The Candidate: A Political Romance
"At his greatest. I know of no other man who could have done it. After
all, Sylvia, don't you think love is the greatest and purest of motives,
and that we should consider it first?"
"John," she said, and it was the first time that she had ever called him
by his first name, "you must not tempt me to break my sacred word to the
man to whom I owe all things. Oh, John, don't you see how hard it is for
me, and won't you help me to bear it, instead of making the burden
heavier?"
She turned upon him a face of such pathetic appeal that Harley was
abashed.
"Sylvia," he replied, almost in a whisper, "God knows that I do not wish
to make you unhappy, nor do I wish to make you do what is wrong. I spoke
so because I could not help it. Do you think that I can love you, and
know you to be what you are, and then stand idly by and see you passing
to another? I believe in silence and endurance, but not in such silence
and endurance as that. It is too much! God never asks it of a man!"
She looked at him. Her eyes were dewy and tender, filled with love, a
love tinged with sorrow, but he saw the brave resolution shining there,
and he knew that, despite all, she would keep her word unless "King"
Plummer himself willingly released her from it. And he loved her all the
more because she was so true.
"Sylvia," he said, "I was wrong. I should not have spoken to you in such
a manner. I am a weak coward to make your duty all the harder for you."
They were at the "ladies' entrance" of the hotel, and the others either
had gone in or had turned aside. They were alone, and she bent a little
towards him.
"The things that you say may be wrong," she whispered, "but--oh, John--I
love to hear you say them!"
Then she went into the hotel, and Harley wisely did not seek to follow.
XIX
AN IDAHO STORM
Among the mountains of Idaho, a dark storm-cloud, ribbed with flashes of
steel-edged lightning, was growing. For thirty years "King" Plummer had
lived a life after his own mind, and it had been a very free life. In
four or five states he was a real monarch, and there was nothing at all
derisive about his nickname. At fifty he was at his mental and physical
zenith, never before had he felt so strong, both in body and mind, so
capable of doing great deeds, and with so keen a zest in life. The blood
flowed in a rich, red tide through his veins, and he breathed the breath
of morning like a youth.
To this big, strong man, rioting in the very fulness of life, came Mrs.
Grayson's letter. He was not in Boise when it arrived there, but it was
forwarded to him at a mining-camp in the very highest mountains. He read
it early one morning sitting on a big rock at the edge of a valley that
dropped off three thousand feet below, and first there was a shade of
annoyance on his face, to be followed by a frown, which gave way in its
turn to an angry red flush.
But while the shade of annoyance was still on his face the "King" asked,
"What is she driving at?" and then, when it was replaced by the frown,
he muttered, "Why does she waste so much time on Harley and a marriage
for him?" and then, when the red flush came, he exclaimed, "Damn the
Eastern kid!" In the mind of "King" Plummer everybody who did not live
west of the Missouri River was Eastern.
He read the letter over four or five times, and it sank deeper and
deeper into his soul, and as it sank it burned like fire. All that he
had feared, but which he had refused to believe when he came away, was
true. Sylvia did not love him, but she loved that raw youngster Harley.
And here was Mrs. Grayson, the wife of a man who was under obligations
to him, whom he could ruin, hinting that he give her up, and she a woman
whom he had supposed to be endowed with at least ordinary intelligence.
In his wrath, which was mighty, "King" Plummer swore at the whole tribe
of women as fickle, heartless creatures. Then he rose to his feet,
clinched his fist, shook it at the opposite mountain across the valley,
and swore aloud at all creation. And "King" Plummer knew how to swear;
he was no mealy-mouthed man; his had been a wild and tumultuous youth,
and though he would never use oaths in the presence of Sylvia, he could
still, in the seclusion of mountain or desert, let fly an imprecating
volley that would burn the rocks themselves. It was apparent to some
miners coming up the slope that their chief was no extinct volcano, and
they wisely passed in silence on the other side.
For the present there was little grief in the "King's" outpouring; the
tide of wrath was too full and sparkling to be tinged yet awhile by
other currents, and just now it flowed most against Mrs. Grayson, who
had been bold enough to tell him what he was least willing to hear. His
heart, too, was full of unspoken threats, as "King" Plummer was a
passionate man who had lived a rough life, close to the ground, and full
of primitive emotions. And the threats he expressed in words were such
as these: "They shall pay for it!" "I helped put that husband of hers
where he is, I helped make him, and I can help unmake him; and, by
thunder, I will do it, too!" In the hour of his wrath he hated Jimmy
Grayson, and his head was filled with sudden schemes. He would "teach
the man what it was to play the King of the Mountains for a sucker,"
and, still raging, he cast from him all the ties of party and
association.
Within an hour he was on his swiftest horse, riding furiously towards
Boise, his heart full of anger and his head full of plans for revenge.
Nor was he sparing in speech when he reached Boise. His words cracked so
loud that the echo of them travelled several hundred miles and reached
Mrs. Grayson, who was waiting vainly for a reply to a letter that she
had written nearly two weeks before. Now, no reply was necessary,
because this news was what she had feared, but which she had hoped would
not come.
The report was winged and full of alarms. "King" Plummer, shooting out
of the mountains like a cannon-ball, had made his appearance in the
streets of Boise, openly denouncing Jimmy Grayson, calling him a
traitor, and saying that he would beat him if he had to ruin himself to
do it. What had caused this sudden change nobody knew, but it must be
something astonishing, and it behooved the candidate to explain himself
quickly.
The loyal soul of the candidate's wife flashed back an angry reply
across the five hundred miles of mountain and desert. If "King" Plummer
was not the man she had hoped he was, then they preferred that they
should fight him rather than have him as a false friend. Yet there was
in her heart a throb of admiration for him, because he was willing to
throw everything overboard for the love of a woman.
The defection clothed the whole train in the deepest gloom. Tremaine
spoke for the group when he said it was all up with Jimmy Grayson, and
the others did not have the heart even to pretend to a different belief.
With a Plummer defection on one side and a Goodnight falling away on the
other, there was no hope left for a party which even with these wings
faithful had only a desperate fighting chance.
Harley was thoroughly miserable. He could guess--no, he did not guess,
he knew the cause of "King" Plummer's bolt, and he knew, too, that if it
were not for himself it would never have occurred; he had wrecked all
the future of others, nor in making such a wreck had he secured his own
happiness, provided even that he was selfish enough to be happy when
others were ruined.
Sylvia, too, was sunk in the depths. She did not have to be told that
her aunt had written to Mr. Plummer; she guessed that Mr. Plummer had
received some warning, some message, it did not matter from whom,
nothing else could cause him to burst forth with such violence, and the
very nature of the case forbade her from speaking; she could only keep
silent, knowing that significant talk was going on all around her, and
pass sleepless nights and troubled days.
The situation brought a thrill of satisfaction and interest to one man
on the train, and he was Churchill. The cumulative effect of "King"
Plummer's bolt might force Jimmy Grayson off the track, and it was not
yet too late to put up another candidate. Such a thing had never been
done, but that was no reason why it could not succeed, and he
telegraphed Mr. Goodnight that Mr. Grayson was very despondent, and that
those about him knew he did not have a ghost of a chance.
Churchill guessed close to the cause of the Plummer bolt, but he was not
sure, and for that and other reasons he at once sought an interview with
the nominee.
Mr. Grayson was courteous, and seemingly not as despondent as Churchill
had described him. He said that he could not speak of Mr. Plummer's
defection, because he had no official knowledge of the fact; it was
merely report, and hence he could not comment on what was not proved.
Mr. Churchill, he knew, would readily recognize the unfitness of such a
thing, nor could he tell what he should do in supposititious cases,
because, even if the latter came true, circumstances might give them
another appearance.
Churchill skirmished as delicately as he could about the subject of
Sylvia and the surmise that she was the key to the situation, which, if
true, would make one of the greatest stories told in a newspaper; but
here the candidate was impervious. Not only was he impervious, but he
seemed to be densely ignorant; all the hints of Churchill glided off him
like arrows from a steel breast-plate, all the most delicate and skilful
art of the interviewer failed. So far as concerned the subject of
politics, Sylvia was unknown to Mr. Grayson. Baffled upon this
interesting point, Churchill retired to write his interview; but as he
rested his pad upon the car-seat and sharpened his pencil he flung out a
feeler or two.
"I say, Hobart," he said to the mystery man, who sat just in front of
him, "I think there's something at the bottom of this Plummer revolt
that we haven't probed. Now, isn't it the truth that Miss Morgan has
thrown him over, and that he is taking his revenge on her uncle?"
Hobart glanced up the car, and noticed that Harley was not within
hearing. Then he replied, gravely:
"Churchill, I don't believe that Miss Morgan has broken her engagement
with the 'King'--she'll marry him yet if he says so--but I do believe
that she has some connection with this affair. What it is, I don't know,
and I'm mighty glad that I don't have to speak of it in my despatches;
it's too intangible."
But Churchill was not so scrupulous. Without giving any names, he wove
into his four-thousand-word despatch a very beautiful and touching
romance, in which Jimmy Grayson figured rather badly--in fact, somewhat
as an evil genius--and the _Monitor_, dealing in the fine vein of irony
which it considered its strongest card, wrote scornfully of a campaign
into which personal issues were obtruding to such an extent that they
were shattering it. The _Monitor_ still affected to see some good in Mr.
Grayson, but put the bad in such high relief that the good merely set it
off, like those little patches that ladies wear on their faces. And the
mystery of the Plummer bolt, involving a young and beautiful woman, just
hinted at in the despatches, heightened the effect of the story. "King"
Plummer himself appeared to the reading public as a martyr, and even to
many old partisans party rebellion seemed in this case honorable and
heroic.
For a day or so Harley scarcely spoke to any one, and, as far as was
possible within the limited confines of a train, he avoided Sylvia. He
did not wish to see her, because he was strengthening himself to carry
out a great resolution which he meant to take. In this crisis he turned
to only one person, and that was Mr. Heathcote, who he felt would give