ANICE INTERVENES
“You wrote them? _You_ wrote them?” muttered Standish, over and over,
stupid, dazed, refusing to believe, to understand.
“Yes,” she said, “I wrote them. And I wrote one to Mr. Ansel. He was
wiser than you. He tried to profit by what I——”
“And I—_I_ thought it might be Gerald Conover.”
“Gerald? He never knew any of the more secret details of the campaign.
His father couldn’t trust him.”
“And he _did_ trust _you_.”
Clive had not meant to say it. He was sorry before the words had passed
his lips. Yet it was the first lucid thought that came to him as his
mind cleared from the first shock of Anice’s revelation. He knew how
fully Conover believed in this pretty secretary of his; how wholly the
Railroader had, in her case, departed from his life rule of universal
suspicion. That she should thus, coldbloodedly, calculatingly, have
betrayed the trust of even such an employer as Caleb was monstrous. He
could not reconcile it with anything in his own long knowledge of her.
The revelation turned him sick.
“You despise me, don’t you?” she asked. There was no shame, no faltering
in her clear young voice.
“I have no right to—to judge anyone,” he stammered. “I——”
“You despise me.” And now it was a statement, not a query.
“No,” he said, slowly, trying to gauge his own tangled emotions, “I
don’t. I don’t know why I don’t, but I don’t. I should think anyone else
that did such a thing was lower than the beasts. But you—why, _you_ are
yourself. And the queen can do no wrong. I’ve known you nearly all your
life. If it had been possible for you to harbor a mean or dishonest
impulse I’d have been the first person on earth to guess it. Because no
one else would have cared as I did. As I _do_. I don’t understand it at
all. And just at first it bowled me over, and a whole rush of disloyal
thoughts and doubts came over me. But I know now it’s all right,
somehow, for it’s _you_.”
“You mean,” exclaimed the girl, wonderingly, “that after what I’ve told
you, you trust me?”
“Why, of course.”
“And you don’t even ask me to explain?”
“If there was anything I had a right to know—that you wanted me to
know—you’d have explained of your own accord.”
She looked at him long, searchingly. Her face was as inscrutable as the
Sphinx’s, yet when she spoke it was of a totally different theme.
“What are you going to do?” she inquired.
“Do?” he repeated, perplexed.
“Yes, about the campaign.”
“There’s nothing to do. I am beaten. When the convention meets, in half
an hour, Conover will be nominated. Only my two little blocks of
delegates will be left to oppose him, against all that whole——”
“Yes; yes, I know that,” she interposed, “but what then?”
“That is the end, I suppose. Perhaps by the next gubernatorial
campaign——”
“The next? _This_ campaign hasn’t fairly begun yet. Do you mean to say
you are going to sit by with folded hands and accept defeat?”
“What else is left?”
“Everything is left. You have tried to fight an all-powerful machine, to
fight it on its own ground, along its own lines, yet refusing to use its
own weapons or to guard against them. And you have failed. The _real_
fight begins now.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you must call on the people at large to help you. You have
aroused them. Already there is so much discontent against Boss rule that
Mr. Conover is troubled. You have no right to abandon the Cause now that
you’ve interested others in it. Put yourself in the people’s hands.”
“You mean, to——?”
“To declare yourself an independent candidate.”
“‘Bolt’ the Democratic ticket? It——”
“It is against custom, but good men have done it. In this battle, as I
understand it, there is no question of party issues. It is the people
against the Machine. Can’t you see?”
“Yes,” he replied, after a moment of hesitation, “I see. And you are
right. But it means only the courting of further defeat. What Conover
has already done in muzzling the press and using other crooked tactics,
he will continue to do. My speeches won’t be allowed to circulate. My
meetings will be broken up. More Conover men will register than can be
found on the census list. And on Election Day there will be the usual
ballot frauds. All the voting machinery is in Conover’s hands. Even if I
won I would be counted out at the polls. No——”
“Wait! If I can clear the way for you, if I can insure you a fair
chance, if I can prevent any frauds and force Mr. Conover to leave the
issue honestly to the people of the Mountain State—if I can do all this,
then will you declare yourself an independent candidate, and——?”
“But how can _you_—a girl—do all this?”
“I’ll explain that to you afterwards. But it won’t be in any unfair or
underhand way. You said just now you trusted me. Can’t you trust me in
this, too?”
“You know I can.”
“And you’ll do as I ask?”
“Yes.”
“Good!”
“It’s worth trial. I’ll do it.”
“Then I shall be the first to congratulate the future Governor.”
“Anice!”—the old-time boyish impetuosity she so well remembered flashing
into one of its rare recurrences—“if I win this fight—if I am elected
Governor—I shall have something worth while at last to offer you. If I
come to you the day I am elected——”
“I shall congratulate you only as I would any other friend.”
His lips tightened as at a blow. For a moment neither spoke. It was
Clive who broke the silence.
“I have said it awkwardly,” he began. “If it had been less to me I might
have found more eloquence. I love you. I think I have always loved you.
You know that. A woman always knows. I love you. I loved you in the old
days, when I was too poor to have the right to speak. What little I
am—what little I may have achieved—is for _you_. I have not made much of
myself. But that I’ve made anything at all is due to you. In everything
I have done, your eyes and your smile have been before me. At heart,
I’ve laid every success at your feet. At heart I’ve asked your faith and
your pardon for each of my failures. And, whether you care or not, it
will always be the same. That one dear ambition will spur me on to make
the very best of myself. My victories shall be your victories whether
you wish it or not. Perhaps that seems to you presumptuous or foolish?”
“No.”
There was no perceptible emotion in the half-whispered word. From it
Clive could glean nothing. Presently he went on:
“I think whenever you see a man trying to make the most of all that is
in him, and wearing out his very soul in this breakneck American race
for livelihood, you’ll find there is some woman behind it all. It is for
her, not for his own selfish ambition, that he is fighting. Sometimes
she crowns his victory. Sometimes he wins only the thorn-crown. But the
glory of the work and the winning are hers. Not his. Now you know why I
entered this Governorship fight, and why I am willing to keep it up. Oh,
sweetheart, I _love_ you so. You _must_ understand, now, why I longed to
come to you in my hour of triumph and——”
“You would have come too late,” she said in that same enigmatic
undertone.
“_Anice._”
There was a world of pain in his appeal, yet she disregarded it; and,
with face averted, hurried on:
“Would you care for—for the love of a girl who made you wait until you
could buy her with fame and an income? Do I care for the love of a man
who holds that love so cheaply he must accompany its gift with a
Governorship title——?”
“And now,” she observed, some minutes later, as she strove to rearrange
her tumbled crown of rust-colored hair before the tiny patch of office
mirror, “and now, if you can be sensible for just a little while, we’ll
go back to the convention. And I’ll explain to you about those letters.
The anonymous ones.”
“It’s all right. I don’t have to be told. I——”
“But I have to tell you. That’s the worst of being a girl.”
The crowd had trooped back into the Convention Hall. Gerald Conover had
not been at the earlier session, but now, his sallow face flushed with
liquor, he sat silent and dull-eyed among a party of noisy young
satellites, in one of the dingy, chicken-coop boxes at the side of the
stage.
He had evidently been drinking hard. In fact, since his wife’s visit to
Granite, the previous week, the youngster had seldom if ever been wholly
sober. Nor was his habitual apathy all due to drink.
The Conover machine, having greased the wheels and oiled the cogs, did
not propose to lose any time in running its Juggernaut over the young
reformer who had dared to brave an entrenched and ruthless organization.
Amid a hullabaloo Bourke called the conference to order, ending his
formula with the equally perfunctory request:
“All gents kindly r’frain from smokin’!”
At the word a hundred matches were struck, in scattered volley, from all
corners of the place. For nothing else so inflames the desire to smoke
as does its unenforceable prohibition. Thus, amid clouds of malodorous
campaign tobacco smoke, was the sacrifice to the Machine consummated.
The Committee on Resolutions offered a perfunctory platform filled with
the customary hackneyed phrases, lauding the deeds of Democracy and
denouncing the Republican party. As the Republicans had never won a
victory in the Mountain State since 1864, these platitudes were
provocative of vast yawns and of shuffling of feet as the delegates
impatiently awaited the call to the slaughter.
The six Standish men on the Platform Committee had prepared a minority
report, but on the advice of Ansel they did not present it.
The Committee on Organization, by a vote of eighteen to six, offered a
report nominating Bourke, temporary chairman, to succeed himself as
permanent chairman.
Then, while the Conover claque hooted joyously and the Standish men sat
by in helpless silence, the finishing stroke was delivered.
Two reports were offered from the Committee on Credentials, one of the
minority, signed by the six members from Wills and Matawan, recommending
the seating of the contesting Standish delegates from the other six
counties; the other, signed by the eighteen Conover members of the
committee, recommending that the delegates holding credentials be
allowed to retain their seats.
The majority report was jammed through, while Shevlin’s noble army of
brazen-lunged shouters cheered, screeched and blew tin horns.
In his den behind the stage Caleb Conover’s mouth corners twisted in a
grim smile of satisfaction as the babel of noise reached him. From some
mysterious source Shevlin had produced a half-dozen bottles of
champagne, and there, in the room of the successful candidate, corks
were drawn and success was pledged to “the Mountain State’s next and
greatest Governor,” with Caleb’s time-honored slogan, “To hell with
reform!” as a rider.
In another room, directly across the stage, a very different scene was
in action. Karl Ansel had left his seat in the Wills County delegation,
turning over the floor leadership of the forlorn Standish hope to Judge
Shelp, of Matawan; and had gone direct to Standish’s quarters. The room
had been empty when he entered, but before he had waited thirty seconds,
the door was flung open and Clive hurried in.
Ansel looked sharply at him. Then in astonished bewilderment. He had
expected to find the beaten man dejected, bereft of even his customary
strong calm. On the contrary, Standish, his face alive with resolve and
with some other impulse that baffled even Ansel’s shrewd observation,
came into the place like a whirlwind. Kicking aside the litter of dusty
stage properties and dingy, discolored hangings that were piled near the
door, he made his way to Karl and grasped his hand.
“How goes it?” he asked. “I’m sorry to be late. I thought——”
“Well, Boy, it’s all up,” said Ansel. “Some fool said once that virtue
was its own reward, and I guess it just naturally has to be. It never
gets any other. In half an hour from now Caleb Conover will be nominated
for Governor, and we will be bowing our necks for his collar, and
pledging ourselves to support him and his dirty gang, just as we always
have in the past and just as we always will in the future, I presume. We
put up a good fight and an honest one, but you see where it’s landed us.
So far as we are concerned, it’s all over but the shouting.”
And the grim old New Englander dropped his hand upon the shoulder of the
defeated candidate with an awkward gesture that was half a caress.
“You’re mistaken,” retorted Clive, “the shouting has just begun. Ansel,
I have made up my mind. A man owes more to his State than he owes to his
party. Political regularity is one thing, and common decency is another.
I marched into this convention a free man, with nobody’s collar on my
neck, and I’m going to march out in the same way.”
“What?” almost shouted Ansel. “You’re not going to bolt?”
“Yes, I am,” answered Standish. “And I’m going to bolt right now before
the nomination is made.”
“But, man,” protested Ansel, “think of it—the irregularity of it! You’ll
be branded as a bolter and a renegade, and a traitor and a lot of other
things. Why, man alive, it’ll _never_ do.”
“It _will_ do,” responded Standish. “I have it all planned. If we walk
out of this convention now, we are going to take some of the delegates
with us. I believe that the Independents will indorse us, and I believe
that the Republicans will indorse us; if we take this stand. I believe
that there are thousands of Democrats who think more of the State than
they do of any one man or any one party. They have followed Conover
because there was no one else to follow. Yes, _I’m_ going to bolt, and
I’m going out there now and tell these people why I do it.”
“But look here, Standish,” remonstrated Ansel, “that’s mighty near as
irregular as the bolting itself, going out there and making a speech. No
candidate’s ever supposed to show his face to the convention until after
the nomination is made. You know that, don’t you? Then, after the
nomination he comes out either to accept it or to promise his support to
the winner. You’ll bust the party traditions all to flinders.”
“Very well,” assented Clive, “if I can smash the Machine, too, it’s all
I ask. I tell you my mind is made up. This convention has been a
mockery, a farce. You know how many voters were with us, and you know
the deal our delegates got. The time’s come in this State to draw up a
new Declaration of Independence. And, right now, I’m going to be the man
to start the ball rolling.”
“But, hold on!” began Ansel. Clive did not hear. Brushing past the lank
manager, he walked out of the room and made his way to the front of the
platform. Karl, muttering perplexedly, followed him.
As the young candidate’s tall figure emerged from the wings, a buzz of
wonder went up from the delegates on the floor below, for, as Ansel had
said, such an advent at such a time was without precedent. But there was
neither hisses from the Conover crowd nor cheers from the corner where
the survivors of the Standish hope sat. The delegates were too
astonished to make any demonstration.
Straight across the stage Standish strode. Shevlin, hurrying out from
Conover’s room, made as though to bar his way, but gave place before the
other’s greater bulk, and fled to tell the Railroader what was afoot.
With Ansel still behind him, Standish kept on until he reached the table
beside which the chairman sat. At his coming Bourke jumped nervously to
his feet.
“Hey! This ain’t regular,” he began, unconsciously copying Ansel’s
words. “The nomination’s just goin’ to begin, and we——”
But he could get no further. Standish pushed him aside, ignoring the
chairman as completely as if he were one of the battered stage
properties.
Dropping one hand upon the table, he faced the crowd, his whole being
alert with tense nervous force. A low murmur, like a ground swell, ran
from row to row of seats, and found its echo in the galleries, where
hundreds of the townspeople had packed themselves to hear the nominating
speeches, and to witness, with varying emotions, the crowning victory of
Caleb Conover.
In the midst of a silence in which the fall of the proverbial pin would
have sounded like the early morning milk wagon, Clive Standish began the
most unusual speech that a Mountain State convention had ever heard.
“My friends——”
From Shevlin’s rooters came a volley of hisses and cat-calls, but the
disturbance and the disturbers were speedily squelched. From the
galleries and from the back of the stage, where many prominent townsfolk
sat, there sprang up a roll of protest, so menacing in its tone, that
the half-drunken thugs’ cheer-leaders deemed it the better part of valor
to draw into their shells and remain thereafter mute.
“My friends,” repeated Standish, his powerful voice echoing from floor
to roof, “Abraham Lincoln freed the black men forty odd years ago. It’s
time that somebody freed the white brother. For years this State has
groaned under the tribute of a relentless Machine, under the rule of a
railroad that was all stomach and no conscience, all bowels and no
heart, all greed and no generosity. Our party—and with shame I say
it—has been turned into a vest-pocket asset of this vile corporation.
For months past, and more especially to-day, you have seen what its
power is, as opposed to the power of the more honest citizens of our
party. It won to-day, it won yesterday, and it won the day before. It
always has won. It rests with us here to-day, now and in this hour, to
decide whether a new Proclamation of Emancipation is to be issued or
whether the great Democratic party in the Mountain State shall continue
to be the chattel, the credulous, simple, weak-kneed, backboneless,
hopeless, helpless victim of the greediest, most corrupt railroad that
ever trailed its steel shackles across the face of the earth. Whether or
not the Boss-guided Machine shall beat us to earth and hold us there
forever. We have tried reforming the party from the inside, and we have
failed. Has the time come to reform it from the outside?”
He paused, and the answer came. From the Conover hosts went up a shout
of “No! No!” mingled with hiss and groan. But instantly, from a great
scattered mass of the audience, and from the Standish delegates on the
floor, there arose an outburst of cheering that drowned the barking
negatives of what had been but ten short minutes before a majority of
that convention.
The effect of this outburst was diverse on its hearers. With Standish
himself it acted as a tonic, as an electric battery which gave him added
force and vigor for what he had yet to say. Karl Ansel it seemed for the
moment to stupify and paralyze. Conover’s lieutenants it threw into a
state of consternation, which approached frenzy, panic, demoralization.
They ran aimlessly to and fro, conferring excitedly in hoarse whispers.
Conover, alone, from his den at the rear of the stage, smiled to himself
and gave no other sign of interest.
Standish was speaking again, and now behind him stood Karl Ansel
recovering from his amazement, and intent to catch his leader’s every
word.
“I tell you,” thundered Clive, beside himself with excitement, “we have
got to act—and to act _now_. I tell you that the people of this State,
irrespective of party, are waiting for half a chance to throw off the
yoke of the railroad—of the Machine. All over this country of ours
bosses are being overthrown. They are going down to ruin in the wreckage
of their own Machines; and it is the PEOPLE who are downing them. The
day of Bossism is passing—passing forever. We came into this convention
as free men. _Some_ of us did. And I for one propose to walk out of it a
free man. If we go before the people of this State on the issue of
honest government as opposed to dishonesty, I tell you that we will
_win_. It only needs a man with a match, and the nerve to use that
match, to start a conflagration that will burn party ties to cinders and
leave a free, emancipated people.
“Let them call me bolter, if they will! Let them call me traitor,
ingrate, renegade! I would rather be a bolter than a thief. I would
rather rip my party, dearly as I love it, to rags and tatters, than to
sacrifice my own self-respect any longer! I would rather see the
Democratic party pass from existence altogether than to see it continue
the tool and the creature of greed and dishonesty.
“Yes, they may call me bolter, and properly so, for I am going to bolt
this convention! Is there a man who will follow me out of doors? Out of
the filthy atmosphere of this Machine-ridden, Boss-owned convention,
into the pure sunshine of God’s own people?”
In the midst of an indescribable tumult, in which hisses and cheers were
madly intermingled, Clive Standish leaped off the platform, cleared the
orchestra railing and strode up the middle aisle toward the open door at
the far end of the hall.
And then a strange thing occurred. Karl Ansel, as a man wakened from a
dream, rubbed his eyes, and peered for a moment at Clive’s retreating
back. Then with a yell that shook the rafters he, too, bounded over the
rail and hastened up the aisle behind his leader.
The delegates from Wills and Matawan counties arose as one man, forming
in procession behind Ansel and Standish.
Down the steps from the gallery came not one, nor a dozen, but
nine-tenths of those who had heard the speech, including the very cream
of the representative business element of Granite.
The remarkable scene was over in almost less than it takes to tell of
it. In a daze sat the abandoned convention. Glancing about them, even
the Conover delegates on the floor discovered here and there vacant
chairs, gaps in their own solid ranks, where some one, weaker perhaps
than the others—or perhaps stronger—had been moved by the furious
oratory of Clive Standish to join that procession which even now was
rolling out of the front door into the quiet, gaslit street like a
living avalanche.
Bourke managed to pull the remnants of the convention back into some
sort of shape. The delegates went through the form of nominating
Conover. A quantity of hand-made enthusiasm burst forth; and then,
without a speech from the successful nominee, the great occasion wound
up in a roar of cheers, shouts and blaring music.
“There wasn’t any stereopticon stunts done while I was out of the room,
was there?” asked Billy Shevlin as, at the close of the proceedings, he
and Bourke repaired to Conover’s den behind the stage.
“’Course not,” answered the chairman. “Why?”
“Oh, nothin’,” said Billy, “only I heard one of them N’ York reporters
sayin’ something about ‘handwritin’ on the wall.’ Maybe it’s a new joke
that ain’t reached Granite yet.”
“No,” remarked the Railroader, as he joined his lieutenants, “it hasn’t
reached Granite, and what’s more it ain’t going to. The only handwriting
on these walls will take the form of a double cross. And it’ll be
opposite Standish’s name.”