Part 15 (2/2)
He found it difficult to preserve his philosophy in the face of George Remington's agitation over the woman's suffrage issue.
”It's the last time,” he had frequently informed his political cronies since the opening of the campaign, ”that I'll wet-nurse a new-fledged candidate. They've got at least to have their milk teeth through if they want Benjamin Doolittle after this.” To George, itchingly aware through all his rasped nerves of Mrs. Herrington's letter in that morning's _Sentinel_ asking him to refute, if he could, an abominable half column of statistics in regard to legislation in the Woman Suffrage States, the furniture dealer was drawling pacifically:
”Now, George, you made a mistake in letting the women get your goat.
Don't pay no attention to them. Of course their game's fair enough. I will say that you gave them their opening; stood yourself for a target with that statement of yours. Howsomever, you ain't obligated to keep on acting as the n.i.g.g.e.r head in the shooting gallery.
”Let 'em write; let 'em ask questions in the papers; let 'em heckle you on the stump. All that you've got to say is that you've expressed your personal convictions already, and that you've stood by those convictions in your private life, and that as you ain't up for legislator, the question don't really concern your candidacy. And that, as you're running for district attorney, you will, with their kind permission, proceed to the subjects that do concern you there--the condition of the court calendar of Whitewater County, the prosecution of the racetrack gamblers out at Erie Oval, and so forth, and so forth.
”You laid yourself open, George, but you ain't obligated in law or equity to keep on presenting yourself bare chest for their outrageous slings and arrows.”
”Of course, what you say about their total irrelevancy is quite true,”
said George, making the concession so that it had all the belligerency of a challenge. ”But of course I would never have consented to run for office at the price of muzzling my convictions.”
Mr. Doolittle wearily agreed that that was more than could be expected from any candidate of the high moral worth of George Remington. Then he went over a list of places throughout the county where George was to speak during the next week, and intimated dolefully that the committee could use a little more money, if it had it.
He expressed it thus: ”A few more contributions wouldn't put any strain to speak of on our pants' pockets. Anything more to be got out of Old Martin Jaffry? Don't he realize that blood's thicker than water?”
”I'll speak to him,” growled George.
He hated Mr. Benjamin Doolittle's colloquialisms, though once he had declared them amusing, racy, of the soil, and had rebuked Genevieve's fastidious criticisms of them on an occasion when she had interpreted her role of helpmeet to include that of hostess to Mr. and Mrs.
Doolittle--oh, not in her own home, of course!--at luncheon, at the Country Club!
”Well, I guess that's about all for today.”
Mr. Doolittle brought the conference to a close, hoisting himself by links from his chair.
”It takes $3000 every time you circularize the const.i.tuency, you know----”
He lounged toward the window and looked out again upon the pleasant, mellow scene around Fountain Square. And with the look his affectation of bucolic calm dropped from him. He turned abruptly.
”What's that going on at McMonigal's corner?” he demanded sharply. ”I don't know, I am sure,” said George, with indifference, still bent upon teaching his manager that he was a free and independent citizen, in leading strings to no man. ”It's been vacant since the fire in March, when Petrosini's fish market and Miss Letterblair's hat st----”
He had reached the window himself by this time, and the sentence was destined to remain forever unfinished.
From the low, old-fas.h.i.+oned brick building on the northeast corner of Fountain Square, whose boarded eyes had stared blindly across toward the glittering orbs of its towering neighbor, the Jaffry Building, for six months, a series of great placards flared.
Planks had been removed from the windows, plate gla.s.s restored, and behind it he read in d.a.m.nable irritation:
”SOME QUESTIONS FOR CANDIDATE REMINGTON.”
A foot high, an inch broad, black as Erebus, the letters shouted at him against an orange background. Every window of the second story contained a placard. On the first story, in the show window where Petrosini had been wont to ravish epicurean eyes by shad and red snapper, perch and trout, cunningly imbedded in ice blocks upon a marble slab--in that window, framed now in the hated orange and black, stood a woman.
She was turning backward, for the benefit of onlookers who pressed close to the gla.s.s, the leaves of a mammoth pad resting upon an easel.
From their point of vantage in the second story of the Jaffry Building, the candidate and his manager could see that each sheet bore that horrid headline:
”QUESTIONS FOR CANDIDATE REMINGTON.”
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