparation.

"So they've got the _Sentinel_ muzzled, have they--and are going to get out an extra repudiating you," Mrs. Herrington repeated. There came a flash into her quick, dark eyes. "I want our candidate to stay right here--rest up--get his thoughts in order. There are a lot of things to be done. I'll be back in an hour, Mr. Remington. The rest of you come along--you, too, Mrs. Remington."

Mrs. Herrington did not altogether keep her word in the matter of time.

It was two hours before she was back. To George she handed a bundle of papers, remarking: "Thought you'd like to see that _Sentinel_ extra."

"I suppose Doolittle has done his worst," he remarked grimly. He glanced at the paper. His face went loose with bewilderment at what he saw--headlines, big black headlines, bigger and blacker than he had ever before seen in the politically and typographically conservative _Sentinel_. He read through a few lines of print, then looked up.

"Why, it's all here!" he gasped. "The kidnapping of Miss Eliot and Genevieve by Noonan's men--my break with Doolittle, my denunciation of the party's methods, my coming out as an independent candidate--that riot on Main Street! How on earth did that ever get into the _Sentinel_?"

"Some straight talk, and quick talk, and the exercise of a little of the art of pressure they say you men exercise," was the prompt reply.

"I telephoned Mr. Ledbetter of the _Sentinel_ advising him to hold the extra Mr. Doolittle had threatened until he heard from Mr. Wesley Norton, proprietor of the Norton Dry Goods Store. You know, Mr. Norton is the _Sentinel_'s largest single advertiser and president of the Whitewater Business Men's Club.

"Then a committee of us women called on Mr. Norton and told him that we'd organize the women of the city and would carry on a boycott campaign against his store--we didn't really put it quite as crudely as that--unless he'd force the _Sentinel_ to stop Mr. Doolittle's lying extra and print your statement.

"Mr. Norton gave in, and telephoned the _Sentinel_ that if it didn't do as he said he'd cancel his advertising contract. Then, to make sure, we got hold of Mr. Jaffry, called on Mr. Ledbetter, who called in the business manager--and your Uncle Martin told them that unless they printed the truth, and every bit of it, and printed it at once, he was going to put up the money to start an opposition paper that _would print the truth_. That explains the extra 'Well'," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed George, still staring, "you certainly are a wonder as a campaign manager!"

"Oh, I only did my fraction. That Miss Eliot did as much as I--she's a find--she's going to be one of Whitewater's really big women. And Betty Sheridan, you can't guess how Betty's worked--and your wife, Mr.

Remington, she's turning out to be a marvel!

"But that's not all," Mrs. Herrington continued rapidly. "We bought ten thousand copies of that extra for ourselves--your uncle paid for them--and we're going to distribute them in every home in town. When the best element in Whitewater read how the women were trampled down by Noonan's mob--well, they'll know how to vote! Mr. Noonan will never guess how much he has helped us."

"You seem to have left nothing for me to do," said George.

"You'll find out there'll be all you'll want," replied the brisk Mrs.

Herrington. "We're organizing meetings--one in every hall in the city, one on almost every other street corner, and we're going to rush you from one to the next--most of the night--and there'll be no letup for you tomorrow, even if it is election day. Yes, you'll find there'll be plenty to do!"

The next twenty-four hours were the busiest that George Remington had ever known in his twenty-six years.

But at nine o'clock the next evening it was over--the tumult and the shouting and the congratulations--and all were gone save only Martin Jaffry; and District-Attorney-Elect Remington sat in his hotel suite alone in the bosom of his family.

He was still dazed by what had happened to him--at the part he had unexpectedly played--dazed by the intense but well-ordered activity of the women: their management of his whirlwind tour of the city; their organization of parades with amazing swiftness; their rapid and complete house-to-house canva.s.s--the work of Mrs. Herrington, of Betty, of that Miss Eliot, of hundreds of women--and especially of Genevieve.

He marveled especially at Genevieve because he had never thought of Genevieve as doing such things. But she _had_ done them--he felt that somehow she was a different Genevieve: he didn't know what the difference was--he was in too much of a whirl for a.n.a.lysis--but he had an undefined sense of _aliveness_, of a spirited, joyous initiative in her.

She and all the rest seemed so strange as to be unbelievable. And yet, she--and all of it--true!...

From dramatic events and intangible qualities of the spirit, his consciousness shifted to material things--his immediate surroundings.