The Candidate: A Political Romance

But Jimmy Grayson was inspired that night on the black prairie. The words leaped in livid flame from his lips. Never was his speech more free and bold, and always his burning eyes looked into those of Plover and held him.

Closer and closer pressed the crowd. The darkness still rolled up, thicker and blacker than ever. Grayson's shoulders sank away, and only his face was visible now. The wind rose again, and whistled around the little town and shrieked far out on the lonely prairie. But above it rose the voice of Grayson, mellow, inspiring, and flowing full and free.

Harley looked and listened, and his admiration grew and grew. "I don't agree with all he says," he thought, "but, my God! how well he says it."

Then he cowered in the lee of a little building, that he might shelter himself from the bitter wind that was searching him to the marrow.

Time passed. The speaker never faltered. A half-hour, an hour, and his voice was still full and mellow, nor had a soul left the crowd. Grayson himself seemed to feel a new access of strength from some hidden source, and his form expanded as he denounced the Trusts and the Robber Barons, and all the other iniquities that he felt it his duty to impale, but he never took his eyes from Plover; to him he was now talking with a force and directness that he had not equalled before. Time went on, and, as if half remembering some resolution, Plover's hand stole towards the little old silver watch that he carried in the left-hand pocket of his waistcoat. But just at that critical moment Grayson uttered the magical name, Wall Street, and Plover's hand fell back to his side with a jerk. Then Grayson rose to his best, and tore Wall Street to tatters.

A whistle sounded, a bell rang, and a train began to rumble, but no one took note of it save Harley. The two-ten on the branch line to connect with the 'Frisco Express on the B. P. was moving out, and he breathed a great sigh of relief. "One gone," he said to himself; "now for the accommodation freight."

The speech continued, but presently Grayson stopped for a hasty drink of water. Harley trembled. He was afraid that Grayson was breaking down, and his fears increased when he saw Plover's eyes leave the speaker's face and wander towards the station. But just at that moment the candidate caught the little man.

"Listen to me!" thundered Grayson, "and let no true citizen here fail to heed what I am about to tell him."

Plover could not resist the voice and those words of command. His thoughts, wandering towards the railroad station, were seized and brought back by the speaker. His eyes were fixed and held by Grayson, and he stood there as if chained to the spot.

Time became strangely slow. The accommodation freight must be more than ten minutes late, Harley thought. He looked at his watch, and found that it was not due to leave for five minutes yet. So he settled himself to patient waiting, and listened to Grayson as he passed from one national topic to another. He saw, too, that the lines in the speaker's face were growing deeper and deeper, and he knew that he must be using his last ounces of strength. His soul was stirred with pity. Yet Grayson never faltered.

The whistle blew, the bell rang, and again the train rumbled. The two-forty accommodation freight on the branch line to connect with the 'Frisco Express on the B. P. was moving out, and Plover had been held. He could not go now, and once more Harley breathed that deep sigh of relief. Twenty minutes passed, and he heard far off in the east a faint rumble. He knew it was the Denver Express, and, in spite of his resolution, he began to grow nervous. Suppose the woman should not come?

The rumble grew to a roar, and the train pulled into the station. Grayson was faithful to the last, and still thundered forth the invective that delighted the soul of Plover. The train whistled and moved off again, and Harley waited in breathless anxiety.

A tall form rose out of the darkness, and a woman, middle-aged and honest of face, appeared. The correspondent knew that it must be Susan. It could be nobody else. She was looking around as if she sought some one. Harley's eye caught Grayson's, and it gave the signal.

"And now, gentlemen," said the candidate, "I am done. I thank you for your attention, and I hope you will think well of what I have said."

So saying, he left the stage, and the crowd dispersed. But Harley waited, and he saw Plover and his wife meet. He saw, too, the look of surprise and then joy on the man's face, and he saw them throw their arms around each other's neck and kiss in the dark. They were only a poor, prosaic, and middle-aged couple, but he knew they were now happy and that all was right between them.

When Grayson went to his room, he fell from exhaustion in a half-faint across the bed; but when Harley told him the next afternoon the cause of it all, he laughed and said it was well worth the price.

They obtained, about a week later, the New York papers containing an account of the record-breaking day. When Harley opened the Monitor, Churchill's paper, he read these head-lines:

GRAYSON'S GABHE IS TALKING THE FARMERS OF THE WEST TODEATHTWENTY-FOUR SPEECHES IN TWENTY-FOURHOURSHE TALKS FIFTY THOUSAND WORDS IN ONE DAY,AND SAYS NOTHING

But when he looked at the Gazette, he saw the following head-lines over his own account:

HIS GREATEST SPEECHGRAYSON'S WONDERFUL EXHIBITION OF PLUCKAND ENDURANCEAFTER RIDING FOUR HUNDRED MILES AND MAKINGTWENTY-THREE SPEECHES HE HOLDSAN AUDIENCE SPELLBOUND FORTHREE HOURS AT HISTWENTY-FOURTHSPEAKS FROM MIDNIGHT UNTIL THREE IN THEMORNING IN THE OPEN AIR AND NOT ASOUL LEAVES, THOUGH A BLIZZARDWAS RAGING

Harley sighed with satisfaction.

"That managing editor of mine knows his business," he said to himself.

VIII

SYLVIA'S RETURN

Harley slept late the next day, and it was the heavy, somewhat nervous slumber of utter exhaustion, like that which he had more than once experienced in the war on the other side of the world, after days of incessant marching. When he awoke, it was afternoon on the special train, and as he joined the group he was greeted with a suppressed cheer.

"I understand that you stayed the whole thing through last night, or rather this morning," said Churchill, in a sneering tone. "There's devotion for you, boys!"

"I was amply repaid," replied Harley, calmly. "His last speech was the most interesting; in fact, I think it was the greatest speech that I ever heard him make."

"I fear that Jimmy Grayson is overdoing it," said the elderly Tremaine, soberly. "A Presidential nominee is not exactly master of himself, and I doubt whether he should have risked his voice, and perhaps the success of his party, speaking in that cold wind until three or four o'clock this morning."

"He just loves to hear the sound of his own voice," said Churchill, his ugly sneer becoming uglier. "I think it undignified and absurd on the part of a man who is in the position that he is in."

Harley was silent, and he was glad now that he had said nothing in his despatch about the real reason for Grayson's long speaking. He had had at first a little struggle over it with his professional conscience, feeling that his duty required him to tell, but a little reflection decided him to the contrary. He had managed the affair, it was not a spontaneous occurrence, and, therefore, it was the private business of himself and Mr. James Grayson. It gave him great relief to be convinced thus, as he knew that otherwise the candidate would be severely criticised for it both by the opposition press and by a considerable number of his own party journals.

But there was one person to whom Harley related the whole story. It was told in a letter to Sylvia Morgan, who was then at the home of the candidate with Mrs. Grayson. After describing all the details minutely, he gave his opinion: he held that it was right for a man, even in critical moments weighted with the fate of the many, to halt to do a good action which could affect only one or two. A great general at the height of a battle, seeing a wounded soldier helpless on the ground, might take the time to order relief for him without at all impairing the fate of the combat; to do otherwise would be a complete sacrifice of the individual for the sake of a mighty machine which would banish all humanity from life. He noticed that even Napoleon, in the midst of what might be called the most strenuous career the world has known, turned aside to do little acts of kindness.

He was glad to find, when her reply came a few days later, that she agreed with him at least in the main part of his argument; but she called his attention to the fact that it was not Mr. Grayson, but Harley himself, who had injected this strange element into the combat when it was at its zenith; her uncle James had merely responded to a strong and moving appeal, which he would always do, because she knew the softness of his heart; yet she was not willing for him to go too far. A general might be able to turn aside for a moment at the height of the battle, and then he might not. She wished her uncle James to be judicious in his generosity, and not make any sacrifice which might prove too costly alike to himself and to others.

"She is a compound of romance and strong common-sense," thought Harley, musing over the letter. "She wants the romance without paying the price. Now I wonder if that is not rather more the characteristic of women than of men."

On the day following the receipt of this letter, a look of joy came over the face of the candidate and there was a visible exhilaration throughout his party. Men, worn, exhausted, and covered with the dust of the great plains, began to freshen up themselves as much as they could; there was a great brushing of soiled clothing, a hauling out of clean collars, a sharpening of razors, and a general inquiry, "How do I look?" The whole atmosphere of the train was changed, and it became much brighter and livelier. It was the candidate himself who wrought the transformation, after reading a letter, with the brief statement, "Mrs. Grayson and Sylvia will join us to-morrow."

All had begun to pine for feminine society, as soldiers, long on the march, desire the sight of women and the sound of their voices. It is true that they saw women often, and many of them—some who were beautiful and some who were not—as they sped through the West, but it was always a flitting and blurred glimpse. "I haven't got an impression of the features of a single one of them," complained the elderly beau, Tremaine. Now two women whom they knew well and liked would be with them for days, and they rejoiced accordingly.

It was at a little junction station in eastern Colorado, in the clear blue-and-silver of a fine morning, that Mrs. Grayson and Sylvia met them. Mr. Grayson and his party had been down about fifty miles on a branch line for a speech at a town of importance, and they had begun the return journey before daylight in order to make the connection. But when the gray dawn came through the dusty car-windows, it was odd to see how neat and careful all appeared, even under such difficult circumstances.

Harley was surprised to realize the eagerness with which he looked forward to the meeting, and put it down to the long lack of feminine society. But he wondered if Sylvia had changed, if the nearer approach of her marriage with "King" Plummer would make her reserved and with her outlook on the future—that is, as one apart.

He had a favorable seat in the car and he was the first to see them. The junction was a tiny place of not more than a half-dozen houses standing in the midst of a great plain, and it made a perfect silhouette against the gorgeous morning sunlight. Harley saw two slender figures outlined there in front of the station building, and, despite the distance, he knew them. There was to him something typically American and typically Western in these two women coming alone into that vast emptiness and waiting there in the utmost calmness, knowing that they were as safe as if they were in the heart of a great city, and perhaps safer.

He knew, too, which was Sylvia; her manner, her bearing, the poise of her figure, had become familiar to him. Slender and upright, she was in harmony with the majesty of these great and silent spaces, but she did not now seem bold and forward to him; she was clothed in a different atmosphere altogether.

There was a warm greeting for Mr. Grayson and the hand of fellowship for the others. Harley held Sylvia's fingers in his for a moment—just a moment—and said, with some emphasis:

"Our little party has not been the same without you, Miss Morgan."

"I'm glad to hear you say it," she replied, frankly, "and I'm glad to be back with all of you. It's a campaign that I enjoy."

"It can be said for it that it is never monotonous."

"That's one reason why I like it."

She laughed a little, making no attempt to conceal her pleasure at this renewed touch with fresh, young life, and, because it was so obvious, Harley laughed also and shared her pleasure. He noticed, too, the new charm that she had in addition to the old, a softening of manner, a slight appeal that she made, without detracting in any wise from the impression of strength and self-reliance that she gave.

"Where did you leave 'King' Plummer?" he asked, unguardedly.

"In Idaho," she replied, with sudden gravity. "He is well, and I believe that he is happy. He is umpiring a great quarrel between the cattlemen and the sheepmen, or, rather, he is compelling both to listen to him and to agree to a compromise that he has suggested. So he is really enjoying himself. You do not know the delight that he takes in the handling of large and rather rough affairs."

"I can readily guess it; he seems to have been made for them."

But she said no more of "King" Plummer, quickly turning the talk to the campaign, and showing at once that she had followed every phase of it with the closest and most anxious attention. Mrs. Grayson had walked on a little and was talking to her husband, but she glanced back and saw what she had expected. She and her husband turned presently in their walk, and she said, looking significantly at Harley and Miss Morgan:

"It is a great pleasure to Sylvia to be with your party again."

There was such a curious inflection to her voice that the candidate exclaimed, "Why, what do you mean, Anna?" and she merely replied, "Oh, nothing!" which meant everything. The candidate, understanding, looked more attentively, and his eyes contracted a little, as if he were not wholly pleased at what he saw.

"It's a free world," he said, "but I am glad that 'King' Plummer will be with us again in a few days."

But his wife, able to see further than he, merely looked thoughtful and did not reply.

Harley's solitary talk with Miss Morgan was brief; it could not be anything else under the circumstances; Hobart, with all sail set, bore down upon them.

"Come! Come, Harley!" he cried, with the perfect frankness that usually distinguished him, "we don't permit any selfish monopolists here. We are all cast away on a desert island, so to speak, and there are a lot of us men and only two women, one of whom is mortgaged!"

Then he was welcoming Miss Morgan in florid style; and there, too, was the ancient beau, Tremaine, displaying all his little arts of elegance and despising Hobart's obvious methods; and Blaisdell, and all the others, forming a court about her and giving her an attention which could not fail to please her and bring a deeper red to her cheeks and a brighter flash to her eyes. It seemed to Mrs. Grayson, looking on, that the girl had been hungry for something which she had now found, and in finding which she was happy, and, despite her sense of loyalty, she felt a glow of sympathy.

But the sense of duty in Mrs. Grayson was strong, and while she hesitated much and sought for mental excuses to avoid it, she wrote a long letter to "King" Plummer that evening in the waiting-room of a little wayside hotel. In many things that she said she was beautifully vague; but she told him how glad she was that he would join them so soon; she spoke of the quarrel between the cattlemen and the sheepmen as a closed affair, and complimented him on his skill in bringing it to an end so quickly; it was all the better because now he could come to them at once, and she boldly said how much Sylvia was missing him. But when she sealed and addressed the letter she reflected awhile before dropping it in the box on the wall.

"Now, ought I to do this?" she asked herself. "Have I the right to hasten or to divert the course of affairs?"

She decided that she had the right, and mailed the letter.

"King" Plummer came a few days later—he said that he "just blew in a few days ahead of time"—and received a hearty welcome from everybody, which he returned in double measure in his broad, spontaneous way. He placed a sounding kiss upon the somewhat flushed brow of Sylvia Morgan, and exclaimed, "Well, my little girl, aren't you glad to see me ahead of time?" She replied quickly, though not loudly, that she was, and then he announced that he would stay with them for a long while. "These are my mountains," he said, "and I'll have to show you the way through them."

"King" Plummer, although inclined to be masterful, was admitted at once into the full membership of the party, and he entered upon what he called his first long vacation. He showed the keenest enjoyment in the speeches, the crowds, the enthusiasm, the travelling, and the quick-shifting scenes. He was a boy with the boys, but the watchful Mrs. Grayson noticed a shade of difference between Sylvia with the "King" present and Sylvia with the "King" absent. With him present there was a little restraint, a slight effort on her part to watch herself; but with him away there was great spontaneity and freedom, especially with the younger members like Harley and Hobart, and even Churchill, who reluctantly admitted that Miss Morgan was a fine girl, "though rather Western, you know."

Mrs. Grayson began to take thought with herself again, and the thought was taken with great seriousness. Had she been right in bringing "King" Plummer on so soon, although he did not even know that he was brought? She resolutely asked herself, too, how much of her action had been due to the knowledge that the "King" was a very important man to her husband, controlling, as he probably could, the vote of several mountain states. This question, which she could not answer, troubled her, and so did the conduct of Sylvia, who, usually so frank and straightforward, seemed to be suffering from a strange attack of perverseness. For years she had obeyed "King" Plummer as her protector and as the one who had rightful control, but now she began to give him orders and to criticise many things that he did, to the unlimited astonishment of the "King," who had never expected anything of the kind.

"What is the matter with Sylvia? I never knew her to act in such a way before," he said to Mrs. Grayson.

"As she is to be your wife, and not a sort of ward, she is merely giving you a preliminary training," replied the candidate's wife, dryly.

"King" Plummer looked at her in doubt, but he pondered the question deeply and was remarkably meek the next time Sylvia scolded him, whereat she showed less pleasure than ever. "King" Plummer was still in a maze and did not know what to say. The very next day he found himself deeper in the tangle, being scolded by Mrs. Grayson herself.

They were waiting at a small station for some carriages which were to take them across the prairie, and, the air being clear and bracing, they stood outside, where Miss Morgan, as usual, held an involuntary court. A cloud of dust arose, and behind it quickly came a great herd of cattle, driven with much shouting and galloping of horses by a half-dozen cowboys. The herd was passing to the south a few hundred yards from the station, but Sylvia, thoroughly used to such sights, was not interested. Not so some of the others who went out to see, and among them was "King" Plummer, who began at once to calculate the number of cattle, their value, and how far they had come, all of which he did with great shrewdness.

The "King's" absorption in this congenial occupation was increased when he recognized the leader of the cowboys as an old friend and former associate in Idaho and Montana, with whom he could exchange much interesting news. Borrowing a horse from one of the men, he rode on with them for a mile or two.

Mrs. Grayson had seen "King" Plummer leave the group about Sylvia, and she marked it with a disapproving eye. She would have spoken to him then, but she had no chance, and she watched him until he borrowed the horse and rode on with the cowboys. Then she looked the other way and saw two figures walking up and down the station platform. They were Sylvia and Harley, engrossed in talk and caring not at all for the passage of the herd. The two brown heads were not far apart, and Mrs. Grayson was near enough to see that Sylvia's color was beautiful.

The candidate's wife was annoyed, and, like any other good woman, she was ready to vent her annoyance on somebody. She walked out a little from the station, and presently she met "King" Plummer coming back. He dismounted, returned the horse to its owner, and approached her, the sparkle of enthusiasm in his eyes lighting up his brown face.

"That was a pleasant surprise, Mrs. Grayson," he exclaimed. "The leader of those boys was Bill Ascott, whom I've known twenty years, an' he's brought those cattle so cleverly all the way from Montana that they are in as good condition now as they were the day they started. And I had a fine gallop with them, too."

He had more to say, but he stopped when he noticed her deeply frowning face.

"What is wrong, Mrs. Grayson?" he asked, in apprehension.

"Oh, you had a fine gallop, did you!" she said, in a tone of biting irony. "I am glad of it. Mr. William Plummer ought to have his gallop, under any circumstances!"

He stared at her in increasing amazement.

"I don't know that I'm counted a dull man, but you've got me now, Mrs. Grayson."

She pointed to the station platform, where the two brown heads were still not far apart.

"Without a word you left the woman that you are going to marry to look at a lot of cattle."

"Why, Sylvia is only a child, an' we've been used to each other for years. She understands."

"Yes, she will understand, or she isn't a woman," said Mrs. Grayson, and if possible the biting irony of her tone increased. "You will see, too, Mr. William Plummer, that one man at least did not neglect her for the sake of some dusty cattle."

Mr. Plummer stared again at the pair on the platform, and a mingled look of pain and apprehension came into his eyes.

"You surely can't mean anything of that kind! Why, little Sylvia has promised—"

"All things are possible, Mr. Plummer. My husband is a lawyer, and I have heard him quote often a maxim of the law which runs something like this, 'He must keep who can.'"

She turned away and would not have another word to say to him then, leaving Mr. Plummer in much perplexity and trouble.

Mrs. Grayson herself was in a similar perplexity and trouble throughout the day. Her doubts about the letter she had written to "King" Plummer increased. Perhaps it would have been wiser to let affairs take their own course. The sight of the two brown heads and the two young faces on the station platform had made her very thoughtful, and she drew comparisons with "King" Plummer; there might be days in autumn which resembled those of spring, but it was only a fleeting resemblance, because autumn was itself, with its own coloring, its own fruits, and its own days, and nothing could turn it into spring. "I will not meddle again," she resolved, and then her mind was taken off the matter by an incident in her husband's progress. In Nebraska the men left the train for a few days, travelling by carriage, and here occurred the event which created a great stir in its time.

IX

JIMMY GRAYSON'S SPELL

A night, after a beautiful, brown October day, came on dark and rainy, with fierce winds off the Rocky Mountains; and Harley, who was in the first carriage with the candidate, could barely see the heads of the horses, gently rising and falling as they splashed through the mud. Behind him he heard faintly the sound of wheels amid the wind and rain, and he knew that the other correspondents and the politicians, who always hung on the trail of Jimmy Grayson, shifting according to locality, were following their leader in single file.