The Candidate: A Political Romance
"So you have, and the press has recognized it."
"What do you mean?"
"I was just looking at a very good picture of you," said Harley, and he
spread the paper before her, hoping that she would express surprise and
distaste. But she showed neither.
"Oh, I've seen that already," she said, quite coolly. "Don't you think
it a good picture?"
"I have no fault to find with the likeness," replied Harley, with some
meaning in his tone.
"Then what fault have you to find?"
Harley was embarrassed, and hesitated, seeking for the right words--what
did it matter to him if she failed to show the reserve that he thought
part of a gentlewoman's nature.
"You infer more than I meant," he said, at last. "I merely felt surprise
that they should have obtained a photograph so quickly."
The slightly deepened flush in her cheeks remained and she surveyed him
with the same cool air of defiance.
"They would have had a picture, anyhow, something made up; was it not
better, then, to furnish them a real one than to have a burlesque
published?"
"It's hardly usual," said Harley, more embarrassed than ever. "But
really, Miss Morgan, I have no right to speak of it in any connection."
"No, but you were intending to do so. It was in your eye when I looked
up and saw you coming towards me."
Her voice had grown chilly, and her gaze was fixed on Harley. The
Western girl certainly had dignity and reserve when she wished them, but
he did not believe that she chose the right moments to display these
admirable qualities.
"I did not know that I had such a speaking countenance," said Harley.
"And even if so, you must not forget that you might read it wrong."
"I do not think so," she said, still chilly, and, glancing up at the
clock, she added: "It is almost twelve, and I promised Aunt Anna to be
with her a half-hour ago."
At the door she paused, turned back, and a flashing smile illuminated
her face for a moment.
"Oh, Mr. Harley," she said, "don't you wish some newspaper would print
your picture?"
Then she was gone, leaving him flushed and irritated. He was angry, both
at her and himself; at himself because he had expected to rebuke her, to
show her indirectly and in a delicate way where she was wrong, and he
had never even got as far as the attack. It was he who had been put upon
the defence, when he had not expected to be in such a state, and his
self-satisfaction suffered. But he told himself that she was a crude
Western girl, and that it was nothing to him if she forced herself into
the public gaze in a bold and theatrical manner.
A little later all left for Milwaukee, where Mr. Grayson was to make
another great speech in the evening, and Harley again refrained from
joining the group that soon gathered around Miss Morgan, and Mrs.
Grayson, also, who, being in a very happy mood, made a loan of her
presence as a chaperon, she said, although, being a young woman still,
it gave her pleasure to hear them speak of her husband's brilliant
triumph the night before, and to enjoy the atmosphere of success that
enveloped the car.
The run from Chicago to Milwaukee is short, but Harley, despite his
pique--he was young and naturally of a cheerful temperament--might have
joined them before their arrival if his attention had not been attracted
by another group, that body of portly, middle-aged men, heavy with
wealth and respectability, who had silently cast a dark shadow upon the
meeting at Chicago. They were men of power, men whose brief words went
far, and they held in their hands strings that controlled many and vast
interests when they pulled them, and their hands were always on the
strings. They were not like the great, voluble public; they worked, by
choice and by opportunity, in silence and the dark, and their kind has
existed in every rich country from Babylonia to the United States of
America. They were the great financial magnates of Jimmy Grayson's
party, and nothing that he might do could escape their notice and
consideration. It was more than likely that in the course of the
campaign he would feel a great power pressing upon him, and he would not
be able to say who propelled it.
Harley knew some of these men by name; one, the leader of the party, a
massive, red-faced man, was the Honorable Clinton Goodnight, a member of
the Lower House of Congress from New York, but primarily a manufacturer,
a man of many millions; and the younger and slenderer man, with the
delicately trimmed and pointed beard, was Henry Crayon, one of the
shrewdest bankers in Wall Street. These two, at least, he knew by face,
but no trained observer could doubt that the others were of the same
kind.
Although silent and as yet casting only a shadow, Harley felt that
sooner or later these men would cause trouble. He had an intuition that
the campaign before them was going to be the most famous in the Union,
dealing with mighty issues and infused with powerful personalities.
Great changes had occurred in the country in the last few years, its
centre of gravity was shifting, and the election in November would
decide many things. He felt as if all the forces were gathering for a
titanic conflict, and his heart thrilled with the omens and presages. It
was a pleasurable thrill, too, because he was going to be in the thick
of it, right beside the general of one of the great armies.
When they reached Milwaukee, Harley and all the correspondents went to
the same hotel with the Graysons, and they remarked jocularly to the
nominee that they would watch over him now night and day until the first
Tuesday in November, and he, being a man of tact and human sympathies,
without any affectations, was able to be a good fellow with them all,
merely a first among his equals.
There was a great crowd at the station, ready to welcome the candidate,
and the sound of shouting and joyous welcome arose; but Harley, anxious
to reach the hotel, slipped from the throng and sprang into a carriage,
one of a number evidently waiting for the Grayson party. It was a closed
vehicle, and he did not notice until he sat down that it was already
occupied, at least in part, by a lady. Then he sprang up, red-faced and
apologetic, but the lady laughed--a curious little laugh, ironic, but
not wholly unpleasant--and put out a detaining hand, detaining by way of
gesture, because she did not touch him.
"You are very much surprised to find me here, Mr. Harley," said Miss
Morgan. "You thought, of course, that I would be in the centre of that
crowd, receiving applause and shaking hands, just as if I were a
candidate, like my uncle James. You would not believe me if I told you
that I came here to escape it."
"Why shouldn't I believe it?"
"Because I am going to tell you that your displeasure over the picture
has made me feel so badly that I am resolved to do better, to be more
modest, more retiring."
"Miss Morgan, you do me wrong," said Harley, with reddening face. "I
have had no such thoughts."
"You fib in a good cause, but you cannot deceive me; I read your
thoughts, but I am very forgiving, and I am resolved that we shall have
a pleasant ride to the hotel together. Now, entertain me, tell me about
that war, of which you saw so much."
She was not in jest, and she compelled him to talk. It was far from the
station to the hotel, and she revealed a knowledge of the world's
affairs that Harley thought astonishing in one coming from the depths of
the Idaho mountains. She touched, too, upon the things that interested
him most, and drew him on until he was talking with a zest and interest
that permitted no self-consciousness. Resolved that he would not tell
what he had seen, and by nature reserved, he was, within five minutes,
under her deft questions, in the middle of a long narrative of events on
the other side of the world. He saw her listening, her eyes bright, her
lips slightly parted, and he knew that he held her attention. He was
aware, too, that he was flattered by the interest that he had been able
to create in the mind of this Idaho girl whose opinion he had been
holding so cheaply.
"I envy a man," she said, at last, sighing a little. "You can go where
you please and do what you please. Even our 'advanced women' have less
liberty than the man who is not advanced at all. And yet I do not want
to be a man. That, I suppose, is a paradox."
Harley was about to make a light reply, something in the tone of
perforced compliment, but a glimpse of her caused him to change his
mind. She seemed to have a touch of genuine sadness, and, instead, he
said nothing.
When the carriage reached the ladies' entrance of the hotel they were
still silent, and as Harley helped her from the carriage her manner was
unchanged. The little touch of sadness was yet there, and it appealed to
him. She surprised his look of sympathy, and the color in her cheeks
increased.
"I am tired," she said. "I just begin to realize how greatly so much
travelling and so many crowds weigh upon one."
Then, with the first smile of comradeship that she had given him, she
went into the hotel.
The Graysons, Miss Morgan, Harley, Hobart, and a few others formed a
family group again at the table, when they dined that evening, and all
the tensity and anxiety visible the day before was gone. Mr. Grayson's
success in Chicago had been too complete, too sweeping to leave doubt of
its continuance; he would be the hero and leader of his party, not a
weight upon it, and the question now was whether or not the party had
votes enough; hence there was a certain light and joyous air about them
which gave to their short stay in the dining-room a finer flavor than
any that a _chef_ could add.
Churchill, of the _Monitor_, was not one of this party. Churchill did
not confine his criticisms to his professional activities, but had a
disposition to carry them into private life, injecting roughness into
social intercourse, which ought to be smooth and easy. Therefore,
somewhat to his own surprise, which ought not to have been the case, he
had not become a member of this family group, and had much to say about
the "frivolous familiarity" of Jimmy Grayson and "his lack of dignity."
But on this evening Churchill had no desire to sit at table with the
Graysons, because he felt that something great was going to happen in
his life. For more than a day, now, he had been on the trail of a mighty
movement that he believed hidden from all save himself and those behind
this movement. He, too, had noticed the appearance at Chicago of the
heavy, rich, elderly men, and he had spoken to one or two of them with
all the respect and deference that their eminent position in the
financial world drew from every writer of the _Monitor_. And his
deference had been rewarded, because that afternoon he received a hint,
and it came from no less a personage than the Honorable Clinton
Goodnight himself, a hint that Churchill rightly thought was worth much
to him.
There was another large hotel in Milwaukee, and it was to this that the
financiers had gone, having ascertained first that Grayson would not be
there; nor did they intend to go to the speech that evening. They had
already, in the address at Chicago, weighed accurately the power of
Jimmy Grayson with his party, and with wary old eyes, long used to
watching the world and its people, they had seen that it would be great.
Hence he was a man to be handled with skill and care, to be led, not
knowing that he was led, by a bridle invisible to all save those who
held it--but they, the financiers, would know very well who held it.
It was these men to whom Churchill came, having slipped quietly away
from his associates, drawn by a hint that he might secure an interview
of great importance, two columns in length and exclusive. Churchill was