“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?”
“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.”