THIS was the library of the Townsend mansion in Harniss. Mrs. Townsend had so christened it when the mansion was built; or, to be more explicit, the Boston architect who drew the plans had lettered the word “Library” inside the rectangle indicating the big room, just as he had lettered “Drawing-Room” in the adjoining, and still larger, rectangle, and Mrs. Townsend had approved both plans and lettering. In the former, and much smaller, home of the Townsends there had been neither library nor drawing-room, the apartments corresponding to them were known respectively as the “sitting-room” and the “parlor.” When the little house was partially demolished and the mansion took its place the rechristened sitting-room acquired two black walnut bookcases and a dozen “sets,” the latter resplendent in morocco and gilt. Now the gilt letters gleamed dimly behind the glass in the light from the student lamp upon the marble-topped center table beside which Foster Townsend was sitting, reading a Boston morning newspaper. It was six o’clock in the afternoon of a dark day in the fall of a year late in the seventies.
The student lamp was a large one and the light from beneath its green shade fell upon his head and shoulders as he sat there in the huge leather easy-chair. Most of the furniture in the library was stiff and expensive and uncomfortable. The easy-chair was expensive also, but it was comfortable. Foster Townsend had chosen it himself when the mansion was furnished and it was the one item upon which his choice remained fixed and irrevocable.
“But it is so big and—and homely, dear,” remonstrated his wife. “It doesn’t look—well, genteel enough for a room in a house like ours. Now, truly, do you think it does?”
Her husband, his hat on the back of his head and his hands in his trousers’ pockets, smiled.
“Maybe not, Bella,” he replied. “It is big, I’ll grant you that, and I shouldn’t wonder if it was homely. But so far as that goes I’m big and homely myself. It fits me and I like it. You can have all the fun you want with the rest of the house; buy all the doodads and pictures and images and story-books and trash that you’ve a mind to, but I want that chair and I’m going to have it. A sitting-room is a place to sit in and I mean to sit in comfort.”
“But it isn’t a sitting-room, Father,” urged Arabella. “It is a library. I do wish you wouldn’t forget that.”
“All right. I don’t care what you call it, so long as you let me sit in it the way I want to. That chair’s sold, young man,” he added, addressing the attentive representative of the furniture house. “Now, Mother, what’s the next item on the bill of lading?”
The leather chair came to the library of the Townsend mansion and its purchaser had occupied it many, many afternoons and evenings since. He was occupying it now, his bulky figure filling it to repletion and his feet, of a size commensurate to the rest of him, resting upon an upholstered foot-stool—a “cricket” he would have called it. A pair of gold-rimmed spectacles were perched upon the big nose before his gray eyes and the stump of a cigar was held tightly in the corner of his wide, thin lipped, grimly humorous mouth. He was dressed in a dark blue suit, wore a stiff-bosomed white shirt, a low “turn down” collar and a black, ready-made bow tie. Below the tie, a diamond stud glittered in the shirt bosom. His boots—he had them made for him by the village shoe-maker—were of the, even then, old-fashioned, long-legged variety, but their leather was of the softest and best obtainable. Upon the third finger of his left hand—stubby, thick hands they were—another diamond, set in a heavy gold ring, flashed as he turned the pages of the paper. His hair was a dark brown and it and his shaggy brows and clipped chin beard were sprinkled with gray.
There was another chair at the other side of the table, a rocking-chair, upholstered in fashionable black haircloth and with a lace “tidy” upon its back. That chair was empty. It had been empty for nearly a month, since the day when Arabella Townsend was taken ill. It was pathetically, hauntingly empty now, for she who had been accustomed to occupy it was dead. A little more than a week had elapsed since her funeral, an event concerning which Eben Wixon, the undertaker, has been vaingloriously eloquent ever since.
“Yes, sir-ee!” Mr. Wixon was wont to proclaim with the pride of an artist. “That was about the most luxurious funeral ever held in this county, if I do say it. I can’t think of anything to make it more perfect, unless, maybe, to have four horses instead of two haulin’ the hearse. That would have put in what you might call the finishin’ touch. Yes, sir, ’twould! Still, I ain’t findin’ fault. I’m satisfied. The music—and the flowers! And the high-toned set of folks sittin’ around all over the lower floor of that big house! Some of ’em was out in the dinin’ room, they was. If I had half the cash represented at that Townsend funeral I’d never need to bury anybody else in this world. I bet you I wouldn’t, I’d have enough.”
Foster Townsend read his paper, became interested in a news item, smiled, raised his head and, turning toward the vacant rocker, opened his lips to speak. Then he remembered and sank back again into his own chair. The paper lay unheeded upon his knees and he stared absently at a figure in the Brussels carpet on the floor of the library.
A door in the adjoining room—the dining room—opened and Nabby Gifford, the Townsend housekeeper, entered from the kitchen. She lit the hanging lamp above the dining room table and came forward to draw the portières between that room and the library. Standing with the edge of a curtain in each hand, she addressed her employer.
“Kind of a hard old evenin’, ain’t it, Cap’n Townsend,” she observed. “It’s rainin’ now but I declare if it don’t feel as if it might snow afore it gets through.”
Foster Townsend did not answer, nor did he look up. Mrs. Gifford tried again.
“Anything ’special in the paper?” she inquired. “Ain’t found out who murdered that woman up to Watertown yet, I presume likely?”
He heard her this time.
“Eh?” he grunted, raising his eyes. “No, I guess not. I don’t know. I didn’t notice. What are you doing in the dining room, Nabby? Where’s Ellen?”
“She’s out. It’s her night off. She was all dressed up in her best bib and tucker and so I judged she was goin’ somewheres. I asked her where, but she never said nothin’, made believe she didn’t hear me. Don’t make much odds; I can ’most generally guess a riddle when I’ve got the answer aforehand. There’s an Odd Fellers’ ball over to Bayport to-night and that Georgie D.’s home from fishin’, so I cal’late—”
Townsend interrupted. “All right, all right,” he put in, gruffly. “I don’t care where she’s gone. Pull those curtains, will you, Nabby.”
“I was just a-goin’ to.... Say, Cap’n Townsend, don’t you think it’s kind of funny the way that woman’s husband is actin’—that Watertown woman’s, I mean? He says he wan’t to home the night she was murdered but he don’t say where he was. Now, ’cordin’ to what I read in yesterday’s Advertiser—”
“All right, all right! Pull those curtains.... Here! Wait a minute. Where’s Varunas?”
“He’s out to the barn, same as he usually is, I guess likely. He spends more time with them horses than he does with me, I know that. I say to him sometimes, I say: ‘Anybody’d think a horse could talk the way you keep company with ’em. Seems as if you liked to be with critters that can’t talk.’”
“Perhaps he does—for a change. Well, if he comes in tell him I want to see him. You can call me when supper’s ready. Now, if you’ll pull those curtains—”
The curtains were snatched together with a jerk and a rattle of rings on the pole. From behind them sounded the click of dishes and the jingle of silver. Foster Townsend sank back into the leather chair. His cigar had gone out, but he did not relight it. He sat there, gazing at nothing in particular, a gloomy frown upon his face.
The door leading from the rear of the front hall opened just a crack. Through the crack came a whisper in a hoarse masculine voice.
“Cap’n Foster!” whispered the voice. “Cap’n Foster!... Ssst! Look here!”
Townsend turned, looked and saw a hand with a beckoning forefinger thrust from behind the door. He recognized the hand and lifting his big body from the chair, walked slowly across the room.
“Well, Varunas,” he asked, “what’s the matter now? What are you sneaking in through the skipper’s companion for?”
A head followed the hand around the edge of the door, the head of Varunas Gifford. Varunas was Nabby Gifford’s husband. He was stableman on the Townsend estate, took care of the Townsend horses, and drove his employer’s trotters and pacers in the races at the county fairs and elsewhere. He was a little, wizened man, with stooped shoulders and legs bowed like barrel hoops. His thin, puckered face puckered still more as he whispered a cautious reply.
“Cap’n Foster,” he whispered, “can you just step out in the hall here a minute? I’ve got somethin’ to tell ye and if I come in there Nabby’s liable to hear us talkin’ and want to know what it’s all about. Come out just a minute, can ye?”
Townsend motioned him back, followed him into the dimly lighted hall and closed the door behind them.
“Well, here I am,” he said. “What’s the matter?”
Varunas rubbed his unshaven chin. His fingers among the bristles sounded like the rasp of sandpaper.
“You know Claribel?” he began anxiously.
Claribel was the fastest mare in the Townsend stable. The question, therefore, was rather superfluous. Claribel’s owner seemed to consider it so.
“Don’t waste your breath,” he ordered. “What’s the matter with her?”
Varunas shook his head violently. “Ain’t nothin’ the matter with her,” he declared. “She’s fine. Only—well, you see—”
“Come, come! Throw it overboard!”
“Well, I was cal’latin’ to take her down to the Circle to-morrow mornin’ early—about six or so; afore anybody was up, you know—and try her out. Them was your orders, Cap’n, you remember.”
“Of course I remember. I was going to remind you of it. You’re going to do it, aren’t you?”
“I was cal’latin’ to, but—well, I heard somethin’ a spell ago that made me think maybe I hadn’t better. I’ve been give to understand that—” he leaned forward to whisper once more—“that there’d be somebody else there at the same time me and Claribel was. Um-hum. Somebody that’s cal’latin’ to find out somethin’.”
Foster Townsend’s big hands, pushed into his trousers pockets, jingled the loose change there. He nodded.
“I see,” he said, slowly. “Yes, yes, I see. Somebody named Baker, I shouldn’t wonder. Eh?”
Varunas nodded. “Somebody that works for somebody named somethin’ like that,” he admitted. “You see, Cap’n, I was down to the blacksmith shop a couple of hours ago—got to have Flyaway shod pretty soon—and me and Joe Ellis was talkin’ about one thing or ’nother, and says he: ‘Varunas,’ he says, ‘when is the old man and Sam Baker goin’ to pull off that private horse trot of theirs?’ he says. Course everybody knows that us and Sam have fixed up that match and it’s the general notion that there’s consider’ble money up on it. Some folks say it’s a hundred dollars and some says it’s five hundred. I never tell ’em how much ’tis, because—”
“Because you don’t know. Well, never mind that. Go on.”
“Yup.... Um-hum.... Well, anyhow, all hands knows that our Claribel and his Rattler is goin’ to have it out and Joe he wanted to know when ’twas goin’ to be. I told him next week some day and then he says: ‘I understand you’ve been takin’ the mare down to the Circle and givin’ her time trials in the mornin’s afore anybody else is up.’ Well, that kind of knocked me. I never suspicioned anybody did know, did you, Cap’n?”
“I told you to take pains that they didn’t. You haven’t done it but once. Who saw you then?”
“Why, nobody, so I’d have been willin’ to bet. I never see anybody around. Lonesome’s all git out ’tis down there that time in the mornin’. And dark, too. How Joe or anybody else knew I had Claribel down there yesterday was more’n I could make out.”
“Well, never mind. It looks as if they did know. Did Ellis tell you what time the mare made?”
“No. But he give me to understand that Seth Emmons, Baker’s man, was figgerin’ to come over from Bayport and be somewheres in that neighborhood to-morrer mornin’, and every mornin’, till he found out. Joe wouldn’t tell me who told him, but he said ’twas a fact. Now what had I better do? It’s the story ’round town that Rattler has made 2:20 or better and that the best Claribel can do is in the neighborhood of 2:35. If folks knew she’d made 2:18½ around that Circle Baker might have Rattler took sick or somethin’ and the whole business would be called off. I’ve known his horses to be took down in a hurry afore, when he was toler’ble sure to lose. When you’re dealin’ with Sam Baker you’re up against a slick article, and that man of his, Seth Emmons, is just as up and comin’. I better not show up at that Circle to-morrow mornin’, had I, Cap’n Foster?”
Townsend, hands in pockets, took a turn up and down the hall. His horses were his pet hobbies. Besides the span of blacks which he was accustomed to drive about town and which, with the nobby brougham or carryall or dog-cart which they drew, were the admiration and boastful pride of Harniss, he owned a half dozen racers. At the Ostable County Fair and Cattle Show in October the Townsend entries usually carried off the majority of first prizes. They were entered, also, at the fair in New Bedford and sometimes as far away as Taunton. Between fairs there were numbers of by-races with other horse owners in neighboring towns. A good trotter was a joy to Foster Townsend and a sharply contested trotting match his keenest enjoyment. The Townsend trotters were as much talked about as the famous and long-drawn-out Townsend-Cook lawsuit. The suit was won, or seemed to be. The highest court in Massachusetts had recently decided it in Foster Townsend’s favor. Bangs Cook’s lawyers were reported to have entered motion of appeal and it was said that they intended carrying it to the Supreme Court at Washington, but few believed their appeal would be granted.
Sam Baker was an old rival of his on the tracks. Baker was the hotel keeper and livery man at Bayport, ten miles away. He was not accounted rich, like Townsend, but he was well to do, a shrewd Yankee and a “sport.” The trotter Rattler was a recent acquisition of his and a fast one, so it was said. He had challenged Townsend’s mare Claribel to a mile trot on the “Circle,” the track which Townsend had built and presented to the town. It was a quarter mile round of hard clay road constructed on the salt meadows near the beach at South Harniss. A lonely spot with no houses near it, it was then. Now a summer hotel and an array of cottages stand on or near it. Foster Townsend used it as an exercise ground for his trotters, but any one else was accorded the same privilege. In the winter, when the snow was packed hard, it was the spot where the dashing young fellow in a smart cutter behind a smart horse took his best girl for a ride and the hope of an impromptu race with some other dashing young fellow similarly equipped.
Varunas Gifford watched his employer pace up and down the hall, watched him adoringly but anxiously. After a moment he returned to repeat his question.
“Better not be down to the Circle to-morrow mornin’, had I, Cap’n?” he suggested.
Townsend stopped in his stride. “Yes,” he said, with decision. “I want you to be there.”
“Eh? Why, good land! If that Seth Emmons is there spyin’ and keepin’ time on Claribel, why—”
“Sshh! Wait! I want you to be there, but I don’t want the mare to be there. Is Hornet all right for a workout?”
“Sartin sure he’s all right. But Hornet can’t do better’n 2:40 if he spreads himself, not on that Circle track anyhow. You ain’t cal’latin’ to haul out Claribel and put in Hornet, be you? There wouldn’t be no sense in that, Cap’n, not a mite. Why—”
“Oh, be quiet! If he does 2:45 it will suit me just as well, provided that is the best you can make him do. You say it’s dark down there at six o’clock?”
“Dark enough, even if it’s a fine mornin’, this time of year. A mornin’ like to-day’s—yes, and the way it looks as if to-morrow’s would be—it’s so dark you can’t much more’n see to keep in the road.”
“All right. The darker the better. If it’s dark to-morrow morning you hitch Hornet in the gig and go down there and send him a mile as fast as he can travel. He is the same build and size as Claribel, about, and the same color.”
“Eh?... Gosh!” Varunas’ leathery face split with a broad grin. “Yus—yus,” he observed, “I see what you’re up to, Cap’n Foster. You figger that Sam Emmons’ll see me sendin’ Hornet around the Circle and he’ll take it for granted—Eh! But no, I’m afraid ’twon’t be dark enough for that. Hornet is the same size and color as Claribel but he ain’t marked the same. Claribel’s got that white splash between her eyes and that white stockin’ on her left hind laig. Hornet he ain’t got no white on him nowheres. If ’twas the middle of the night Sam might be fooled, but—”
“Sshh! You’ve been whitewashing the henhouses this week, haven’t you? And as the job isn’t finished, I imagine you’ve got some of the whitewash left. If you have, and if you’ve got any gumption at all, I should think you could splash a horse white wherever he needed to be white and do it well enough to fool anybody on a dark morning, particularly if he wasn’t on the lookout for a trick. You could do that on a pinch, couldn’t you?”
Mr. Gifford’s grin, which had disappeared, came back again, broader than ever.
“I shouldn’t be surprised to death if I could,” he chuckled. “I see—yus, yus, I see! Sam he’ll see Hornet all whitewashed up like a cellar door and he won’t be suspicionin’ nothin’ but Claribel, and so when Hornet can’t do no better than 2:40 or 2:45 he’ll naturally—Hi! that’s cute, that is! Yes, yes, I see now.”
“Well, I’m glad you do. Go ahead and do your whitewashing. Whitewash isn’t like paint, it comes off easy.”
From behind the closed door of the library a sharp voice called: “Cap’n Townsend! Cap’n Townsend! Supper’s ready!”
Varunas started. “I must be goin’,” he whispered. “Don’t tell her about it, Cap’n Foster, will ye. She’ll pester me to death to find out what’s up and if I don’t tell her, she— But say!” he added admiringly, “that is about as slick a trick as ever I heard of, that whitewashin’ is. How did you ever come to think that up all by yourself?”
Foster Townsend, his hand on the knob of the dining room door, grunted.
“I didn’t think it up all by myself,” he said, curtly. “There’s nothing new about it. It’s an old trick, as old as horse racing. I remembered it, that’s all, and I guess it is good enough to fool any of Sam Baker’s gang. You can tell me to-morrow how it worked.”
He opened the door, crossed the library and sat down in his chair at the lonely supper table. Nabby Gifford brought in the eatables and set them before him.
“I made you a fish chowder to-night, Cap’n Foster,” she said. “I know you always liked it and we ain’t had one for a long time. Ezra Nickerson had some real nice tautog that his boy had just caught out by the spar buoy and there’s no kind of fish makes as good chowder as a tautog. Now I do hope you’ll eat some of it. You ain’t ate enough the last week to keep a canary bird goin’. You’ll be sick fust thing you know.”
Townsend dipped his spoon in the chowder and tasted approvingly.
“Good enough!” he declared. “Tastes like old times. Seems like old times to have you waiting on table, too, Nabby. Mother always liked your fish chowders.”
Mrs. Gifford nodded. “I know she did,” she agreed. “Time and time again I’ve heard her say there was nobody could make a chowder like me. Um-hum. Oh, well! We’re here to-day and to-morrow the place thereof don’t know us, as it says in the Bible. Ah, hum-a-day!... Speakin’ of waitin’ on table,” she added, noting the expression on his face, “I wanted to talk to you about that, Cap’n Townsend. There ain’t any reasons why I shouldn’t do it all the time. You don’t need two hired help in that kitchen now any more than a codfish needs wings. Ellen, she and that Georgie D. of hers will be gettin’ married pretty soon—leastways all hands says they will—and when she quits you mustn’t hire anybody in her place. If I can’t get meals for one lone man then I’d better be sent to the old woman’s home. You might just as well let me do it, and save your money—not that you need to save any more, land knows!”
Foster Townsend shook his head. “A pretty big house for one pair of hands to take care of,” he observed. “When Ellen goes—or if she goes—you better hire some one else, Nabby.”
“Now, Cap’n Foster, what’s the use? What for?”
“Because I want you to, for one reason.... There, there, Nabby! don’t argue about it. I know what I’m doing. At any rate I guess I can spend my own money, if I want to.”
“I guess you can. I don’t know who’s liable to stop you doin’ anything you want to, far’s that goes. Nobody has done it yet, though there’s a good many tried.... But while I’m talkin’ I might just as well talk a little mite more. I don’t see why you keep on livin’ in this great ark of a place. ’Tain’t a bit of my business, but if I was you I’d sell—or rent it, or somethin’—and have a little house that I wouldn’t get lost in every time I went upstairs.”
Her employer shook his head. “This is my house and I stay in it,” he said, crisply.
“Well, if you will you will, of course. When you bark at a body that way there ain’t a mite of use barkin’ back, I know that. And I realize that you and—and her that’s gone had the best time in the world buildin’ over this house and riggin’ it up. It’s just that I know how lonesome you are—a blind person could see that.... Here, here! You mustn’t get up from that table yet, Cap’n Foster. You’ve got to have some more of my tautog chowder.”
“No. Had enough, Nabby.”
“My soul! Well, then you must have a helpin’ of baked indian puddin’. I made it ’special, because I knew how you liked it. Don’t tell me you won’t touch that puddin’!”
“All right, all right. Bring it along. And I’ll have another cup of tea, if you’ve got it.”
“Got it! I’ve got a gallon. That Varunas man of mine would drink a hogshead of strong tea all to himself any time if I’d let him. I tell him no wonder he’s all shriveled up like a wet leather apron.”
She disappeared into the kitchen to return, a moment later, with the refilled cup. She was talking when she went out and talking when she came back.
“You hadn’t ought to keep on livin’ in this house all alone,” she declared, with emphasis. “I said it afore and now I say it again. It ain’t natural to live that way. It ain’t good for man to be alone, that’s what the Good Book says. Land sakes! afore I’d do that I’d—I’d do the way the rich man in the—what-d’ye-call-it—parallel done. I’d go out into the highways and byways and fetch in the lame and the halt and the blind. Yes, indeed I would! I’d do it for company and I wouldn’t care how halt they was, neither; they’d be better’n nobody. Speakin’ about that parallel,” she added, reflectively. “I’ve never been real sure just what ailed a person when he was a ‘halt.’ A horse—mercy knows I hear horse talk enough from Varunas!—has somethin’ sometimes that’s called the ‘spring halt,’ but that, so he tells me, is a kind of lameness. Now the parallel tells about the lame and the halt, so— Good gracious! Why, you ain’t through, be you, Cap’n Foster? You ain’t hardly touched your puddin’.”
The captain had risen and pushed back his chair. “I’ve eaten all I can to-night, Nabby,” he said. “My appetite seems to have gone on a voyage these days and left me ashore.... Humph! So you think I’d better have somebody come and live here with me, do you? That’s funny.”
“Why is it funny? Sounds like sense to me.”
“It’s funny because I had just about made up my mind— Oh, well, never mind that, I’m going out pretty soon. If any one comes to see me you can tell them I’ve gone.”
“Where shall I say you’ve gone?”
“If you don’t know you won’t have to say it.... Good-night.”
“Shall I tell Varunas to have the carriage and team ready for you?”
“No, I’m going to walk.”
“Walk! What’ll people think if they see you out a-walkin’ on your own feet like—like common folks? The idea!”
“Good-night. One thing more: If the minister comes tell him I’ll keep up Bella’s subscription to the church the same as she did when she was here—that is, for the present, anyhow. If he says anything about my giving money toward the new steeple tell him I haven’t made up my mind whether or not the steeple is going to be rebuilt. When I do I’ll let him know.... That’s all, I guess.”
He went into the library, drawing the curtains with his own hands this time. He glanced at the ornate marble and gold clock upon the mantel, decided that it was too early for his contemplated walk, and sank heavily into the leather chair. He picked up the paper from the floor, adjusted his spectacles and attempted to read. The attempt was a failure. Nothing in the closely printed pages aroused his interest sufficiently to distract his thoughts from the empty rocker at the other side of the table. He tossed the paper upon the floor again and sat there, pulling at his beard and glancing impatiently at the clock. Its gold plated hands crept from seven to seven-thirty and, at last, to ten minutes to eight. Then he rose and moved toward the front hall.
In that hall he took from the carved walnut hatstand a long ulster and a black soft hat. He had donned the ulster and was about to put on the hat when he heard Mrs. Gifford’s step in the library. She was calling his name.
“Well, here I am,” he answered, impatiently. “Now what?”
Nabby was out of breath, and this, together with the consciousness of the importance of her errand, did not help her toward coherence.
“I—I’m awful sorry to stop you, Cap’n Foster,” she panted, “and—and of course I know you didn’t want to see nobody to-night. But—but he said ’twas serious and he’d come all the way from Trumet a-purpose—and it’s rainin’ like all fire, too—and bein’ as ’twas him, I—well, you see, I just didn’t know’s I’d ought to say no—so—”
Townsend interrupted. “Who is it?” he demanded.
Nabby’s tone was awe-stricken. “It’s Honorable Mooney,” she whispered. “Representive Mooney, that’s who ’tis. He’s drove all the way from Trumet, rain and all, to see you, Cap’n Foster, and he says it’s dreadful important. If it had been any one else I wouldn’t have let him in, but honest, when I see him standin’ on the steps to the side door, lookin’ just as big and—and noble as he done when Varunas took me to that Republican rally and he made such a grand speech, I—well, I—”
Again her employer broke in.
“You have let him in, I take it,” he said, curtly. “And of course you told him I was in.... Well, I’ll give him five minutes. Send him into the sitting-room.”
The Honorable Alpheus Mooney was a young man serving his first term in the Massachusetts Legislature as Representative for the Ostable County district. He was extremely anxious to continue his service there, had been renominated and was now facing the ordeal of the election which would take place early in November. His manner as he entered the library was a curious mixture of importance, deference and a slight uneasiness.
“How do you do, Cap’n Townsend?” he gushed, changing his hat from his right hand to his left and extending the former. “How do you do, sir?”
He seized the Townsend hand and shook it heartily. The captain endured the shaking rather than shared in it. He did not ask his caller to be seated.
“How are you, Mooney?” he said. “Well, what brought you over here this wet night?”
Mr. Mooney sat without waiting for an invitation. He placed his hat upon the floor, clasped his hands in his lap, unclasped them again, crossed his knees, cleared his throat, and agreed that the evening was a wet one. Townsend, still standing, thrust his own hands into his trousers pockets.
“Well, what’s the matter?” he asked, dismissing the subject of the weather.
Mooney once more cleared his throat. “Oh—er—oh, nothing in particular, Cap’n,” he said. “Nothing much. I was over here in Harniss and—and I thought I would drop in for a minute, that’s all. I haven’t seen you since your—er—sad loss—and I—er—I can’t tell you how sorry I was to learn of your bereavement. It was a great shock to me, a dreadful shock.”
Townsend’s face was quite expressionless. “All right,” he observed. “Nabby said you wanted to see me about something important. Well?”
“Well—well, I—er—I did. Not so very important, perhaps—but ... you were going out, weren’t you, Cap’n Townsend?”
“Yes. I am going out in five minutes. Perhaps a little less.”
“I wouldn’t think of keeping you, Cap’n, of course not.”
“All right.”
“Cap’n Townsend, I—er—well, I am going to be—I am going to speak right out, as man to man. I know you would rather have me speak that way.”
Townsend nodded. “There aren’t any women here, as I know of,” he agreed. “Go ahead and speak.”
“Yes.” Mr. Mooney seemed to find the “man to man” speaking difficult. “Well,” he began, “it has come to my ears—far be it from me to say it is true; I don’t believe it is, Cap’n Townsend—but I have heard that you weren’t so very—well, anxious to see me reëlected Representative. I have heard stories that you said you didn’t care whether they reëlected me or not. Now, as I say, I don’t believe you ever said anything of the kind. In fact, I as good as know you didn’t.”
He paused and looked up eagerly, seeking confirmation of the expressed disbelief. The Townsend face was still quite expressionless, nor was the reply altogether satisfactory.
“All right,” said the captain again. “If you know it, then you don’t need to worry, do you?”
“No. No-o; but—you haven’t said any such thing, have you, Cap’n Townsend?”
Townsend did not answer the question. He regarded his visitor with a disquieting lack of interest.
“I was given to understand that you said you were as good as reëlected already,” he observed. “If you said that, and believe it, then what I said or what anybody else said isn’t worth fretting about, let alone cruising twelve miles in a rainstorm to find out about.”
“Well, but, Cap’n Townsend—”
“Heave to a minute. See here, Mooney, you’ve got the Republican nomination.”
“Yes. Of course I have, but—”
“Wait. And there hasn’t been a Democratic Representative from this district at the state house since the sixties, has there?”
“No, but—”
“All right. Then you don’t need to talk to me. If you’re a Republican, ready to vote every time with your party and for the district, you are safe enough. Especially,” with a slight twitch of the lip, “when you say yourself you’re as good as reëlected.”
This, perhaps, should have been reassuring, but apparently it was not. The Honorable Mr. Mooney shifted uneasily in his chair.
“Yes, yes, I know,” he admitted. “That’s all right, so far as it goes.... But, Cap’n Townsend, I—well, I know you aren’t as—well, as strong for me as you were when I ran before. You thought, I suppose—like a good many other folks who didn’t know—that I ought to have voted for that cranberry bill. You, nor they, didn’t understand about that bill. That bill—well, it read all right enough, but—well, there was more to it than just reading. There were influences behind that bill that I didn’t like, that’s all. No honest man could like them.”
“Um-hum. I see. Well, what was it that honest men like you didn’t like about that bill? I was one of those ‘influences,’ behind it, I guess. It protected the cranberry growers of the Cape, didn’t it? Looked out for their interests pretty well? I thought it did, and I read it before you ever saw it.”
“Yes. Yes, it protected them all right. But there are other sections than the Cape, Cap’n Townsend. They’re beginning to raise cranberries up around Plymouth and—and—”
“I know. And there are influences up there, too. Well, what has that cranberry bill got to do with you? You didn’t vote against it. Of course you told me and a few others, before you were elected the first time, that you would vote for it, but you didn’t do that, either. You weren’t in the House when that bill came up to a vote. You’d gone fishing, I understand.”
Mr. Mooney was indignant. “No such thing;” he declared, springing to his feet. “I hadn’t gone fishing. I was sick. That’s what I was—sick.”
“Yes?” dryly. “Well, some of the rest of us were sick when we heard about it. Never mind that. The bill was defeated. Of course,” he added, after a momentary interval, “it may come up again this session and Jim Needham, the Democratic candidate, says he shall vote for it, provided he’s elected. But you say you’re going to be elected, so what he may or may not do won’t make any difference.... There! my five minutes are up, and more than up. I’ve got to go. Honest men are scarce in politics, Mooney. Maybe all hands around here will remember that on election day and forget their cranberry swamps. Maybe they will. Sorry I’ve got to hurry. Good-night.”
He was on his way to the hall door, but his visitor hurried after him and caught his arm.
“Hold on, Cap’n Townsend,” he begged. “Hold on just a minute. I—I came here to tell you that—that I’d changed my mind about that bill. I—I’m going to vote for it. Yes, and I am going to work for it, too.”
“Oh!... Well, speaking as one of those ‘influences’ you were talking about, I’m glad to hear you say so, of course. But you said so before. What makes you change your mind this time—change it back again, I mean? Has that honesty of yours had a relapse?”
The Honorable Mooney ignored the sarcasm. He had journeyed from Trumet in the rain to say one thing in particular and now he said it.
“Cap’n Townsend,” he pleaded desperately, “you aren’t going to use your influence against me, are you? There’s no use beating around the bush. Everybody that knows anything knows that a word from you will change more votes than anybody else’s in the county. If you say you’re going to vote for Needham—well, this is a four to one Republican district, but I guess you can lick me if you want to. You won’t do that, will you? I’m going to work hard to get that cranberry bill through the House; honest, I am. I was a fool last session. I realize it now. If that bill can be shoved through I’ll help do it. That’s the honest God’s truth.”
Foster Townsend regarded him in silence. Mooney’s eyes met the grim intentness of the gaze for a moment, then faltered and fell. The Townsend lip twitched.
“You’re goin’ to make a speech here in Harniss sometime this week, aren’t you?” the captain asked.
“Yes. Next week, Tuesday night, at the town hall.”
“Um-hum. Going to say anything about that cranberry bill?”
“Yes, yes, I am. I am going to come out for it hard. I am going to tell everybody that I was wrong about it, that I’ve seen my mistake and they can count on me as being strong for it. That’s what I am going to tell them.... Say,” he added, eagerly, “I’ve got my speech all written out. It’s in my pocket now. Don’t you want to read it, Cap’n? I brought it hoping you would.”
Townsend shook his head.
“I can wait until Tuesday, I guess,” he replied. “I was planning to go to the rally. I’ll be there, along with some more of the dishonest influences. They will all want to hear you.”
“And you won’t work against me, Cap’n Townsend? I can’t tell you how sorry I am about—about this whole business.”
“Never mind. You can tell it all at the rally. It ought to be interesting to hear and, if it is interesting enough, it may bring some votes into port that have been hanging in the wind. I can’t say for sure, but it may.... There! I can’t spare any more time just now.... Nabby!” raising his voice. “Nabby!”
Mrs. Gifford appeared between the curtains. Her employer waved a hand toward his visitor.
“Nabby,” he said, “just see that Mr. Mooney finds his way out to his buggy, will you.... Good-night, Mooney.”
The honorable representative of an ungrateful constituency, thus unceremoniously dismissed, followed Mrs. Gifford to the dining room and from there to the side entrance to the mansion. Foster Townsend watched him go. Then he shrugged, sniffed disgustedly, and, pulling the soft hat down upon his forehead, strode through the hall, stopped to take an umbrella from the rack, and stepped out through the front door into the rainy blackness of the night.
The few who met and recognized him as he tramped the muddy sidewalks bowed reverentially and then stopped to stare. For Captain Foster Townsend, greatest among Ostable County’s great men, to be walking on an evening such as this—walking, instead of riding in state behind his span of blacks—was an unheard-of departure from the ordinary. Why was he doing it? Where was he bound? What important happenings hung upon his footsteps?
They could not guess, nor could their wives or sons and daughters when the story was told them. They were right, however, when they surmised that the magnate’s errand must be freighted with importance. It was—vastly important to him and no less so to the members of another household in the village of Harniss.