Phil, on her way to a tea, reached Main Street shortly before three o'clock. Her forehandedness was due to the fact that her hostess (the wife of the college president) had asked her to perform divers and sundry preliminary offices pertaining to refreshments, and it had occurred to Phil that it would be as well to drop in at the Bartletts' to see whether Rose had sent the cakes she had contracted to bake for the function, as the sophomore who delivered Rose's creations was probably amusing himself at the try-out of baseball material on Mill's Field.
Shopkeepers restlessly pacing the sidewalk before the doors of their neglected stores informed Phil of the meeting at the court-room, and of the panicky rumors. No good reason occurred to Phil for absenting herself from a mass meeting at which her Uncle Alec was to speak. Phil liked meetings. From the crest of a stack of chicken crates near the freight depot she had heard Albert Jeremiah Beveridge speak when that statesman had vouchsafed ten minutes to the people of Montgomery the preceding autumn. She had heard such redoubtable orators as William Jennings Bryan, Charles Warren Fairbanks, and "Tom" Marshall, and when a Socialist had spoken from the court-house steps on a rainy evening, Phil, then in her last year in high school, had been the sole representative of her sex in the audience.
Waterman was laboriously approaching his peroration when she reached the packed court-room. Men were wedged tightly into the space reserved for the court officials and the bar, and a number stood on the clerk's desk. She climbed upon a chair at the back of the room, the better to see and hear. There were other women and girls present—employees of the furniture factory—but it must be confessed that even without their support Phil would not have been embarrassed.
Waterman was in fine fettle, and cheers and applause punctuated his discourse.
"I am not here to arouse class hatred, or to set one man against another. We of Montgomery are all friends and neighbors. Many of you have lived here, just as I have, throughout your lives. It is for us to help each other in a neighborly spirit. Factories may close their doors, banks may fail, and credit be shaken, but so long as we may appeal to each other in the old terms of neighborliness and comradeship, nothing can seriously disturb our peace and prosperity.
"It grieves me, however, to be obliged to confess that there are men among us who have not felt the responsibility imposed upon them as trustees for the less fortunate. I have already touched on the immediate plight of those of you who are thrown out of employment, with your just labor claims unpaid. There are others—and some of them are perhaps in this room—who entrusted their savings to the Sycamore Traction Company, and who are now at the mercy of the malevolent powers that invariably control and manipulate such corporations. I shall not be personal; I have no feelings against any of those men. But I say to you, men and women of Montgomery, that when I heard this morning from the lips of an industrious and frugal German mechanic that a certain financier of this town had bought from him a traction bond that represented twenty years of savings—then my blood boiled with righteous indignation.
"My friends, a curious situation exists here. Why is it—why is it, I repeat, while one of our fellow-citizens pretends to be trying to safeguard by legal means all the local interests involved in that traction company, another person who stands close to him is buying the bonds of laborers and mechanics, widows and orphans, at little more than fifty per cent of their face value? My friends, when you find a corrupt lawyer and a rapacious banker in collusion, what chance have the people against them?"
Apparently the people had no chance whatever, in the opinion of the intent auditors. The applause at this point was long continued, and Waterman, feeling that he had struck the right chord, hurried on.
"Who are these men who have plundered their own people, thrust their hands into the pockets of their fellow-citizens, and filched from them the savings of years? Who are they, I say? My friends, in a community like this, where we are all so closely knit together,—where on the Sabbath day we meet in the church porch after rendering thanks unto God for his mercies,—where in the midweek prayer-meeting we renew and strengthen ourselves for the battle of life,—it is a serious matter to stand in a forum of the people before the tabernacle the law has given us for the defense of our liberties, and impugn the motives of our fellows. I shall not—"
"Name them!" chorused a dozen voices.
Waterman's histrionic sense responded to the demand. With arm uplifted, he deliberated, turning slowly from side to side. He was a master of the niceties of insinuation. Innuendo he had always found more effective than direct statement. He shook his head deprecatingly, reluctant to yield to the clamor for the names of the human vultures he had been arraigning.
"Name them! Tell who they are!"
He indulged these cries with a smile of resignation. They had a right to know; but it was left for him, in his superior wisdom, to pass upon their demands.
"Hit 'em, Alec! Go for 'em!" yelled a man in the front row.
"Why," the orator resumed, "why," he asked, "should I name names that are in every mind in this intelligent audience?" There was absolute quiet as they waited for the names, which he had not the slightest intention of giving.
"Why—"
The carrying power of Phil's voice had been deplored from her earliest youth by her aunts. Her single word, flung across the heads of the auditors, splashed upon the tense silence like a stone dropped suddenly into a quiet pond.
"Put him out!" yelled some one who attributed this impiety to the usual obstreperous boy. A number of young fellows in Phil's neighborhood, who knew the source of the ejaculation, broke into laughter and jeers. Alexander Waterman knew that voice; he had seen Phil across the room, but had assumed that her presence was due to her vulgar curiosity, on which his wife had waxed wroth these many years. In his cogitations Phil was always an unaccountable and irresponsible being: it had not occurred to him that she might resent his veiled charges against her father and Amzi. Waterman, by reason of his long experience as a stump speaker, knew how to deal with interruptions. He caught up instantly the challenge Phil had flung at him.
"Coward?" he repeated. "I should like to ask you, my fellow-citizens, who is the coward in this crisis? Is it I, who face you to-day clothed in my constitutional guaranty of free and untrammeled speech, to speak upon the issues of this grave crisis; or is it the conspirators who meet in dark rooms to plot and plunder?"
Applause and cheers greeted this reply. Men looked at each other and grinned, as much as to say, "Alec knows his business." In Phil's immediate vicinity a number of young men, lost in admiration of her temerity, and not without chivalrous instincts, jeered the orator's reply. In the middle of the room Fred Holton, who had gone to the meeting with some of his farmer neighbors that he met in Main Street, turned at the sound of Phil's voice. Before Waterman, luxuriating in his applause, could resume, Fred was on his feet.
"As this was called as a meeting of citizens, I have a right to be here. We have listened for nearly an hour to a speech that has made nothing any clearer—that has, in fact, gone all round the pump without finding the handle. It's time we knew what it is the speaker wants done; it's time he came to the point and named these men who have robbed their friends and neighbors. Let's have the names right now before we go any further."
"Who's that talking? Put him out!"
The meeting was in disorder, and a dozen men were trying to talk. Waterman, smiling patiently, rapped with the official gavel that Judge Walters wielded when counsel, in the heat of argument, transcended the bounds of propriety.
"It's Fred Holton," bellowed some one.
Waterman smiled in quiet scorn. He had recognized Fred Holton and was ready with his answer. One of his friends who had pushed through the crowd whispered in his ear.
"My friends," he began, in the indulgent tone of a grieved parent, "the gentleman who spoke a moment ago was quite right in remarking that this is a meeting of citizens. No one denies his right to speak or to interrupt other speakers if such be his idea of courtesy. But he will pardon me for suggesting that it is remarkable that he of all men should interrupt our friendly conference here and demand that names be mentioned, when, prompted by a sense of delicacy, I have refrained from mentioning his own name in this unpleasant connection. It's a name that has been identified far too closely with the affairs of this town. I should like to know how a member of the Holton family dare come to this meeting, when the suspension of one of our chief industries and the embarrassments of the Sycamore Traction Company are directly attributable to the family of which this young gentleman is a member. And while we sit here in conference, there are grave rumors afloat that we are threatened with even more serious difficulties. Within a few minutes word has reached me that a run is in progress upon certain of our banks." (There was a commotion throughout the room, and those near the doors were already pushing toward the street.)
"I beg of you, be not hasty; the hour calls for wise counsel—"
The shuffling of feet and overturning of chairs deadened the remainder of his speech.
Phil escaped quickly from the court-house, and seeing the throng in Main Street began a detour to reach Montgomery's Bank. Fred caught up with her and begged her to go home.
"There's going to be a row, Phil, and you'd better keep out of the way."
"If there's a row, that silly Waterman is responsible," Phil replied. "I'm going to the bank to see Amy."
People were flocking to Main Street from all directions, and finding that she persisted in going on, Fred kept close beside her.
"He'll scold you if you do; you'd better go home," Fred urged as they reached Franklin Street, a block south of Main, and saw the packed streets at the First National corner.
They debated a moment; then Phil was seized with an idea.
"Fred, run over to the college and bring all the boys you can find at Mill's Field. Bring them up Main Street singing, and send a flying wedge through the mob;—that will smash it. Beat it, before the boys hear the row and mix in!"
Fred was off for the athletic field before she had finished speaking, and Phil sought the side door of Montgomery's Bank.
The throng at the intersection of Franklin Street and Main faced the First National. When the court-house clock boomed three the clerks inside made an effort to close the doors, and this had provoked a sharp encounter with the waiting depositors on the bank steps. The crowd yelled as it surged in sympathy with the effort to hold the doors open. Some one threw a stone that struck the window in the middle of "National" in the sign, and this caused an outbreak of derisive cheers. An intoxicated man on the steps turned round with difficulty and waved his hat.
"Come on, boys; we'll bust the safe and find out whether they've got any money or not."
Some of those who had gained entrance to the bank came out by the side door, and this served to divert attention to Franklin Street for a moment. There were cries that a woman who had received her money had been robbed, and this increased the uproar.
When Amzi took a last survey from his bank steps at three o'clock, some one yelled, "Hello, Amzi!" A piece of brick flung with an aim worthy of a nobler cause whizzed past his head and struck the door-frame with a sharp thwack and blur of dust. Amzi looked down at the missile with pained surprise and kicked it aside. His clerks besought him to come in out of harm's way; and yet no man in Montgomery had established a better right than he to stand exactly where he stood and view contemporaneous history in the making.
Howls and cat-calls followed the casting of the brick. Amzi lifted his hand to stay the tumult, but in his seersucker coat and straw hat his appearance was calculated to provoke merriment.
"Shoot the hat! Where's your earmuffs?" they jeered.
He could not make himself heard, and even if his voice had been equal to the occasion no one was in humor to listen to him. Bankers were unpopular in Montgomery that afternoon. No one had ever believed before that Amzi was capable of taking unfair advantage of his fellow-men; and yet Waterman's hearers were circulating the report in Main Street that Amzi had been buying Sycamore bonds at an infamously low price.
He flourished his cigar toward the First National, and then pointed it at his own door, but this bit of pantomime only renewed the mirth of the assemblage. It seemed to be the impression that he was trying to advertise his bank, in the fashion of a "demonstrator" in a shop-window. The disorder increased. Some one yelled:—
"What are you paying for Sycamore bonds?"
This was followed by an ominous turning and shifting. Amzi withdrew, closed and locked the bank doors, and showed his scorn of his calumniators by reversing with deliberation the tin card so that it announced "Bank Shut."
Amzi, his dignity ruffled by the reception accorded him, had retired to his private room when a familiar knock sounded on the Franklin Street door and he turned the latch to admit Phil.
"You—! what you doing down here? What right have you to be running the streets on a day like this?" he blurted, his eyes bulging wrathfully.
"Oh, chuck it, Amy! This is the best show we've had since the calliope blew up and killed the elephant in the circus when I was seven years old. I've been to the meeting. The Honorable Alec delivered a noble oration; he told them that everybody, including you and daddy, is crooked; he's the only honest man. It was the supreme and ultimate limite!"
"Want to burn me in effigy? Call me a horned plutocrat?"
"Oh, he didn't mention you, or daddy either, by name; just hinted that you were both trying to rob the Sycamore bondholders."
Amzi put his feet on a chair, settled his hat comfortably on the back of his head, and chewed his cigar meditatively.
"Thunder! You'd better keep away from indignation meetings where Alec's going to speak. You're likely to get shot."
"Not I, sir. I called him a coward, right there in the meeting. A most unladylike proceeding; indeed, it was, Amy.
"When rose the maid upon a chair,
Some called her false: none named her fair:
Nathless she saw nor sneer nor frown,
But 'C-o-w-a-r-d' flung her challenge down."
Amzi ignored her couplets—Phil's impromptu verses always embarrassed him—and demanded the particulars. He chuckled as she described the meeting. He cross-examined her to be sure that she omitted nothing. Her report of his brother-in-law's tirade gave him the greatest delight. As they talked, they heard plainly the commotion in the streets.
"I like the way you take things," said Phil. "The town's gone crazy, and there's a mob in front of your little toy bank, but you're not even peevish."
"Some old schoolmate threw a brick at me awhile ago when I went out for air and that annoyed me," Amzi admitted. "If those fellows out there who haven't any money in any bank, and never will have any, would only go home, I'd do something to relieve the pressure. I hanker for a chance to cross the street, but they won't let me. I called the mayor on the telephone and demanded that he send over the fire department and sprinkle 'em, but he said he couldn't unless I'd turn in an alarm—had the nerve to tell me it would be against the city ordinances! What do you think of that, Phil? Guess the police force is under the bed at home. But I can wait. There's nothing like waiting. Take it from me that you'd better trot along to your tea. You're rather cute in that hat. I suppose it burnt a hole in a ten-dollar-bill."
"Twenty-five, Amy."
"No wonder there's a panic! Go out and show yourself, so they can see what a plutocrat looks like. I guess that would cause 'em to break windows all right."
"Ungrateful old man! Main Street will be opened for traffic in a few minutes, thanks to the head under the hat you feign to despise. I sent Fred over to the college to bring the boys down to clean things up. They're about due, methinks."
"Fred in town?"
"Why ask? It's Saturday and he's a farmer."
"Your thinker thinks, Phil. Would that I loved prayer-meeting as much as you love trouble! As trustee of Madison, I wish you'd left the boys at play. That last Washington's Birthday row almost broke up the college."
Phil jumped down from the table suddenly and flung the door open. Above the murmur of the restless shuffling crowd rose the sound of singing.
The sunny afternoon had brought to Mill's Field budding baseballists and candidates for track teams and a gallery of critics of their performances. Fred Holton's name was written high in the athletic records of Madison, and a few words bawled from the bleachers served to assemble all the students in sight.
"There's an ugly mob downtown, boys; and it may do mischief if it hangs together until dark. If we can pry 'em apart, they'll go home and forget it."
Fifty students immediately formed in line. "No clubs or sticks, boys. We'll march down Main Street in good order and see what a peaceful demonstration will do. Forward! March!"
As they crossed the campus at double-quick, students poured out of the library and joined the battalion. Others came tumbling out of the fraternity houses in Buckeye Lane, anxious to join in the lark. Before entering Main Street, Fred gave his last orders, which were accepted without question from an alumnus whom they had all learned to know of late as a sympathetic and stimulating visitor to the Gym, and the adviser for the Thanksgiving football game in which they had scored a victory over the hosts of Purdue.
Two blocks from the bank they re-formed in four lines, extending from curb to curb, and went forward to the strains of "Old Madison":—
"What shall we do for Madison, for Madison, for Madison?
What shall we do for Madison, our college and her men?"
To the familiar strains of the college song, Montgomery had frequently wept not without reason, for the young Madisonians had been much given in recent years to ebullitions of college spirit. The timid mayor heard it now, looked out upon the lines of marching students, and pulled down his office blinds to avoid witnessing the inevitable collision between town and gown.
As the students approached, women and timorous men began trying to escape. Fred signaled to the yell leader, who began beating time, and the street rang with the college cheer. They gave it over and over again; they cheered the college and every bank in town, and between cheers Fred moved the lines forward. The mechanics and farmers, who, alarmed for the security of their savings, had formed the nucleus of the crowd, began to disperse before the advance of the students, but the sidewalks filled with those who expected an encounter and wished to view it in safety. Merchants closed and barred their doors against possible invasion. The rougher element, that had attached itself to the throng and given it the semblance of a mob, now organized hastily for a counter-demonstration.
"Smash the college dudes!" bawled a big fellow, throwing himself forward as leader. There was a rush and a sharp struggle. The collegians stood fast. The town phalanx withdrew to Franklin Street, and, considerably increased, rushed again upon the collegians. A lively fist-fight now engaged the vanguard for a minute, to the delight of the spectators. Hard blows were struck on both sides. While this was in progress, Fred withdrew the rear ranks of his army, massed them compactly, and led them in a gallant charge through the shattered line of their comrades, against the enemy. The students wavered at the moment of collision; there was sharp tackling and the line broke, closed again, and swept on, beyond Franklin Street and for half a block further; then effected a quick about-face in readiness for another charge but found the field clear. Some one on the packed sidewalk proposed a cheer for the college, and it was given with a will, and the collegians resumed their cheering. A few missiles flung by the vanquished town men rained upon them, but the war was over. Fred's lines were flung across the intersecting streets like pickets, and, impressed by their quiet order, the belligerent town men began to mingle peacefully with the lingering crowd on the pavements.
Mr. Amzi Montgomery appeared on the steps of his bank, and glanced up and down the street, and at the courthouse clock, like a pigeon emerging from its cote after a shower. Phil, having been warned to remain inside, naturally joined him an instant later. Amzi was saluted with a cheer in recognition of his dignity as treasurer of Madison's board of trustees,—a greeting he acknowledged by puffing his cheeks and guardedly lifting his hat. And all these things pleased Main Street. An attack on the First National had been averted; the students had made amends for many affronts to municipal dignity; and it was in the air that other and equally interesting incidents would add further to the day's entertainment.
The jubilant yell leader, seeing Phil beside Amzi, decided that she, too, was deserving of attention.
"For the girl on the bank steps—all together!"
While this rah-rahing was in progress, Amzi left the steps and started across the street. Now, while Amzi Montgomery had been seen of all men in all years and at all seasons, standing on the steps of his bank in the old straw hat, with his seersucker coat buttoned tightly round his sturdy figure, he had never before been known to descend into Main Street in that garb. The crowd immediately began closing in upon him and Fred detached a squad of his brawniest men to act as the banker's bodyguard.
Amzi moved with great serenity towards the First National Bank, and appeared to be examining the sunburst the hostile stone had stamped upon the plate-glass window. Amzi never hurried, and he appeared to be in no haste now. Main Street was pleased that he deliberated. The longer the entertainment lasted the better. The door of the First National had been closed with little difficulty during the diversion afforded by the arrival of the college men, but the steps and sidewalk were filled. Amzi looked over the crowd musingly, and beckoned to Fred.
"Get me a box to stand on and a piece of soap—laundry soap. I want to—"
He waved his cigar toward the window in vague explanation, and Fred dived into a grocery and came back with the articles demanded. Main Street's curiosity had never been so whetted and teased. If it had been any one but Amzi; but it was so unmistakably Amzi! Amzi placed the box under the window and stood upon it. Then with characteristic nonchalance he removed the wrapper from the cake of soap, while the crowd surged and shuffled, filling the street again in its anxiety to miss nothing. Amzi broke the bar of soap in two, and calmly trimmed half of it to serve as a crayon. As he began to write upon the glass, his guards were hard-pressed to hold back the throng that seemed bent upon pushing the banker through his rival's window. To ease the tension the boys struck up—
"The pirates of the Wabash,
A jolly crowd are they."
Amzi wrote slowly, in a large round hand, beginning immediately under the "First National Bank" lettering. The faint tracings of the soap were legible only a few yards away and the yell-leader began reading for the benefit of the crowd. And this was Amzi's announcement:—
I hereby guarantee all deposits in this bank.
Interest on Sycamore Traction bonds will be paid here April 1. Persons from whom I have bought such bonds may redeem same at price I paid for them, without discount.
A. MONTGOMERY.
When he had completed his first sentence, he paused to inspect it. Murmurs of astonishment gave way to shouts of approval, and then the street grew silent as the remainder was read word by word.
"Let her go now, for A. Montgomeree!" cried the yell-leader, and while necks craned and men jostled and pushed, the students cheered. When Amzi had written, "at the price I paid for them," he made a period, and then, after a moment's reflection, drew out his handkerchief and erased it to add—"without discount."
He threw away the soap and began to retrace his steps, but the whole town seemed now to have massed itself in the intersecting streets. The nearest students flung themselves together as an escort, and amid cheers Amzi returned to his own bank, where Phil opened the door and demanded to know what he had been doing to be cheered as only a football hero is cheered when his name is read at commencement.
"Thunder!" said Amzi. "I just wanted to take the gas out of Alec's speech. What are those fools doing now?"
Phil, Fred, and Amzi, with several of the students who had acted as the banker's bodyguard, gathered at the front window. Amzi's announcement that the Sycamore interest would be paid had brought Kirkwood into the minds of many who knew of his efforts to save the company. His name shouted here and there in the street directed attention to his office windows. As a former member of the faculty of Madison, Kirkwood appeared usually on the platform at commencement, and now that he was mentioned the students improvised a cheer for him that Kirkwood's building flung back at Montgomery's Bank. The demonstration continued with increased volume, until finally Kirkwood opened a window and looked down. A shout rose as he appeared. The tears sprang to Phil's eyes as she saw her father's tall figure, his stoop accentuated as he bent under the window. He had really achieved at last! She only vaguely grasped the import of what Amzi had told her in a few abrupt sentences after his return to the bank, but her heart beat fast at the thought that her father shared in the day's honors. He had been of real service to his fellow-townsmen and they were now demanding a speech. He bowed and vanished; but when the cheering was renewed and long continued, he came back, and when silence fell upon the crowd (Phil wondered if they, too, felt the pathos in him that had always touched her, and which just then brought the tears to her eyes!) he spoke slowly and clearly.
"My friends, this is the best town and its people are the best and kindest people in the world. If I have done anything to win your praise I am glad. This community is bound to prosper, for it is founded, not upon industry and thrift alone, but upon faith and honor and helpfulness; and these, my good friends, are the things that endure forever."
"I couldn't hear that," said Amzi to Phil, as her father disappeared into his office amid the loudest cheers of the day, "but I reckon Tom said about the right thing."
"I'm sure he did," replied Phil, drying her eyes, "and it's all true, too!"