"Seriously, now," said Mr. Fenelby, very seriously indeed, "this has got to stop! You and Kitty may think it is all a joke, but Laura and I went into this thing before you came, and we meant it seriously.
We went into it in parliamentary form, and in good faith. Now we see it was all a mistake and we want to do away with it. If you will just take it seriously for five minutes--if you can be sensible that long--we will not trouble you with it any more. Laura, awaken Bobberts!"
Mrs. Fenelby awakened the Territory by gently kissing him on his eyes, and he opened them and blinked sleepily at the ceiling.
"Congress is in session," said Mr. Fenelby. "And Laura moves that the Fenelby Domestic Tariff be repealed and annulled. I second it.
All in favor of the motion say--"
"Stop!" exclaimed Billy, rising from his chair. "I object to this!
Kitty and I did not come in here to have such an important motion rushed through without consideration. It is not parliamentary. I want to make a speech."
"Oh, don"t!" pleaded Mrs. Fenelby. "Think how late it is, Billy."
"Mr. President and Ladies of Congress," said Billy unrelentingly; "we are asked to repeal our tariff laws, our beneficent laws, enacted to send Bobberts to college. We stand in the presence of two cruel parents who would take away from their only Territory its sole chance--as we were informed--of securing an education. We are asked to do this merely because there has been some slight difficulty in collecting the tariff tax. I am ashamed to be a State in a commonwealth that can put forward such an excuse. I care not what others may do, but as for me I shall never cast my vote to rob that poor innocent," he pointed feelingly toward Bobberts, "to rob him of his future happiness! Never. You won"t either, will you, Kitty?"
"I should think not!" exclaimed Kitty. "Poor little Bobberts!"
Mr. Fenelby moved the papers on his desk nervously. He was tempted to say something about smuggling, but he controlled himself, for it would not do to antagonize one-half of congress. He felt that Kitty and Billy had been planning some great feats of smuggling, and that they had no desire to have their fun spoiled by the repeal of the tariff. Probably no smugglers are free traders at heart--free trade would ruin their business.
He put the motion, and the vote was what he had expected--two for and two against the motion. It was not carried. For a few minutes all sat in silence, the air tingling with suppressed irritability. A word would have condensed it into cruel speech. It was Billy who broke the spell.
"I"m going out to smoke another duty-paid cigar before I turn in,"
he said. "Do you want to have a turn on the porch, Kitty?"
"I think not. I"m tired. I"ll go up, I think," said Kitty, and they left the room together.
Mr. Fenelby gathered his papers and his book together and pushed them wearily into the desk. Then he dropped into a chair and looked sadly at the floor.
"Tom," said Laura, "can"t we stop the tariff anyway?"
"Oh, no!" said her husband disconsolately. "We can"t do anything.
We"ve got to go ahead with the foolishness until Kitty and Billy go.
They would laugh at us and crow over us all their lives if we didn"t. Especially after the fool I have made of myself with this voting nonsense," he added bitterly.
Mrs. Fenelby sighed.
XI
THE COUP D"eTAT
The next morning dawned gloomily. The sky was a dull gray, and a sickening drizzle was falling, mixed with a thick fog that made everything and everybody soggy and damp. It was a most dismal and disheartening Sunday, without a ray of cheerfulness in it, and Mr.
and Mrs. Fenelby felt the burden of the day keenly. The house had the usual Sunday morning air of untidiness. It was a bad day on which to take up the load of the tariff and carry it through twelve hours of servantless housekeeping.
Breakfast was a sad affair. Kitty and Billy, who seemed in high spirits, tried to give the meal an air of gaiety, but Mr. Fenelby was glum and his wife naturally reflected some of his feeling, and after a few attempts to liven things Kitty and Billy turned their attention to each other and left the Fenelbys alone with their gloom. As soon as breakfast was over, Kitty, after a weak suggestion that she should help Laura with the dishes, carried Billy away, saying that no matter what happened she was going to church. The Fenelbys were glad to have them go, and Mr. Fenelby helped Laura carry out the breakfast things.
"Laura," said Mr. Fenelby, "I lay awake a long time last night thinking about the tariff, and something has got to be done about it! I cannot, as the father of Bobberts, let it go on as it is going."
"I lay awake too," said Laura, "and I think exactly as you do, Tom."
"I knew you would," said Mr. Fenelby. "The way Kitty and Billy are acting is not to be borne. They acted last night as if you and I were not capable of raising our own child! I really cannot put another cent in that bank under the tariff law, Laura. Just think how it looks--_we_ are not to be trusted to provide Bobberts with an education; _we_ are not fit to decide how to raise the money for him. No, Kitty and Billy are to be his guardians. They don"t trust us; they insist that we shall keep ourselves bound by the tariff system. They think we don"t love dear little Bobberts, and they think they can make us provide for him, just because they have the balance of power!"
"Yes," said Laura sympathetically. "I thought of all that, Tom, and I don"t think it does them much credit. It is easy enough for them to say there must be a tariff, when they bring hardly anything into the house that they have to pay duty on, but _we_ have to keep the house going. _We_ have to have vegetables and meat and all sorts of things, and they are making _us_ pay duty, while all they have to do is to eat and have a good time. Bobberts is our child, Tom, and it ought to be for us to say what we will save for him, and how we will save it."
"That is just what I think," said Mr. Fenelby feelingly, "and I am not going to stand it any longer. I am going to have another meeting of congress this afternoon--"
"They will vote just the same way," said Laura, hopelessly.
"Probably," said Mr. Fenelby. "But if they do we will end the whole thing."
"We can"t send them away," said Laura. "We couldn"t be so rude as that."
"No," said Mr. Fenelby, "but we will secede. You and I and Bobberts will secede from the Union. I never believed in secession, Laura, but I see now that there are times when conditions become so intolerable that there is nothing else to do. We will give them a chance to vote the tariff out of existence, and if they don"t we will just secede from the Commonwealth of Bobberts. We will have a free trade commonwealth of our own, and Kitty and Billy can do as they please."
"Tom," said Mrs. Fenelby, "that is just what we will do!" And so it was settled.
By the time Kitty and Billy returned loiteringly from church Mr.
Fenelby had progressed pretty well through four of the sixteen sections of the Sunday paper, and Mrs. Fenelby had Bobberts washed and dressed and was in the kitchen preparing dinner, which on Sunday was supposed to be at noon, but which, this Sunday, threatened to be about two o"clock. Kitty threw off her hat and dropped her umbrella in the hall and rushed for the kitchen. Billy merely glanced into the parlor, and seeing Tom holding the grim funny page uncompromisingly before his face, strolled out to the hammock.
"Laura," cried Kitty, "you _must_ let me help you! And what do you think? We met Doctor Stafford, and he _did_ prescribe whisky and rock candy for Bridget"s cold! So I fixed everything all right. I rushed Billy around to Bridget"s sister"s and Bridget is just getting over her cold, so she was glad to come back to you. She says she never, never drinks except under her doctor"s orders, and she said that if you hadn"t been so hasty--"
Mrs. Fenelby dropped the potato she was slicing. Her pretty mouth hardened.
"Kitty!" she exclaimed. "Now I shall _never_ forgive you! I will _never_ have Bridget in this kitchen again! It wasn"t only that she drank, it was her awful, awful deceitfulness. It was that, Kitty, more than anything else. I _won"t_ have people about me who will not live up to the tariff poor dear Tom worked and worried to make!
_You_ may smuggle, Kitty, if you must be so low, and I certainly have no control over Billy, but my servants must not break the rules of this house. If that Bridget dares to put her head inside of this door I will send her about her business."
"Laura," said Kitty, "I wish you would be reasonable--like Billy and me. We talked it all over on the way to church, and we saw that it was Tom"s crazy old tariff that was making all the trouble and driving Bridget away and everything, and we decided we would stop the tariff right away."
Laura"s chin went into the air and her eyes flashed.
"_You_ will stop the tariff!" she cried, turning red. "What right have _you_ to stop anything in this house, Kitty? And it isn"t a crazy tariff. It was a splendid idea, and no one but Tom would ever have thought of it, and it worked all right until you and Billy began spoiling it!"
"But I thought you wanted it stopped," said Kitty.
"I don"t!" exclaimed Laura, bursting into tears. "It is a nice, lovely tariff, and if I ever said I didn"t want it, it was because you aggravated me. I won"t have it stopped. I won"t be so mean to anything dear old Tom starts. It"s Bobberts" tariff. You ought to think more of Bobberts than to suggest such a thing, if you don"t love me."
Kitty stood back and looked at Laura as at some one possessed of evil spirits. Then she turned to the table and took up the potato knife and began slicing potatoes calmly.
"Very well, Laura," she said. "I tried to do what I thought you would like, but if you want the tariff so badly I shall certainly not oppose you. Hereafter, no matter what happens, Billy and I will vote for the tariff!"
"And Tom and I certainly will," said Laura between sobs. "We don"t care _who_ the tariff bothers, or _how_ much trouble it is. We are always, always going to have a tariff--for ever and ever!"
When she told Mr. Fenelby this he was not as happy about it as might have been expected. He agreed that under the circ.u.mstances there was nothing else to do; that the tariff must become a permanent fixture; but he did not say so joyfully. He had more the air of a Job admitting that a continued succession of boils was inevitable. Job, under those circ.u.mstances was probably as placid as could be expected, but not hilarious, and neither was Mr. Fenelby.
Dinner was as gloomy as breakfast had been. It developed into one of the plate-studying kind, with each of the four eating hastily and silently. Even Bobberts was not cheerful. He did not "coo" as usual, but stared unsmilingly at the ceiling. Into such a condition does a nation come when it suffers under a tax that is obnoxious, but which it cannot and will not repeal. When a nation gets into that condition one State can hardly ask another State to pa.s.s the b.u.t.ter, and when it does ask, its parliamentary courtesy is something frigidly polite. Suddenly Mrs. Fenelby looked up.