Half a Rogue - Harold MacGrath (phonics books TXT) 📗

my advice and clear out. That is all, gentlemen. Come, John."

When they were gone Morrissy turned savagely upon McQuade.

"I told you you were a damn fool!"

"Get out of here, both of you; and if you ever stick your heads in this office again, I'll smash you."

McQuade dropped into his chair, once more alone. He sat there for an hour, thinking, ruminating, planning; but all his thinking and ruminating and planning had but one result: they had him licked. Morrissy was right; he was a fool. The girl! He would have liked her throat in his fingers that moment, the sneaking, treacherous baggage! Licked! To go about hereafter with that always menacing him! But there was one ray of consolation. He knew something about human nature. Bennington and Warrington would drift apart after this. Bennington had cleared up the scandal, but he hadn't purged his heart of all doubt. There was some satisfaction in this knowledge. And Warrington would never enter the City Hall as Herculaneum's mayor.


Chapter XX


By November John and his wife were on the way to Italy. There is always a second honeymoon for those who have just passed the first matrimonial Scylla and Charybdis; there is always a new courtship, deeper and more understanding. Neither of them had surrendered a particle of their affection for Warrington, but they agreed that it would be easier for all concerned if there came a separation of several months.

"You are all I have," said Warrington, when they bade him good-by. "I shall be very lonely without you. If I lose the election I shall go to Japan."

"There's always Patty and the mother," said John, smiling.

"Yes, there's always Patty and her mother. Good-by, and God bless you both. You deserve all the happiness I can wish for you."

Warrington plunged into the campaign. It would keep him occupied.

Mrs. Bennington and Patty lived as usual, to all outward appearance. But Patty was rarely seen in society. She took her long rides in the afternoon now, always alone, brooding. Her young friends wondered, questioned, then drifted away gradually. Poor little Patty! No one had told her; the viper had not been shaken from her nest. Day after day she waited for the blow to fall, for the tide of scandal to roll over her and obliterate her. She was worldly enough to know that Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene was not the kind of woman to keep such a scandal under lock and key; others must know, Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene's particular friends. So she avoided the possibility of meeting these friends by declining all invitations of a formal character. Perhaps after a time it would die of its own accord, to be recalled in after years by another generation, as such things generally are. Patty derived no comfort from the paragraph in the Sunday papers announcing Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene's departure for Egypt, to remain for the winter.

She kept in touch with all that Warrington did. The sense of shame she had at first experienced in reading his speeches was gone. Her pride no longer urged her to cast aside the paper, to read it, to fling it into the flames. Sometimes she saw him on the way home from his morning rides. It seemed to her that he did not sit as erectly as formerly. Why should he? she asked herself bitterly. When the heart is heavy it needs a confidante, but Patty, brave and loyal, denied herself the luxury of her mother's arms. Tell her this frightful story? Bow that proud, handsome head? No.

"It is very strange," mused her mother, one evening, "that Mr. Warrington calls no more. I rather miss his cheerfulness, and John thinks so much of him."

Patty shivered. "He is very busy, mother. Election is only three days off, and doubtless he hasn't a minute to call his own."

Nor had he. Pulled this way and that, speaking every night, from one end of the city to the other, he went over the same ground again and again, with the same noise, the same fumes of tobacco and whisky and kerosene, with his heart no longer behind his will. Yes, Warrington was very busy. He was very unhappy, too. What did he care about the making up of the slate? What was it to him that this man or that wanted this or that berth? What were all these things? But he hid his dissatisfaction admirably. His speeches lacked nothing.

Election day came round finally, and a rare and beautiful day it was. The ghost of summer had returned to view her past victories. A west wind had cleared the skies, the sun shone warm and grateful, the golden leaves shivered and fluttered to the ground. Nature had lent a hand to bring voting humanity to the polls. Some men are such good citizens that they will vote in the rain. But warmth and sunshine bring out the lazy, the indifferent, and the uninterested.

Warrington voted early in the morning, rode to the Country Club, made an attempt to play golf over the partly frozen course, lounged round till three in the afternoon, and then returned to town. There was not a flutter in his heart. There was this truth, however, staring him in the eyes: if he lost, he would become an indifferent citizen; if he won, an in different mayor. He was not a man to falsify his accounts for the inspection of his conscience.

The voting was heavy throughout the day. Crowds lingered round the polls, which, in greater part, were in the rear of shops, in barns and sheds. There was a good deal of repeating in some of the districts, and a dozen arrests had been made. Neither party was free from this taint of dishonest politics. But no one could prophesy what the final results of the day would be.

Night came. It is the greatest spectacular night the American knows. The noisy, good-natured crowds in the streets, the jostling, snail-moving crowds; the illuminated canvas-sheets in front of the newspaper offices; the blare of tin horns, the cries, the yells, the hoots and hurrahs; the petty street fights; the stalled surface cars; the swearing cabbies; the newsboys hawking their latest extras, men carrying execrable posters of roosters. Hurrah! hurrah! A flash goes over the canvas.

In the 4th District
Donnelly 608
Warrington. 302

A roar that rose and died suddenly, and a wailing of tin horns.


In Seven Districts
Warrington 1,262
Donnelly 1,196


Roars. It was, going to be close. Between times local advertisers used the sheets, or there were pictures of presidents past and present, crowned heads (always greeted with jeers), funny pictures, or returns from other states.


In Nine Districts
Donnelly 1,821
Warrington 1,800


The crowds surged and billowed, and there was pandemonium.

The newspaper offices were having a busy time. This period proves the man; he is a newspaper man or he is not. There was a continuous coming and going of messengers, bringing in returns. The reporters and editors were in their shirt-sleeves, most of them collarless. Figures, figures, thousands of figures to sift and resift. A fire-bell rings. No one looks up save the fire reporter, and he is up and away at once. Filtering through the various noises is the maddening rattle of the telegraph instruments. Great drifts of waste-paper litter the floors. A sandwich man serves coffee and cigars, and there is an occasional bottle of beer. Everybody is writing, writing.

McQuade and his cohorts haunted the city room of the Times. Things did not look well at all. There were twelve more districts to hear from. Donnelly seemed to be the coolest man in that office.

Warrington started home at nine. Up to this time he had been indifferent, but it was impossible not to catch the spirit of this night. Win or lose, however, he wanted to be alone. So he went home, lighted the fire in his working-room, called his dog, and sat there dreaming.

Down town the clamor was increasing. The great throngs round the bulletins were gathering in force. Bonfires were flaring on corners.


In 15 Districts
Warrington 9,782
Donnelly 9,036


Close, terribly close. But those districts upon which the fight really depended had not yet turned up. The big labor vote had not been accounted for.

The Call had notified its readers that when the returns were all in and the battle decided, it would blow a whistle. If Warrington was elected, five blasts; if Donnelly, ten.

So Warrington waited, sunk in his chair, his legs sprawled, his chin on his breast, and his eyes drawing phantoms in the burning wood fire. ... It was cruel that Patty could not know; and yet to leave John with the belief that his sister knew nothing was a kindness, and only John could convince Patty; and it was even a greater kindness to leave Patty with the belief that John knew nothing. So there he stood; friendship on the one side and love on the other. He recalled all the charming ways Patty had, the color of her hair, the light music of her laughter, the dancing shadows in her eyes, the transparent skin, the springy step, and the vigor and life that were hers. And he had lost her, not through any direct fault, but because he was known to have been dissipated at one time; a shadow that would always be crossing and recrossing his path. So long as he lived he would carry that letter of hers, with its frank, girlish admiration.

So, he mused, those dissipations of his, which, after all, had touched him but lightly-these had, like chickens, come home to roost! And how these chickens had multiplied and grown! On the way home it seemed that everybody had striven to fatten them up a bit and add surreptitiously a chicken or two of his own. Oh, these meddlers, these idle tongues! None of them would set to work to wrong anybody, to wreck anybody's life. They would shrink in horror from the thought, let alone the deed. Yet, they must talk, they must exchange the day's news, they must have news that no one else had; and this competition is the cause of half the misery on earth. What if they exaggerate a little here and a little there? No harm is meant. Human nature, having found its speech, must have something to talk about; that which it has neither seen nor heard, it invents.

Who had written that letter to Patty? Some woman; man had not yet acquired such finished cruelty. He could not understand its purpose, well as he understood women. Who could possibly hate Patty, honest and loyal as the day is long? McQuade's letters had their existence in revenge. Patty had wronged no one; McQuade had.

"Well, Jove, old man, you and I may have to pack up on the morrow. If we are licked, you and I'll go to Japan. That's a country we've always been wanting to see."

Jove lifted his head, somewhat scarred, and gazed up at his master with steadfast love in his red-brown eyes. A dog is better than a horse, a horse is better than a cat, a cat is better than nothing. ... Warrington sat up quickly, drawing in his legs. A whistle! He caught