The Candidate: A Political Romance
heed to him, talking with the others and passing over him as if he had
not been present; and, while this was what he wanted in the first place,
yet, now that he had it, he resented it as something undeserved. But if
she would not speak to him, he, too, would keep silence, a silence which
he was convinced had in it a disdainful quality; hence it was not
without a certain comfort and satisfaction.
But Harley was forced to admit that if she was of the bold and
boisterous type, she was a favorable specimen within those unfavorable
limits. While she was familiar, in a measure, with these men, yet she
was able to keep them at the proper distance, and no one presumed, in
any respect. She radiated purity and innocence, and it was to ignorance
only that Harley now charged her faults.
They reached Chicago the next morning, and at noon Hobart knocked at the
door of Harley's room at the hotel.
"There is some idle time this afternoon," said Hobart, "and Tremaine and
I have asked Miss Morgan to go driving. She has accepted, but it takes
four to make a party, and you are the lucky fourth."
He allowed no protestations, and, after all, Harley, who had been under
much strain for some time, was not averse to an hour or two in the fresh
air.
"Miss Morgan has never been in Chicago before," said Hobart, "and it is
our duty to show it to her."
Hobart, who drove, put Miss Morgan upon the seat beside him, and
Tremaine and Harley, who sat behind, occupied what was to some extent
the post of disadvantage; but Tremaine, safe in his years, would not
permit the rear seat to be neglected. He talked constantly, and her
face, of necessity, was often turned to them, giving Harley opportunity
to see that it had a most becoming flush.
She had an eager interest in everything--the tall buildings, the
wind-swept streets, and the glimpses of the wide, green lake. Harley saw
that Chicago bulked much more largely in her imagination than in his,
and he began to fear that he had been neglectful; it was the most
concrete expression of the West, and, as the greatest achievement of a
new people in city building, it deserved attention for qualities
peculiarly its own, and there could be no doubt either of Miss Morgan's
admiration or pleasure. She was seeking neither for the old nor the
picturesque, which are not always synonymous, but was in full sympathy
with the fresh, active, and, on the whole, joyous life around her. It
was sufficient to her to be a part of the human tide, and to feel by
contact the keenness and zest of the human endeavor. She was not
troubled by the absence of ruins.
"But the city is flat and unpicturesque," once said Harley.
"All the better," she rejoined. "I have so much of silence and grandeur
in Idaho that I enjoy the sight of two million people at work on this
billiard-table that is Chicago. I like my own kind, I like to talk to it
and have it talk to me. I suppose that the mountains have a voice, but
the voice is too big for perpetual conversation with a poor little
mortal like myself. After a while I want to come down to my own level,
and I find it here."
Harley glanced at her. The flush was still on her face, and there was a
soft light in her eyes. He could not doubt that she was sincere, and she
started in his mind thoughts that were not altogether new to him; he
wondered if excessive reverence for the antique did not indicate a
detachment from the present, and therefore from life itself, and, as a
logical sequence, a lack of feeling for one's own kind. He had heard an
elderly man from Chicago, dragged about by his wife and daughters in
Rome, exclaim in disgust, "I would not give a single street corner in
Chicago for all Rome!" The elderly Chicagoan had been drowned in
derisive laughter, but Harley could understand his point of view, and
now, as he remembered him, he had for him a fellow-feeling.
Hobart took them through many streets, one much like another, and then
over a white asphalt drive beside the great lake. The shores were low,
but to Harley the lake had the calm restlessness and expanse of the sea,
and the wind had the same keen tang that comes over miles of salt. He
saw the girl's eyes linger upon the vast sheet of green, and the
incipient hostility that he felt towards her disappeared for a time.
Somewhere in her nature, strait though the place might be, there was a
feeling for fine things, and he felt a kindred glow.
They were rather quiet when they drove back towards the hotel, but she
spoke at last of her uncle James and his speech that night, which might
justify the expectations of either his friends or his enemies. There had
grown up lately in the theatrical world a practice of "trying a new
piece on the dog"--that is, of presenting it first in some small town
which was not too particular--but now the political world was moving
differently in this particular case. The candidate was to make his first
appearance in one of the greatest of cities, before two million people,
so to speak, and the ordeal would be so severe that Harley found himself
apprehensive for Jimmy Grayson's sake. The feeling was shared by his
niece.
"You don't think he will fail, do you?" she said, in an appealing tone
to Hobart.
"Fail!" replied that irrepressible optimist. "He can't fail! The bigger
the crowd the better he will rise to the occasion."
But she did not seem to be wholly convinced by Hobart's cheerfulness,
which was too general in its nature--that is, inclusive of
everything--and turned to Harley and Tremaine as if seeking
confirmation.
"It will be a terrible test," said Harley, frankly, "but I feel sure
that Mr. Grayson will pass it with glory. He is a born orator, and he
has courage."
"I thank you for your belief," she said, giving Harley a swift glance of
gratitude, and unaccountably he felt a pleasing glow at the first
gracious words she had ever spoken to him.
"I could not bear it if he failed," she continued. "He is my uncle, and
he is our own Western man. What things would be in the newspapers
to-morrow!"
"If Mr. Grayson should fail to-night, he would recover himself at his
second speech; he has your spirit, you know," said the ancient Tremaine.
But she did not seem to relish his elderly gallantry. "How do you know I
have spirit?" she asked. "I have done nothing to indicate it."
"I inferred it," replied he, bowing, but she only lifted her chin
incredulously, and Tremaine subsided, his suppression giving Harley some
quiet enjoyment.
They returned, chiefly in silence, to the hotel. The dusk was coming
down over the great city, and with it a grayish mist that hid the walls
of the buildings, although the electric lights in lofty stories twinkled
through it like signal-fires from hill-tops. Miss Morgan seemed subdued,
and at the hotel door she said to them in dismissal: "I thank you; you
have given me much pleasure."
"I rather think that she is wrapped up in Mr. Grayson's success," said
Hobart, "and, as she intimates, it will come pretty near to breaking her
heart if he fails."
In the lobby Harley met Churchill, of the _Monitor_, and Churchill, as
usual, was sneering.
"I imagine that Grayson will make a display of provincialism to-night,"
he said. "America will have to blush for herself. I have copies of the
_Monitor_, and all our London cables show the greatest amazement in
Great Britain and on the Continent that we should put up such an _outre_
Western character for President, one of the Boys, you know."
"The Grayson of the _Monitor_ is not the Grayson of reality," replied
Harley, "and the opinion of Europe does not matter, because Europe knows
nothing about Mr. Grayson."
"Oh, I see! You are falling under the influence," said Churchill,
nastily.
"What do you mean?" demanded Harley.
But Churchill would not answer. He sauntered away still sneering. Harley
looked after him angrily, but concluded in a few moments that his wrath
was not worth while--Churchill, trained to look always in the wrong
direction could never see anything right.
IV
THE FIRST SPEECH
When Harley started at an early hour for the vast hall in which Mr.
Grayson was to speak, he realized that there was full cause for the
trepidation of his feminine kind--perhaps in such moments women tremble
for their men more than they ever tremble for themselves--and he had
plenty of sympathy for Mrs. Grayson and Miss Morgan. The city, astir
with the coming speech, was free to express in advance its opinion of
it, both vocally and through its press, which was fairly divided--that
is, one-half was convinced that it would be an overwhelming triumph, and
the other half was equally sure that it would be a failure just as
overwhelming.
Harley had in his pocket a copy of his own paper--the _Gazette_--the
latest to reach him, and he had read it with the greatest care, but he
saw that it remained independent; so far, it neither endorsed nor
attacked Grayson; and, also, he had a telegram from his editor
instructing him to narrate the events of the evening with the strictest
impartiality, not only as concerned facts, but, above all, to transmit
the exact color and atmosphere of the occasion. "I know that this is
hard to do," he said, but with the deft and useful little compliment
that a wise employer knows how to put in at the end, he added: "I am
sure that you can do it." And he knew his man; Harley would certainly
do it.
Harley, seated in an obscure corner of the stage, but one offering many
points of vantage for his own view, saw the vast crowd come quickly into
the hall, among the largest in the world, and he heard the hum of
voices, in which he thought he could distinguish two notes, one of favor
and one of attack. Yet the audience was orderly, and on the whole the
element of curiosity prevailed. The correspondent, quick to read such
signs, saw that the people had an open mind in regard to Jimmy Grayson;
it was left to the candidate to make his own impression. Churchill took
a seat near him and began to annoy him with depreciatory remarks about
Grayson, not spoken to Harley in particular, but to the wide world.
Hobart once said that Churchill needed no audience, preferring to talk
to the air, which could make no reply of its own, but must return an
echo.
Harley saw Mrs. Grayson and her niece slip quietly into a box, sitting
well back, where they could be seen but little by the audience; and
then, knowing that Mr. Grayson had arrived, he went behind the wings,
where the candidate sat waiting.
Mr. Grayson received him with a calm and pleasant word; if his family
were in a tremble, he was not; at least he was able to hide any
apprehension that he might feel, and he remarked, jestingly: "It is
apparent that I will have an audience, Mr. Harley; they will not ignore
me."
"No, you are a good puller," rejoined Harley.
There were some dry preliminaries--introductory remarks by the chairman
and other necessary bores--and then the audience began to call for
Grayson. The speech would be reported in full by short-hand, for which
mechanical work the staff correspondent always hires a member of that
guild, and Harley was free for the present. He resolved to go into the
box with Mrs. Grayson and Miss Morgan, but he changed his mind when he
glanced at their faces. There was pallor in their cheeks, and their
whole attitude was of strained and intense waiting. For them the crucial
moment had come, and Harley had too much humanity to disturb them, even
with well-meant efforts, at such a moment.
The hum in the crowd increased to a roar, a thunderous call for Grayson,
but there was a pause on the stage, where no figures moved. The chairman
glanced uneasily towards the wings and shuffled in his seat as if he did
not know what to do, but his apprehension did not last long.