saucy, and his attention was called again by the bold, fine curve of her
chin, and he was saying to himself: "A wild life in the mountains surely
develops courage and self-reliance, but at the expense of the more
delicate and more attractive qualities." Then he said aloud, and
politely:
"I see no reason, Miss Morgan, why you should have credited me with a
lack of faith in your word. Have I said anything to induce such a belief
in your mind?"
"No, you have merely looked it."
"I do not always look as I feel," said Harley, in embarrassment, "and I
want to tell you, Miss Morgan, that I am very glad you are going with us
on this Chicago trip."
"You look as if you meant that," she said, gravely; "but if I am to take
you at your word, you mean nothing of the kind."
"I do mean it; I assure you I do," said Harley, hastily. "But are Mr.
and Mrs. Grayson ready to receive visitors?"
"That depends. I am not sure that I want Uncle James interviewed so
early in the day. At least I want to know in advance the subject of the
interview. You can give me, as it were, the heads of your discourse.
Come, tell me, and I will render a decision."
She regarded Harley with a grave face, and he was divided between
vexation and a sort of reluctant admiration of her coolness. She was
bold and forward, not to say impertinent, but she seemed wholly
unconscious of it, and, after all, she was from one of the wildest parts
of Idaho. He kindly excused much of her conduct on the ground of early
association.
"I do not seek to interview any one," he said; "I merely wish to pay my
respects to Mr. and Mrs. Grayson, having been their guest, as you know."
"Oh, then you can go in," she said, and, calling to the porter, she told
him to announce Mr. Harley, of the New York _Gazette_. "Of the New York
_Gazette_," she said again, with what Harley considered unnecessary
repetition and emphasis, and he had a new count against her.
Mr. and Mrs. Grayson received him with courtesy, even with warmth, and
Harley saw that he had made new progress in their esteem. He remained
with them only a few minutes, and he said nothing about the
objectionable conduct of Miss Morgan, who had set herself as a guard
upon their door. He deemed it wiser to make no reference to her at all,
because she was only an insignificant and momentary incident of the
campaign, not really relevant. Chicago was merely a beginning, and they
would drop her there. When he returned from the drawing-room, she was
still sitting near the door, and at his appearance she looked up pertly.
"Did you find him in a good-humor?" she asked.
"I think Mr. Grayson is always in a good-humor, or at least he is able
to appear so."
"I doubt whether perpetual good-humor, or the appearance of it, is
desirable. One ought to make a difference in favor of friends; I do not
care to present an amiable face to my enemies."
She pursed up her lips and looked thoughtful.
"When Uncle James goes to Washington to take the Presidency," she
continued, "he will need me to protect him from the people who have no
business with him."
"I hope the last remark is not personal?"
"Oh no," she said; "I recognize the fact that the press must be
tolerated."
Harley again felt piqued, and, not willing to retire with the sense of
defeat fresh upon him, he sat down near her and began to talk to her of
her Western life. He wished to know more about the genesis and progress
of a girl who seemed to him so strange, but he was not able to confine
her to certain channels of narrative. She was flippant and vague, full
of allusions to wild things like Indians or buffaloes or grizzly bears,
but with no detailed statement, and Harley gathered that her childhood
had been in complete touch with these primitive facts. Only such early
associations could account for the absence of so many conventions.
The correspondents who travelled with Harley were mostly men of
experience, readily adaptable, and the addition of a new member to Mr.
Grayson's party could not escape their attention. Harley was surprised
and shocked to find that all of them were well acquainted with Miss
Morgan inside of six hours, and that they seemed to be much better
comrades with her than he had been. Hobart, the most frivolous of the
lot, and the most careless of speech, returning from the Grayson car,
informed him that she was a "great girl, as fine as silk."
"That's a queer expression to apply to a lady," said Harley. "It smacks
of the Bowery."
"And what if it does?" replied Hobart, coolly. "I often find the Bowery
both terse and truthful. And in this case the expression fits Miss
Morgan. She's the real article--no fuss and frills, just a daughter of
the West, never pretending that she is what she isn't. I heard her speak
of you, Harley, and I don't think she likes you, old man. What have you
been doing?"
"I hope I have been behaving as a gentleman should," replied Harley,
with some asperity; "and if I have been unlucky enough to incur her
dislike, I shall endure it as best I can."
He spoke in an indifferent tone, as if his endurance would not be
severely tested.
"But you are missing a good time," said Hobart. "There are not less than
a dozen of us at her feet, and the Grayson car is full of jollity. I'm
going back."
He returned to the car, and Harley was left alone just then, as he
wished to be, and with an effort he dismissed Miss Morgan from his
thoughts. Mr. Grayson would speak that night in Chicago, and an audience
of twenty thousand people was assured; this fact and the other one, that
it would be his initial address, making the event of the first
importance.
Harley as a correspondent was able not only to chronicle facts, which is
no great feat, but also to tell why, to state the connection between
them, and to re-create the atmosphere in which those facts occurred and
which made them possible. He was well aware that a fact was dependent
for its quality--that is, for its degree of good or evil--upon its
surrounding atmosphere, just as a man is influenced by the air that he
breathes, and for this reason he wished to send in advance a despatch
about Mr. Grayson and his personality as created by his birth and
associations.
He rested his pad on the car-seat and began to write, but Miss Morgan
intruded herself in the first line. This question of character, created
by environment, would apply to her as well as to her uncle; but Harley,
angrily refusing to consider it, tore off the sheet of paper and,
throwing it on the floor, began again. The second trial was more
successful, and he soon became absorbed in the effort to describe Mr.
Grayson and his remarkable personality, which might be either deep and
complex or of the simplest Western type.
As he wrote Harley became more and more absorbed in his subject, and
with the absorption came spontaneity. He did not know how well he was
writing, nor what a vivid picture he was presenting to the vast Eastern
population to whom Jimmy Grayson was as yet but a name. It was a
despatch that became famous, reprinted all over the Union, and quoted as
the first description of the candidate as he really was--that is, of the
man. And yet Harley, reading it days later, recognized in it something
that nobody else saw. It was a blend. In every fourth line Sylvia Morgan
again, and despite his efforts, had obtruded herself. He had borrowed
something from her to add to Jimmy Grayson, and he felt that he had been
seeking excuses for her manner.
But this fact did not impinge upon Harley now, when he read the
despatch preparatory to filing it at Chicago. He merely felt that he had
made an attempt to solve Jimmy Grayson, and in doing so had fulfilled
his duty.
As he folded up the article the loud voice of Hobart hailed him from the
other end of the car, and he beheld that irresponsible man entering with
the candidate's niece.
"You see what he has been about all this time, Miss Morgan?" said
Hobart. "He has been at work. Harley, you know, is the only
conscientious man among us."
"I have remarked already his devotion to duty," she said, sedately; "but
do you think, Mr. Hobart, we should disturb him now? We do not know that
he has finished his task."
Harley flushed. He did not wish to be thought a prig or one who made a
pretence of great industry, and, although Miss Morgan's voice was
without expression, he believed that irony lay hidden somewhere in it.
"You are mistaken," he said; "my work is over, for the time, at least.
It was something that had to be done, or I should not have stolen off
here alone."
Then he went back with them to the Grayson car, where a joyous group had
gathered. Mr. and Mrs. Grayson were in the drawing-room, with the door
shut, working upon the candidate's speech at Chicago, Harley surmised,
and hence there was no restraint. Of this group the girl from Idaho was
the centre and the sun. She seemed to be on good terms with them all, to
the great surprise of Harley, who had known her longer than they, and
who had not been able to get on with her at all, and he sat rather on
the fringe of the throng, saying but little.
Again she inspired him with hostility; she seemed, as before, too bold,
too boisterous, too much the mountain maid, although he could not
analyze any particular incident as wrong in itself. And clearly she had
won the liking, even the admiration, of his associates, all of whom were
men of wide experience. Tremaine, the dean of the corps, a ruddy,
white-haired old fellow, who had written despatches from the
Russo-Turkish war, which was ancient history to Harley, warmed visibly
to Miss Morgan. "It is always the way with those old gallants," was
Harley's silent comment. But he had never before characterized Tremaine
in such a manner.
He was afraid of her sharp tongue, knowing that a woman in such respects
is never averse to taking an unfair advantage of a man; but she paid no
heed to him, talking with the others and passing over him as if he had
not been present; and, while this was what he wanted in the first place,
yet, now that he had it, he resented it as something undeserved. But if
she would not speak to him, he, too, would keep silence, a silence which
he was convinced had in it a disdainful quality; hence it was not
without a certain comfort and satisfaction.
But Harley was forced to admit that if she was of the bold and
boisterous type, she was a favorable specimen within those unfavorable
limits. While she was familiar, in a measure, with these men, yet she
was able to keep them at the proper distance, and no one presumed, in
any respect. She radiated purity and innocence, and it was to ignorance
only that Harley now charged her faults.
They reached Chicago the next morning, and at noon Hobart knocked at the
door of Harley's room at the hotel.
"There is some idle time this afternoon," said Hobart, "and Tremaine and
I have asked Miss Morgan to go driving. She has accepted, but it takes
four to make a party, and you are the lucky fourth."
He allowed no protestations, and, after all, Harley, who had been under
much strain for some time, was not averse to an hour or two in the fresh
air.
"Miss Morgan has never been in Chicago before," said Hobart, "and it is
our duty to show it to her."
Hobart, who drove, put Miss Morgan upon the seat beside him, and
Tremaine and Harley, who sat behind, occupied what was to some extent
the post of disadvantage; but Tremaine, safe in his years, would not
permit the rear seat to be neglected. He talked constantly, and her
face, of necessity, was often turned to them, giving Harley opportunity
to see that it had a most becoming flush.
She had an eager interest in everything--the tall buildings, the
wind-swept streets, and the glimpses of the wide, green lake. Harley saw
that Chicago bulked much more largely in her imagination than in his,
and he began to fear that he had been neglectful; it was the most
concrete expression of the West, and, as the greatest achievement of a
new people in city building, it deserved attention for qualities
peculiarly its own, and there could be no doubt either of Miss Morgan's
admiration or pleasure. She was seeking neither for the old nor the
picturesque, which are not always synonymous, but was in full sympathy
with the fresh, active, and, on the whole, joyous life around her. It
was sufficient to her to be a part of the human tide, and to feel by
contact the keenness and zest of the human endeavor. She was not
troubled by the absence of ruins.
"But the city is flat and unpicturesque," once said Harley.
"All the better," she rejoined. "I have so much of silence and grandeur
in Idaho that I enjoy the sight of two million people at work on this
billiard-table that is Chicago. I like my own kind, I like to talk to it
and have it talk to me. I suppose that the mountains have a voice, but
the voice is too big for perpetual conversation with a poor little
mortal like myself. After a while I want to come down to my own level,
and I find it here."
Harley glanced at her. The flush was still on her face, and there was a
soft light in her eyes. He could not doubt that she was sincere, and she
started in his mind thoughts that were not altogether new to him; he
wondered if excessive reverence for the antique did not indicate a
detachment from the present, and therefore from life itself, and, as a
logical sequence, a lack of feeling for one's own kind. He had heard an
elderly man from Chicago, dragged about by his wife and daughters in
Rome, exclaim in disgust, "I would not give a single street corner in
Chicago for all Rome!" The elderly Chicagoan had been drowned in
derisive laughter, but Harley could understand his point of view, and
now, as he remembered him, he had for him a fellow-feeling.
Hobart took them through many streets, one much like another, and then
over a white asphalt drive beside the great lake. The shores were low,
but to Harley the lake had the calm restlessness and expanse of the sea,
and the wind had the same keen tang that comes over miles of salt. He
saw the girl's eyes linger upon the vast sheet of green, and the
incipient hostility that he felt towards her disappeared for a time.
Somewhere in her nature, strait though the place might be, there was a
feeling for fine things, and he felt a kindred glow.
They were rather quiet when they drove back towards the hotel, but she
spoke at last of her uncle James and his speech that night, which might
justify the expectations of either his friends or his enemies. There had
grown up lately in the theatrical world a practice of "trying a new
piece on the dog"--that is, of presenting it first in some small town
which was not too particular--but now the political world was moving
differently in this particular case. The candidate was to make his first
appearance in one of the greatest of cities, before two million people,
so to speak, and the ordeal would be so severe that Harley found himself
apprehensive for Jimmy Grayson's sake. The feeling was shared by his
niece.
"You don't think he will fail, do you?" she said, in an appealing tone
to Hobart.
"Fail!" replied that irrepressible optimist. "He can't fail! The bigger
the crowd the better he will rise to the occasion."
But she did not seem to be wholly convinced by Hobart's cheerfulness,
which was too general in its nature--that is, inclusive of
everything--and turned to Harley and Tremaine as if seeking
confirmation.
"It will be a terrible test," said Harley, frankly, "but I feel sure
that Mr. Grayson will pass it with glory. He is a born orator, and he
has courage."
"I thank you for your belief," she said, giving Harley a swift glance of
gratitude, and unaccountably he felt a pleasing glow at the first
gracious words she had ever spoken to him.
"I could not bear it if he failed," she continued. "He is my uncle, and
he is our own Western man. What things would be in the newspapers
to-morrow!"
"If Mr. Grayson should fail to-night, he would recover himself at his
second speech; he has your spirit, you know," said the ancient Tremaine.
But she did not seem to relish his elderly gallantry. "How do you know I
have spirit?" she asked. "I have done nothing to indicate it."
"I inferred it," replied he, bowing, but she only lifted her chin
incredulously, and Tremaine subsided, his suppression giving Harley some
quiet enjoyment.
They returned, chiefly in silence, to the hotel. The dusk was coming
down over the great city, and with it a grayish mist that hid the walls
of the buildings, although the electric lights in lofty stories twinkled
through it like signal-fires from hill-tops. Miss Morgan seemed subdued,
and at the hotel door she said to them in dismissal: "I thank you; you
have given me much pleasure."
"I rather think that she is wrapped up in Mr. Grayson's success," said
Hobart, "and, as she intimates, it will come pretty near to breaking her
heart if he fails."
In the lobby Harley met Churchill, of the _Monitor_, and Churchill, as
usual, was sneering.
"I imagine that Grayson will make a display of provincialism to-night,"
he said. "America will have to blush for herself. I have copies of the
_Monitor_, and all our London cables show the greatest amazement in
Great Britain and on the Continent that we should put up such an _outre_
Western character for President, one of the Boys, you know."
"The Grayson of the _Monitor_ is not the Grayson of reality," replied
Harley, "and the opinion of Europe does not matter, because Europe knows
nothing about Mr. Grayson."
"Oh, I see! You are falling under the influence," said Churchill,
nastily.
"What do you mean?" demanded Harley.
But Churchill would not answer. He sauntered away still sneering. Harley
looked after him angrily, but concluded in a few moments that his wrath
was not worth while--Churchill, trained to look always in the wrong
direction could never see anything right.
IV
THE FIRST SPEECH
When Harley started at an early hour for the vast hall in which Mr.
Grayson was to speak, he realized that there was full cause for the
trepidation of his feminine kind--perhaps in such moments women tremble
for their men more than they ever tremble for themselves--and he had
plenty of sympathy for Mrs. Grayson and Miss Morgan. The city, astir
with the coming speech, was free to express in advance its opinion of
it, both vocally and through its press, which was fairly divided--that
is, one-half was convinced that it would be an overwhelming triumph, and
the other half was equally sure that it would be a failure just as
overwhelming.
Harley had in his pocket a copy of his own paper--the _Gazette_--the
latest to reach him, and he had read it with the greatest care, but he
saw that it remained independent; so far, it neither endorsed nor
attacked Grayson; and, also, he had a telegram from his editor
instructing him to narrate the events of the evening with the strictest
impartiality, not only as concerned facts, but, above all, to transmit
the exact color and atmosphere of the occasion. "I know that this is
hard to do," he said, but with the deft and useful little compliment
that a wise employer knows how to put in at the end, he added: "I am
sure that you can do it." And he knew his man; Harley would certainly
do it.
Harley, seated in an obscure corner of the stage, but one offering many
points of vantage for his own view, saw the vast crowd come quickly into
the hall, among the largest in the world, and he heard the hum of
voices, in which he thought he could distinguish two notes, one of favor
and one of attack. Yet the audience was orderly, and on the whole the
element of curiosity prevailed. The correspondent, quick to read such
signs, saw that the people had an open mind in regard to Jimmy Grayson;
it was left to the candidate to make his own impression. Churchill took
a seat near him and began to annoy him with depreciatory remarks about
Grayson, not spoken to Harley in particular, but to the wide world.
Hobart once said that Churchill needed no audience, preferring to talk
to the air, which could make no reply of its own, but must return an
echo.
Harley saw Mrs. Grayson and her niece slip quietly into a box, sitting
well back, where they could be seen but little by the audience; and
then, knowing that Mr. Grayson had arrived, he went behind the wings,
where the candidate sat waiting.
Mr. Grayson received him with a calm and pleasant word; if his family
were in a tremble, he was not; at least he was able to hide any
apprehension that he might feel, and he remarked, jestingly: "It is
apparent that I will have an audience, Mr. Harley; they will not ignore
me."
"No, you are a good puller," rejoined Harley.
There were some dry preliminaries--introductory remarks by the chairman
and other necessary bores--and then the audience began to call for
Grayson. The speech would be reported in full by short-hand, for which
mechanical work the staff correspondent always hires a member of that
guild, and Harley was free for the present. He resolved to go into the
box with Mrs. Grayson and Miss Morgan, but he changed his mind when he
glanced at their faces. There was pallor in their cheeks, and their
whole attitude was of strained and intense waiting. For them the crucial
moment had come, and Harley had too much humanity to disturb them, even
with well-meant efforts, at such a moment.
The hum in the crowd increased to a roar, a thunderous call for Grayson,
but there was a pause on the stage, where no figures moved. The chairman
glanced uneasily towards the wings and shuffled in his seat as if he did
not know what to do, but his apprehension did not last long.
The candidate appeared, coming forward with a steady step, his face pale
and apparently inexpressive; but Harley could see that the eyes, usually
so calm, were lighted up by a fire from within. Suddenly all his fear
for Grayson sank away; it came upon him with the finality of a lightning
flash that here was a man who would not fail, and by an unknown impulse
he looked from the candidate to the box in which Miss Morgan sat. She
seemed to have read his faith in his eyes, for a look of relief, even
joy, came over her face.
This intuition of the two was justified, as the candidate did not have
to conquer his audience. He held it in his spell from the opening
sentence; the golden and compelling oratory, afterwards so famous, was
here poured before the greater world for the first time. Harley listened
to the periods, smooth but powerful, and he could not throw off their
charm; some things were said of which he was not sure, and others with
which he positively disagreed, but for the time they all seemed true.
Jimmy Grayson believed them--there could be no doubt of it; every word
was tinged with the vivid hue of sincerity--that was why they held the
audience in a spell that it could not escape; these were convictions,
not arguments that he was speaking, and the people received them as
such. Moreover, he was always clear and direct, he had a Greek precision
of speech, and there was none in the audience who could not follow him.
Harley, no orator himself, had in the course of his profession heard
much oratory, some good, much bad, and even now he struggled against the
charm of Grayson's voice and manner, and sought to see what lay behind
them. Was there back of this golden veil any great originating or
executive power, or was he, like so many others who speak well, a voice
and nothing more? An orator might win the Presidency of the United
States, but his gift would not necessarily qualify him to administer the
office. It was a tribute to Harley's power of will or detachment that he
was able at such a time to ask himself such a question.
But he forgot these after-thoughts in the pleasurable sympathy that his
view of the candidate's wife and niece aroused. Their faces were
illumined with joy. Feeling his spell so strongly themselves, they knew
without looking that the audience felt it, too, and the evening could be
no fuller for them. Here he was, a hero not only for his womenkind, but
for all whom his womenkind could see, and Harley thought that under the
influence of this feeling Miss Morgan's features had become very soft
and feminine. The curve of the jaw was gentle rather than firm, and now
in her softer moments it seemed to Harley that something might be made
of this mountain girl, say by the deft hands of an Eastern and older
woman. Then he blushed at himself for such a condescending thought, and
turned to his task--that is, the effort to reproduce for readers in New
York, the next morning, the atmosphere of that evening in a Chicago
hall, and the exact relation that Mr. Grayson, the people, and the
events of the hour bore to each other.