Mr. Heathcote borne on in the press. As they settled into their seats
Barton pointed out of the window, and cried: "Look! Look! The 'man' is
about to get left!"
John, a valise in one hand and a hat-box in the other, was rushing for
the train, which had already begun to move. But the conductor reached
down the steps, grasped him by the collar, and dragged him, baggage and
all, aboard. John appeared humbly before his master, who was silent,
however, merely waving him to a seat. Mr. Heathcote was apparently
indignant about something. By-and-by he stated that his valet had been
forced to leave Red Cloud without anything to eat. Nobody had looked
after the man, and he could not understand such neglect. He would like
to have a porter bring him something. Old Senator Curtis, who was with
them, spoke up from a full heart:
"He'll have to go hungry. There's no dining-car on this train, and he
can't get a bite, even for a bagful of money, till we get to Willow
Grange at two o'clock this afternoon."
The senator was not excessively polite, and Mr. Heathcote opened his
mouth as if to speak, but, changing his mind, closed it. He glanced at
Jimmy Grayson, who looked troubled, although he, also, maintained
silence. Neither would any one else speak; but every one was taking
notice. Harley in his heart felt sorry for the poor valet, who seemed to
be an inoffensive fellow, suited to his humble trade; but a political
campaign in the Rocky Mountain West was no place for him; he must take
what circumstances dealt out to him.
The committeeman presently recovered his sense of his own worth and
dignity, and spoke in a large manner of the plans that he would take to
raise the tone of the campaign. The candidate still looked troubled and
made no comment. The local public men, the correspondents, and all on
the little train were silent, staring out of the windows, apparently
engrossed in the scenery, which was now becoming grand and beautiful.
Ridge rose above ridge, and afar the peaks, clad in eternal snow, looked
down like heaven's silent sentinels.
Mr. Heathcote was very courteous to Mrs. Grayson, but at first he
scarcely noticed Sylvia, although a little later he expressed admiration
for her beauty, not doubting, however, that he would find her the
possessor of an uncultivated mind.
Towards the noon hour a tragic discovery was made. After the candidate's
last speech in the evening the train would leave immediately for Utah,
and all continuing on the way must sleep aboard. Room had been found in
some manner for Mr. Heathcote, but every other berth, upper and lower,
had been assigned long ago, and there was nothing left for his man. But
Mr. Heathcote, resolved not to be trampled upon, went in a state of high
indignation to the conductor.
"I must have a place for my man. I cannot travel without an attendant."
"Jimmy Grayson does," replied the conductor, a rude Democrat of the
West; "and your fellow can't have any, because there ain't any to be
had; besides, it's 'cordin' to train rules that dogs an' all such-like
should travel in the baggage-car."
Mr. Heathcote refused to speak again to such a man, and complained to
the candidate. But Jimmy Grayson could do nothing.
"This train on which we now are is paid for jointly by the committeemen
of Colorado, Utah, and Idaho," he said, "and I have nothing to do with
the arrangements. I should not like to attempt interference."
Mr. Heathcote looked at old Senator Curtis, who seemed to be in charge,
but, apprehending a blow to his dignity, he refrained from pressing the
point, and the lackey slept that night as well as he could on a seat in
the smoking-car.
The next few days, which were passed chiefly in Utah, were full of color
and events. Life became very strenuous for the Honorable Herbert Henry
Heathcote. He learned how to take his meals on the wing, as it were, to
run for trains, to snatch two hours' sleep anywhere between midnight and
morning, and to be jostled by rude crowds that failed to recognize his
superiority. The full-backed light overcoat, during its brief existence
the focus of so much attention, was lost in a dinner rush and never
reappeared. But, above all, Mr. Heathcote had upon his hands the care of
the helpless, miserable lackey, and never did a sick baby require more
attention. John was lost amid his strange and terrible surroundings. At
mountain towns crowds of boys, and sometimes men, would surround him and
jeer at his peculiar appearance, and his master would be compelled to
come forcibly to his rescue. He never learned how to run for the car,
with his arms full of baggage, and once, boarding a wrong train, he was
run off on a branch line a full fifty miles. He was rescued only after
infinite telegraphing and two days' time, when he reappeared,
crestfallen and terrified.
And there was trouble--plenty of it--aboard the train. There was never a
berth for the lackey, who was relegated permanently to the smoking-car.
Mr. Heathcote himself sometimes had to fight, bribe, and intrigue for
one--and often he failed to get breakfast or dinner through false
information or the carelessness of somebody. He made full acquaintance
with the pangs of hunger, and many a time, when every nerve in him
called for sleep, there was no place to lay his weary head.
Now the iron entered the soul of the Honorable Herbert, and he became a
soured and disappointed man, but he stuck gravely to his chosen task.
Harley, despite his dislike, could not keep from admiring his tenacity.
Nobody, except the candidate, paid the slightest attention to him; even
Sylvia and Mrs. Grayson ignored him; if he made suggestions, nobody said
anything to the contrary, but they were never adopted, and Mr. Heathcote
noticed, too, that the others seemed to be enduring the life easily,
while it was altogether too full for him. If there was any angle, he
seemed somehow to knock against it; and if there was any pitfall, it was
he who fell into it. But he gave no sign of returning to the East, and
his misfortunes continued. From time to time they got copies of the
Western papers containing full reports of Jimmy Grayson's canvass, and
none of them, except the _Monitor_, ever spoke flatteringly of the
Honorable Herbert or his efforts to put the campaign on a higher plane.
Churchill spoke once to the group of correspondents and politicians
about the lack of deference paid to the committeeman, but he was invited
so feelingly to attend to his own business that he never again risked
it. However, he said in his despatches to the _Monitor_ that even Mr.
Heathcote's efforts could not keep the campaign on a dignified level.
At last, on one dreadful day, they lost the lackey again, and this time
there was no hope of recovery. He had been seen, his hands full of
baggage, running for the wrong train, and when they heard from him he
was far down in Colorado, stranded, and there was no possible chance for
him to overtake the "special." Accordingly, his master, acting under
expert advice, telegraphed him money and a ticket and ordered him back
to New York. When the news was taken to the candidate Harley saw an
obvious look of relief on his face. That valet had been a terrible
weight upon the campaign, and none knew it better than Jimmy Grayson.
Mr. Heathcote now became morose and silent. Much of his lofty and
patronizing air disappeared, although the desire to instruct would crop
out at times. Usually he was watchful and suspicious, but the struggle
for bread and a place to sleep necessarily consumed a large portion of
his energies. As time dragged on his manner became that of one hunted,
but doggedly enduring, nevertheless. The candidate always spoke to him
courteously, whenever he had a chance, but then there was little time
for conversation, as the campaign was now hot and fast. Mr. Heathcote
was, in fact, a man alone in the world, and outlawed too. The weight
upon him grew heavier and heavier as his path became thornier and
thornier; the angles, the corners, and the pitfalls seemed to multiply,
and always he was the victim. Jimmy Grayson looked now and then as if he
would like to interfere, but there was no way for him to interfere, nor
any one with whom he could interfere.
Mr. Heathcote still clung bravely to some portions of his glorious
wardrobe. The white spats he yet sported, in the face of a belligerent
Western democracy, and he paid the full price. Harley acknowledged this
merit in him, and once or twice, when the committeeman, amid the
comments of the ribald crowd, turned a pathetic look upon him, he was
moved to pity and a desire to help; but the last feeling he resolutely
crushed, and held on his way.
The campaign swung farther westward and northward, and into a primitive
wilderness, where the audiences were composed solely of miners and
cowboys. Old Senator Curtis and several other of the Colorado men were
still with them, and one night they spoke at a mining hamlet on the
slope of a mountain that shot ten thousand feet above them. The
candidate was in great form, and made one of his best speeches, amid
roars of applause. The audience was so well pleased that it would not
disperse when he finished, and wished vociferously to know if there were
not another spellbinder on the stage. Then the spirit of mischief
entered the soul of Hobart.
The Honorable Herbert sat at the corner of the stage, the white spats
still gleaming defiance, his whole appearance, despite recent
modifications, showing that he was a strange bird in a strange land.
Hobart constituted himself chairman for the moment, and, pointing to Mr.
Heathcote, said:
"Gentlemen, one of the ablest and most famous of our national
committeemen is upon the stage, and he will be glad to address you."
The audience cheered, half in expectation and half in derision, but the
Honorable Herbert, who had never made a speech in his life, rose to the
cry. His figure straightened up, there was a new light in his eye, and
Harley, startled, did not know Mr. Heathcote. As he advanced to the edge
of the stage the shouts of derision overcame those of expectation.
Harley heard the words "Dude!" "Tenderfoot!" mingled with the cries, but
the Honorable Herbert gave no sign that he heard. He reached the edge of
the stage, waved his hand, and then there was silence.
"Friends," he said--"I call you such, though you have not received me in
a friendly manner--"
The crowd breathed hard, and some one uttered a threat, but another man
commanded silence. "Give him a chance!" he said.
"You have not received me in a friendly manner," resumed the Honorable
Herbert, "but I am your friend, and I am resolved that you shall be
mine. I cannot make a speech to you, but I will tell you a story which
perhaps will serve as well."
"Go on with the story," said the men, doubtfully. On the stage there was
a general waking-up. Correspondents and politicians alike recognized the
Honorable Herbert's new manner, and they bent forward with interest.
"My story," said Mr. Heathcote, "is of a man who had a fond and perhaps
too generous father. This father had suffered great hardships, and he
wished to save his son from them. What more natural? But perhaps, in his
tenderness, he did the son a wrong. So this son grew up, not seeing the
rough side of life, and finding all things easy. He lived in a part of
the country that is old and rich, where what is called necessity you
call luxury. He knew nothing of the world except that portion of it to
which he was used. What more natural? Is not that human nature
everywhere? He saw himself petted and admired, and in the course of time
he felt himself a person of importance. Is not that natural, too?"
He paused and looked over the audience, which was silent and attentive,
held by the interest of something unusual and the deep, almost painful,
earnestness of Mr. Heathcote's manner.
"What's he coming to?" whispered Hobart.
"I don't know; wait and see," replied Harley.
"Thus the man grew up to know only a little world," the Honorable
Herbert went on, "and he did not know how little it was. He was like a
prisoner in a gorgeous room, who sees, without, snow and storm that
cannot touch him, but who is a prisoner nevertheless. Those whom he met
and with whom he lived his daily life were like him, and they thought
they were the heart of this world. Everything about them was golden;
they saw that people wished to hear of them, to read of them, to know
all that they did, and their view of their importance grew every day.
What more natural? Was not that human nature?"
"I think I see which way he is going," whispered Hobart.
Harley nodded. The audience was still and intent, hanging on the words
of the speaker.
"This youth," continued Mr. Heathcote, "was sent by-and-by to Europe to
have his education finished, and there all the ideas formed by his life
in this country were confirmed in him. He saw a society, organized
centuries ago, in which every man found a definite place for life
assigned to him, in accordance with what fortune had done for him at
birth. There he received deference and homage, even more than before,
and the great, changing world, with its mighty tides and storms that
flowed about his little group, leaving it untouched, was yet unknown to
him.
"He came back to his own country, and the strong father who had
sheltered him died. He was filled with an ambition to be a political
power, as his father had been, and the dead hand brought him the place.
Then he came into the West to join in a great political campaign, but it
was his first real excursion into the real world, and his ignorance was
heavy upon him."
A deep "Ah!" ran through the crowd, and Harley noticed a sudden look of
respect upon the brown faces. They were beginning to see where the
thread of the story would lead. Then Harley glanced at old Senator
Curtis, whose lips moved tremulously for a moment. "King" Plummer was
regarding the committeeman with astonished interest.
"This man, I repeat," continued Mr. Heathcote, "came West with his
ignorance, I might almost say with his sins heavy upon him, but it was
not his fault; it was the fault, rather, of circumstances. He seemed a
strange, a grotesque figure to these people of the West, but they should
not have forgotten that they also seemed strange to him. It has been
said that it takes many kinds of people to make a world, and they cannot
all be alike. One point of view may differ from another point of view,
and both may be right. If this man did anything wrong--and he admits
that he did--he did it in ignorance. There were some with him who knew
both points of view who might have helped him, but who did not; instead,
they made life hard; they put countless difficulties in his way; they
made him feel very wretched, very mean, and very little. He saw the
other point of view at last, but he was not permitted to show that he
saw it; he was put in such a position that his pride would not let him."
The crowd suddenly burst into cheers. The keen Western men understood,
and the mountain-slope gave back the echo, "Hurrah for Heathcote!" The
Honorable Herbert's figure swelled and his eyes flashed. Grateful water
was falling at last on the parched desert sands.
"But, friends," he continued, "this man, though his lesson has been
rough, comes to you with no resentment. He has broken the bars of his
prison; he is in the real world at last, and he comes to you asking to
be one of you, to give and take with the crowd. Will you have him?"
"Yes!" a chorus of a thousand voices roared against the side of the
mountain and came back in a thunderous echo.
Old Senator Curtis sprang to his feet, seized Mr. Heathcote by the hand,
and shouted:
"Gentlemen, I, too, need to apologize, and also I want to introduce to
you a real man, Mr. Herbert Henry Heathcote."
"Put me down for an apology, too," said "King" Plummer, in his big,
booming tones.
Jimmy Grayson, on the outskirts of the crowd, returning to learn what
the noise was about, saw and heard all, and murmured to a friend:
"There is now a new member of our group, and all is well again."
XII
CHURCHILL STRIKES
The conversion and adoption of Mr. Heathcote, as Hobart called it, was a
pleasant incident in several senses, bringing much quiet gratification
to them all, and particularly and obviously to the candidate. A hostile
element, one intended by others to be hostile and interfering, had
become friendly, which, of itself, was a great gain. Moreover, the
smoothness of social intercourse was increased, and there, too, was a
new type, adding to the variety and interest of the group.
The only one not pleased was Churchill, who had expected much from Mr.
Heathcote, and who now, as he considered it, saw the committeeman turn
traitor. It was not a matter that he could handle fully in his
despatches to the _Monitor_, being too intangible to allow of bald
assertion, and he was reduced to indirect statement. This not satisfying
him at all, he wrote a long letter to Mr. Goodnight, both for the sake
of the cause and for the sake of his own feelings, which had been much
lacerated. Its production cost him a great deal of thought and labor;
but he had his reward, as its perusal after completion proved to him
that it was a masterpiece.
Churchill showed quite clearly to Mr. Goodnight the steady decay of the
candidate's character and the lower levels to which his campaign was
falling. In the security of a private letter it was not necessary for
him to spare words, and Churchill spoke his mind forcibly about the
manner in which Jimmy Grayson was pandering to the "common people," the
"ignorant mob," the "million-footed." Churchill himself, although not
old, had taken long ago the measure of these foolish common people, and
he despised them, his contempt giving him a very pleasant conviction of
his own superiority.
He also poured a few vials of wrath upon the head of Mr. Heathcote, whom
he characterized as a coward, not able to stand up against petty
persecution, and from the committeeman he passed on to others of Mr.
Grayson's immediate following, taking "King" Plummer next. Mr. Plummer,
in his opinion, was an excellent type of democracy run to riot. He was
one of the "boys" in every sense. He was wofully wanting in personal
dignity, speaking to everybody in the most familiar manner, and
encouraging the same form of address towards himself; he failed utterly
to recognize the superiority of some other men, and he was grossly
ignorant, knowing nothing whatever of Europe and the vast work that had
been done there for civilization and order. Moreover, he could not be
induced, even by the well-informed, to take any interest in the Old
World, and once had had the rudeness to say to Churchill himself, "What
in the devil is Europe to us?"
Churchill thus subjected the views of "King" Plummer to the process of
elaboration because they had made a vivid impression upon him. He and
the "King" had never been able to get on together, the mountaineer
treating him with rough indifference, and Churchill returning it with a
hauteur which he considered very effective. To Churchill men of "King"
Plummer's type seemed the greatest danger the country could have. Their
lack of respect for diplomacy, their want of form and ceremony, their
brutal habit of calling things by their names, were in his opinion
revolutionary. He did not see how dealings with foreign nations, which
always loomed very large to him, could be conducted by such men. Always
in his mind was the question, What would they say in London and Vienna
and Berlin? and the _Monitor_, which he served faithfully, confirmed him
through its tone in this mental state. Still drawing his inspiration
from the _Monitor_, he regarded a sneer as invariably the best weapon;
if you were opposed to anything, the proper way to attack it was by
sneering at it; then, not having used argument, you never put yourself
in a position to have your arguments refuted.
From "King" Plummer, Churchill passed to some of his associates--like
the _Monitor_, he never hesitated to befoul his own nest--and he told
Mr. Goodnight how the candidate was using them, how they had wholly
fallen under the spell of his undeniable charm of manner, and how they
wrote to please him rather than to tell the truth.
As he sealed his long letter, Churchill felt the conscious glow of
right-doing and stern self-sacrifice. He had written thus for the good
of the party and the good of the country, and he was strengthened, too,
by the feeling that he could not possibly be wrong. The _Monitor_
cultivated the sense of omniscience, which it communicated in turn to
all the members of its staff.
He passed Sylvia Morgan on his way from the hotel reading-room to the
lobby to mail his letter, and when he met her he quickly turned down
the address on the envelope, in order that she might not see it. It was
done by impulse, and Churchill, for the first time, had a feeling of
guilt that made him angry.
"That must be a love letter, Mr. Churchill," said Sylvia, teasing him
with the easy freedom of the West. "Do you write her twenty-four pages,
or only twenty?"
"I have no love except my work, Miss Morgan," replied Churchill,
assuming his most grandiose air.
"Is that a permanent affection, or a passing fancy?"
Her face expressed the most eager interest, as if she could not possibly
be happy until she had Churchill's answer. The words were frivolous, but
her manner was most deferential, and Churchill concluded that she was
expressing respect in as far as what he considered her shallow nature
could do so.
"It is, I hope, a permanent passion, Miss Morgan," he replied, gravely.
"There is a pleasure in doing one's duty, particularly under
disagreeable circumstances, which I am happy to say I have felt more
than once, and custom usually strengthens one who walks in the right
path."
Still in this mood of contemplation, he regarded her, and he thought he
saw a slight look of awe appear in her eyes. His opinion of her rose at
once. While not able to show merit of the highest degree, she could
perceive it in others, and this differentiated her from the rest of the
group. Churchill allowed himself to see that she had a fine face and a
slender, beautiful figure, and he felt it a pity that she should be
thrown away on a crude, rough old mountaineer like Plummer.
"I often think, Miss Morgan," he said, "that if you had lived in the
East awhile you could have been quite a match for any woman whom I have
ever known."
"Thank you," she replied, humbly. "Oh, if I could only have lived in the
East just a little while!"
"But I assure you, Miss Morgan, I have met some very remarkable women."
"I do not doubt it, and they have had an equal good-fortune."
Churchill looked suspiciously at her, but there was the same touch of
deference in her manner, and he still honored her with his conversation.
He permitted himself to discourse a little upon the affairs which he had
embodied--"embodied" he felt was the word--in his letter, and she, with
all a woman's intuition, and much of masculine reasoning power, guessed
what the letter contained, although she did not know to whom it was
going. Nor did she feel it wrong to be very attentive, as Churchill
talked, because he was doing it of his own free will, and she had the
fate of her uncle deeply at heart.
Churchill spoke of the campaign, venturing upon polite criticisms of
certain features that seemed objectionable to him, and, listening to
him, she confirmed her opinion that he was the personal representative
with Mr. Grayson of the chief elements within the party that could cause
trouble. And she felt sure, too, that the letter he held in his hand
would add fuel to the fire already burning. She happened also to be
present several days later when a messenger-boy handed him a telegram,
and, when he opened it, he made an involuntary motion to hide it, just
as he had done with the letter. She pretended not to see, and walked
away, but she knew as well as if he had told her that the telegram was
the reply to the letter.