The Landloper - Holman Day (13 inch ebook reader .TXT) 📗

two of them, voices in the wilderness of careless greed, had faced the masters of the city in the _hotel de ville_; "it seems strange that a man--that anybody should take a child and--" She hesitated.
"_Oui_, ma'm'selle, it seemed strange," agreed the old man, studying her with sharp glance of suspicion--a gaze so strange that she shifted her eyes uneasily.
Ah, Etienne told himself, the law sometimes sent queer emissaries to probe for it--and he feared the law very much.
He must be very careful how he told any of the secrets which might trouble his good friend, who was now such a friend of the mighty folks; as for himself--well, he would willingly be a martyr if the law demanded--but he did fear that law!
"But he loved the child very much," she hinted.
"So much that he will fight them because they have poisoned her--he will fight them and not be scare."
"It is strange!" she repeated.
"_Oui_, ma'm'selle," he said, regarding her with still more suspicion.
"But before that morning--when you found them here under the tree! He told you--"
"He walk the street with her in his arm. I don't tell you some more about dat t'ing what I do not know!"
But she knew that he was withholding something from her. She mustered her courage.
"Mr. Provancher, the bad men are making threats that they will print stories about the child--and its mamma--to hurt your friend. And the stories will make the mamma very sad."
"No stories can make her sad," said old Etienne, solemnly. But he did not say that he had raked the mother from the canal. The law must not know!
"But I have heard about her," she insisted.
The old man's mouth trembled; he was frightened. "What you hear?" he faltered.
"Only good things. That she was very tender and went with you to the grave."
"_Oui_," admitted Etienne, visibly relieved and grasping at this opportunity. "She's sweet and good. She's play-mamma."
"And her name is Zelie Dionne?" she asked, her face growing white in the dusk.
"_Oui_, ma'm'selle--she live across in the little house where there are plant in the window--she live with the good Mother Maillet what I told you about." He pointed to the cottage. "You go some time and talk with her--but not now," he added, his fears flaming. He was anxious to be the first to talk to Zelie Dionne, in order that she might help him to protect their friend. "You shall talk with her--soon--p'raps. I will tell her so that she will not be afraid. Yes, you shall hear the play-mamma say good things of poor Rosemarie."
She bowed and hurried away.
And before her tear-wet eyes the words "play-mamma" danced in letters of fire. It seemed to be only another sordid story.
But she remembered the face of Walker Farr, and in her heart she wondered why she still refused to condemn him.


XXVI
THE DRIVEN BARGAIN
The Honorable Daniel Breed, "sipping" his thin lips and propping his coat-tails on his gaunt fingers, patrolled the lobby of the National Hotel and his complacency was not a whit disturbed when Richard Dodd passed in front of him and sneered in his face.
"Keep on practising making up faces," advised the old man, amiably. "Perhaps in the course of time your uncle will give you a job making up faces as his understudy, seeing that his physog is getting so tough he can't manage it very well these days."
Young Dodd whirled on his heel and returned. "We've got a line on you and your amateur angels, Breed."
"Don't consider me an amateur, do you?" asked the old politician, smacking his lips complacently.
"You're a has-been."
"Sure thing!" agreed Mr. Breed. "The state committee told me so, and the state committee never made a mistake."
"We've got so much of a line on your crowd that my uncle has called off the organizers. There's no need of our wasting money in this campaign. You're that!" He clacked a finger smartly into his palm.
"Oh yes! You're right! Some snap to us."
"I mean you're nothing."
"Run in and take another drink, sonny," advised Breed, giving slow cant of his head to denote the baize door through which Dodd had emerged. "What you have had up to date seems to be making you optimistic--and there's nothing like being optimistic in politics. I'm always optimistic--but naturally so. Don't need torching!"
"Look here, Breed, we've got enough dope on that ex-hobo who is doing your errand-boy work--we know enough about him to kill your whole sorehead proposition. But I don't believe my uncle will even use it. No need of it."
"Probably not," said Mr. Breed, without resentment. "And I wouldn't if I were he."
"We won't descend to it. Now that we have got rid of a lot of old battle-axes of politicians--and I'm calling no names--we can conduct a campaign with dignity."
"So do! So do! And it will save a lot of trouble, son; that's why the newspapers wouldn't print that stuff about Mr. Farr after your uncle got it ready. Libel cases make a lot of trouble."
Dodd grew red and scowled. "Look here, Breed, you're licked before the start, and as a good politician you know you are. My uncle wants you to drop in and see him. He told me to tell you so. This is no official order, you understand. Just drop in informally, and he'll probably have something interesting to say to you."
"I'm terribly rushed up--shall be till after convention," averred Mr. Breed, piercing the end of a cigar with a peg he had whittled from a match.
"What's the good of your being a fool any longer?"
"Always have been, so I've found out from that state committee who never told a lie--and it's comfortable to keep on being one," he said, with great serenity.
"You don't think for a minute that you are going to get control of the next legislature, do you?"
"How much money have you got--your own money, I mean?" inquired Mr. Breed, guilelessly, his eyes centered carefully on the lighted tip of his cigar.
"Say--you--you--What do you mean by that?" rasped Dodd, putting the cracker of a good round oath on the question.
"I meant that I wanted to bet something--and I wouldn't want you to go out and borrow money--or--or--anything else." From the cavernous depths where his eyes were set Mr. Breed turned a slow and solemn stare on the enraged chief clerk of the state treasury.
"What do you want to bet?"
"Any amount in reason that after the first of next January there'll be a fresh deal in the way of state officers in every department in the Capitol. Arguing futures don't get you anywhere, son. If you've got money to back that opinion you just gave me it will express your notions without any more talk. But don't go borrow--or--or anything else."
Dodd stared at the shrewd old political manipulator for a long time.
"You have money to bet, have you?" he asked.
Mr. Breed languidly drew forth a wallet which would make a valise for some men and carelessly displayed a thick packet of bills.
"There it is," he said, "and I earned it myself and so I ain't poking it down any rat-hole without being condemned sure that I'll be able to pull it all back again with just as much more sticking to it. That wouldn't be sooavable--and from what you know of me I'm always sooavable."
Dodd looked at the bills, carefully straightened in their packet, and giving every evidence of having been hoarded with an old man's caution.
There was something about that money which impressed him with the sincerity of Mr. Breed's belief in his own cause. The young man grew visibly white around the mouth.
"I'll see you later, Breed," he gulped. "I don't believe you know what you are talking about--but I'm not national bank on legs. I'll be around and cover your cash."
He went back into the bar, swallowed a glass of whisky, and went out and hailed a cab. He directed the driver to carry him to the Trelawny Apartment.
Mrs. Kilgour admitted him to the vestibule of the suite.
"Is Kate at home?" he demanded.
"Yes, Richard!" She shrank away from him, for his aspect was not reassuring. "You know--she has given up her work--she is--"
"I know all about it, Mrs. Kilgour. But I want to ask you whether she has given up her work in order to marry me at once?"
"Why, I--She said--I think it will come about all right, Dicky." She was pitifully unnerved.
"Have you told her why she must marry me?"
"It is not time to tell her--it is not right--I can't--"
He seized her arm and pulled her into the sitting-room. The daughter rose and faced them, reproof and astonishment mingling in her expression.
"This thing is going to be settled here and now," said the lover, roughly. "There is going to be no more fooling. Has your mother put this matter up to you so that you understand it, Kate?"
"She has told me that she owes you five thousand dollars," returned the girl. Her eyes flashed her contempt. "You told me that yourself. I repeated the statement to her and she admits it."
"But did she tell you how it happens that she owes me that money?"
"For God's sake, Richard, have some pity! This is my own daughter. I will sell everything. I will slave. I will pay you. Kate, for my sake--for your own sake, tell him that you will marry him."
"I will not marry this man," declared the girl. "It has been a mistake from the beginning. As to your business with him, mother, that is not my affair. You must settle it."
"You belong in the settlement," declared Dodd. "Hold on! Don't leave this room, Kate."
He reached out his hands to intercept her, and Mrs. Kilgour, released, fell upon the floor and began to grovel and cry entreaties.
But his raucous tones overrode her appeals.
"We're all together in this. I am five thousand dollars shy in the state treasury, Kate. I took that money and loaned it to your mother when she begged me to save her stocks. But she didn't have any stocks."
Mrs. Kilgour grasped his knees and shook him. But he kept on.
"She had embezzled from Dalton & Company. What I did saved her from prison and you from disgrace, Kate. And now I am in the hole! Listen here! There's hell to pay in this state just now! The soreheads are banding together. A man has just offered to bet me big money that there's going to be an overturn in the State House departments. I don't know whether it will happen--but you can understand what kind of torment I'm in. Kate, are you going to let me stand this thing all alone?"
The girl stood silent and motionless in the middle of the room.
She did not weep or faint. Her face displayed no emotion. It was as white as marble.
"Do you want to drag my daughter down with you?" cried Mrs. Kilgour.
"You'd better not talk about dragging down," he shouted, passionately. "I didn't steal for myself. Give me your love, Kate! Give me yourself to encourage me, and I'll get out of the scrape somehow. I'll find ways. But if you don't come with me I won't have the courage or the desire to fight my way through. I'll not disgrace you if you marry me--I swear I will not! With you to protect from everything I'll make good. Symonds Dodd is my uncle. He won't see the family name pulled in. But you must marry me!"
"And if I do not?" she asked.
"We'll all go to damnation together. I don't care! I'll blow it all. I won't