The Landloper by Holman Day (ereader ebook .txt) 📖

be disgraced alone because of something I did for your mother. I may sound like a cur. I don't care, I say! I'm going to have you, and I don't care how I get you!"
"We need not be so dramatic," said the girl. Some wonderful influence seemed to be controlling her. "Mother, stop your noise and go and sit in that chair. You demand, do you, Mr. Dodd, that to save my mother from exposure as a woman who has stolen, I must be your wife?"
"I do."
"Do you really want a wife who has been won in that fashion?"
"I want you."
"You realize, fully, don't you, the spirit in which I shall marry you?"
"We'll take care of that matter after we are married, Kate. You have liked me. You will care for me more when you come to your senses in this thing."
"You remember what my father did in the way of sacrifice, I suppose? It was no secret in this state."
"Yes," he muttered, abashed under her steady gaze.
"I am like my father in many ways--in many of my thoughts. Perhaps if he had not set me such an example in the way of sacrifice I should say something else to you, Mr. Dodd. But as the matter stands between us, considering the demand you make on me, I will marry you."
The concession was flung at him so suddenly--he had expected so much more of rebellion--that he staggered where he stood. He advanced toward her. But she waved him back.
"Sit down!" she commanded. "This matter has gone far outside romance. It has become one of business. It is a matter of barter. I have had some experience in business. You say that mother owes you five thousand dollars which you took from the state treasury?"
"Yes, Kate."
"And your books will be examined very carefully, of course, if there is an overturn in your office?"
"Yes. It won't be any mere legislative auditing."
"I know something about politics as well as about business, Mr. Dodd. I cannot very well help knowing, after my experience in your uncle's office. I suppose the next state convention will determine pretty effectually whether there will be an overturn or not?"
"If we renominate Harwood it ought to give us a good line on the control of the next legislature," he told her. "A hobo and a goody-goody," he added, with scorn, "think they have stirred up a revolution, but they have another think coming." He had been calmed by her outwardly matter-of-fact acceptance of the situation. But he did not perceive the fires of her soul gleaming deep in her eyes.
"If Governor Harwood is renominated and the next legislature is in the hands of your uncle, as usual, you will be sure to remain in your position?"
"Of course!"
"And you can hide the discrepancy on your books from the auditing committee?"
"I am pretty sure I can."
"You appreciate fully, don't you, Mr. Dodd, why, after all my troubles in this life up till now, I should hesitate to marry a man with state prison hanging over him?"
"Yes."
"If Governor Harwood is not renominated I shall expect you to defer our marriage until you can work out of your difficulties. There will be danger and it is not in the bargain of my sacrifice that I shall pass through such disgrace with you; at any rate, I do not consider that added suffering is in the trade and will not agree to it. I prefer to remain as I am and share the disgrace of my mother. Do you agree to that?"
"I don't like it, but I suppose I've got to be decent in the matter."
"But if Governor Harwood is renominated at the convention I will concede a point on my part and will marry you at once, taking it for granted that you will be able to clear yourself. In that way both of us are making concessions--and such things should be considered in a bargain." She was coldly polite.
He bowed, not knowing exactly what reply to make to her.
"You have accused me of trifling in the past," she continued. "I will now try to show you that I can conduct straight business as it should be handled. Shall I make a memo of our agreement and hand it to you?"
"There is no need of it," he stammered.
"Thank you, Mr. Dodd. And now that the matter has been settled to our mutual satisfaction, I will ask you to go. I think my mother needs my attention. And I am reminded that our bargain does not dispose of the fact that my mother owes you five thousand dollars. I will reflect on how that debt may be paid--by insurance"--her face grew whiter still--"or by some arrangement."
"I wish you wouldn't say such--" But she interrupted him.
"On my part, this is strictly business, Mr. Dodd, and I must consider all sides. I will give the money matter careful thought. I'm sure we can arrange it. I have merely bought my mother's good name with _myself_!"
He stumbled out of the room and went on his way.
"Mother, you and I have some long, long thoughts to busy ourselves with before we attempt to talk to each other," said the girl when the two were alone. "I am going to my room. Please do not disturb me until to-morrow."
For an hour Kate Kilgour was a girl once more, sobbing her heart out against her pillow, stretched upon her bed in abandon of woe, torn by the bitter knowledge that she was alone in her pitiful fight. She was more frank with herself in her sorrow than she ever had been before. She owned to her heart that a few days before even a mother's desperate plight would hardly have won such a sacrifice as she had made.
She was ready to own that she loved that tall young man of mystery whose face had refuted the suspicion that he was a mere vagrant. It was strange--it was unaccountable. But she had ceased to wonder at the vagaries of love. In her prostration of mental energies and of hope she confessed to herself that she had loved him.
But now between his face and hers, as she shut her eyes and reproduced his features, limned in her memory, those fiery words danced--there was a "play-mamma" who with him had loved the little girl named Rosemarie.
Checking her sobs, she sighed, and her heart surrendered him.
Her sacrifice had been made both easier and yet more difficult.
Then she snuggled close to her pillows and gazed out into the gathering night, and pondered on the fact that if Walker Farr won his fight in the state convention that victory put an end to her poor little truce in the matter of Richard Dodd.
Then she was sure that she had put Walker Farr out of her heart for ever, because she found herself hoping that he would win. The girl had not yet grown into full knowledge of the dynamics of a true and unselfish love--she did not fully know herself.


XXVII
A DICKER FOR A MAN'S SOUL
The populace came first and packed solidly into the galleries of the great auditorium of Marion city.
For years the state conventions of the dominant party had attracted but little public attention. They had been simple affairs of routine, indorsing the men and the principles of the Big Machine. The next governor had been groomed and announced to the patient people long months before the date of the convention; platforms protecting the interests were glued placidly and secretly and brought forth from the star chamber to be admired; and no delegate was expected or allowed to joggle a plank or nick the smooth varnish which had been smoothed over selfish privilege.
But this year came all the people who could pack themselves into galleries and aisles.
Below on the main floor were more than two thousand delegates. Every town and city sent the full number accredited. After these men had been seated the men and women who thronged the corridors and stairways were allowed to enter and stand in the rear of the great hall.
Strange stories, rumors, predictions, had been running from lip to lip all over the big commonwealth. It was reported that the throne of the tyrant was menaced at last by rebellion which was not mere vaporings of the restless and resentful; organized revolt had appeared, marching in grim silence, not revealing all its strength, and therefore all the more ominous.
A military band brayed music unceasingly into the high arches of the hall. The music served as obbligato for the mighty diapason of men's voices; the thousands talked as they waited.
The broad platform of the stage was untenanted. The speakers, the chairman, the clerks, the members of the state committee, did not appear, though the hour named as the time of calling the meeting to order arrived and passed.
In an anteroom, so far removed from the main hall that only the dull rumble of voices and the shredded echoes of the blaring music reached there, was assembled the state's oligarchy awaiting the pleasure of Colonel Symonds Dodd.
He sat in a big chair, his squat figure crowding its confines.
The state committee and the rest of his entourage were gathered about him.
There was a committeeman from every county in the state--the men who formed the motive cogs of his machine.
One after the other they had reported to him.
And each time a man finished talking the colonel drove a solid fist down on the arm of the chair and roared: "I say again I don't believe it's as bad as you figure it. It can't be as bad. Do you tell me that this party is going to be turned upside down by a kid-glove aristocrat who has hardly stirred out of his office during this campaign?"
"He has had a chap to do his stirring for him," stated one of the group.
"A hobo, scum of the rough-scruff, hailing from nowhere! Shown up in our newspapers as a ditch-digger--a fly-by-night--a nobody! I'm ashamed of this state committee, coming here and telling me that he has been allowed to influence anybody."
"Colonel Dodd, what I'm going to say to you may not sound like politics as we usually talk it," declared a committeeman, a gray-haired and spectacled person who had the grave mien of a student, "and it is not admitted very often by regular politicians who run with the machine. But we are up against something which has happened in this queer old world of ours a good many times. We have had the best organization here in this state that a machine ever put together. But in American politics it's always just when the machine is running best that something happens. Something is dropped into the gear, and it's usually done by the last man you'd expect to do it. The fellows who are tending the machine are too busy watching that part of the crowd they think is dangerous, and then the inconspicuous chap slips one over."
"I don't want any lecture on politics," snapped the boss. "Do you mean to insinuate that that low-lived Farr has put _this_ over on _us_?"
"I have hunted to the bottom of things and I do say so, Colonel Dodd."
"How in blazes did that fellow ever get any influence? I haven't been able to believe that he has been accomplishing anything."
"You ought to have listened a little more closely to us, Colonel," insisted the committeeman. "Every once in a while there comes forward a man whom the people will follow. And he is never the rich man nor the proud man, but he is one who knows how to reach the hearts of the crowd. A