Ethan Harkness, having finished his labors, such as the labors of a

bank president are, sat at his old walnut desk in the window of the

First National Bank waiting for Emily to come and drive him home. The

old man had set his desk in order, with his big gold pen laid in the

rack of his ink stand, his blotters held down by a paper weight, and

a leaf of his calendar torn off, ready for the next day's business.

The desk was in such order as would have made the work-table of a

professional man unfamiliar to him, but, as he waited, Ethan Harkness

rearranged it again and again, absent-mindedly, changing the position

of the blotters, wiping his pen once more on his gray hair. Then he

drew out his gold watch, adjusted his spectacles, took an observation

of the time, and looked with an air of incredibility into the street.

Any break in the routine of his life was a pain to Ethan Harkness, and

it was with a resignation to this pain that he called:

"Morton, bring me the paper! I might as well read it if I've got to

wait."

The old teller, a white haired, servile man with the stoop of a clerk

in his shoulders, and the disindividualized stare of a clerk in his

submissive eyes, came shuffling in with the paper he himself had been

reading. Harkness took it reluctantly. His life was as methodical as

his calendar, and if he read the evening paper before supper he would

have nothing to do after, for he could not go to bed till nine o'clock.

If he did, he awoke too soon in the morning and then he would reach

the bank before the mail had been delivered. Thus it will be imagined

how serious would be the train of consequences set in motion by one

irregularity in his day.

But he took the paper. It was the _News_, and his eye lighted at once

on the article that Pusey had written about Garwood. As he read it a

great rage gathered in his breast, a rage compounded of many emotions,

which gradually took form, first as a hatred of Garwood for his

misdeeds, then of Pusey for laying them bare. Ethan Harkness was not a

man of broad sympathies. What love he had was bestowed on Emily; he had

lavished it there ever since his wife had died. He gave so much to her

that he had none left for others, and he stood in the community as a

hard, just man who had built up his fortune by long years of labor and

self-denial that made him impatient of the frailties which his fellows

in the little community, in common with their brothers in the wider

world, found it so hard to govern and restrain.

He sat there mute and implacable, with his fist, still big from the

farm work it had done in early life, clenched upon the _News_, while

Morton clanked the bars of the vault in fastening the place of treasure

for the night, and slipped here and there behind his wire cage,

pretending little duties to keep him from facing his employer when in

such a mood.

It was after five o'clock when the surrey lurched into the filthy

gutter, and when Harkness saw that Emily was not in it, he felt his

rage with Garwood increase for depriving him thus of the pleasant hour

to which he looked forward all the afternoon. He rode home in silence

behind old Jasper who tried in his companionable way, by making his

characteristic observations on men and things, to draw his master out

of his moody preoccupation.

Harkness found his daughter at the supper table, and when he saw her,

he at once yearned toward her with a great wish to give her such

comfort as a mother would have supplied; but with something of his

own stern nature, she held herself spiritually aloof; and he ate his

cold meat, his fried potatoes, his peaches and cream and drank his

tea without a word from her, beyond some allusions to the heat of the

sultry day, the prospect of rain, and the need of it at his farm lying

at the edge of town. Her face was white, but her eyes were not red or

swollen, and she gave him no sign whether or not she knew of the blow

that had been struck at the man she loved. He thought several times of

telling her, or asking her about it, but he was always half afraid of

her, and had submitted to her rule all the years when no one else was

strong enough to rule him.

When supper was done, she disappeared, and as he strained his ears from

his library where he was reading all alone, he heard her close a door

upstairs and lock it. Later, when he went up in his stocking-feet,

having left his boots downstairs in the habit he had brought out of the

poverty of his boyhood into the comfort of his age, he paused a moment

by her door, and raised his hand as if to knock; but he could not

figure it out, he said to himself, and so changed his mind and went to

bed, leaving it all to time.

When Emily went to her room, she sat at her dressing-table a moment

looking at her own reflection, until her features became so strange

that a fear of insanity haunted her, and then she half undressed and

lay down upon her bed. She told herself that she could not sleep that

night, and yet, after her first burst of tears she fell into the sound

and natural slumber of grief-stricken youth with its vague apologetic

hope that the whitened hair will show in the morning.

Far in the night she awoke with a strange ignorance of time and place.

She shivered with the chill of the night air. Rain was falling and she

heard the lace curtains at the windows scraping in the wind against the

heavy leaves of a fern she was nurturing, and with a woman's intuitive

dread of the damage rain may do when windows are open, she arose to

close them. The cool air swept in upon her, driving the fine mist of

the rain, but she let it spray a moment upon her face, upon her breast,

before she pulled her window down. Outside the yard lay in blackness,

and she looked down on it long enough to distinguish all its familiar

objects, each bush and shrub and tree; she saw the lawn mower stranded

by the walk and she thought how her father would scold old Jasper in

the morning; and then she thought it strange and unreal that she could

think of such irrelevant things at such a time. Yet every material

thing was aggressively normal; the electric light swinging and creaking

at the corner of Ohio Street with the rain slanting across the ovoid of

light that clung around it showed that; everything the same--yet all

changed with her.

She turned from her window. The darkness indoors was kind, it seemed to

hide the wound that had been dealt her, and she hastily undressed and

got to bed, curling up like a little child. Then she lay and tried to

think, until her head ached. She had been thinking thus ever since the

cruel moment that afternoon when she had picked up the _News_ on the

veranda.

Her heart had been light that day. She had thought of Jerome as he

traveled in his private car with a coming president. She had gone

with him to Lincoln, and seen him riding through the crowded streets;

had beheld him in the flare of torches, his face alight with the

inspiration of an orator, his eyes fine and sparkling, as she had so

often seen them blazing with another passion; had heard his ringing

voice, and the cheers of the frantic people, massed in that remembered

square. And so in the afternoon she became impatient for the cry the

boy gave when he tossed the local papers on the floor of the veranda.

She had swooped down on them before the boy had turned his little back

and mounted his wheel. And the thing that first struck her eye had

smitten her heart still--the headlines bearing Garwood's name. She had

caught at the newel post in the wide hall to keep from falling.

It had not then occurred to her to doubt the truth of the tale Pusey

had told. She had not yet progressed in politics or in life far

enough to learn to take with the necessary grain of salt everything a

newspaper prints. The very fact that a statement was in type impressed

her as abundant proof of its truth, as it does children, young and

old, a fact which has prolonged the life of many fables for centuries

and will make others immortal. It seemed to her simply an inexorable

thing and she turned this way and that in a vain effort to adjust the

heavy load so that it might more easily be borne. But when she found

it becoming intolerable, she began to seek some way of escaping it. In

that hour of the night she first doubted its truth; her heart leaped,

she gave a half-smothered laugh. Then she willed that it be not true,

she determined that it must not be true, and with a child-like trust in

His omnipotence, she prayed to God to make it untrue. And so she fell

asleep at last.

All these hours of the night, in a far humbler street of the town, in

a small frame house where nothing could be heard but the ticking of an

old brown Seth Thomas clock, a woman lay sleeping. Her scant, white

hair was parted on her wrinkled brow, her long hands, hardened by the

years of work, were folded on her breast, and her face, dark and seamed

as it was, wore a peaceful smile, for she had fallen asleep thinking

of her boy, laughing at his traducers, and praying, pronouncing the

words in earnest whispers that could have been heard far back in the

kitchen which she had set in such shining order, that her boy's enemies

might be forgiven, because they knew not what they did.

VIII

When Rankin came home from the Lincoln mass meeting, he seemed to

have reached that stage in the evolution of his campaign when it was

necessary to put forth mighty claims of victory. He declared that he

had never had any doubt of ultimate success at the polls, though he

admitted, with a vast wave of his arms to embody the whole magnanimity

of his concession, that he had felt somewhat disturbed by that apathy

which was the result of over-confidence. But the meeting at Lincoln, he

said, had completely dispelled these fears. He said that the meeting

at Lincoln had been a great outpouring of the common people, and that

they had gone home so deeply enthusiastic, after the sight of their

great leader, that it was now only a question of majorities. And as for

Garwood, why, he had never been so proud of the boy in his life. The

visit of the presidential candidate would increase the normal majority

of twenty-two hundred in the Thirteenth District to three thousand, but

Garwood was bound to run at least five hundred ahead of the ticket.

Rankin had published these views extensively as he sat in the smoking

car of the excursion train that jolted over from Lincoln the night of

the big meeting. The Grand Prairie boys had been disturbed by the story

printed in the _News_ but Rankin laughed at their fears, just as he

had laughed at Garwood.

"Why, it'll do him good!" Rankin declared, bringing his palm down

on the knee of Joe Kerr, the secretary of the Polk County central

committee. "Do him good, I tell you. It's worth a thousand votes to us

in Polk alone to have that little cur spring his blackmailin' scheme

at this stage o' the campaign. It's as good as a certificate of moral

character from the county court."

"Do you think it's a blackmailin' scheme?" asked Kerr.

"Think it!" cried Rankin, "why, damn it, man, I know it--didn't you

hear how Jerry threw him out of his office the day he tried to hold him

up? Why, he'd 'a' killed him if I hadn't held him back. You'd ought to

post up on the political history of your own times, Joe."

The men who were perched on the arms and hanging over the backs of the

car seats, pitching dangerously with the lurches the train gave in the

agony of a bonded indebtedness that pointed to an early receivership,

laughed above the groanings of the trucks beneath them. They had

gathered there for the delight it always gave them to hear Jim Rankin

talk, a delight that Rankin shared with them.

"Why didn't you kill him, Jim?" one of them asked.

"Oh," he said with an affectation of modesty as he dropped his eyes

and with his hand made moral protest, "I wanted him to print his story

first. I'll have to kill him some day, but I reckon I won't have time

before election."

While Rankin was extravagant in talk, he calculated pretty accurately

the effect of his words, and never said many things, in a political

way at least, that came back to plague him. His conception of Pusey's

motives was eagerly accepted by his own party men, and they went home

with a new passion for work in the wards and townships.

Pusey meanwhile had been standing on street corners in Grand Prairie,

swinging his cane, and glancing out with a shifty eye from under his

yellow straw hat, but men avoided him or when they spoke to him, did

so with a pleasantry that was wholly feigned and always overdone,

because they feared to antagonize him. Rankin had not seen him since

the publication of his screed, but one evening, going into the Cassell

House, he saw the soiled little editor leaning against the counter of

the cigar stand. The big man strode up to him, and his red face and

neck grew redder, as he seized Pusey by the collar of his coat.

"You little snake!" Rankin cried, so that all the men in the lobby

crowded eagerly forward in the pleasant excitement the prospect of a

fight still stirs in the bosoms of men. "I've got a notion to pull your

head off, and spat it up ag'inst that wall there!"

He gave the little man a shake that jolted his straw hat down to his

eyes.

"You just dare to print another line about us and you'll settle with

_me_, you hear? I'll pull your head off--no, I'll _pinch_ it off,

and--"

Rankin, failing of words to express his contempt, let go Pusey's coat

and filliped directly under his nose as if he were shooting a marble.

Pusey glared at him, with hatred in his eyes.

"Don't hurt him, Jim," one of the men in the crowd pleaded. They all

laughed, and Pusey's eye grew greener.

"Well, I won't kill you this evenin'," relented Rankin, throwing to the

floor the cigar he had half smoked, "I wouldn't want to embarrass the

devil at a busy time like this."

The Chicago papers had not covered the Garwood story, as the newspaper

phrase is, though the Grand Prairie correspondents had gladly wired it

to them. But the _Advertiser_ as well as one or two other newspapers

in the Thirteenth District, which were opposed politically to Garwood,

had not been able to resist the temptation to have a fling at him on

its account, though with cautious reservations born more of a financial

than a moral solvency.

The _Evening News_ with all the undiminished relish Pusey could find in

any morsel of scandal, had continued to display its story day after day

with what it boasted were additional details, but on the day following

the incident in the Cassell House, Pusey left off abusing Garwood to

abuse Rankin, and smarting under Rankin's public humiliation of him,

injected into his attack all the venom of his little nature. He kept,

however, out of Rankin's way, and all the while the big fellow as he

read the articles chuckled until his fat sides shook.

Jim Rankin was the most popular man in Grand Prairie; men loved to

boast for him that he had more friends than any three men in Polk

County, and the sympathy that came for Garwood out of a natural

reaction from so much abuse, was increased to sworn fealty when Rankin

was made the target for Pusey's poisoned shafts. When the story first

appeared the men of Grand Prairie had gossiped about it with the

smiling toleration men have for such things, but now it was a common

thing to hear them declare that they would vote for Garwood just to

show Free Pusey that his opinions did not go for much in that community.

Emily Harkness did not leave the house for days. She felt that she

could not bear to go down town, where every one would see her; and

there was nowhere else to go, save out into the country, and there no

one who lives in the country ever thinks of going unless he has to go.

She had entrenched herself behind the idea that the story was untrue,

and she daily fortified this position as her only possible defense

from despair, seeking escape from her reflections when they became

too aggressive by adding to her interest in Garwood's campaign. She

knew how much his election meant to him in every way, and though she

preferred to dissociate herself from the idea of its effect on her own

destiny, she quickly went to the politician's standpoint of viewing it

now as a necessary vindication, as if its result by the divine force of

a popular majority could disprove the assertions of Garwood's little

enemy.

Emily read all the papers breathlessly dreading a repetition of the

story, but her heart grew lighter as she found no further reference

to it. She had ordered the boy to stop delivering the _News_, and she

enjoyed a woman's sense of revenge in this action, believing that it

would in some way cripple Pusey's fortunes. She resolved, too, that her

friends should cease to take the sheet, but she could not bring herself

to make the first active step in this crusade.

Meanwhile, she had watched for an indignant denial from Garwood

himself, and she thought it strange that none appeared. But finally,

striving to recall all she knew of men's strange notions of honor,

and slowly marking out a course proper for one in Garwood's situation

to pursue, she came to the belief that he was right in not dignifying

the attack by his notice. She derived a deeper satisfaction when the

thought burst upon her one day, making her clasp her hands and lift

them to her chin with a gasp of joy such as she had not known for days,

that the same high notion had kept him from writing to her, though her

conception of a lover's duty in correspondence was the common one,

that is, that he should write, if only a line, every day. But Garwood

was busy, she knew, with his speaking engagements in Tazewell and

Mason Counties, and she tried faithfully to follow him on the little

itinerary he had drawn up for her, awaiting his coming home in the calm

faith that he would set it all aright.

IX

The strong-limbed girl who went striding up the walk to the Harkness's

porch was the only intimate of her own sex that Emily had retained;

perhaps she retained her because Dade Emerson was away from Grand

Prairie so much that custom could not stale this friendship. The girls

had been reared side by side, they had gone to the same school and,

later, for a while, to the same college; and they had glowed over those

secret passions of their young girlhood, just as they had wept when

their lengthened petticoats compelled them to give up paper dolls.

Dade Emerson, however, had never shared Emily's love of study; she

conformed more readily to the athletic type at that time coming into

vogue. In the second year of Dade's college course, old Mr. Emerson

died, and his widow, under the self-deluding plea that her grief could

find solace only in other climes, resolved to spend in traveling the

money with which her husband's death had dowered her. Dade Emerson

entered upon the hotel life of the wanderer with an enthusiasm her

black gowns could hardly conceal. They tried the south for her mother's

asthma, and the north for her hay-fever; they journeyed to California

for the good the climate was sure to do her lungs, and they crossed

the Atlantic to take the baths at Wiesbaden for her rheumatism.

While her mother devoted herself to a querulous celebration of her

complaints, Dade led what is known as the active outdoor life. She

learned to row, and to swim; she won a medal by her tennis playing, and

she developed a romping health that showed in the sparkle of her dark

eye, in the flush of her brown cheek, in the swing of her full arm or

the beautiful play of the muscles in her strong shoulders as she strode

in her free and graceful way along the street or across the room. She

climbed Mont Blanc; she wished to try the Matterhorn, but the grave

secretary of the Alpine Club denied her permission when she dragged her

breathless mother one summer up to Zermatt to try for this distinction.

In the summer under notice, her mother had declared that she must

see Grand Prairie once more before she died, and they had come home,

and thrown open the old house for its first occupancy in two years.

When the Emersons arrived at Grand Prairie, Dade had embraced Emily

fervidly, and the two girls had vowed that their old intimacy must

immediately be reëstablished on its ancient footing. With her objective

interest in life, Dade had no difficulty in giving her demeanor towards

Emily the spontaneity it is sometimes necessary to feign towards the

friends of a by-gone day and stage of development; and so she swung

into the wide hall, and fairly grappled Emily, who had come to meet

her.

"I've bean just dying to see you, dyah," she said, in the new accent

she had acquired while in Europe, which was half Eastern, half English.

She kissed Emily, and flung herself into a chair in the parlor whither

Emily was already pointing the way. Her fresh, wholesome personality,

her summer garments, the very atmosphere of strength and health she

breathed were welcome stimulants to Emily.

"It's downright hot, I say," Dade continued, wriggling until her skirts

fluffed out all over the front of her chair, and showed the plaid hose

above the low, broad-heeled shoes she wore. She glanced around to see

if the windows were open.

"Beastly!" she ejaculated. And she took a handkerchief and polished her

face until its clean tanned skin shone.

"I say," she went on, tossing her handkerchief into her lap, "I didn't

sleep a wink thinking about you lahst night. I had to run ovah to see

you about it directly I could leave poor mamma. Isn't it too--"

"It's awfully good of you to come, dear," Emily got in. "I've been

intending to have you over to take dinner and spend the day. But now

that you are back for good--"

"Back for good!" said Dade, "_Mais non_, not a bit of it. Mamma says

she cawn't enduah this climate, and who could? We're off directly we

can decide wheah to go. She wants to go up into the White Mountains,

but I've just got to go some place wheah they have golf links, don't

you know? The truth is, Em, its impossible in this stupid, provincial

old hole--I'll be every bit as fat as mamma if I stay hyah a minute

longah--"

"You miss your exercise?" said Emily, lolling back on the cushions of

her divan in an indolence of manner that told how remote exercise was

from her wish at that moment.

"Don't speak the word!" cried Dade, pushing out one of her strong hands

repellently. "I positively cawn't find a thing to do. I tried for a

cross-country walk yesterday, and got chased by a stupid fahmah, and

nearly hooked by a cow--to say nothing of this rich Illinois mud. Mamma

owns a few hundred acres of it, _Dieu merci_, so we don't have to live

hyah on it, though if the--what do you say?--_les paysans_--keep on

crying for a decrease in rent I fawncy you'll see me back hyah actually

digging in it."

The picture of the Emerson's tenants which Dade drew struck a pang

in Emily's sociological conscience. She pitied the girl more for her

inability to estimate the evils of a system which left her free to

wander over the earth seeking that exercise which her clamoring muscles

demanded, while those upon whose labors she lived had to exercise more

than their overwrought muscles required than she did for the remote

prospect of her being doomed to labor on the corn lands of Polk County.

"I'd go down to Zimmerman's saloon and bowl, if it wouldn't shock you

all to death. But tell me, how do you feel about it?"

"About what--your need of exercise?"

"_Mon Dieu_, no--about the terrible _exposé_ of that interesting

protégé of yours? _On ne pourrait le croire--c'est affreux!_"

"Well, no," Emily said, with a woeful laugh, "if I understand your

French."

"What!" exclaimed the girl. "I thought you were so deeply interested

in him. Haven't you worked hard to give him some sort of social form,

getting him to dawnces and all that sort of thing?"

"No, not to dances, Dade. He doesn't dance."

"Oh, to be suah. I heahd that--and I heahd--" she gave a ringing

laugh--"I heahd that he was downright jealous when you went to visit

Sallie Van Stohn in St. Louis and dawnced with all those men theah. And

I didn't blame him--those St. Louis men are raeally lovely dawncers,

bettah than the Chicago men--they have the _mesure_ but not the

_grâce_--though the St. Louis men are nothing at all to the German

officers we met at Berlin. Why, my dyah, those fellows can waltz across

a ball room with a glass of wine on each hand--raeally!" She stretched

out her well-turned arms and held their pink palms up, to picture the

corseted terpsichorean. "But why didn't you teach him to dawnce?"

Emily did not conceal with her little laugh the blush that came at

this reminder of her attempts to overcome Garwood's pride, which had

rebelled at the indignity of displaying his lack of grace in efforts at

the waltz or the easier two-step.

"He wouldn't learn."

"How stupid! But that's nothing now to this othah thing. Had you evah

dreamed of such a thing? I thought from what you wrote me that he was

the soul of honah."

"So he is!" declared Emily, lifting eyes that blazed a defiance.

"But won't it injure his chawnces of election?"

"No!" Emily fairly cried in her determined opposition to the thought,

"no, it won't." She sat upright on the divan, and leaned toward her

friend with a little gasp.

"You don't mean to tell me you think it true, Dade?"

Dade ceased to rock. She looked at Emily with her black eyes sparkling

through their long lashes, and then she squeezed her wrists between her

knees and said:

"Emily Harkness, you're in love with that man!"

Emily's gaze fell. She thrust out her lower lip a little, and gave

an almost imperceptible toss to her brown head. She stroked a silken

pillow at her side. Dade's eyes continued to sparkle at her through

their long lashes, and she felt the conviction of their gaze.

"Well," she said at last, gently, "I am going to marry him."

Dade continued to gaze a moment longer, and then she swooped over to

the divan. She hugged Emily in her strong young arms, almost squeezing

the breath from the girl's body.

"Bless you, I knew it!" And then she kissed her, but suddenly held her

away at arm's length as if she were a child, and said with the note of

reproach that her claim as a life-long intimate gave her voice: "But

why didn't you tell me?"

"You're the first I've told except papa," said Emily.

"_C'est vrai?_" said Dade, her jealousy appeased. "Then it's all

right, dyah--and it's splendid, I think. He's a typical American, you

know, and the very man you ought to marry. Mamma's been afraid I'd

marry one of those foreignehs, and so have I--but it's splendid. And

I tell you--" she settled herself for confidences--"I'll come back

from anywheah to the wedding, to be your maid of honah--just as we

used to plan--don't you know? Oh, I am so glad, and I think it's noble

in you; it's just like you. It'll elect him, too, if you announce it

right away. I say, I'll give a luncheon for you, and we can announce

it then--no, that wouldn't be correct, would it? We'd have to have the

luncheon hyah--but it'll elect him. It would in England, where the

women go in for politics more than you do, _n'est ce pas_?"

She always spoke of her own land from the detached standpoint a long

residence abroad, and sometimes a short one, gives to expatriates.

"And--let's plan it all out now, dyah. Will you have it at St. Louis,

and Doctah Storey?--why--there--there now----"

Emily had pillowed her head on Dade's full bosom, and her

long-restrained tears had flooded forth. The larger girl, with the

motherly instinct that comes with brimming health, wrapped her friend

in her arms, and soothed her, though disengaging one hand now and then

to wipe the perspiration that bedewed her own brow. The two girls sat

there in silence, rocking back and forth among the pillows in the

darkened parlor, until Dade suddenly broke the spell by sitting bolt

upright and exclaiming:

"_Mon Dieu_, there comes that big De Freese girl. I'm going."

And she rose to effect her incontinent desertion at once. Turning

in from the street, a large, tranquil blonde, gowned and gloved and

bearing a chiffon parasol to keep the sun from her milky complexion,

was calmly and coolly crossing the yard.

"She's got call in her eye!" exclaimed Dade. And then she hurried on,

before she fled, to say all she had left unsaid:

"I'll be ovah this aftahnoon, and we'll plan it all out--and I'm going

to make mamma spend next wintah in Washington. It'll help some of her

diseases--what's the climate of Washington good for, do you know?"

But Emily had risen to glance out the window, and then, with her hands

to her face, had fled from the room. Dade heard the patter of her feet

on the stairs as she gathered up her skirts and soared aloft. And then

in her surprise she looked out the window again and saw a tall man,

with a broad black hat slouched over his eyes, taking long steps across

the lawn. He seemed boorishly to be set on beating the mild blonde to

the door.

The two callers gained the veranda at the same moment, before the bell

could be rung to summon the maid. As she left the parlor Dade snatched

her hat from her head and sent it sailing across to the divan, and

then, at the door, she smiled and said:

"Good mohning, Miss de Freese. Miss Hawkness? No, she's ill, and

isn't visible this mohning. I'm staying with heh. She'll be downright

sorry--and Mr. Hawkness, sir," she turned to Garwood, "left wohd to

have you wait. He'll be hyah directly. Just step into the drawing-room

please," she smiled, but with a little scowl, at the obtuse politician,

who seemed disposed to dispute with her, though under the influence of

her eyes, he obeyed, and when he had passed in, she continued:

"It's too bad, Miss de Freese, raeally--and you've had such a walk this

wahm mohning. Oh, nothing serious at all, just one of heh headaches,

you know; I'll tell heh--she'll be awfully disappointed."

She went into the drawing-room.

"Pahdon, sir," she said, "I left my hat." And she crossed to the divan.

"Did I understand you to say that Emil--that Miss Harkness was----"

"I'll tell heh; she'll come right down."

"But you said Mister Harkness had left----"

Dade smiled the superior smile of the socially perfect.

"You possibly misundahstood me, sir; I said Miss Harkness would be

down."

She bowed herself out of the room, leaving Garwood with one more

perplexity added to those that were already accumulating too rapidly

for him.

Dade went up the staircase and to Emily's room. The girl was standing

by her door, her hands clasped and raised in expectation to her freshly

powdered face.

"_Le voilà!_" said Dade, pointing tragically over the balusters, and

then she went down the back stairs.

X

Garwood, as he sat in the cool drawing-room that morning, rehearsed

again, and, as he suddenly remembered, for the last time, the scene he

was about to enact with Emily. He had thought the matter all out, and

with his quick perception of the theatrical quality of any situation,

he had prepared for it just as he would for a public speech or, when he

had the time, for an argument before a jury. As he sat this morning,

taking his eye for a moment from the hall door to glance through the

open window into the yard, he beheld old Jasper raking the lawn, heard

him talking to himself in an expostulatory tone, and knew that the old

man was just putting the finishing touches to some imaginary opponent

he had vanquished in an argument. And Garwood smiled, and felt a

sympathy with the old fellow; he, too, was given to the practice of

talking to himself; if the speeches he delivered when walking home at

night could only be reproduced on the stump, he would have no fears

whatever of the result.

As he looked out the window he became telepathically aware of a

presence, and turned to behold Emily standing in the wide door that

led into the hall, parting the heavy curtains with trembling hands. He

sprang to his feet and took a step towards her. She advanced to meet

him, she stretched out her hands, she took him by the arms; she turned

him half around that the light might fall full in his face, and then

she let her eyes melt into his. And before he could move, or say one

word of all he had intended to say, her face gladdened like the sky at

dawn, and she smiled and said:

"Ah, Jerome--I knew it, I knew it!"

And then she hid herself against his breast, and he put his arms about

her.

"Did you ever believe it for one little instant?" he whispered, bending

over her, after he had drunk to the uttermost the ecstasy and the

anguish of that moment.

"Not for one little instant," she whispered. "Oh, not for one little

instant! I knew it couldn't be!"

And Garwood, looking over the masses of her hair, again saw old Jasper

working away in the yard. He was singing now, and Garwood knew that

ever after in his memory the aged negro would live in association with

that scene.

When they were sitting on the divan, side by side, and the morning was

gone, Emily asked him, out of the half-affected simplicity Garwood

loved to have her adopt, as most men do, because of the tribute to

their superior intelligence it implies:

"Jerome, what is a roorback?"

He was silent for a moment, and then he said:

"A roorback, dear, is a lie told because of the necessities of

politics."

"And are lies necessary in politics?"

"Always, it seems," he said.

XI

A man whose figure had taken on the full contour of a prosperous

maturity sat at his desk, reflectively drawing little geometrical

designs on a pad of paper. The abundance of his prosperousness was

indicated in every appointment of his law offices no less than in his

own person, for they reflected the modern metropolitan style of Chicago

rather than the fashion of an older day in central Illinois, where a

bare floor, a flat table, and a rough set of bookshelves bearing up

Blackstone and Kent, Chitty and Starkie, and the Illinois digests and

reports, were considered sufficient furnishing. His silvery hair was

cropped close with a half bang over his clear forehead, and his gray

beard was as carefully trimmed as his hair; in the lapel of the gray

coat that set his shoulders off stoutly, was a red carnation. He wore a

fresh carnation every day; where he got them was ever a mystery to the

people of Clinton.

Judge Bromley had resigned from the bench of the Circuit Court to

become the general attorney of a railroad than ran up out of Egypt to

tap the central portion of Illinois, and he was the local attorney for

a number of other roads. His railroads would have been pleased to have

him in Congress, no doubt, though they would have preferred to have him

on the bench of the United States Court. And it was with this prospect

in veiled view that he had consented to run for Congress in a district

where the normal majority was greatly against him, knowing that his

sacrifices would commend him to the administration at Washington in

case the national ticket of his party was successful.

Another man sat with Bromley in his private office that October

morning. He sat tentatively, if not timidly, on the edge of his chair,

for the conversation had not reached such a stage of confidential

warmth on the lawyer's part as warranted the man in lounging at more

familiar ease in its leather depths.

The man was McFarlane, and he was the chairman of the congressional

committee of the party that had nominated Bromley to stand in the

Thirteenth against Garwood.

"I have already sent my checks to the chairman of each county committee

in payment of my assessments, Mr. McFarlane," the lawyer said at length.

"Sure, I know that, Judge," said McFarlane, "but things is changed

now--I tell you you've got more'n a fightin' chance to win out."

"You think this story of Mr. Garwood's irregularities--his alleged

irregularities," he corrected himself with a lawyer's absurd habit of

care in his words, "will seriously impair his prospects, then?"

"W'y, sure, why wouldn't it?" McFarlane urged. "We can make it."

"Ah, make it," observed Bromley. "But how, if you will oblige me? You

must pardon my lack of knowledge of the--ah--technique of politics,

Mr. McFarlane."

"Oh, that's all right, Judge," McFarlane hastened to say, with a

reassuring generosity of soul. "How'll we make it? Why, use it--that's

how; we'll make Jerry defend his record in the House. We'll get the

people to see it--that's how."

"But will the people believe it? They are slow, you know, to believe

these stories of boodling, as I believe it is called. The newspapers

have a good deal to say of it from time to time, but I doubt if the

people take it much more seriously than the rest of the current and

conventional jokes of the press. Do you think they'll believe it? That

question occurs to me as material at this point of our----"

"Believe it! Do you think these farmers around here'd refuse to believe

anything when you tell 'em the corporations is behind it? Don't you

think they won't believe it!"

"You have no doubt, then, of its authenticity?"

"Oh, course, I don't say as to that. Jerry's a good fellow, all

right enough. I ain't sayin', between ourselves, what he done at

Springfield--it's none o' my business, you know."

"I presume not."

"You ought to know as much about it as me, anyway, Judge. You're a

corp'ration lawyer--you've been to Springfield yourself, I reckon."

The lawyer winced, and the natural ruddiness of his healthy skin showed

under his white beard a deeper hue.

"I have only been there to appear in the Supreme or the Appellate

Court, Mr. McFarlane; I have no concern with any legislative lobbying

my clients may do, if they do any."

"Oh, sure--'scuse me, Judge--that's done by the Chicago lawyers, of

course; I didn't stop to think." McFarlane had almost settled himself

in his chair, but at this _contretemps_ he leaned forward again, and

then, wishing to give the action the effect of interest rather than of

embarrassment, he hastened on:

"But that ain't all, by a long shot. You know Sprague--Con Sprague?"

"The present incumbent? Of course."

"Well, you know, Jerry beat him for renomination, or Jim Rankin did

it fer 'im. Garwood had promised Sprague to hold the Polk County

delegation fer 'im, he says, and, well, Rankin turned a trick at the

Clinton convention that euchred Sprague out of the nomination. Course,

Jim turned round and tried to square it by throwin' the legislative

nomination to Sprague's brother-in-law, Hank Wilson; but still,

Sprague's sore."

"He is?"

"You bet he is. He hasn't lifted a finger in the whole campaign, an' I

heerd last night from Al Granger, who's over from Sullivan, that his

fellows over there are openly knifing Garwood, and that gives us a

chance to carry Moultrie. Well," McFarlane paused to swallow, "we can

carry DeWitt here--it's your home county--and the majority against us

is less than a hundred; we have a good chance in Piatt, an' they're

shaky about Logan, particularly down in Millwood to'nship. Garwood had

a meetin' there the other day which was a frost--a change of a hundred

an' fifty votes, an' you've got 'em. Why, I tell you, man, it's the

chance of your life. You can win out."

McFarlane spoke with the enthusiasm of that confidence into which a

politician can work himself when he begins to juggle the handy figures

of old election returns, and some of his warmth was communicated

to the candidate, who felt his blood tingle, and his heart rise in

anticipation. He had never allowed himself to think of the possibility

of his election, until that moment; but that moment was the fatal one

that comes to every candidate, at a certain stage in his campaign, when

he begins to indulge in dreams of victory. And yet Bromley was a wary

man and he shrank again, in his habit of judicial deliberation.

"You speak encouragingly, Mr. McFarlane," he said, "but I do not quite

share your confidence. I am not the man to indulge in illusions. You

realize, of course, that I took the nomination at some sacrifice,

merely for the sake of the party. I had no thought of being elected

with the district organized as it is under the present apportionment

act."

"Yes, I know, they carved the district out for Sprague in their

last gerrymander, an' then Sprague got thrown down fer the

nomination--that's why he's so sore."

"What plan do you propose?"

"Well," said McFarlane, "just what I told you. We ought to poll

every county in the district, make a separate an' distinct poll fer

ourselves, independent of the county committees, and then--get out the

vote. It'll take money, of course."

Judge Bromley was tapping his pencil lightly on the desk.

"Do you think I should make a personal canvass of the district?"

McFarlane hesitated.

"Well," he said, "that might be a good thing a little later." He looked

at the judge's clothes, made by a Chicago tailor, as he supposed,

though they were made by a New York tailor, at his red carnation, at

his rimless _pince-nez_, and thought of his campaigning in the rural

districts.

"But my idee fer the present 'uld be a still hunt. We can work up to

the brass band and the red fire gradually, and wind up in a blaze o'

glory, after we get 'em on the run. See?"

"How much will all this cost?"

"Oh, well, now, that's a question. Course, the boys ain't in politics

fer the'r health, an' the more money we have the more----"

Bromley, at this bald suggestion of a raid on his pocket-book, flushed,

this time angrily. He dropped his pencil and tightened his fist, laying

the thick of it heavily on the edge of his desk. Then he wheeled

around, and said, his eyes contracting behind his rimless aristocratic

glasses:

"Look here, McFarlane, this must be a plain business proposition. I

have no barrel, as you call it,"--though McFarlane had said nothing

about a barrel--"and I've already given all I can afford to the

campaign. I would be willing, perhaps, as a further sacrifice to the

party and my principles, to increase my contribution, but I'd want

to know just what was done with it; I'd want every bill audited by a

responsible committee; I'd want it all used properly and effectively;

in other words, I'd expect results--do you understand?"

"Oh, course, Judge, just as you say. It's your campaign, you know. I'm

only showin' you where you can win out, that's all. If you don't care

nothin' about goin' to Congress--why, all right. It needn't cost much."

"But _how_ much, that's the question?" demanded Bromley.

"Oh, well, three or four thousand, perhaps; maybe five. Hell! I can't

tell exactly. It's no cinch, the amount ain't. A couple o' thousand

'uld do fer a starter, till we could tell how she developed."

Bromley received McFarlane's estimate in silence, and looked somewhere

out of his window for support. McFarlane sat and eyed him keenly.

"Has Garwood any means?" the lawyer asked presently, and then

immediately answered his own question by observing: "I suppose not,

though; his practice, as I suppose he calls it, is confined to the

personal injury business." The judge said this with a corporation

lawyer's contempt for one who has no money and whose practice is

confined to the speculative side of personal injury cases.

"No, Jerry's poor," said McFarlane. "But I hear it rumored that old

Ethan Harkness's puttin' up some fer 'im."

"Ethan Harkness? The banker over at Grand Prairie?"

"Yep."

"Why should he provide means for Garwood's campaign?"

"Oh, don't ask me--that's what the boys says. Seems to me, though, I

heerd somethin' about Jerry's goin' to marry his daughter."

"H-m-m-m!" the judge said, and then he was silent for a while.

"Somebody would have to put up fer 'im," McFarlane continued. "I

hear he hain't paid none o' his campaign assessments yet, an' that

hain't helpin' him none. That'll be another thing in your favor, too,

Judge--unless old Harkness does hear an' heed the Mac'donian cry."

"I hardly can imagine Ethan Harkness giving away money for any purpose,

much less a purpose of that sort," said the judge, with the first

twinkle in his eye that had sparkled behind his lenses since McFarlane

had mentioned money. "And I don't place much credence in that story

about Garwood's wedding Miss Harkness. The Harknesses are really a very

good family, as I remember to have heard Mrs. Bromley say."

McFarlane did not care to venture on the unsafe ground of society, and

so was silent. The judge, too, was silent. He was pondering.

"Well, Mr. McFarlane," he said at length, "I'll consider your

suggestion carefully, and you may call to-morrow morning, if you will

be so good, when I shall have a conclusion ready for you."

The judge looked at McFarlane with the glance that terminates the

interviews of a busy man, especially a man busy in corporation

interests, where the personal equation may be largely ignored, and

waited for McFarlane to leave.

McFarlane went down the stairs, chuckling.

"He took the bit all right," he said to the man who was waiting for

him. "Let's go have a nice little drink."

XII

Ethan Harkness was sitting in his library, as the architect who had

remodeled his old house had named the pleasant apartment that opened

off the living-room. Here, out of deference to the idea, Emily had her

books, as well as the few her father read, disposed upon low shelves;

and here the old man passed his hours at home, because, as he loved

to say, in his whimsical pretense that he was in the way, he would

bother no one. His habit was to sit here every evening and smoke his

cigar over his newspaper. Perhaps he would read some book Emily had

urged upon him, though he never liked the books she recommended. Once

in every year he read Scott's novels through, at least he was one of

those persons of whom that highly colored tale is told. Emily, in her

new appreciation of the realistic, had joined in the cultured revolt

against the romantic school, and would not own to the least respect for

Scott. Once in a while, when her father, in his devices to induce her

to read the Wizard, would complain of his eyes hurting him, and ask

her to read Rob Roy to him, she would do so until he nodded, and then

when he had gone to bed, would take the book to her room and read until

the house was still and cold with the silence and chill of midnight,

so that she was afraid to move. But such occasions she declared to be

literary debauches, and would tell her father at breakfast that she was

ashamed of herself.

He was sitting thus one evening, under the lamp, its soft mellow light

falling on his silver hair; his glasses far down upon his high-bridged

nose, his book held up before them. He breathed heavily as he read, and

Emily, pausing an instant in the doorway, gazed upon him, thinking,

with a love that to her had a touch of pathos, of all his kindly ways.

"All alone, as usual?" she said.

The old man took off his glasses slowly, closed his book upon them to

mark his place, and then looked gravely up, waiting for her to speak.

"Father," she said, "I've something to tell you."

The tone was one to alarm the old man, and he sighed. He had reached

the time of life when he dreaded change, and her tone had the note of

change in it.

She sat down in a little rocking-chair before him, knitting her fingers

together, her white hands lying in her lap. Her eyes were fixed upon a

ring that sparkled on her finger--a ring that Garwood had bought, on

credit, at Maxwell the jeweler's, that morning. Harkness waited for her

to speak with the same gravity with which he had waited for Garwood to

speak an evening long ago, when the voting man had ventured in upon

him, trying to assume a dignity the beating of his heart threatened,

just as the beating of the old man's heart now threatened the gravity

he had assumed. Though there was a difference; the old man was aware

that it was not well for him that his heart should beat as it was

beating in that moment.

"Father," the girl said, twirling the ring on her finger, the light

from the lamp flashing a dozen spectra from the facets of the diamond,

"Jerome and I are going to be married."

The old man made no reply.

"Soon," she added, thinking he had not caught the full significance of

her words.

"Soon," he said, in hollow repetition. But he did not turn his head or

move.

He had expected it some day, he had even wished it, for in his

old-fashioned conservatism he did not like to think of Emily as an old

maid, but he had hoped that it would be a day long in coming.

Emily raised her eyes and looked at him. His hair seemed whiter, his

face suddenly older, he appeared so lonely. As she looked a tear oozed

from his eye and slid down his cheek and beard. And then she leaned

forward, folded her arms on his knees, pillowed her head upon them, and

wept.

The old man placed his hand upon her coils of hair, patting them

softly. But he was silent. The mood passed, the old man possessed

himself, laid his book on the table, and sighed with relief, as if at

the end of some painful scene. He grew restless, but the girl held him;

drew closer, embraced him passionately at the last, and cried:

"But I won't leave you, father, I won't--I won't! It'll be just the

same for us--tell me it will!"

The old man smiled.

"Oh, yes," he said, "that part of it'll be all right. But tell

me--what's the rush?"

"Why, father, there isn't any rush--only, don't you know how every

one's against him just now?"

"Humph!" he said, "not if the reports of his meetings is correct, they

hain't."

"Well, I know; but they tell such stories about him, and this horrible

roorback--isn't that what they call it?"

"Depends on who you mean by they," he answered.

"Well, you know," she said, in the assumption that avoided

explanations, "I want to show them that I believe in him, anyway."

"That's like you, Em," he said, smiling at her. "It's like your mother,

too."

She was touched by this. He seldom spoke of her mother. And she drew

nearer to him, and ran her fingers fondly through his white hair.

"Have you been thinking of her?" she asked, with a tender reverence.

"Some--to-night," he said. "She stuck up for me once." And then he was

silent again.

The girl, with the impatience of youth, tried to coax him away from his

sad humor, and assumed a happy tone, though she blinked to keep back

her tears.

"Oh, it won't be for a long time, really, father--not till fall, not

till after election, anyway. And it shan't make any difference, shall

it? No, we'll all be so happy together. You and Jerome can play cards

in the evening--and it'll be ever so much livelier in this big, empty

old house."

The old man conceived the picture she imagined for him, but one of his

grotesque humors came upon him.

"D'ye think Mother Garwood'll like the board?" he asked.

"Father!" Emily protested, "you'd joke at a funeral!"

XIII

The seven members of the congressional committee, assembled in Judge

Bromley's office, sat in a circle around the wall, beneath the pictures

of Chief-justice Marshall, of Daniel Webster, and of Blackstone,

reflecting in their faces, with a studied effort that pained them, the

seriousness of those jurists. They sat in silence, looking now and

then one at another, or most of all at McFarlane, the chairman, who

by virtue of his office sat nearest the roll-top desk of the judge,

and, out of a disposition to show the ease of his footing with the

candidate, carelessly swung back and forth the revolving bookcase,

which creaked under its load of the Illinois Reports and Kinney's

Digest.

The members of the committee were smoking cigars from a box the judge

had provided, a box of five-cent domestic cigars, which fouled the

atmosphere of the private office with their thick white smoke. The

smoke from the Havana cigar the judge himself was smoking, wriggled

upward in a blue wraith from the white hand that held it, and the judge

only raised the cigar to his lips often enough to keep it alight, and

as if to aid his mental processes. These processes were doubtless

profound, for he bent his head, and wrinkled his brow, and looked

intently at the silver-mounted furnishings of his desk. He had already

sat there what seemed to the waiting politicians a long time, and had

not moved. But at last he dropped the eraser with which he had been

playing while he thought, and, lightly touching the revolving bookcase,

for its swing and creak made him nervous, he gave a judicial cough.

"I have asked you to meet here, gentlemen," he began, half turning in

his swivel chair, "to discuss some features of my campaign. You, all of

you, no doubt, were apprised, at the convention of our party, of the

reluctance I felt in accepting the nomination; you, all of you, are

aware, at what personal sacrifice I consented to allow my name to be

used, so that it is unnecessary for me to discuss this feature of the

case at this time."

The judge said this impressively, with his brows lowered, as if he were

charging a jury.

"Up to this time, it has not seemed to me advisable to make an active

personal canvass, and as you know, I have not done so, preferring to

leave to you the execution of such plans as might suggest themselves

to the consideration of your--ah--excellent committee. But recently,

events have developed that induce me to alter any resolutions I

may have formed to continue in such a course. You, all of you, are

acquainted with these events, much better acquainted, I may say, than

I, so that I need not touch upon them in detail. Within the last two

or three weeks, I have noticed that a strong undercurrent of public

opinion has set in toward our ticket." The judge illustrated the

undercurrent by moving his hand gracefully along at a horizontal

plane above the floor. "If I understand the temper of our people, and

the prevailing signs of the times, they are ready for a change in

the guidance of their affairs--to be brief, I think that we have an

excellent chance to win."

"You bet we have, Judge," broke in Hadley, from Tazewell.

The judge raised his head and looked his surprise at Hadley, as if to

resent the interruption, and the members of the committee turned and

looked at Hadley severely. Murch, who sat next Hadley, drove an elbow

into the man's ribs, and Hadley's bronzed face became a deeper shade.

"As I observed," said Bromley, anxious that his observation be not

lost, "I think we have an excellent chance of winning, better than we

have had in any congressional campaign within my memory."

The judge paused here to let the conviction that his own personality

had produced this unusual political condition sink into the minds of

his auditors. And then he resumed.

"If you have followed me thus far, gentlemen, you will be prepared for

the announcement I am about to make."

He paused again impressively.

"I have determined, gentlemen, to enter upon the prosecution of a

vigorous personal campaign. In short, I shall take the stump."

He stopped, and looked around him. The committee-men, not expecting him

to leave off in his address so soon, were not prepared for its end, and

so had to bestir themselves and simulate a proper appreciation of the

effect of his announcement. McFarlane murmured some sort of approval,

and his words were repeated around the circle. Judge Bromley leaned

back in his chair, with his elbow on his desk.

"I shall take the stump," he repeated, showing his love for the phrase,

which he had been accustomed to see in newspapers all his days when the

doings of eminent politicians were chronicled, "and have determined to

open my campaign in Mr.--ah--Garwood's own county, in his own town,

Grand Prairie. I believe you are the committee-man for Polk County,

Mr. Funk, are you not?" He turned to a lank man leaning his long body

forward, his sharp elbows on his knees, who now looked up languidly.

"Me? I reckon I am," he said.

"Very well," the judge continued, "can we arrange for a meeting in your

county?"

"Reckon we can," replied Funk, "if we can raise the price."

The judge scowled.

"We shall, of course, provide for that," he said. At the words Funk

straightened up, and a revival of interest was apparent in the other

members of the group.

"What would you suggest--an open-air meeting?"

"Don't know as I would," said Funk. "Open-air meetin's is

dangerous--mightn't be enough turn out to fill all outdoors. Course, we

might have a torch-light percession, to draw a crowd--if we had the

torches and a band."

"That can be arranged," said the judge.

"Might have the meetin' in the op'ra house," Funk went on. "What d'ye

think, Neal?" He deferred to McFarlane.

"Seems to me the op'ra house would be safer," said McFarlane.

"That, of course, is a matter to be considered," said Bromley. "But at

any rate, I wish to have meetings announced in all the counties."

The silence which had oppressed the members of the committee having

been broken by the words of Funk and McFarlane, the conversation became

general, and grew in interest until McFarlane voiced the burden that

lay at the bottom of all their hearts by saying:

"Judge, how 'bout the funds? You know what we was sayin' the other day."

"Yes," said Bromley, "I recall our conversation. I shall meet all

legitimate expenses--ah--as they arrive."

There was an instant depreciation of interest, and when the men filed

down the stairs half an hour later, McFarlane again voiced the burden

of their hearts by saying:

"He's goin' to hold onto his pile, boys. All bills to be paid on

vouchers signed by the auditor and presented to the treasurer."

McFarlane liked to recall to his friends his six months in the State

House, and spoke at times in the language of the bills he had enrolled

and engrossed so often during that experience.

"Well, a lawyer that tries his own case has a fool for a client,"

said Mason, "and it's that-away 'ith a candidate that manages his own

campaign."

Bromley had been led to his resolution to take the stump by two

incidents. One, the first, occurred at Chicago. He had gone there to

attend a banquet of the State Bar Association, and had made a speech.

Though he had been accustomed to the court room all his life, and had

spoken much to juries, and oftener to courts, he was deliberative and

judicial, rather than epideictic, and had acquired the dry, sophistical

manner of speaking which comes to those happy and distinguished lawyers

whose causes are heard with more sympathy by the solemn judges of the

courts of appeal, than by the juries in the _nisi prius_ courts, and he

had shrunk from popular oratory.

But at the bar banquet, having drunk wine, he spoke at length, and as

he progressed so loved the sound of his own voice, that when he sat

down he found himself for the first time in his life in an oratorical

perspiration. And then, before the flush of his intellectual activity

had left him, ideas more brilliant than those he had had while on his

feet came to him in such profusion that he had longed to repeat his

effort. He felt that he could do so much better, though he felt that he

had done well, for the long board, sweeping away with its glistening

glass, and surrounded by so many ruddy men in brave shirt-fronts, had

run round with applause. To crown his triumph the man next to him had

said:

"Judge, why don't you take the stump?"

The words had coursed gladly through his veins like the wine he had

drunk. He felt that he had found himself at last.

The sense of triumph had not altogether left him by the next morning,

and as he sat at his late breakfast at his hotel, seeking an account of

the banquet in the _Courier_, his name had suddenly leaped to his eyes

out of all the thousands of words packed on the page, and he read with

a gasp a despatch from Springfield, which reviewed political conditions

in the state.

The paragraph devoted to the Thirteenth Congressional District said,

among other things:

"Judge Bromley thus far has not taken the stump, and the impression is

general that he is conscious of his own limitations as an orator. In

the Supreme Court, arguing a case for some of his wealthy clients, he

is perfectly at home, but he is not the kind of man that takes on the

stump before a promiscuous crowd. Realizing this, the astute managers

of his campaign have kept the judge at home and are making a still

hunt. Meanwhile, young Jerry Garwood, who has oratorical powers of

a high order, and who has unsuccessfully tried to draw Bromley into

a joint debate, is speaking nightly to big audiences all over the

District."

The judge grew angry as he read this, and he made his resolve in that

hour. A few days later, when the excitement of his success at the bar

banquet had left him, and he imagined himself speaking to jostling

thousands before him, under the flare and swirl of torches' yellow

flames, he would turn cold with fear. But he was a determined man, and

he could not resist the pleasing sound of the words that announced his

intention to take the stump. Proclamation was duly made, after what he

politely called his conference with the committee, that he would open

his speaking tour in Grand Prairie, with some more phrases, equally

pleasing to him, about "throwing down the gauntlet," and "carrying the

war into the enemy's country."

Over in Grand Prairie, Jim Rankin read the announcement with glee; out

on Sangamon Avenue, Emily Harkness read it, and clenched her little

fists, saying to herself that it was an impertinence in Bromley to come

into Jerome's own town; in a little hotel over in Monticello, Garwood

read it with concern, wondering what it could mean, while away over in

the Galesburg District, on a train that was rolling out of Monmouth,

Charley Cowley, the _Courier's_ political correspondent, who had

written the paragraph in his Springfield despatch at Rankin's request,

showed his teeth in that odd smile of his. And up in Chicago, in the

breakfast room of the Grand Hotel, the chairman of the state committee

of the party Judge Bromley represented, read it and swore to himself:

"The damn fool!"

XIV

In the calm October days that followed, mysterious and subtle forces

were at work all over the Thirteenth District. The green trees of

the windbreaks changed to red and gold, the brown fields were tented

with tepees of yellow corn; in and out among the stubble, and along

the sides of the black roads, still dry and velvety from the summer's

warmth, brown prairie-chickens rustled covertly, and over all, over the

fields, the woods, the roads and the scattered towns, the blue sky bent

with a haze that had melancholy reminiscences of the lost spring, and

the benediction of peaceful autumn.

Emily, sitting in the sunlight that streamed through the tall bay

windows of her room, stitched away on her white wedding garments,

dreaming in her smiles of the new life that was just opening to her,

picturing Garwood, a great, strong man, fighting the battles of his

country, just as his old mother, sitting with her knitting by her low

window, wrinkling her brow as she lifted her eyes now and then over her

spectacles to gaze on her withering flower-beds in the little yard,

pictured him as a little boy, playing on the floor, charming her with

his precocious speeches.

Amid all this beauty and mystery, men were fighting one another,

bribing, deceiving and coercing one another, in order that the offices

of the republic might be taken from one set of men and turned over

to another set of men. This condition prevailed over all the land.

Everywhere men left work to talk and shout of this great battle, all

of them pretending, of course, that they did this for the good of

those whom they were vilifying and hating and accusing; claiming that

the country would be lost unless their own side won. For instance,

Judge Bromley had laid aside his dignity and was traveling all over

the counties that made up the Thirteenth Congressional District of

Illinois, urging people to vote for him because Garwood, as he charged,

while a member of the Legislature, had accepted a bribe. The judge did

not know whether this was true or not, but he used all the powers he

had cultivated in his four years in college, his three years in the

law school, his lifetime at the bar and on the bench, to make people

believe it was so; and he gave, though not so freely, of the money he

had made by these same talents of persuasion and dissimulation, to

organize clubs that would bind men to believe it.

At the same time Garwood was going up and down, urging people to

vote for him because his opponent was the paid attorney of the same

corporation which Bromley said had given the bribe; and using all his

talents to make people believe him instead of Bromley. Much of this was

said under the guise of discussing the tariff question; as to whether

the people could be made the happier by taxing one another much or

little; though neither side could have had the happiness of the people

at heart, for, in all the national turmoil, both sides were doing all

they could to defeat and humiliate those who differed from them in

opinion on little details of government.

Meanwhile a change as subtle and as mysterious as that of autumn

was going on in the feelings of men over the outcome of this great

conflict. In the Thirteenth District, from believing that Garwood would

be elected, they began to believe that he would be defeated. No one

could explain or analyze this change of sentiment, but his opponents

were gladdened by it, and his adherents saddened by it; many of them

wavered in their belief in him and in their adherence to him, being

drawn by a desire to be on the winning side.

Rankin was one of the first to perceive this change. His political

sensibilities were acute from long training, he could estimate public

sentiment accurately, and early in the campaign he had warned Garwood

that before election the day would come when they would feel that

they were losing ground; he had hoped that it would come early in the

campaign, but now that it had come, with but three weeks in which to

overcome its effects, Rankin carefully kept the fact from Garwood.

The letters that he wrote him, the telegrams he sent him, the advice

he gave when Garwood came home for Sunday, tired and worn from his

nerve-exhausting labors, were all to give him better heart to continue

the struggle. Garwood himself, speaking nightly to crowds that cheered

him, living and moving in an atmosphere of constant adulation and

applause, fortunately could not recognize the condition that alarmed

Rankin. It seemed to him, just as it seems to every candidate, that all

the people were for him, because he never met any who were against him.

Bromley had opened his campaign in Grand Prairie with a meeting which,

by its size, alarmed Rankin more than he would admit. He had his fun

out of it, of course, saying that Bromley, like all the rich, would

do better to let his money talk for him, and assuring Bromley's party

workers that the opening of his fountains of eloquence meant the

closing of his barrel. He made the discovery, too, that the judge,

while on his campaign tour, slept in silken pajamas, and he made much

of this in appeals to the prejudices of the farmers, knowing how this

symbol of the luxury of Bromley's life would affect them. Rankin dubbed

him "Pajamas" Bromley, and the stigma stuck, and yet he was too wise to

believe that he could overcome the effect of Bromley's money by mere

words and names. This was why he made the trip over to Sullivan to see

Sprague.

He found Sprague sitting in his law office, reading a newspaper in the

idleness of a country lawyer, a cuspidor placed conveniently near.

Sprague was a large man, with a tousled mass of gray hair, and a

short, shaggy beard burnished by the red of its youth, though it was

now lightened by gray. He wore, after the older professional ideal,

a long, black frock coat, though that he did not go thoroughly into

the details of sartorial effects was shown by the muddy tan shoes that

cocked their worn heels on the edge of his desk.

Conrad Sprague had once been considered a clever man; when admitted to

the bar he was one of those youths of whom it is said, "He has a bright

future"; and, like many such, Sprague had mistaken the promise for the

fulfilment, and had been content to use the superficial acquirements

which had given him a place in the debating society of the Ohio

college he had attended, before going out to Illinois to "locate," as

the phrase was, without strengthening them by newer studies. While

waiting for a law practice, he had gone into politics, originally

for the purpose of securing an acquaintance that would help him in

his profession, and ultimately, when his political duties interfered

so constantly with his legal duties that he could not attend to such

practice as came to him, as a means of livelihood in itself. Thus his

law office became in time but a background for his career in politics.

He had been successful at first; he had gone to the Legislature

and once to Congress. Now, in his defeat, with only the remnant of

his loosely organized following left to him, he was undergoing the

spiritual fermentation which disappointment works in weak natures, and

gave promise of souring altogether.

Sprague did not rise when Rankin entered, nor even remove his feet from

his desk. But he did lay his paper in his long lap, then slowly taking

the black-rimmed eye-glasses from his nose, and dangling them at the

end of their tangled and knotted cord, he said:

"Howdy, Jim; where'd you come from?"

"Just landed in," replied Rankin, pulling up a cane-seated chair and

dropping his heavy body into it.

"Come on business?"

"Yes, I did," said Rankin, rocking back and forth, "damned important

business."

"That so?"

"Yes, that's so."

Sprague, moved by the snapping tone, twisted his body and looked

squarely at Rankin. He made a movement of his legs as if he would take

his feet down.

"Yes, that's it," Rankin went on, "and you're the man I come to see."

Sprague dropped his feet to the floor, swung his chair half around on

one of its legs, and as it came down he brought it into a position

directly facing Rankin. He looked at his caller almost angrily for an

instant, but adopting the more peaceful tone in which he would have

addressed a new client, he said:

"Well, what can I do for you?"

"I'll tell you," said Rankin, "since that's what I come fer. You can

get out and do something to help land Garwood."

Sprague puckered his lips, turned his head away and whistled

reflectively. The whistle was a series of low, tuneless notes, and was

irritating to Rankin, who, though a fat man, developed nerves at times.

"Well, Jim," said Sprague at last, "you know that I haven't been taking

any active interest in this campaign."

"No, that's just the trouble," said Rankin, "you haven't. But some o'

your fellers has, an' I want you to call 'em off."

Sprague stopped whistling and looked at Rankin.

"Of course, Jim," he said, "what some of my friends may be doing I

don't know. They seem to think, some of them, that they have cause for

dissatisfaction in the way I was treated at the Clinton convention."

"Oh, come off, now," said Rankin. "You know that won't go 'ith me, Con.

You know how much chance you ever had at the Clinton convention, and

you know jus' what I told you there in the Gleason House that night

before we met. So don't try to come any o' that old gag on me, 'cause I

won't stand fer it."

"Well--" Sprague began, in a voice that indicated a want of conviction

on his part, lifting his brows to add to the effect of the tone. He

ended by spitting at his convenient cuspidor.

"But I don't care 'bout me," said Rankin; "go in an' abuse me all you

want. Ther' ain't nobody'll believe you, anyhow. Everybody knows't I

never broke a promise in my life, an' that I al'ays stood pat fer my

friends--which you wasn't one o' them, so long's I can remember--but

that don't cut any figur' here ner there."

"I always supposed we were friends, Jim," Sprague complained.

"Oh, that's all right--in politics, I mean. I hain't nothin' ag'in you

pers'nally, course, but in politics we've al'ays been ag'in each other,

an' ther' ain't no use tryin' to ignore that now. You've been sore ever

since the convention, of course, an' I don't know's I blame you fer it,

but we beat you fair an' square, an' I come over here to tell you that

we expect you to get out an' support the ticket."

"Oh, you did, did you?" said Sprague, with half a smile.

"Yes, I did," said Rankin.

"Well," said Sprague, deliberately stopping to spit again, "I supposed

that after the Clinton convention I might consider myself out of

politics."

"Yes, you _might_," Rankin rejoined, "but the trouble is, you _don't_,

an' your fellers right here in Moultrie County is out with the'r knives

fer Jerry."

"Well, if they are," said Sprague, "I'm sure I didn't know it."

"Oh, hell, now, Con," expostulated Rankin, disgustedly, "don't fer

God's sake use that 'ith me. Maybe it goes down to Washin'ton, I don'

know, but it don't go here, not 'ith me, 't any rate. You know what

they're doin', an' so do I. An' I'll just tell you this," Rankin leaned

over and laid his hand on the edge of Sprague's desk, while Sprague

eyed him with disfavour, "that if you expect to be in politics any

more they've got to stop it, an' stop it now, an' if they don't----"

"Well, if they don't?" Sprague interrupted in an ugly, defiant note.

"If they don't, why, don't ever dare stick your head up out o' your

crab-hole ag'in; an' what's more----"

"What's more?" repeated Sprague, nodding.

"This is a game two can play at. We've got a few knives over in Polk

County, and, while they're a little rusty an' out o' use, they're long,

an' they're deadly, an' we'll get 'em out at once an' run 'em into that

brother-'n-law o' yourn about that fur----"

Rankin measured off the sickening distance on his left arm, with his

right hand at the elbow.

"An' turn 'em round," and Rankin twisted his fist savagely. In

illustrating the vengeful deed he had allowed some of his excitement

to master him, and he rose now and stood hanging over Sprague with a

menace in the droop of his shoulders and the stretch of his neck.

"Now you know the business that brought me here, Con Sprague," Rankin

went on. "I come over to tell this to Wilson, but I thought it 'uld be

fair to tell you first. I'm goin' over to tell him, an' then I'm goin'

back home. Now, if your brother-'n-law wants to go to the Legislature,

just you get out an' make a few speeches fer Garwood, an' declare

y'urself, an' you an' him put y'ur fellers over here to work, an'

you do it in two days. I'll watch you an' if you don't do it, I'll

say 'plunk,'"--Rankin used the word which the Illinois politicians,

doubtless in their distrust of anything British, have substituted

for the Englishman's "plump"--"an' the boys'll plunk--an' fer the

first time in our history we'll send a minority representative to

Springfield, an' it won't be your brother-'n-law, either."

Sprague's face blackened. He knew that dangerous possibility in

cumulative voting, but he said nothing.

"I don't ask you fer any answer," said Rankin. "But I've served notice

on you. You can do just as you damn please."

And then Rankin went away. He made his call on Wilson, By night he was

back in Grand Prairie.

XV

In the early twilight of a Saturday afternoon late in October Garwood

walked up Kaskaskia Street from the station in a cold, sullen rain,

conscious of but one sensation--he was glad that only one more week

of the campaign remained. He walked with long, deliberate strides,

indifferent to the rain, which had beaten down his wide hat brim and

trickled off it, before and behind, in little streams. His face,

under those drooping eaves, was long and serious; it brightened,

automatically, only when he met some pedestrian to whom in his capacity

as a candidate, he involuntarily spoke a greeting.

Garwood had come home in response to a telegram from Rankin, a telegram

which had concentrated such an urgency into its economically chosen ten

words that he had traveled many miles since daylight over country roads

and by rail to reach Grand Prairie at night. Now, just as the twilight

was darkening and the lights were beginning to show in the stores along

Main Street, he turned into the Lawrence Block and climbed to his

office. The office was dark; young Enright, who was reading law under

him, had gone into the country to make one of the political speeches

he was proud of having been asked to deliver that fall; the typewriter

had closed her desk and gone, and her little clock was ticking

lonesomely beside her little vase of flowers. But in his private

room, Garwood found Rankin sitting with his feet on the window-sill

looking abstractedly down into the street where the lights from the

store-windows wriggled in many lines across the canal of mud.

Garwood took off his hat, lashed it back and forth to get the water

off, and slapped it down on the top of his desk. And then he said, in a

voice that was rough and hoarse:

"Well, what's the matter? Everything's gone to hell, I suppose--heh?"

"No, it's all right. I just want a talk with you," said Rankin. "Have a

good meetin' last night?"

"Oh, first-rate; made a poor speech, though. Truth is, I'm about done

up. Thank God it'll be over in another week, whichever way it goes.

Don't know that I care"--his sentence was broken by a cough that shook

him.

Rankin turned and tried to distinguish his features.

"Look'e here, Jerry," said the big fellow, "you've got a cold--you'll

best go down and have Chris mix you a hot tod."

"Oh, I'm all right," said Garwood, scraping his throat. "Go on with

your tale of woe."

"Well," began Rankin with evident reluctance, "I hate to tell you, but

the truth is, we've got to have some money, an' I don't know where

it's comin' from. I've spent all we had, an' more, too, an' I've held

up everybody here in town till I've squeezed 'em dry. They don't like

to give to us anyway; most of 'em has already contributed to the

county fund, an' they think that's enough. I can't use all the county

funds fer you; the candidates is kickin' already; they say I've been

neglectin' 'em fer you, an' it won't do to git 'em sore on us--'taint

hardly square nohow. Damned if I like it. We've got along so fur, but

now we're up to the limit."

"Wouldn't the Hutchinsons give?"

"Well, they put all theirn in the county fund, so's to elect Sanford;

they say anyhow a congressman can't help 'em; they're lookin' fer the

treas'rer only--all they care fer is the bank."

"That's the way with those bankers," said Garwood. "Hogs, all of them.

That's what we get for giving them Sanford. If we'd nominated a fellow

of our own for treasurer we might have forced him to lay down on them."

"Yes, you're right, but that time's gone by now, no use cryin' over

spilt milk. We've got to face the present. We owe a good many bills,

some fer printin', an'--"

"Can't they wait till after election?"

"Oh, maybe they might, but I hate to ask 'em; it wouldn't help us any.

The postage--well, I've paid all that out o' my own pocket."

"You know how I appreciate that, Jim, don't you?"

"Oh, that's all right," said Rankin, waving his gratitude aside. "Then

there's the _Citizen_ an' some other papers over the district, they're

beginning to clamor fer the'r money."

"It's a regular hold-up, isn't it?" said Garwood.

"That's what you've got to expect in politics," said Rankin. "But

if that 'as all we might take care of it. The situation has taken a

curious turn this last week."

"How's that?" asked Garwood, who had suffered from a candidate's

myopia, and could not note the numerous turns a situation takes during

a campaign.

"Well, it's this way. The committees is all kickin' because your

assessments hasn't been paid. I've been tryin' to make a poor man's

campaign fer you, an' I've succeeded pretty well so fur, if I do say

it myself. But the boys needs money everywhere; they want to finish up

the'r poll, and over in Moultrie, where we had to deal with the Sprague

kickers, a little money has just _got_ to be used, that's all."

"I thought you'd fixed Sprague?"

"Well, I made him come down, o' course, but I wouldn't trust the dirty

whelp out o' my sight on'y when I could see him, as the old widow woman

said of her grandson, an' I think we ought to pay the assessment over

there anyway."

"How much is it?" asked Garwood, with the pain an unrendered bill can

give one.

"Two hundred," said Rankin. "The boys over there say--shall I tell you

what they say?"

"Yes; go on, I can stand anything nowadays."

"Well, they say that now you're goin' to marry ol' man Harkness's

daughter, you'd ought to get him to put up fer you."

Garwood, in his hoarse voice, swore an oath.

"Well, I'm just tellin' you what they say. They're sayin' that right

here to home, an' they're sayin' it pretty much all over the district.

They think Harkness is made o' money, an' that it 'uld be easy fer him

to put up some."

"Have they ever known him to put up any for a campaign?" asked Garwood

with a sardonic smile that Rankin could not see in the gloom.

"No, reckon not; but they look to you to loosen him up. But let me

tell you," Rankin hastened on, as if he had pleasanter information,

"you know Bromley, when he got good an' goin', let loose a lot of his

money--just sowed it 'round freely fer two or three weeks, an' it kind

o' made up fer the mistakes he was makin' on the stump. But now he's

done just what I knowed he'd do--here with election a week off, he's

got skeered an' froze up stiff an' cold, tighter'n a mill race in

January--not a red cent 'ill he bleed now, an' the whole push is sore

on 'im. But I knowed he'd do it, I knowed it, from the very first."

Rankin chuckled at his own prophetic instinct. "So you see, we'd ought

to take advantage of the situation. If I had a little money to use

judiciously, I'd have 'em licked to a stand-still a week from to-night."

Rankin rubbed his palms in the enthusiasm he would have felt in such a

triumphant finish to his campaign, while Garwood's heart beat a little

higher as he thought of the security he would feel in the possession of

a campaign fund. The little wave of excitement brought on a return of

his cough.

"An' now, Jerry," Rankin resumed, "I'll tell you why I sent fer you."

He drew his chair closer to Garwood, and laid his hand on Garwood's

knee. "My God, man!" he exclaimed, suddenly. "You been sittin' here in

clothes as wet as that?"

"Oh, go on," said Garwood. "Let's hear what you have to say. Don't mind

me, I'm all right."

"Well, I'll make it short," said Rankin. "An' then we'll go down to

Chris's. What I want to suggest is this--I hate to do it, but it's a

groun'hog case, an' you an' me's ol' friends"--