With the stable boy's assurance that within ten minutes his horse would
stand at the curb, Shelby locked his door against surprise, and, with
an eye on the Temple driveway, made a rapid change to his riding
clothes, which he was accustomed to keep by him for emergencies. As he
finished, Ruth, lissome in her black habit, cantered daintily out with
a laughing nod to Volney Sprague, who was watching her from the _Whig_
office over the way. His clerk was absent serving papers in Etruria,
and, hanging a mendacious "Back-in-1-Hour" sign on his outer door,
Shelby leaped down the stair.
In the public eye he grew more sedate, and trotted soberly out of the
business district in a direction contrary to that taken by his
neighbor. Then, of a sudden, he shamed John Gilpin with a right-about,
and, circling by side streets and quiet lanes the course he had just
covered, galloped countryward in pursuit. The manoeuvre was not new to
him. He had employed it on occasion to hoodwink Mrs. Grundy for Mrs.
Hilliard's sake, scrupulously meeting and leaving the lady outside the
corporation limits, a ruse which deceived nobody save the deceivers.
Nor was it effective now. Ruth passed Mrs. Bowers's argus-eyed bay
window, as did Shelby, and Mrs. Grundy had her speculative pickings of
the event.
Ruth spied pursuit where the turnpike elbowed sharply from the
outskirts. For a demure girl her smile was mischievous. Walking her
wiry little pony till the footfalls of Shelby's chestnut cob beat the
'pike a scant hundred yards behind, she flicked her animal ever so
lightly with her riding crop. The man saw a puff of dust, a twinkle of
little hoofs, and a lithe figure outlined for an instant against the
autumn sky as it sped over a hill and far away. The cob labored to the
crest and pondered his defeat. A half-mile down the unkempt old toll
road, where the goldenrod dropped stately bows to the purple aster, and
Bouncing Bet viewed their livelong philandering with scorn, was the
impertinent runt--walking! Down thundered the cob. No evasion now.
Two hundred yards, one fifty, one hundred yards, seventy-five, sixty,
even fifty--and again the pursued was spirited away in a cloud.
Shelby bore it thrice, and raised his voice. Ruth's surprise was a
delightful thing to see.
"I've tried these three miles to overtake you," he scolded. "You must
have heard me."
Ruth surveyed the smoking cob.
"We did hear a noise. My pony is so restive."
"The little beast looks as demure as yourself. I believe you knew it
was I."
Ruth's glance swept a neighboring field.
"Have you ever associated cabbages with beauty?" she asked. "Just look
at that reach of blue-green."
Shelby admired obediently. Then, the occasion seeming to demand a
certain finesse, he said:--
"There's a man out this way I must look up--a kind of farmer, drover,
and jockey rolled in one. He influences a bunch of votes. It's very
pleasant to find you riding the same way. I'm glad we met--that is--if
you--"
Her smile stopped his limping improvisation in mid-career.
"You needn't invent anything more," she said. "You're not good at it."
"There really is such a man," he defended, with a contented laugh; "but
he can wait. I'd like to be quit of the political grind for a while.
May I rest?"
"Yes; you may come," Ruth decided.
His appeal struck a womanly chord.
October was spendthrift of its pigments. Every isolated copse was a
mimic forest fire, each bivouacked corn-field a russet foil, the air a
heady wine. Shelby thrilled with dumb pastorals and a vague longing to
do and speak in keeping with the spirit of the scene. A tuft of oxeye
daisies in the shelter of a ruinous worm fence attracted him, and he
reined the cob from the highway to fetch them. To his bewilderment
Ruth's face shadowed at the gift.
"Poor things--what made you?" she lamented. "I've watched them there
for a fortnight. What clumsy florist could have grouped them with the
tall grasses so exquisitely, and set the little red vine clambering
over all in the fence corner, so satiny and lichen-gray?"
Shelby was mystified.
"I thought that they would look smart in your belt--that all women
wanted to pick flowers when they saw them--" he stammered. "I'm afraid
I know little of women's ways."
Her laugh was a caress.
"Don't put my rudeness upon the sex," she said. "It's because I dabble
in paints and things that I thought of these flowers first as a
picture. But I assure you I'm just as much given to plundering them to
set off my hair and dress as any daughter of Eve," wherewith she placed
his offering, as he would have it, in her belt. He seemed to her
always a kind of shorn Samson when afield from politics, and now, as
she had often done, she drew him to speak of what he knew best.
"I used to think you cared little about such things," he told her
presently. "The average woman doesn't care greatly. If she had the
ballot, she'd probably vote for the handsomest man--if the candidate
was a man."
"I'm afraid I should," owned Ruth. "For instance, I never could vote
for a candidate with mutton-chop whiskers. And fancy having to decide
between two women!"
"Vote-buying would have a scope which staggers the imagination."
The comment set her thoughts running on the accusations of corruption
which were bandied from lip to lip during this campaign.
"Are many votes really bought?" she asked.
"Yes, many," Shelby answered frankly. "I shouldn't care to have you
quote me, but I'll admit that I've sometimes bought them myself."
She was dumfounded at his candor, and half regretted it.
"Is it--is it quite necessary?"
"I think it is--sometimes. And so it will be till the reformers show
the practical politician a better system, or human nature changes its
spots. Indiana was bought for Lincoln in '64. It would take an
unpractical man, even an unpatriotic man, to deny that the crisis did
not justify the step."
"Every candidate is not a Lincoln."
"Nor every year a '64. Timid people compound with their conscience by
calling that Indiana affair a war measure. But we're talking of our
own state, whose political name has justly or unjustly become a hissing
among the nations. I don't deny there's some reason for it. We are
big, with big opportunities for corruption, and the tradition of sharp
practice is of long standing. We bribed, intimidated, and filibustered
in swaddling clothes, and stole a governorship as early as 1791. The
tricks of to-day have all gone stale with handling, for the patriots we
honor were politicians too."
"That is a novel point of view for me," Ruth admitted. "It's so easy
to think the old time the best time." This was the pleader of the
court-house rally, and she forgot the gaucheries and limitations of a
moment since.
"All in all, the Catilines meet their Ciceros," said Shelby; "the
Tildens undo the Tweeds. General Jackson once said he was not a
politician, but if he were, he should be a New York politician. You
see the state is an eternal riddle--'pivotal,' as the saying goes--the
mother of parties, the devotee of none; and there lies half its
fascination for the politician--I might say for the statesman. What
passes for mere politics here might well figure as statesmanship
elsewhere. We don't call our commonwealth the Empire State for naught;
its interests are indeed imperial, and it is no mean office to shape
its destinies. It is the man in politics who does this, whether you
will or no. A free government requires parties, parties require
politicians--in last analysis the mouthpiece of the sovereign people.
I dare say you're wondering what all these generalities have to do with
vote-buying in Tuscarora. I'll tell you. It's true that not every
candidate is a Lincoln, that not a few men are personally unworthy of
the offices they hold or seek; but this also is true, that many an
unworthy man is worthy of election, even by bribery,--I say it
deliberately,--because of his party's sake, for that party's success
may signify the country's salvation. You have, of course, heard sad
things said of me. You will hear more, and I shall not run around
among my friends to deny them. Worthy or unworthy, I merge my
personality in that of my party, in whose ultimate patriotism I have
enduring faith."
Ruth was no logician.
"I don't believe you unworthy," she said.
"That's better than a hundred votes," laughed the man, vastly pleased.
"Let me promise you something. If I'm elected to Congress, I will do
and say everything a new member can to wipe out the tariff on objects
of art."
It was her turn for mystification; if he had his shallows, he also had
his depths.
Shelby did not ask if she were pleased; he saw it.
"You wouldn't have thought it of a practical politician--one of the
'aesthetically dead,'" he smiled. "Yet it is the politician you should
seek to interest in these things. He'll see their value if he's
taught. You opened my eyes--did it in a social way, which is the best
way. It's through his social side, be it in barroom or drawing-room,
that the politician is most easily reached, for he's a human being.
Reformers don't see that; they aim at the intellect direct. You didn't
dream, in talking about art to me now and then, that you were doing a
possible public service. That's the key-note of woman's best influence
in politics, I've come to believe--unconscious argument, not
speechmaking. You have influenced me more than I can tell. I've
grown. You have broadened my horizon. Will you make it broader? I
ask you to marry me."
It was a little moment before she took his meaning, so much did his
blunt proposal seem a part of the staccato chat of politics from which
it issued.
"I cannot," she said at last.
"Why?"
It seemed ridiculous to speak of the affections to this businesslike
creature who apparently counted them not worth mentioning; so she
answered that they were unsuited to one another.
Shelby shook his head emphatically.
"I can't agree with you. Are you engaged to marry any one else?"
Ruth colored under his cross-examination, but replied that she was not.
"We'll let the question lie fallow for a time," Shelby arranged.
"Think it over impartially."
She tried to bid him put the thing wholly out of mind, but he adjourned
discussion as summarily as he might a committee meeting, and spoke of
other topics.
It was sundown when they neared the town, returning by way of Little
Poland and the successive quarries bordering the canal. Shelby dropped
a careless glance at the docks and yards of his own company, now quiet
with the day's work done. Then he looked again. Outlined against the
sky a man climbed to the tow-path and walked away. Shelby recognized
Bernard Graves.
"Ride on slowly," he directed. "I'll join you in a minute. There's
something needs looking after in the Eureka."