Scarborough often rode with Gladys and Pauline, sometimes with Gladys alone. One afternoon in August he came expecting to go out with both. But Gladys was not well that day. She had examined her pale face and deeply circled eyes in her glass; she had counseled with her maid—a discreetly and soothingly frank French woman. Too late to telephone him, she had overruled her longing to see him and had decided that at what she hoped was his "critical stage" it would be wiser not to show herself to him thus even in her most becoming tea-gown, which compelled the eyes of the beholder to a fascinating game of hide and seek with her neck and arms and the lines of her figure.
"And Mrs. Dumont?" inquired Scarborough of the servant who brought Gladys' message and note.
"She's out walking, sir."
Scarborough rode away, taking the long drive through the grounds of the Eyrie, as it would save him a mile of dusty and not well-shaded highway. A few hundred yards and he was passing the sloping meadows that lay golden bronze in the sun, beyond the narrow fringe of wood skirting and shielding the drive. The grass and clover had been cut. Part of it was spread where it had fallen, part had been raked into little hillocks ready for the wagons. At the edge of one of these hillocks far down the slope he saw the tail of a pale blue skirt, a white parasol cast upon the stubble beside it. He reined in his horse, hesitated, dismounted, tied his bridle round a sapling. He strode across the field toward the hillock that had betrayed its secret to him.
"Do I interrupt?" he called when he was still far enough away not to be taking her by surprise.
There was no answer. He paused, debating whether to call again or to turn back.
But soon she was rising—the lower part of her tall narrow figure hid by the hillock, the upper part revealing to him the strong stamp of that vivid individuality of hers which separated her at once from no matter what company. She had on a big garden hat, trimmed just a little with summer flowers, a blouse of some soft white material, with even softer lace on the shoulders and in the long, loose sleeves. She gave a friendly nod and glance in his direction, and said: "Oh, no—not at all. I'm glad to have help in enjoying this."
She was looking out toward the mists of the horizon hills. The heat of the day had passed; the woods, the hillocks of hay were casting long shadows on the pale-bronze fields. A breeze had sprung up and was lifting from the dried and drying grass and clover a keen, sweet, intoxicating perfume—like the odor which classic zephyrs used to shake from the flowing hair of woodland nymphs.
He stood beside her without speaking, looking intently at her. It was the first time he had been alone with her since the afternoon at Battle Field when she confessed her marriage and he his love.
"Bandit was lame," she said when it seemed necessary to say something.
She rode a thoroughbred, Bandit, who would let no one else mount him; whenever she got a new saddle she herself had to help put it on, so alert was he for schemes to entrap him to some other's service. He obeyed her in the haughty, nervous way characteristic of thoroughbreds—obeyed because he felt that she was without fear, and because she had the firm but gentle hand that does not fret a horse yet does not let him think for an instant that he is or can be free. Then, too, he had his share of the universal, fundamental vanity we should probably find swelling the oyster did we but know how to interpret it; and he must have appreciated what an altogether harmonious spectacle it was when he swept along with his mistress upon his back as light and free as a Valkyr.
"I was sorry to miss the ride," Pauline went on after another pause—to her, riding was the keenest of the many physical delights that are for those who have vigorous and courageous bodies and sensitive nerves. Whenever it was possible she fought out her battles with herself on horseback, usually finding herself able there to drown mental distress in the surge of physical exultation.
As he still did not speak she looked at him—and could not look away. She had not seen that expression since their final hour together at Battle Field, though in these few last months she had been remembering it so exactly, had been wondering, doubting whether she could not bring it to his face again, had been forbidding herself to long to see it. And there it was, unchanged like all the inflexible purposes that made his character and his career. And back to her came, as it had come many and many a time in those years, the story he had told her of his father and mother, of his father's love for his mother—how it had enfolded her from the harshness and peril of pioneer life, had enfolded her in age no less than in youth, had gone down into and through the Valley of the Shadow with her, had not left her even at the gates of Death, but had taken him on with her into the Beyond. And Pauline trembled, an enormous joy thrilling through and through her.
"Don't!" she said uncertainly. "Don't look at me like that, PLEASE!"
"You were crying," he said abruptly. He stood before her, obviously one who had conquered the respect of the world in fair, open battle, and has the courage that is for those only who have tested their strength and know it will not fail them. And the sight of him, the look of him, filled her not with the mere belief, but with the absolute conviction that no malign power in all the world or in the mystery round the world could come past him to her to harass or harm her. The doubts, the sense of desolation that had so agitated her a few minutes before now seemed trivial, weak, unworthy.
She lowered her eyes—she had thought he would not observe the slight traces of the tears she had carefully wiped away. She clasped her hands meekly and looked—and felt—like a guilty child. The coldness, the haughtiness were gone from her face.
"Yes," she said shyly. "Yes—I—I—" She lifted her eyes—her tears had made them as soft and luminous as the eyes of a child just awake from a long, untroubled sleep. "But—you must not ask me. It's nothing that can be helped. Besides, it seems nothing—now." She forced a faint smile. "If you knew what a comfort it is to cry you'd try it."
"I have," he replied. Then after a pause he added: "Once." Something in his tone—she did not venture to look at him again—made her catch her breath. She instantly and instinctively knew when that "once" was. "I don't care to try it again, thank you," he went on. "But it made me able to understand what sort of comfort you were getting. For—YOU don't cry easily."
The katydids were clamoring drowsily in the tops of the sycamores. From out of sight beyond the orchard came the monotonous, musical whir of a reaper. A quail whistled his pert, hopeful, careless "Bob White!" from the rail fence edging the wheat field. A bumblebee grumbled among a cluster of swaying clover blossoms which the mower had spared. And the breeze tossed up and rolled over the meadow, over the senses of the young man and the young woman, great billows of that perfume which is the combined essence of all nature's love philters.
Pauline sank on the hay, and Scarborough stretched himself on the ground at her feet. "For a long time it's been getting darker and darker for me," she began, in the tone of one who is talking of some past sorrow which casts a retreating shadow over present joy to make it the brighter by contrast. "To-day—this afternoon it seemed as if the light were just about to go out—for good and all. And I came here. I found myself lying on the ground—on the bosom of this old cruel—kind mother of ours. And—" She did not finish—he would know the rest. Besides, what did it matter—now?
He said: "If only there were some way in which I could help."
"It isn't the people who appear at the crises of one's life, like the hero on the stage, that really help. I'm afraid the crises, the real crises of real life, must always be met alone."
"Alone," he said in an undertone. The sky was blue now—cloudless blue; but in that word alone he could hear the rumble of storms below the horizon, storms past, storms to come.
"The real helpers," she went on, "are those who strengthen us day by day, hour by hour. And when no physical presence would do any good, when no outside aid is possible—they—it's like finding a wall at one's back when one's in dread of being surrounded. I suppose you don't realize how much it means to—to how many people—to watch a man who goes straight and strong on his way—without blustering, without trampling anybody, without taking any mean advantage. You don't mind my saying these things?"
She felt the look which she did not venture to face as he answered: "I needed to hear them to-day. For it seemed to me that I, too, had got to the limit of my strength."
"But you hadn't." She said this confidently.
"No—I suppose not. I've thought so before; but somehow I've always managed to gather myself together. This time it was the work of years apparently undone—hopelessly undone. They"—she understood that "they" meant the leaders of the two corrupt rings whose rule of the state his power with the people menaced—"they have bought away some of my best men—bought them with those 'favors' that are so much more disreputable than money because they're respectable. Then they came to me"—he laughed unpleasantly—"and took me up into a high mountain and showed me all the kingdoms of the earth, as it were. I could be governor, senator, they said, could probably have the nomination for president even,—not if I would fall down and worship them, but if I would let them alone. I could accomplish nearly all that I've worked so long to accomplish if I would only concede a few things to them. I could be almost free. ALMOST—that is, not free at all."
She said: "And they knew you no better than that!"
"Now," he continued, "it looks as if I'll have to build all over again."
"I think not," she replied. "If they weren't still afraid of you they'd never have come to you. But what does it matter? YOU don't fight for victory, you fight for the fight's sake. And so"—she looked at him proudly—"you can't lose."
"Thank you. Thank you," he said in a low voice.
She sighed. "How I envy you! You LIVE. I can simply be alive. Sometimes I feel as if I were sitting in a railway station waiting to begin my journey—waiting for a train that's late—nobody knows how late. Simply alive—that's all."
"That's a great deal," he said. He was looking round at the sky, at the horizon, at the fields far and near, at her. "A great deal," he repeated.
"You feel that, too?" She smiled. "I suppose I should live on through anything and everything, because, away down under the surface, where even the worst storms can't reach, there's always a sort of tremendous joy—the sense of being alive—just alive." She drew a long breath. "Often when I've been—anything but happy—a little while ago, for instance—I suddenly have a feeling of ecstasy. I say to myself: Yes, I'm unhappy, but—I'm ALIVE!"
He made a sudden impulsive movement toward her, then restrained himself, pressed his lips together and fell back on his elbow.
"I suppose I ought to be ashamed of myself,' she added.
"You mustn't say that." He was sitting up, was speaking with all his energy. "All that you were telling me a while ago to encourage me applies to you, too—and more—more. You DO live. You ARE what you long to be. That ideal you're always trying to grasp—don't you know why you can't grasp it, Pauline? Because it's your own self, your own image reflected as in a mirror."
He broke off abruptly, acutely conscious that he was leaning far over the barrier between them. There was a distant shout, from vigorous, boyish lungs. Gardiner, mad with the joy of healthy seven, came running and jumping across the field to land with a leap astride the hillock, scattering wisps of hay over his mother and Scarborough. Pauline turned without getting up, caught her boy by the arms and with mock violence shook and thrust him deep down into the damaged hillock. She seemed to be making an outlet for some happiness too great to be contained. He laughed and shouted and struggled, pushed and pulled her. Her hat fell off, her hair loosened and the sun showered gold of many shades upon it. She released him and stood up, straightening and smoothing her hair and breathing quickly, the color high in her cheeks.
Scarborough was already standing, watching her with an expression of great cheerfulness.
"Good-by," he now said. "The caravan"—his tone was half-jesting, half-serious—"has been spending the heat and dust of the day on the oasis. It makes night journeys only. It must push on."
"Night journeys only," repeated Pauline. "That sounds gloomy."
"But there are the stars—and the moon."
She laughed. "And other oases ahead. Good-by—and thank you!"
The boy, close to his mother and facing Scarborough, was looking from her to him and back again—curiously, it almost seemed suspiciously. Both noticed it; both flushed slightly. Scarborough shook hands with her, bowed to the little boy with a formality and constraint that might have seemed ludicrous to an onlooker. He went toward his horse; Gardiner and his mother took the course at right angles across the field in the direction in which the towers of the Eyrie could be seen above the tree-tops. Suddenly the boy said, as if it were the conclusion of a long internal argument: "I like Mr. Scarborough."
"Why not?" asked his mother, amused.
"I—I don't know," replied the boy. "Anyhow, I like him. I wish he'd come and stay with us and Aunt Gladys."
Gladys! The reminder made her uncomfortable, made her feel that she ought to be remorseful. But she hastened on to defend herself. What reason had she to believe that Gladys cared for him, except as she always cared for difficult conquest? Hadn't Gladys again and again gone out of her way to explain that she wasn't in love with him? Hadn't she said, only two days before: "I don't believe I could fall in love with any man. Certainly I couldn't unless he had made it very clear to me that he was in love with me."
Pauline had latterly been suspecting that these elaborations of superfluous protestation were Gladys' efforts to curtain herself. Now she dwelt upon them with eager pleasure, and assured and reassured herself that she had been supersensitive and that Gladys had really been frank and truthful with her.
On his way down the bluffs to town Scarborough felt as calm and peaceful as that tranquil evening. He had a sense of the end of a long strain of which he had until then been unconscious. "NOW I can go away and rest," he said to himself. And at sundown he set out for his farm.
He arrived at ten o'clock, by moonlight, amid a baying of dogs so energetic that it roused every living thing in the barnyard to protest in a peevish chorus of clucking and grunting and quacking and squealing.
"What on airth!" exclaimed Mrs. Gabbard, his farmer's wife, standing at the back door, in calico skirt and big shawl. When she saw who it was, her irritated voice changed to welcome. "Why, howdy, Mr. Scarborough! I thought it was old John Lovel among the chickens or at the granary. I might 'a' knowed he wouldn't come in the full of the moon and no clouds."
"Go straight back to bed, Mrs. Gabbard, and don't mind me," said Scarborough. "I looked after my horse and don't want anything to eat. Where's Eph?"
"Can't you hear?" asked Mrs. Gabbard, dryly. And in the pause a lusty snore penetrated. "When anything out of the way happens, I get up and nose around to see whether it's worth while to wake him."
Scarborough laughed. "I've come for a few days—to get some exercise," he said. "But don't wake me with the others to-morrow morning. I'm away behind on sleep and dead tired."
He went to bed—the rooms up-stairs in front were reserved for him and were always ready. His brain was apparently as busy and as determined not to rest as on the worst of his many bad nights during the past four months. But the thoughts were vastly different; and soon those millions of monotonous murmurings from brook and field and forest were soothing his senses. He slept soundly, with that complete relaxing of every nerve and muscle which does not come until the mind wholly yields up its despotic control and itself plunges into slumber unfathomable.
The change of the air with dawn slowly wakened him. It was only a little after five, but he felt refreshed. He got himself into farm working clothes and went down to the summer dining-room—a shed against the back of the house with three of its walls latticed. In the adjoining kitchen Mrs. Gabbard and her daughters, Sally and Bertha, were washing the breakfast dishes—Gabbard and his two sons and the three "hands" had just started for the meadows with the hay wagons.
"Good morning," said Scarborough, looking in on the three women.
They stopped work and smiled at him, and the girls dried their hands and shook hands with him—all with an absolute absence of embarrassment that, to one familiar with the awkward shyness of country people, would have told almost the whole story of Scarborough's character. "I'll get you some breakfast in the dining-room," said Mrs. Gabbard.
"No—just a little—on the corner of the table out here," replied Scarborough.
Mrs. Gabbard and Sally bustled about while he stood in the doorway of the shed, looking out into the yard and watching the hens make their careful early morning tour of the inclosure to glean whatever might be there before scattering for the day's excursions and depredations. He had not long to wait and he did not linger over what was served.
"You've et in a manner nothing," complained Mrs. Gabbard.
"I haven't earned an appetite yet," he replied. "Just wait till this evening."
As soon as he was out of view he gave a great shout and started to run. "What folly to bother with, a foolish, trouble-breeding thinking apparatus in a world like this!" he thought, as the tremendous currents of vitality surged through him. And he vaulted a six-rail fence and ran on. Down the hollow drenched with dew, across the brook which was really wide enough to be called a creek, up the steep slope of the opposite hill at a slower pace, and he was at the edge of the meadows. The sun was clear of the horizon now, and the two wagons, piled high with hay and "poled down" to keep the loads steady, were about to move off to the barn.
"Bring back a fork for me, Bill!" he called to the driver of the nearer wagon—Bill was standing on the lofty top of his load, which projected forward and rear so far that, forward, the horses were half canopied. Against Bill's return he borrowed Gabbard's fork and helped complete the other wagon, the sweat streaming from his face as his broad shoulders swung down with the empty fork and up with a great mat of hay.
They worked alternately in the fields and at the barns until half-past eleven. Then they went into the shade at the edge of the meadow and had their dinner.
"My old woman," said Gabbard, "says that two set-down meals a day in harvest time's as many as she'll stand for. So we have dinner out here in good weather, and to the barn when it rains."
The talk was of weather prospects, of probable tonnage to the acre, of the outlook for the corn, of the health and family expectations of the mares and the cows and the pigs. It died away gradually as one man after another stretched out upon his back with a bunch of hay for an odorous pillow and his broad-brimmed straw hat for a light-shade. Scarborough was the fourth man to yield; as he dozed off his hat was hiding that smile of boundless content which comes only to him who stretches his well body upon grass or soft stubble and feels the vigor of the earth steal up and through him. "Why don't I do this oftener?" Scarborough was saying to himself. "I must—and I shall, now that my mind's more at ease."
A long afternoon of the toil that tires and vexes not, and at sundown he was glad to ride home on top of the last wagon instead of walking as he had intended. The supper-table was ready—was spread in the dining-shed. They washed their hands and sunburnt arms and soused their heads in cold water from the well, and sat, Scarborough at one end, Gabbard at the other, the strapping sons and the "hands" down either side. The whole meal was before them—huge platters of fried chicken, great dishes full of beans and corn and potatoes; plates piled high with hot corn bread, other plates of "salt-rising"; Mrs. Gabbard's miraculous apple pies, and honey for which the plundered flowers might still be mourning. Yesterday it would have seemed to Scarborough dinner enough for a regiment. To-day—he thought he could probably eat it all, and wished that he might try. To drink, there were coffee and cider and two kinds of milk. He tried the buttermilk and kept on with it.
"You must 'a' had a busy summer," said Gabbard. "This is the first time you've been with us."
"Yes," Scarborough replied. "I did hope to get here for the threshing, but I couldn't."
The threshing set them all off—it had been a record year; thirty-eight bushels to the acre on the average, twenty-seven on the hillsides which Gabbard had hesitated whether to "put in" or not. An hour after supper Scarborough could no longer hold his eyes open. "Wake me with the others," he said to Mrs. Gabbard, who was making up the "salt-rising" yeast for the morrow's baking. "I'll have breakfast when they do."
"I reckon you've earned it," said Mrs. Gabbard. "Eph says you laid it over 'em all to-day."
"Well, I guess I at least earned my supper," replied Scarborough. "And I guess I ate it."
"You didn't do so bad, considerin'," Mrs. Gabbard admitted. "Nothin' like livin' in town to take appetite away."
"That isn't all it takes away," said Scarborough, going on to his own part of the house without explaining his remark. When his head touched the pillow his brain instantly stopped the machinery. He needed no croonings or dronings from the fields to soothe him. "Not an idea in my head all day," he said to himself with drowsy delight.
Four days of this, and on the fifth came the outside world in the form of Burdick, chairman of the county committee of his party in the county in which his farm lay. They sat on the fence under the big maple, out of earshot of the others.
"Larkin's come out for John Frankfort for the nomination for governor," said Burdick.
Scarborough smiled. "Even Larkin couldn't get it for Frankfort—he's too notorious."
"He don't want to get it for him," replied Burdick. "His real man's Judge Graney."
Scarborough stopped fanning himself with his wide-brimmed straw. Judge Graney was the most adroit and dangerous of John Dumont's tools. He had given invaluable aid from the bench at several of the National Woolens Company's most critical moments. Yet he had retained and increased his popularity and his reputation by deciding against his secret master with a brave show of virtue when he knew the higher courts must reverse him. For several years Scarborough had been looking forward to the inevitable open conflict between the forces of honesty in his party and the forces of the machine as ruled by the half-dozen big corporations who also ruled the machine of the opposition party. He had known that the contest must come, and that he must take part in it; and he had been getting ready. But he had not wished to give battle until he was strong enough to give a battle which, even if he lost it, would not strengthen the hold of the corruptionists.
After he rejected Larkin's dazzling offers, conditioned upon his aloofness rather than frank subservience, he had thought the whole situation over, and, as he hinted to Pauline, had realized how apparently hopeless a fight against the machine would be just then, with the people prosperous and therefore quiescent. And he had decided to stand aside for the time. He now saw that reluctance to attack Dumont had been at least a factor in this decision; and he also saw that he could not delay, as he had hoped. There was no escape—either he must let his work of years be undermined and destroyed or he must give battle with all his strength and skill. He remembered what Pauline had said: "You can't lose!"
"No, one can't lose in this sort of fight," he thought. "Either WE win or there'll be no victory." He sprang from the fence to the ground. "Let's go to the house," he said to Burdick.
"What you going to do?" asked Burdick, as they walked toward the gate, where his horse and buggy were hitched.
"Fight, of course," said Scarborough. "Fight Larkin and his gang in the open. I'll get ex-Governor Bowen to let us use his name and canvass the state for him."
Burdick shook his head sadly.
"It ain't politics," he said. "You'll split the party; then the party'll turn and split you." And later, as they were separating, Scarborough to drive to Saint X, Burdick to go back to Marshaltown, he said: "I'll help all I can in a quiet way. But—I hope you've got your cyclone cellar dug."
Scarborough laughed. "I haven't been digging a cyclone cellar. I've been trying to manufacture a cyclone."
There were thirty-three clear days before the meeting of the convention. He wasted not an hour of them on the manufacturing towns; he went to the country—to the farmers and the villagers, the men who lived each man in his own house, on his own soil from which he earned his own living. Up and down and across the state he went, speaking, organizing, planning, inspiring—he and the coterie of young men who looked up to him as their leader and followed him in this desperate assault as courageously as if victory were assured.
Not long before the convention he paused at ex-Judge Bowen's country place and spent two hours with him in his great, quiet, cool library.
"Isn't it inspiring," Scarborough said, "to see so many young men in arms for a principle?"
The old man slowly shook his magnificent white head and smiled at the young man. "Principles without leaders go begging," he replied. "Men rally to the standard only when the right voice calls. The right voice at the right time." He laid his hand on Scarborough's shoulder with affection and pride. "If the moment should come for you to think of it, do not forget that the leader is the principle, and that in this fight the leader is not I—but you."
Larkin decided that the state convention should be held at Saint X because his machine was most perfect there. The National Woolens Company, the Consolidated Pipe and Wire Company and the Indiana Oil and Gas Corporation—the three principal political corporations in the state—had their main plants there and were in complete political control. While Larkin had no fear of the Scarborough movement, regarding it as a sentimental outburst in the rank and file of the party that would die away when its fomenter had been "read out of the party" at the convention by the regular organization, still he had been in the game too long to take unnecessary chances. He felt that it would be wise to have the delegates assemble where all the surroundings would be favorable and where his ablest and confidential men could do their work in peace and quiet.
The convention was to, meet on the last Thursday in September. On the preceding Monday morning, Culver—Dumont's small, thin, stealthy private secretary—arrived at Saint X and, after making an appointment with Merriweather for half-past twelve, went out to the Eyrie to go through a lot of accumulated domestic business with Mrs. Dumont. When she in a most formal and unencouraging manner invited him to stop there, he eagerly accepted. "Thank you so much," he said effusively. "To be perfectly frank, I've been tempted to invite myself. I have some valuables with me that I don't feel at all easy about. If I should be robbed, it would be a very serious matter. Would it be asking too much of you to ask you to put a package in your jewel safe?"
"I'll be glad to do it for you," replied Pauline. "There's plenty of room—the safe's almost empty and it's ridiculously large."
"My package isn't small," said Culver. "And on my mind it weighs tons." He reached into his large bag—at sight of it Pauline had wondered why he had brought such a bag up from the hotel when his papers for her inspection were so few. He lifted out an oblong, bulky package.
"If you'll just touch that button," said she, "James will come and show you how to get to the safe."
Culver hesitated nervously. Finally he said: "I'm making a nuisance of myself, Mrs. Dumont, but would you mind going to the safe with me? I'd much rather none of the servants knew about this."
Pauline smiled and bade him follow her. They went to her private sitting-room and she showed him the safe, in a small closet built into the lower part of the book-case. "You have the combination?" asked Culver, as he put the package away.
"I see that you don't lock this door often."
"How fortunate you spoke of it!" said she.
"The combination is on a bit of paper in one of the little drawers."
Culver found it in the first drawer he opened, and handed it to her without looking at it.
"You mustn't let me know it," said he. "I'll just fix the time lock so that it won't interfere." And when he had done so, he closed the safe. As he left, he said, "I shall only bother you to let me sleep in the house. I'll be very busy all day each day I'm here." When she thought he had gone he returned to add: "Perhaps I'd better explain to you that there's forty-five thousand dollars in cash in the package. That's why I was so anxious for no one to know."
"I'll say nothing about it," Pauline assured him.
Larkin came down from Indianapolis the next day and registered at the Palace Hotel. As soon as he could escape from the politicians and newspaper correspondents in the hotel office, he went by a devious route to a room on the floor below his own and, knocking, was admitted to Culver and Merriweather. He nodded to Dumont's political agent, then said to Culver: "You've got the dough?"
"Yes," Culver answered, in his best imitation of the tone of the man of large affairs. "In twenties, fifties and hundreds."
"I hope, mighty few hundreds," said Larkin. "The boys are kind o' shy about changing hundred-dollar bills. It seems to attract attention to them." He had large, dreamy, almost sentimental, brown eyes that absurdly misrepresented his character, or, at least, his dominant characteristics. His long, slightly bent nose and sharp chin and thin, tight mouth were more truthful.
"How do things look, Joe?" asked Merriweather.
"Yes, Mr. Dumont asked me to telegraph him after I'd talked with you," said Culver. "Has Scarborough made much headway?"
"I must say, he's raised a darn sight more hell than I thought he would," Larkin answered.
"The people seem to be in a nasty mood about corruption. Darn their fool souls, as if they wouldn't be in the rottenest kind of a fix, with no property and no jobs, if we didn't keep the ignorant vote under control and head off such firebrands as this fellow Scarborough."
"Got any figgers?" demanded Merriweather, who had listened to this tirade with an expression suggesting cynicism. He thought, and he knew Joe Larkin thought, politics a mere game of chance—you won or you didn't win; and principles and oratory and likes and dislikes and resentments were so much "hot air." If the "oil can" had been with Scarborough, Merriweather would have served him as cheerfully and as loyally as—well, as would Joe Larkin in those circumstances.
Larkin wrenched a big bunch of letters and papers from the sagged inside pocket of his slouchy sack coat; after some fumbling and sorting, he paused upon the back of a dirty envelope.
"Here's how the convention stands, to a man," he said. "Sure, two hundred and sixty-seven-by 'sure' I mean the fellows we own outright. Safe, two hundred and forty-five-by 'safe' I mean those that'll stand by the organization, thick and thin. Insurgents, two hundred and ninety-five—those are the chaps that've gone clean crazy with Scarborough. Doubtful, three hundred and eighty-six-some of 'em can be bought; most of 'em are waiting to see which way the cat jumps, so as to jump with her."
"Then we've got five hundred and twelve, and it takes five hundred and ninety-seven to elect," said Merriweather, the instant the last word was out of Larkin's mouth. Merriweather was a mite of a man, could hardly have weighed more than a hundred pounds, had a bulging forehead, was bald and gray at the temples, eyes brown as walnut juice and quick and keen as a rat-terrier's. His expression was the gambler's—calm, watchful, indifferent, pallid, as from years of nights under the gas-light in close, hot rooms, with the cards sliding from the faro box hour after hour.
"Eighty-five short—that's right," assented Larkin. Then, with a look at Culver: "And some of 'em'll come mighty high."
"Where are you going to do business with them?" inquired Merriweather. "Here?"
"Right here in this room, where I've done it many's the time before," replied Larkin. "To-morrow night Conkey Sedgwick and my boy Tom'll begin steerin' 'em in one at a time about eight o'clock."
"Then I'll turn the money over to you at seven to-morrow night," said Culver. "I've got it in a safe place."
"Not one of the banks, I hope," said Merriweather.
"We noted your suggestions on that point, and on all the others," Culver answered with gracious condescension. "That's why I brought cash in small denominations and didn't go near anybody with it."
Larkin rose. "I've got to get to work. See you here to-morrow night at seven, Mr. Culver—seven sharp. I guess it'll be Judge Graney on the third ballot. On the first ballot the organization'll vote solid for Graney, and my fellows'll vote for John Frankfort. On the second ballot half my Frankfort crowd'll switch over to Graney. On the third I'll put the rest of 'em over, and that'll be enough to elect—probably the Scarborough crowd'll see it's no use and let us make it unanimous. The losers are always hot for harmony."
"That sounds well," said Merriweather—his was a voice that left his hearers doubtful whether he meant what his words said or the reverse.
Culver looked with secret admiration from one man to the other, and continued to think of them and to admire, after they had gone. He felt important, sitting in and by proxy directing the councils of these powerful men, these holders and manipulators of the secret strings whereto were attached puppet peoples and puppet politicians. Seven years behind the scenes with Dumont's most private affairs had given him a thoroughgoing contempt for the mass of mankind. Did he not sit beside the master, at the innermost wheels, deep at the very heart of the intricate mechanism? Did not that position make him a sort of master, at any rate far superior to the princeliest puppet?
At five the next afternoon—the afternoon of the day before the convention—he was at the Eyrie, and sent a servant to say to Mrs. Dumont that he would like to see her. She came down to him in the library.
"I'm only troubling you for a moment," he said.
"I'll relieve you of my package."
"Very well," said Pauline. "I haven't thought of it since day before yesterday. I'll bring it down to you."
She left him in the library and went up the stairs—she had been reading everything that was published about the coming convention, and the evident surprise of all the politicians at the strength Scarborough was mustering for ex-Governor Bowen had put her in high good humor. She cautioned herself that he could not carry the convention; but his showing was a moral victory—and what a superb personal triumph! With everything against him—money and the machine and the skilful confusing of the issues by his crafty opponents—he had rallied about him almost all that was really intelligent in his party; and he had demonstrated that he had on his side a mass of the voters large out of all proportion to the number of delegates he had wrested away from the machine—nearly three hundred, when everybody had supposed the machine would retain all but a handful.
Money! Her lips curled scornfully—out here, in her own home, among these simple people, the brutal power of money was master just as in New York, among a people crazed by the passion for luxury and display.
She was kneeling before the safe, was working the combination, paper in hand. The knob clicked as the rings fell into place; she turned the bolt and swung the door open. She reached into the safe. Suddenly she drew her hand back and sat up on the floor, looking at the package. "Why, it's for use in the convention!" she exclaimed.
She did not move for several minutes; when she did, it was to examine the time lock, to reset it, to close the door and bolt it and throw the lock off the combination. Then she rose and slowly descended to the library. As she reappeared, empty-handed, Culver started violently and scrutinized her face. Its expression put him in a panic. "Mrs. Dumont!" he exclaimed wildly.
"Has it been stolen?"
She shook her head. "No," she said. "It's there."
Trembling from weakness in the reaction, he leaned against the table, wiping his sweating brow with sweating hands.
"But," she went on, "it must stay there."
He looked open-mouthed at her.
"You have brought the money out here for use in the convention," she went on with perfect calmness. "You have tried to make me a partner in that vile business. And—I refuse to play the part assigned me. I shall keep the money until the convention is over."
He looked round like a terror-stricken drowning man, about to sink for the last time.
"I'm ruined! I'm ruined!" he almost screamed.
"No," she said, still calm. "You will not be ruined, though you deserve to be. But I understand why you have become callous to the commonplace decencies of life, and I shall see to it that no harm comes to you."
"Mr. Dumont will—DESTROY me! You don't realize, Mrs. Dumont. Vast property interests are at stake on the result of this convention—that's our cause. And you are imperiling it!"
"Imperiling a cause that needs lies and bribes to save it?" she said ironically. "Please calm yourself, Mr. Culver. You certainly can't be blamed for putting your money in a safe place. I take the responsibility for the rest. And when you tell Mr. Dumont exactly what happened, you will not be blamed or injured in any way."
"I shall telegraph him at once," he warned her.
"Certainly," said Pauline. "He might blame you severely for failing to do that."
He paused in his pacing up and down the room. He flung his arms toward her, his eyes blazing.
"I WILL have it!" he exclaimed. "Do you hear me, I WILL! I'll bring men from down-town and have the safe blown open. The money is not yours—it is——"
She advanced to the bell.
"Another word, Mr. Culver, and I'll have the servants show you the door. Yours is a strange courage—to dare to speak thus to me when your head should be hanging in shame for trying to make such base use of me and my courtesy and friendliness."
His arms dropped, and he lowered his head.
"I beg your pardon," he said humbly. "I'm not myself. I think I'm going insane. PITY me!"
Pauline looked at him sadly. "I wish I had the right to. But—I SYMPATHIZE, and I'm sorry—so sorry—to have to do this." A pause, then—"Good afternoon, Mr. Culver." And she moved toward the door. At the threshold she turned. "I must say one thing further—THE CONVENTION MUST NOT BE PUT OFF. If it is adjourned to-morrow without making nominations, I shall understand that you are getting the money elsewhere. And—I shall be compelled to put such facts as I know in the possession of—of those you came to injure." And she was gone.
Culver went to Merriweather's office and sent out for him and Larkin. When they arrived he shut the doors and told them what had happened—and in his manner there was not left a trace of the New Yorker and ambassador condescending to westerners and underlings. Larkin cursed; Merriweather gave no outward sign. Presently Merriweather said: "Larkin, you must adjourn the convention over to-morrow. Culver can go to Chicago and get back with the money by to-morrow night."
"No use," groaned Culver. And he told them the last part of his talk with Mrs. Dumont.
"She thought of that!" said Merriweather, and he looked the impartial admiration of the connoisseur of cleverness.
"But she'd never carry out her threat—never in the world!" persisted Larkin.
"If you had seen her when she said it, and if you'd known her as long as I have, you wouldn't say that," replied Culver. "We must try to get the money here, right away—at the banks."
"All shut," said Merriweather "I wonder how much cash there is at the Woolens and the Oil and Steel offices? We must get together as much as we can—quietly." And he rapidly outlined a program that put all three at work within fifteen minutes. They met again at seven. Culver had twenty-six hundred dollars, Larkin thirty-one hundred, Merriweather, who had kept for himself the most difficult task, had only twelve hundred.
"Sixty-nine hundred," said Merriweather, eying the heap, of paper in packages and silver in bags.
"Better than nothing," suggested Culver, with a pitiful attempt to be hopeful.
Merriweather shrugged his shoulders. "Let's get some supper," he said to Culver. Then to Larkin: "Well, Joe, you'll have to try promises. Will you keep this cash or shall I?"
"You might as well keep it," replied Larkin, with a string of oaths. "It'd be ruination to pay one without paying all. Perhaps you can use some of it between ballots to-morrow." Then, sharply to Culver: "You've telegraphed Mr. Dumont?"
"Of course," said Culver. "And it took some time as I had to put the whole story into cipher."
As Culver and Merriweather were seated, with the dinner before them which Culver did not touch, and which Merriweather ate placidly, Culver asked him whether there was "any hope at all."
"There's always hope," replied Merriweather. "Promises, especially from Joe Larkin, will go a long way, though they don't rouse the white hot enthusiasm that cold cash in the pocket does. We'll pull through all right." He ate for a while in silence. Then: "This Mrs. Dumont must be an uncommon woman." A few more mouthfuls and with his small, icy, mirthless laugh, he added: "I've got one something like her at home. I keep her there."
Culver decided to spend the night at the hotel. He hung round the hotel office until two in the morning, expecting and dreading Dumont's reply to his telegram. But nothing came either for him or for Merriweather. "Queer we don't get word of some sort, isn't it?" said he to Merriweather the next morning, as the latter was leaving for the convention.
Merriweather made no reply beyond a smile so faint that Culver barely saw it.
"She was right, after all," thought Culver, less despondent. "I'll get the money just before I leave and take it back. And I'll not open this subject with Dumont. Maybe he'll never speak of it to me."
And Dumont never did.