into a cab to take them to their train. The other three walked back down town.
As Jeff sat before his desk four hours later, busy with a tax levy story, Miller came in and took a seat. Jeff waved a hand at him and promptly forgot he was on earth until he rose and put on his coat an hour later.
“Well! Did they get off all right?” he asked.
Miller nodded absently. Ten minutes later he let out what he was thinking about.
“I wish to God I knew the man,” he exploded.
Jeff looked at him quietly. “I’m glad you don’t. Adding murder to it wouldn’t help the situation one little bit, my friend.”
CHAPTER 14
Only the man who is sheet-armored in a triple plate of selfishness can be sure that weak hands won’t clutch at him and delay his march to success.–From the Note Book of a Dreamer.
THE HERO, CONFRONTED WITH AN UNPLEASANT POSSIBILITY, PROVES HIS GREATNESS BY RISING SUPERIOR TO SENTIMENT
Part 1
James came down to the office one morning in his car with a smile of contentment on his handsome face. It had been decided that he was to be made speaker of the House after the next election, assuming that he and his party were returned to power. Jeff and the progressives were to stand back of him, and he felt sure that after a nominal existence the standpatters would accept him. He intended by scrupulous fair play to win golden opinions for himself. From the speakership to the governor’s chair would not be a large step. After that–well, there were many possibilities.
He did not for a moment admit to himself that there was anything of duplicity in the course he was following. His intention was to line up with the progressives during the campaign, to win his reelection on that platform, and to support a rational liberal program during the session. He would favor an initiative and referendum amendment not so radical as the one Jeff offered, a bill that would not cripple business or alarm capital. As he looked at it life was a compromise. The fusion of many minds to a practical result always demanded this. And results were more important than any number of theories.
As James passed into his office the stenographer stopped him with a remark.
“A man has been in twice to see you this morning, Mr. Farnum.”
“Did he leave his name?”
“No. He said he would call again.”
James passed into his private office and closed the door.
A quarter of an hour later his stenographer knocked. “He’s here again, Mr. Farnum.”
“Who?”
“The man I told you of.”
“Oh!” James put down the brief he was reading. “Show him in.”
A figure presently stood hesitating in the doorway. James saw an oldish man, gray and stooped with a rather wistful lost-dog expression on his face.
“What can I do for you, sir?” he questioned.
“Don’t you know me?” the stranger asked with a quaver in his voice.
The lawyer did not, but some premonition of disaster clutched at his heart. He rose swiftly and closed the door behind his caller.
A faint smile doubtful of its right touched the weak face of the little old man. “So you don’t know your own father–boy!”
A sudden sickness ran through the lawyer and sapped his strength. He leaned against the desk uncertainly. It had come at last. The whole world would learn the truth about him. The Merrills, the Fromes, Valencia Van Tyle–all of them would know it and scorn him.
“What are you doing here?” James heard himself say hoarsely.
“Why, I–I–I came to see my son.”
“What for?”
Before so harsh and abrupt a reception the weak smile went out like a blown candle.
“I thought you’d be glad to see me–after so many years.”
“Why should I be glad to see you? What have you ever done for me but disgrace me?”
Tears showed in the watery eyes. “That’s right. It’s gospel truth, I reckon.”
“And now, when I’ve risen above it, so that all men respect me, you come back to drag me down.”
“No–no, I wouldn’t do that, son.”
“That’s what you’ll do. Do you think my friends will want to know a man who is the son of a convict? I’ve got a future before me. Already I’ve been mentioned for governor. What chance would I have when people know my father is a thief?”
“Son,” winced the old man.
“Oh, well! I’m not picking my words,” James went on with angry impatience. “I’m telling you the facts. I’ve got enemies. Every strong man has. They’ll smash me like an empty eggshell.”
“They don’t need to know about me. I’ll not do any talking.”
“That’s all very well. Things leak out,” James grumbled a little more graciously. “Well, you better sit down now you’re here. I thought you were living in Arkansas.”
“So I am. I’ve done right well there. And I thought I’d take a little run out to see you. I didn’t know but what you might need a little help.” He glanced aimlessly around the well-furnished office. “But I expect you don’t, from the looks of things.”
“If you think I’ve got money you’re wrong,” James explained. “I’m just starting in my profession, and of course I owe a good deal here and there. I’ve been hard pressed ever since I left college.”
His father brightened up timidly. “I owe you money. We can fix that up. I’ve got a little mill down there and I’ve done well, though it was hard sledding at first.”
James caught at a phrase. What do you mean?”
“Owe me money!
“I knew it must be you paid off the shortage at the Planters’ National. When I sent the money it was returned. You’d got ahead of me. I was THAT grateful to you, son.”
The lawyer found himself flushing. “Oh, Jeff paid that. He was earning money at the time and I wasn’t. Of course I intended to pay him back some day.”
“Did Jeff do that? Then you and he must be friends. Tell me about him.”
“There’s not much to tell. He’s managing editor of a paper here that has a lot of influence. Yes. Jeff has been a staunch friend to me always. He recognizes that I’m a rising man and ought to be kept before the public.”
“I wonder if he’s like his father.”
“Can’t tell you that,” his son replied carelessly. “I don’t remember Uncle Phil much. Jeff’s a queer fellow, full of Utopian notions about brotherhood and that sort of thing. But he’s practical in a way. He gets things done in spite of his softheadedness.”
There was a knock at the door. “Mr. Jefferson Farnum, sir.”
James considered for a second. “Tell him to come in, Miss Brooks.”
The lawyer saw that the door was closed before he introduced Jeff to his father. It gave him a momentary twinge of conscience to see his cousin take the old man quickly by both hands. It was of course a mere detail, but James had not yet shaken hands with his father.
“I’m glad to see you, Uncle Robert,” Jeff said.
His voice shook a little. There was in his manner that hint of affection which made him so many friends, the warmth that suggested a woman’s sympathy, but not effeminacy.
The ready tears brimmed into his uncle’s eyes. “You’re like your father, boy. I believe I would have known you by him,” he said impulsively.
“You couldn’t please me better, sir. And what about James–would you have known him?”
The old man looked humbly at his handsome, distinguished son. “No, I would never have known him.”
“He’s becoming one of our leading citizens, James is. You ought to hear him make a speech. Demosthenes and Daniel Webster hide their heads when the Honorable James K. Farnum spellbinds,” Jeff joked.
“I’ve read his speeches,” the father said unexpectedly. “For more than a year I’ve taken the _World_ so as to hear of him.”
“Then you know that James is headed straight for the Hall of Fame. Aren’t you, James?”
“Nonsense! You’ve as much influence in the state as I have, or you would have if you would drop your fight on wealth.”
“Bless you, I’m not making a fight on wealth,” Jeff answered with good humor. “It’s illicit wealth we’re hammering at. But when you compare me to James K. I’ll have to remind you that I’m not a silver-tongued orator or Verden’s favorite son.”
The father’s wistful smile grew bolder. Somehow Jeff’s arrival had cleared the atmosphere. A Scriptural phrase flashed into his mind as applicable to this young man. Thinketh no evil. His nephew did not regard him with suspicion or curiosity. To him he was not a sinner or an outcast, but a brother. His manner had just the right touch of easy deference youth ought to give age.
“Of course you’re going to make us a long visit, Uncle Robert.”
The old man’s propitiating gaze went to his son. “Not long, I reckon. I’ve got to get back to my business.”
“Nonsense! We’ll not let you go so easily. Eh, James?”
“No, of course not,” the lawyer mumbled. He was both annoyed and embarrassed.
“I don’t want to be selfish about it, but I do think you had better put up with me, Uncle. James is at the University Club, and only members have rooms there. We’ll let him come and see you if he’s good,” Jeff went on breezily.
James breathed freer. “That might be the best way, if it wouldn’t put you out, Jeff.”
“I wouldn’t want to be any trouble,” the old man explained.
“And you won’t be. I want you. James wants you, too, but he can’t very well arrange it. I can. So that’s settled.”
In his rooms that evening Jeff very gently made clear to his uncle that Verden believed him to be his son.
“If you don’t mind, sir, we’ll let it go that way in public. We don’t want to hurt the political chances of James just now. And there are other things, too. He’ll tell you about them himself probably.”
“That’s all right. Just as you say. I don’t want to disturb things.”
“I adopted you as a father about a year ago without your permission. It won’t do for you to give me away now,” the nephew laughed.
Robert Farnum nodded without speaking. A lump choked his throat. He had found a son after all, but not the one he had come to meet.
Part 2
At the ensuing election the progressives swept the state in spite of all that the allied corporations could do. James was returned to the legislature with an increased majority and was elected speaker of the House according to program. His speech of acceptance was the most eloquent that had ever been heard in the assembly hall. The most radical of his party felt that the committees appointed by him were in their personnel a little too friendly to the vested interests of Verden, but the _World_ took the high ground that he could render his party no higher service than absolute fair play, that the bills for the rights of the people ought to pass on their merits and not by tricky politics.
Never before had there been seen at the State House a lobby like the one that filled it now. The barrel was tapped so that the glint of gold flowed through the corridors, into committee rooms, and to out of the way corners where legislators fought for their honor against an attack that never ceased. Sometimes the corruption was bold. More often it was insidious. To see how one by one men hitherto honest surrendered to bribery was a sight pathetic and tragic.
The Farnum cousins were the centers around whom the reformers rallied. James directed their counsels in the House and Jeff pounded away in the _World_ with vital trenchant editorials and news stories. Every day that paper carried to the farthest corner of the state bulletins of the battle. Farmers and miners and laboring men watched its roll of honor to see if the local representatives were standing firm. As the weeks passed the fight grew more bitter. Now and again men fell by the wayside disgraced. But the pressure from their constituents was so strong that Jeff believed his bill would go through.
His friends forced it through the committee and pushed it to a vote. House Bill 33, as the initiative and referendum amendment was called, passed the lower legislative body with a small majority. The pool rooms offered five to four that it would carry in the senate.
It was on the night of the twenty-first of December that the amendment passed the House. On the morning of the twenty-third the _Herald_ sprang a front page sensation. It charged that the editor of the _World_ had ruined a girl named Nellie Anderson at a house where he had boarded and that she had subsequently disappeared. It featured also a story of how he had been seen to enter his rooms at midnight with a woman of the street, who remained there until morning reveling with him. Attached to this were the affidavits of two detectives, a police officer, and the druggist who had furnished the liquor.
The story exploded like a bomb shell in the camp of the progressives. Rawson tried at once without success to get Jeff on the telephone. He was not at the office, nor had he reached his rooms at all after leaving the _World_ building on the previous night. None of his friends had seen or heard of him.
The afternoon papers had a sensation of their own. Jefferson Farnum had left Verden secretly without leaving an address. Evidently he had been given a hint of the exposure that was to be made of his life and had decamped rather than face the charges.
Rumor had a hundred tales to tell. The waverers at the State House chose to believe that Jeff had sold them out and fled with his price. It was impossible to deny the stories of his immorality, since it happened that Sam Miller, the only man who knew the whole story, was far up in the mountains arranging for a shipment of Rocky Mountain sheep to the state museum. Farnum’s friends could only affirm their faith in him or surrender. Some gave way, some stood firm. The lobbyists and the opposition went about with confident, “I-told-you-so” smiles writ large on their faces. Within a few days it became apparent that the reform bill would be defeated in the senate. Its fate had been so long tied up with the people’s belief in Jeff that with his collapse the general opinion condemned it to defeat. Its friends hung back, unwilling to risk a vote as yet.
The situation called for a leader and developed one. James Farnum stepped into the breach and took command. In a ringing speech he called for a new alignment. He would yield to none in the devotion he had given to House Bill Number 33. But it needed no prophet to see that now this amendment was doomed. Better half a loaf than no bread. He was a practical man and wanted to see practical results. Rather than see the will of the people frustrated he felt that House Bill I7 should be passed. While not an ideal bill it was far better than none. The principle of direct legislation at least would be established.
H. B. No. I7 was brought hurriedly out of committee. It had been introduced as a substitute measure to defeat the real reform. According to its provision legislation could be initiated by the people, but to make it valid as a law the legislature had to approve any bill so passed. The people could advise. They could not compel.
The speech of the speaker of the House precipitated a bitter fight. The more eager friends of H. B. No. 33 accused him of treachery, but many felt that it was the best possible practical politics under the circumstances. For weeks the issue hung in doubt, but gradually James gathered adherents among both progressives and conservatives. It became almost a foregone conclusion that H. B. No. I7 would pass.
CHAPTER 15
“Old Capting Pink of the Peppermint,
Though kindly at heart and good,
Had a blunt, bluff way of a-gittin’ ‘is say That we all of us understood.
When he brained a man with a pingle spike Or plastered a seaman flat,
We should ‘a’ been blowed but we all of us knowed That he didn’t mean nothin’ by that.
I was wonderful fond of old Capting Pink, And Pink he was fond o’ me,
As he frequently said when he battered me head Or sousled me into the sea.”
–Wallace Irwin.
BULLY GREEN PRESERVES DISCIPLINE AND THE REBEL LEARNS TO SAY “SIR”
Part 1
On the night of the twenty-second of December Jeff left the _World_ building and moved down Powers Avenue to the all night restaurant he usually frequented. The man who was both cook and waiter remembered afterwards that Farnum called for coffee, sausage, and a waffle.
Before the editor left the waffle house it was the morning of the twenty-third. He had never felt less sleepy. Nor did a book and a pipe before his gas log seem quite what he wanted. The vagabond streak in him was awake, the same potent wanderlust that as a boy had driven him to the solitude of the forests and the hills. This morning it sent him questing down Powers Avenue to that lower town where the derelicts of the city floated without a rudder.
A cold damp mist had crept up from the water front and enwrapped the city so that its lights showed like blurred moons. Some instinct took him toward the wharves. He could hear the distant cough of a tug as it fussed across the bay, and as he drew near the big Transcontinental wharves of Joe Powers the black hulk of a Japanese liner rose black out of the gray fog shadow. But the freighters, the coasters, tramps that went hither and thither over the earth wherever fat cargoes lured them–they were either swallowed in the mist or shadowed to a ghost-like wraith of themselves so tenuous that all detail was lost in the haze.
Jeff leaned on a pile and let his imagination people the harbor with the wandering children of the earth who had been drawn from all its seafaring corners to this Mecca of trade. He knew that here were swarthy little Japanese with teas and silks, dusky Kanakas with copra, and Alaskan liners carrying gold and returning miners. There would be brigs from Buenos Ayres and schooners that had nosed into Robert Louis Stevenson’s magic South Sea islands. Puffy London steamers, Nome and Skagway liners condemned long since on the Atlantic Coast, queer rigged hybrids from Rio and other South American ports, were gorging themselves with lumber or wheat or provisions according to their needs. Here truly lay before him the romance of the nations.
The sound of a stealthy footfall warned him of impending danger. He whirled, and faced three men who were advancing on him. A vague suspicion that had oppressed him more than once in the past week leaped to definite conviction in his brain. He was the victim of a plot to waylay–perhaps to murder him. One of these men was a huge Swede, another a swarthy Italian with rings in his ears. He had seen them before, lurking in the shadows of an alley outside the _World_ building. Last night he had come out from the office with Jenkins, which no doubt had saved him for the time. This morning he had played into the hands of these men, had obligingly wandered down to the waterfront where they could so easily conceal murder in a tide running out fast.
Strangely enough he felt no fear; rather a fierce exultant drumming of the blood that braced him for the struggle. His eyes swept the wharf for a weapon and found none.
“What do you want?” he demanded sharply.
The man in command ignored his question. “Stand by and down him.”
The Italian crouched and leaped. Jeff’s fist caught him fairly between the eyes. He went down like a log, rolled over once and lay still. The others closed instantly with Farnum and the three swayed in a fierce silent struggle.
Both of his attackers were more powerful than Jeff, but he was far more active. The darkness, too, aided him and hampered them. The Swede he could have managed, for the fellow was awkward as a bear. But the leader stuck to him like a burr. They went down together over a cleat in the flooring, rolling over and over each other as they fought.
Somehow Jeff emerged out of the tangle. He dragged himself to his knees and hammered with his fist at an upturned face beside him. Battered, bleeding, and winded, he got to his feet and shook off the hands that reached for him. Dodging past, he lurched along the wharf like a drunken man. The Italian had gathered himself to his knees. When Jeff came opposite him he dived like a football tackle and threw his arms around the moving legs. The newspaper man crashed heavily down to unconsciousness.
When Farnum opened his eyes upon a world strangely hazy he found himself lying in a row boat, his head bolstered by a man’s knees.
“Drink this, mate,” ordered a voice that seemed very far away.
The neck of a bottle was thrust between his lips and tilted so that he could not escape drinking.
“That dope’ll hold him for a while, Say, Johnny Dago, put your back into them oars,” he heard indistinctly.
Faintly there came to him the slap of the waves against the side of the boat. These presently died rhythmically away.
It was daylight when he awakened again. His throbbing head slowly definitized the vile hole in which he lay as the forecastle of a ship. Gradually the facts sifted back to him. He recalled the fight on the wharf and the drink in the boat. In this last he suspected knockout drops. That he had been shanghaied was beyond suspicion.
Laboriously he sat up on the side of his bunk and in doing so became aware of a sailor asleep in the crib opposite. His stertorous breathing stirred a doubt in Jeff’s mind. Perhaps the crimps had taken him too.
The ship was rolling a good deal, but by a succession of tacks Jeff staggered to the scuttle and climbed the hatchway to the deck. A wintry sun was shining, and for a few moments he stood blinking in the light.
She was a three-masted schooner and was plunging forward into the choppy seas outside the jaws of the harbor. He whiffed the salt tang of the air and tasted the flying spray. An ebb tide was lifting the vessel forward on a freshening wind, and trim as a greyhound she slipped through the cat’s-paws.
A thickset, powerful figure paced to and fro on the quarter-deck, occasionally bellowing an order in a tremendous voice like the roar of a bull. He was getting canvas set for the fresh breeze of the open seas that was catching him astern, and the sailors were jumping to obey his orders. The pounding sails and the singing cordage, the rattling blocks and the whipping ropes, would have told Jeff they were scudding along fast, even if the heeling of the schooner and its swift forward leaps had not made it plain.
“By God, Jones, she’s walking,” he heard the captain boom across to the mate.
Just then a figure cut past him and made straight for the captain. Farnum recognized in it the sailor whom he had left asleep in the forecastle and even in that fleeting glance was aware of the man’s livid fury. Up the steps he went like a wild beast.
“What kind of a boat is this?” he panted hoarsely.
The captain turned toward him. His eyes were shining wickedly, but his voice was ominously suave and honeyed. “This boat, son, is a threemasted schooner, name of _Nancy Hanks_ , Master Joshua Green, bound for the Solomon Islands with a cargo of Oregon fir.”
“I’ve been shanghaied. This is a nest of crimps,” the man screamed.
Joshua Green’s salient jaw came forward. “Been shanghaied, have you? And we’re a nest of crimps, are we? Son, the less I hear of that line of talk the better. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.”
The man turned loose a flood of profanity and swore he would rot in hell before he would touch a rope on that ship.
Out went Green’s great gnarled fist. The seaman shot back from the quarterdeck and struck a pile of rope below. He was up again and down again almost quicker than it takes to tell. Three times he hit the planks before he lay still.
The captain stood over him, his eyes blazing. He looked the savage, barbaric slavedriver he was.
“Me, I’m Bully Green, and don’t you forget it. Been shanghaied, have you? Not going to touch a rope? Then, by thunder, you white-livered beachcomber, a rope will touch you till you’re flayed. Get this in your coconut. You’ll walk chalk, you lazy son of a sea cook, or I’ll haze you till you wish you’d never been born.” He punctuated his remarks with vigorous kicks. “Bully Green runs this tub, strike me dead if he don’t. Now you hump for’ard and clap a hand to them sheets. Walk, you shanghaied Dutchman!”
The sailor crawled away, completely cowed. For one day he had had more than enough. The captain watched him for a moment, his great jaw thrust grimly out. Then, as on a pivot, he whirled toward Jeff.
“Come here, you! Step lively, Sport!”
Farnum wondered whether he was about to undergo an experience similar to that of the sailor. “Do you want to know what kind of a ship this is?”
“No, sir. I’m perfectly satisfied about that,” smiled his victim.
“Got no opinions you want to hand out free, son?”
“Think I’ll keep them bottled.”
“Say ‘sir,’ Sport!”
“Yes, sir,” answered Farnum, his quiet eyes steady and unafraid.
“When I give an order you expect to jump?”
“Jump isn’t the word.”
“Sir!” thundered Green, and “Sir” the newspaper man corrected himself.
“Got no story to spiel about being shanghaied, son?”
“Would it do any good, sir?”
“Not unless you’re aching to get what that son of a Dutchman got. See here, sport! You walk the chalk line, and Bully Green and you’ll get along fine. I’m a lamb, I am, when I’m not riled. But get gay–and you’ll have a hectic time. I’ll rough you till you’re shark-food. Get that through your teeth?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now you trot down to the fo’c’sle and dive into them slops you find there. You got just three minutes to do the dress-suit act.”
Jeff, as he passed below, could hear the great bull voice roaring orders to the men. “Set y’r topsails! Jam ‘er down hard, Johnnie Dago! Stand by, you lubbers! . . . Now then, easy does it . . . easy!”
Within the allotted three minutes Farnum had climbed into the foul oilskin coat and tarry breeches he found below and was ready for orders.
“Clap on to that windlass, sport! No loafing here. . . . Hump y’rself. D’ye hear me? Hump?”
Jeff threw his one hundred and fifty pounds of bone and muscle against the crank of the windlass. Some men would have fought first as long as they could stand and see. Others would have begged, argued, or threatened. But Jeff had schooled himself to master impulses of rage. He knew when to fight and when to yield. Nor did he give way sullenly or passionately. It was an outrage– highhanded tyranny–but at the worst it was a magnificent adventure. As he flung his weight into the crank he smiled.
Part 2
Before the trade winds the _Nancy Hanks_ foamed along day after day, all sails set, making excellent time. But for his anxiety as to the effect his disappearance would have upon the political situation, Jeff would have enjoyed immensely the wild rough life aboard the schooner. But he could not conceal from himself the interpretation of his absence the machine agents would scatter broadcast. He foresaw a reaction against his bill and its probable defeat.
The issue was on the knees of chance. The fact that could not be obliterated was that he had been wiped from the slate until after the legislature would adjourn. For every hour was carrying him farther from the scene of action.
His only hope was that the _Nancy Hanks_ might put in at the Hawaiian Islands, from which place he might get a chance to write, or, better still, to cable the reason of his absence. Captain Green himself wiped out this expectation. He jocosely intimated to Farnum one afternoon that he had no intention of calling the Islands.
“When we get through this six months’ cruise you’ll be a first- rate sailorman, son, and you’ll get a sailorman’s wages,” he added genially.
The shanghaied man met his eye squarely. “I think I could arrange to draw on Verden for a thousand dollars if you would drop me at the Islands.”
“Not for twenty thousand. You’re going to stay with us till we get to the Solomon Islands, and don’t you forget it.”
Bully Green had taken rather a fancy to this amiable young man who had taken so sensible a view of the little misadventure that had befallen him, but of course business was business. He had been paid to keep him out of the way and he intended to fulfil the contract.
“Here I’m educatin’ you, makin’ an able-bodied seaman out of you, son. You had ought to be grateful,” he grinned.
“Oh, I am,” Jeff agreed with a twinkle.
But Captain Green had reckoned without the weather. The _Nancy Hanks_ drifted into three days of calm and sultry heat. At the end of the third day she began to rock gently beneath a murky sky.
“Dirty weather,” predicted the mate, the same who had assisted at the shanghaing. “When you see a satin sea turn indigo and that peculiar shade in the sky you want to look out for squalls,” he explained to Jeff.
It came on them in a rush. The sun went out of a black sky like a blown candle and the sea began to whip itself to a froth. The wind quickened, boomed to a roar, and sent the schooner heeling to a squall across the leaden waters. The open sea closed in on them. Before they could get in sail and make secure the sheets ripped with a scream, braces parted and the topmasts snapped off. The _Nancy_ went pitching forward into the yawning deeps with drunken plunges from which it seemed she would never emerge. Great combing seas toppled down and pounded the decks, while the sailors clung to stays or whatever would give them a hold.
The squall lasted scarce an hour, but it left the schooner dismantled. Her sheets were in ribbons, her topmasts and bowsprit gone. There was nothing for it but a crippled beat toward the Islands.
Four days later she made an offing in the harbor at Honolulu just as a liner was nosing her way out.
Bully Green ranged up beside Farnum and cast a speculative eye on him.
“Sport, I had ought to iron you and keep you in the fo’c’sle until we leave here. It’s the only square thing to do.”
Jeff’s gaze was on the advancing steamer. She was scarce two hundred yards away now and he could plainly read the name painted on her side. She was the _Bellingham_ of Verden.
“I don’t see the necessity, sir,” he answered.
“I reckon you do, son. Samuel Green stands by his word to a finish. Now I’ve promised to keep you safe, and you can bet your last dollar I’m a-going to do it.”
His prisoner turned from the rail against which he was leaning to the captain. Pinpoints of light were gleaming in the big eyes.
“How much safer do you want me than this?”
Green expectorated at a chip in the water and shifted his quid. “You’ve got brains, son. No telling what you might try to do. But see here. You’re no drunken beachcomber. I know a gentleman when I see one. Gimme your word you’ll not try to skip out or send a message back to the States and I’ll go easy on you. I’m so dashed kindhearted, I am, that–”
Jeff leaped to the rail, stood poised an instant, and dived into the blue Pacific.
“Well, I’ll be ” Bully Green interrupted himself to roar an order to lower a boat.
CHAPTER 16
A young man left his father’s house to see the world. Everywhere he found busy human beings. Cities were rising toward the skies, seas and plains were being lined with traffic, school, mill and office hummed with life. He wondered why men were so busy and what they were trying to do.
He went to a railroad director and asked: “Why are you building railroads?” “For profits,” was the answer. But a laborer beckoned him aside and whispered: “No–we are making the _World_ one neighborhood. East is now next door to West, and all peoples dwell in one continuing city.”
The young man went to the boss of a labor union. “Why,” he asked, “do you spend your days breeding discontent and leading strikes?” “Why?” repeated the leader fiercely, “that the workers receive more pay for shorter hours.” “No,” whispered a laborer, “we are teaching the _World_ the sacred value of human beings. We are learning how to be brotherly–how to stand up for each other. –James Oppenheim.
UNDER STRANGE CIRCUMSTANCES THE REBEL MAKES HIS BOW TO POLITE SOCIETY. TAKING AN APPLE AS A TEXT, HE PREACHES ON THE RISE OF ADAM
Part 1
“Man overboard!”
Somebody on the liner sang it out. Instantly there was a rush of passengers to the side. From the schooner a boat was being lowered and manned.
“I see him. He’s swimming this way. I believe he’s trying to escape,” one slender young woman cried.
“Nonsense, Alice! He fell overboard and he’s probably so frightened he doesn’t know which way he is swimming.” This suggestion was from the beautiful blonde with bronze hair who stood beside her under a tan parasol held by a fresh-faced globetrotter.
“Don’t you believe it, Val. Look how he’s cutting through the water. He’s trying to reach us. Oh, I hope they won’t get him. Somebody get a rope to throw out.”
“By Jove, you’re right, Miss Alice,” cried the Englishman. “It’s a race, and it’s going to be a near thing.” He disappeared and was presently back with a rope.
“Come on! Come on!” screamed the passengers to the swimmer.
“He’s ripping strong with that overhead stroke. Ye gods, it’s close!” exclaimed the Britisher.
It was. The swimmer reached the side of the ship not four yards in front of the pursuing boat. He caught at the trailing rope and began to clamber up hand over hand, while the Englishman, a man standing near, and Alice Frome dragged him up.
The mate of the Nancy Hanks, standing up in the boat, caught at his foot and pulled. The man’s hold loosened on the rope. He slid down a foot, steadied himself. Suddenly the left leg shot out and caught the grinning mate in the mouth. He went over backward into the bottom of the boat. Before he could extricate himself from the tangle his fall had precipitated, the dripping figure of the swimmer stood safely on the deck of the _Bellingham._
In his wet foul slops the man was a sight to draw stares. The cabin passengers moved back to give him a wide circle, as men do with a wet retriever.
“What does this mean, my man?” demanded the captain of the _Bellingham,_ pushing forward. He was a big red-faced figure with a heavy roll of fat over his collar.
“I have been shanghaied, sir. From Verden. I’m the editor of the _World_ of that city.”
“That’s a lie,” proclaimed the mate of the _Nancy Hanks_ , who by this time had reached the deck. “He’s a nutty deckswabber we picked up at ‘Frisco.”
“Why, it’s Mr. Farnum,” cried a fresh young voice from the circle.
The rescued man turned. His eyes joined those of a slim golden girl and he was struck dumb.
“You know this man, Miss Frome?” the captain asked.
“I know him by sight.” She stepped to the front. “There can’t be any doubt about it. He’s Mr. Farnum of Verden, the editor of the _World._”
“You’re quite sure?”
“Quite sure, Captain Barclay. My cousin knows him, too.”
The captain turned to Mrs. Van Tyle. She nodded languidly.
Barclay swung back to the mate of the _Nancy Hanks_ . “I know your kind, my man, and I can tell you that I think the penitentiary would be the proper place for you and your captain, with my compliments to him.”
“Better come and pay ’em yourself, sir,” sneered the mate.
“Get off my deck, you dirty crimp,” roared the captain. “Slide now, or I’ll have you thrown off.”
Mr. Jones made a hurried departure. Once in the boat, he shook his fist at Barclay and cursed him fluently.
The captain turned away promptly. “Mr. Farwell, if you’ll step this way the steward will outfit you with some clothes. If they don’t fit they’ll do better than those togs you’re wearing.”
The English youth came forward with a suggestion. “Really, I think I can do better than that for Mr. Far–” He hesitated for the name.
“Farnum,” supplied the owner of it.
“Ah! You’re about my size, Mr. Farnum. If you don’t mind, you know, you’re quite welcome to anything I have.”
“Thank you very much.”
“Very well. Mr. Farwell–Farnum, I mean–shake hands with Lieutenant Beauchamp,” and with the sense of duty done the worthy captain dismissed the new arrival from his mind.
Jeff bowed to Miss Frome and followed his broad-shouldered guide to a cabin. He was conscious of an odd elation that had not entirely to do with a brave adventure happily ended. The impelling cause of it was rather the hope of a braver adventure happily begun.
Part 2
“By Jove, I envy you, Mr. Farnum. Didn’t know people bucked into adventures like that these tame days. Think of actually being shanghaied. It’s like a novel. My word, the ladies will make a lion of you!”
The Englishman was dragging a steamer trunk from under his bed. It needed no second glance at his frank boyish face to divine him a friend worth having. Fresh-colored and blue-eyed, he looked very much the country gentleman Jeff had read about but never seen. It was perhaps by the gift of race that he carried himself with distinction, though the flat straight back and the good shoulders of the cricketer contributed somewhat, too. Jeff sized him up as a resolute, clean-cut fellow, happily endowed with many gifts of fortune to make him the likable chap he was.
Beauchamp threw out some clothes from a steamer trunk and left the rescued man alone to dress. Ten minutes later he returned.
“Expect you’d like an interview with the barber. I’ll take you round. By the way, you’ll let me be your banker till you reach Verden?”
“Thank you. Since I must.”
From the barber shop the Englishman took him to the dining saloon. “Awfully sorry you can’t sit at our table, Mr. Farnum. It’s full up. You’re to be at the purser’s.”
Jeff let a smile escape into his eyes. “Suits me. I’ve been at the bos’n’s for several weeks.”
“Beastly outrage. We’ll want to hear all about it. Miss Frome’s tremendously excited. Odd you and she hadn’t met before. Didn’t know Verden was such a big town.”
“I’m not a society man,” explained Jeff. “And it happens I’ve been fighting her father politically for years. Miss Frome and Mrs. Van Tyle are about the last people I would be likely to meet.”
From his seat Jeff could see the cousins at the other end of the room. They were seated near the head of the captain’s table, and that officer was paying particular attention to them, perhaps because the _Bellingham_ happened to be one of a line of boats owned by Joe Powers, perhaps because both of them were very attractive young women. They were types entirely outside Farnum’s very limited experience. The indolence, the sheathed perfection, the soft sensuous allure of the young widow seemed to Jeff a product largely of her father’s wealth. But the charm of her cousin, with its sweet and mocking smile, its note of youthful austerity, was born of the fine and gallant spirit in her.
Beauchamp sat beside Miss Frome and the editor observed that they were having a delightful time. He wondered what they could be talking about. What did a man say to bring such a glow and sparkle of life into a girl’s face? It came to him with a wistful regret for his stolen youth that never yet had he sat beside a young woman at dinner and entertained her in the gay adequate manner of Lieutenant Beauchamp. James could do it, had done it a hundred times. But he had been sold too long to an urgent world of battle ever to know such delights.
Part 3
After dinner Jeff lost no time in waiting upon Miss Frome to thank her for her assistance. It was already dark. When he found her it was not in one of the saloons, but on deck. She was leaning against the deck railing in animated talk with Beauchamp, the while Mrs. Van Tyle listened lazily from a deck chair.
“I like the way that red head of his came bobbing through the water,” Beauchamp was saying. “Looks to me as if he would take a lot of beating. He’s no quitter. Since I haven’t the pleasure of knowing Mr. Powers or Senator Frome, I think I’ll back Farnum to win.”
“It’s very plain you don’t know Joe Powers. He always wins,” contributed his daughter blandly.
“But Mr. Farnum is a remarkable man just the same,” Alice added. Then, with a little cry to cover her flushed embarrassment: “Here he is. We do hope you’re a little deaf, Mr. Farnum. We’ve been talking about you.”
“You may say anything you like about me, Miss Frome, except that I’m not grateful for the lift aboard you gave me this afternoon,” Jeff answered.
He found himself presently giving the story of his adventure. He did not look at Alice, but he told the tale to her alone and was aware of the eagerness with which she listened.
“But why should they want to kidnap you? I don’t see any reason for it,” Alice protested.
A shadowy smile lay in the eyes of Mrs. Van Tyle. “Mr. Farnum is in politics, my dear.”
A fat pork packer from Chicago joined the group. “I’ve been thinking about the sharks, Mr. Farnum. You played in great luck to escape them.”
“Sharks!” Jeff heard the young woman beside him give a gasp. In the moonlight her face showed white.
“These waters are fairly infested with them,” the Chicagoan explained. “We saw two this morning in the harbor. It was when the stewards threw out the scraps. They turned over on their–”
“Don’t!” cried Alice Frome sharply.
The petrified horror on the vivid mobile face remained long as a sweet memory to Jeff. It had been for him that she had known the swift heart clutch of terror.
Part 4
Farnum, pacing the deck as he munched at an apple, heard himself hailed from the bridge above. He looked up, to see Alice Frome, caught gloriously in the wind like a winged Victory. Her hair was parted in the middle with a touch of Greek simplicity and fell in wavy ripples over her temples beneath the jaunty cap. She put her arms on the railing and leaned forward, her chin tilted to an oddly taking boyish piquancy.
“I say, give a fellow a bite.”
By no catalogue of summarized details could this young woman have laid claim to beauty, but in the flashing play of her expression, the exquisite golden coloring, one could not evade the charm of a certain warm witchery, of the passionate beat of innocent life. The wonder of her lay in the sparkle of her inner self. Every gleam of the deep true eyes, every impulsive motion of the slight supple body, expressed some phase of her infinite variety. Her flying moods swept her from demure to daring, from warm to cool. And for all her sweet derision her friends knew a heart full of pure, brave enthusiasms that would endure.
“I don’t believe in indiscriminate charity,” Jeff explained, and he took another bite.
“Have you no sympathy for the deserving poor?” she pleaded. “Besides, since you’re a socialist, it isn’t your apple any more than it is mine. Bring my half up to me, sir.”
“Your half is the half I’ve already eaten. And if you knew as much as you pretend to about socialism you’d know it isn’t yours until you’ve earned it.”
Her eyes danced. He noticed that beneath each of them was a sprinkle of tiny powdered freckles. “But haven’t I earned it? Didn’t I blister my hands pulling you aboard?”
He promptly shifted ground. “We’re living under the capitalistic system. You earn it and I eat it,” he argued. “The rest of this apple is my reward for having appropriated what didn’t belong to me.”
“But that’s not fair. It’s no better than stealing.”
“Sh–h! It’s high finance. Don’t use that other word,” he whispered. “And what’s fair hasn’t a thing to do with it. It’s my apple because I’ve got it.”
“But–”
He waved her protest aside blandly. “Now try to be content with the lot a wise Providence has awarded you. I eat the apple. You see me eat it.
That’s the usual division of profits. Don’t be an agitator, or an anarchist.”
“Don’t I get even the core?” she begged.
“I’d like to give it to you, but it wouldn’t be best. You see I don’t want to make you discontented with your position in life.” He flung what was left of the apple into the sea and came up the steps to join her.
Laughter was in the eyes of both, but it died out of hers first.
“Mr. Farnum, is it really as bad as that?” Before he could find an answer she spoke again. “I’ve wanted for a long time to talk with some one who didn’t look at things as we do. I mean as my father does and my uncle does and most of my friends. Tell me what you think of it–you and your friends.”
“That’s a large order, Miss Frome. I hardly know where to begin.”
“Wait! Here comes Lieutenant Beauchamp to take me away. I promised to play ring toss with him, but I don’t want to go now.” She led a swift retreat to a spot on the upper deck shielded from the wind and warmed by the two huge smokestacks. Dropping breathless into a chair, she invited him with a gesture to take another. Little imps of mischief flashed out at him from her eyes. In the adventure of the escape she had made him partner. A rush of warm blood danced through his veins.
“Now, sir, we’re safe. Begin the propaganda. Isn’t that the word you use? Tell me all about everything. You’re the first real live socialist I ever caught, and I mean to make the most of you.”
“But I’m unfortunately not exactly a socialist.”
“An anarchist will do just as well.”
“Nor an anarchist. Sorry.”
“Oh, well, you’re something that’s dreadful. You haven’t the proper bump of respect for father and for Uncle Joe. Now why haven’t you?”
And before he knew it this young woman had drawn from him glimpses of what life meant to him. He talked to her of the pressure of the struggle for existence, of the poverty that lies like a blight over whole sections of cities, spreading disease and cruelty and disorder, crushing the souls of its victims, poisoning their hearts and bodies. He showed her a world at odds and ends, in which it was accepted as the natural thing that some should starve while others were waited upon by servants.
He made her see how the tendency of environment is to reduce all things to a question of selfinterest, and how the great triumphant fact of life is that love and kindness persist. Her interest was insatiable. She poured questions upon him, made him tell her stories of the things he had seen in that strange underworld that was farther from her than Asia. So she learned of Oscar Marchant, coughing all day over the shoes he half-soled and going out at night to give his waning life to the service of those who needed him. He told her–without giving names–the story of Sam Miller and his wife, of shop girls forced by grinding poverty to that easier way which leads to death, of little children driven by want into factories which crushed the youth out of them.
Her eyes with the star flash in them never left his face. She was absorbed, filled with a strange emotion that made her lashes moist. She saw not only the tragedy and waste of life, but a glorious glimpse of the way out. This man and his friends set the common good above their private gain. For them a new heart was being born into the world. They were no longer consumed with blind greed, with love of their petty selves. They were no longer full of cowardice and distrust and enmity. Life was a thing beautiful to them. It was flushed with the color of hope, of fine enthusiasms. They might suffer. They might be defeated. But nothing could extinguish the joy in their souls. They walked like gods, immortals, these brothers to the spent and the maimed. For they had found spiritual values in it that made any material profit of small importance. Alice got a vision of the great truth that is back of all true reforms, all improvement, all progress.
“Love,” she said almost in a whisper, “is forgetting self.”
Jeff lost his stride and pulled up. He thought he could not have heard aright. “I beg your pardon?”
“Nothing. I was just thinking out loud. Go on please.”
But she had broken the thread of his talk. He attempted to take it up again, but he was still trying for a lead when Alice saw Mrs. Van Tyle and Beauchamp coming toward them.
She rose. Her eyes were the brightest Jeff had ever seen. They were filled with an ardent tenderness. It was as if she were wrapped in a spiritual exaltation.
“Thank you. Thank you. I can’t tell you what you’ve done for me.”
She turned and walked quickly away. To be dragged back to the commonplace at once was more than she could bear. First she must get alone with herself, must take stock of this new emotion that ran like wine through her blood. A pulse throbbed in her throat, for she was in a passionate glow of altruism.
“I’m glad of life–glad of it–glad of it!” she murmured through the veil she had lowered to screen her face from observation.
It had come to her as a revelation straight from Heaven that there can be no salvation without service. And the motive back of service must be love. Love! That was what Jesus had come to teach the world, and all these years it had warped and mystified his message.
She felt that life could never again be gray or colorless. For there was work waiting that she could do, service that she could give. And surely there could be no greater happiness than to find her work and do it gladly.
CHAPTER 17
All sorts of absurd assumptions pass current as fixed and non- debatable standards. We might be free, and we tie ourselves to the slavery of rutted convention. Afraid of ideas, we come to no definite philosophy of life that is the result of clear and pellucid thinking.
We must get rid of our bonds, but only in order to take on new ones. For our convictions will shackle us. The difference is that then we shall be servants of Truth and not of dead Tradition. –From the Note Book of a Dreamer.
THE CHAPERONE EXPLAINS THAT THE REBEL IS IMPOSSIBLE AND THE CHAPERONED BEGS LEAVE TO DIFFER
Part 1
“And why mustn’t I?” Alice demanded vigorously.
Her cousin regarded her with indolent amusement. “My dear, you are positively the most energetic person I know. It is refreshing to see with what interest you enter into a discussion.”
Miss Frome, very erect and ready for argument, watched her steadily from the piano stool of their joint sitting room. “Well?”
“I didn’t say you mustn’t, my dear. I know better than to deal in imperatives with Miss Alice. What I did was mildly to suggest that you are going rather far. It’s all very well to be civil, but–” Mrs. Van Tyle shrugged her shoulders and let it go at that. She was leaning back in an easychair and across its arm her wrist hung. Between the fingers, polished like old ivory to the tapering pink nails, was a lighted cigarette.
“Why shouldn’t I be–pleasant to him? I like him.” Her color deepened, but the eyes of the girl did not give way. There was in them a little flare of defiance.
“Be pleasant to him if you like, and if it amuses you. But–” Again Valencia stopped, but after a puff or two at her cigarette she added presently: “Don’t get too interested in him.”
“I’m not likely to,” Alice returned with a touch of scorn. “Can’t I like a man and admire him without wanting to marry him? I think that’s a hateful way to look at it.”
“It’s your interpretation, not mine,” Mrs. Van Tyle answered with perfect good humor. “Of course you couldn’t want to marry him under any circumstances. His station in life–his anarchistic ideas–his reputation as a confirmed libertine–all of them make the thought of such a thing impossible.”
Miss Frome’s mind seized on only one of the charges. “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe a word of it. Anybody can throw mud–and some of it is bound to stick. He’s a good man. You can see that in his face.”
“You can perhaps. I can’t.” Valencia studied her beneath a droop of eyelids behind which she was very alert. “Those things aren’t said about a man unless they are true. Moreover, it happens we don’t have to depend on hearsay.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you remember that night we saw the Russian dancers?”
“Yes.”
“On the way home our car passed him. He was helping a woman out of a cab in front of the building where he rooms. She was intoxicated, and–his arm was round her waist.”
“I don’t believe it. It was somebody else,” the young woman flamed.
“His cousin recognized him. So did I.”
“There must be some explanation. I’ll ask him.”
“Ask him!” Valencia’s level eyebrows lifted “Really, I don’t think that will do. Better quietly eliminate him.”
“You mean treat him as if he were guilty when, I am sure he is not.”
Mrs. Van Tyle’s little laugh rippled out. “You’re quite dramatic about it, my dear. The man’s of no importance. He’s a _poseur_, a demagogue, and one with a vicious streak in him. I understand, of course, that you’re interested only because he different from the other men you know. That merely a part of his pose.”
“I’m sure it isn’t.”
“You’re romantic, my dear. I’ll admit his arrival on this ship was dramatic. No doubt you’re imagining him a knight going back to save gallantly a day that is lost. He’s only a politician, and so far as I can understand they are almost all a bad lot.”
“Including Father and Uncle Joe and Ned Merrill?” Alice asked acidly.
“They are not politicians, but business men. They are in politics merely to protect their interests. But I didn’t intend to start a discussion about Mr. Farnum. I ask you to remember that as your chaperone I’m here to represent your father. Would he wish you to be friendly with this man?”
Alice was silent. What her father would think was not a matter of doubt.
“The man’s impossible,” Mrs. Van Tyle went on pleasantly. “And it’s just as well to be careful. Not that I’m very prudish myself. But if you’re going to marry Ned Merrill–”
She had struck the wrong note. Like a flash Alice answered.
“I’m not. That’s definitely decided.”
“Really! I thought it was rather arranged,” Valencia smiled blandly.
It was all very well for Alice to protest, but in the end she would be a good girl and do as she was told. Not that her cousin objected to her having a little fling before the fatal day. But why couldn’t the girl do her flirting with Beauchamp instead of with this wild socialist?
Valencia reflected that at any rate she had done her duty.
Part 2
Jeff was tramping the deck, his hands in his coat pockets, waiting for the trumpeter to fling out the two bars of music that would summon him to breakfast. He walked vigorously? drawing in deep breaths of the salt sea air. His thoughts were of Alice Frome. He was a lover, and in his imagination she embodied all things beautiful. Her charm flowed through him, pierced him with delight. When he heard music his mind flew to her. It voiced the rhythm of her motions and the sound of her warm laughter. The sunshine but reflected the golden gleams of light in her wavy hair.
As he swung round the smoking saloon Jeff came face to face with Alice. He turned and caught step with her. The coat she wore came to her ankles, but it could not conceal her light, strong tread nor the long lines of the figure that gave her the grace of a captured wood nymph.
“Only five hundred miles from Verden. By night we ought to be in wireless communication,” he suggested.
Her glance flashed at him. “You’ll be glad to get home.”
“I will and I won’t. There’s work for me to do there. But it’s the first real vacation I ever had in my life that lasted over a week. You can’t think how I’ve enjoyed it.”
“So have I. More than anything I can remember.” They stopped to look at a steamer which lay low on the distant horizon line. After they had fallen into step again she continued at the point where they had been interrupted: “And after we reach home? Are you going to come and see me? Are you going to let me meet your friends, those dear people who are giving themselves to make life less hideous and harsh for the weak? Shall I meet Mr. Mifflin . . . and Mr. Miller and your little Socialist poet? Or are you going to desert me?”
He smiled a little at her way of putting it, but he was troubled none the less. “Are you sure that your way is our way? One can give service on the Hill just as much as down in the bottoms. There’s no moral grandeur in rags or in dirt. Isn’t your place with your friends?”
“Haven’t I a right to take hold of life for myself at first hand? Haven’t I a right to know the truth? What have I done that I should be walled off from all these people who earn the bread I eat?”
“But your friends . . . your father. . .”
Her ironic smile derided him. “So after all you haven’t the courage of your convictions. Because I’m Peter C. Frome’s daughter I’m not to have the right to live.”
“No, it’s your right to take hold of life with both hands. But surely you must live it among your own people.”
“I’ve got to learn how to live it first, haven’t I?
Most of my friends are not even aware there a problem of poverty. They thrust the thought of it from them. Our wealthy class has no social consciousness. Take my father. He thinks the submerged are lost because they are thriftless and that all would be right if they wouldn’t drink. To him they are just a waste product of civilization.
“But can you study the life of the people without growing discontented with the life you must lead?”
“There is a divine discontent, you know. I’ve got to see things for myself. Why should all my opinions, my faith, be given to me ready-made. Why must I live by a formula I have never examined? If it isn’t true I want to know it. And if it is true I want to know it.” She had been looking straight before them toward the rising sun but now her gaze swept round on him. “Don’t blame yourself for giving me new thoughts. I suppose all new ideas are likely to make trouble. But I’ve been working in this direction for years. Ever since I’ve been a little girl my heresies have puzzled my father. Meeting you has shown me a short cut. That’s all.”
Something she had said recalled to him a fugitive memory.
“Do you know, I think I saw you once when you were a little bit of a thing?”
“Where?”
“On the doorstep of your old place. I was rather busy at the time fighting Edward Merrill.”
She stopped, looking at him in surprise. “Were you that boy?”
“I was that boy.”
“You fought him to help a little ragged girl. She was a foreigner.”
“I’ve forgotten why I fought him. The reason I remember the occasion is that I met then for the first time two of my friends.”
She claimed a place immediately. “Who was the other one?”
“Captain Chunn.”
Presently she bubbled into a little laugh. “How did the fight come out? My nurse dragged me into the house.”
“Don’t remember. I know the school principal licked me next day. I had been playing hookey.”
They made another turn of the deck before she spoke again.
“So we’re old acquaintances, and I didn’t know it. That was nearly eighteen years ago. Isn’t it strange that after so long we should meet again only last week?”
Jeff felt the blood creep into his face. “We met once before, Miss Frome.”
“Oh, on the street. I meant to speak.”
“So did I.”
“When?”
With his eyes meeting hers steadily Jeff told her of the time she had found him in the bushes and mistaken him for a sick man. He could see that he had struck her dumb. She looked at him and looked away again.
“Why do you tell me this?” she asked at last in a low voice.
“It’s only fair you should know the truth about me.”
They tramped the circuit once more. Neither of them spoke. The trumpeter’s bugle call to breakfast rang out.
At the bow she stopped and looked down at the waters they were furrowing. It was a long time before she raised her head and met his eyes. The color had whipped into her cheeks, but she put her question steadily.
“Are you telling me. . . that I must lose my friend?”
“Isn’t that for you to say?”
“I don’t know.” She faltered for words, but not the least in her intention. “Are you–what I have always heard you are?”
“Can you be a little more definite?” he asked gently.
“Well–dissipated! You’re not that?”
“No. I’ve trodden down the appetite. I’m a total abstainer.”
“And you’re not. . . those worse things that the papers say?”
“No.”
“I knew it.” Triumph rang in her voice. She breathed a generous trust. To know him for a true man it was necessary only to look into his fearless eyes set deep in the thin tanned face. It was impossible for anything unclean to survive with his humorous humility and his pervading sympathy and his love of truth. “I didn’t care what they said. I knew it all the time.”
Her sweet faith was a thing to see with emotion. He felt tears scorch the back of his eyes.
“The thing you know is bad enough.”
“Oh, that! That is nothing . . . now. It doesn’t matter.”
Lieutenant Beauchamp emerged from a saloon and bore down upon them.
“Mrs. Van Tyle has sent me to bring you to breakfast, Miss Frome. Mornin’, Mr. Farnum.”
“And I’m ready for it, We’ve been round the deck ever so many times. Haven’t we, Mr. Farnum?”
She nodded lightly to Jeff and walked away with the Englishman. The sunshine of her warm vitality was like quicksilver in Farnum’s veins. What a gallant spirit, at once delicate and daring, dwelt in that vivid slender form! A snatch of Chesterton came to his mind:
Her face was like an open word
When brave men speak and choose,
The very colors of her coat
Were better than good news.
“It is the hour of man: new purposes, Broad shouldered, press against the world’s slow gate; And voices from the vast eternities
Publish the soul’s austere apostolate.
Man bursts the chains that his own hands have made; Hurls down the blind, fierce gods that in blind years He fashioned, and a power upon them laid To bruise his heart and shake his soul with fears.” –Edwin Markham.
CHAPTER 18
THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY ARE GIVEN AN ILLUSTRATION OF A ROORBACK
Part 1
Rawson sat in the rotunda of the Pacific Hotel in desultory conversation with Captain Chunn, Hardy and Rogers. He brought his clenched hand down on the padded leather arm of the big chair.
“They’ll jam it through to-morrow. That’s what they’ll do. James K. Farnum’s been playing mighty pretty politics and he has got the votes to deliver the goods.”
Hardy nodded as he knocked the ash from his cigar. “Now that it’s all over we can see James K.’s trail easily enough. He meant to defeat the initiative and referendum amendment, and he meant to do it without losing his popularity. He’s done it too. Jeff’s disappearance made it certain our bill wouldn’t go through. James jumps in with a hurrah and passes one that isn’t worth the powder to blow it up. But he’s going to claim it as a great victory for the people–and if I know that young man he’ll get away with his bluff. Yet it’s certain as taxes that he’s been working for Joe Powers all the time.”
“I wouldn’t put it past him to have engineered some deal to get rid of his cousin,” Chunn suggested.
Rawson shook his head. “No. Not respectable enough for James. And he’s not fool enough to run his head into a trap. But I’d bet my head Big Tim gave him a tip it was to be pulled off. J. K. had to know. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been in a position to play the game for them. But he didn’t know any details–just a suggestion. Enough to wise him without making him responsible.”
“And the play he’s been making in the papers. Offering a reward for information about Jeff, insisting publicly that he has absolute confidence in his cousin’s integrity while he shakes his head in private. If you want my opinion, that young man is a whited sepulchre. I never did believe in him.”
Rogers turned to Captain Chunn with an incredulous smile. “But you still believe in Jeff. Frankly, it looks to me like a double sell out.”
The old Confederate’s eyes gleamed. “Sir, I’ve known that boy since he was a little tad. He’s never told me a lie. He’s square as they make them.”
“I used to believe in his cousin James, too,” Rogers commented.
“Oh, James! He’s another proposition.” Rawson’s voice was sour with disgust. “He just naturally looked to see where his bread was buttered. He’s as selfish as the devil for all that suave, cordial way of his. Right from the first his idea has been to make a big personal hit. And he figured out he could do it easier with Joe Powers back of him than against him. James K. is the smoothest fraud on the Pacific Coast. But Jeff–why, every hair of his head is straight. He’s one out of a million, believe me.”
“You’ve said it,” Chunn agreed.
Rogers smiled across at them. “He’s left a lot of good friends behind him anyhow. But it’s strange he could drop off the earth without a soul knowing about it.”
“The men who murdered him know about it,” Rawson answered significantly.
Captain Chunn shook his head. “No, that boy will turn up yet.”
“But not in time to save us. We’re licked. There’s not one chance in a million for us. That’s the discouraging feature of it, to be sold out after we had won our fight.”
Rawson agreed with Hardy. “Yes, we’re licked. Even if Jeff were to show up, with all these stories against him, we wouldn’t be able to stem the tide now.”
“Mister Raw-w-son–Mister Raw-w-son.” The singsong voice of a bellhop echoed through the rotunda.
Captain Chunn’s walking stick flagged the lad and brought him sliding across the polished floor.
“Telegram for Mr. Rawson.”
The big politician ripped it open and ran his eyes rapidly over the yellow slip. From his lips burst a sudden oath of surprise.
“By Jupiter, the miracle’s happened. Jeff is alive and on his way here. He’s sent me a wireless from out at sea somewhere.”
“What!” Captain Chunn let out a whoop of joy.
“Listen here.” Rawson read aloud his message. “‘Shanghaied on schooner _Nancy Hanks_ . Escaped at Honolulu. Back in Verden to-night. Keep up the fight.'”
“Didn’t I say Jeff was alive? Didn’t I say he would come back and beat those robbers yet?” the owner of the _World_ demanded.
“Don’t get excited. It may be a fake.” This from Hardy, who was almost as much moved himself.
“Fake nothing! We’ll go down to the telegraph office and make sure it’s 0. K. Won’t this make a bully story for the _World_ ‘Shanghaied’ in big letters across the top, and underneath a red hot roast of the old city hall gang’s methods of trying to defeat the will of the people.” Rawson laughed aloud as his imagination pictured the story.
The old soldier’s eyes gleamed. “I’ll run twice as many copies as usual. We’ll plaster the state with them, calling for mass meetings everywhere to insist on the legislature passing our bill.”
“Go easy, gentlemen,” advised Rogers. “If it’s true we hold a trump card, but we want to play it mighty carefully so as to make it carry as much dynamite as possible.”
The company could give no information more definite than that the message had come from the _Bellingham,_ which was still a couple of hundred miles out at sea.
In view of the value of the news from a strategic slant his friends succeeded in keeping the lid on Captain Chunn’s enthusiasm until the party was safe aboard a fast yacht steaming out of the harbor to meet the _Bellingham._ The old Confederate’s first impulse had been to run an extra immediately, but he was argued out of it.
“We don’t want to go off half cocked. We’ve got a beautiful comeback if we play it right. That is, if Jeff’s got any proof. But we better wait and let Jeff run the newspaper end of it, Captain.”
This was Hardy’s view, and it was indorsed by the others.
“Another thing. This story has got to come just like an explosion on James K. Farnum’s supporters. We’ve got to sweep them right back to our bill. Now if we break the force of it by giving them warning that swarm of lobbyists will get busy and stay busy all night,” Rawson added.
Jim Dunn, the star reporter of the _World,_ was hurriedly summoned by telephone. Chunn explained to the city editor that Dunn and the staff photographer were needed to cover a big story, but of what the story was no mention was made to the office. As soon as Dunn and Quillen reached the wharf the _Fly by Night_ shot out of the dock.
Part 2
In the wintry afternoon sunlight Beauchamp and Alice were playing a match of shuffleboard against Jeff and the daughter of a Honolulu missionary. The game had reached an exciting and critical stage when they noticed that the ship was no longer quivering from the throb of the engines.
“A steam yacht, probably from Verden,” the ship purser remarked to the first mate as they passed.
The players gave up their game to watch the boat that was being lowered from the deck of a yacht close at hand. Into it stepped five men in addition to the crew. Presently Jeff, leaning against the rail, borrowed the glasses of a man near. After Alice had looked she handed them to Farnum.
He gave a little exclamation of surprise.
“I beg your pardon?” the girl beside him murmured.
“They are my friends, Miss Frome. Come to meet me, I expect. The little man in gray with one arm is Captain Chunn.”
She was all excitement at once. “Then they must have received your message?”
“Probably.”
Jeff was the first man to meet Captain Chunn as he walked up the steps. The gray little man gave a whoop of joy.
“David!”
Their hands gripped.
Rawson fell on Farnum from behind and pounded him jubilantly. Instantly the editor was the center of a group of eager, urgent wellwishers.
Alice explained to Captain Barclay what it was all about and stood back smiling while questions and answers flew back and forth.
“What about our bill?” Jeff inquired as soon as the first hubbub had quieted.
“Dead as a door nail. Your cousin has substituted H. B. I7. They will pass it to-morrow or the next day.”
A swift sickness ran through Farnum. “James gone back on us?”
“That’s what. He’s double-crossed us.” Rawson snapped the words out bitterly.
“Why–why–surely not James.” Jeff’s mind groped for some possible
explanation.
“Says our bill was lost anyhow and it was a question of getting through Garman’s bill or none.”
“But Garman’s bill was framed by Ned Merrill. It doesn’t give us anything.”
Rawson nodded grimly. “That’s the idea. We’re to get nothing, but it’s to be wrapped up like a Christmas present so as to fool us.”
“And isn’t there any chance at all for our bill?”
“Just this one chance.” Rawson leaned forward and spoke in a low voice, driving his hand down on the deck railing. “That you’ve got a charge of dynamite up your sleeve to throw into their camp. If you can’t stampede them we’re down and out.”
Jeff and his allies presently moved away together to hold a conference of ways and means. The boat crew pulled back to the yacht. The engines began to throb once more. The _Bellingham_ gathered momentum and was soon plunging forward at full speed.
Part 3
With a queer little surge of pride in him Alice watched Jeff and his friends move away. They depended on him. Unless he could save it their fight was lost. To her he was a prophet of the better civilization that would some day rise on the ruins of an Individualism grown topheavy. But he was neither a dreamer nor a weakling. His idealism was sane and practical, and he would fight to the last ditch when he must.
And this was another strange thing about him, that though his democracy was a faith, vital and ardent, it was tempered with the liberal spirit. He could make allowances; held no grudges, would laugh away insults at which another man would have raged. Out of her very limited experience Alice decided that he was a great man. That he was so warm and human with it all was one of his seizing charms. No boy could have been more interested in winning the shuffleboard game than he.
The fat pork packer from Chicago came wheezing toward her. He took the steamer chair beside Alice and jerked his head toward the spot where Jeff had disappeared.
“Now if you want my notion, Miss Frome, that’s the kind of a man that breeds anarchy. I’ve seen his paper. He fills it full of stuff that makes the workingman discontented with his lot. A trouble maker, that’s what he is. Stops the wheels of industry. Gets in the road of the boosters to croak hard times.”
Alice observed the thick rolls of purple fat that bulged over his collar.
“Progress now,” he went on. “I’m for progress. Develop the country. That gives work to the laborers and keeps them contented. But men like Farnum are always hampering development by annoying capital. Now that’s foolish because capital employs labor.”
The young woman suggested another possibility. “Or else labor employs capital.”
“What!” The fat little man sat bolt upright in surprise. “I guess you never heard your Uncle Joe Powers talk any such foolishness.” He snorted indignantly. “Hmp! The best friend labor has got is capital. If I had the say so I’d crush every labor union–for the good of the working people themselves.”
Alice decided that the mental indigestion of the rich sat heavily upon him. She felt her temper rising and took advantage of the approach of Beauchamp to leave quickly.
“Oh, Lieutenant! Have you seen Valencia?”
The Englishman showed surprise. It happened that Alice had at that moment a view of Mrs. Van Tyle stretched on a deck chair some thirty feet away.
Miss Frome hurried him along. Presently, with a low laugh, she explained. “I wanted to get away from him. Carelessly, I dropped a new idea there. It’s likely to go off. You know how dangerous they are.”
“To people who haven’t many. Had it anything to do with making money?”
“Not directly.”
“Then you needn’t be alarmed on our stout friend’s account. He’s immune to all ideas not connected with that subject.”
The double blast of a trumpet invited them to dinner down stairs.
Part 4
Dunn was sitting in the smoking room writing his story of the kidnapping when a ruddy young Englishman stopped opposite him.
“You’re Mr. Dunn, are you not? Reporter for the _World?_”
“Yes.” The newspaper man looked him over with a swift, trained attention.
“A young lady would like to see you for a few minutes. She is interested in this shanghaing of Mr. Farnum.”
Dunn’s black gimlet eyes searched Beauchamp’s face.
“All right. Glad to see her.” Dunn’s story was being transferred to his pocket as he rose.
He followed his guide to the ladies’ writing room. A slender young woman was standing in front of the bookcase. She turned as they entered. Beauchamp introduced the reporter to her, but Dunn failed to catch the name of this rather remarkable looking young lady.
“You are to write the story of Mr. Farnum’s adventure?” she asked.
The reporter’s eyes narrowed very slightly. “What story?”
“The account of the shanghaing. Oh, I know all about it. Have you all the facts?”
“I’ll be glad to hear what you know, Miss–”
She answered his hesitation by mentioning her name.
Dunn grew more wary. “Miss Alice Frome, daughter of Senator Frome?”
“Yes.”
“Anything you have to say I’ll be pleased to hear, Miss Frome.”
To his surprise she broke through the hedge of reserve he had withdrawn behind.
“You distrust me. You think because I’m Senator Frome’s daughter that I must be against Mr. Farnum. Is that it?”
“I didn’t say that,” he sparred.
“I’m not against him. It’s because I’m anxious to see him win that I want to be sure he has given you the whole story.”
“Why shouldn’t he give me the whole story?”
“Because he isn’t the kind to boast. Did he tell you about the sharks?”
“Or how Miss Frome helped pull him aboard just in time to save him from the crimps?”
The reporter’s eyes gleamed. “What’s that?” he snapped quickly.
“And all about the race from the schooner to the _Bellingham,_ It was the most exciting thing I ever saw.”
“Great guns! What’s the matter with Jeff Farnum? He didn’t say a word about that–missed the cream of the story.”
Alice smiled. “I thought perhaps he might have.”
“He said he saw a chance to swim across to the _Bellingham._ That made a pretty good story. But sharks–and the shanghaiers chasing him–and a young lady helping to haul him aboard to safety–and that young lady Miss Alice Frome! Say, this is the biggest story that ever broke in Verden. If I fall down on it I’m a dead one sure enough.”
“You think it will help Mr. Farnum’s fight for his bill?”
“Help it. Say, I’d give fifty dollars to see James K. Farnum’s face when he reads the _World_ tomorrow morning. The town will go right up in the air. Hundreds of telegrams are going to pour in to members of the assembly from their constituents. We’ll make a Yale finish of this yet.”
“It’s lucky Miss Frome recognized Mr. Farnum. Otherwise I suppose he would have been sent back to the _Nancy Hanks_ .”
“Oh, Miss Frome recognized him? Jeff said one of the passengers did. He couldn’t remember who.”
“I don’t suppose my name is necessary to the story. Just say a young woman on board,” Alice suggested.
Dunn’s black eyes questioned her. “Are you for us, Miss Frome?”
She smiled. “I’m for you.”
“Against Senator Frome and Mr. Powers?”
“I think the bill ought to be passed. I’m not against anybody.”
“Well, I’ll tell you this. It will help the story a lot to have you in it. Some people might say we framed the whole thing up. But with Senator Frome’s daughter starring in it.”
“Oh, no, Mr. Farnum’s the star.”
“Well, you’re the leading lady. Don’t you see how it helps? Clinches the whole thing as genuine. It’s as good as putting the Senator himself on the stand as a witness for us. We’ve just got to have you.”
“It will really help, you think?”
“No question.”
“Very well.”
“And photographs. You’ll stand for one, of course.”
“Now really I don’t see ”
“They can’t get back of a photograph. It carries conviction. Of course we’ve got pictures of you at the office, Miss Frome. But I want to play fair with you. Besides, I want them to show the ship setting.”
She laughed. “Don’t worry. Your enterprising photographer caught me twice before I knew it. And he got one of my cousin, Mrs. Van Tyle. She doesn’t know it, though.”
“Good boy, Quillen. Now, if you’ll begin at the beginning, Miss Frome, I’ll listen to your story.
When she had finished his eyes were gleaming. “It’s the biggest scoop I ever got in on. Sounds too good to be true.”
Part 5
At Gillam’s Point Jeff and his friends, with Dunn and Quillen, left the _Bellingham_ on the launch which brought the pilot. They caught the fast express a half hour later and reached Verden shortly after midnight. His hat drawn down over his eyes and muffied to the ears in an ulster so that he might not be recognized, Farnum took a cab with Captain Chunn, Dunn and Quillen for the office of the World. He slipped into the building and his private room unnoticed by any member of the staff.
Dunn presently brought to him Jenkins, the make-up man.
“Rip your front page to pieces. We’ve got the story of a life time,” Captain Chunn exploded.
Jenkins opened his eyes and grinned at Jeff. “That’s what Jim tells me. Have you got the proof to hang the thing on Big Tim?”
“I’ve got a letter he wrote to Captain Green of the_Nancy Hanks_ . It’s on city hall stationery of the last administration.”
“Funny he used that paper.”
“Someone usually makes a slip in putting a deal of this kind through.”
“And the letter?”
“Just a line, signed with O’Brien’s initials. ‘The terms agreed on are satisfactory.’ I found the letter in Green’s cabin. As I thought I might make use of it I helped myself.”
“Bully! We’ll run a fac-simile of it on the front page.”
“Dunn’s story covers the whole affair. I don’t like some features of it, but our friends say it ought to be run as it stands. I’ve written three columns of editorial stuff dealing with the situation. And here’s a story calling for a mass meeting in front of the State House to-morrow morning.”
“You’ll speak to the people?”
“I’ll say a few words. Hardy and Rawson will be the speakers.”
“Pity we’ve lost your cousin. He’d stir them up.”