Part 19

Mrs. Fenelby sighed.

THE COUP D'ÉTAT

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 circumstances 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 circumstances 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 pass the butter, and when it does ask, its parliamentary courtesy is something frigidly polite. Suddenly Mrs. Fenelby looked up.