The Candidate: A Political Romance
"Wait and we shall see," repeated Jimmy Grayson, as sweetly as ever.
"Well, this conference came to pass, and it lasted a long time, but only
the committee talked; they gave the candidate scarcely a chance to say a
word. They treated him with increasing arrogance. They said that if he
declared himself upon this great issue they would bolt the party and let
him go headlong to destruction."
"The traitors!" shouted the big man in the audience. But the members of
the committee, from some strange cause, seemed to be struck speechless.
Their jaws fell, but the faces of them all were as red as fire. Sylvia
leaned forward and clapped her gloved hands.
"Blaisdell," whispered Hobart, "slip away and arrange at the
telegraph-office; any of us will give you his report. I shall have at
least five thousand words myself."
Blaisdell slid noiselessly away.
"The candidate endured it all, but only for the time," thundered Jimmy
Grayson, and now his voice was swelling with passion, while his eyes
fairly sparkled with heat and anger--"but only for the time. He had
decided opinions upon this subject, as I have upon the question of
tariff revision, and he intended to utter them as I intend to utter
mine. They said--and they said it with intolerable condescension and
patronage--that for the sake of his record he might make one little
speech upon the subject before a few people out in what they called the
desert, and he accepted the concession. But there was rage in his heart.
He was willing to be beaten by the biggest majority ever given against a
Presidential candidate before he would yield to such insolent dictation.
Moreover, there was the question of his true opinion, which the people
had a right to know, and he took his resolve. There was that little
speech, and he remembered the telegraph wire, the thin line that binds
the farthest little village to the great world, and I say he took his
resolve."
"He called the bluff!" shouted the big man in the audience, in a perfect
roar of triumph, and Jimmy Grayson smiled sweetly.
Suddenly Mr. Goodnight, in all the might of his majesty and importance,
rose up and stalked from the stage, and the eleven other members of the
committee, headed by Mr. Crayon, followed him in an angry file,
accompanied by the derisive shouts of the audience. They quickened their
pace somewhat when they reached solid ground, but before they were
within the sheltering confines of their private car, Jimmy Grayson was
launched upon his great and thrilling tariff speech, in which he
invested the driest subject in the world with an interest that absorbed
the attention of ninety million people.
All day the wires eastward and westward sang with the burden of the
great speech made in the tiny hamlet of Waterville, in the Wyoming
mountains, and the next morning it occupied the front pages of ten
thousand newspapers. It was absolutely clear and decisive. No one could
doubt how the candidate stood. He was heart and soul for revision.
Sylvia threw her arms around his neck, and said, "Uncle James, I was
never prouder of you than I am at this moment."
When they left Waterville the private car of the committee was still
attached to their train, but there was no communication between it and
the other cars. About the middle of the afternoon they reached a
junction with another railroad line. There the private car was cut off
and attached to a new engine. Then it sped eastward at the rate of fifty
miles an hour.
Meanwhile the correspondents were holding a little conference of their
own.
"They will bolt him sure," said Hobart. "Will it ruin Jimmy Grayson?"
"I believe not," said Harley, who had been thinking much. "Of course
there will be a split, but such courage, and his way of meeting their
attack, will appeal to the people; it will bring him thousands of new
votes."
"Whether it does or does not," said Hobart, "if I had been in his place
I'd have done as he did."
XXI
ALONE WITH NATURE
When the party returned to the train after Jimmy Grayson's thrilling
defiance there was an air of relief, even joyousness, about them all. No
more diplomacy, no more watching for blows in the dark, no more waiting,
now they knew who their friends were, and they knew equally well their
enemies. They could strike straight at Goodnight, Crayon, and all the
others. Only in the heart of nearly every one of them there was still
mourning for the lost leader, for "King" Plummer, whom a gust of passion
had led astray.
"Well," said Hobart, "I thank God that the split has come at last. Even
if we are beaten out of our boots, I've got that defiance to remember,
and the picture of Jimmy Grayson refusing either to be browbeaten or
cajoled, even though the price was the Presidency."
"We know where we stand," said Mr. Heathcote, "and that at least is a
gain."
As for Sylvia, she was thrilling with pride. Her uncle's high heroism,
his superb truthfulness appealed to every quality in her woman's soul,
and with another impulse full as womanly she hated Goodnight, Crayon,
and their associates with all her heart; she believed them capable of
any crime, personal as well as political. She felt so intensely upon
the subject that she wanted to speak of it to somebody else, but Mr. and
Mrs. Grayson had withdrawn to the drawing-room, and all the
correspondents were deep in their work, as it would be necessary to send
very long despatches to the great cities that day.
Harley wrote five or six thousand words full of fire and zeal. As usual,
he wrote from the "inside," and his was not a bare record of facts; one
reading it, though three thousand miles away, was upon the scene
himself; everything passed before him alive; he saw the heroic figure of
the candidate thundering forth his denunciation; he knew all that it
cost, the full penalty, and he shared the stern impulse which such a
speaker in such a situation must feel; he, too, saw the astonishment on
the faces of the committee, astonishment followed by fear and rage, and
he shared also the noble thrill that must come to a man who had lost all
save honor, but was proud in the losing. Harley was always a good
writer, but now as he wrote he saw every word burning before him, so
intense were his feelings, and even across the United States he
communicated the same thrill to those who read.
His despatch brought from his abrupt editor the one word "Splendid!" and
it attracted marked attention not only wherever the _Gazette_ went, but
where also went the numerous journals into which it was copied.
Everybody who read it said, "What a magnificent figure Jimmy Grayson
is!" and the impression was deepened and widened by other writers on the
train who were inferior in powers only to Harley. In this his day of
great disaster the candidate was to find that there were friends who
were truly bound to him with "hooks of steel." Nor was he ungrateful.
The moisture rose in his eyes when he first heard of their accounts,
and in privacy he confided to his wife that he did not know how to thank
them.
"If I were you I should not say anything," she advised. "They will like
it better if you don't."
And he did not.
Now the campaign took on a new phase. Even in the beginning it had
differed from any other ever waged in America, and since the Philipsburg
conference that difference, already great, increased. It was permeated
throughout by the personal element, party platforms sank into the
background, and in the foreground stood the titanic figure of Jimmy
Grayson fighting single-handed against a host of foes.
His hero appealed more powerfully than ever to Harley; every sympathy
within him was aroused by this lone figure who stood like Horatius at
the bridge--the old simile was always coming to him--and under its
influence his despatches took on a vivid coloring and a keen, searching
quality that thrilled all who read. And many other newspapers gave the
same lifelike impression.
The figure of the candidate, although he was admittedly a beaten man,
loomed larger than ever to the whole country, and his enemies, although
counting already the fruits of victory, began to feel a certain awe of
him. They showed an anxiety to keep away from him, even in what they
considered his dying moments, and no speaker dared to meet him on the
platform, despite the recollections of his defeat at Egmont. The
opposition often alluded to this "defeat," and sought to make great
capital of it, but the sensation that it had created at first faded. It
was surrounded by too many brilliant triumphs; people would say that on
the day of his defeat he was ill, like Napoleon at Leipsic; that he was
giving daily proofs that he was without a match in the world, and one
such little incident did not count.
The split in the party was made complete. Mr. Goodnight, Mr. Crayon, and
eighteen of their associates, all men of wealth and influence, came out
in a formal signed statement published first in the _Monitor_, stating
their position in calmness and moderation and in measured language. They
said that they had tried to support Mr. Grayson; they had given him
every chance; they had always been ready with advice; they had sought to
instil in him a full sense of his responsibility, and to impart to his
mind the breadth and solidity so necessary in a Presidential nominee;
they were strong in party loyalty, and they hesitated long before taking
such a momentous step; but they knew that in every great crisis brave
men who would not hesitate at great risk to lead must be found;
therefore they stepped into the breach. Reluctantly and with much grief
they announced that they could not support Mr. Grayson. He was a menace
to the country, and they felt that they must remove this danger; hence
they would support the other side, and they advised all the solid worth
of the country, those who cared for the national honor, to do likewise.
The _Monitor_ commented editorially in its finest vein upon this tribute
to conscience. It was glad to know that there were yet brave and honest
men; it was never worth while to despair of the republic so long as such
lofty and heroic citizens as Mr. Goodnight and Mr. Crayon were
vouchsafed to it. The American people were frivolous and superficial,
but there was a saving remnant, men who might almost compare with the
great statesmen of Europe, and in every emergency, every crisis, it was
they who would make enormous sacrifice of private interest and save the
state.
Churchill followed the lead, and in a long despatch made a ferocious
attack upon Jimmy Grayson, the man. Then, with a concealed sense of
importance, he waited until the paper arrived, and when the two hours
that he thought necessary to make the impression deep had passed he went
in to Mr. Grayson and announced with an air of great dignity that he was
prepared to leave the train; he felt that as a keen and remorseless
critic his presence would put a severe constraint upon the candidate;
there was nothing personal in his course, and he did not wish to prevent
anybody from doing his best; he was aware that he must be regarded with
the greatest hostility and apprehension, and therefore he would retire,
seeking his news either by going before or by following.
"Why, Mr. Churchill!" exclaimed the candidate, in surprise, "we do not
dream of letting you go. You have been so long with us that your place
could not be filled. I cannot consent to such a thing! You must stay
with us to the end!"
Churchill felt that his shot had missed again, but he said:
"I spoke out of consideration. I thought that my continued presence here
might have a somewhat disconcerting effect upon you."
"Not at all! Not at all!" replied the candidate, courageously. "It's a
blow, but we prefer to bear it rather than lose you. Ah, here is my