The Candidate: A Political Romance
gardens. No one had noticed them, and Jimmy Grayson, with a sigh of
relief, drew breaths of the crisp, cool air that came across a thousand
miles of clean prairie.
"What a splendid night!" he said. "What a grand horizon!"
They stood upon a slight elevation, and they looked down the street and
out upon the prairie, which rippled away, silver in the moonlight, like
the waves of the sea. A wind, faint, like a happy sigh, was blowing.
"An evening for lovers," said the candidate, and he smiled as his mind
ran back to some happy evenings in his own life. "Now, why should such a
moonlight as this ever be spoiled by a political speech?" he continued.
"I was thinking of lovers myself," said Harley, "because here is the
Anderson house before us. Don't you see its white walls shining through
the trees?"
"Poor girl!" said the candidate. "It is a terrible thing for a woman to
be separated from the man she loves. A woman, I think, can really love
but once. And yet her father's pride is natural; young Lee has not even
made a start in life."
"All he needs is a chance, which he will get--when it is too late," said
Harley.
The house and its grounds, surrounded by a stone wall not more than
three feet high, occupied an entire square in the outskirts of the
little city, and the candidate and Harley followed the least frequented
of the streets--one running beside the stone wall, which was shaded
presently by thick and arching boughs of trees that grew within. As they
entered the shadow they saw a man leap over the low barrier and
disappear in the Anderson grounds.
"A burglar!" exclaimed Harley. His first thought was of Helen Anderson
and her beautiful, appealing face, and without a moment's hesitation he
sprang over the wall to pursue. Jimmy Grayson looked at him in
astonishment, and then followed.
Harley stopped for an instant inside the grounds, and saw the dark
figure just ahead of him, but now walking with such slowness that
pursuit was easy. Evidently the burglar was making sure of the way
before he sought to enter the Anderson mansion; but Harley was
surprised, in a few moments, to notice something familiar in the
shoulders and bearing of the man whom he followed. His burglar never
looked back, but entered an open space; and then Harley, his surprise
increasing, stopped when he saw him approach a little summer-house of
lattice-work. The hand of the candidate fell at that moment upon his
arm, and a deep voice said in his ear:
"I think we have gone far enough, don't you, Harley?"
"I do," replied Harley, with conviction.
A woman was coming, a woman with a beautiful, pale face, more lovely and
sad than ever in the moonlight, and the two men knew at once that Helen
was about to meet her lover. They would have turned and fled from the
grounds, because a woman's pure love was sacred, to be hidden from all
eyes and ears save those of one, but her face was towards them, and had
they stepped from the shadow of the oak she would have seen the two.
"Ah, Helen!" said Lee, as he met her and took her hands in his.
"Arthur, for the last time!" she exclaimed.
"Yes, I know it is for the last time," said Arthur, and there was a
moving sadness in his voice.
Their faces were turned towards the two there in the shadow of the
great oak, although unwitting that others were so near, and neither man
dared to move. The moonlight, in softened silver, fell upon the faces of
the lovers, disclosing all the beauty of the woman's and all the
loftiness of the man's. Harley thought he had never seen a nobler pair.
The man took both the girl's hands in his and held them for a few
moments. Then he walked back and forth, taking quick little steps. Every
motion of his figure expressed agony and despair. The girl stood still,
and her face, clearly shown in the moonlight, was turned towards Harley;
it, too, expressed agony and despair; but her stillness showed
resignation, Lee's fierce movements were full of rebellion.
"I am going away, Helen," said Arthur. "I have decided upon it. I shall
not be here more than a week or two longer. I cannot be in the same
town, seeing you every day and knowing that you cannot be mine. I could
not stand it."
"I suppose it is best," said Helen; "but, Arthur, I love you. I have
told you that, and I am proud of it. I shall never love any one else. It
is not possible."
Her beautiful, pale face was still turned towards Harley, and he saw
again upon it that touch of ineffable sadness and resignation that had
moved him so deeply. Lee stopped his despairing walk back and forth and
looked at Helen. Then he uttered a little cry and seized her hands
again.
"Helen," he said, "I cannot do it! I came here to give you up forever,
to tell you that I was going away, and I meant to go, but I cannot do
it. We love each other--then who has the right to separate us? I thought
that I could stand this, that I had hardened myself to endure it, but
when the time comes I find that it is too much. My right to you is
greater than that of father or mother. Come with me; we can go to
Longford to-night, and in three hours we shall be man and wife."
He still held her hands in his, and his face was flushed and his eyes
shining with an eager but noble passion.
Harley and the candidate, in the shrubbery, never stirred. They
listened, but they forgot that they were listening.
The girl lifted her eyes to those of her lover, and there was in them no
reproach, only a high, sad courage.
"You do not mean what you say now, Arthur," she said. "I have given my
promise to my father, and you must help me to be strong, for alone I am
weak, very weak. None can help me but you. You must go, as you said you
would go, but your face shall always be with me here. Though I may not
be your wife, I shall be true to you all my life."
"In such moments as these the woman is always stronger than the man,"
breathed Jimmy Grayson.
Lee dropped her hands again and walked a step or two away.
"Helen," he said, "forgive me, and forget what I said. I was base when I
spoke. But I have found it too hard!--too hard!"
Her eyes still expressed no reproach; there was in them something almost
divine. She loved him the more because of his weakness, although she
would not yield to it.
"It is hard, very hard for us both," she whispered, "but it must be
done. But, Arthur, I love you. I have told you that, and I am not
ashamed of it. I shall never love any one else. It is not possible."
"I know it. I know, too, that your heart will always be mine, but, as
the world sees it, your father is right. I am nothing. I have no right
to a wife--above all, to one such as you. I feel that I have a power
within me, the power to do things which the world would call good, but
there is no chance. I suppose that the chance will come some day--when
it is too late."
Harley started. The words were the echo of his own. "We must go," he
whispered to the candidate. "No one has a right to listen, even without
intention, at this, their last meeting." Jimmy Grayson had already
turned away, and by the faint moonlight sifting through the branches
Harley saw a mist in his eyes. But their movement made a sound, and the
lovers looked up.
"Did you hear a noise? What was it?" asked Helen.
"Only a lizard in the grass or a squirrel rattling the bark of a tree,"
replied Arthur.
They listened a moment, but they heard nothing more, save the faint
stirring of the wind among the leaves and the grass.
"Are you really going, Arthur?" asked Helen, as if, approving it once,
she would like now to hear him deny it.
He looked at her, his face flushing and his eyes alight, as if at last
he heard her ask him to stay; but he saw in her gaze only brave resolve.
She could love him, and yet she had the strength to sacrifice that love
for what she considered her duty. He drew courage from her, and he
lifted his head proudly, although his eyes expressed grief alone.
"Yes, I have only to start," he replied; "you know I have little to
take. I make just one more public appearance in Egmont. Mr. Grayson
speaks here again to-morrow night, and the committee, by some chance--a
chance it must have been--has put me on the list of speakers."
"Oh, Arthur, it may be an opportunity for you!"
She was eager, flushed, her eyes flaming and uplifted to his.
"It might be, Helen, at any other time, but this is evil fortune. I am
of the other party; I must speak against him--we are fair to both sides
here; he will have the right of rejoinder, and you know what he is,
Helen--the greatest orator in America, perhaps in all the world. No one
yet has ever been able to defeat him, and what chance have I, with no
experience, against the most formidable debater in existence? I should
shirk it, Helen, if the people would not think me a coward."
"Oh, Arthur, what an ordeal!" She looked up at him with wet, tender
eyes.
Harley, at the mention of Jimmy Grayson's name, glanced away from the
lovers and towards the candidate. He saw him start, and a singular, soft
expression pass over his face, to be followed by one of doubt.
"Now I shall go, Helen," said Arthur. "It was wrong of me to ask you to
meet me here, but I could not go away without seeing you alone and
speaking to you alone, as I do now."
"I was glad to come."
He took her hands again, and for a few moments they stood, gazing into
each other's eyes, where they saw all the grief of a last parting.
Harley wished to turn his gaze away, but, somehow, he could not. There
was silence in the grounds, save that gentle, sighing sound of the wind
through the leaves and grass, and only the moon looked down.
Suddenly the youth bent his head, kissed the girl on the lips, and then
ran swiftly through the shrubbery, as if he could not bear to hesitate
or look back.
"It was their first kiss," murmured Harley.
"I did not see it," said Jimmy Grayson, turning his eyes away.
"And their last," murmured Harley.
The girl stood like a statue, still deadly pale, but Harley saw that her
eyes were luminous. It was the man whom she loved who had taken her
first kiss; nothing could alter that beautiful fact. She listened, as if
she could hear his last retreating footstep on the grass dying away like
an echo. Harley and the candidate watched her until her slender figure
in the white draperies was hid by the house, and then they, too, went
back to the street.
Neither spoke until they passed the low stone wall, and then the
candidate said, brusquely:
"Harley, unless this moonlight deceives me, there is moisture on your
eyelids. What do you mean by such unmanly weakness?"
Harley smiled, but, refraining from the _tu quoque_, left Jimmy Grayson
to lead the way, and he noticed that he chose a course that did not take
them back to the hotel. Moreover, he did not speak again for a long
time, and Harley walked on by his side, silent, too, but thoughtful and
keenly observant. He saw that his friend was troubled, and he divined
the great struggle that was going on in his mind. Whether he could do it
if he were in the place of the candidate he was unable to say, and he
was glad that the decision did not lie with himself.
They walked on and on until they left the town and were out upon the
broad prairie, where the wind moaned in a louder key, and the
candidate's face was still troubled.
"Harley," said the candidate, at last, "I cannot get rid of the look in
that girl's eyes."
"I do not wish to do so," said Harley.
It was nearly midnight when he turned and began to walk back towards the
town. The moonlight, breaking through a cloud, again flooded Jimmy
Grayson's face, and Harley, who knew him so well, saw that the look of
trouble had passed. The lips were compressed and firm, and in his eyes