Nor was Shelby's best contemptible. The charge up the canal counties had not measured half its course before the increasing crowds, the space given his doings by the correspondents whose good graces he seduously [Transcriber's note: sedulously?] cultivated, the deference of his Excellency and his chameleon staff, all told him that the glory of what the party organs courteously styled the "governor's brilliant dash" was his and not the governor's.
"What we didn't count on," observed Handsome Ludlow, with a touch of envy, "was campaigning with a whirlwind."
So Shelby came in triumph to his own people, the governor at his chariot wheel, and fought the last stubborn week of his campaign. His mail was now burdened with invitations to speak, but he made few speeches.
"The voter a speech will influence has made up his mind," he said to Bowers. "The heart-to-heart talk is the trump card of the eleventh hour."
To play this card required a prodigious amount of travelling about the district; and between these activities and the speaking engagements he was in promise bound to fulfil, Shelby saw little or nothing of New Babylon till midnight of Saturday, which was the virtual end of the canvass. Seen again, as he viewed it now, the town would look raw and provincial despite patriotic throes of self-deception. On moonlit nights the New Babylon Electric Light and Power Company hoarded its energies, and an inky pall accordingly lay over the muddy streets which the pale melon rind in the clouded zenith did nothing to dissipate. The contrast between this niggardliness and the midnight brilliance of up-town Broadway was inevitable, and the jolting Tuscarora House free 'bus came readily into unflattering comparison with a certain rubber-tired hansom cab. Naturally midnight, a jaded body, and the Tuscarora House free 'bus might well jaundice any scene; but the returning native recognized these as accidents merely in the phenomenon of his changed vision.
The hotel bar-room was boisterous with the usual Saturday night gathering of the set which in its innocence supposed itself fast, and the maturer poker crowd, Shelby's own cronies, was in protracted session elsewhere in the building; but he managed to evade them all and lock himself in his ugly room. For some sophisticated weeks he had suspected the household gods here assembled to have feet of clay. Now he knew it; but with the feeling that the place was a temporary husk at best, he avoided a too particular inventory of the pseudo-marble clock, the vases of pampas grass, the album, and the garish pictures against their background of pink roses blushing in a terra-cotta field, and ran drowsily over the little pile of accumulated mail.
With one exception he found a politician's budget, and the exception brushed its fellows imperiously aside. It was a tinted intriguing thing, faintly odorous of patchouli; its contents without date, superscription, or signature, though for the reader the scent was Mrs. Hilliard writ large; a single straggling line of characterless script.
"Why," it inquired, "have you forsaken me?"
The man yawned.
He awoke refreshed and lay in snug indolence listening to the rival sextons pealing first bell for Sunday service. Whatever their doctrinal disputes, the churches of New Babylon made a shift for concord when it came to bell-ringing, whose stately performance was regarded by no less a theological expert than the Widow Weatherwax as "spiritoolly edifyin' and condoocive to grace." Drifting between cat-naps Shelby usually found it a fillip to the fancy. He would detect infant damnation and argument for sprinkling in the deep boom of the Presbyterian bell, and instant dissent in the querulous note of the Baptist, whose echo droned "i-m-m-e-r-s-i-o-n" to infinity. This was the cue for a jaunty flaunting of apostolic succession on the part of the Episcopalian sexton, only to be himself reminded by the First Methodist that there were bishops and bishops. So on, assertion, rejoinder, surrejoinder, and rebuttal, till the dispassionate philosopher in the pillows wearied of his conceit and directed his thoughts toward breakfast.
From breakfast Shelby ordinarily turned to the sporting columns of the Sunday papers, but today he found his thoughts reverting to church-going as a not unpleasant sedative after the storm and stress of his campaign. Reasons multiplied: it would be a sop to the prejudices of no small body of the voting population; an act of tolerance worthy of a mind open to broad horizons; a lightning-rod for supernatural approval of his cause; and a simple means of falling in with Ruth Temple, since by a happy coincidence Ruth Temple and a large block of the church-going vote worshipped under the same spire. Some little time later, therefore, Shelby was ushered to a prominent seat in the midst of a decorous flurry of excitement which stirred the Presbyterian congregation from choir-loft to rearmost pew. Unknown to the visitor, the Rev. Mr. Hewett was scheduled to preach on the ethical issues involved in the present election.
The minister entered the pulpit almost immediately and laid eyes upon Shelby as he announced the opening hymn, coloring at the discovery. His voice wavered perceptibly in the earlier parts of the service as the absorbed congregation noted; but by sermon time he had conquered his nervousness, and with set jaw thundered out his text from Jeremiah: "Why trimmest thou thy way?" With this entering wedge the parson clove into an analysis of practical politics which did not stick at instancing corruption near at hand, and whose climax was a bitter denunciation of ignoble leadership and the doubly ignoble laxity of the indifferent led. It was as pointed an attack on local conditions as he could frame without complications with his deacons, who were politically of divers minds, and the fusion managers might have used its final exhortation to "vote your conscience" as their own ammunition, without altering a word.
Shelby sat under it all like a graven image, careless of the raking fire of eyes from every point, sang "America" with unction at the close, and advancing with the benediction to the pulpit stair, congratulated the bewildered clergyman on his "effort," and before he could conceive, much less deliver, a coherent reply, slipped down a side aisle and greeted Ruth.
"Vigorous, but intemperate," said he, "and typically ministerial. The right road and the wrong road in politics don't abound in sign-posts, and pretty frequently both carry grist to the same mill."
The riddle of his character piqued Ruth at that moment as it never had, and before they separated he obtained permission to call upon her after tea—a privilege which he interpreted as license to present himself betimes and stay to an unconscionable hour. Yet he talked fluently and well, and went out at length into the night tingling with the consciousness of having touched fingers with the higher life of his cherished aspirations. By the token of Ruth's interest, moreover, he took hope that he had not been found wanting where he was most ambitious to excel. It was a thing to lay to heart, an epochal page in his history which sleep alone could fitly round. Nevertheless, a disturbing impression of something essential left undone haunted the borderland of dreams to remain formless till morning, when his pocket handkerchief jerked a note odorous of patchouli to his bedroom floor.
It was annoying. Of course Mrs. Hilliard had a certain claim, and had he been less occupied on his return from stumping the state with the governor he would have gone to her. By rights he should have made the effort to see her after receiving this message—yesterday, in fact; yesterday the golden. He would have gone, too, if—frankly, if the stature of the man he had become had less exacting ideals of womanly perfection. To the grown man of broadened horizon Mrs. Hilliard had come indubitably to seem a bore. Still, she had her claim.
"I'll drop in after election," he decided, and laid his hand to the day's work.
It proved a long, hard pull, made up of details petty enough in themselves, but considerable in their relation to the whole scheme of his defence. However, he reached its end cheery in the belief that the sun of Tuesday would light no Waterloo.
"I'll win," he said to Bowers. "By no walkover, I admit; but I'll win."
"M-yes; I guess, but by the narrowest margin the Demijohn ever gave.The slightest flurry might snow us under."
"I'd stake my head on it."
"Some who have betted less than that have hedged."
"Who?" exclaimed the candidate, quickly.
"Tuscarora House sports—I won't mention names—but poker friends of yours."
"Sandy lot, they are," broke out Shelby, contemptuously. "I hope you counteracted the effect."
"I instructed some of our people to cover everything they would put up," Bowers answered dryly. "You know I don't bet myself."
Shelby guffawed and clapped him on the shoulder.
"Same way you don't stoop to buy the purchasable? Lord! If theTuscarora floaters only knew their Santa Claus!"
But Bowers merely coughed.
Tickled with his joke at the expense of his associate whose handling of the State Committee's saving aid had been masterly, Shelby went to his evening meal in a humor which even a second note from Mrs. Hilliard could not damp. In scent, brevity, and chirography it was the counterpart of the first, telling him that the nameless writer was wretched, and begging him to come to her. The appeal found him in a softened mood. Viewed at the close of an irksome day, Mrs. Hilliard's society had attractions which his hypercritical mind of the morning hours slighted; and while her message in itself left his withers unwrung, he concluded that it was perhaps as well to break gently with "poor Cora" now, as later, when possibly greater growth and broader horizons might create barriers yet more awkward. Under a show of letter-writing, accordingly, he lingered in the hotel office till he was certain that Joe Hilliard had joined his boon companions of the billiard room, when he let himself quietly out of doors and made his way to the quarry owner's home.
"I was afraid you might come, and then that you mightn't," the woman whispered, in the obscurity of the hall. "Joe had a headache, and said at first that he wouldn't go out to-night; but he went."
"Yes; I know. Servants out?"
"Oh, yes."
"And Milicent?" he pursued, scorning hypocrisy.
"I let her go away for the night. The poor child needed a change."
As they left the hall he discovered that she was in evening dress—the black gown glittering with jet beads and bugles which she had introduced at the first autumn meeting of the Culture Club. He held her hand high, and turned her slowly round after the manner of the dance.
"Did you do that for me?" he asked, his face lighting.
She nodded.
"I wore it the night of your nomination, and I put it on to-night to bring you luck at the polls. Was it silly of me?"
"Not if somebody else doesn't see."
"Joe'll not see. I shall have gone to my room before he comes. I'll not keep you long. It's enough that you've proved you cared to come. It's a crumb of comfort in my wretchedness."
"You know I've been on the jump," he returned, adding dryly, "You don't look as wretched as your note led me to expect."
"You can't know."
"Not till I'm told."
"The scene there's been, I mean."
"Scene? What scene?"
"With Joe—about you—New York—everything."
"There wasn't need for a word. Nobody's blabbed. I saw to that. I went to Sprague in New York."
"I told Joe," she confessed. "You didn't come that morning—and I was frightened. I thought if stories were to get to him, I'd best be the one to tell them. So I left at once."
"If you had only waited."
"If you had only got word to me."
They fell into explanation of their several movements, from whichShelby, white-faced, suddenly cut loose, saying:—
"What does he know? For God's sake, what does he know? What did you tell?"
"Oh, that I met you, had dinner, went to the theatre—"
"Then why—"
"I'm coming to that. While we were away somebody—Mrs. Weatherwax, I suppose—filled Joe full of malicious town gossip about our—our friendship—and he was terrible. Oh, you can't know, you can't know!"
"But me—me!" cried Shelby, clutching her by the arms. "What about me? Is he down on me? His votes,—his two hundred votes, you know,—they could defeat me—ruin me! Tell me—tell me—"
"No, no; it's not you he blames; not you, Ross. It's I. He thinks I'm a fool—the brute! He calls me a fool!"
"Thank God! Thank God!" ejaculated the man, laughing wildly in his revulsion of relief.
"But I—I am miserable," sobbed the woman, and clung to him when he would have released her. "You will go to your triumph and your future,—what have I left now?"
Shelby swayed unsteadily with his burden, his eyes on the perfect shoulders whose curves played and quivered with the labored breath. He recalled a fragment of poetry—something about "morbid . . . faultless shoulder-blades," which he had overheard Bernard Graves quote to Volney Sprague as Mrs. Hilliard passed at the club. Morbid had seemed an inept word then, but he began to spy out a certain fitness. The house was too still by far—dangerously still; the stillness of espionage. With a flash of intuition he lifted his eyes, and in the doorway met Joe Hilliard. Almost at the same instant the woman in her trumpery saw him too.
"Joe!" she called, in an incredulous, husky whisper. "Joe!"
He loomed there in the dusk like a rock, and with a frightened whimper she tottered and clung to him as she had clung to Shelby.
"I'm not a bad woman, Joe," she babbled. "I'm not a bad woman."
"No one has accused you," replied her husband, putting her gently away.
"Nor am I what you doubtless think," stammered Shelby. "It's all a mistake, Joe; a big mistake. It can be explained—it can be explained—"
Hilliard doubled and relaxed a mighty fist.
"No; not under this roof," he said quietly. "Go!"
The scandal derived its impetus from the vulgar circumstance that the Hilliard washing went to line on Tuesday (Monday having dawned lowering and ended stormy), thereby exposing more family linen than could possibly have been foreseen, since the day laundress and Mrs. Hilliard's housemaid were bound in friendship by a common appetite for gossip and for tea. Monday's unfinished labors despatched, these familiars laid their heads together over a pannikin of their favorite brew, and the laundress, poising her saucer with the elegance which was the envy of her circle, ventured the opinion that the housemaid was holding in reserve a palate-tickling morsel concerning the missus; whereupon the housemaid cloaked herself afresh with mystery and "suspicioned" that she could tell things if she were one of those odious persons who carried tales, which of course she was not.
Blowing and sipping with the calm which is the handmaiden of true elegance, the laundress conceded both propositions, and edged forward the suggestion that tale-bearing and confidence between intimates were horses of dissimilar color. This was readily admitted by the housemaid with its corollary that anything intrusted in confidence to the bosom of the laundress was as good as locked in the mute confines of the tomb. With these time-honored preliminaries the crisis above stairs as seen from below stairs was promptly bared to the scalpel.
"Whin he come home lasht night He was here," the housemaid imparted in a whisper.
The laundress hurdled the ambiguous pronouns like a thoroughbred.
"Is it th' trut' ye're tellin' me?" she demanded, forgetting her graces, and grounding her saucer with a clatter.
"Cross me hear-rt," said the housemaid, enjoying her sensation.
"Ye'll excuse me intherruptin'—"
"Ye're no intherruptin'. 'Tis th' ind iv th' shtory."
"But phat did th' good ma-an say?"
As the faithful soul did not know, she remarked that there were some things which a lady in her delicate position could not confide even to a bosom friend. She hinted, however, that in the light of what she had told the laundress a week ago of the family jar occasioned by Her meeting Him in New York, the present state of things was easy to conjecture.
But the laundress thirsted for details.
"Was his dayparture suddin like?" she asked.
Feeling that the force of her narrative might suffer from the admission that she had only entered the house by a side door after she had met Him walking rapidly away from the front, the housemaid answered merely by moving sighs. The laundress reasoned from past experience that the font had gone dry, and suddenly remembered that she was promised to help with the Bowers's heavy ironing. This was at a quarter before nine o'clock.
At ten minutes past nine o'clock the laundress remarked across the ironing-board to Mrs. Bowers that if she were one of those odious persons who carried tales, which of course she was not, she could expose the carryings-on of somebody living not a hundred miles away to a tune which would bring the blush to New Babylon's outraged cheek. Mrs. Bowers made haste to answer that she was of principle firmly opposed to gossip; but as an intelligent woman, she recognized that certain things require ventilation for the good of the community, and was accustomed in such emergencies to send personal reluctance to the rear. The tale of how He coming unexpectedly home found Him with Her was then put through its paces with such skilful jockeying that not one in ten would know it for the same dobbin so lately brought limping to the light.
As now set forth, He had fathomed Her and Him with more shrewdness than the world had given him credit for possessing—poor man!—and had been hoodwinked by their transparent devices for meeting at the golf links and on lonely country roads no more than had Mrs. Bowers or any other person of equal virtue and capacity. He had seen, and he had warned. Then, stolen sweets becoming perilous near home, the culprits had taken their several ways to New York,—most fit choice for such a pilgrimage! This too was fathomed and forgiven. O unwise clemency! O base requital! Violence upon discovery? No doubt. Loaded pistol constantly in the house since the last burglar scare. At this Mrs. Bowers recollected shots in the night; Seneca had said "Campaign fireworks"; but she knew better; shots, of course. Dreadful thing to happen at one's very door. An immediate separation naturally. By all the laws of righteousness she should not be given the custody of the child.
In affairs requiring ventilation for the common good Mrs. Bowers could conceive of no instrument so sure as the Widow Weatherwax, who providentially dropped in to borrow flour at the precise moment Mrs. Bowers had decided that if she ever meant to run over and copy the widow's unequalled recipe for floating island, this was the time to do it. Quite in the same breath with her greetings, therefore, Mrs. Bowers intimated that were she one of those odious persons who carried tales, which of course she was not, she could astonish the widow with a chronicle of happenings not remote in time or scene. But when told, the widow was not astonished.
"I've knowed she wuz a Scarlet Woman since the last night ov the camp-meetin' at Eden Centre," she explained. "It come to me when I see her a-standin' outside the circle, and it was borne in on me to testify b'fore the brethren."
In this, its third edition, the tale gained picturesqueness and circumstantial weight. To the New York episode the widow contributed the imaginative touch of a baffled detective, while Mrs. Bowers's shots in the stilly night passed into the province of undisputed fact. The circumstance that the widow had only that morning seen the destroyer of homes walking abroad unmaimed, was but touching evidence that the husband had been too grief-crazed to send a bullet to the mark. The widow almost remembered that the destroyer had limped; therefore the injured man must have resorted to natural weapons. Doubtless the beginning of proceedings for an absolute divorce hung fire only because this was a legal holiday.
As the clock in the town hall struck ten the good women parted company, and the now able-bodied scandal careered bravely into the world. Tinctured by personal equation, the respective variants of Mrs. Bowers and Mrs. Weatherwax had minor differences in the dramatic grouping of detail, but they were variants, nevertheless, and adhered in all essentials to the notable fabric these ladies had joined forces to erect.
Early in the morning the Hon. Seneca Bowers returned to his home for a warmer overcoat, and met the petrifying version of his wife. His first thought was of its bearing on the election.
"True or untrue, Eliza," he declared, energetically, "this servant's chatter must go no farther."
"But if he's a bad man—" began Mrs. Bowers, uneasily.
"I'm not concerned with his morals; it's the party I'm thinking of.Not one soul must you tell—understand that clearly—not one soul."
"I—I did tell one—just one."
"In God's name, who?" cried her husband.
"Don't swear, Seneca. And you a church member."
"Who? Who?"
"Mrs. W—W—" It was impossible to articulate that tongue-worrying name with her lord glaring at her so dreadfully.
The man blenched.
"Not old Weatherwax!"
"Y-yes."
Bowers's jaw hung flaccid. This phenomenon continuing, Mrs. Bowers took alarm.
"You've not gone and had a stroke, have you?" she wavered timidly, feeling for his pulse.
Bowers revived with a grunt, and bolted for the door. His buggy wheel protested stridently as he cramped the vehicle at the horse-block, reassuring Mrs. Bowers that his natural force was not abated; and his flight down town affronted the ordinance against reckless driving which he himself had framed.
Shelby, unnaturally pale, but composed, was issuing from his office staircase, and joined him directly at the curb.
"Jump in," said Bowers, making room.
"No time now."
"But this is important—critical, in fact." Observing no sign of compliance. Bowers lowered head and voice, murmuring, "You know I'm no hand at carrying tales, Ross, but—"
"You won't have to," cut in Shelby. "I know."
"You know?"
"Baffled sleuth—discovery by husband—shots—kicked down steps—divorce case summons in the morning—you see the whole roorback has come my way."
"Roorback!" Bowers caught at the straw. "We can make a sweeping denial, then?"
"Whole hog or none." He smiled sarcastically into the face which had so suddenly gone bright. "The truth has been so far outstripped that you can't see it with a telescope. Get handbills printed denying the story, denounce it as a partisan trick, and sign the statement yourself as chairman of the County Committee. Have them distributed all over town, and station men—men, mind you, not boys—with a supply just outside electioneering limits at each polling place. If the yarn spreads elsewhere in the district, wire our people to take similar measures."
"Ross!" Bowers called him back. "I don't need to tell you how glad I am. I never believed it of you."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence," laughed Shelby; "but I'd rather you'd hurry the handbills."
He had a more urgent reason yet, for wishing Bowers to take himself off. A block or two up the street, where the trees began to interlace their denuded branches and the court-house common sparkled with frosty rime, he had seen the Widow Weatherwax accost Ruth Temple. The girl had stopped when addressed, but almost immediately walked on, as if to escape the little busybody who, nothing daunted, trotted at elbow for a rod or more. Then Ruth came down the slope alone, and was intercepted by Shelby at her gate.
"I must speak with you," he said abruptly. "My good name is being dragged in the dirt, and I must assure you—"
"No, no," Ruth interposed.
"I tell you I must. You have heard this calumny. I saw her stop you—the woman who is peddling it from door to door. I must speak—it's no time for mincing words—speak to you personally—Bowers will answer to my constituency—speak to you personally, I say, appeal to you to believe in me. You don't know what your belief in me has been—my inspiration, my safeguard. Don't take it away—it's vital; don't deprive me of all this on hearsay. Say you'll not. Give me a sign—"
"Go win in spite of it." In a single wave of generous impulse she had spoken, put out her hand, and slipped past him, flushing, through the gate.
"I can't fail now," he exulted, detaining her an instant. "And victory means so much. It means—listen: I'll tell you a thing I've breathed to no one else; success to-day means the governorship two years hence! It's been fairly promised me—the governorship! That's the great stake—part of it, rather; you're the rest; you who believe in me and bid me win. I've not changed my mind since the day we rode together. I told you to think over what I said, and I've given you time. I meant then to come to you on the night of my election—a victor—and so I shall. I couldn't know that I should have the executive mansion to offer you, but it's none too good. I'll come! I'll come!"
There was more solid ground than mere confidence in his destiny behind Shelby's bold front. The earliest mail delivery had shed a glimmer of hope in the shape of a midnight note from Mrs. Hilliard. He did not require her reminder that the voting strength of Little Poland was no longer to be counted in his column—he had thought and fought that out in the small hours; but he did need and pounced upon the statement that Little Poland's master would be out of town the greater part of election day. The scrawl ended with an appointment for a clandestine meeting at eleven o'clock, toward which he now bent his steps on leaving Ruth.
Mrs. Hilliard had named a cemetery on the immediate outskirts as the rendezvous—a choice on whose evil omen Shelby wasted no thought. In the heyday of their flirtation he and Mrs. Hilliard had made frequent use of it as a Platonic trysting-place, and he climbed the silent paths toward the summit of the mount, as it was styled in that level land, with no sentiment save approval of her wisdom in seizing upon the one spot in all New Babylon whose privacy was certain.
Mrs. Hilliard, shivering in the lee of a pretentious granite shaft which bore her family name, was more susceptible.
"Bleak—desolate," she chattered. "What an end for our Fools' Paradise.But where else could we escape their prying eyes?"
"You've heard what they're saying?"
She nodded listlessly.
"Who has not heard?" As they huddled in the shelter of the monument she brooded over the plain below wherein the canal, livid, yet unfrozen still, half girdled the town in a serpentine fold. Each chimney curled a light spiral into the nipping air. "Under every one a wagging tongue," she said. "It's known to every soul except one."
"You mean he's still in the dark?"
"He can't know yet. He took an early train to Centreport. It's some quarry business that could not wait. I remembered it last night—after—after you had gone; so I wrote. It was past two o'clock before I dared steal out to post the letter."
Shelby shrugged into the collar of his ulster.
"I don't deserve all this," he muttered.
"Don't say that. You've done things, too. You've stood for—things; something to pin faith to. You are—"
"I'm your good friend—remember that."
"Friend!"
He drew her farther into shelter, and tucked her furs about her throat.
"Now concentrate your mind," he enjoined, "and tell me exactly the lay of the land. Did he communicate with the foreman at the quarry before he left?"
"Yes. I overheard him telephone Kiska before breakfast. He said he'd return at half-past three. There's no train to-day from Centreport till then."
"And there is no other till the polls close. He said nothing, then, about voting the hands before afternoon?"
"They're at work this morning."
"On election day! You're sure?"
"They're working half a day on full day's pay. Joe's hurrying some contract through. I don't understand it very well, but the stone has to be shipped before the canal freezes on account of—something—freight rates—"
"Never mind that. What did he say to Kiska about voting—that the men should be ready at such and such a time?"
"No, no; I know about that. Before anything happened it was arranged that the men should vote about four o'clock. He merely told Kiska he'd return at three-thirty."
"Good, good!" exclaimed Shelby, making ready for action. "Every naturalized mother's son in Little Poland shall vote for me before the train can even whistle. Now, you go home, Cora," he charged, "and drink something hot against this graveyard chill. Keep a stiff upper lip—that's my creed. Everything blows over in time. The scandal is so tall that it will topple of itself. Nobody will believe it after election."
"But Joe? Think of him when he learns what they're saying, and that you've outwitted him."
Shelby grinned.
"That's the situation's one humorous phase," said he. "The two things will neutralize one another's effect,—like Kilkenny cats, you know. He'll not dare raise a row about the votes for fear of lending color to the scandal."
But Mrs. Hilliard, whose sense of humor was sluggish this morning, rejoined bitterly;—
"The row will fall to me."
"He needn't know your part in this—the matter of the votes; and as for the other thing—well, after all, he is your husband, hard and fast, and you'd best try and patch things up."
She straightened, flashing him a stony look, and he braced himself for a hurricane; but to his equal discomfiture she went down beside the shaft in a passionate fit of weeping.
"I should be under here," she sobbed; "I should be under here."
Shelby, tingling to be gone, shifted from foot to foot, and offered some blundering solace which she put away.
"You've ceased to care," she accused.
He protested, adding indiscreetly that she had done too much for him for that.
"You've filled the place he should have filled!"
Shelby was silent, goaded to torture by the lapse of precious minutes.
"There's only blackness ahead!"
"Don't take the dark view," entreated Shelby, groping desperately for a bright one. "The man can't live always—so much older than you—and then—your life's your own—"
The bowed figure shuddered.
"It's a dreadful thing to do—but I've thought that, too. I can't help it. You—you are the real one—the real one—" She waited.
"Yes." It was screwed from him.
"The real one—and if—I know I don't need your promise—but if—"
"Yes, yes; of course if—"
Neither of them would name the contingency. Shelby contrived a leave-taking, and bounded down the terraced slopes. It was quite noon when he reached the Tuscarora House, but without a thought of food, he got his horse and buggy from the livery, speeding the harnessing with his own hands, and whipped away for Little Poland.
On reaching the Hilliard quarries he confronted unexpected obstacles. The men had quitted work and scattered to their homes, and Kiska was to be discovered neither in nor around the little office. However, the Polish lad in temporary charge, Kiska's own son, was not slow to recognize the original of the campaign lithograph which in his home enjoyed honors second only to a highly-colored Madonna, and went flying in search of his father. Shelby took instant advantage of his absence to telephone Bowers, whom he luckily located at his midday meal. He learned that the handbills had been sown broadcast with encouraging effect, and that the general opinion of the voting public leaned toward unbelief. Shelby told his whereabouts, and requested the prompt services of Jasper Hinchey and three or four kindred spirits, ringing off after certain mysterious, though concise, directions regarding a concert hall in the Flats, which he meant shortly to utilize.
He had barely hung up the receiver when a telegraph messenger from town brought a despatch for Kiska. Shelby's breath shortened at sight of the yellow envelope, but he mustered a specious unconcern, telling the boy that the foreman's return, though certain, was not within immediate prospect, and volunteered to receipt for the message himself—an offer readily embraced by the lad, who, without a glance, pocketed the book in which Shelby scrawled Kiska's own name, and fared away with a head aflame from the bonfires of the coming night.
The envelope was loosely gummed, and gave under gentle persuasion. Shelby threw a glance from either window of the narrow room, and drew the paper from its cover. It was from Hilliard at Centreport, and announced that he had missed his train. The reader's delight was qualified by the succeeding statement that he should come by the canal, and that the men were to be in readiness.
"He's hired a launch or tug," commented Shelby. "Horses aren't to be had to-day for rubies or fine gold."
He replaced the message, sealed the envelope, and flung it on the table, catching sight of Kiska, as he did so, striding along the canal bank toward the office. The big Pole burst into the room a moment later, his simple face aglow at the meeting, and sputtered broken excuses for keeping his preserver waiting. Shelby shook both his grimy hands, and smilingly supposed that Kiska had made up his mind how he should vote. Kiska's English was uncertain, but there was no misreading his gesticulation.
"And Little Poland?" insinuated the candidate, blandly.
"Leetle Poland ees ein beeg vote," Kiska eagerly assured him; "joost ein beeg vote for Meester Shelby. Whan you save me, Meester Heelyard he say eef anybody no want to vote for you, he can joost valk aus de qvarry."
"Very kind of him," said Shelby. "Now, since you all know your own minds, I'd take it as a favor if you would get to the polls at the earliest possible moment. The voting promises to be heavy toward the close, and I don't care to have my friends inconvenienced. By the way, Kiska," he broke off carelessly "there's a telegram for you over there. It came not ten minutes ago."
By dint of facial contortion Kiska puzzled out the meaning, and handed the message to Shelby, who gave it grave perusal.
"Ah," said he. "You see he's anxious about it, too. If there was any way of reaching him by wire, we could relieve his mind; as there is not, the wise course is to go ahead. His coming by boat is uncertain. It will be a nice little surprise for him to find that you've got the votes all in."
So it seemed to Kiska, and the business of rallying Little Poland to its civic duties was instantly got under way. Here, too, were obstacles. Having been told to present themselves at a later hour, the villagers were in all states of unreadiness; but by impressing this helper and that, doing the work of three men himself, and with the reënforcement of Jap Hinchey and his co-workers, whom Bowers hurried to the scene in a hired carriage whose bravery of varnish made mock of their rags, Kiska at last collected his compatriots. The rented vehicle was urged back at a gallop to Bowers and continued public usefulness, and the whole body of enfranchised Poles, under the escort of Kiska, Jap Hinchey, and his fellows, trudged off in groups of five and ten to New Babylon.
Little Poland lay within the same voting precinct as the Flats, and when Shelby had assured himself that the straggling column was finally in motion, he rode on in advance toward this quarter and the concert hall to which he had made mysterious reference in his telephoned directions to the Hon. Seneca Bowers. From the elevation of a canal bridge he searched the waterway for a sign of Hilliard's coming, pondering anxiously whether a pillar of smoke at the horizon's rim were his herald; but a glance at his watch reassured. The train which Hilliard had missed was barely due, and to cover the distance by boat meant an additional hour at least. Employing a street urchin to lead his horse to its stable, he struck out on foot for the Flats.
At the tawdry concert hall everything was as it should be, and in the brief interval before the arrival of the Poles he received inspiriting news from one of his workers. Money was flowing, buckets of it, but beyond doubt they held the longer purse. Their policy of offering high prices to the floaters at the outset had drained the disciples of the late Chuck O'Rourke before twelve o'clock, and patriots were now to be had at bargain rates. Some few conscientious souls who could not see their way to a Shelby vote had been induced to stay away from the polls altogether; and at least a dozen irreconcilables had been laid by the heels with bad whiskey before they had done protesting that not all the powers of darkness could deter them from casting an unsullied ballot under the emblem of the Square.
The Poles came hulking in, Shelby himself keeping tally at the door, and when Kiska had urged the last loiterer over the threshold, the key was turned. Drinks were sparingly circulated, and Kiska harangued the crowd briefly in Polish, hammering in Shelby's instructions for their conduct in the voting booths, and impressing them with the fact that good cheer in plenty would await them here on their return. Under the efficient supervision of Jasper Hinchey and his lieutenants they were now guided to the polling-place in squads of three or four, returning presently to unlimited refreshment and a surreptitious two-dollar bill—shining examples and incentives to such as had not yet voted to speed their going.
Yet with all their willingness, the affair consumed time, and twiceShelby went into the dusty wings of the stage to a window overlooking thecanal, and strained to detect the panting of a laboring launch or tug.But the last quarryman voted, the polls closed, darkness fell, and JoeHilliard was not yet come.
A pleasant local custom fell this night into abeyance. Years out of mind the adherents of the leading political parties had mingled sociably before a non-partisan bulletin board in the courthouse, much as hostile camps fraternize in the truce forerunning peace. But the old, simpler order of things had suffered more wrenches than one in this acrid congressional campaign, and the warring factions could unite only on the hibernian proposition that union was impossible. One party, therefore, made ready to gather in the accustomed place, the other in the Grand Opera House, while seceding remnants from both swelled the crowd in the street before the office of theWhig, which, with unlooked-for enterprise, had prepared to announce the returns by stereopticon.
At six o'clock Shelby broke his fast with a ravenous meal at the hotel, which Bowers shared, and three-quarters of an hour later the two men shouldered through the boisterous mob in the streets to Shelby's law office, where arrangements had been perfected to receive the returns by messenger and private wire. TheWhigbulletin over the way had already massed a constituency extending to the Temple lawn, which, in default of definite news, it was edifying with views of foreign travel and cartoons bearing on the larger issues of the election. Within doors the telegraph operator was already installed at the ancient table which had graced the grand-paternal distillery, and William Irons was making good the tedium of a dreary day in the deserted office by goggling from the ticking instrument to a consignment of iced champagne just arrived from the Tuscarora House.
Shelby was in rare fettle.
"William, thou abstemious youth," he addressed the clerk, "I am tempted to empty one of these cold bottles down your scandalized neck and pack you off with another for the Widow Weatherwax!"
He had the youth carry the wine to the rear room and set out glasses against the coming of his friends, drinking a bumper meanwhile to William's good health and the sentiment Confusion to Fusion. Never a solitary winebibber, and William remaining recalcitrant, he returned to the outer office and demanded "no heeltaps" of the operator and Bowers. This accomplished to his taste, he crammed a greenback into the dazed clerk's fingers and dismissed him for the night with the injunction to buy and blow the biggest tin horn in New Babylon.
His intimates now began to drift in, and the toast of Confusion to Fusion enjoyed a wide popularity, the telegraph operator and the county chairman being the only ones permitted to flag in the exacting ceremonies which the occasion required.
"I'll do my hurrahing when the returns are in," said Bowers, and stripping to his shirt sleeves he took his station under a drop-light and made ready to figure the local result.
But the local returns were tardy. It developed early that throughout the Demijohn split tickets had prevailed to an unprecedented extent. Heretofore reliable localities ran after strange socialistic and prohibition gods, to avoid voting for either of the leading candidates; while Graves and Shelby both gained support in quarters where it would have been sheer fatuity to hope. The hurrying news from the country at large shamed the dribble at the threshold. Texas and Vermont, those stock commonplaces of election night humor, went Democratic and Republican by the usual majorities, and all signs pointed to a sweeping victory for Shelby's party in state and Union. And still Tuscarora and the Demijohn aped the Sphinx.
Men elsewhere became curious. Bowers received and passed silently to Shelby demands for a forecast from other county chairmen in the district; from leaders prominent in the state; from great metropolitan newspapers which were tabulating the congressional elections of the nation and studying the complexion of the future House.
"Claim the district, of course," directed Shelby. "Say we're deliberate, but true blue."
The drumming humble-bee [Transcriber's note: bumble-bee?] voice of the crowd below the windows watching Volney Sprague's bulletin suddenly lifted in a lion roar. Elation in that quarter was ominous, and Shelby drew a curtain. It appeared that a minor revolt against the Boss in New York City, with which the Tuscarora independents had felt themselves peculiarly in sympathy, had made good its claim for recognition. Shelby turned from the window with a laugh.
"Merely a little extra diplomacy for Old Silky," he said. "Within a twelvemonth each reformer will have a foreign mission."
A tactless friend embraced the occasion to wonder where the Boss would banish Bernard Graves should he chance to win; but even idle speculation on such a possibility was so distasteful to the company that the blunderer only retrieved his mistake by toasting Confusion to Fusion anew.
The returns from the laggard Demijohn presently thickened, and Shelby left his seat to pace the floor, while Bowers, with an unlighted cigar between his teeth, and looking very like Grant indeed, figured, discarded, and figured again as successive reports modified his calculations.
"Never saw its equal—never!" he grunted. "Here's our own town hanging fire till almost the last like some jay village in the Adirondacks. We've always prided ourselves on being prompt." He caught a flying sheet from the operator and groaned: "Wearethe last! By the Great Horn Spoon!" For Shelby's ear alone he muttered: "The last, Ross; New Babylon's the last, and the die by which you lose or win. Figure it yourself."
Shelby ran through his senior's calculations and nodded without speech. No one spoke now. Not a wine-glass tinkled. The room sensed a crisis. By telephone, special messenger, and the instrument at the table the belated story of New Babylon's vote pieced itself together under Bowers's pencil. The candidate hovered above him, intent on every stroke.
"Good God!" he whispered suddenly; "it hangs on the Flats!"
"Yes; it's the last precinct. They sent word that the thick-skulled Poles and the rest had made an awful mess of the ballots. Tom"—to one of the onlookers—"'phone the Flats again."
But on the instant the Flats embodied itself in the doorway in the person of a breathless messenger. Bowers's trembling fingers fumbled the paper and cast it fluttering toward the floor, but Shelby fastened on it in mid-air, read it, crumpled it, mechanically made it smooth again, and laid it gently on his desk. There came a second roar from the street, a medley of cheers, groans, hisses, and the blare of horns. Shelby again drew a curtain. On theWhig'sscreen was displayed a huge rooster with the legend: IT'S GRAVES!
Shelby caught a murmuring from the group behind him: vapid expressions of regret, scorching condolence, pitying oaths; then the voice of a newcomer, a newspaper correspondent, asking Bowers if they conceded their defeat.
He spun about, crying,—
"We concede nothing."
The reporter said that the returns as received indicated a slight majority for the fusion candidate.
"We dispute the returns."
"But, Ross,—" Bowers put in.
"We dispute the returns. Should the official count be adverse, we shall dispute that. In view of the methods employed by the allies of the independents, it becomes nothing less than a public duty to carry the contest to the floor of the House of Representatives."
"It will be a House of your political friends," remarked the correspondent, impersonally. "Shall I then quote you as claiming your election?"
"Most emphatically, yes. Quote me as confident of a verdict approving my public course and rebuking the slanderous attack on my private character."
"What's the use?" protested Bowers, as the reporter hurried off in quest of Bernard Graves. "It's too late to bluff."
"Use," echoed Shelby. "I tell you, man, there's a blunder in the returns. Look, man, look!" snatching up the report from the Flats. "Isn't that arrant nonsense on the face of it? The Flats, mind you; our own little pocket borough of the Flats! Don't talk to me about the Poles muddling things; those inspectors of election can give them cards for stupidity and take every trick. Let me 'phone the Flats."
And he was right. The inspectors of the belated precinct, conscious of unwonted delay, nervous from long weighing of defective ballots, harassed by incessant demands for their report, had capped the climax of their offending by announcing the result as favorable to Graves. The mistake was discovered and rectified within fifteen minutes of its commission. Shelby had carried the precinct, and with it the election by something less than two hundred votes.
Giddy with the reaction, the Hon. Seneca Bowers gulped glass after glass of champagne, toasting Confusion to Fusion like the veriest roisterer.
"And we abused the Poles," he said in self-reproach. "Ross, it was thePoles who saved the day."
Shelby was the one self-contained being in the room.
"Yes," he answered soberly, "it was the Poles."
With stern straightforwardness theWhigbulletin over the way had promptly set forth the corrected result, and the crowd, now swollen by more deserters from the tame gatherings in the little theatre and the court-house, was clamoring for a sight of the victor whom everybody knew was within hearing. Shelby's jubilant companions were puzzled at his reluctance to comply with the popular demand. He declined to show himself, however, till the arrival of a serenading brass band compelled an acknowledgment, when he stepped from a window to a little balcony and spoke a few grave words: he had never doubted their support, they had repaid his trust, he was grateful; as he had championed their lesser interests in the smaller field, so should he strive to further their greater concerns in the national lists to which he was to pass their chosen knight.
Within the law office preparations were rife for adjourning to the Tuscarora House as a less restricted arena for the celebration which the fitness of things demanded. Shelby begged them to go before him, promising to follow.
"I need a few minutes to myself, boys," he said. "It's been a strain, you know."
They caroused away. Bowers the most jocund bacchanal of all; the operator boxed over his instrument against harm and slipped out; and Shelby was left solitary with the litter and the lees. One by one he extinguished the lights, and in darkness, at length, halted at the window from which he had so often marked the goings and comings of Ruth Temple. The old house was brilliantly alight in its lower rooms; lit, he dared hope, in honor of his triumph and his anticipated return. He turned and left his office with elastic step.
Fumbling with the lock in the dim light of the hall, he was spied from below by a newsboy who came bounding up the stairs.
"Extry! Extry 'dition of th'Whig, Mr. Shelby," he called. "Read all about yer 'lection an' th' drowndin' accident!"
"Drowning accident!" Shelby started and seized a paper. "Who is drowned?"
The lad did not know. He had not read beyond the headline which seemed to promise salability. But in the obscurity of the landing Shelby came upon the particulars swiftly enough. Skimming the brief despatch, here a sentence, there a sentence seared itself into his memory.
"Missed his train at Centreport—conscientious citizen, valuing his vote—hired a naphtha launch—collision—hampered by clothing—leaves a sorrowing widow—"
"Th' extry 'dition is two cents," reminded the urchin.
The executive mansion was strewn with the wreckage of the inaugural reception. A musky odor blent of plant life and massed humanity hung thickly throughout the spacious rooms and corridors; the bower of palms and flowery brightness at the foot of the great staircase, which had fended the orchestra, and incidentally barred an intrusive if sovereign people from the private apartments, was jostled and awry, its blossoms half despoiled; here lay a trampled glove, there a shining shred of braid, beyond an embarrassed cigar stump—dumb emblems of social Albany, gold-laced officialdom, and the unaristocratic unofficial ruck, whose mingled tide had beat upon the new governor's threshold in the late hours of the afternoon. A clock somewhere about the scene of devastation chimed midnight, and a man with attractive black eyes, who had been monopolizing his hostess upward of two hours, outstaying all other guests save one, now took his belated leave.
"Yes; I prophesy a brilliant season, Mrs. Shelby," he said. "With a woman of your talents in this house, Albany must at last awake."
Cora Shelby returned to one of the smaller reception rooms, where an open fire wrought changing shadows in the face of the Hon. Seneca Bowers.
"I think ex-Senator Ludlow is perfectly fascinating," she exclaimed."Have you known him long?"
"All of ten years," returned Bowers, with a little tightening of the lips. "Most everybody in politics knows Handsome Ludlow."
"Ah, he is handsome. And so polished, too."
Bowers found the topic difficult, and changed it.
"What's your opinion of Ross's inauguration?" he asked. "I call it anA-1 success."
"It would have been a success," discriminated Cora, "a pronounced success, if Ross had approached it with a tithe of the spirit I urged. But no; simplicity, simplicity! You would have thought the affair a transfer of Methodist parsons. No military escort to the capitol, no decorations in the Assembly Chamber to speak of, no music, no anything that the occasion demanded."
"Fuss and feathers never did appeal to Ross," said the guest. "Besides, I guess he thought the last administration had splurged enough for two."
"Their fine plumage covered as slovenly housekeeping as I ever saw," interjected Mrs. Shelby, momentarily diverted from her husband's shortcomings. "I wish you might have seen what I have seen in out-of-the-way corners of this establishment. What the servants did for their wages I can't conceive. But, after all, those people had the right idea of upholding the dignity of the position. The ex-governor didn't decline an escort to the capitol when he took office. That puts me out of patience with Ross every time I think of it. Then, to cap the climax, he didn't even take a carriage; he walked!"
"Walked down with me," Bowers chuckled.
"And, by Jove, nobody knew him. One of the orderlies wanted to keep him out of the executive chamber."
Cora shuddered, and the old man bestirred his wits to soothe her outraged sensibilities.
"You must remember that he made his run on an economy platform," he reminded. "He believed it, too, every word. After all, you can't say that you've not had things your own way here at the mansion."
"It's a mercy I did. He would have had the house reception and the staff dinner equally prim if I hadn't put my foot down. I said no; be as puritanic as you please at the capitol, but the executive mansion concerns me; I'm governor here."
"Tolerably big commonwealth, too," commented Bowers, dryly. "Somehow it puts me in mind of what I thought palaces were like when I was a boy."
"Oh, yes; it's well enough, though the decorations aren't to my taste; but the location is very unfashionable—orphan asylums, hovels, saloons, and all that under one's very nose."
"I hadn't noticed the saloons."
"Well, there's a saloon at any rate. I saw it to-day from one of the south windows. The state was stupidly short-sighted to buy a house in this quarter. The executive mansion ought to stand in Quality Row."
"What's that?" asked Bowers.
"Not much to look at—just a block or two of houses near the capitol, not one of which could have cost more than my own place in New Babylon, for all that famous people have lived in them; but it's the cream of Albany."
"Everything else is skim milk, I suppose?"
Mrs. Shelby eluded the classification.
"Nearly all that's socially significant is grouped thereabouts," she pursued; "the cathedral, the Beverwyck Club, Canon North, and Mrs. Teunis Van Dam. The canon and Mrs. Van Dam are the keys to the social citadel, I assure you. Probably you noticed them on the platform at the Inauguration. Then, she helped me receive this afternoon, thanks to a bit of diplomacy."
Bowers absorbed these esoteric deliverances in meekness.
"It takes a woman to bottom such things," he said admiringly. "I guess you'll pass."
Cora herself harbored no doubts, but she disclaimed a single-handed victory.
"I shouldn't know all these things yet if it were not for the governor's military secretary, Colonel Schuyler Smith. Do you know him?"
"I'm not sure that I can place the colonel," ruminated Bowers. "Is he that blond young dandy whose sword got tangled in his legs?"
"Yes, poor dear! He's not used to wearing it yet. But he's a treasure. He's Mrs. Teunis Van Dam's grandson, you know, and like her is descended from all those delightful old Dutchmen who make such enviable ancestors, and have stained glass windows in the cathedral. He knows who is who, I assure you. Ex-Senator Ludlow does too, for that matter; though he doesn't care for Mrs. Van Dam's circle. He thinks it too stately and old régime. He goes with the younger set—Mrs. Tommy Kidder's—and he says Mrs. Tommy is quite my own style."
The governor entered the room in the midst of these matters and listened soberly. Shelby had taken on more years than his congressional service spanned. His dark hair had grayed at the temples; his old puffiness of jowl and dewlap had vanished; and the strong bone framework of his head showed for what it truly was. Tuscarora ancients, who remembered the pioneer, said that Shelby favored his grandfather.
Bowers turned to him with a laugh.
"It's a mighty good thing you've got a skilled pilot in these waters," he said.
"Yes, Cora knows her way around," returned her husband. "I dare say the world's a brighter place for this varnish, though I've noticed that when you scrape through it people average much alike. It's meant more to me to-day to have you here, old friend, than the notables. You gave me my start." He hesitated, glanced at his wife, and added: "But they were all welcome. Cora has come into her kingdom, and I wouldn't abate a single courtier."
"I've waited for my kingdom," she declared; "waited for it in sackcloth and ashes. You can't call Washington anything else for a congressman's wife. Her husband may get glory; she gets snubs. Now my turn has come, and I've plans galore. Milicent's début is one of them. I'll bring her out with a ball when she has had enough of her finishing school. Ex-Senator Ludlow thinks it an inspiration."
The men exchanged a look.
"Handsome Ludlow isn't an ideal adviser for young girls," droppedShelby, quietly.
"He's a victim of gossip; he told me so. You and I know too well what that means to countenance it. Besides, you're going to appoint him commissioner of something or other—I read it in yesterday's papers; but that's politics, I suppose."
Shelby gloomed in his corner, but made no answer.
Bowers essayed a diversion.
"I saw Bernard Graves's wife in the assembly chamber this morning," he remarked. "Seems to me she's looking rather peaked since her marriage."
"Ruth Graves here!" exclaimed Cora.
"I saw her too," said Shelby. "She congratulated me later in the executive chamber. She has been living in New York this winter. Graves is still lecturing around the country, telling how he wrote his poem and what it's all about."
"I presume she couldn't resist coming up to see how we would behave,"Cora reflected, aloud.
"She is visiting Mrs. Van Dam," added the governor.
"Of all people!" Mrs. Shelby's wonder was unrestrained. "I do remember, though," she continued presently, "that she made friends here when she was in Vassar College. It's plain enough why Mrs. Van Dam has taken her up again. She wants to know all about us."
It was an easy step now to the conclusion that perhaps such an old friend really merited an invitation to the executive mansion.
The governor brushed his forehead with a weary gesture, drew a chair toBowers's side, and unfolded a bundle of manuscript.
"I know it's late," he said apologetically, "but there's a bit of my message I'd like to read to you. There'll be no time in the morning if you're still bent on taking the early train to Tuscarora. I'd like your opinion whether it's what the plain people want."
Mrs. Shelby found the reading unspeakably juiceless and went yawning to bed. Nor did the governor detain Bowers long. A servant entering presently discovered Shelby before the grate alone.
"Don't wait up for me," he directed kindly. "I'll see to this fire, and remember not to blow out the gas."
The relic of the old régime restrained his surprise at these democratic doings, smiled decorously, and withdrew. Jocosity slipped out at his dignified heels. The man before the fire drank deep in self-communion, and his face was grave. For the first time that crowded day he could look his future in the face. Yet, evoked by a woman's handclasp in the long line which had filed by him as he stood in the executive chamber surrounded by his glittering staff, it was the past which most absorbed him. It struck him as a wanton caprice of fate that they should have been flung together that day. Ruth, whom he had promised a share in these honors; Ruth, whom he had boasted that he would return and claim; Ruth, whom he had put away because he must, because of a loftier standard which—grimmest irony of all!—she herself had unwittingly set up. He wondered—as he had wondered often in the years which had witnessed her marriage, his own, and his rise to power—whether shehadwaited that night; whether shehadcared as he, apart from the red passion of the struggle, could perceive that he had cared.
A vagrant memory of the morning's inauguration intruded. The moment of his oath had been a time of solemn consecration for him, a laying on of hands unseen; the shades of his greatest predecessors stood round about; the genius of the state was in presence. Then came Cora and kissed him. Emotional souls in the gallery applauded the act, but the husband divined its prompting egoism and was cold.