Roxy

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5. Election Day



You have often wondered, no doubt, why men should make a business of politics. There is, of course, the love of publicity and power; but, with the smaller politicians, this hardly accounts for the eagerness with which they give themselves to a business so full of toil, rudeness, and anxiety. I doubt not the love of combat and the love of hazard lie at the root of this fascination. This playing the desperate stake of a man's destiny against another man's equal risk, must be very exciting to him who has the impulse and the courage of a gamester.

The grand rally of each party had been held in the village of Luzerne, and other rallies not so grand had been rallied at all the other places in the county. It was at last the morning of the election day. Politicians awoke from troubled slumbers with a start. I fancy election day must be hard on the candidate: there is so little for hint to do. The whippers-in are busy enough, each at his place, but the candidate can only wait till night-fall. And all the while he is conscious that men are observinohim, ready to note the slightest symptom of uneasiness. With all this, under the ballot system, he must remain in entire ignorance of the state of the poll until the election ie concluded.

On that first Monday in the August of 1840, the town was thronged with people by seven o'clock. The old politicians voted silently early in the morning. Then came the noisy crowd who could not vote without swearing and quarreling. There were shouts for " Little Van," and cries of " Hurrah for Tippecanoe," for, though the presidential election came months later, the state elections would go far toward deciding the contest by the weight of their example.

At midday, when the crowd was greatest, old Bob Harwell, a soldier of the Revolution, who had managed to live to an advanced age, by dint of persistent drunkenness and general worthlessness, was drawn to the polls in a carriage amid deafening cheers for the veteran, from the Whigs. The old man appreciated the dramatic position. .Presenting his ballot with a trembling hand, he lifted his bat and swung it feebly round his head.

" Boys," he cried, in a quavering, mock-heroic voice, "I fit under Gineral Washi'ton, an' I voted fer him, an' now I've voted fer General Harrison " (the old man believed that he had, " and if the hero of Tippecanoe is elected, I want to die straight out and be the fust one to go to heaven and tell Washi'ton that Gineral Harrison's elected ! Hurrah ! "

" You'll be a mighty long while a-gittiu' thar, you old sinner," cried one of the Democrats.

The old Swiss settlers and their descendants voted the Democratic ticket, probably from a liking to the name of the party. It is certain that they knew as little as their American fellow-citizens about the questions of finance which divided the two parties. After the Revolutionary irelic had departed, there came an old Frenchman one Pierre Larousse who was commonly classed with the Swiss on account of his language, but who voted with the Whigs.

"W'at for you vote the W'ig tigget, eh?" cried out.

David Croissant, one of the older Swiss. " You arc a turn-goat, to come to Amereeky an' not pe a damognit Sac-d-papier ! Entrailles de poules ! "

" Sac-r-r-re ! Le (liable J '" burst out Larousse. "You dinks I is d urn -goat. I dinks you lies one varee leetle pit. By gare ! I nayvare pe a damograt. I see 'nough of damograts. Sacr-r-re ! I leef in Paree. Robespierre vas a damograt. I hafe to veel of my head avairy morning to see eef it vas nod shop off. I no likes your damograts. Doo much plud. I likes my head zave and zound, eh ? By gare ! Quel sacre imbecile ! "

It was with some difficulty that the Swiss Democrat and the French Whig were restrained from following their stout French oaths with stouter blows.

With such undignified accompaniments and interludes did the American citizen of that day perform the freeman's " kingliest act " of voting. The champion fighter of the western end of the county cheerfully accepted " a dare " from the champion fighter from the eastern end of the county, and the two went outside of the corporation line, and in the shade of the beautiful poplars on the rivei bank pummeled each other in a friendly way until the challenger, finding that his antagonist had entirely stopped respiration, was forced to " hollow calf-rope," that is, to signify by gestures that he was beaten.

Night came, and with it more drinking, noise, and fighting, filling up the time till the returns should come in. After nine o'clock, horsemen came galloping in, first by one road and then by another, bringing news from country, precincts. On the arrival of the messenger, there was always a rush of the waiting idlers to that part of the public square between the court-house door and the townpump. Here the tidings were delivered by the messengers and each party cheered in turn as the news si owed that the victory wavered first to one side and then to the other. The Democrats became excited when they found that the county, which always had been a "stronghold,'" might possibly be carried by the Whigs. It was to them the first swash of the great opposition wave that swept the followers of Jackson from their twelve years' hold on the government.

In the first returns, Bonamy ran a few votes ahead of his ticket, and his friends were sure of his election. But with Mark there was a fearful waiting for the punishment of his sins. His flirtation with Nancy Kirtley did not seem half so amusing to him now that in a close election he began to see that Rocky Fork might put back the fulfillment of his ambition for years. Paying the fiddler is a great stimulus to the pricks of conscience.

When the returns from the Bocky Fork precinct were read, Mark was astonished to hear that where nearly every vote was Democratic, his friend, Major Lathers, had received twenty-five votes. His own vote in the same poll was precisely one. This must have been cast by old Gid Kirtley. Every other man in the Fork was his enemy. When the adjacent voting-places in Brown Township came to be heard from through the mud-bespattered messengers who had ridden their raw-boned steeds out of breath for the good of their country, Mark caught a little glimpse of the adroit hand of Lathers. He had lost twenty-four Whig votes to offset the twenty-five Democratic votes which Lathers received. There had then been a system of " trading off." This is what Lathers had been doing, while he, like a fool, had been dancing attendance on "that confounded Nancy Kirtley," as he now called her in his remorseful soliloquies.

At ten o'clock the two remote townships York and Posey were yet to be heard from. The whole case wa? to be decided by them. It was still uncertain whether the Whigs or the Democrats had carried the comity; but there was little hope that the two towns, usually Demo eratic, would give Whig majority enough to elect Bon a ray, Meantime, the crowd were discussing the returns froir Tanner Township. What made Bonamy fall so far be hind? When the story of the dance began to be circulated, there was much derision of Mark's weakness and much chuckling over the shrewdness by which Major Lathers had made it serve his turn. But Lathers was quite unwilling to confess that he had betrayed his friend. When asked about his increased vote, he declared that "the dog-law and the likes done the business."

As the time wore on toward eleven, the impatient crowd moved to the upper part of the town, where they would intercept the messenger from York and Posey. Here, under the locusts in front of a little red building used as a hatter's shop, they stood awaiting the vote that was to decide the awful question of the choice of six or eight petty officers a question which seemed to the excited partisans one of supreme moment.

All at once the horse's feet are heard splashing through mud and water. Everybody watches eagerly to see whether it be a Whig or a Democrat who rides, for, as is the messenger, so is his message.

" Hurray for York and Posey ! "

Mark, who is in the crowd, notes that it is the voice of Dan Hoover, the Whig ringleader in York. The voter surround him and demand the returns, for the Democrats still hope that Bonamy is beaten. But they can get but one reply from the messenger, who swings his hat {nd rises in his saddle to cry :



"Hurray for York and Posey ! "

" Well, what about York and Posey, Hoover ? We want to know," cries Mark, who can bear the suspense no longer. But Hoover is crazed with whisky and can give no intelligible account of the election in York and Posey. He responds to every question by rising in his stirrups, swinging his hat and bellowing out:

" Hurray for York and Posey, I say ! "

After half an hour of futile endeavor to extract anything more definite from him, Mark hit upon an expedient.

"I say, Dan, come over to Dixon's and get a drink, you're getting hoarse."

This appeal touched the patriotic man. Mark got the spell of iteration broken and persuaded Hoover to give him a memorandum which he carried in his pocket and which read :

"York gives 19 majority for the Whig ticket,
Posey gives 7 majority for the same,
Bonamy a little ahead of the ticket."

This indicated Mark's election. But he did not sleep soundly until two days later when the careful official count gave him a majority of thirteen.

With this favorable result his remorse for having cheated poor Jim McGowan out of his sweetheart became sensibly less, though he laid away some maxims of caution for himself, as that he must not run such risks again. He was not bad, this Mark Bonamy. He was only one of those men whose character has not hardened. He was like a shifting sand bank that lay open on all sides to the water; every rise and fall or change of direction in the current of influence went over him. There are men rot bad who may come to do very bad things from mere impressibility. He was not good, but should he chance to be seized by some power strong enough to master him, he might come to be good. Circumstances, provided they are sufficiently severe, may even harden such negatives into fixed character, either good or bad, after a while. But in Mark's present condition, full of exuberant physical life and passion, with quick perceptions, a lively imagination, ambitious vanity, a winning address and plenty of bonhommie, it was a sort of pitch and toss between devil and guardian angel for possession.

Set it down to his credit that he had kept sober on this election night. His victory indeed was not yet sure enough to justify a rejoicing which might prove to be premature. Drunkenness, moreover, was not an inherent tendency with Bonamy. If he now and then drank too much, it was not from hereditary hunger for stimulant, much less from a gluttonous love of the pleasures of gust. The quickened sense of his imprudence in the matter of the dance at Rocky Fork had a restraining effect upon him on election day. At any rate, he walked home at midnight with no other elation than that of having carried the election ; and even this joy was moderated by a fear that the official count might yet overthrow his victory. It was while walking in this mood of half-exultation that Bonamy overtook Roxy Adams and her friend Twonnet, just in the shadow of the silent steam-mill.

" Good-evening, or good-morning, I declare I don't know which to say," he laughed as he came upon them. " You haven't been waiting for election returns, have you?"

"Have you heard, Mark? are you elected?" inquired Roxy, with an eagerness that nattered Bonamy.

' Yes, I am elected, but barely," he replied. " But what on earth are you girls taking a walk at midnight for? I'll bet Roxy's been sitting up somewhere?"

" Yes," said Twonnet, whose volatile spirits could not be damped by any circumstances, "of course we've been sitting up, since we haven't gone to bed. It doesn't take a member of the legislature to tell that, Honorable Mr. Bonamy."

This sort of banter from his old school-mate was very agreeable. Mark liked to have his new dignity aired even in jest, and in a western village where a native is never quite able to shed his Christian name, such freedoms are always enjoyed.

" But where have you been ? " asked Mark, as he walked along with them.

"Up at Haz Kirtley's. His baby died about an hour ago," said Roxy, " and I sent for Twonnet to tell them how to make a shroud. She understands such things, you know."

" That's just what I am good for," put in Twonnet, " I never thought of that before. I knew that nothing was made in vain. There ought to be one woman in a town that knews how to make shrouds for dead people. That's me. But Roxy I'll tell you what she's good for," continued the enthusiastic Swiss girl with great vivacity ; " she keeps people out of shrouds. I might put up a sign, Mark, and let it read: ' Antoinette Lefaure, Shroudmaker.' How does that sound ? "

" Strangers never would believe that you were the per boh meant," said Mark. " One sight of your face would make them think you had never seen a corpse. Besides, you couldn't keep from laughing ai a funeral, Twonnet, you know you couldn't."

" I know it," she said, and her clear laugh burst forth at the thought. " I giggled tonight right over that poor dead baby, and I could 'a' whipped myself for it, too. You see, Haz hartley's sister was there. Haz is ignorant enough, but his sister oh my ! " and Twonnet paused to laugh again.

" Oh, don't, Twonnet don't laugh so," said Roxy. " I declare I can't get over that poor child's sufferings and its mother's scream when she saw it was dead. I used to think low people of that sort hadn't much feeling, but they have. That sister of Haz's is an ignorant girl, and I don't like her much, but she is beautiful."

" She's the prettiest creature I ever saw," said Twonnet. " But when she looked at me so solemnly out of her large, bright eyes and told me that she knew that the baby must die, ' bekase the screech-owl hollered and the dog kep' up sich a yowlin' the livelong night,' I thought Pel die."

Mark could make but little reply to this. He had not thought of any kinship between Haz Kirtley, the dray man, and Nancy Kirtley a dozen miles away on Rocky Fork. Had Nancy come into town today to be his Nemesis? He heartily wished he had never seen her. Without suspecting the true state of the case, Twonnet was seized with an uncontrollable impulse to tease.

" By the way, Mark," she began again, " while I was cutting out the shroud, Nancy Kirtley told me in confidence that she knew you well. She spoke of you aa though you were a very particular friend, indeed."

" A candidate has to be everybody's very particular friend," said Mark, in a tone of annoyance, thinking of the seal he had given away the day before.

" She said you couldn't trot a reel very well, though," persisted Twormet. " She claims to have danced with you all night, and she ought to know."

" Pshaw ! " said Mark, " What a yarn ! "

The evident vexation of Bonamy delighted Twonnet.

" Poor old Mr. White ! " interrupted Roxy, who wished to make a diversion in Mark's favor. " There's his candle burning yet. They say he hasn't been able to sleep without it for thirty years. It must be an awful thing to have such a conscience."

Something in Mark's mood made him feel in an unreasonable way that this allusion to Mr. White's conscience was a thrust at himself. White was an old man who had shot and killed a man in a street affray, many years before, when the territory of Indiana was yet new and lawless, but the old man from that day had never slept without a light in his room.

They had now reached the little gate in the paling fence in front of Twonnet Lefaure's home, and Mark was glad to bid the vivacious tease good-night, and to walk on with Roxy, whose house lay a little further away in the direction of his own home. Now that Twonnet was out of sight his complacency had returned ; but he was quite in the mood tonight to wish to live better, and he confided to Roxy his purpose to " turn over a new leaf," the mora readily since he knew that she would cordially approvo it, and approval was what he craved now more than anything else.

Besides, Roxy was the saint of the town. In a village nobody has to wait long to find a " mission." He who can do anything well is straightway recognized, and his vocations are numerous. The woman who has a genius for dress is forthwith called in consultation at all those critical life-and-death moments when dresses are to be made for a wedding, an infare, or a funeral. And the other woman whose touch is tender, magnetic, and lifegiving, is asked to "set up" with the sick in all critical cases. Such was Roxy Adams. The gift of helpfulness was born in her ; and to possess the gift of helpfulness is to be mortgaged to all who need.

That night Roxy climbed the steep stairs to her room, and went to bed without writing in her diary. When one's heart is full, one is not apt to drop a plummet line into it ; and now Roxy was happy in the reaction which helpfulness brings for an angel can never make other people as happy as the angel is. And she was pleased that Mark had carried the election, and pleased to think that perhaps she had " dropped a word in season " that might do him good.

And while the innocent-hearted girl was praying for him, Mark was inwardly cursing the day he had met Nancy Kirtley, and resolving to cut her acquaintance, by degrees.