The Candidate: A Political Romance
and his form expanded as he denounced the Trusts and the Robber Barons,
and all the other iniquities that he felt it his duty to impale, but he
never took his eyes from Plover; to him he was now talking with a force
and directness that he had not equalled before. Time went on, and, as if
half remembering some resolution, Plover's hand stole towards the
little old silver watch that he carried in the left-hand pocket of his
waistcoat. But just at that critical moment Grayson uttered the magical
name, Wall Street, and Plover's hand fell back to his side with a jerk.
Then Grayson rose to his best, and tore Wall Street to tatters.
A whistle sounded, a bell rang, and a train began to rumble, but no one
took note of it save Harley. The two-ten on the branch line to connect
with the 'Frisco Express on the B. P. was moving out, and he breathed a
great sigh of relief. "One gone," he said to himself; "now for the
accommodation freight."
The speech continued, but presently Grayson stopped for a hasty drink of
water. Harley trembled. He was afraid that Grayson was breaking down,
and his fears increased when he saw Plover's eyes leave the speaker's
face and wander towards the station. But just at that moment the
candidate caught the little man.
"Listen to me!" thundered Grayson, "and let no true citizen here fail to
heed what I am about to tell him."
Plover could not resist the voice and those words of command. His
thoughts, wandering towards the railroad station, were seized and
brought back by the speaker. His eyes were fixed and held by Grayson,
and he stood there as if chained to the spot.
Time became strangely slow. The accommodation freight must be more than
ten minutes late, Harley thought. He looked at his watch, and found that
it was not due to leave for five minutes yet. So he settled himself to
patient waiting, and listened to Grayson as he passed from one national
topic to another. He saw, too, that the lines in the speaker's face were
growing deeper and deeper, and he knew that he must be using his last
ounces of strength. His soul was stirred with pity. Yet Grayson never
faltered.
The whistle blew, the bell rang, and again the train rumbled. The
two-forty accommodation freight on the branch line to connect with the
'Frisco Express on the B. P. was moving out, and Plover had been held.
He could not go now, and once more Harley breathed that deep sigh of
relief. Twenty minutes passed, and he heard far off in the east a faint
rumble. He knew it was the Denver Express, and, in spite of his
resolution, he began to grow nervous. Suppose the woman should not come?
The rumble grew to a roar, and the train pulled into the station.
Grayson was faithful to the last, and still thundered forth the
invective that delighted the soul of Plover. The train whistled and
moved off again, and Harley waited in breathless anxiety.
A tall form rose out of the darkness, and a woman, middle-aged and
honest of face, appeared. The correspondent knew that it must be Susan.
It could be nobody else. She was looking around as if she sought some
one. Harley's eye caught Grayson's, and it gave the signal.
"And now, gentlemen," said the candidate, "I am done. I thank you for
your attention, and I hope you will think well of what I have said."
So saying, he left the stage, and the crowd dispersed. But Harley
waited, and he saw Plover and his wife meet. He saw, too, the look of
surprise and then joy on the man's face, and he saw them throw their
arms around each other's neck and kiss in the dark. They were only a
poor, prosaic, and middle-aged couple, but he knew they were now happy
and that all was right between them.
When Grayson went to his room, he fell from exhaustion in a half-faint
across the bed; but when Harley told him the next afternoon the cause of
it all, he laughed and said it was well worth the price.
They obtained, about a week later, the New York papers containing an
account of the record-breaking day. When Harley opened the _Monitor_,
Churchill's paper, he read these head-lines:
GRAYSON'S GAB
HE IS TALKING THE FARMERS OF THE WEST TO
DEATH
TWENTY-FOUR SPEECHES IN TWENTY-FOUR
HOURS
HE TALKS FIFTY THOUSAND WORDS IN ONE DAY,
AND SAYS NOTHING
But when he looked at the _Gazette_, he saw the following head-lines
over his own account:
HIS GREATEST SPEECH
GRAYSON'S WONDERFUL EXHIBITION OF PLUCK
AND ENDURANCE
AFTER RIDING FOUR HUNDRED MILES AND MAKING
TWENTY-THREE SPEECHES HE HOLDS
AN AUDIENCE SPELLBOUND FOR
THREE HOURS AT HIS
TWENTY-FOURTH
SPEAKS FROM MIDNIGHT UNTIL THREE IN THE
MORNING IN THE OPEN AIR AND NOT A
SOUL LEAVES, THOUGH A BLIZZARD
WAS RAGING
Harley sighed with satisfaction.
"That managing editor of mine knows his business," he said to himself.
VIII
SYLVIA'S RETURN
Harley slept late the next day, and it was the heavy, somewhat nervous
slumber of utter exhaustion, like that which he had more than once
experienced in the war on the other side of the world, after days of
incessant marching. When he awoke, it was afternoon on the special
train, and as he joined the group he was greeted with a suppressed
cheer.
"I understand that you stayed the whole thing through last night, or
rather this morning," said Churchill, in a sneering tone. "There's
devotion for you, boys!"
"I was amply repaid," replied Harley, calmly. "His last speech was the
most interesting; in fact, I think it was the greatest speech that I
ever heard him make."
"I fear that Jimmy Grayson is overdoing it," said the elderly Tremaine,
soberly. "A Presidential nominee is not exactly master of himself, and I
doubt whether he should have risked his voice, and perhaps the success
of his party, speaking in that cold wind until three or four o'clock
this morning."
"He just loves to hear the sound of his own voice," said Churchill, his
ugly sneer becoming uglier. "I think it undignified and absurd on the
part of a man who is in the position that he is in."
Harley was silent, and he was glad now that he had said nothing in his
despatch about the real reason for Grayson's long speaking. He had had
at first a little struggle over it with his professional conscience,
feeling that his duty required him to tell, but a little reflection
decided him to the contrary. He had managed the affair, it was not a
spontaneous occurrence, and, therefore, it was the private business of
himself and Mr. James Grayson. It gave him great relief to be convinced
thus, as he knew that otherwise the candidate would be severely
criticised for it both by the opposition press and by a considerable
number of his own party journals.
But there was one person to whom Harley related the whole story. It was
told in a letter to Sylvia Morgan, who was then at the home of the
candidate with Mrs. Grayson. After describing all the details minutely,
he gave his opinion: he held that it was right for a man, even in
critical moments weighted with the fate of the many, to halt to do a
good action which could affect only one or two. A great general at the
height of a battle, seeing a wounded soldier helpless on the ground,
might take the time to order relief for him without at all impairing the
fate of the combat; to do otherwise would be a complete sacrifice of the
individual for the sake of a mighty machine which would banish all
humanity from life. He noticed that even Napoleon, in the midst of what
might be called the most strenuous career the world has known, turned
aside to do little acts of kindness.
He was glad to find, when her reply came a few days later, that she
agreed with him at least in the main part of his argument; but she
called his attention to the fact that it was not Mr. Grayson, but Harley
himself, who had injected this strange element into the combat when it
was at its zenith; her uncle James had merely responded to a strong and
moving appeal, which he would always do, because she knew the softness
of his heart; yet she was not willing for him to go too far. A general
might be able to turn aside for a moment at the height of the battle,
and then he might not. She wished her uncle James to be judicious in his
generosity, and not make any sacrifice which might prove too costly
alike to himself and to others.
"She is a compound of romance and strong common-sense," thought Harley,
musing over the letter. "She wants the romance without paying the price.
Now I wonder if that is not rather more the characteristic of women than
of men."
On the day following the receipt of this letter, a look of joy came over
the face of the candidate and there was a visible exhilaration
throughout his party. Men, worn, exhausted, and covered with the dust of
the great plains, began to freshen up themselves as much as they could;
there was a great brushing of soiled clothing, a hauling out of clean
collars, a sharpening of razors, and a general inquiry, "How do I look?"
The whole atmosphere of the train was changed, and it became much
brighter and livelier. It was the candidate himself who wrought the
transformation, after reading a letter, with the brief statement, "Mrs.
Grayson and Sylvia will join us to-morrow."
All had begun to pine for feminine society, as soldiers, long on the
march, desire the sight of women and the sound of their voices. It is
true that they saw women often, and many of them--some who were
beautiful and some who were not--as they sped through the West, but it
was always a flitting and blurred glimpse. "I haven't got an impression
of the features of a single one of them," complained the elderly beau,
Tremaine. Now two women whom they knew well and liked would be with them
for days, and they rejoiced accordingly.
It was at a little junction station in eastern Colorado, in the clear
blue-and-silver of a fine morning, that Mrs. Grayson and Sylvia met
them. Mr. Grayson and his party had been down about fifty miles on a
branch line for a speech at a town of importance, and they had begun the
return journey before daylight in order to make the connection. But when
the gray dawn came through the dusty car-windows, it was odd to see how
neat and careful all appeared, even under such difficult circumstances.
Harley was surprised to realize the eagerness with which he looked
forward to the meeting, and put it down to the long lack of feminine
society. But he wondered if Sylvia had changed, if the nearer approach
of her marriage with "King" Plummer would make her reserved and with her
outlook on the future--that is, as one apart.
He had a favorable seat in the car and he was the first to see them. The
junction was a tiny place of not more than a half-dozen houses standing
in the midst of a great plain, and it made a perfect silhouette against
the gorgeous morning sunlight. Harley saw two slender figures outlined
there in front of the station building, and, despite the distance, he
knew them. There was to him something typically American and typically
Western in these two women coming alone into that vast emptiness and
waiting there in the utmost calmness, knowing that they were as safe as
if they were in the heart of a great city, and perhaps safer.
He knew, too, which was Sylvia; her manner, her bearing, the poise of
her figure, had become familiar to him. Slender and upright, she was in