CHAPTER VII

STRANGE WILD THINGS

"Phoebe," said David Kildare as he seated himself on the corner of the table just across from where Phoebe sat in Major Buchanan's chair writing up her one o'clock notes, "what is there about me that makes people think they must make me judge of the criminal court of this county? Do I look job-hungry so as to notice it?"

"No," answered Phoebe as she folded her last sheet and laid down her pencil, "that is one thing no one can accuse you of, David. But your work down there has brought its results. They need you and are calling to you rather decisively I think. Any more delegations to-day?"

"Several. Susie Carrie Snow came with more Civic Improvements, rather short as to skirts and skimpy as to hats. They have fully decided that I am going to feed Mayor Potts out of my hand as Taylor does, and they want my influence to put up two more drinking fountains and three bra.s.s plates to mark the homes of the founders of the city, in return for their precious support. I promised; and they fell on my neck. That is, if _you_ don't mind?" David edged a tentative inch or two nearer Phoebe who had rested her elbows on the table and her head on her hands as she looked up at him.

"I don't," she answered with a cruel smile. Then she asked, with an unconcerned glance over the top of his head, "Did you hear from the United Charities?"

"Well, yes, some," returned David with an open countenance, no suspicion of a trap in even the flicker of an eyelash. "They sent Mrs. Cherry.

Blooming more every day isn't she, don't you think? She didn't fall on my neck worth a cent though I had braced myself for the shock. She managed to convey the fact that the whole organization is for me just the same.

It's some pumpkins to be a candidate. I'm for all there is in it--if at all."

"You aren't hesitating, David?" asked Phoebe as she rose and stood straight and tall beside him, her eyes on a level with his as he sat on the table. "Ah, David, you can if you will--will you? I know what it means to you," and Phoebe laid one hand on his shoulder as she looked him straight in the eyes, "for it will be work, _work_ and fight like mad to put out the fire. You will have to fight honest--and they won't.

But, David"--a little catch in her voice betrayed her as she entreated.

"Yes, dear," answered David as he laid his hand over the one on his shoulder and pressed it closer, "I sent in the announcement of my candidacy to the afternoon papers just as I came around here to see the major--and you. The fight is on and it is going to be harder than you realize, for there is so little time. Are you for me, girl?"

"If _I_ fall on your neck it will make seven this morning. Aren't you satisfied?" And Phoebe drew her hand away from his, allowing, however, a regretful squeeze as he let it go.

"No, six if you would do it," answered David disconsolately, "I told you that Mrs. Cherry failed me."

"Yes," answered Phoebe as she lowered her eyes, "I know you told me."

David Kildare was keen of wit but it takes a most extraordinary wisdom to fathom such a woman as Phoebe chose to be--out of business hours.

"Isn't it time for you to go to dress for the parade?" she asked quickly with apparent anxiety.

"No," answered David as he filled his tooled leather case from the major's jar of choice Seven Oaks heart-leaf--he had seen Phoebe's white fingers roll it to the proper fineness just the night before, "I'm all ready! Did you think I was going to wear a lace collar and a sash?

Everything is in order and I only have to be there at two to start them off. Everybody is placed on the platform and everybody is satisfied. The unveiling will be at three-thirty. You are going out with Mrs. Matilda early, aren't you? I want you to see me come prancing up at the head of the mounted police. Won't you be proud of me?"

"Sometimes, really, I think you are the missing twin to little Billy Bob," answered Phoebe with a laugh, but in an instant her face became grave again. "I'm worried about Caroline Darrah," she said softly. "I found her crying last night after I had finished work. I was staying here with Mrs. Matilda for the night and I went into her room for a moment on the chance that she would be awake. She said she had wakened from an ugly dream--but I know she dreads this presentation, and I don't blame her. It was lovely of her to want to give the statue and plucky of her to come and do it--but it's in every way trying for her."

"And isn't she the darling child?" answered David Kildare, a tender smile coming into his eyes. "Plucky! Well I should say so! To come dragging old Peters Brown's money-bags down here just as soon as he croaked, with the express intention of opening up and pa.s.sing us all our wads back. Could anything as--as pathetic ever have happened before?"

"No," answered Phoebe. Then she said slowly, tentatively, as she looked into David's eyes that were warm with friendliness for the inherited friend who had preempted a place in both their hearts: "And the one awful thing for which she can offer no reparation she knows nothing of. I pray she never knows!"

"Yes, but it is about to do him to the death. I sometimes wake and find him sitting over his papers at daybreak with burned-out eyes and as pale as a white horse in a fog."

"But why does it _have_ to be that way? Andrew isn't bitter and it isn't her fault--she wasn't even born then. She doesn't even know."

"I think it's mostly the money," said David slowly. "If she were poor it would be all right to forgive her and take her, but a man couldn't very well marry his father's blood money. And he's suffering G.o.d knows. Here I've been counting for years on his getting love-tied at home, and to think it should be like this! Sometimes I wish she _did_ know--she offers herself to him like a little child; and thinks she is only doing reverence to the poet. It's driving him mad, but he won't cut and run."

"And yet," said Phoebe, "it would kill her to know. She is so sensitive and she has just begun to be herself with us. She has had so few friends and she isn't like we are. Why, Polly Farrell could manage such a situation better than Caroline Darrah. She is so elemental that she is positively--primitive. I am frightened about it sometimes--I can only trust Andrew." As Phoebe spoke her eyes grew sad and her lips quivered.

"Dear heart," said David as he took both her hands in his, "it's just one of those fatal things that no man can see through; he can just be thankful that there's a G.o.d to handle 'em." There were times when David Kildare's voice held more of tenderness than Phoebe was calculated to withstand without heroic effort. It behooved her to exert the utmost at this moment in order that she might hold her own.

"It's making me thin," she ventured as she shook a little shower of tears off her black lashes and again smilingly regained control of her own hands, but displaying a slender blue-veined wrist for his sympathetic inspection.

"Help!" exclaimed David, taking possession of the wrist and circling it with his thumb and forefinger. "Let me send for a crate of eggs and a case of the malt-milk! You poor starved peach-bud you, _why won't_ you marry me and let me feed you? I'm going--"

"But you and the major both recommended 'lovers' troubles' to me, David,"

Phoebe hazarded.

"I only recommended _my_ own special brand, remember," retorted David. "I won't have you ill! I'm going to see that you do as I say about your--"

"David Kildare," remarked the major from the door into the hall, "if you use that tone to the grand jury they will shut up every saloon in h.e.l.l's Half Acre. Hail the judge! My boy, my boy, I knew you'd line up when the time came--and the line!"

"Can I count on the full artillery of the _Gray Picket_ brigade, Major?"

demanded David with delight in his eyes as he returned the major's vigorous hand-shake.

"Hot shot, grape, canister and shrapnel, sir! Horses in lather, guns on the wheel and bayonets set. We'll bivouac in the camp of the enemy on the night of the election! We'll--"

"I don't believe you will want to lie down in the lair of the blind tiger as soon as that, Major," laugher Phoebe.

"Phoebe," answered the major, "politics makes strange bed-fellows. Mike O'Rourke, the boss of the democratic Irish, was around this morning hunting for David Kildare with the entire green grocer's vote in his pocket. He spoke of the boy as his own son."

"Good for old Mike!" laughed David. "It's not every boy who can boast an intimate friendship with his corner grocer from childhood up. It means a certain kind of---self-denial in the matter of apples and other temptations. I used to go to the point of an occasional errand for him.

Those were the days, Phoebe, when you sat on the front steps and played hollyhock dolls. Wish I'd kidnapped you then--when I could!"

"It would have saved us both lots of time--and trouble," answered Phoebe daringly from the protection of the major's presence.

"David, sir," said the major who had been busy settling himself in his chair and lighting his pipe during this exchange of pleasantries between David and Phoebe, to the like of which he was thoroughly accustomed, "this is going to be a fight to the ditches. I believe the whisky ring that controls this city to be the worst machine south of Mason and Dixon's. State-wide prohibition voted six months ago and every saloon in the town going full tilt night and day! They own the city council, the board of public works and the mayor, but none of that compares in seriousness to the debauching of our criminal courts. The grand jury is helpless if the judge dismisses every true bill they return--and Taylor does it every time if it is a whisky law indictment or pertaining thereto, and most of the bills are at least distantly pertaining. So there you have us bound and helpless--a disgrace to the nation, sir, and a reproach to good government!"

"Yes, Major, they've got us tied up some--but they forgot to gag us,"

answered David with a smile. "Your editorial in the _Gray Picket_, calling on me to run for criminal court judge, has been copied in every paper in the state and some of the large northern sheets. I am willing to make the try, Major. I've practised down there more than you'd think and it's rotten from the cellar steps to the lightning-rod. Big black buck is sent up for rioting down at Hein's Bucket of Blood dive--stand aside and forget about it--while some poor old kink is sent out to the pen for running into a flock of sleepy hens in the dark, 'unbenkownst' entirely.

I defended six poor pick-ups last week myself, and I guess Taylor saw my blood was on the boil at the way he's running things. I'm ready to take a hand with him, but it will take some pretty busy doing around to beat the booze gang. Am I the man--do you feel sure?"

As David questioned the major his jaw squared itself determinedly. There was a rather forceful sort of man appearing under the nonchalant David whom his friends had known for years. A wild pride stirred in Phoebe to such an extent that she caught her breath while she waited for the major's reply.

"Yes, David," answered the major as he looked up at him with his keen old eagle eyes, "I think you are. You've had everything this nation can give you in the way of fighting blood from Cowpens to Bull Run, and when you speak in a body legislative your voice can be but an echo of the men who sired you, statesmen, most of them; so it is to you and your cla.s.s we must look for clean government. It is your arraignment of the mayor and the judge on the hay-market question that has made every decent organization in the city look to you to begin the fight for a clean-up reorganization. They have all rallied to your support. Show your colors, boy, and, G.o.d willing, we will smash this machine to the last cog and get on a basis of honest government."

"Then here goes the hottest fight Davie knows how to put to them! And it's going to be an honest one. I'll go before the people of this city and promise them to enforce law and order, but I'll not _buy_ a vote of a man of them. That I mean, and I hereby hand it out to you two representatives of the press. From now on 'not a dollar spent' is the word and I'm back of it to make it go." As he spoke, Kildare turned to Phoebe and looked at her as man to man with nothing in his voice but the cool note of determination. It was a cold dash for Phoebe but the reaction brought hot pride to her eyes.

"Yes, David," she answered, "you can and you will."

The determination in her voice matched that in his, and her eyes met his with a glance in which lay a new expression--not the old tolerant affection nor the guarded defense, but one with a quality of comradeship that steadied every nerve in his body. Some men get the like from some women--but not often.

"They will empty their pockets to fight you," the major continued thoughtfully. "But there is a deal of latent honesty in human nature, after all, that will answer the right appeal by the right man. A man calls a man; and ask a crook to come in on the straight proposition, two to one he'll step over the line before he stops himself. This is an independent candidacy--let's ask them all in, without reference to age, color or 'previous condition of servitude'--in the broadest sense."

"Yes, and with the other construction, too, perhaps. We'll ask in the darks--but they won't come. They'll vote with the jug crowd every time.

No nig votes for Dave without the dollar and the small bottle. How many do they poll, anyway, do you suppose?"