WOLCOTT THE MAGNIFICENT (continued 2)

“Drop in a red card for Wolcott next time, and as far as Ellis and I are concerned, Leonard will be elected at once. We two have been keeping him out right along.” Bigelow looked surprised, then laughed and nodded as if he understood such things, and in a moment Leonard, amid a murmur of relief from the crowd, was declared elected. Once more the hat was handed from man to man. They were electing Wolcott now, actually electing him, thought Haydock. He noticed that Bigelow voted with the seven of hearts, then he looked in McGaw’s direction to see how the tutor would take the news of Wolcott’s success when Haviland should announce it from the desk. It was very late, and the rickety old room had grown chilly in spite of the two blazing chandeliers. Three or four of the men had put on their coats and hats; the meeting seemed about to end.

“Wolcott gets twelve red and two black,” said Haviland, hopelessly.

“What!” exclaimed Ellis. Haydock turned incredulously toward the desk; he felt as if some one had played him a sneaking trick. He went over to Bigelow, astonished and rather angry.

“You voted for Wolcott, didn’t you?” he asked.

“Why, yes, of course I did,” answered Bigelow, irritably. Now that his own candidate was safe, he was anxious to go home. “I’ve been voting for him ever since he was put up, except just the first round.” Haydock swore. He had taken it for granted that Bigelow had been keeping Wolcott out when, as a matter of fact, it had been some one else,—some one who no doubt was in complete sympathy with McGaw. His jump at the conclusion struck him now as an incredibly dull proceeding.

“I’m sure I don’t know what to do,” Haviland was saying. “We simply must have a seventh man. I hate to have the thing drag over until ‘next time,’ when we’re all here to-night. Nominate Tony Wilson, or Jack Linzee—somebody—anybody.”

“I nominate Tony Wilson!” drawled Baxford, obediently. Haydock and Ellis ostentatiously gave the new candidate the only two black-balls he received. Haviland grasped the situation at once.

“I think we’ll have to come to some sort of an understanding,” he said. He was tired and annoyed, and so conscious of the fact that he forced himself to be extraordinarily polite. “Two of us apparently want Wolcott enough to cause a deadlock,—which I suppose is perfectly justifiable,—and two of us don’t want him at all. Lots of things have been said in his favour, and no one has said much of anything against him. I think it’s only fair for the two fellows who are keeping us here so late to get up and give us some idea of why they don’t want him. We can’t very well throw his name out as long as he has only two black. If the fellows who are keeping him out have a really good reason, we ought to know it. Such things, I’m sure, won’t go beyond this room.” There was a pause, while Haviland looked inquiringly from face to face. Then McGaw stood up. There was just a trace of defiance in his general bearing that vanished as soon as he saw that every one had turned toward him with interest.

“I suppose I ought to have objected to Sears Wolcott earlier in the evening,” he said slowly. He looked quietly, fixedly, at Haydock. “I have met him in a way that none of you could meet him. I wish I didn’t know that he was one kind of a fellow with men who have money and friends and everything, and different with the other kind,—men who can’t afford such things. I’m very sorry that I’ve seen him laugh at a man because he was poor and underfed and dressed in somebody else’s clothes,—clothes that didn’t fit him; because I can’t forget it now, when I should like to. I can’t think that he has a good heart. I don’t want to meet him here.” McGaw said this very slowly and regretfully; and when he sat down he stared at the floor. His little speech left every one wide-awake and uncomfortable, and so silent that the fellows could hear the rain slapping in gusts against the window-panes outside. His words in the mouth of—say Baxford or Dickey Dawson would have been laughed at. As it was, Tommy murmured audibly, “‘Kind hearts are more than coronets,’” but the observation fell rather flat. McGaw had been painfully sincere. He had succeeded, beyond a doubt, in “getting his effect.” Haydock knew that just that sort of thing said about Wolcott, by some one who was liked rather than otherwise, and who more or less represented “the extreme left,” was peculiarly fatal. No one else in the room would have talked in that way under any circumstances, although there were several men who didn’t object to hearing it done so authoritatively. Wolcott, who had seemed to be on the verge of slipping into the Signet a moment or two before, was now given seven black-balls, and dropped without comment. Tony Wilson was elected with a feeble burst of applause; Haydock and Ellis were putting on their overcoats when the hat went around, and didn’t vote.

Haviland turned out the lights, and the men groped their way—holding on to one another and striking matches from time to time—down the two flights of steep, dark stairs to the wet street. No one spoke of the election on the way down. Had anything been said it would have had to do, undoubtedly, with McGaw’s speech; and McGaw was there, somewhere in the dark, with the rest of them. Haviland walked with Ellis and Haydock as far as the “Crimson” office,—he hoped to get the names of the Third Seven into the morning paper. But they didn’t talk of the election. Ellis was boiling with righteous indignation; Haydock was wondering who had been McGaw’s ally in black-balling Wolcott; and Haviland was too glad to have it over with, and be out in the fresh air, to think of the Signet. It was not until Haydock and Ellis threw some fresh wood on the fire at the club, and sank into two big leathern chairs, that they felt at liberty to discuss the matter freely.

“I suppose it was hopeless from the first,” mused Haydock.

“It needn’t have been,—that’s what makes me furious,” returned Ellis. “If McGaw only could have had an inkling of who he was keeping out—”

“Yes, I think he would have been the first to turn right around and work like a pup to get him in,” agreed Haydock.

“I felt like jumping up and telling everything.”

“How awful,—think of the scene!”

“Well, it wouldn’t have been much more damnable than it was! Nobody knew where to look. There was just enough truth to what McGaw said—that and the way he got up and did it—it wasn’t as if anybody else had tried to—”

“The difference is that McGaw really cared,” broke in Haydock; “there was feeling behind it. It isn’t given to many of us to have real, sure-enough feelings around here in college. Nothing ever seems to happen that makes enough difference one way or the other. McGaw’s one of the kind that has them. That’s how he got everyone to vote for Carver the minute he put him up. He just felt all over that Carver was the right man for the place, and somehow everybody believed him. He slaughtered poor Searsy by the same method. You see he’s the sort of fellow who is destined to be listened to by all kinds of people. The masses like guts, while the upper classes prefer expression. McGaw has the intensity of a fanatic and the manners of a gentleman; his armament is formidable. I shouldn’t be a bit surprised to hear some day that he’d started an entirely new and plausible religion, or written a book that really proved something, or reorganised the Supreme Court on a less flippant basis. The creature actually has beliefs; he’s rather astonishing. I can’t blame him for giving it to Wolcott in the neck, when he had such a good chance; but I’m darned sorry he was inspired to do it.”

“I suppose you’ll tell Sears all about it,” said Ellis.

“No, I sha’n’t,” answered Haydock, after a moment. “You see, you never can tell how he is going to take things—so what’s the use? The Signet’s nothing to him, and he might be ever so much amused that McGaw could keep him out of it. But then, again, it’s quite likely that he’d carry on and swear like a trooper, and never do anything for McGaw again. I know him better than you do. If I ever do tell him, it’ll be some day just after he’s won a bet, or beaten me at golf, or taken a prize at the horse show; not when he’s cooped up in his room with sore throat, the way he is now, railing at the weather and Cambridge and the college, and everybody who makes a sound in the hall near his door. I’m devoted to Searsy, but I don’t think I have many illusions about him.”

“Oh, I wish we could tell McGaw about him! It might make McGaw feel badly just at first; but I’d be so much more comfortable. Couldn’t we—just to be just?”

“Certainly not,” yawned Haydock. “One must have the courage to be unjust.”

And that, no doubt, would have been the end of the McGaw-Wolcott episode, if tailors didn’t exert such extraordinary influence over human affairs.

The next afternoon, when Haydock dropped into Wolcott’s room to see how the sore throat was getting along, he found Wolcott’s mother and sister had driven out from Boston on the same errand. Haydock’s call was opportune, for Wolcott, in a few minutes, had another visitor,—a somewhat agitated, incoherent young man who wished very much to speak to Wolcott alone. The Magnificent One would have granted the interview outside in the hall had not Mrs. Wolcott protested on account of draughts, so he took his guest into his bed-room, and shut the door.

“How very mysterious!” said Miss Wolcott. Her mother examined the closed door through her glasses. “Who is he?”

“That’s McGaw!” said Haydock, significantly.

“One of Sears’s friends?” asked Mrs. Wolcott. Haydock laughed.

“I never knew that he was,” he answered. Miss Wolcott seemed much interested; but her interest not nearly as eager as Haydock’s. McGaw’s visit baffled him. He couldn’t believe that the fellow had come, in a fit of remorse, to apologise to Wolcott for having kept him out of the Signet,—the idea was fantastic—ridiculous. Nor could he think it probable that McGaw had found out what Wolcott had been doing for him; no one but Barrows and Ellis and Miss Wolcott and Haydock himself knew. The long interview in Wolcott’s bed-room was indeed mysterious. It was something of a strain to Haydock to keep his attention from wandering to the rise and fall of voices on the other side of the door long enough to talk intelligently to Mrs. Wolcott; and when, after examining everything in the room, she said that, since she was in Cambridge, she thought she would improve the opportunity of making a call somewhere on Brattle Street, Haydock inwardly applauded the intention.

“He’s not nearly as ill as his note led us to believe,” said Mrs. Wolcott. “He wrote that he was ‘wasted away to a shadow,’ and that if we had a desire—from idle curiosity or any other motive—to see him alive, which he doubted, we’d better come out at once.”

“I was reassured,” added Miss Wolcott, “when I got a note by the next post, saying, ‘Dear Josephine, If you wear that dowdy old felt hat, with the black satin bow and the brass buckle, out to Cambridge, please sit downstairs in the vestibule, while I talk to mamma.’ Sears really ill is quite lamblike.”

“So you see, you mustn’t think me an unnatural parent for running away to leave a card on old Mrs. Burlap,” said Wolcott’s mother. Haydock saw her to the carriage, and went back to tell Miss Wolcott about the Signet meeting, and interest her still more in her brother’s visitor. He softened the language of McGaw’s speech a little, although he made its general import clear. His frequent talks with Miss Wolcott about Sears enabled him to.

“I agree with Mr. Ellis,” she said, when Haydock had finished. “I want McGaw to know. It does seem unjust to poor Searsy.”

“Maybe he does know,” replied Haydock, listening intently to the voices in the bed-room. Suddenly they ceased. Wolcott burst into his loud laugh, and both men began to talk again at once. “I wish they’d hurry up!” added Haydock, with suppressed excitement. Then the door opened, and McGaw, looking ill at ease, but smiling wanly, came out, followed by Wolcott, who went with him as far as the hall.

“And don’t come before ten o’clock,” Wolcott said, shaking hands. “I’m not often in early in the evening.” Wolcott, chuckling delightfully, came across the room, and laid a tiny oblong bit of white linen on Haydock’s knee. On it was printed the name of a Boston tailor, followed in handwriting by Wolcott’s name and a date and some cabalistic letters and numerals written in a clear round hand. Wolcott folded his arms and grinned. Haydock knew where it must have come from, yet he looked puzzled.

“But I remember distinctly having ripped it out that afternoon before you sent them around to Barrows,” he said, after a moment.

“Out of the coat,—not the trousers; they sew them under the right-hand pocket of the trousers sometimes,—so McGaw says,” Wolcott laughed like a child. “That pressed the button, so to speak, and Barrows, confound him! did the rest.”

“Well, well, well!” was all Haydock could say; he didn’t like to let Sears know that he had told Miss Wolcott, and that she was eager for details.

“Who was that who just went out, Searsy?” asked Miss Wolcott, innocently.

“That? Oh—a friend of mine,” answered The Magnificent One, winking at Haydock, as he took back the tailor’s label, and put it in his card-case.