The Tempering Part 31

"Anne," he spoke firmly, but a tremour of feeling crept into his voice, "Mrs. Masters loves you with such a big and single love that it can't reason. Her own sufferings have come from knowing poverty, after she'd taken wealth for granted--so that is the one danger she'll guard against for you. It's an obsession with her. All the other things that might wreck your life--such as marrying a man you didn't love, for instance--she merely waves aside. If a man's been scarred with a knife, he's apt to forget that others have not only been hurt but killed by bullets. My G.o.d, dearest, she'll mean to be kind--but she'll put you on the rack--she'll take you straight through the torture-chamber, in her well-meant and c.o.c.ksure certainty that she can choose for you better than you can choose for yourself."

"I think, Boone," said Anne, with more than a little pride in the rich softness of her voice, "you wouldn't hang back, because you had to come to me through things like that. I'm not afraid of the torture-chamber--it's just that I want to make it as easy for mother as I can."

On the night before the first day of registration Boone was dining at Colonel Wallifarro's house. Mrs. Masters found it difficult to maintain a total concealment of her distrust of the mountain boy. In her own heart she always thought of him as "that young upstart," but her worldly wisdom safeguarded her against the mistaken att.i.tude of open hostility or even of too patronizing a tolerance. That course, she knew, had driven many high-spirited daughters into open revolt. "Make a martyr of him," she told herself with philosophically shrugged shoulders, "and you can convert an ape into a hero."

So after dinner Boone and the girl sat uninterrupted in the fine old drawing-room where the age-ripened Jouett portraits hung, while Morgan and his father went over some papers in the Colonel's study on the second floor.

"Boone," demanded the girl, "what is all this talk about camera squads and inspection parties? I'm afraid Uncle Tom--and you, too--are going to be running greater risks tomorrow than you admit."

He had risen to say good night, but it is not on record that lovers resent delays in their leave-takings.

"At the registration every qualified voter must be enrolled," he told her. "The camera squads have been formed to make rounds of the precincts and take certain pictures."

"Why?"

"Because we have fairly reliable information that the town will be overrun with flying squadrons of imported repeaters--and that the police who should lock them up mean to protect them."

"What are repeaters?" she navely inquired, and he enlightened her out of the treasury of his newly acquired wisdom.

"We believe that hundreds of floating and disreputable fellows have been brought in from other towns and will be registered here as voters. After registering they will disappear as unostentatiously as they came. But meanwhile they will not satisfy themselves with being enrolled once, as the decent citizens must do. They will go from precinct to precinct, using fake addresses and changing names."

He smiled grimly, and then added with inelegant directness:

"We aim to get pictures of some of those birds--for use in court later."

"And the police will hamper you?"

"We don't expect much help from them."

Anne's eyes clouded with apprehension. She laid her hands on the boy's arms. "Boone," she exclaimed, "you know Uncle Tom. In spite of his gentleness, indignation makes him reckless. Will he be armed tomorrow?"

Boone shook his head. His eyes narrowed a little, and his tone indicated personal disagreement with the decision which he repeated:

"No. They've decided that since they're seeking reform they must keep inside both the letter and the spirit of the law. They've advised every one to go unarmed except for heavy walking sticks. Even that has brought a howl of 'attempted intimidation' from the city hall crowd--but I reckon their gangs won't be unheeled."

"Are you going to be armed?"

Boone hesitated, but finally he answered with a trace of the ironic: "I haven't quite made up my mind yet. You see, I learned my politics in the b.l.o.o.d.y hills--though I never carried a gun when I was campaigning there. Here, where it's civilized--I'm not so sure."

"Will you be with Uncle Tom, all the time tomorrow? Will you go everywhere that he goes?" The question was put as an interrogation, but it was an earnest plea as well, and Boone took both her hands in his.

They stood framed in the hall door, he holding her hands close pressed, and her eyes giving him back look for look.

"I'll be with him every minute he'll let me," he declared. "Of course a soldier must obey orders, and he can't choose his station."

It was standing like that with Boone holding Anne's hands, and their faces close together, that Morgan, whose footsteps were soundless on the carpeted stairway, saw them, and it was not a picture to rea.s.sure a rival or to a.s.suage the disdainful anger of a man of Morgan's temperament for one whom he considered an ingrate and a presumptuous upstart.

CHAPTER XXVI

Morgan's teeth closed with a slight click. The sinews of his chest and arms tightened. Such insolence rightfully called for the chastis.e.m.e.nt of cane or dog-whip, he thought, but that was impossible. He might undertake to rebuke Boone openly but could hardly a.s.sume so high-handed a course with Anne--or in her presence. He would nevertheless conduct his own affairs in his own way; so, quietly and with no intimation that he had been a witness to what he construed as an actual embrace, he turned and went back to the stairhead.

From there his voice, raised in a conversational tone to reach his father in the study, carried with equal clarity to the room below.

"Father," he called, "I'll see you in the morning. I have to run down to the office for an hour or so now. I didn't quite finish looking over those latest depositions in the Sweeney case."

After having served that notice of his coming, he strolled casually down the stairs--to overhear nothing more incriminating than Anne's earnest exhortation: "Promise me not to take any foolish chances tomorrow," and Boone's laugh, deprecating the apprehension. Boone held only one hand now.

But Morgan ground his teeth. The young cub had doubtless been trying to capitalize his petty part in the petty political game, he reflected.

That was about the thing one might expect from a youth pitchforked into polite society out of a vermin-infested log cabin, where the women smoked pipes and dipped snuff! But his own bearing was outwardly unruffled as he took down his hat from the old mahogany hall stand.

"Mr. Wellver," he suggested--(he always called Boone Mr. Wellver, because that was his way of indicating his line of aloofness against distasteful intimacy)--"could you come to the office this evening for a while? There's a matter I'd like to talk about."

Boone repressed the flash of surprise which the request brought into his eyes. He knew of no business at the office in which he and Morgan had shared responsibility, and heretofore Morgan had rather resented his partic.i.p.ation in any work more responsible or dignified than that of an office boy or clerk.

"Why, yes," he answered. "I was going home, but of course if it's important, I'll be there."

"I regard it as important."

Boone caught the intimation of threat, but Anne, knowing little of law-office procedure, recognized only what she resentfully considered a peremptory and supercilious note.

Morgan nodded to Anne, and let himself out of the door, and less than an hour later Boone entered the office building, deserted now save for the night watchman, and for scattered suites, here and there, where window lights told of belated clerks toiling over ledgers, or lawyers over briefs.

As the young man from the mountains let himself in through the door that bore the name of his employer's firm, the other man was standing with his back turned and his eyes fixed on some trifle on his desk. The back of a standing figure, no less than its front, may be eloquent of its feelings, and had the shoulder blades of Colonel Wallifarro's gifted son been those of a hairy caveman, instead of an impeccably tailored modern, there would perhaps have been bristles standing erect along his spine.

Wellver saw that warning of ugly mood in the instant before Morgan wheeled, and he wheeled with a military quickness and precision.

"I was a little bit puzzled," said the younger man, meeting the glaring eyes with a coldly steady glance, "at your asking me to come here tonight. I couldn't think of any work we'd been doing together."

"I won't leave you in perplexity long," the wrathful voice of the other a.s.sured him. "I asked you to come because I couldn't well say what needed to be said under my father's roof--while you were a guest there."

"I take it, then, that it's something uncomplimentary?"

"I mean to go further than that."

Boone nodded, but he came a step nearer, and the lids narrowed over his eyes. "Whatever you might feel like saying to me, Mr. Wallifarro," he announced evenly, "would be a thing I reckon I could answer in a like spirit. But because I owe your father so much--that I've got to be mighty guarded--I hope you won't push me too far."

"I haven't the right to say whom my father shall permit in his house,"

declared Morgan with, as yet, a certain remnant of restraint upon his anger, "but I do a.s.sert plainly and categorically that I shan't remain silent under the abuse of that hospitality."

"I'm afraid you're still leaving me in considerable perplexity. I believe you promised not to do that long."

"I'd rather not go into details--and I think you know what I mean. I came down the stairs there a short while ago. You were with Anne--and I didn't like the picture I saw."

"What picture?"