All-Wool Morrison - Holman Day (sad books to read txt) 📗

on him! Let him go!" commanded one of the searchers.
The man who came forcing his way through the press, his clinched fists waving over his head, was young, pallid, typically an academic devotee of radicalism, a frenetic disciple, obsessed by _furor loquendi_ He was calling to the mob, trying to rouse followers. "You have been standing here, freezing in the night, damning tyrants, boasting what you would do. Why don't you do it? Do you let a smirking ruler bluff all the courage of real men out of you? He's only doing the bidding of those higher up. He admits it! He's a tool, too! He's a fool, along with you, if he tries to excuse tyranny. You have your chance, now, and all the provocation that honest men need. The rulers tried to scare you with guns. But you have called the bluff. Their hired soldiers have run away. Now is your time! Take your government into your hands! Down with aristocrats! Smash 'em like we smash their windows. They hold up an idol and ask you to bow down and be slaves to it; but you're only bowing to the drivers of slaves! They hide behind that idol and work it for all it's worth. They point to it and tell you that you must empty your pockets to add to their wealth, and work your fingers off for their selfish ends."
He halted a short distance from the plinth, declaiming furiously.
Morrison broke in, snapping out his words. "Down to cases, now! What is the idol?"
"A patchwork of red, white, and blue rags!"
Morrison whirled, crouched on his hands and knees, set his fingers on the edge of the plinth, and slid down the side. He swung for an instant at the end of his arms and dropped the rest of the way to the pavement.
Lanigan had started for the man, but Stewart overtook the commander, seized him by the collar and coattail slack, and tossed him to one side.
"Here's a case at last where I don't need any help or advice from you, Joe!"
"Punch the face offn him!" adjured Lanigan, even while he was floundering among the legs of the men against whom he had been thrown.
The mayor plunged through the crowd in the direction of the vilifier.
The man did not attempt to escape. "Strike me! Strike me down. I offer myself for my cause to shame these cowards!"
But Morrison did not use his fists, though Lanigan continued to exhort.
"There are altogether too many of you would-be martyrs around this city to-night. I can't accommodate you all!" Stewart made the same tackle he had used in the case of Lanigan and Spanish-walked his captive back toward the _porte-cochère_.
"I reckon I do need your help, after all, Joe!" confessed Morrison, noting that Lanigan was on his feet again. "Give me your back and a boost!"
Then the captor suddenly tripped the captive and laid him sprawling at Lanigan's feet; before the fallen man was up, Morrison, using the commander's sturdy shoulders and the thrust of the willing arms of his helper, had swung himself back to the top of the plinth. He kneeled and reached down his hands. "Up with him, Joe! Toss! I won't miss him!"
Lanigan was helped by a comrade in making the toss. Morrison grasped the man and yanked him upright and held him in a firm clutch.
The mayor was receiving plenty of advice from the crowd by that time. The gist of the counsel followed Lanigan's suggestion about punching off the fellow's face. But the mob was by no means unanimous. Men were daring to voice threats against Morrison.
As it had availed before that evening, Morrison's imperturbable silence secured quiet on the part of others.
"The opinion of the meeting seems to be divided," he said. He had recovered his poise along with his breath. "But no matter! I shall not adopt the advice of either side. I shall not let this fellow go until I have finished my business with him. I shall not punch his face off him. I'll not flatter him to that extent. A good American reserves his fists for a man-fight with a real man." He shook the captive, holding him at arm's-length. "Here's a young fool who has been throwing stones at windows. Here's a fresh rowdy who has been sticking out his tongue at authority. I know exactly what he needs!"
"He insulted the flag of this country! Turn him over to the police!" somebody insisted, and a roar of indorsement hailed the demand.
"Citizens, that would be like giving a mongrel cur a court trial for sheep-killing! This perverted infant simply needs--_dingbats!_" He shouted the last word. He twisted the radical off his feet, stooped, and laid the victim across a knee that was as solid as a tree-trunk, and with the flat of a broad hand began to whale the culprit with all his might.
The onlookers were silent for a few moments. Then there was a chorus of jeering approbation.
When the shamed, humiliated, agonized radical--thus made a mark for gibes instead of winning honor as a martyr for the cause--began to wail and plead the men who were nearest the scene of flagellation started to laugh. The laughter spread like a fire through dry brambles. It ran crackling from side to side of the great square. It mounted into higher bursts of merriment. It became hilarity that was expended by a swelling roar that split wide the night silence and came beating back in riotous echoes from the façade of the State House. That amazing method of handling anarchy had snapped the tense strain of a situation which had been holding men's emotions in leash for hours. The ludicrousness of the thing was heightened by the nervous solemnity immediately preceding. Men beat their neighbors on the back in instant comradeship of convulsed, rollicking jubilation.
"Always leave 'em laughing when you say good-by!" Morrison advised the chap whom he was manhandling. He held the fellow over the edge of the plinth by the collar and dropped him, wilted and whimpering, into the waiting arms of the appreciative Lanigan. "Dry his eyes, Joe, and wipe his nose, and see that he gets started for home all right."
Morrison stood straight and secured a hearing after a time. "Boys, those of you who are in the right mind--and I hope all of you are that way now, after a good laugh--I've given you a sample of how to handle the Bolshevist blatherskites when you come across 'em in this country. Look around and if you find any more of 'em in the crowd go ahead and dose 'em with dingbats! Fine remedy for childish folly! I reckon all of us have found out that much for ourselves in the old days. I won't keep you standing in the cold here any longer. Good night!"
He leaped down on to the porch and went into the State House.
General Totten was near the big door.
The men outside were guffawing again.
Morrison was dusting his palms with the air of a man who had finished a rather unpleasant job. "Do you hear 'em, Totten? Sounds better than howls of a crowd bored by machine-gun bullets, eh? How much chance do you think there is of starting a civil war among men who are laughing like that?"


XIX
LANA CORSON HAS HER DOUBTS
The chief of police had distributed his officers to posts of duty and was patrolling the rotunda.
He saluted the mayor when Morrison came hurrying in through the main entrance.
"All is fine, Chief! I thank you for your work. I don't look for anything out of the way, after this. But keep your men on till further orders."
At the foot of the grand stairway Stewart's self-possession left him.
Lana Corson was standing half-way up the stairs. Her furs were thrown back, revealing her festival attire. Her beauty was heightened by the flush on her cheeks and by the vivid animation in her luminous eyes.
He paused for a moment, his gaze meeting hers, and then he hastened to her.
"How did it happen--that you're here, Lana?"
"I'm here--let that be an answer for now. But this, Stewart--this what I have been seeing and hearing! Does it mean what it seems to mean?"
"I'll have to admit that I don't know exactly how it does show up from the side-lines. Suppose you say!"
"I heard you talk to General Totten. I heard you talk to that mob. I saw what you did. But I heard you give all the credit to my father." She searched Stewart's face with more earnest stare. "You have saved the state from disgracing itself, haven't you? Isn't that what you have done--you yourself?"
"Oh, nonsense! Tell me! How did you get in and who came with you?"
"I'm here alone, Stewart, and it's of no importance how I got in. The question I have asked you is the important one just now."
Her insistence was disconcerting; he had not recovered from the astonishment of the sudden meeting; he felt that he ought to lie to that daughter, in the interests of her family pride, but he was conscious of his inability to lie glibly just then.
"Where is your car?"
"Waiting for me in the little park."
"Lana, there'll be no more excitement here--not a bit. Nothing to see! Suppose you allow me to take you to the car. Come!" He put out his arm.
"Certainly not! Not till I see my father! He is in danger!"
"I assure you he is not. I left him with the Governor only a few minutes ago, and the Senator was never better in his life--nor safer!" In spite of his best endeavor to be consolatory and matter-of-fact he was not able to keep a certain significance out of his tone.
From where she stood she could look across the rotunda and down into the square. The glare of the lights made all movements visible. The crowd was melting away.
"Stewart, brains and tact have accomplished wonders here to-night. I want to know all the truth. Why shouldn't you be as candid to me as you seemed to be with those men when you were talking to them? I want to give my gratitude to somebody! The name of our good state has been kept clean. You're not fair to me if you leave me in the dark any longer."
"I did my little bit, that's all! I'm only one of the cogs!"
"I know how I'll make you tell. I propose to give you all the credit. And I never knew you to keep anything that didn't belong to you."
"Now you're not fair yourself, Lana! We just put our heads together--the whole of us--that's all! Put our heads together! You know! As men will!" His stammering eagerness did not satisfy her feminine penetration. Her daughterly interest in the Senator's political standing was stirred as she reflected.
"My father is down here to see that his fences are in good shape," she declared, with true Washington sapience. "I think it was his duty and privilege to step out there and make the speech. I'm surprised because he let such an opportunity slip. With all due respect to the mayor of Marion, you were not at all dignified, Stewart. They laughed at you--and I didn't blame them!"
"I can't blame 'em, either," he confessed. "I--I--I guess I lost my head. I'm not used to making speeches. I have made two since supper, and both of 'em have seemed to stir up a lot of trouble for me."
"I think, myself, that you're rather unfortunate as a speechmaker," she returned, dryly. "I suppose you're going back to report to father. I'll go with you." In her manner there was implied promise that she would proceed to learn