The Candidate: A Political Romance
"Thank you," she replied, humbly. "Oh, if I could only have lived in the
East just a little while!"
"But I assure you, Miss Morgan, I have met some very remarkable women."
"I do not doubt it, and they have had an equal good-fortune."
Churchill looked suspiciously at her, but there was the same touch of
deference in her manner, and he still honored her with his conversation.
He permitted himself to discourse a little upon the affairs which he had
embodied--"embodied" he felt was the word--in his letter, and she, with
all a woman's intuition, and much of masculine reasoning power, guessed
what the letter contained, although she did not know to whom it was
going. Nor did she feel it wrong to be very attentive, as Churchill
talked, because he was doing it of his own free will, and she had the
fate of her uncle deeply at heart.
Churchill spoke of the campaign, venturing upon polite criticisms of
certain features that seemed objectionable to him, and, listening to
him, she confirmed her opinion that he was the personal representative
with Mr. Grayson of the chief elements within the party that could cause
trouble. And she felt sure, too, that the letter he held in his hand
would add fuel to the fire already burning. She happened also to be
present several days later when a messenger-boy handed him a telegram,
and, when he opened it, he made an involuntary motion to hide it, just
as he had done with the letter. She pretended not to see, and walked
away, but she knew as well as if he had told her that the telegram was
the reply to the letter.
Mr. Goodnight himself sent the despatch, and he thanked Churchill warmly
for the very important information told so luminously in his letter. The
solid and respectable portion of the party had hoped much from the
presence of Mr. Heathcote, but as he had yielded to the influence of
another, instead of exerting his own, it would be necessary to take
additional action later. Meanwhile he requested Mr. Churchill to keep
him accurately and promptly informed of everything, and Churchill at
once telegraphed: "Despatch received. Will be glad to comply with your
request."
Then he congratulated himself, and felt good, his complacent demeanor
forming a contrast to that of several others in the party. The latter
were "King" Plummer, Sylvia Morgan, and John Harley, all of whom were
unhappy.
Harley was troubled by his conscience, and he could not do anything to
keep it from sticking those little pins into him. Sylvia Morgan, despite
herself, drew him on, not the less because his first feeling towards her
had been one of hostility. She had a piquant touch, a manner full of
unconscious allurement--the radiation of a pure soul, though it
was--that he had never seen in any other woman, and the harder he fought
against it, the more surely it conquered him. He took from his valise a
copy of that old Chicago newspaper, with her picture on the front page,
and wondered how he could have intimated that she was the cause of its
being there. As he knew her better, he knew that she could not have done
it, and he knew, too, that she would have scornfully resented any
insinuation of having done so by refusing to deny it.
The "King" was unhappy, too, in his way, and that was very bad indeed
for him. He had tried an effusive gallantry, and it did not seem to
succeed any better than obedience to his own impulses--on the whole,
rather worse; and now, not knowing what else to do, he sulked. It was
not any sly sulking, but genuine, open sulking in his large, Western
way, thus leaving it apparent to all that the great "King" Plummer was
sad. And that meant much to the party, because in a sense it was now
personally conducted by him. In his joyous mood, which was his usual
mood until the present, he had a large and pervasive personality that
was a wonderful help to travel and social intercourse. They missed his
timely, if now and then a trifle rough, jests, his vast knowledge of the
mountains, which had some good story of every town to which they came,
and his infinite zest and humor, which also communicated more zest and
humor to every one with him. It was a grievous day for them all when
"King" Plummer began to mourn. More than one guessed the cause, but
wisely they refrained from any attempt to remove it. They could do
nothing but endure the gloom in silence, until the clouds passed, as
they hoped they would pass.
The candidate, too, was troubled, and sought the privacy of the special
car's drawing-room more than usual. Sylvia Morgan had given him a hint
that attacks upon him from a certain source were likely to be renewed,
and, moreover, would increase in virulence. He soon found that she was
right, as the copies of the _Monitor_ that they now obtained were
frankly cynical and unbelieving. All of its despatches from the West,
Churchill's as well as others, were depreciatory. The candidate was
invariably made to appear in a bad light--which is an easy matter to
do, in any case, without sacrifice of the truth--that is, verbally, only
the spirit being changed--and the editor reinforced them with strong
criticisms, in which quotations from English writers and a French phrase
now and then were freely employed. The whole burden of it was, "We
support this candidate; but, oh, how hard it is for us to do it, how
badly we feel about it, and how much easier it would be for us to
support any other man!" It also printed many contributions from readers,
in all of which the contributors spoke of themselves as belonging by
nature and cultivation to the select few, "the saving remnant," who
really knew what was good for the country. Here much latitude of
expression was allowed, as the paper was not directly responsible for
what these gentlemen said. They wrote of the way in which the dignity of
a great party had been destroyed by the uncouth and talkative Westerner
who had been lucky enough to secure the nomination. They felt that they
had been shamed in the face of the world, and more than once asked the
burning and painful question, "What will Europe say?" They asked, also,
if it were yet too late to amend the error, and they threw forth the
suggestion that the intelligent and cultured minority within the party
might refrain from voting, when election day came, or, in a pinch, might
vote for the other man.
These communications were signed, sometimes, with Latin names, and
sometimes with names in modern English, but always they indicated a
certain sense of superiority and of detachment from the crowd on the
part of the signers.
The annoyance of the candidate increased as he read copies of the
_Monitor_, which were sent to him in numbers. He knew that the paper was
the chief spokesman of an influential minority within the party, and
the divergence between the majority and the minority was already
manifest. It was evident, too, that it was bound to become greater, and
that was why the candidate was troubled. He wished to become President;
it was his great desire, and he did not seek to conceal it; he
considered it a legitimate, a noble ambition, one that any American had
a right to have, and he was in the first flush of his great powers, when
such a position would appeal most to a strong man. Now, even when the
fight, with a united party, was desperate at best, he foresaw a
defection, and hot wrath rose up in his veins against Goodnight, the
_Monitor_, and all their following.
But the worst of the whole position to a man of Grayson's open and
direct temperament was the necessity to keep silent, even to dissemble,
or, at least, to do that which seemed to him very near to dissembling.
Although he was under so fierce a fire, he would not allow any one to
find fault with Churchill for his despatches; and this was not always
easy to do, because many of the local politicians, who were on the train
from time to time, would grow hot at sight of the criticisms, and want
to attack the writer. But Jimmy Grayson always interfered, and reminded
them that it was the right of the press to speak so if it wished.
Churchill still wondered, why he was not a martyr, and wasted his
regrets. Mrs. Grayson and Sylvia maintained an eloquent silence.
Meanwhile, an event destined to give Churchill and the _Monitor_ a yet
greater shock was approaching.
XIII
THE THIRD DEGREE
The candidate and his company were due one night at Grayville, a brisk
Colorado town, dwelling snugly in the shadow of high mountains and
hopeful of a brilliant future, based upon the mines within its limits
and the great pastoral country beyond, as any of its inhabitants, asked
or unasked, would readily have told you. Hence there was joy in the
train, from Jimmy Grayson down, because the next day was to be Sunday, a
period of rest, no speeches to be made, nothing to write, but just rest,
sleeping, eating, idling, bathing, talking--whatever one chose to do.
Only those who have been on arduous campaigns can appreciate the luxury
of such a day now and then, cutting like a sweep of green grass across
the long and dusty road.
There was also quite a little group of women on the train, the wives of
several Colorado political leaders having joined Sylvia and Mrs. Grayson
for a while, and they, too, looked forward to a day of rest and the
restoration of their toilets.
"They tell me that Grayville has one of the best hotels in the
mountains," said Barton to Harley, his brother correspondent. "That you
can get a dinner in a dozen courses, if you want it, and every course
good; that it has real porcelain-lined bath-tubs, and beds sure to cure
the worst case of insomnia on earth. Do you think this improbable, this
extravagant but most fascinating tale can be true, Harley?"
"I live in hope," replied Harley.
"Jimmy Grayson has been here before," interrupted Hobart, "and he says
it's true, every word of it; if Jimmy Grayson vouches for a thing, that
settles it; and here is a copy of the Grayville _Argus_; it has to be a
pretty good town that can publish as smart a daily as this."
He handed a neat sheet to Barton, who laughed.
"There speaks the great detective," he said. "You know, Harley, how
Hobart is always arguing from the effect back to the cause."
Hobart, in fact, was not a political writer, but a "murder mystery" man,
and the best of his kind in New York, but the regular staff
correspondent of his paper, the _Leader_, being ill, he had been sent in
his place. He was a Harvard graduate and a gentleman with a taste for
poetry, but he had a peculiar mind, upon which a murder mystery acted as
an irritant--he could not rest until he had solved it--and his paper
always put him on the great cases, such as those in which a vast
metropolis like New York abounds. Now he was restless and discontented;
the tour seemed to him the mere reporting of speeches and obvious
incidents that everybody saw; there was nothing to unravel, nothing that
called for the keen edge of a fine intellect.
"Grayville, with all its advantages as a place of rest, is sure to be
like the other mountain towns," he said, somewhat sourly--"the same
houses, the same streets, the same people, I might almost say the same
mountains. There will be nothing unusual, nothing out of the way."
Harley had taken the paper from Barton's hands and was reading it.
"At any rate, if Grayville is not unusual, it is to have an unusual
time," he interrupted.
"How so?"
"It is to hear Jimmy Grayson speak Monday, and it is going to hang a man
Tuesday. See, the two events get equal advance space, two columns each,
on the front page."
He handed the paper to Hobart, who looked at it a little while and then
dropped it with an air of increasing discontent.
"That may mean something to the natives," he said; "it may be an