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West Wind Drift, a novel by George Barr McCutcheon |
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Book 3 - Chapter 2 |
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_ BOOK III CHAPTER II The population of Trigger Island has increased. Following the example of Buck Chizler and the Governor himself, scores of dubious lovers took heart. They succeeded in dispelling certain misgivings--and doubts lurking in the hearts,--not to say consciences,--of approximately three-fourths of the unmarried women on the island, with the result that Father Francisco and Parson Mackenzie were kept exceedingly busy for a number of weeks. The "state," guided by the newly elected Chief Justice, extracted vows even more severe than those incorporated in the marriage service. And yet, despite the emphatic declarations of certain candidates,--principally male,--there remained in the minds of all,--including brides,--a lingering doubt. On the other hand, several ardent and undoubtedly honest gentlemen were unable to marry the objects of their affection for the simple reason that too many people were able to recall the lamentations of the ladies themselves, in the early days when it was customary to suffer because of the suspense and agony their poor husbands were enduring at home. The case of Joe Hooker and Matilda Larson was particularly distressing, and ultimately led to the passage of a rather drastic law by the Council. Judge Malone was the father of this law. It provided for the automatic annulment of all previous marriages at the expiration of two years,--provided, however, the absent husband or wife didn't turn up to contest the matter. This law also granted absolute freedom to the absent husband or wife, who was thereby authorized to remarry without further notice,--or words to that effect. It was, declared Randolph Fitts, a perfectly just and equable law, and would no doubt ease the minds of quite a number of people in far-off lands,--if they ever heard of it. Joe and Matilda had been married nearly two months when, in the thick of a connubial row, he demanded her passport. He even went so far as to threaten her with his if she didn't produce it at once. Matilda's temper was no milder than Joe's. She not only dug up her passport but a marriage certificate as well, while all he could show was a passport. It was a very unfortunate contretemps, in view of the fact that they shortly afterwards kissed and "made up." It so happened that there were quite a number of witnesses to the flaunting of these damaging documents, and as Trigger Island was then in the first stages of a religious upheaval, it was impossible to overlook this definite instance of iniquity. Despite the recantations of the chagrined couple,--and, it must be added, the surreptitious disappearance of the incriminating papers,--the matter was brought before the tribunal of justice. Chief Justice Malone was equal to the emergency. Indeed, he had been expecting something of the sort, and was prepared. He ordered both of the interested parties to bring suit for divorce from their legal spouses, one for "failure to provide," the other for "desertion," and promptly granted decrees, service by publication having been obtained through the medium of the Trigger Island Pioneer, printed monthly by Peter Snipe, editor and publisher, limited to an edition of one, owing to the scarcity of paper, and posted conspicuously for all subscribers on the bulletin board in front of the "government building." Additional spice was lent to the affair by the surprising reluctance of Joe and Matilda to re-enter the paradise from which they had been ejected. Apparently they had had enough of each other. Moreover, they had both "got religion" and insisted on repenting at leisure, separately and alone. But people took a very decided stand in the matter. They could repent in any manner they liked after Matilda's baby was born, but not before. And so they were married once more, and, strange to relate, lived happily and contentedly thereafter. Now, while all this may strike the reader as footless and trivial, it really has a distinct place in the chronicles of Trigger Island. If, perforce, the writer has succeeded in treating the situation facetiously, it should not be assumed that the people of Trigger Island had any desire or inclination to be funny about it. On the contrary, they took it very seriously, and quite naturally so, if one stops to consider the narrow confines by which their very existence was bounded. There were no such things as "trifles" in the daily life of Trigger Island. The smallest incident took on the importance of an event, the slightest departure from the ordinary at once became significant. In other circumstances, these people would have been vastly amused by the quixotic settlement of the affairs of Joe and Matilda; they would have grinned over the extraordinary decree of Justice Malone, and they would have taken it all with an indulgent wink. As a matter of fact, they were stern-faced and intense. They had made laws of their own, they had established a code. The violation of either was not to be countenanced. It was of no consequence to them that Judge Malone's methods were without precedent, that they were not even a travesty in the true light of the law. No one was more soberly in earnest than Michael Malone himself. The proceedings were carried out with the utmost dignity and formality. There were no smiles, no jocose comments. Nothing will serve more clearly to illustrate the sense of isolation to which the people of Trigger Island had resigned themselves than the fact that they accepted the Judge's decision and the subsequent marriage as absolutely unassailable, either from a legal or an ethical point of view. The town itself was flourishing. Traffic and commerce were carried on in the most systematic, organized manner. Everybody was busy. The utter impossibility for one man or set of men to profit at the expense of others naturally put a curb upon ambitions, but it did not subdue the spirit of enterprise. There is a baby in the Governor's Mansion,--a lusty boy with blue eyes and an engaging smile. He is four months old, and his name is already a household word on Trigger Island. It is not Algernon, nor is it Adonis. It is John;--John Clinton Percival. The Governor's Mansion is a pretentious structure. It has four rooms and a bath! A wide porch extends along the full front of the house, with a steeply pitched awning protecting it from the rain and sun. At one end of the porch is a very cosy arrangement of hand-wrought chairs and a commodious swinging seat. The other end, just off the parental bed-chamber, has been converted into an out-door sleeping-room for John C. Percival. The Governor's lady has no nursemaid. She does her own housework, her own washing and ironing, and she takes care of her own baby. (There is no such thing on Trigger Island as a servant. More than one woman who reads this tale will sigh and murmur something about Paradise.) Ruth still teaches in the little school. Though she is the first lady of the land, she supports herself, she earns her daily bread. It is the law irrevocable. There are no distinctions. Nor would she have it otherwise. The "Mansion," as it was universally called, stands alone at the upper end of the Green, facing the meeting-house. The nearest hut is at least two hundred yards away. Work on its construction was begun the day after the wedding. For weeks men had toiled eagerly, enthusiastically, voluntarily, and in the first gay days of spring it was completed. Since then, the same hands, the same thoughts, the same interests were constantly employed in improvements,--not only to the house itself but to the grounds about it. The Governor's "Mansion" became the plaything of the people. Percival's protests were received with amiable grins. "It's our house, boss,--not yours," explained Buck Chizler, whose spare time was largely expended in the development,--you might almost say, the financing,--of a flower-bed on the lawn. It was to be the finest flower-bed of them all, he swore. "This is government property and we, the people, are going to do what we please with it." "That's all very fine, Buck, but don't you think you ought to be spending your spare hours with your wife, instead of puttering around here?" "Do you know who the boss of this job is? My wife. I'm nothing but an ordinary day-laborer, a plain Mick, a sort of a Wop, obeying orders. Good gosh, you don't think I've got brains enough to design this flower-bed, do you? No, sirree! It takes an artist to think up a design like this. When I get all these rocks in place according to plans you'll see what I mean. It'll be a hum-dinger, A. A. This here thing running off this way is the tail. Come over here and look at it from this side,--it's upside down from where you're standin'." "Tail? Tail of what?" "Tail of a horse. This is going to be a horse when it's finished." "My God!" Buck was not above being irritated by the dismay in Percival's voice. "Minnie's got her heart set on it, A. A.," he explained. "It's going to be a sorrel horse, you see,--with a blue tail and a red head. Mustard, hollyhocks and geraniums is what she's going to plant here when I get the bed fixed. Socrates,--he was the best horse I ever straddled,--he was a sorrel. I took him down the--" "As far as you've got, Buck, it looks more like a dachshund than a horse," observed Percival. Buck eyed his work deprecatingly. "That's because there ain't space enough. I had to either saw his legs off or else have him layin' down. Minnie had him kneelin' in her first sketch, but gosh, it was the funniest thing you ever saw. It ain't possible for a horse to kneel with his hind legs, but she had him doin' it all right,--kneeling forward, at that, with his tail stickin' straight up so's it wouldn't be in the way of his heels. It's all Jack Wales's fault. He simply would put that blamed sun-dial of his right in the middle of this plot,--and these doggoned gravel-walks running every which way give me the blind-staggers. Why, A. A., you got more gravel walks here than they've got in Central Park. And all these scrubby hedges, stone walls, fountains, flower-beds, cedar freaks,--my God, Perce, I'd hate to come home a little squiffed if I lived in that house of yours, 'specially at night. Look at old Pedro and Philippa over there, setting out that stuff that looks like sparrowgrass. And that prize job of Ed Keller's,--my God, A. A., what good is a dog kennel on this island? There ain't a dog inside a thousand miles. The only one we ever had was that poodle old Mrs. Velasco had, and it died before--" "That isn't a kennel, Buck." "It ain't? Well, what is it?" "It's a Swiss chalet." "What does Ed Keller know about Swiss chalets?" "Nothing,--absolutely nothing, Buck," admitted Percival forcibly. A tall, perfectly straight flagpole graced the extensive "front-yard," and from its peak floated the flag of Trigger Island,--a great white pennon with a red heart in the centre, symbolic of love, courage, fidelity. But on the tip of Split Mountain the Stars and Stripes still waves from sunrise to sunset. The new cabins are farther up the slope of the mountains, overlooking what is now called the "old" town. There is something fairy-like in the picture one sees at night from the Green below. Dozens of lighted windows gleam softly through the foliage, for all the world like witches' lamps. The day reveals thin, blue plumes of smoke stealing out of the tops of the trees to be wafted off into nothingness; they come from invisible chimneys far down in the leafy fastnesses. Up here are the huts of the newly married. Almost without exception, they are tiny affairs, scarcely larger than the metaphorical bandbox. Each contains two rooms. During the very hot weather in January and February, the long, curving beach is alive with oddly dressed bathers and idlers. This is at midday only, when the sun is so hot and fierce that all work ceases for two hours or more. Though the sun is hot, the water is never warm. A dip in the surf is all that any one save the hardiest cares to take. They loll on the cool white sands, under improvised shelters made of boughs, or indulge in spirited games on the long level stretches. This is the play-hour of the people throughout the hot months of summer. They "knock off" work of all sorts, and seek relief from the stifling heat of the woodland in the cool wet sands along the shore. The costumes are strange and varied; some are pretty, others almost ludicrous. Small children appear in a scant breech-cloth; women of all ages and proportions wear a sort of one-piece "jumper," arms bare and legs uncovered up to the knees. The men affect nothing except trunks made from coffee sacks. The few real bathing-suits belong to such experienced travellers as Nicklestick, Shine and the Blocks,--regular and persistent patrons of the hotels at Atlantic City, Palm Beach and Rockaway. They never travel without a full and complete equipment. Mr. Nicklestick, very superior in his red two piece "costume," goes so far as to contend that a man never should be without a bathing-suit, because, says he, "it takes up no room in your trunk, and if you leave it at home some one else is sure to stretch it so's you can't use it yourself again." Olga Obosky and her three dancing-girls, Careni-Amori, and several of the Brazilian ladies possess Ostend costumes in which they disport themselves with complacent disregard for public opinion, favourable or otherwise. "She's got 'em all skinned a mile," was Morris Shine's comment upon Olga's lithe, graceful figure. "Ain't that so, Abey?" The remark was addressed to Abel Landover. "Even so," returned that gentleman, glaring at the offender, "it doesn't give you the right to call me Abey. You've got to cut it out, Shine. Understand?" "Sure," said the affable Morris. "Only I've got a brother named Abraham, and that was my father's name too. It comes natural to me to--Why, by gracious, she's got the Venus Belvedere lashed to the mast. Did you ever see--" "I've never had the pleasure of seeing the Venus Belvedere," interrupted Landover coldly. "You haven't?" exclaimed Morris, amazed. "The armless wonder? You ain't seen her? Why, she's supposed to have the most perfect figger in the world. Maybe you've seen her without knowing what her name is. They never put the name on it, simply because every school boy and girl is supposed to know who it is without being told. Funny you don't know--Oh, she ain't alive, you know,--she ain't real. She's a statue,--thousands of 'em turned out every year. Gee, the feller that designed that statue must have cleaned up a pile. But, as I was saying, our little old Olga has got her--Say, did you ever see a figger like that?" "Yes," broke in Landover shortly, "thousands of them." Mr. Shine looked sceptical. "Well," he said after a moment's reflection, and with studied politeness,--having already offended at the outset, "all I got to say is, you talk like a woman, that's all I got to say." Landover was a greatly changed man in these days. There had come a crisis in the affairs of Trigger Island, not many weeks before the second annual election in April, when he was obliged to show his true colours. The banker suddenly realized with a shock that he was actually involved in a well-organized, though secret plot to overthrow the so-called "government." He had been completely deceived by the wily Manuel Crust and several of his equally wily friends. They professed to be organizing an opposition party to oust the dictatorial Percival and his clique from office at the ensuing election,--a feat, they admitted, that could be accomplished only by the most adroit and covert "educational" campaign, "under the rose" perforce, but justifiable in the circumstances. They had led Landover to believe that he was their choice for governor. They went among the people, insidiously sowing the seeds of discontent, hinting at the advantages to be obtained by the election of an entirely new set of officers, mostly from among the people themselves, but headed by the ablest man on the island,--Abel T. Landover. They argued that as treasurer and comptroller of currency he had shown himself to be the only man qualified to direct the affairs of the people. And Landover believed them. Despite his superior intelligence and his vaunted ability to size up his fellow man, he was as blind and unsuspecting as a child when it came to penetrating the real motives of the conspirators. Vain, self-important, possessed of an abnormal conceit, men of his type go ahead ruthlessly, ignoring the details, bent only on achieving the ultimate. In Landover's case, he made the fatal error of underestimating the craftiness of Manuel Crust; he looked upon him as a blatant, ignorant ruffian of the stripe best known to him as a "beer saloon politician,"--and known only by hearsay, at that. He regarded himself as the master-politician and Crust as a contemptible necessity. As a matter of fact, Crust was using him to very materially advance his own ends. The big Portuguese had a very definite purpose in mind. He had no more intention of making Landover the chief man of the island than he had of flying to the moon. He,--Manuel Crust,--was to have that distinction! He despised Landover and all that he represented. He hated him because he was rich, educated, favoured by fortune,--and given to washing himself with unnecessary frequency and thoroughness. Manuel was foul of body as well as foul at heart. He bitterly resented the sanitary rules set up and enforced by the Council because those rules interfered with what he was pleased to call his personal liberty. Why should he be required to wash himself if he didn't want to do so? And why should he do a great many silly things that Dr. Cullen ordered, just because a lot of aristocrats were in the habit of doing them? His hatred of Landover, however, was impersonal. The banker merely represented a class. On the other hand, he hated Percival as an individual; he hated him with every drop of blood in his black, venomous heart. He had a certain grudging regard,--it might even be called respect,--for the class to which Landover belonged; he was sometimes conscious of a strange but quite positive sense of his own inferiority. But he did not for an instant put Percival in the class with Landover. He looked upon the young American as being no better than himself, and yet the people from the Doraine had showered honours upon him, had made him their chief, had suffered him,--a vagabond without a penny to his name,--to marry the fairest and rarest woman of them all. What right had this interloper to everything that was worth having, while he, an honest fellow who always had paid his way, was denied even the smallest place in the councils of the land? What right had he, a tramp, to sit upon a throne? Landover was an unwitting, but thoroughly self-satisfied dupe. He fitted in very nicely with Manuel's plan to gain control of the island. There were certain people who regarded the great banker as an apostle, a man to follow, to be imitated,--such men as Block, Nicklestick and a few others. Was he not one of the great financial geniuses of the day? Was he not a power, a tremendous power, in the banking world? Was he not a man who understood how to transform a dollar into a business block almost over-night? For a time, sentiment had played tricks with their boasted astuteness. Swept along by the current, they had failed to appreciate the true conditions. They began to realize that it had been a mistake to keep such men as Percival in power; behind the hand they went about convincing each other that it was high time to rectify the original error. These, in addition to the ignorant, easily persuaded rabble from the steerage,--who, by the way, could give ample testimony as to Percival's ability to "bluff,"--provided Crust with a decidedly formidable following. The steerage people had but to be reminded of the time when Percival tricked them so successfully. Crust contended that if the American could fool them once, he would do so again,--in fact, he went so far as to say that he had been doing it all the time. There was nothing open and above board about the methods of Manuel Crust. He proceeded about the business of fomenting dissatisfaction and strife with an artfulness surprising in one of his type. At no time did he openly denounce the "government." He was very careful about that. A jesting word here, a derisive smile there, a shrug of the shoulders,--and in good time others less politic than himself began to do the talking. Others began to complain of the high-handed, dictatorial manner in which Percival and his friends ruled the community. The secret, stealthy opposition grew apace; it assumed sinister proportions,--all the more sinister because it was masked by every outward sign of submission. Crust had won friends right and left among the very people who would have killed him not so many months before but for the very man he was planning to destroy. Outwardly he had changed,--not subtly, it is true,--from a sullen, threatening bully into a hearty, smiling, sympathetic comrade who laid himself out to be obliging. Even Percival was puzzled, if not deceived, by this surprising transformation. _ |
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