"I wonder if that is blunt?" she mused. "No, he will think it just popped out, and that I was unconscious of it. I shall let it stay." Then she resumed:
"It ought to be a girl with a temperament that is at once a match and foil for his own. She should have a sense of humor, a gift for light and ironic speech that can stir him without irritating him, because he is perhaps of a cautious disposition, and hence would be well matched with one a little bit impulsive, each exercising the proper influenceupon the other. She should be strong, too, habituated to physical hardship, as our Western girls are. Such a marriage, I think, would be ideal, and I expect you, Mr. Plummer, when you rejoin us, to help me make it, should the opportunity arise.Yours sincerely,"Anna Grayson."
"It ought to be a girl with a temperament that is at once a match and foil for his own. She should have a sense of humor, a gift for light and ironic speech that can stir him without irritating him, because he is perhaps of a cautious disposition, and hence would be well matched with one a little bit impulsive, each exercising the proper influenceupon the other. She should be strong, too, habituated to physical hardship, as our Western girls are. Such a marriage, I think, would be ideal, and I expect you, Mr. Plummer, when you rejoin us, to help me make it, should the opportunity arise.
Yours sincerely,
"Anna Grayson."
She folded the sheets, put them in the envelope, and addressed them. It was the second time that she had written to Mr. Plummer, but with a very different motive, and she had more confidence in the second letter than she had ever felt in the first.
"That will cause him pain," she reflected, "but the task cannot be done without it."
In her heart she was genuinely sorry for Mr. Plummer, thinking at that moment more of his grief than of her husband's risk, but she was resolute to mail the letter, nevertheless. She read it a little later to Mr. Grayson, and he approved.
"It is likely to bring 'King' Plummer raging down from Idaho, but it ought to go," he said.
A half-hour later, this letter, written in a delicate, feminine hand, but heavy with fate, was speeding northwestward.
A few days after writing this letter, Mrs. Grayson announced that Sylvia would rejoin them on the following afternoon, having shortened her stay in Salt Lake City, as her relations were about to depart on a visit to California.
"She wants very much to go on with us," said Mrs. Grayson, "and rather than send her either to Boisé or to our home, where she would be alone, we are willing for her to continue."
"I should think you would be!" exclaimed Hobart. "Why, Mrs. Grayson, much as we esteem you, we would start a violent rebellion if you should send Miss Morgan away, a rebellion attended by bloodshed and desperate deeds."
Mrs. Grayson smiled and glanced at Harley, who was silent. But she did not fail to see the flash of pleasure under his veiled eyelids.
"Keep your pistol in your pocket and your sword in its sheath, Mr. Hobart," she said; "I shall not give you occasion to use either."
"Then I declare for peace."
Sylvia joined them at the time mentioned by Mrs. Grayson, quiet, slightly pale, and disposed, in the opinion of the Graysons, to much thought. "The girl has something on her mind which she cannot put off," said Tremaine, and in this case he was right.
Sylvia, while in Salt Lake City, far from the influences which recently had brought to her acute pain and joy alike, considered her position with as much personal detachment as she could assume. Away from Harley and the magic of his presence and his confident voice, she strengthened her resolve to keep her word—if "King" Plummer claimed her, he should yet have her. But this same examination showed her another fact that was unalterable. She loved Harley, and, though she might marry another man, she would continue to love him. In a way she gloried in the truth and her recognition of it. It was a love she intended to hide, but it brought her a sad happiness nevertheless.
It was this feeling, spiritual in its nature, that gave to Sylvia a new charm when she came back, a touch of sorrow and womanly dignity that all noticed at once, and to which they gave tribute. It melted the heart of Jimmy Grayson, who knew so well the reason why, and he was glad now that his wife had written to "King" Plummer.
Sylvia said nothing about Mr. Plummer; if she knew whether he would return and when, she kept it to herself, and Mrs. Grayson, who was waiting in anxiety for an answer to her letter—an answer that did not come—was in a state of apprehension, which she hid, however, from all except Mr. Grayson. This agitation was increased by an event in her husband's career, so unexpected in its nature and so extraordinary that it was the sensation of the country, and exercised an unfavorable influence upon the campaign. If any one in the United States, whether friend or enemy, had been asked if such a thing could occur, he would have said that it was impossible.
In their travels they came presently to Egmont, a snug town, lying in a hollow of the land, from which they were going to conduct what Hobart called a circular campaign—that is, it was the centre from which they were to make journeys to a ring of smaller places lying in a circle about it, returning late at night for sleep and rest.
They were all pleased with Egmont; though less than ten years old, it had houses of brick and stone, a trim look, and the smoothness of life and comfort that usually come only with age. It was a pleasure to return to it every night from the newer and cruder villages in the outer ring, and enjoy good beds and fresh sheets.
But the candidate spoke first in Egmont, and the chairman of the committee that managed the meeting was the solid man of the town. Harley and his comrades required no information on this point; it was visible at once in the important manner of the Honorable John Anderson, the cool way in which he assumed authority, and his slight air of patronage when he came in contact with the correspondents. Harley and his comrades only laughed; they had often noticed the same bearing in men much better known in the world than the Honorable John Anderson, of Egmont, Montana, and they generally set it down as one of the faults of success; therefore they could smile.
But Mr. Anderson was hospitable, insisting that the candidate and his family, instead of spending the first night at the hotel, should go with him to his house. "I have room and to spare," he said, with a slight touch of importance. "My house will be honored if it can shelter to-night the next President of the United States."
"Thank you for the invitation," said Jimmy Grayson, gravely. "I shall be glad to join you with my family and Mr. Harley. Mr. Harley has become in a sense one of my advisers, almost a lieutenant, I might say."
Mr. Anderson was not intending to ask Harley, as the correspondent knew, but the candidate had included him so deftly that the important citizen must do so, too, and he widened the invitation with courtesy. Harley, always in search of new types, always anxious to explore the secrets of new lands, accepted as promptly as if the request had been spontaneous.
Although his house was only a few hundred yards away, Mr. Anderson took them there in his two-seated, highly polished carriage, drawn by a pair of seal-brown trotters. "Good horses," he said, as he cracked his whip contentedly over them. "I brought them all the way from Kentucky. Cost me a lot, too."
The Anderson house was really fine, built of light stone, standing far back on a wide lawn, and Harley could see that the good taste of some one had presided at its birth. It had an Eastern air of quiet and completion. When Mr. Anderson, glancing at his guests, beheld the look of approval on their faces, he was pleased, and said, in an easy, off-hand manner:
"Been up only four years; planned it myself, with a little help from wife and daughter."
Harley at once surmised that the good effect was due to the taste of the wife or daughter, or both, and he was confirmed in the opinion when he met Mrs. Anderson, a slight, modest woman, superior to her husband in some respects that Harley thought important. The daughter did not appear until just before dinner, but when she came into the parlor tomeet the guest the correspondent held his breath for a moment.
Rare and beautiful flowers bloom now and then on the cold plains of the great Northwest, and Harley said in his heart that Helen Anderson was one of the rarest and most beautiful of them all. It was not alone the beauty of face and figure, but it was, even more, the nobility of expression and a singular touch of pathos, as if neither youth nor beauty had kept from her a great sadness. This almost hidden note of sorrow seemed to Harley to make perfect her grace and charm, and he felt, stranger though he was, that he was willing to sacrifice himself to protect her from some blow unknown to him. Speaking of it afterwards, he found that she had the same effect upon the candidate. "I felt that I must be her champion," said Mr. Grayson. "Why, I did not know, but I wanted to fight for her."
Miss Anderson herself was unconscious of the impression that she created, and she strove only to entertain her father's guests, a task in which she achieved the full measure of success. Mr. Anderson mentioned, casually, how he had sent her to Wellesley, and Harley saw that her horizon was wider than that of her parents. But the pathetic, appealing look came now and then into her beautiful eyes, and Harley was convinced of her unhappiness. Once he saw a sudden glance, as of sympathy and understanding, pass between her and Sylvia.
It was not long before the secret of Helen Anderson was told to him, because it was no secret at all. The whole town was proud of her, and everybody in it knew that she was in love with Arthur Lee, the young lawyer whose sign hung on the main street of Egmont before an office which was yet unvisitedby clients. It was true love on both sides, they said, with sympathy; they had been boy and girl together, and during her long stay in the East at school she had never forgotten him. But Mr. Anderson would have none of the briefless youth; his prosperity had fed his pride—a lawyer without a case was not a fit match for his daughter. "If you were famous, if it were common talk that some day you might be governor or United States senator, I might consent, but, sir, you have done nothing," he had said, with cruel sarcasm to Lee.
It was a bitter truth, and Lee himself, high and honorable in all his nature, saw it. The girl, too, had old-fashioned ideas of duty to parents, and when her father bade her think no more of Lee she humbly bowed her head. But the town said, and the town knew, that the more she sought to put him out of her heart, the more strongly intrenched was he there; that while she now tried to think of him not at all, she thought of him all the time.
The whole story was brought to Harley; it was not in his nature to pry into the sacred mysteries of a young girl's heart, but the tale moved him all the more deeply when he saw young Lee, a man with a high, noble brow and clear, open eyes, through which his honest soul shone, that all might see. But upon his face was the same faint veil of sadness that hovered over Helen Anderson's, as if hope were lacking.
Harley met young Lee two or three times, and on each occasion purposely prolonged the talk, because the young lawyer without a case aroused his interest and sympathy. He soon discovered that Lee had an uncommon mind, acute, penetrating, and on fire with noble ideals. But it was a fire that smouldered unseen. He had never had a chance; it would cometo him some day, Harley knew, but it might be, it surely would be, too late. Harley had seen much of the world, its glory and its shame alike, and he was convinced that nothing else in it was worth so much to man as the spontaneous love of a pure woman and a happy marriage. He knew from dear experience how much Lee was losing—nay, had lost already—and his pity was deeply stirred. He wished to speak of it to Sylvia, but the thought of such words only made his own wound the deeper. The whole town was on the side of the lovers, but it was bound and helpless; the father's command and Lee's own honor were barriers that could not be passed.
The people about Egmont were so much delighted with Mr. Grayson's speech that they demanded a second from him, and, with his usual good-nature, he yielded, although Harley knew that he was feeling the strain of such a long and severe campaign. The evening of the fifth day after his arrival was set for the time, and he was expected to deliver the address at a late hour, when he returned from one of the circle of villages.
On the night before the second speech, the candidate and Harley, who were now staying at the hotel, after making their excuses to the others, slipped out for a walk in the cool and silence of the dark. The rarest thing in Jimmy Grayson's life now was privacy, and he longed for it as a parched throat longs for water; it was only at such times as this, with a late hour and a favoring night, that he could secure it.
Nearly all Egmont was in bed, and they turned from the chief street into the residence quarter, where a few lights twinkled amid the lawns and gardens. No one had noticed them, and Jimmy Grayson, witha sigh of relief, drew breaths of the crisp, cool air that came across a thousand miles of clean prairie.
"What a splendid night!" he said. "What a grand horizon!"
They stood upon a slight elevation, and they looked down the street and out upon the prairie, which rippled away, silver in the moonlight, like the waves of the sea. A wind, faint, like a happy sigh, was blowing.
"An evening for lovers," said the candidate, and he smiled as his mind ran back to some happy evenings in his own life. "Now, why should such a moonlight as this ever be spoiled by a political speech?" he continued.
"I was thinking of lovers myself," said Harley, "because here is the Anderson house before us. Don't you see its white walls shining through the trees?"
"Poor girl!" said the candidate. "It is a terrible thing for a woman to be separated from the man she loves. A woman, I think, can really love but once. And yet her father's pride is natural; young Lee has not even made a start in life."
"All he needs is a chance, which he will get—when it is too late," said Harley.
The house and its grounds, surrounded by a stone wall not more than three feet high, occupied an entire square in the outskirts of the little city, and the candidate and Harley followed the least frequented of the streets—one running beside the stone wall, which was shaded presently by thick and arching boughs of trees that grew within. As they entered the shadow they saw a man leap over the low barrier and disappear in the Anderson grounds.
"A burglar!" exclaimed Harley. His first thoughtwas of Helen Anderson and her beautiful, appealing face, and without a moment's hesitation he sprang over the wall to pursue. Jimmy Grayson looked at him in astonishment, and then followed.
Harley stopped for an instant inside the grounds, and saw the dark figure just ahead of him, but now walking with such slowness that pursuit was easy. Evidently the burglar was making sure of the way before he sought to enter the Anderson mansion; but Harley was surprised, in a few moments, to notice something familiar in the shoulders and bearing of the man whom he followed. His burglar never looked back, but entered an open space; and then Harley, his surprise increasing, stopped when he saw him approach a little summer-house of lattice-work. The hand of the candidate fell at that moment upon his arm, and a deep voice said in his ear:
"I think we have gone far enough, don't you, Harley?"
"I do," replied Harley, with conviction.
A woman was coming, a woman with a beautiful, pale face, more lovely and sad than ever in the moonlight, and the two men knew at once that Helen was about to meet her lover. They would have turned and fled from the grounds, because a woman's pure love was sacred, to be hidden from all eyes and ears save those of one, but her face was towards them, and had they stepped from the shadow of the oak she would have seen the two.
"Ah, Helen!" said Lee, as he met her and took her hands in his.
"Arthur, for the last time!" she exclaimed.
"Yes, I know it is for the last time," said Arthur, and there was a moving sadness in his voice.
Their faces were turned towards the two there inthe shadow of the great oak, although unwitting that others were so near, and neither man dared to move. The moonlight, in softened silver, fell upon the faces of the lovers, disclosing all the beauty of the woman's and all the loftiness of the man's. Harley thought he had never seen a nobler pair.
The man took both the girl's hands in his and held them for a few moments. Then he walked back and forth, taking quick little steps. Every motion of his figure expressed agony and despair. The girl stood still, and her face, clearly shown in the moonlight, was turned towards Harley; it, too, expressed agony and despair; but her stillness showed resignation, Lee's fierce movements were full of rebellion.
"I am going away, Helen," said Arthur. "I have decided upon it. I shall not be here more than a week or two longer. I cannot be in the same town, seeing you every day and knowing that you cannot be mine. I could not stand it."
"I suppose it is best," said Helen; "but, Arthur, I love you. I have told you that, and I am proud of it. I shall never love any one else. It is not possible."
Her beautiful, pale face was still turned towards Harley, and he saw again upon it that touch of ineffable sadness and resignation that had moved him so deeply. Lee stopped his despairing walk back and forth and looked at Helen. Then he uttered a little cry and seized her hands again.
"Helen," he said, "I cannot do it! I came here to give you up forever, to tell you that I was going away, and I meant to go, but I cannot do it. We love each other—then who has the right to separate us? I thought that I could stand this, that I had hardened myself to endure it, but when the time comesI find that it is too much. My right to you is greater than that of father or mother. Come with me; we can go to Longford to-night, and in three hours we shall be man and wife."
He still held her hands in his, and his face was flushed and his eyes shining with an eager but noble passion.
Harley and the candidate, in the shrubbery, never stirred. They listened, but they forgot that they were listening.
The girl lifted her eyes to those of her lover, and there was in them no reproach, only a high, sad courage.
"You do not mean what you say now, Arthur," she said. "I have given my promise to my father, and you must help me to be strong, for alone I am weak, very weak. None can help me but you. You must go, as you said you would go, but your face shall always be with me here. Though I may not be your wife, I shall be true to you all my life."
"In such moments as these the woman is always stronger than the man," breathed Jimmy Grayson.
Lee dropped her hands again and walked a step or two away.
"Helen," he said, "forgive me, and forget what I said. I was base when I spoke. But I have found it too hard!—too hard!"
Her eyes still expressed no reproach; there was in them something almost divine. She loved him the more because of his weakness, although she would not yield to it.
"It is hard, very hard for us both," she whispered, "but it must be done. But, Arthur, I love you. I have told you that, and I am not ashamed of it. I shall never love any one else. It is not possible."
"I know it. I know, too, that your heart will always be mine, but, as the world sees it, your father is right. I am nothing. I have no right to a wife—above all, to one such as you. I feel that I have a power within me, the power to do things which the world would call good, but there is no chance. I suppose that the chance will come some day—when it is too late."
Harley started. The words were the echo of his own. "We must go," he whispered to the candidate. "No one has a right to listen, even without intention, at this, their last meeting." Jimmy Grayson had already turned away, and by the faint moonlight sifting through the branches Harley saw a mist in his eyes. But their movement made a sound, and the lovers looked up.
"Did you hear a noise? What was it?" asked Helen.
"Only a lizard in the grass or a squirrel rattling the bark of a tree," replied Arthur.
They listened a moment, but they heard nothing more, save the faint stirring of the wind among the leaves and the grass.
"Are you really going, Arthur?" asked Helen, as if, approving it once, she would like now to hear him deny it.
He looked at her, his face flushing and his eyes alight, as if at last he heard her ask him to stay; but he saw in her gaze only brave resolve. She could love him, and yet she had the strength to sacrifice that love for what she considered her duty. He drew courage from her, and he lifted his head proudly, although his eyes expressed grief alone.
"Yes, I have only to start," he replied; "you know I have little to take. I make just one more public appearance in Egmont. Mr. Grayson speaks hereagain to-morrow night, and the committee, by some chance—a chance it must have been—has put me on the list of speakers."
"Oh, Arthur, it may be an opportunity for you!"
She was eager, flushed, her eyes flaming and uplifted to his.
"It might be, Helen, at any other time, but this is evil fortune. I am of the other party; I must speak against him—we are fair to both sides here; he will have the right of rejoinder, and you know what he is, Helen—the greatest orator in America, perhaps in all the world. No one yet has ever been able to defeat him, and what chance have I, with no experience, against the most formidable debater in existence? I should shirk it, Helen, if the people would not think me a coward."
"Oh, Arthur, what an ordeal!" She looked up at him with wet, tender eyes.
Harley, at the mention of Jimmy Grayson's name, glanced away from the lovers and towards the candidate. He saw him start, and a singular, soft expression pass over his face, to be followed by one of doubt.
"Now I shall go, Helen," said Arthur. "It was wrong of me to ask you to meet me here, but I could not go away without seeing you alone and speaking to you alone, as I do now."
"I was glad to come."
He took her hands again, and for a few moments they stood, gazing into each other's eyes, where they saw all the grief of a last parting. Harley wished to turn his gaze away, but, somehow, he could not. There was silence in the grounds, save that gentle, sighing sound of the wind through the leaves and grass, and only the moon looked down.
Suddenly the youth bent his head, kissed the girl on the lips, and then ran swiftly through the shrubbery, as if he could not bear to hesitate or look back.
"It was their first kiss," murmured Harley.
"I did not see it," said Jimmy Grayson, turning his eyes away.
"And their last," murmured Harley.
The girl stood like a statue, still deadly pale, but Harley saw that her eyes were luminous. It was the man whom she loved who had taken her first kiss; nothing could alter that beautiful fact. She listened, as if she could hear his last retreating footstep on the grass dying away like an echo. Harley and the candidate watched her until her slender figure in the white draperies was hid by the house, and then they, too, went back to the street.
Neither spoke until they passed the low stone wall, and then the candidate said, brusquely:
"Harley, unless this moonlight deceives me, there is moisture on your eyelids. What do you mean by such unmanly weakness?"
Harley smiled, but, refraining from thetu quoque, left Jimmy Grayson to lead the way, and he noticed that he chose a course that did not take them back to the hotel. Moreover, he did not speak again for a long time, and Harley walked on by his side, silent, too, but thoughtful and keenly observant. He saw that his friend was troubled, and he divined the great struggle that was going on in his mind. Whether he could do it if he were in the place of the candidate he was unable to say, and he was glad that the decision did not lie with himself.
They walked on and on until they left the town and were out upon the broad prairie, where the windmoaned in a louder key, and the candidate's face was still troubled.
"Harley," said the candidate, at last, "I cannot get rid of the look in that girl's eyes."
"I do not wish to do so," said Harley.
It was nearly midnight when he turned and began to walk back towards the town. The moonlight, breaking through a cloud, again flooded Jimmy Grayson's face, and Harley, who knew him so well, saw that the look of trouble had passed. The lips were compressed and firm, and in his eyes shone the clear light of decision. Harley's feelings, as he saw, were mingled, a strange compound of elation and apprehension. But at the hotel he said, gravely, "Good-night," and the candidate replied with equal seriousness, "Good-night." Neither referred to what they had seen nor to what they expected.
The second speech at Egmont drew an even greater audience than the first, as the fame of Jimmy Grayson's powers spread fast, and there would be, too, the added spice of combat; members of the other party would accept his challenge, replying to his logic if they could, and the hall was crowded early with eager people. Harley, sitting at the back of the stage, saw the Honorable John Anderson come in, importantly, his wife under one arm and his daughter under the other. Helen looked paler than ever, but here under the electric lights her sad loveliness made the same appeal to Harley. Lee arrived late, and although, as one of the speakers, he was forced to sit on the stage, he hid himself behind the others. But a single glance passed between the two, and then the girl sat silent and pale, hoping against hope for her lover.
The candidate spoke well. His voice was as deepand as musical as ever, and his sentences rolled as smoothly as before. All his charm and magnetism of manner were present; the old spell which he threw over everybody—a spell which was from the heart and the manner as well as from the meaning of his words—was not lacking, but to Harley, keenly attentive, there seemed to be a flaw in his logic. The reasoning was not as clear and compact as usual. Only a man with a penetrating, analytical mind would observe it, but there were openings here and there where his armor could be pierced. Blaisdell, one of the correspondents, noticed the fact, and he whispered to Harley:
"It's a good thing that Jimmy Grayson has no great speaker against him to-night; I never knew him to wander from the point before."
"Where's your great speaker?" asked Harley, with irony.
But the crowded audience was oblivious. It heard only the music of the candidate's voice and felt only the spell of his manner; therefore, it was with a sort of contempt that it looked upon Lee, the young lawyer without a case, who rose to reply. Lee was pale, but there was a fire in his eyes, as if he, too, had noticed something, and Harley, observing, caught his breath sharply.
The correspondent again looked down at the girl, and he saw a deep flush sweep over her face, and then, passing, leave it deadly pale. The next moment she averted her eyes as if she would not see the failure of her lover, not the less dear to her because he was about to go away forever. But though he did not see her face now, Harley, as he looked at the bent head, could read her mind. He knew that she was quivering; he knew that she, too, had been completelyunder the spell of the candidate's great voice and manner, and she feared the painful contrast.
Harley glanced once at Jimmy Grayson, sitting quietly, all expression dismissed from his face, and then he looked back at the girl; she should receive all his attention now. Presently he saw her raise her head, the color returned to her face, and a sudden look of wonder and hope appeared in her eyes. Arthur was speaking, not timidly, not like one beaten, but in a strong, clear voice, and with a logic that was keen and merciless he drove straight at the weak points in the candidate's address. Even Harley was surprised at his skill and penetration.
The correspondent watched Helen, and he read every step of her lover's progress in her eyes. The wonder and hope there grew, and the hope turned to delight. She looked up at her father, as if to tell him how much he had misjudged Arthur, and that here, in truth, was the beginning of greatness; and the important man, as he felt her eyes upon him, moved uneasily in his seat.
The feelings of the audience were mingled, but among them amazement led all the rest. The great Jimmy Grayson, the Presidential nominee, the unconquerable, the man of world-wide fame, the victor of every campaign, was being beaten by a young townsman of their own, not known twenty miles from home. Incredible as it seemed, it was true; the fact was patent to the dullest in the hall. Harley saw a look of astonishment and then dismay overspread the faces of Mrs. Grayson and Sylvia, and he knew that of all in the hall they were suffering most acutely.
The keen, cutting voice went on, tearing Jimmy Grayson's argument to pieces, clipping off a sectionhere and a section there, and tossing the fragments aside. By-and-by the amazement of the people gave way to delight. Their home pride was touched. This boy of their own was doing what no other had ever been able to do. They began to thunder forth applause, and the women waved their handkerchiefs. Hobart leaned over and whispered to Harley:
"Old man, what does this mean? Is Jimmy Grayson sick?"
"He was never better than he is to-night."
Hobart gave him an inquiring look.
"I'll ask more about this later," he said.
But Harley already had turned his attention back to Helen, and as he watched the growing joy on her face his own heart responded. It was relief, elation, that he felt now, and, for the moment, no apprehension. He saw the color yet flushing her cheeks, and the eyes alight with life and joy. He saw her suddenly clasp her father's arm in both hands, and, though he was too far away to hear, he knew well that she was telling him what a great man Arthur was going to be. For her all obstacles were driven away by this sudden flood of fortune, and Harley again saw the important man move uneasily while a look, half fear, half shame, came into his eyes.
The speech was finished, and young Lee, a man now on a pedestal, sat down amid thunders of applause. Jimmy Grayson undertook to respond, but for the first time in his life he was weak and halting. He wandered on lamely, and at last retired amid faint cheers, to be followed quickly by an astonished silence. Then, when the people recovered themselves, they poured in a tumult from the hall; but the hero to whom they turned admiringly was Arthur Lee, their own youthful townsman, and not the candidate.
The next day Hobart told Harley that Lee had won everything. Mr. Anderson, sharing the pride of Egmont, could resist no longer, and had withdrawn his refusal. Arthur and Helen would be married in the winter.
"You see," said Hobart, "young Lee is now a hero."
"But not the greatest hero," said Harley.
"That is true," said Hobart, and then he added, after a moment's pause, "I could never have done it."
But that night, when Jimmy Grayson left the hall, he went at once to the hotel with Mrs. Grayson. Luckily there was a side-door, out of which they slipped so quietly and quickly that not many people had a chance either to pity him or to exult over him, at least in his presence. Yet he did not fail to notice more than one sneer on the faces of those who belonged to the other party, and his cheeks burned for a moment, as James Grayson, the candidate, had his full store of human pride.
In the hall the amazed crowd lingered, and the correspondents, not less surprised than the people, gathered in a group to talk it over. Sylvia was there, too, and she was almost in tears. To none had the blow been harder than to her, and she was so stunned that she could yet scarcely credit it. All of the group were sad except Churchill, who felt all the glory of an I-told-you-so come to judgment.
"It was bound to happen, sooner or later," he said, when he noticed that Sylvia was not listening; "the man is all froth and foam, but who could have thought that the bubble would be pricked by an obscure little Western attorney? Was ever anything more ignominious?"
Then the ancient beau, Tremaine, spoke from a soul that was stirred to the depths.
"Churchill," he exclaimed, "I've been travelling about the world forty years, but there are times when I think you are the meanest man I ever met."
Churchill flushed and clinched his fist, but thought better of it, and turned off the matter with an uneasy laugh.
"Tremaine," he said, "the older you grow the fonder you become of superlatives."
"I admired Jimmy Grayson in his triumphs, and I admire him more than ever in his defeat," said Tremaine, still bristling, and fiercely twisting his short, gray mustache.
"Mr. Tremaine, I want to thank you," said Sylvia, who, turning to them, had heard Tremaine's warm speech; and she put her hand in his for a moment, which was to him ample repayment.
Harley stood by, and was silent because he did not know what to say. To state that Mr. Grayson had allowed himself to be beaten for a purpose would have an incredible look in print—it would seem the poorest of excuses; nor did he wish to make use of it in the presence of Churchill, who would certainly jeer at it and present it in his despatches as a ridiculous plea. He had begun to have a certain sensitiveness in regard to the candidate, and he did not wish to be forced into a quarrel with Churchill.
But Sylvia caught a slight smile, a smile of irony, in the eyes of Harley, and the tears in her own dried up at once. She felt instinctively, with all the quickness of a woman's intuition, that Harley knew something about the speech which she did not know, but she meant to know it, and she watched for an opportunity.
They were turning out the lights in the hall and the people began to go away, the correspondentsclosing up the rear. Sylvia fell back with Harley, and touched his arm lightly.
"There is something that you are not telling me," she said.
"I am willing to tell it to you, because you will believe it."
Tremaine, with ever-ready gallantry, was about to join them, but Sylvia said:
"I thank you, Mr. Tremaine, but Mr. Harley has promised to see me to the hotel."
Her tone was light, but so decisive that Tremaine turned back at once, and Hobart, who was ahead, hid a smile.
"Now, I want to know what it is," she said, eagerly, to Harley. "That was a good speaker, an able man, but I don't believe that he or anybody else could beat Uncle James. How did it happen?"
Harley did not answer her at once, because it seemed to him just then that the action of Jimmy Grayson was an illustration, and the idea was hot in his mind.
"Perhaps there is nothing to tell, after all," she said, and her face fell.
"There is something to tell; I hesitated because I was looking for the best way to tell it. Mr. Grayson to-night made a sacrifice of himself, purposely and willingly."
"A sacrifice of himself! How could he have done such a thing?"
"For the best reason that makes a man do such a thing. For love."
She stared at him a moment, and then broke into a puzzled but ironic laugh.
"You are certainly dreaming a romance. Uncle James and Aunt Anna have been happily marriedfor years, and there is nothing now that could force him to make such a sacrifice."
Harley smiled, and his smile was rarely tender, because he was thinking at that moment of Sylvia.
"The sacrifice was not to help his own cause, but the cause of another, the cause of the man who beat him—that is, seemed to beat him. Mr. Lee, through his victory to-night, wins the girl whom he loves, and he could have won her in no other way. There are people who can do great deeds and make great sacrifices for love, even to help the love of two others. It will be printed in every paper of the United States in the morning that Mr. Grayson was defeated in debate to-night by a young local lawyer. His prestige will be greatly impaired."
Her eyes glowed, and her face, too, became rarely tender.
"Uncle James was truly great to-night!" she exclaimed.
"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 Ican 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.
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 Boisé 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 onHarley 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 himwhat 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 Boisé, his heart full of anger and his head full of plans for revenge.
Nor was he sparing in speech when he reached Boisé. 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 Boisé, 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 ofmountain 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'sbolt 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 theMonitor, 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. TheMonitorstill 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 him advice that was right and true.
When Harley told Mr. Heathcote of his purpose, the committeeman's face became grave, but he said, "It is the hard thing for you to do, although it is the best thing." An hour later, Harley sent to his editor in New York a despatch, asking to be recalled; he said there had arisen personal reasons which would make him valueless for the rest of the campaign, and he felt that theGazettewould be the gainer if he were transferred to another field of activity.
Harley felt a deep pang, and he did not attempt to disguise it from himself, when he sent this telegram, but after it was gone his conscience came to his relief, although he still avoided the presence of Sylvia with great care. But the pang was repeated many times, as he sat silent among his companions and calculated how he could leave them that night and get a train for New York in the morning.
He was still sitting among them about the twilight hour when the conductor handed him a telegraphic despatch, and Harley knew that it was from his editor, who had a high appreciation of his merits, both personal and professional. The message was brief and pointed. It said: "Can't understand your request for a transfer. Your despatches from the campaign best work you have ever done; not only have all news, but write from the inside; you present the candidate as he is. Have telegraphed Mr. Grayson asking if there is any quarrel, and inreply he makes special request that you representGazettewith him to the end. Stay till you are sent for, and don't bother me again."
Harley read it over a second time. Despite himself he smiled, and he smiled because he felt a throb of pleasure. "Good old chief," he said, and he understood now that a refusal of his request was a hope that he had dared not utter to himself. But he knew that he should have taken the great risk.
He showed the despatch to Mr. Heathcote, and the committeeman was sincerely glad.
"Your editor has done his duty," he said.
Mr. Grayson did not allude to the subject, and Harley respected his silence, although devoutly grateful for the reply that he had made.
Other telegrams caused by the threatened revolt in the mountains were also passing; some of them stopped at the house of Mr. Plummer, in Boisé, and upon the trail of one of these telegrams, a forcible one, came a thin-faced and quiet but alert man, Mr. Henry Crayon, who in his way was a power in both the financial and political worlds. Mr. Crayon was perhaps the most trusted of the lieutenants of the Honorable Clinton Goodnight, and the two had held a long conference before his departure for the West, agreeing at the end of it that "it was time to make a move, and after that move to spring a live issue."
Mr. Crayon was fairly well informed of the causes that agitated the soul of "King" Plummer, and as he shot westward on a Limited Continental Express he considered the best way of approach, inclining as always to delicate but incisive methods. Long before he reached Boisé his mind was well made up, and he felt content because he anticipated nodifficulty in handling the crude mountaineer, who was unused to the ways of diplomacy.
He found the "King" in Boisé, still hot and sulky. Mr. Plummer had not heard anything in person from the Graysons, nor had he sent any message to them, and the mountains were full of talk about his bolt, which was now spoken of as an accepted fact.
Mr. Crayon's first meeting with Mr. Plummer came about in quite an accidental and easy way—Mr. Crayon saw to that—and the Easterner was deferential, as became one who had so little experience of the West, who, in case he was presumptuous, was likely to be reminded that Idaho was nearly twenty times as large as Connecticut and twice as large as the state of New York itself. After making himself pleasant by humility and requests for advice, Mr. Crayon glided warily into the subject of politics. He disclosed to Mr. Plummer how much a powerful faction in the party was displeased with Mr. Grayson, and the equally important fact that this faction felt the necessity of speedy action of some kind.
They were at that moment in a secluded corner of the reading-room of the chief hotel in Boisé, and Mr. Crayon had ordered a pleasant and powerful Western concoction which he and Mr. Plummer sipped as they talked. The "King's" face was red, partly with the sun and partly with the anger that still burned him. Mr. Crayon's words fell soothingly upon his ear—Mr. Crayon had a quiet, mellow voice—and his sense of injury at the hands of Jimmy Grayson deepened. What right had Jimmy Grayson or Jimmy Grayson's wife, which was the same thing, to interfere in his private affairs? And it was only a step from one's private life to one's public life. Wrong in one, wrong in the other. Mr. Crayon, watchinghim keenly though covertly, was pleased with the varying expressions that passed over the unbearded portions of the "King's" face. He read there anger, jealousy, and revenge, and he said to himself that he would bend this man, big and strong as he was, to his will.
Mr. Crayon now grew bolder. He said that the minority within the party, which, for the present, he represented, was resolved to come to an issue with Mr. Grayson; the destinies of a great party, and possibly the country, could not be put in the hands of a man who had neither the proper dignity nor the proper sense of responsibility. Thus far he went, and then the wily Mr. Crayon stopped to notice the effect.
It seemed to him to be favorable, and Mr. Crayon was an acute man. The "King" drank a little of his liquor and nodded his head. Yes, he had been fooled in Jimmy Grayson, he had thought that he was as true as steel, but there was a flaw in the steel; Jimmy Grayson had done him a great injury, and he was not a man who turned one cheek when the other was smitten; he smote back with all his might, and his own hand was pretty heavy.
Mr. Crayon smiled—all things were certainly going well; he had caught Mr. Plummer at the right moment, and there was no doubt of the impression that he was making. Then he went a little further; he suggested that a certain important issue not hitherto discussed in the campaign was going to be brought up, even now they were proposing to present it in the West, and Mr. Grayson would have to declare himself either for or against it—there was no middle ground. Mr. Crayon again stopped and observed the "King" with the same covert but careful glance.The face of Mr. Plummer obviously bore the stamp of approval; moreover, he nodded, and, thus encouraged, Mr. Crayon went further and further, telling why the issue was so great, and why it must be presented to the public without delay.
Mr. Plummer asked him to name the issue, and when Mr. Crayon did so, without reserve, the "King's" face once more bore the stamp of approval, and he nodded his head again.
"If Mr. Grayson accepts the law as we lay it down," said Mr. Crayon, with satisfaction, "he places himself in our hands and we control him. Our policies prevail, and, if he becomes President of the United States, we remain the power that rules him, and that, therefore, rules the country. If he resists us, well, that is the end of him!"
Mr. Crayon had lighted a cigar, and as he said "that is the end of him" he flicked off the ash with a quick gesture that had in it the touch of finality.
Mr. Plummer said nothing, and Mr. Crayon was content; he could do enough talking for two.
"Mr. Goodnight and other of my associates are coming West very soon," he continued. "The velvet glove will be taken off, and it is high time."
Then they went forth into the streets of Boisé and they were seen walking together by many people, to which Mr. Crayon was not averse, and in an hour three or four local correspondents were sending eastward vivid despatches stating that Mr. Crayon, the representative of the conservative and dissatisfied minority in the party, was in Boisé in close conference with "King" Plummer, the political ruler of the mountains. And the burden of all these despatches was fast-coming evil for Jimmy Grayson.
Nor was the candidate long in hearing of it. Thevery next day a Boisé newspaper containing a full first-page account of it reached them, and was read aloud to the party by Mr. Heathcote. Mr. Grayson made no comment as it was being read, but Harley once saw his face darken and his lips close tightly together; this was the only sign that he gave, and it quickly passed.
But the others were not so chary of words. The train was full of indignant comment, and the ears of "King" Plummer in the distance must have burned.
"I could not have believed it of him," said Mr. Heathcote. "It is untrue to the man's whole nature, even if he is swayed suddenly by some powerful emotion."
Hobart glanced at Sylvia, who had withdrawn to the far end of the car, where she was apparently gazing at the mountains that fled by, although she said not one word and her face was red. Nor did Harley join in the talk, but, taking advantage of the slight bustle caused by Mr. Grayson's retirement to the drawing-room, he took refuge in a day car to which their own coach was attached for the time. That evening, while the others were at dinner, he saw Sylvia alone.
"I ought to tell you," she said, "that I have asked to leave the train, but my aunt has refused to consent to it. She says she needs me, and as I cannot go now to my old home in Boisé, it is better for me to stay with her. I have heard that you asked to be recalled to the East, and I honor you for it."
"Are you sorry that my request was refused?" asked Harley.
She did not falter, although the red in her cheeks flushed deeper.
"No, I am not sorry; I am glad," she replied."Why should I tell an untruth about what is so great a matter to both of us? But it cannot change anything."
Harley felt that this was, indeed, a maid well worth winning, and his hope yet to find a way, which had been weakened somewhat lately, grew high again. That night wild resolves ran through his mind. He would sacrifice his pride, hitherto an unthinkable thing—he would see "King" Plummer and tell him that Sylvia and he loved each other, that neither of them could possibly be happy unless they were wedded, then he would appeal to the older man's generosity; he would tell him how Sylvia loyally meant to keep her word and pay her debt of gratitude with herself, then he would ask him to release her from the promise. But he gave up the idea as one that required too much; he could never humiliate himself so far, and even then it would be a humiliation without result.
If Harley had undertaken to carry out such a wild idea, he would have found it difficult, because no one in the party then knew where "King" Plummer was; they were hearing of him all over the West, and the Denver, Salt Lake, and smaller newspapers were filled with accounts of his doings, all colored highly. His bolt, they said, was now an accomplished fact; he showed the deepest hostility to the candidate, and he was also in constant correspondence with a powerful and dissatisfied wing in the East.
Mr. Grayson never said a word, he never spoke of Mr. Plummer in any of his speeches, and Harley believed there was only sadness in his mind, not anger, whenever he thought of the "King."
But there could be no doubt of the effect of all these events upon the campaign; to the public JimmyGrayson seemed as one lost in the wilderness, and only in the mountains, where the people were far from the great centres of information, did they yet cherish a hope of his election. Churchill wrote to theMonitorthat Jimmy Grayson himself had abandoned hope.
Ominous rumblings were coming from the East, too. Goodnight, Crayon, and their friends had found a pretext upon which to take drastic action, and they were about to take it.