“Man is for woman made,And woman made for manAs the spur is for the jade,As the scabbard for the blade,As for liquor is the can,So man's for woman made,And woman made for man.”
THE HERO STUDIES THE MONA LISA SMILE IN ITS PROPER SETTING. INCIDENTALLY, HE MEETS AN EMPIRE BUILDER
Since James was not courting observation he took as inconspicuous a way as possible to The Brakes. He was irritably conscious of the incongruity of his elaborate afternoon dress with the habits of democratic Verden, which had been too busy “boosting” itself into a great city, or at least one in the making, to have found time to establish as yet a leisure class.
Leaving the car at the entrance to Lakeview Park, he cut across it by sinuous byways where madronas and alders isolated him from the twilit green of the open lawn. Though it was still early the soft winter dusk of the Pacific Northwest was beginning to render objects indistinct. This perhaps may have been the reason he failed to notice the skulking figure among the trees that dogged him to his destination.
James laughed at himself for the exaggerated precaution he took to cover a perfectly defensible action. Why shouldn't he visit at the house of P. C. Frome? Entirely clear as to his right, he yet preferred his call not to become a matter of public gossip. For he did not need to be told that there would be ugly rumors if it should get out that Big Tim had called at his office for a conference and he had subsequently been seen going to The Brakes. Dunderheads not broad enough to separate social from political intercourse would be quick to talk unpleasantly about it.
Deflecting from the path into a carriage driveway, he came through a woody hollow to the rear of The Brakes. The grounds were spacious, rolling toward the road beyond in a falling sweep of well-kept lawn. He skirted the green till he came to a “raveled walk” that zig-zagged up through the grass, leaving to the left the rough fern-clad bluff that gave the place its name.
The man who let him in had apparently received his instructions, for he led Farnum to a rather small room in the rear of the big house. Its single occupant was reclining luxuriantly among a number of pillows on a lounge. From her lips a tiny spiral of smoke rose like incense to the ceiling. James was conscious of a little ripple of surprise as he looked down upon the copper crown of splendid hair above which rested the thin nimbus of smoke. He had expected a less intimate reception.
But the astonishment had been sponged from his face before Valencia Van Tyle rose and came forward, cigarette in hand.
“You did find time.”
“Was it likely I wouldn't?”
“How should I know?” her little shrug seemed to say with an indifference that bordered on insolence.
James was piqued. After all then she had not opened to him the door to her friendship. She was merely amusing herself with him as a provincialpis aller.
Perhaps she saw his disappointment, for she added with a touch of warmth: “I'm glad you came. Truth is, I'm bored to death of myself.”
“Then I ought to be welcome, for if I don't exorcise the devils of ennui you can now blame me.”
“I shall. Try that big chair, and one of these Egyptians.”
He helped himself to a cigarette and lit up as casually as if he had been in the habit of smoking in the lounging rooms of the ladies he knew. She watched him sink lazily into the chair and let his glance go wandering over the room. In his face she read the indolent sense of pleasure he found in sharing so intimately this sanctum of her more personal life.
The room was a bit barbaric in its warmth of color, as barbaric as was the young woman herself in spite of her super-civilization. The walls, done in an old rose, were gilded and festooned to meet a ceiling almost Venetian in its scheme of decoration. Pink predominated in the brocaded tapestries and in the rugs, and the furniture was a luxurious modern compromise with the Louis Quinze. There were flowers in profusion—his gaze fell upon the American Beauties he had sent an hour or two ago—and a disorder of popular magazines and French novels. Farnum did not need to be told that the room was as much an exotic as its mistress.
“You think?” her amused voice demanded when his eyes came back to her. “that the room seems made especially for you.”
She volunteered information. “My uncle gave me a free hand to arrange and decorate it.”
As he looked at her, smoking daintily in the fling of the fire glow, every inch the pampered heiress of the ages, his blood quickened to an appreciation of the sensuous charm of sex she breathed forth so indifferently. The clinging crepe-de-chine—except in public she did not pretend even to a conventional mourning for the scamp whose name she bore lent accent to her soft, rounded curves, and the slow, regular rise and fall of her breathing beneath the filmy lace promised a perfect fullness of bust and throat. He was keenly responsive to the physical allure of sex, and Valencia Van Tyle was endowed with more than her share of magnetic aura.
“You have expressed yourself. It's like you,” he said with finality.
Her tawny eyes met his confident appraisal ironically. “Indeed! You know then what I am like?”
“One uses his eyes, and such brains as heaven has granted him,” he ventured lightly.
“And what am I like?” she asked indolently.
“I'm hoping to know that better soon—I merely guess now.”
“They say all women are egoists—and some men.” She breathed her soft inscrutable ripple of laughter. “Let me hasten to confess, and crave a picture of myself.”
“But the subject deserves an artist,” he parried.
“He's afraid,” she murmured to the fire. “He makes and unmakes senators—this Warwick; but he's afraid of a girl.”
James lit a fresh cigarette in smiling silence.
“He has met me once—twice—no, three times,” she meditated aloud. “But he knows what I'm like. He boasts of his divination and when one puts him to the test he repudiates.”
“All I should have claimed is that I know I don't know what you are like.”
“Which is something,” she conceded.
“It's a good deal,” he claimed for himself. “It shows a beginning of understanding. And—given the opportunity—I hope to know more.” He questioned of her eyes how far he might go. “It's the incomprehensible that lures. It piques interest and lends magic. Behind those eyelids a little weary all the subtle hidden meaning of the ages shadows. The gods forbid that I should claim to hold the answer to the eternal mystery of woman.”
“Dear me! I ask for a photograph and he gives me a poem,” she mocked, touching an electric button.
“I try merely to interpret the poem.”
She looked at him under lowered lids with a growing interest. Her experience had not warranted her in hoping that he would prove worth while. It would be clear gain if he were to disappoint her agreeably.
“I think I have read somewhere that the function of present-day criticism is to befog the mind and blur the object criticised.”
He considered an answer, but gave it up when a maid appeared with a tray, and after a minute of deft arrangement disappeared to return with the added paraphernalia that goes to the making and consuming of afternoon tea.
James watched in a pleasant content the easy grace with which the flashing hands of his hostess manipulated the brew. Presently she flung open a wing of the elaborate cellaret that stood near and disclosed a gleaming array of cut-glass decanters. Her fingers hovered over them.
“Cognac?”
“Think I'll take my tea straight just as you make it.”
“Most Western men don't care for afternoon tea. You should hear my father on the subject.”
“I can imagine him.” He smiled. “But if he has tried it with you I should think he'd be converted.”
She laughed at him in the slow tantalizing way that might mean anything or nothing. “I absolve you of the necessity of saying pretty things. Instead, you may continue that portrait you were drawing when the maid interrupted.”
“It's a subject I can't do justice.”
She laughed disdainfully. “I thought it was time for the flattery. As if I couldn't extort that from any man. It's the A B C of our education. But the truth about one's self—the unpalatable, bitter truth—there's a sting of unexpected pleasure in hearing that judicially.”
“And do you get that pleasure often?”
“Not often. Men are dreadful cowards, you know. My father is about the only man who dares tell it to me.”
Farnum put down his cup and studied her. She was leaning back with her fingers laced behind her head. He wondered whether she knew with what effectiveness the posture set off her ripe charms—the fine modeling of the full white throat, the perfect curves of the dainty arms bare to the elbows, the daring set of the tawny, tilted head. A spark glowed in his eyes.
“Far be it from me to deny you an accessible pleasure, though I sacrifice myself to give it. But my sketch must be merely subjective. I draw the picture as I see it.”
She sipped her tea with an air of considering the matter. “You promise at least a family likeness, with not an ugly wrinkle of character smoothed away.”
“I don't even promise that. For how am I to know what meaning lurks behind that subtle, shadowy smile? There's irony in it—and scorn—and sensuous charm—but back of them all is the great enigma.”
“He's off,” she derided slangily.
“And that enigma is the complex YOU I want to learn. Of course you're a specialized type, a product of artistic hothouse propagation. You're so exquisite in your fastidiousness that to be near you is a luxury. Simplicity and you have not a bowing acquaintance. One looks to see your most casual act freighted with intentions not obvious.”
“The poor man thinks I invited him here to propose to him,” she told the fire gravely, stretching out her little slippered feet toward it.
He laughed. “I'm not so presumptuous. You wouldn't aim at such small game. You would be quite capable of it if you wanted to, but you don't. But I'm devoured with curiosity to know why you asked me, though of course I shan't find out.”
Her narrowed eyes swept him with amusement. “If I knew myself! Alice says it was to make a fool of you. I don't think she is right. But if she is I'm in to score a failure. You're too coolheaded and—” She stopped, her eyes sparkling with the daring of her unvoiced suggestion.
“Say it,” he nodded.
“—and selfish to be anybody's fool. Perhaps I asked you just in the hope you might prove interesting.”
He got up and stood with his arm on the mantel. From his superior height he looked down on her dainty insolent perfection, answering not too seriously the challenge of her eyes. No matter what she meant—how much or how little she was wonderfully attractive. The provocation of the mocking little face lured mightily.
“I am going to prove interested at any rate. Let's hope it may be a preliminary to being interesting.”
“But it never does. Symptoms of too great interest bore one. I enjoy more the men who are impervious to me. Now there's my father. He comes nearer understanding me than anybody else, but he's quite adamantine to my wiles.”
“I shall order a suit of chain armor at once.”
“An unnecessary expense. Your emotions are quite under control,” she told him saucily.
“I wish I were as sure.”
“I thought you promised to be interesting,” she complained.
“Now you're afraid I'm going to make love to you. Let me relieve your mind. I'm not.”
“I knew you wouldn't be so stupid,” she assured him.
“No objection to my admiring your artistic effect at a distance, as a spectator in a gallery?”
“I shall expect that,” she rippled.
“Just as one does a picture too expensive to own.”
“I suppose I AM expensive.”
“Not a doubt of it. But if you don't mind I'll come occasionally to the gallery to study the masterpiece.”
“I'll mind if you don't.”
Voices were heard approaching along the hall. The portieres parted. The immediate effect on Farnum of the great figure that filled the doorway was one of masterful authority. A massive head crested a figure of extraordinary power. Gray as a mediaeval castle, age had not yet touched his gnarled strength. The keen steady eyes, the close straight lips, the shaggy eyebrows heavy and overhanging, gave accent to the rugged force of this grim freebooter who had reversed the law of nature which decrees that railroads shall follow civilization. Scorning the established rule of progress, he had spiked his rails through untrodden forests and unexplored canons to watch the pioneer come after by the road he had blazed. Chief among the makers of the Northwest, he yearly conceived and executed with amazing audacity enterprises that would have marked as monumental the life work of lesser men.
Farnum, rising from his seat unconsciously as a tribute of respect, acknowledged thus tacitly the presence of greatness in the person of Joe Powers.
The straight lips of the empire builder tightened as his eyes gleamed over the soft luxury of his daughter's boudoir. James would have been hard put to it to conceive any contrast greater than the one between this modern berserk and the pampered daughter of his wealth. A Hun or a Vandal gazing down with barbaric scorn on some decadent paramour of captured Rome was the most analogous simile Farnum's brain could summon. What freak of nature, he wondered, had been responsible for so alien an offspring to this ruthless builder? And what under heaven had the two in common except the blood that ran in both their veins?
Peter C. Frome, who had followed his brother-in-law into the room, introduced the young man to the railroad king.
The great man's grip drove the blood from Farnum's hand.
“I've heard about you, young man. What do you mean by getting in my way?”
The young man's veins glowed. He had made Joe Powers notice him. Not for worlds would he have winked an eyelash, though the bones of his hand felt as if they were being ground to powder.
“Do I get in your way, sir?” he asked innocently.
“Do you?” boomed the deep bass of the railroader. “You and that mad brother of yours.”
“He's my cousin,” James explained.
“Brother or cousin, he's got to get off the track or be run over. And you, too, with that smooth tongue of yours.”
Farnum laughed. “Jeff's pretty solid. He may ditch the train, sir.”
“No!” roared Powers. “He'll be flung into the ditch.” He turned abruptly to Frome. “Peter, take me to a room where I can talk to this young man. I need him.”
“'Come into my little parlor,' said the spider to the fly.”
They wheeled as at a common rein to the sound of the young mocking voice. Alice Frome had come in unnoticed and was standing in the doorway smiling at them. The effect she produced was demurely daring. The long lines of her slender sylph-like body, the girlishness of her golden charm, were vigorously contradicted in their suggestion of shyness by the square tilted chin and the challenge in the dancing eyes.
“Alice,” admonished her father with a deprecatory apology in his voice to his brother-in-law.
Powers knit his shaggy brows in a frown not at all grim. The young woman smiled back confidently. She could go farther with him than anybody else in the world could, and she knew it. For he recognized in her vigorous strength of fiber a kinship of the spirit closer than that between him and his own daughter. An autocrat to the marrow, it pleased him to recognize her an exception to his rule. Valencia was also an exception, but in a different way.
“Have you any remarks to make, Miss Frome?” he asked.
“Oh, I've made it,” returned the girl unabashed. She turned to James and shook hands with him. “How do you do, Mr. Farnum? I see you are going to be tied to Uncle Joe's kite, too.”
Was there in her voice just a hint of scorn? James did not know. He laughed a little uneasily.
“Shall I be swallowed up alive, Miss Frome?”
“You think you won't, but you will. He always gets what he wants.”
For all the warmth and energy of youth in her there was a vivid spiritual quality that had always made a deep appeal to James. He sensed the something fine and exquisite she breathed forth and did reverence to it.
“And what does he want now?” the young man parried.
“He wants YOU.”
“Unless you would like him yourself, Alice,” her uncle countered.
The color washed into her cheeks. “Not just now, thank you. I was merely giving him a friendly warning.”
“I'm awfully obliged to you. I'll be on my guard,” laughed James.
He stepped across to the lounge to make his farewell to Mrs. Van Tyle.
“You'll come again,” she said in a low voice.
“Whenever the gallery is open—if I am sent a ticket of admission.”
“Wouldn't it be better to apply for a ticket and not wait for it to be sent?”
“I think it would—and to apply for one often.”
“I am waiting, Mr. Farnum,” interrupted Powers impatiently.
To the young man the suggestion sounded like a command. He bowed to Alice and followed the great man out of the room.
Many business men of every community are respectablecowards. The sense of property fills them with a crampingtimidity.—From the Note Book of a Dreamer.
SAFE AND SOUND BUSINESS RALLIES TO THE DEFENSE OF THE COUNTRY. THE REBEL, FRUSTRATED, PLANS FURTHER VILLAINIES
When James reached his office next morning he found Killen waiting for him. One glance at the weak defiant face told him that the legislator was again in revolt. The lawyer felt a surge of disgust sweep over him. All through the session he had cajoled and argued the weak-kneed back into line. Why didn't Hardy do his own dirty work instead of leaving it to him to soil his hands with these cheap grafters?
No longer ago than yesterday it had been a keen pleasure to feel himself so important a factor in the struggle, to know that his power and his personality were of increasing value to his side.
But to-day—somehow the salt had gone out of it. The value of the issue had dwindled, his enthusiasm gone stale. After all, what did it matter who was elected? Why should not the corporate wealth that was developing the country see that men were chosen to office who would safeguard vested interests? It was all very well for Jeff to talk about democracy and the rights of the people. But Jeff was an impracticable idealist. He, James, stood for success. Within the past twenty-four hours there had been something of a shift of standards for him.
His visit to The Brakes had done that for him. He craved luxury just as he did power, and the house on the hill had said the final word of both to him in the personalities of Joe Powers and his daughter. It had come home to him that the only way to satisfy his ambition was by making money and a lot of it. This morning, with the sharpness of his hunger rendering him irritable, he was in no mood to conciliate disaffectants to the cause of which he was himself beginning to weary.
“Well?” he demanded sharply of Killen.
“I've been looking for your cousin, but I can't find him. He was to have met me here later.”
“Then I presume he'll be here when he said he would.” The eyes of the lawyer were cold and hard as jade.
“You can tell him it won't be necessary for me to see him. I've made other arrangements,” Killen said uneasily.
“You mean that you repudiate your agreement with him. Is that it?” Farnum's voice was like a whiplash.
“I've decided to support Frome. Fact is—”
“Oh, damn the facts! You made an agreement. You're going to sell out. That's all there is to it.”
The young man's face was dark with furious disgust.
Killen flared up. “You better be careful how you talk to me, Mr. Farnum. I might want to know what Big Tim was doing in your office yesterday. I might want to know what business took you up to The Brakes by a mighty roundabout way.”
James strode forward in a rage. “Get out of here before I throw you out, you little spying blackguard.”
“You bet I'll get out,” screamed the mill man. “Get clear out and have nothing more to do with your outfit. But I want to tell you that folks will talk a lot when they know how you and Big Tim fixed up a deal—” Killen, backing toward the door as he spoke, broke off to hasten his exit before the lawyer's threatening advance.
James slammed the door shut on him and paced up and down in an impotent fury of passion. “The dirty little blackleg! He'd like to bracket me in the same class as himself. He'd like to imply that I—By Heaven, if he opens his lying mouth to a hint of such a thing I'll horsewhip the little cad.”
But running uneasily through his mind was an undercurrent of disgust—with himself, with Jeff, with the whole situation. Why had he ever let himself get mixed up with such an outfit? Government by the people! The thing was idiotic, mere demagogic cant. Power was to the strong. He had always known it. But yesterday that old giant at The Brakes had hammered it home to him. He did not like to admit even to himself that his folly had betrayed Hardy's cause, but at bottom he knew he should not have gone to The Brakes until after the election and that he ought never to have let Killen out of the office without an explanation. Yesterday he would have won back the man somehow by an appeal to his loyalty and his self-interest.
He must send word at once to Jeff and let him try to remedy the mischief.
His cousin, coming into the office with Rawson just as James took down the receiver of the telephone, noticed at once the disturbance of the latter.
James told his story. It was clear to him that he must anticipate Killen's disclosure of his visit to The Brakes and so draw the sting from it as far as possible. But his natural reluctance to shoulder blame made him begin with Killen's defection.
“I told you to let me deal with the little traitor,” Rawson exploded.
“He was quite satisfied when I left him yesterday. They must have got at him again,” Jeff suggested. “I left O'Brien with him. But I was dead sure of him.”
James cleared his throat and began casually. “I expect the little beggar got suspicious when he saw Big Tim coming to my office.”
“To your office?” Rawson cut in sharply.
The lawyer flushed, but his eyes met and quelled the incipient doubt in those of the politician. “Yes, he came to feel the ground. Of course I told him flatly where I stood. But Killen must have thought something was doing he wasn't in on. It seems he followed me to The Brakes yesterday afternoon when I called on Mrs. Van Tyle.”
“Followed you to The Brakes. Good Lord!” groaned Rawson. “What in Mexico were you doing there?”
“Thought I mentioned that I was calling on Mrs. Van-Tyle,” returned James stiffly.
“Wasn't that call a little injudicious under the circumstances, James?” contributed Jeff with his whimsical smile.
“I suppose I may call wherever I please.”
“It was a piece of dashed foolishness, that's what it was. You say Killen saw you. The thing will fly like dust in the wind. It will be buzzed all over the House by this time and every man that wants to sell out will find a reason right there,” stormed Rawson.
“Are you implying that I sold out?” demanded James icily.
Jeff put a conciliatory hand on his cousin's shoulder. “Of course he doesn't. He isn't a fool, James. But there's a good deal in what Rawson says. It was a mistake. The waverers will find in it their excuse for deserting. Of course Big Tim has been at them all night. We'll go right up to the House in your machine, Rawson. We haven't a moment to lose.”
Rawson nodded. “It's dollars to doughnuts the thing is past mending, but it's up to us to see. If I can only get at Killen in time I'll choke the story in his throat. You wait here at the 'phone, Jeff, and I'll call you up if you're needed at this end of the line. Better have a taxi waiting below in case you need one. Come along, James.”
If he did not get to Killen in time it was not Rawson's fault, for he made his car flash up and down Verden's hills with no regard to the speed limit. He swept it along Powers Avenue, dodging in and out among the traffic of the busy city like a halfback through a broken field after a kick. With a twist of the wheel he put the machine at the steep hill of Yarnell Way, climbed the brow of it, and plunged with a flying leap down the long incline to the State House.
James clung to the swaying side of the car as it raced down. It was raining hard, and the drops stung their faces like bird shot. Two hundred yards in front appeared a farm wagon, leaped toward them, and disappeared in the gulf behind. A dog barking at them from the roadside was for an instant and then was not. In their wake they left cursing teamsters, frightened horses, women and children scurrying for safety; and in the driver's seat Rawson sat goggle-eyed and rigid, swallowing the miles that lay in front of him.
The car took the last incline superbly and swung up the asphalt carriage way to a Yale finish at the marble stairway of the State House. Rawson was running up the steps almost before the machine had stopped. Farnum caught him at the elevator and a minute later they entered together the assembly room of the House.
One swift glance told Rawson that Killen was not in his seat, and as his eyes swept the room he noted also the absence of Pitts, Bentley, and Miller. Of the doubtful votes only Ashton and Reilly were present.
He flung a question, “anything of Bentley, Akers?”
“Mr. Bentley! Why, yes, sir. He was called to the telephone a few minutes ago and he left at once. Mr. Miller went with him, and Mr. Pitts.”
“Were Ashton and Reilly here then?”
“No, sir. They came in a moment before you did.”
Rawson drew Farnum to one side and whispered.
“Killen must have gone right from your room to Big Tim. They got the others on the phone. They must have been on that street car we met a mile back. There's just a chance to head 'em off. I'll chase back in my machine while you call up Jeff and have him meet the car as it comes in. Tell him not to let them out of his sight if he has to hold them with a gun. You keep an eye on Reilly and Ashton. Don't let anyone talk to them or get them on the phone. Better take them up to the library.”
James nodded sulkily. He did not like Rawson's peremptory manner any the better because he knew his indiscretion had called it down upon him. What he had been unable to forget for the past hour was that if this break to Frome had happened yesterday it would have been he that gave the orders and Rawson who jumped to execute them. Now he had slipped back to second place.
He caught Jeff on the line and repeated Rawson's orders without comment of his own, after which he went back from the committee room, gathered up Reilly and Ashton, and took them on a pretext to the library.
It must have been nearly an hour later that a messenger boy handed James a note. It was a hasty scribble from Rawson.
Euchred, by thunder! Both Jeff and I missed them. Big Tim butted in with a car at Grover Street before we could make connections. Am waiting at the House for them. Don't bring A. & R. in till time to vote. FROME CAN'T WIN IF YOU MAKE THEM BOTH STICK.
James stuck the note in his pocket and flung himself with artificial animation into the story he was telling. Once or twice the others suggested a return to the House, but he always had just one more good story they must hear. Since only routine business was under way there was no urgency, and when at length they returned to the House chamber the clock pointed to five minutes to twelve.
Rawson and two or three of the staunchest Hardy men relieved Farnum of his charge in the cloak room and took care of the two doubtfuls. The seats of Bentley, Miller, Pitts and Killen were still vacant, and there was a tense watchfulness in the room that showed rumors were flying of a break in the deadlock.
Already the state senators were drifting in for the noon joint sessions, and along with them came presently the missing assemblymen flanked by O'Brien and Frome adherents.
The President of the Senate called the session to order and announced that the eleventh general assembly would now proceed to take the sixty-fourth ballot for the election of a United States Senator.
In an oppressive silence the clerk began to call the roll.
“Allan.”
A raw-boned farmer from one of the coast counties rose and answered “Hardy.”
“Anderson.”
In broken English a fat Swede shouted, “Harty.”
“Ashton.”
“Hardy.” The word fell hesitantly from dry lips. The man would have voted for the Transcontinental candidate had he dared, but he was not sure enough that the crucial moment was at hand and the pressure of his environment was too great.
“Bentley.”
Three hundred eyes focused expectantly on the gaunt white-faced legislator who rose nervously at the sound of his name and almost inaudibly gulped the word “Frome.”
A fierce tumult of rage and triumph rose and fell and swelled again. Bentley became the center of a struggling vortex of roaring humanity and found himself tossed hither and thither like a chip in a choppy sea.
It was many minutes before the clerk could proceed with the roll-call. When his name was reached James said “Hardy” in a clear distinct voice that brought from the gallery a round of applause sharply checked by the presiding officer. Killen gave his vote for Frome tremulously and shrank from the storm he had evoked. Rawson could be seen standing on his seat, one foot on the top of his desk, shaking his fist at him in purple apoplectic rage, the while his voice rose above the tumult, “You damned Judas! You damned little traitor!”
The presiding officer beat in vain with his gavel for quiet. Not until they had worn themselves to momentary exhaustion could the roll-call be continued.
Miller and Pitts voted for Frome and stirred renewed shouts of support and execration.
“Takes one more change to elect Frome. All depends on Reilly now,” Rawson whispered hoarsely to Jeff. “If he sticks we're safe for another twenty-four hours.”
But Reilly, knowing the decisive moment had come, voted for Frome and gave him the one more needed to elect. Pandemonium was loose at once. The Transcontinental forces surrounded him and fought off the excited men he had betrayed who tried to get at him to make him change his vote. The culminating moment of months of battle had come and mature men gave themselves to the abandon of the moment like college boys after a football game.
When at last the storm had subsided Ashton, who had seen several thousand dollars go glimmering because his initial came at the beginning of the alphabet instead of at the close, in the hope of still getting into the bandwagon in time moved to make the election unanimous. His suggestion was rejected with hoots of derision, and Frome made the conventional speech of acceptance to a House divided against itself.
Jeff joined his cousin as he was descending the steps to the lower hall. “Don't blame yourself, old man. It would have happened anyhow in a day or two. They were looking for a chance to desert. We couldn't have held them. Better luck next time.”
James found cold comfort in such consolation. He was dissatisfied with the part he had played in the final drama. Instead of being the hero of the hour, he was the unfortunate whose blunder had started the avalanche. Yet he was gratified when Rawson said in effect the same thing as Jeff.
“And I'm going to have the pleasure of telling that damned little Killen what I think of him,” the politician added with savage satisfaction.
“Don't blame him. He's only a victim. What we must do is to change the system that makes it possible to defeat the will of the people through money,” Jeff said.
“How are you going about it?” Rawson demanded incredulously.
“We'll go after the initiative and referendum right now while the people are stirred up about this treachery. The very men who threw us down will support us to try and square themselves. The bill will slip through as if it were oiled,” Jeff prophesied.
“Oh, hang your initiative and referendum. I'm a politician, not a socialist reformer,” grinned Rawson.
James said nothing.
If the years were bringing Jeff a sharper realization of the forces that control so much of life they were giving him too the mellowness that can be in revolt without any surrender of faith in men. He could for instance now look back on his college days and appreciate the kindness and the patience of the teachers whom he had then condemned. They had been conformists. No doubt they had compromised to the pressure of their environment. But somehow he felt much less like judging men than he used to in the first flush of his intellectual awakening. It was perhaps this habit of making allowance for weakness, together with his call to the idealism in them, that made him so effective a worker with men.
He was as easy as an old shoe, but people sensed the steel in him instinctively. In his quiet way he was coming to be a power. For one thing he was possessed of the political divination that understands how far a leader may go without losing his following. He knew too how to get practical results. It was these qualities that enabled him out of the wreckage of the senatorial defeat to build a foundation of victory for House Bill 77.
To bring into effect Jeff's pet measure of the initiative and referendum necessitated an amendment to the state constitution, which must be passed by two successive legislative assemblies and ratified by a vote of the people in order to become effective. The bill had been slumbering in committee, but immediately after the senatorial election Jeff insisted on having it brought squarely to the attention of the House.
His feeling for the psychological moment was a true one and he succeeded by a skillful newspaper campaign in rallying the people to his support. The sense of outrage felt at this shameless purchase of a seat in the Senate, accented by a knowledge of its helplessness to avenge the wrong done it, counted mightily in favor of H. B. No. 77 just now. It promised a restoration of power to the people, and the clamor for its passage became insistent.
A good deal of quiet lobbying had been done for the bill, and the legislators who had sold themselves, having received all they could reasonably expect from the allied corporations, were anxious to make a show of standing for their constituents. Politicians in general considered the bill a “freak” one. Some who voted for it explained that they did not believe in it, but felt the people should have a chance to vote on it themselves. By a large majority it passed the House. Two days later it squeezed through the Senate.
Rawson, who had been persuaded half against his judgment to support the bill, lunched with Jeff that day.
“Now watch the corporations dig a grave for your little pet at the next legislature,” he chuckled, helping himself to bread while he waited for the soup.
“They may. Then again they may not,” Farnum answered. “We are ruled by political machines and corporations only as long as we let them. I've a notion the people are going to assert themselves at the next election.”
“How are you going to make the will of the dear people effective with the assembly?” asked Rawson, amused.
“Make the initiative and referendum the issue of the campaign. Pledge the legislators to vote for it before nominating them.”
“Pledge them?” grinned Rawson cynically. “Weren't they pledged to support Hardy? And did they?”
“No, but they'll stick next time, I think.”
“You're an incurable optimist, my boy.”
“It isn't optimism this time. It's our big stick.”
“Didn't know we had one.”
“Do you remember House Bill 19?”
“No. What's that got to do with it?”
“It slipped through early in the session. Anderson introduced it. Nobody paid any attention to it because he's a back country Swede and his bill was very wordy. The governor signed it to-day. That bill provides for the recall of any public official, alderman or legislator if the people are not satisfied with his conduct.”
The big man stared. “I thought it only applied to district road supervisors. Were you back of that bill, Jeff?”
“I had it drawn up and helped steer it through the committee, though I was careful not to appear interested.”
“You sly old fox! And nobody guessed it had general application. None of us read the blamed thing through. You're going to use it as a club to make the legislators stand pat on their pledges.”
“Yes.”
“But don't you see how revolutionary your big stick is?” Rawson's smile was expansive. “Why, hang it, man, you're destroying the fundamental value of representative government. It's a deliberate attack on graft.”
“Looks like it, doesn't it?”
It was while Rawson was waiting for his mince pie piled with ice cream that he ventured a delicate question.
“Say, Jeff! What about James? Is he getting ready to flop over to the enemy?”
“No. Why do you ask that?”
“I notice he explained when he voted for House Bill 77 that he reserved the right to oppose it later. Said he hadn't made up his mind, but felt the people should be given a chance to express themselves on it.”
Upon Farnum's face rested a momentary gravity. “I can't make James out lately. He's lost his enthusiasm. Half the time he's irritable and moody. I think perhaps he's been blaming himself too much for Hardy's defeat.”
Rawson laughed with cynical incredulity. “That's it, is it?”